Snared (2 page)

“Let it out, Shirley. Go on, you can do it. Let it out.”

“I can't…it's too horrid….”

“You can, you can!”

“For Christ's sake!” Anne yelled. “Are we doing Lamaze for the dead now? Leave her alone. If it has to, it'll come out. She won't be able to stop it.”

Mary turned from her ministrations to look at Anne with that puzzled expression again. “Lamaze?”

“Forget it,” Anne said, shaking her head.

In an instant, Shirley pitched out of Daphne and Mary's grasp. She flopped onto her chest and raised her shoulders up by pushing on her hands. Her eyes were fixed on a spot in midair, the way a cat's eyes are when it seems to see what no one else can. All the fear—and for that matter, all other expression—vanished from her face as she began to speak.

A storm raged overhead, pelting the road and the SUV with rain. The family vacation wasn't getting off to the best of starts. It seemed to Lindsay Morgan that the rain was following them, like some kind of nasty omen telling her the family vacation was cursed. The closer to Redlands Beach they got, the louder the rain beat on the car.

With her dad driving and her mom in the passenger seat, Lindsay sat in the back, listening to music on her iPod and texting with her friend Kate. The drive had exhausted her and the storm was doing nothing to improve her mood. She knew the vacation was important to her parents, especially her dad, but Lindsay had spent the last
few weeks dreading the trip. It couldn't have come at a worse time. She'd been helping Kate with a totally important party, and now she couldn't even go! Of course, her dad was quick to point out that Lindsay had always enjoyed trips to her uncle Lou's place. But she'd been a little girl then. At sixteen, Lindsay wasn't feeling any glee for the retro.

She was certain her dad just didn't get it. She'd grown up. She was in high school. She was popular and received good grades. Though her teachers sometimes flinched at her often harsh humor, they couldn't help but see the intelligence behind it. Oh, she could be snide and sarcastic, and more than once a friendly burn had been taken as meanness by kids who didn't know her, but it usually only took a few kind words to mend those feelings, and often enough Lindsay found herself with another friend. Plus—and Lindsay felt certain her father did
not
get this—she could take care of herself. When she was faced with a problem, she found a way to fix it. She didn't let it stress her out or piss her off; she just made it work. Lindsay Morgan was practical that way. But she'd tried to fix this trip—had done everything she could to
avoid it—and it hadn't worked.

She might not have been so bummed if her parents were taking her to a happening beach like Cancún or the Hamptons or even Atlantic City. But they weren't. They were going to her uncle's house on Redlands Beach, and though it had sand and ocean, it fell way short of an A-list destination. True, Lindsay's memories of the place were a bit fuzzy, but that didn't mean she was wrong. She remembered her uncle and other men standing on the shore with their fishing lines sunk in the ocean (which was probably why his house always smelled like fish guts). There were noisy children racing from the surf toward their chain-smoking mothers and their beer-drinking fathers. The “good” restaurant in town served fried clams in a plastic basket. On reflection, she considered the beach some kind of trailer trash econo-resort, but her folks said it was an up-and-coming town.

She'd asked to stay home, arguing rationally at first. When logical pleas tanked, Lindsay resorted to a more emotional approach. Tears were involved. They didn't work. Anger soon followed, but it didn't get her anywhere. There was no way she could get out of the trip. Her parents had
already taken the time off work. So Lindsay was faced with ten days in her uncle's house—away from her friends and an epic party.

Just thinking about it made her sad. Everyone from school was going to be there. BlackBerrys and cell phones had been buzzing about it for weeks. All the cool and cute would be gathering at Kate's house. (
Her
parents were vacationing in Paris!) It would be a red carpet event with beer and banging tunes, and Lindsay was going to miss it.

Lindsay's motivations weren't totally selfish either. Yes, she badly wanted to go—who wouldn't?—but Kate needed her,
really
needed her, and that was important, too.

Lindsay loved her friend like a sister, but Kate was about as organized as a chimp, not to mention the fact that she was panic waiting to happen. Lindsay knew the second one little thing went wrong with the party, Kate would freak like a meth head on
Cops
. She had said a billion times she couldn't pull the party off without Lindsay.

The invitation tragedy was a perfect example. Kate had wanted to use paper invitations, and that would have been okay, but she bought boxes of invites with a picture of a kitten wearing sun
glasses on the cover. Inside they read“ Come and party with the cool cats.” If Kate had sent out those wholly cred-killing invites, she'd never have lived down the humiliation. So Lindsay wrote the invitation for Kate—email only—and she made it sound like a total secret, because Lindsay knew the best way to get the word out was to tell people to keep quiet.

