Down With the Shine (8 page)

T
he creepy “this is bad” feeling increases as we approach Michaela’s gigantic mansion. Trying to distract myself, I twist around in my seat to check on Dylan. Seeing that one of her arms is dangling down at an awkward angle, I reach back and gently take her hand.

And then I scream.

I am jerked sideways as the car swerves, and thrown again when it screeches to a stop.

“What?” Smith demands. “What?”

I can’t answer him, because I am too busy flinging my door open, unbuckling my seat belt, and finally diving out of the car to puke all over someone’s perfectly maintained lawn.

“Here,” Smith says from behind me. Glancing over my shoulder, I see he’s offering me a bottle of water. Gratefully, I grab it and then spit and rinse. After a few minutes, I’m steady enough to stand.

I lean against the side of the car taking deep breaths while Smith waits beside me. I give him credit for waiting at least two full minutes before asking, “You gonna tell me what that was all about?”

I wonder if I should tell him, but he’ll probably notice eventually, so I decide to spill. “Her hand. Her fingers. She’s missing her pinkie and her middle finger. They’re just . . .”

“They’re gone.” He says it almost nonchalantly, like we’re discussing a change in her hair instead of how Dyl can no longer use her fingers to count to ten. “I noticed right away when her covers came off, but you wouldn’t have known to look.”

“To look for missing fingers?”

“Yeah. It was sort of a secret,” Smith explains. “When the cops found Dyl, they reassembled her and did a body parts count. That’s when they realized she was all there except for two fingers. We were told to keep it quiet, so if the cops found a suspect who knew about those missing fingers, they’d be able to prove that was the guy who did it. But they never got close enough to any suspects, so it didn’t make a difference.” He sounds calm, almost clinical, but when I glance over I notice how the sunshine highlights the tautness in his face. He’s only barely holding it together.

I know the last thing he wants is for me to see the million vulnerabilities he has bubbling beneath the surface, so I look away and press my forehead to the cool glass on the side of the SUV. Regrets fill me to overflowing and the words explode out of me before I can even think to stop them. “It was my fault, Smith. You were right. The whole time. It was my fault.”

He says nothing. Unable to take it anymore, I turn to face him.

I immediately wish I hadn’t. I’d been expecting anger. I could’ve dealt with that. But he looks . . . pained. Like breathing hurts. Like
being
hurts.

“Talk. Now.” He bites the words out.

The truth gushes out of me. “She met a guy online. He was a fan of my father’s. He wanted to meet me. Dyl promised to set it up, but I told her I wouldn’t do it. She kept bugging me for months, telling me what a great guy he was and all this stuff and I could tell she really liked him. But I didn’t want to do it and I got mad and said he probably didn’t want to meet me, he just wanted an excuse to meet her in person—’cause it was pretty obvious they were both crazy about each other. And then she told me that she’d been pretending to be me the whole time and that was the only reason he liked her and we got into a huge fight. I told her to go ahead and be me and see how
much she liked it and she said that it was only terrible being me because I sucked at it and made things harder for myself and . . .” The stream of words suddenly halt, caught in my throat. Somehow, though, I push them out. “That was the last time I saw her.”

“Jesus, Lennie,” Smith whispers.

I sink to the ground, burying my face in my hands. “I know. I should’ve told someone. But I didn’t really know anything worth telling, and anyway I’d thought she’d run away with this guy. That she was having the time of her life. And even when it got more serious, I figured the cops would’ve searched her computer and figured it out for themselves. They were already so sure I was involved, I worried that if I told them anything it would be evidence that I’d caused it and then by the time I realized how serious it was . . . well, Dyl was dead, so it wasn’t like they could save her.”

Smith’s hand lands on my knee, in a surprisingly soft and comforting way. “Lennie, some dude wanted to kill you. Maybe that would’ve been a good thing to tell the cops about.”

I peer up at Smith from between my fingers. “Maybe he killed Dyl ’cause he found out she wasn’t me.”

“Or maybe the shady internet guy wanted to kill you the whole time. What if he came after you? Did you even think of that?”

“Of course,” I admit in a soft voice. “But . . . I sort of had it coming, right?”

Smith grabs a chunk of my hair and yanks it—hard.

“Ouch!” I scoot away from him.

A clump of dirt hits me in the chest. Another gets me in the shoulder, as Smith tears apart the pretty flower bed around someone’s mailbox.

“Stop, Smith! Fuck!”

“Oh, sorry, Lennie,” he says, while chucking another bit of dirt at me. “I didn’t think you’d mind. It’s not as if I’m trying to kill you, you know, like you really deserve.”

He hits me again, this time on the side of my head.

“Okay!” I stand up, and then quickly duck away from another dirt ball. “It was a stupid thing to say. I’m sorry!”

