Feral (35 page)

“Don't play dumb!” Owen shouted. “You saw. You saw me. You saw Jennifer.”

“Jennifer?”

“Isles! You saw us! You're going to go rat me out. You're going to tell Becca—and everyone else—we're cheating. I know you girls. You blab everything to each other.”

“Cheating,” she repeated.

“It's not like that,” Owen said, still gripping Claire's shoulders, even as Claire took a step back, trying to get out of his way. He took the step with her. Following her. This time, though, Claire was being followed while looking straight into a boy's face. His wild, frenzied face.

“Don't you know how old she is? She's hardly older than me at all. We've got plans, okay? Not like me and Becca. God—Becca's just a girl. She doesn't know
anything.
Neither does Chas. They act like
kids.
We love each other, me and Jennifer. She's going to get out of this stupid place, because of her students' good grades. She's going to get a job someplace like Kansas City or St. Louis, some
real
place, and I'm going to go with her. Don't you get it? She's taking me. We're going to be together. This is my chance, okay? I don't have As. I'm not good enough at football to ever play past high school. I don't have college. I have Jennifer. She's everything. My whole life. If you tell anyone, I lose my
whole life.
”

“Casey,” Claire called. Her eyes roved about the office, searching for signs of him. “Casey!”

“God, what
is
it with that stupid story? Stop it, Claire, all right? Just stop it. Repeat after me: There's nobody here but you and me. You. And me.”

She craned her neck to look behind her. Serena had dipped into the shadows of a corner, unseen. Waiting. Now that Owen was here, would Claire lose control of the situation? What if Serena got away, managing to skitter out the open window before Claire found out what happened to her? Owen was ruining everything,
everything.

“Casey!” Claire shouted. She needed him to stop Serena, corner her, keep her from running off.

“No!” Owen screamed, now shaking her forcefully, like he could dislodge the idea from her head. “No Casey. Is
that
why you came down here, too? Are you chasing that same lame story? He's not here, Claire. And neither am I. And neither is Jennifer. Okay? Say it with me: There's no ghost. End of story. And there's no
other
story here, either. Say it, Claire.
Damn
it. Just say it!”

He was so desperate, the vibrations of his voice buzzed against the glass in the window above them. He shook her again. His touch wasn't fearful, not anymore—it was threatening.

Claire knew about angry touches. She knew how they could rip skin. She knew that they left a girl close to death, to spend month after month trying to heal. But things never did completely heal, go back to being the way they were before. There were always scars. And scars hurt. Nobody said that. But it was true—scars hurt.

Claire was tired of hurting. She wailed, raising her arms and pushing them outward, wrenching Owen's hands away. She took a giant, forceful step backward. She felt an opening behind her. A way out. An exit.

This is it—I'm going to escape
, Claire thought.
I'll do it. I'll get out.

A door—there was a door, too. Her left arm brushed up against it. Her fingers wrapped around the edge—it felt funny, it was metal, and it was thinner, too, not like a door to a room.

But a door was safety. She would put it between her and Owen, and she would be safe.

She pushed herself all the way through the opening, and she slammed the door in front of her.

Blackness exploded.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

C
laire
wasn't
free. She was locked inside something. Not a room. Where was she? The space was smaller than a trunk.

“No!” Owen screamed. “Not again. Don't do this to me, Claire. You have to get out of there!”

Claire's eyes adjusted with the help of thin streams of light slipping through the door in front of her. Metal slats. Like on the front of a locker door.

Claire's heart kicked her ribs.
I'm not free. I'm stuck in a locker. I'm trapped. I'm cornered.

“Help!” Claire shouted, pounding on the inside of the locker door with her fist. “Help me!” Panic thrashed inside of her. She pressed her eye against the little metal slats. “Please,” she begged, her face so close to the vents that her eyelashes brushed against them. “Please help me.”

“I'm trying, Claire,” Owen said. “The handle's stuck. The door's warped. It's too hot down here. Next to the boiler. The fucking boiler.”