Lindsay often thought that she would make a great party planner, or maybe a wedding planner. She was able to look at any event, no matter how complicated, calmly and thoroughly, and spot the details others might overlook. Last year she organized the freshman dance, and instead of throwing some high-school hoedown with a pop tune theme, she made it memorable. She did an industrial disco night called Batcave, with painted wall panels that made the gym look like a dungeon and a wrought-iron bar for sodas. It was a total hit. Everyone at school talked about it for weeks.

Kate just can't do this on her own. I should be there, helping her.

But she wasn't; she was in an SUV with her parents, driving through a downpour headed to Redneck Hollow, and no matter how she tried to
hide her disappointment—because she knew the trip really meant a lot to her dad—she just couldn't.

It was like being kidnapped or something. She was a prisoner, and her two captors sat in the front seat, acting all happy and crap.

When the power on her Treo died, cutting off Lindsay in midtext, she couldn't help but groan. Her connection to home and her friends was severed. She hadn't bothered charging her cell phone completely, because she preferred the PDA. So her cell phone had died an hour into the trip, and now her Treo was toast. How much worse was this trip going to get?

A hand touched her shoulder, and Lindsay looked up, startled. Her mom had turned in the seat and was looking at her with a shadow of frustration on her brow. Her mom's lips were moving, but Lindsay couldn't hear what she said because she had her tunes cranked. She pulled the earbuds out and said “What?”

“You know, you could talk to us if you're bored.”

“I could, but that would negate the whole not-talking-to-you thing.”

Her dad laughed, and her mother just shook her head.

“We're sorry about Kate's party,” her dad said. “But try to have a good time. You used to love the beach.”

She really wished he'd quit saying that.

“I also used to wear diapers, but I don't see any of us clinging to that tradition.”

“You'll feel better when we get there. Believe me, it's nicer now.”

Lindsay rested her head against the cold window. The vibrations from the road and the rain beating down massaged her temple. Outside, the day grew darker, and the downpour rapped harder on the SUV's roof. All she could see were blurry trees and more blurry trees, the same view over and over, like an animated message board avatar.

Of course, there was a major difference. She was trapped in this image.

 

Lindsay sat in the SUV while her parents shopped at the grocery store on the edge of town. She'd tried to see the city's shops and offices through the storm, but everything outside the car was a big gloomy smear. So she searched her iPod for a song—not a specific song, just one that might make her feel better. Scrolling along the titles, she
came across a cool tune by Green Day and jabbed the Play button, but after listening to a few grinding guitar riffs, she poked the button again and turned it off.

Lindsay pulled the earbuds loose, wrapped them around her iPod, and dropped the player on the seat. She crossed her arms and leaned back against the door, staring at the front of the supermarket.
Come on, Dad
, she thought, watching the glass doors slide open and closed for shoppers.
Hurry up
.

She felt certain her mood would improve when they reached the house. The SUV and the storm felt so confining. She would have gone into the store with her parents, except her mom would have constantly asked her opinion about food and junk to make Lindsay feel involved, and she just wasn't in the mood. The house would be better. She could charge up her phone and Treo and reconnect with Kate so her friend didn't have an attack over the party. And bonus, her uncle Lou was out of town. That was such a relief. Lou wasn't a total freak, but he came close. He was loud and annoying and told the worst knock-knock jokes ever. Her dad said he was in Arkansas, fishing with
friends, which meant she'd get the guest room, and her parents would take his. At least she'd have some privacy.

But what was she supposed to do for ten days? She couldn't hang with her parents the whole time, though she imagined that was her dad's plan.

“You might meet a nice boy on the beach,” her mom had said before they left on the trip.

Yeah right
, Lindsay thought.
Redlands Beach is probably crawling with gap-toothed Cletuses. Likely they swim in cutoff jeans and show off their hairy backs. Gross
.

She smiled and shook her head, but she did find a ray of hope way in the back of her thoughts. Maybe she
would
meet a boy. It could happen. People from all over went to the beach in the summer.

The glass doors of the store opened. Lindsay squinted through the storm and saw a fat guy in overalls hauling two bags of groceries into the downpour. Sadly, that was the kind of guy who'd probably be prowling the beach, his round belly rolling over the top of his swim trunks. Or worse, what if he was feeling saucy and decided to wear a thong?

Lindsay groaned and laughed, imagining that very thing. “So sick,” she whispered to the empty car.

Though totally unlikely, some hot guy's parents might have kidnapped him, too. That would be cool. They'd meet on the beach. He'd have blond hair and aquamarine swimming trunks, like the kind she saw that
OC
stud wearing in last night's rerun. His name would be something totally cool, like Jaimie or Josh, and he'd be eighteen and headed off to college after summer. Every afternoon they'd meet on the beach and then hit town for coffee and stuff.

