Gravity, a young adult paranormal romance (16 page)

But a voice in my head nagged me whenever I
let myself think about it. It was a pretty strange coincidence that
two girls would go missing in our little town only months
apart. 

The trees were dressed for autumn now, orange
and scarlet leaves that appeared almost overnight, turning the town
into a postcard. The colder days meant gray skies and drizzling
rain, and the insulated feeling returned. My limbs felt heavier, as
though I were dragging myself to school and back.
  

Hell went into annual decoration overdrive.
Most of the year, there were a few witches flying into telephone
poles, or the mere names of businesses like Screams Ice Cream to
represent Hell's uniqueness. But in October, nearly every business
and lawn had Halloween décor, from plastic ghosts hanging in trees
to full artificial graveyards, complete with the obligatory
skeletal hand poking out. Every day it was like walking through a
party store.

I ended up getting a B+ on my big test. It was
the highest grade I had gotten in Geometry so far. I felt more
confident in taking my time in math, and my grades stayed steady. I
found Henry by his locker after class and held my paper up like an
excited child.

"Good job. I don't know why you're surprised.
I knew you could do it," he said. He slammed the locker shut. His
reaction only made my pride swell, and I grinned.

"Thanks for helping me," I said. I'd said it
before countless times, but I couldn't stop myself from repeating
it.

"You're welcome, again," he said, looking
amused. His eyes practically glittered when he was in such good
humor, I'd noticed as the days we spent together began to add up.
When he was irritated, his eyes would darken, closer to the brown
of tree bark. When he was excited about something, which was often,
light radiated from the center.

"You really don't have to keep thanking me,"
he said. "I'm not doing charity work. I like spending time with
you."

I felt the thump in my chest as my heart
skipped a beat, as though I had sneezed.

"I do too. I mean, I like spending time with
you." Why did I always turn into a stuttering imbecile around him
lately?

"I knew what you meant," he said, smiling
gently. He nodded at me as he took off and walked to his next
class. As he reached the door, he turned for a moment, and watched
me go.     

Whenever the cold seasons came, I always
wanted to stay in and read. I plowed through the books that Corinne
gave me for my birthday, using them as late night reading material.
Of course, that bad idea only intensified the eerie feeling in my
room. No more odd situations had happened, though. But I could
never fully shake the feeling of being watched. It remained like a
light that was always lit in the corner of my brain. When I changed
in the mornings and for bed at night, I did it behind the closet
door.  

I realized that I needed to get new books,
something to keep me occupied. I ran inside the library in the
middle of the week, but the reconstruction was still in full swing.
Plastic sheeting blocked off half of the interior. A loud buffer
started up behind the foggy partition, so loud that I left before I
even arrived at the fiction section.

School was just as tedious as ever; both of my
Honors classes buried me under piles of homework every night. I
learned to deal with Ms. Fellows' boring monotone and gloomy
classroom by writing the entire time, even if it didn't have to do
with what she was lecturing about. One day I just scribbled down
the lyrics to all my favorite songs.   

The school got just as into Halloween as the
rest of Hell. My Spanish teacher wore a sweater with huge candy
corn buttons, which were very distracting when we were trying to
learn new verbs. Construction paper ghosts and black cats were
taped up on the walls by the student council, and a giant
papier-mâché pumpkin sat in the vestibule until I watched Ambrose
Slaughter casually kick a football-sized hole in it. 
 

On Friday in homeroom, two energetic
cheerleaders replaced McPherson on the morning announcements. I
looked up at the loudspeaker, curious at what brought on the
change.  

"It's October, Ashley!" said the first girl,
her voice gratingly peppy. I twitched.  

"I know! Do you know what that means,
Brianna?" The other girl asked.

"I dunno...oh yeah, Halloween!" replied
Ashley. Wow, did you come up with that all by yourself?
 

"Not just Halloween. The annual Hawthorne
Halloween dance!"

There were murmurs of excitement all around. I
groaned and put my face in my hands. Freshman weren't allowed to go
to the Halloween dance, so this year would be the first time I was
eligible. The second biggest dance of the year, next to prom, it
was always held Halloween weekend. Basically they combined
homecoming and winter formal. 

"Attendees can wear full costume or formal
wear with costume accents, as long as they abide by the dress
code," the girl continued.

Dances never used to bug me; I usually just
thought they were boring in middle school. All the boys had sweaty
hands and took a bath in cologne. My toes suffered damage from
being stepped on during the group dates Jenna and I went with.
 

But now that there was someone I could
potentially want to go with, a person who seemed to only be my
friend, it was hard to think about. I couldn't tell what was going
on in Henry's head, even though he seemed to know everything that
went on in mine. Even though he wasn't dating Lainey, I knew that I
wasn't really his type. After our initial flirtation, Henry seemed
to be all business during our tutoring sessions, which had
continued through the month. I didn't really know what to
think.

Boys like him favored the girls who always
wore a bunch of makeup and dressed in designer clothes. No matter
how different he seemed, the rules seemed certain.

I went over to Theo's house after school. I'd
been there several times before, but only for brief moments when
she needed to fetch something or take care of a chore. Normally we
hung out at my house, without comment from me. I knew how trapped I
felt sometimes in my own.   

Sitting in her living room, our discussion was
fixed on the topic of the dance. Her cats, Persephone and Pandora,
strode into the room, jumping on the couch. I petted Pandora's
rabbit-like white fur as she nuzzled up next to me.