“Nope.” Another dirt clod, this one the size of a softball, explodes against my back as I try to run. “I want to hear you say that was some major bullshit.” Giving chase, Smith hits me again. “I’m not stopping until you say it, Lennie.”

“Fine!” I spin around, putting my hands in the air to signal my surrender. “I was feeling sorry for myself and it was bullshit. Are you happy now?”

Smith pauses with another giant clump of earth waiting in his fist. Letting the dirt trickle to the ground, he nods. “Totally happy.”

“Great,” I grumble as I run my fingers through my hair, trying to shake all the dirt free.

“Of course, you had to find the dirtiest way possible to make your point.”

He grins, totally unrepentant. “I work with what I got.”

“Jerk,” I respond, the word coming out gentle, maybe even affectionate. Some subtle shift just happened between me and Smith, one I’m gonna need a little more time to fully understand. But already I know enough to tell that I like it. “We should go,” I say, reminding myself of Larry waiting only a few houses away.

I spin to head for the Jeep, but before I even make it two steps Smith snags the hem of my shirt and reels me in until the back of my shoes hit the tips of his. His knuckles graze the sensitive bare skin at the base of my spine. It’s only the slightest of connections and yet my neurons race up my spine to my brain screaming TOUCH TOUCH TOUCH. I feel his breath, warm against the back of my neck. “I should’ve said it earlier, but thank you. For the wish. For Dyl. For—”

I whirl around, needing to see his mouth moving and these hushed and humble words flowing out of it, just so that I know for sure that I’m not imagining this. But as soon as I face him he goes silent and almost glares at me in this smoldering way, which is annoying but also sort of
hot, which also makes it even more annoying . . . and hot. It’s a vicious cycle.

Dumb, I know. Stupid that I have to keep reminding myself that having my hand permanently connected to Smith’s would be a bad thing. And when he acts protective and nice and actually worried about me . . . well, that makes it so much worse. If I don’t get away from him pronto, the next thing you know I’ll be cutting off my hand and giving it to him, insisting that he needs it more than me.

And yet I can’t seem to stop myself from crossing the few inches of distance between us and giving Smith a “you’re welcome” kiss.

Actually, I’m not even sure if it qualifies as a kiss. It’s a brush of lips against his rough cheek, so short that I barely connect with the warmth of his skin beneath the dark stubble. And then I am stumbling backward, as if he’d pushed me away, but it’s only my own mortification chasing me, while Smith follows, reaching out, and I reflexively give him my own hand in return, our fingertips brush—

Remembering, I snatch my hand away again.

Smith’s outheld hand falls as if it’s suddenly made of lead. “I wasn’t—” He gives a sharp shake of his head. “Never mind.”

And just like that, I can feel all the progress we made crumbling away.

“Right. Yeah.” My head pumps up and down a few times in enthusiastic agreement. “Larry’s probably wondering what happened to me,” I say, unable to deal with this moment.

Smith nods, then turns, strides across the grass, and gets back into the Cherokee without another word. And I am left feeling like I somehow lost the one thing about this whole situation that didn’t totally suck.

And that sucks even worse.

M
ichaela’s driveway is still packed with cars, but other than that, nothing looks weird or out of place. “Who’s that?” Smith asks as we pull to a stop.

A tall skinny guy plays basketball on the half-size court on the side of the house. And he’s good—no, he’s amazing. Sinking every basket, dribbling and running the ball like he was made to do it. The sun high above us makes his wild red hair look like it’s alive.

That’s when I realize who he is. And I remember another wish.

Seanie O’Hara standing in front of me, so short that the top of his head just barely reached my chin. I remember he had to sorta lean back to look up into my eyes, before he said, “I wish I was a little bit taller, I wish I was a baller.”

“Holy shit,” Smith says, finally putting it together. “That can’t be . . .”

“Seanie O’Hara? Actually, it is.”

“I’ve had gym class with that kid. He couldn’t get halfway across the court without tripping over his own feet.” Smith shakes his head. “He’s a genius. Why didn’t I make a wish like that?”

“Because you’re an idiot,” I immediately reply and then jump out of the car to get a little closer to Seanie and see up close the graceful miracle he’s become. For a minute I worry I’ll see a grimace of pain on his face, like maybe he can’t stop playing or maybe the sudden growth was painful. But he looks happy. Unmistakably, irrefutably happy. If there was some terrible side effect, it doesn’t seem to be bothering him.

I did that. It was a good thing and I made it happen.