As she thought this, the doors of the market slid open again. Two men stood in the opening, side by side. One was tall and slender, the other short and round. The rain blurred their faces, so Lindsay only got a vague impression of what they looked like. Both wore slick black parkas against the rain. The round one held a sack of groceries. The thin one opened an umbrella, then handed it to the round man. The thin man opened a second umbrella that he raised over his head, and the two men stepped into the storm.

They walked slowly, seeming to match each
other's steps perfectly in a creepy kind of dance. The mushroom parts of the umbrellas floated over their heads, gliding smoothly through the battering rain and wind. Lindsay squinted harder and slid across the seat to get a better look at these strange men. A chill ran down her back, and her hands trembled.

When the men reached the front of her parents' SUV, the tall one looked through the wind-shield at her. His head turned slowly, though his shoulders didn't move. He didn't stop walking, didn't even pause. He kept looking at her, though. His narrow face was blank and motionless, his eyes black with shadows. And his head kept turning, as if it wasn't attached to the rest of him.

Lindsay's stomach knotted with fear. The guy was creeping her out bad. She checked the doors and made sure they were locked; then she curled her legs up tight to her chest and held them with her arms. She looked down at the screen of her iPod and stared at the letters without reading them. Anything to distract herself from the curious freaks with umbrellas. She counted to ten, feeling certain that at any moment she'd hear the sound of the door handle click and crack as the two men
in black tried to break into the car.

On the number nine, with her heart beating so hard she thought it would burst through her chest, a loud rapping startled her, and she yelped. Her head whipped up, away from the iPod screen, and she saw her dad's face, dripping wet, pressed up against the glass. He was pointing at the door lock and shouting “Hurry up.”

Lindsay sprang forward to disengage the lock. Behind her dad, she saw the two men in black drifting deeper into the storm.

As they drove south on the narrow coastal road, Lindsay was thrilled to see all of the new construction going up near town. Then she was disappointed when they neared her uncle's house, because this stretch hardly seemed to have changed at all. Every tenth house was fantastic—all glass and new paint—which only served to point out the lameness of the older properties.

Of course, the weather didn't help. It was so dreary. Still, she kept hoping, unreasonably that in the years since she'd last visited the beach it had gone from zero to hero on the resort scale. Then, just before turning into her uncle's drive, she saw the sign for the Redlands Mobile Home Park, and
her spirits sank a little lower.

Lightning cracked as Lindsay followed her parents into Uncle Lou's house. The rain sounded like a million tiny footsteps on the roof.

“It's supposed to clear up tomorrow,” her dad said. He carried her bags upstairs, while her mom stayed in the kitchen to unload the groceries.

Uncle Lou's house hadn't changed in five years. His green sofa still faced the fireplace in the den, and the square wooden coffee table sat in front of it. He still had all of the old paintings of dogs and hunters on the walls. At least he'd discovered the magic of Febreze, so the room didn't smell as bad as she remembered. Lindsay went to the window and looked toward the beach. Angry surf, with caps of froth, cut a line through the otherwise gray scene. The beach looked messy with tons of drift-wood and litter poking out of the sand.

Glad I brought sandals. I'd cut my toes to shreds on that stuff.

Once she heard her dad's heavy feet on the stairs, Lindsay turned away from the view. She needed to recharge her Treo, cell phone, and iPod, and get her laptop set up.

Her dad met her at the bottom of the stairs and
said, “You're all set. First door on the right. Why don't you get unpacked and then come down to help your mom fix dinner?”

“I have to call Kate first,” Lindsay said, walking up the stairs. “Tell Mom I'll do the salad.”

The room wasn't awful. The bed was huge, with a fluffy down quilt hugging the top of the mattress. A small chest of drawers, hardly large enough for the clothes she brought, stood by the closet. There was a cool window seat with a thick green cushion on the far side of the bed. She imagined that was where she'd spend a lot of the next ten days, drinking coffee and looking out at the ocean or at the screen of her laptop. That would work. She could picture herself there, like one of those models in a coffee commercial, looking all cool and content while gripping a steaming mug of bean and gazing out into the world.

There was even an electrical outlet built into the wall under the window seat, so she could keep her laptop plugged in. Nice.

Lindsay lifted the first suitcase onto the bed, where it sank in the fluffy quilt. She unpacked her cables and chargers first, plugging them into the socket by the chest of drawers, and then connected
her cell phone and iPod. She carried her laptop and its power cord to the window seat and hooked them up.