Claire's arms were right in front of her face, in the same position they'd been when she'd raised them to protect her face in Chicago. She remembered the way the parking lot lights had looked as they'd shone through the space between her arms—before they'd been snapped like twigs.

“Jesus, Claire!” Owen pleaded. “Why the hell did you
do
that?” He banged on the door from the outside, kicking the locker at the base, wiggling the handle furiously.

“It was an accident,” Claire called. It was all she could think of. Why else would she put herself in a locker?

“
Accident
,” Owen growled. “Not again.”

Claire stared at her hands. In the tightness of the locker, with her shoulders squeezed, curving in toward her chest, she had no way to put her arms down. Her tiny gold satin clutch still dangled from her wrist, just a couple of inches from her nose.

Claire suddenly remembered the phone she'd tossed inside. She fumbled with the drawstring, turning the phone on. The new phone her father'd bought her, and had laid on top of her dresser.

911
, she would dial, and the operator at the other end would ask,
What is the nature of your emergency?

But the moment the phone came to life, her tiny bubble of celebration popped. She recognized the face in the picture being used as the phone's wallpaper—both faces, actually. One girl with light blond hair, the other with thick brown hair, both in Peculiar High uniforms, their faces smashed together as they hugged. Becca and Serena.

Becca and Serena?
Claire's mind spun. How did they get on her phone?

Her thumb flew over the screen, as she discovered a folder of pictures labeled Basement Story. Photos of the janitors' office, the vacant classrooms, the gym, the boys' locker room. What the picture taker had seen walking down the deserted downstairs hallways. And what Claire had seen herself only moments ago—Owen and Isles, bodies tangled.

This wasn't Claire's new phone at all. It was Serena's old phone. Claire remembered the pink scarf on top of her dresser, bunched in the middle. Serena always went to her old house. Wasn't that what Becca'd said? Did Serena leave her phone there? Had the phone been beneath the scarf the entire time?

Yes
, Claire answered herself.
The whole time. Hidden beneath the bunched-up folds of the scarf. Just waiting to be found.

“She knew about you,” Claire called. “Serena. She knew about you and Isles. She saw you—when she came down to investigate her ghost-hunter piece. Her story about Casey. Didn't she?”

Owen kicked at the locker again, as pieces of the puzzle came together in Claire's head.

“Were you looking for it?” Claire asked. “Her phone? Is that why you said you'd clean out her locker?” But the phone wasn't in her locker. And it wasn't on her body. Because Serena didn't have her phone with her the day she died. She'd already hidden her phone in her old house. Her favorite house. Of course she had. Almost as though she'd known—as though she'd had some sort of
premonition
—the same word Mrs. Sims had used when talking about her daughter.

Claire hurried through Serena's apps, her hands shaking. She pulled up a writing app, found it filled with notes she'd taken for her story. The basement. Casey.

And Owen.
Creep!
read one of Serena's notes.
Chas couldn't get away with cheating on me, and Owen's not going to get away with cheating on Becca. Becca stood up for me. I'm going to stand up for her now.

Meeting w/ O.,
read another note.
Basement. After school. CONFRONT HIM ABOUT WHAT I KNOW
.

“You met her here,” Claire said, in a tone loud enough for Owen to hear. “You met her in the basement. She told you what she knew. That she had proof. That she saw you while she was researching her story about Casey haunting the basement.”

“Oh, shit,” Owen moaned, as the boiler cranked into gear. “It's coming on again. The heat.”

He banged furiously against the locker. “Not again,” he begged.

Not again?
Claire thought. The basement meeting. The heat.
Worse in hot weather
, Rich had said about Serena's asthma. And the inhaler that had fallen out of Serena's locker upstairs.

A fight—the locker—
not again
—no inhaler. An ice storm. The boiler. Heat. An asthma attack. Panic. Suffocation.