For the first time it occurs to me that this whole wishing thing could be okay. I mean, obviously, I have a few things to figure out before I try it again, but maybe this is the answer to the black hole that is my life after high school. While everyone else is going to college and looking for jobs, I can travel the world or find a nice little house on the beach—hell, maybe both! And to keep the cash rolling in, I’ll grant wishes. Only nice ones like Seanie’s. Nice little wishes that make one person’s world a little bit—

Seanie screams in this shrill voice and then takes off running. The glare from the sun momentarily blinds me, so I’m not sure what Seanie’s yelling about until a dark form with gigantic wings leaps from the roof and swoops down toward the basketball court.

In the end, Seanie’s not quite fast enough. The bat person picks him up and carries him away, beyond my line of sight. The scream, though, lingers long after he disappears.

My heart beats like mad and I can actually feel it sinking down down down from its earlier hopeful elevation to its new location closer to my knees.

“Did you see that?” Smith asks in a shaky voice.

“Devon Stringer wanted big scary bat wings.”

“Emo Devon Stringer with the skinny jeans and guyliner?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Shit.”

“Uh-huh.”

I begin trudging toward the front door and Smith falls into step beside me. “It’s gonna be even worse when we get inside, isn’t it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay.”

We reach the stairs leading up to the front porch and for the second time in as many days, I walk uninvited into
Michaela Gordon’s house.

And it is chaos. Not the drunken bacchanal chaos of last night that even at its rowdiest felt like a party. This . . . this is something else entirely. Like a scene out of a disaster movie.

To the right of the entrance, a group of girls I recognize from the three-time state champions girls’ lacrosse team wield broomsticks and golf clubs. Mercilessly, they bash skulls and whack the shins of anyone foolish enough to enter their territory. Most of the invaders quickly retreat back the way they came. The few who get past are chased by one of the girls who insists on checking the bottom of their shoes before finally letting them go.

Worse, judging from the screams, thuds, and crashes coming from the rear of the house, the lacrosse girls’ skirmish is only the tip of the shitberg.

Seemingly unperturbed, Smith approaches the outer edges of their territory. “Hey, Stace,” he calls to the lacrosse girl who is clearly the leader. “What’s going on?” Of course, he knows her. All the sporty people seem to live in their own special Gatorade-colored world.

I expect her to smile and flutter at him, a typical reaction to Smith. Instead she raises a curtain rod like a weapon. “Don’t give me that look, Smith. I’m not letting you through.”

“I don’t wanna get through,” he counters. “I just wondered what the deal is?”

“The deal!?” Stace shifts the curtain rod in her hands, as if she’s so disgusted with his question that she’s thinking of hitting him even though he’s only standing there. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those dorks who immediately went into hiding?”

“No!” Smith’s cool is shaken at the very suggestion that he might be part of the hidden dorks. “Lennie and I got here a few minutes ago.”

“Lennie.” Stace’s gaze swings past Smith to land on me.

I waggle my fingers sort of lamely. “Hey.”

The tip of Stace’s curtain rod jabs me in the chest. “Why?” Another jab. “I wanna know why?” A quick tap-tap this time. For variety, I guess. “Fuck with all these other assholes. I don’t care. But my sister was a nobody. Why mess with her?” The rod comes at me again and this time I’m pretty sure she’s aiming to put it straight through my heart.

Smith swats it away. “Are you crazy, Stace? You don’t even have a sister.”

Stace goes white. Then she stumbles back a few steps. “I do have a sister.” Her voice is low and suddenly full of tears. “She’ll be a freshman this year. I never let her hang with me, I was—” She breaks off, unable to say any more
as her whole body is racked with sobs.

Another girl leads her away, while a third one leans in to me and Smith. “Her sister was fat. Like really—” The girl blows out her cheeks and spreads her arms out to illustrate the amount of girth we should imagine. “She made a wish, I guess. To be small, we figure, because one second she was there, and the next . . . she just, like, shrunk right before our eyes. Stace put her on a shelf over there to keep her out of trouble, but she’s not there anymore, because the shelf isn’t there anymore.” Smith and I both follow her gesture to an empty, oddly orange-colored space on the wall. The girl shakes her head. “The problem is there’s no safe place in this house of horrors.”

I know exactly who they’re talking about. She’d squeezed in behind me while I was opening the third jar. I’d spun around and there she was, completely blocking my way. She had the biggest bluest eyes I’d ever seen and the look in them was wild and a little bit desperate. I recognized that look. That feeling. So I didn’t even wait for her to ask.

“Make a wish,” I said, holding the jar out.

She took it gingerly. Her hands were shaking as someone jeered, “She’ll drink it all!” Those on the bottom rungs, like myself, generally decide on a defense strategy and stick with it. Me, I’ve always used my mouth, which
is why I told that guy where to shove it. This girl, though, went still and then curled inward, her shoulders hunching and head sinking as if she wanted to disappear completely.