Looking out the window, she noticed the house next door. It was smaller than her uncle's house, and it looked like it might just collapse under the next big gust of wind. The shingles were black and torn like the scales of a sick dragon. The house was supposed to be white, but the boards were dirty and broken. The porch in front sagged, and the two windows on the side facing her were crusted with dirt. The gloomy afternoon made it hard to tell exactly how dismal the house was, but viewed through the rain, the place made her uncle's house look like a Malibu palace.

Movement caught her eye, and Lindsay looked into the backyard. The first thing she noticed was the umbrella—a large black mushroom, opened up to keep its owner dry. She could not see who stood beneath the umbrella, but he wore a slick black parka just like the ones the men from the grocery store wore. The umbrella guy stood beneath a scraggly tree with pointy limbs. He didn't move, just faced the back of the house like a black statue.

Uneasy again, Lindsay stepped away from the window seat. What if the freaky umbrella guys had followed her? What if they lived
next door
? The place had all the charm of a zombie hostel, so it wouldn't be hard to believe.

She finished unpacking her things and returned to the window seat. Cautiously, she looked at the house next door. The umbrella guy was gone, and she found that even creepier than seeing him standing under the skeletal tree. He could be anywhere. He could be looking at her right now.

Lindsay backed away from the window. At the chest of drawers she lifted her cell phone, which was still connected to the charging cord, and dialed Kate's number with a trembling finger.

“Get me out of here,” she said when Kate picked up.

“That bad, huh?”

“Worse.”

Kate giggled. In the background, the TV blared some sitcom, and her friend's laughter blended with the show's laugh track.

“There's this house next door,” Lindsay said, “and Buffy wouldn't go into it. And there are these weird guys with umbrellas all over town.”

“Is it raining?”

“Yeah, it's raining, but these are huge black umbrellas and all of the guys have these shiny black parkas on. It's like they're part of a cult or something.”

“Maybe they don't want to get wet.”

“You'd understand if you saw them. They're from some serial killer outlet store. One of them was just outside, and he was totally scoping me.”

That was a lie, but she had to say something so Kate would understand just how bizarre these guys were.

“No way,” Kate said.

“So true. He was in back of the place next door, just staring. Totally not moving or anything. Just staring.”

“Is he still there?”

“No. He bailed.”

“Weird.”

“I know. It's just awful here.”

“It sounds like it,” Kate said. “Maybe it'll be better if you get some sun.”

“I hope so. Right now it's just so gray.”

“Have you forgiven your parents yet?”

“Not even. They must be punished. I can NOT
believe they picked this week to drag me out of town.”

“Well, you totally helped with the party. I so owe you, big.”

“It's okay. I just wish I could be there. It's going to be way fun.”

“I'm so nervous.”

“You'll do fine. Just make sure you have the number of the taxi company if anyone gets too wasted, and do not let Justin and Farge in.”

“Oh my god,” Kate said with a cackling laugh. “I'd have to fumigate the place if those burners got in.”

“Exactly,” Lindsay said. “Just remember, they are guests in your house, but it is
your
house. Don't put up with any dis'.”

“I won't, Linds. Thanks so much. I totally have to go like now. I'll call you tomorrow, okay?”

“See ya.”

Back at the window, Lindsay sat on the edge of the green cushion and looked out. The yard next door was still empty. She relaxed a bit and opened up her laptop. Kate was probably right. It
was
raining really hard, and it made sense that people would have umbrellas and raincoats on. It wasn't
like a total breakdown in reality.

As she thought this, a figure dashed into the alley, pushing close to the rundown house. Lindsay pulled a little way back, just looking over the edge of the sill to see who stood below.

The boy was blond with long frayed dreadlocks. He wore cargo shorts, Teva sandals, and a tie-dyed T-shirt that was drenched and pasted to his body. He bent at the waist, and a flash of light burst over his belly as he sparked a lighter. Hunched over, the burner was sparking a bowl in the downpour.

What a looz
, Lindsay thought. The burner couldn't even wait to get home and get under some shelter before taking a hit.

The boy straightened up a bit, cupping his pipe in his palm so it didn't get too wet. He exhaled a thick cloud of smoke that was immediately beat down by the rain. Lifting his face to let the downpour wash over him, looking ecstatic, the boy shoved the pipe into a pocket. Lindsay moved farther from the window. She so didn't want this dope jockey spotting her.

He started walking to the back of the house, pausing at a window and looking in.

Lindsay'd had enough. She turned away from the window and focused her attention on her laptop. She checked her email, but there was nothing interesting: a piece of spam from one of those online pharmacy places, a notice from Amazon that her DVD order was shipping, and a note from her friend Trey.