Theo sat on the floor, a mug of
tea perched between her knees. Motel-style paintings of bowls of
fruit decorated the walls. Theo told me Ms. Vore painted them
herself. A cabinet with china dolls and figurines, the type
advertised in catalogues for commemorative purposes, was tucked in
the corner. It was nothing like I had imagined before I set foot
inside; in my head, I'd pictured their house would look like
something in a city apartment, Picasso prints and furniture
from
Beetlejuice
.

"I've never actually been to a dance," Theo
admitted, sipping her tea. The back of her hair fanned out on the
faint plaid couch cushion. "No big deal."

"I just wish people didn't have to talk about
it all the time," I said. I was only exaggerating a little; I had
literally been hearing conversations all day about dresses and
whether limos were a worthwhile investment.

"Anything to make them feel important," Theo
said. "Have you heard or seen any shadiness from McPherson, by the
way? We kind of dropped the ball on that one."

I had tried to put him out of my mind. The
last thing I needed was to get on the Principal's bad
side.

"Nothing. But I haven't been really paying too
much attention to him, either. I don't want him to get too
suspicious, especially when he already caught me following him. And
I have no idea what he does after school."

"Do you think he still lives with his mom?"
Theo asked randomly, looking at me.

"It's possible," I said, chuckling.
"Why?"

"That's always a sign of a mentally unbalanced
person, when they're over thirty," she said, tapping her forehead
with one ink-smudged finger. "At least on TV. We should find out."
I was glad to know I wasn't the only one who took my research from
TV shows.  

"Are you suggesting we locate his house and
spy on it?" I asked, pretending to be taken aback.

"Nothing better to do. I'm bored," she said,
stretching her arms up.

When one is in doubt, it's best to
check online. We went to her computer (I had another short burst of
jealousy at the fact that she even
had
her own computer, even though it
was normal for most people) and typed in the school's name.
Hawthorne had a pretty comprehensive website. Our parents could
check our grades throughout the marking period online, so they knew
when to berate us. It was a good bet that McPherson's personal
information would be up, at the very least a phone number.
 

The entire administration had their addresses
and phone numbers listed, including McPherson. We mapped his
address and Theo printed out the directions, making a neat crease
in the paper. Going into the backyard, we retrieved our bikes.
Theo's had polka dot ribbons tied to the handlebars. McPherson's
house was about ten minutes away in the opposite direction from
Hawthorne. We biked there in silence, the cool, autumn scented air
blowing in our faces.  

The house itself was plain, with white siding
and a meticulously clipped lawn. A neat little orange wreath was
hung on the doorway for the season. Theo and I knelt behind the
shrubs next to his mailbox.

"Alright, we're here. Now what?" I asked her.
She was the one with the veritable degree in espionage.

Theo squinted, looking at the house through
the gaps of the shrub. There was no car in the driveway, or any
sign that anyone was home. I wondered if he was in a meeting or
something at school. We hid our bikes behind another nearby row of
bushes.

"Let's go up to the house," she insisted. We
crept around the back, parallel to a line of neatly clipped, ugly
crabapple trees. Theo boldly strode over to the back windows, and
peered inside.

"Now I know I'm doing too much trespassing," I
muttered. Theo looked back at me quizzically.

"What?" she asked. I shook my head and joined
her at the window.

Inside was sparse, plain furniture: a white
couch, a few tables and a TV. It almost looked like he had just
moved there, as there were no photos, no decorative touches
whatsoever, really. He seemed like a very organized person at first
glance. But there was nothing so suspicious about that.
 

"We should probably get going," I said. "He's
bound to come back any minute."

"What about over there?" Theo asked, gesturing
towards a little shed set apart from the house. 

We walked over to the shed and Theo tried
pulling at the handles. It was locked.

"Do you smell that?" she asked, wrinkling her
nose. I did; it was a stale, moldy smell, like something rotten had
been there for a while. Theo and I frowned at each other. It didn't
seem to fit with the picture of the spotless showroom house.
 

The sound of a car pulling up made us move. We
ducked behind the bushes as McPherson arrived and pulled into his
garage. After a moment, he came out and pushed the button for his
garage door to lower, then stormed into his house. The front door
slammed.  

Quickly, we ran down the driveway and
retrieved our bikes. Without a word to one another, we jumped on
them and pedaled towards home.

"Wasn't the plan that we were
going to spy on
him
?" I asked breathlessly as we slowed down, having put
distance between ourselves and McPherson.

"Didn't you see him? He was not in the best
mood," Theo replied, a little short of breath herself, taking her
hand of the handlebars to push up her glasses. "If he had caught us
snooping, he probably would have tied us up and stuck us in a
box."

"What do you think was in the shed?" I asked
as we pulled up into her driveway, safe and sound. "It smelled
disgusting."

"I don't know," she replied. "But whatever it
was, it didn't belong there."

On Sunday, I was doing homework in my room as
usual. Theo and I had decided there wasn't much we could do about
McPherson's mysterious shed, since we had been trespassing when we
made the discovery. Still, the unknown made me nervous. McPherson
had always thrown me a vibe that screamed wrong, and there had been
something I couldn't put my finger on about his house that
underscored the sentiment.  

The letters in my biology textbook began to
run together like broken eggs. I rubbed my eyes, yawning, ready for
bed.

THUD.

I looked up above my head at the
wall.

"Not again," I said to myself. I stood up and
turned around, fully ready to go get one of my parents this time,
no matter how immature that might make me seem. The lamp and the
overhead light flickered for a moment, then disappeared, leaving me
in total darkness.

THUD.

 
Fear pulsed through my veins
with the beating of my heart. I was not alone in the room.
Something was there with me. The dark was deeper than just having
the lights off; something brought on the inky, thick air.