Her wish trembled at the tip of her lips, and she swallowed a few times, as if even her voice was in hiding. Then finally she spoke. “I wish I was small. No, tiny. Petite. The type of girl who looks like she could fit in a guy’s pocket. That’s what I wish more than anything.”

I repeated her wish back word for word. Granting it, although I didn’t know that then. Except . . . I can sort of remember thinking that I wanted to make it true for her.

Now, though . . . now I wish she’d stayed away from me. Or that I’d stayed away from her and the rest of this party.

I reach out and grab the third girl before she walks away. “Have you seen Larry Carver?” Her forehead scrunches as if trying to remember who that might be. I help her out. “Tall guy. Kinda dopey-looking. Dark hair, cut short. Looks like his mom dresses him. Says things like, ‘Oh, gosh, sorry’ a lot.”

“Oh, yeah.” She nods. “Sorry, haven’t seen him.”

Damn. It couldn’t be easy. Of course not.

“What about Michaela?” Smith calls after the girl.

Her ponytail swings as she looks back over her shoulder. “Locked away with her lover boy.”

“Lover boy?” Smith asks, but a shout from her teammates pulls the girl back into guard duty.

I pull out my cell and text Larry that we’re here and searching for him, when a guy runs by and presses a fistful of dollars into my hand. He then gives another pile of them to Smith.

“Enjoy!” he hollers before running along. Two seconds later, a bug-eyed boy stops in front of us.

“Show me the money!” he demands. “Show me the money!”

After Smith and I exchange puzzled looks, we both shrug and obligingly hold out our crumpled . . . our eyes meet in disbelief.

We are each clutching hundred-dollar bills.

The boy gazes at the money adoringly as if trying to fill his line of vision with nothing but green, and then he’s gone, dashing after the first boy, who is still handing out the crazy amounts of cash.

I count the dollars in my hand. Eight hundred. I laugh in delight; if I survive this day I am gonna have a hell of a shopping spree. What a rare bit of good fortune that I granted a wish to someone so generous.

And then I remember the wish. “I wanna be rich. Like shitting-hundred-dollar-bills type of filthy rich.”

I don’t realize I’ve repeated his wish out loud until
Smith throws his pile of Benjamins to the floor. He stares at me in amazement when I quickly snatch his money up and add it to my own quickly growing bankroll. I return the look as he pulls a teensy bottle of hand sanitizer from his pocket and thoroughly coats his hands with the stuff.

“So what did the second guy with the crazy eyes wish for?” Smith asks as I shove my newfound wealth into my back pocket.

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“‘Show me the money’ was his wish?”

I nod. “Yeah, I don’t get it either, but he was so emphatic, I was just like, ‘Okay, dude.’”

As we talk, Smith and I push our way through the house. At every turn there are fights, tears, and people running frantically from or to things that we can’t see, but must be terrible judging by their reactions. I mostly stay tucked behind Smith and hide my face, because after Stace’s reaction I realize that more than a few people might be able to connect the dots that lead straight to me.

Luckily, the chaos seems to be working in my favor, since few people register our presence at all. That is, until Larry pops out from under the dining room table and screams, “LENNIE! You came!”

The room becomes very quiet then. The group of people on top of the dining room table who’d been wrestling
over the brass candlesticks—apparently wanting to use them as weapons—swivels my way. Another line of people who’d been stampeding past stop in their tracks. Three more people pop out from under the table, and I can’t help but be amazed that so many would choose such an obviously lame hiding place.

With the exception of Larry, none of them look like they want to greet me with a squeezing-tight hug.

“Cash is here.
She
did this,” someone says. Or maybe they all say it. My name is suddenly on everyone’s lips, spreading and drawing more and more people into the room. It feels a lot like last night, actually, when they all wanted a sip of the shine. No doubt they are thinking the same thing as they close in.

Smith steps in front of me and somehow his voice is calm and friendly and confident when he speaks. “Everybody chill. I know this is a bad situation, but Lennie came here to fix it.”

“More like she came to finish us all off!” a faceless girl in the crowd counters, and the mob roars its approval.

My stomach clenches. It doesn’t matter what Smith or anyone else says. These people want blood. My blood, to be specific. And I don’t really blame them.

Smith, though, seems to feel differently. The “hey, we’re all friends here” smile has faded from his face and
a new, more dangerous expression has taken its place. It reminds me of the wild, slightly dangerous, and totally sexy “I’m gonna kiss you ’cause you just saw something you shouldn’t have” look. Except judging from the way his hands are curled into fists, I’m pretty sure he’s not gonna make out with me or anyone else.

I’m not sure fighting is such a great idea, but since I don’t have any better—or worse—ones, I take a deep breath and prepare to throw myself into the fray beside him.