Like Kate, Trey had been Lindsay's friend forever. He was just so nice. She'd never heard him say a nasty thing about anyone. It was like he liked everyone, and he always said the sweetest things. Lindsay knew he'd kind of crushed on her for a while in the eighth grade, but then he'd met Sarah Thomas during the summer break, and by the time he'd come back for the ninth grade he was in love with Sarah. Unfortunately, the relationship ended last year, when Sarah moved to California with her family. Trey had been miserable, and Lindsay had felt miserable for him. But she'd taken him out for coffee every day for two weeks, letting him unload his sadness on her, and soon enough his smile was back.

She looked at his email and smiled. For the tenth time in three days, he told her how much he would miss her at Kate's party. She'd run out of
ways to thank him, so she simply replied with a smiley emoticon.

She reminded herself that she needed to run downstairs and help her mom with dinner, but for the moment she just wanted some quiet. Lindsay scooted back on the window seat and leaned against the wall. Just then a light came on in the house next door. She leaned closer to the window, close enough that her breath made fog on the glass. The burner was gone, probably dancing over the sand, too high to care about the storm. The light came from the second window about halfway back on the house. Someone moved in the room, throwing shadows up and down the wall. Lindsay wiped a cloud of vapor from the glass.

Then she saw him. The distance and rain made it impossible for Lindsay to make out any details, but a boy came to the window, and she saw
him
. So not the pot-smoking looz. Black hair. A slender muscular build. He was wearing distressed jeans and no shirt, and even through the gloom, she could see his developed pecs and six-pack abs. She pushed as close to the glass as she could to see if his face was as fine as she wanted it to be, but the weather smoothed the specifics of his features,
leaving nothing but an impression of the boy, a very hot impression.

Suddenly the family vacation was looking a lot better.

 

At dinner Lindsay was in better spirits. She ate and joked with her mom and dad. As parents went, Lindsay knew she had it good. Her mom and dad were still married, still in love. They still had sex way too much, and she
soooo
didn't want to think about that. But at least they hadn't split like so many of her friends' parents had, and despite having dragged her on this vacation, they usually let her do her own thing and didn't gripe too much. They rarely yelled at her and didn't pull cheap stunts like snagging her cell phone as punishment (an art Kate's mother had perfected).

“Your mom wants to go flea marketing tomorrow,” her dad said, before raising a fork full of corn to his mouth. He chewed and drank some wine. Then he said “You feel like coming along, or do you want to check out the beach?”

Winnie the Pooh,
Lindsay thought. Her dad looked like Winnie the Pooh. He had a round face, and when he smiled his cheeks pooched out. His
eyebrows were really thin and neat, but the rest of his face was rounded and blunt. Pooh had been her favorite cartoon character when she was a little girl. Strange that she'd never noticed the resemblance before.

He had his eyebrows arched and grinned like he was waiting for the punch line of a joke. Lindsay almost laughed at the expression.

“I'm going to hang here,” she said. Her dad's smile faded into disappointment. “I'm going to be on panic alert with Kate until her party is over. She's kind of counting on the long distance help. I'll just hang and explore the beach or something. You guys have fun.”

“We won't be out long,” her mom said.

“Cool,” Lindsay said. “If the weather is still crappy, I can watch the box.”

“It's supposed to be clear and warm,” her dad said. “I'll bet the beach will be swarming with kids.”

“Well, they better stay on the beach,” her mom said. “I don't want you bringing strangers into your uncle's house unless we're here to meet them.”

Lindsay rolled her eyes and put her fork down. “Right, because I want a bunch of slack-jawed
mouth breathers to know where I'm staying.” She smiled widely to show her parents she was just playing.

“You might be surprised,” her dad said. “I told you the real estate market has been booming in this area. A lot of new people have moved in, and a lot of tourists are renting houses for the summer. Your uncle told me it's quite the resort town these days.”

Sure
, Lindsay thought.
It's Cancún and Ibiza all rolled into one. That's why there's a trailer park half a mile up the beach.

Still, she realized it was better than she'd thought. There had been new shops downtown, and some of the houses were new and cool. And of course the bit of eye candy next door didn't hurt.

Though she'd only caught a glimpse of him, she thought about the boy, wondered if he were visiting or if his parents owned the house. She reminded herself that she hadn't seen him very well. Close-up he might look like Freddy Krueger, or he might be old, like twenty-five or something. But she didn't think so. He might be a couple years older than her, and maybe he wasn't a total CW
throbber, but he could be.

“Did Uncle Lou say who owned the house next door?” Lindsay asked, making sure she sounded really casual.