She touched the door in front of her, finding it full of large, fist-sized indentions. Like someone had beaten the locker, trying to get out. She imagined Serena fighting, the struggle only making the locker hotter, while the boiler came on again and again, the panic making her asthma attack worse. She pictured Serena, fists flying, beating the locker, beating her chest, beating frantically for
something
to open up—the door, her lungs.

Claire shuddered. This was it—this was where Serena died. Claire remembered lying in Serena's grave, how cool it had felt. How it had fit.

This fits you now, too
, she heard, as stripes of color began to pour in through the vents on the front of the locker.

The colors swirled, congealed, became the same face Claire had seen smiling at her during Serena's funeral—the face on the blown-up picture propped beside the casket.

Claire squinted and squirmed, fighting her blurring eyes—now too hazy to dial Serena's phone,
911, what is the nature of your emergency?
Claire fought surges of nausea as the boiler kicked on again, and heat swelled—far hotter than it had been in 'Bout Out or Owen's car. This was the heat of an infection, a blistered sore, the heat of fear, of panic. The heat of the moment of death.

“You can feel it, can't you?” Serena asked Claire. “Your lungs are closing. That's just like asthma. Owen pushed me in this locker, and in the heat, I had an asthma attack. The worst of my life.”

Claire began to wheeze, clawing at her throat. She had asthma too, it seemed—brought on by fear, by the power of suggestion—and by Serena. Serena had powers that Claire did not even fully understand.

“Would be nice to have an inhaler, wouldn't it?” Serena asked. “But I left mine in my locker. I was only going to talk to Owen for a minute. Just a minute, I said. But once I was in here, the air just kept getting hotter and my lungs kept getting tighter. The ice storm had just started—it was so cold, and the boiler kept coming on. My asthma was always worse in the summer. And in here, it was far hotter than any August afternoon.”

Claire kicked at the door, whining.

Waves of hot air surged. Claire gagged, choking on the heat. As her body convulsed, fiery air wrapped its fingers around her throat.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

C
laire grew physically weak. Her breath became shallow as the space grew hotter, the air thinner.

She beat the metal locker door, begging with her fists to be freed. Trying to suck in a breath had become as easy as trying to move air through hardened mortar. And still, liquid fire from the nearby boiler invaded the locker. She clawed at her own throat, tearing her flimsy cardigan. Exposing her shoulders.

Claire knew how hard it had been for Serena to breathe—such a tight space, the heat, her asthma.
No wonder she died
, Claire thought.

A splash of black and white filtered in through the metal grates on the locker door. A new figure appeared, joining Claire and Serena in the heat. A boy with the same black-and-white face Claire had first discovered in the old Peculiar High yearbook—Casey Andrews. “You're not supposed to be here,” Casey growled.

Fog began to filter in through the crack at the bottom of the door. The town dead, the spirits, here in the locker.

“You need to go with them, Serena,” Casey said. “Go with the fog.”

“No, I don't,” Serena sneered. “I'm going to get in Claire, get a new body, a better body.”

“You don't have to do this,” Claire said. “I know what happened to you now. I'll let everyone know.”

“
I'll
let them know,” Serena said. “With
your
voice.
I'll
write the story.”

Serena's eyes flashed as they scanned Claire's scrunched-up shoulders, her scarred skin. Her surprise melted into a wicked chuckle. “That's okay,” she said. “I had a couple of scars, too, and a scar is not the same as being dead. So what if I'll have to put on a brave face and pretend like it doesn't bother me, all those times people will be repulsed by the look of me? I won't be
dead
.”

“Please take her,” Claire begged Casey. “She's out of the cat now. She got out—like in the woods. She wants in me. You can do it.
Take her
.”

Proof
, Claire thought, her frenzied, frantic mind grasping at anything—any solution.
Get proof.

“How would you like a
picture
, Serena?” Claire asked. “You took pictures on your phone to get proof for your own story. What if I had pictures on the phone of
you
?”