“Okay,” I said. My voice dripped icicles. “Well, it’s good to see you.”
Again, Morgan wasn’t stupid. I didn’t get anything past her. She leaned forward and grabbed my wrist again. The mask of pity was replaced with something resembling confusion. Better, I supposed.
“I’m sorry, Luce,” she said. “I just… We all searched for you, you know? We all thought… You aren’t exactly the run-away type. Not in the middle of a date. I’m just… I don’t know how to deal with this.”
I nodded, but I couldn’t get rid of my disapproving frown and the cold set of my features. It was stupid and stubborn, but I don’t care. I’d believe her in a heartbeat. I wouldn’t vomit pity on her like she was insane.
“I have to go,” I said. A pair of stock boys had already spotted Morgan’s egg carton mess and were moving in with mops and buckets.
“Wait,” she said. “Can I call you tonight?”
I paused, looking down at the hand on my wrist. “I just need some alone time.”
She nodded and let go of my hand with a sudden crispness.
“Okay,” she said. That damn okay.
As I scooped up my box of Shake ’N Bake from the shelf and made for the check-out aisle, Morgan spoke up. I only half-turned toward her when she did.
“I’ll see you Monday?”
I nodded. “Still want a ride?”
She frowned. “Yeah.”
She said it like she’d taken a swig of bad milk.
“See you Monday.”
I paid for the Shake ’N Bake and headed out the door. I welcomed the gray dimness of the overcast sky, and it reminded me more than a little of the beach and the highway and the foggy nothingness of my dreams. I’d been a regular bitch to Morgan, for no reason. Plus I’d terrified everyone, gotten Morgan and probably Daphne in deep trouble with their parents. All for what?A stupid date?
When I got to my bike, and I was holding the bike lock in one hand, a sudden spike of panic shot through my body. Run. Run run run run run. Run or die. Run or die.
Sweat slicked my skin, and I stumbled under the incredible weight of the terror spreading through every pore in my body. I dropped the bike lock with a dull rattle and ran. A pair of soda machines stood against the side of the building not far away, and I jumped into the nook between them and pressed myself as hard as I could against the white brick wall.
My heart hammered and my lungs bellowed. I knew I was hyperventilating, pulling in tiny shocks of air and gushing them out just as quickly. But I couldn’t calm down. My mind wouldn’t even form rational thoughts. Despite the warm sweat glistening on my skin, my core felt cold. Like I’d swallowed an icicle the size of a baseball bat.
It smelled like urine between the soda machines, but only a distant part of me recognized it. My ears were turned up to their maximum gain. Every rattle in the soda machines, the shriek of every grease-starved shopping cart wheel. The dull whoosh of the sliding doors of the store not twenty feet from where I cowered. The sound of cars starting up and dying off. The creak of car suspension and the groan of tires.
One car was moving fast. Its rush swept from my right, but it was coming quick. I tucked my face against the soda machine and pulled my elbow up to cover my head. Through a tiny crack in my defenses, I saw the car fly past the soda machines. In that split second, I saw a long white boxy car with green-tinted windows, and the outline of the driver’s head. The supernova of terror exploded inside my chest, a crescendo of horror. My breath stuck in my throat, and I tried to burrow into the brick wall, anything to get away from that terrible source…
The car whipped a right turn back into the bulk of the parking lot, zipped through one lane, and turned another right to skirt the furthest edge of the parking lot. Without fanfare it pulled out onto Lincoln Street and disappeared down the road.
The panic disappeared. My hands trembled, and I could feel the hiccup of my shaking breath. The sweat on my skin had turned into ice-water, and I knew I was trembling from more than just adrenaline. I was freezing.
I crept out from between the soda machines and went to unlock my bike. I tucked the bag with the Shake ’N Bake into my backpack, mounted the bike, and stood for a long moment trying to quiet the quakes rocking my body. Were they in that car? The boys who had… Baldy, with that sick smile and that silver revolver. Could I sense them?
Through the windows of the supermarket, I saw Morgan in the check-out line. She couldn’t see me. Not still here. Not like this. I jumped onto the pedals and raced off across the parking lot.
I didn’t see the white car again for another three days.
Chapter Six
Freeze
I spent the rest of Sunday at home, alone. My phone buzzed with calls and text messages, but my only response was a mass text I sent to everyone telling them I was okay, and that I’d be at school on Monday. Six missed calls from Zack. My chest tightened, but I didn’t relent. My mom gave me crap for forgetting her Cosmo, my dad burned every excuse he had to avoid me, and I spent more than a little time listening to my MP3 player and lying in bed. A little emo, certainly, but I think I earned it.
I didn’t eat anymore the rest of the day—I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t unaware that that put me at two full days with nothing more in my system than three eggs and four pieces of bacon. And even that had been less hunger and more habit. I marked the breakfast on my wall calendar out of morbid curiosity.
The night brought me to the grey beach, somewhere I was beginning to fear less and less. I spent the night walking up and down the shore, picking up little grey rocks and little grey shells and hurling them into the waves. My fear of the man-thing made of light floated somewhere in the back of my mind, but it hadn’t been that hard to avoid the first time, and it had made a terrible racket when it arrived. I didn’t think it could sneak up on me any more than a train could. I left the beach every night with the rise of the sun since the first night, but my first excursion told me that leaping into the water would wake me up right away. It was an emergency exit.
When the sun came, I woke up and got ready for school. My first instinct was to dress down, to try to blend in and deflect what attention I could. But then I thought of the questions and the pitiful stares and the spinning gauntlet I was about to enter and decided I’d need all the self-esteem I could muster. I spent most of the morning curling my hair into a mane of black tresses, and I spent the rest of it digging through my clothes for my long black skirt and my witchy-poo boots. I completed the look with an eye-scorching pink top and a black cardigan. I made my eyes as startling and green as I could with my best eye-liner tricks, scooped up my backpack, and bounced downstairs.
“Luce! Luce, you missed breakfast.” My mom said from the kitchen.
“It’s okay,” I said, grabbing the books I needed and stuffing them into my pack. “I’ll eat a big lunch.”
I wanted to say “it’s cool, I’m a freak,” or “all the cool kids are anorexic now,” but I managed to spin the words before they came out. When she came out of the kitchen, her eyes bugged out. She scanned my appearance with more than a little disapproval.
“I see why you missed breakfast,” she said in a tiny, tight voice. “Is this really appropriate, Luce?”
I frowned and indicated my clothes with a sweep of my hand.
“I’m not dressed slutty.”
“I—” she said and stopped, clearly exasperated at my candor. “That’s not what I meant.”
I felt that stupid defensive pride grab the wheel again.