The Locket (24 page)

Would the locket take me back to that night I’d put it on and let me choose not to touch it? Even if it would, would that make everything better? Would time return to normal and everyone I’d hurt be safe? Or would it be like Rachel and Sarah, one evil exchanged for another, reality still distorted and strange?

The locket stayed cool and quiet, mocking my failure, its lack of heat an assurance that it was an evil thing that would never help me undo any of the damage I’d done. If I wanted out, I was going to have to fight my way out with something a lot more serious than wishful thinking and steak knives.

Hope danced across my skin. Why hadn’t I thought of that before? Something more serious . . . like wire cutters. Or some kind of heavy-duty tool. Gardening shears, even!

I spun and hurried out the door, down the hall, headed toward Ally’s garage. They obviously had a gardener—the giant yard and flower beds were too much for Ally’s mom to handle alone and I could tell she didn’t get her hands dirty—but maybe they had a few tools lying around. If I could find a pair of shears, maybe I’d be able to get the locket off.

It was unusually strong and definitely supernatural, but it was still made of something created on earth. It was metal, and
something
would be able to cut through its links. Even if I had to hunt down a blowtorch or a blade made of diamonds, I’d get it off of me. Then everything would be okay. Pictures would stop changing, lives would return to normal, memories would become constant and true. If I could just get the locket off, then—

“There she is,” someone said, the excitement in the harsh whisper making my head turn.

Under normal circumstances, I never would have assumed the person was talking about me, even if I
had
just walked into the living room. I didn’t inspire scandalized whispers. But for some reason . . . I knew I was the “she” in question.

Maybe a part of me felt the attention of the room even before I looked around and encountered a dozen pairs of curious eyes. Or maybe a part of my brain had been listening to the song blasting over the speakers, processing the meaning of the lyrics, even while the rest of me was too busy freaking out about the locket to remember how my feet got down the stairs.

“In love with my best friend, in love with a girl I shouldn’t have been, in love with my best friend. Again.” Mitch’s voice rang out, smooth and haunting over a pounding drumbeat. The song was one part rock ballad, one part punk anthem, but I still recognized the tune. It was the same one he’d been playing in the tree house. The one his best friend had built him, the one
I’d
built him.

I swallowed and turned away from the living room full of curious stares, nonchalantly changing my course, angling toward the back door, pulse mimicking the pounding of the drums.

Surely Mitch couldn’t be singing about me . . . and even if he
was
, how would all these people know? Until last week, I’d been invisible to most of the platinums. They wouldn’t know that Mitch and I were best friends.

“Oh, little girl, come sit for a while, hair like a Muppet, but it makes me smile. We’ll talk about him, like we always do, but I don’t care as long as I’m with you, oh, Kaley. Oh, Kaley. Ka-ka-ka-kaley, will you always be my best friend’s girl?”

Kaley
, not
Katie
, but it didn’t matter. I could tell myself all the comforting lies I wanted, but I’d seen the signs. During the past two weeks—and even for months before in “real” time—Mitch had done everything but write his feelings down and shove them in my face. And now he’d done that too. Or at least written them down and sung them. In front of the entire school.

I knew this song was about me. Everyone knew.
Isaac
knew.

I froze just outside the back door, scanning the ground near the keg where I’d last seen Isaac but finding only men in white and black uniforms rolling up the Persian rugs, dragging them under the tent covering the band, dancing area, and food. The sky had grown considerably darker in the few minutes I’d been inside. It was going to rain any second, the sky burst open and cry like it had about this time two weeks ago, when I’d fallen to my knees in the mud, screaming in pain as the locket worked its magic for the first time.

Maybe the locket would work for me again and turn back the past few minutes, back to before Mitch started singing so I could pull him off the stage and—

I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head. No! I didn’t want the locket to take me anywhere. Not now, not ever. No matter how horrible this was, the locket’s magic was worse. I had to make this better. Me, on my own.

“Kaley, you don’t know what you do to me, when you touch me, I can’t breathe,” Mitch sang, his voice making the simple lyrics sound like so much more. They were a confession, a prayer.

A prayer I couldn’t answer, and a confession that was going to ruin everything
again
if I didn’t find a way to fix this. I jogged down the deck stairs toward the tent, too panicked to know what I’d do when I got there. I only knew I had to find Isaac. Or stop Mitch. Or find Isaac
and
stop Mitch.

“Kaley! Ka-ka-ka-kaley.”

God, Mitch,
why
? Why here? Why now? Like
this
?

“Oh, Kaley, will you always be my best friend’s girl?”

The crowd at the edge of the tent parted to let me through, guys staring, girls whispering, and Rachel Pruitt smiling like the cat who’d pooped in the dog’s food and watched him eat it. For a split second, I regretted saving her life, wishing I’d left her where she’d fallen, head cracked open and blood spilling out to cover the stage.

“Come on, Isaac, where are you?” I whispered under my breath, eyes scanning back and forth, looking for the signature orange shirt.

Finally, I spied Isaac at the edge of the dance floor, where a few dozen clueless people still thrashed to the rhythm, oblivious to the major drama ripping the party to shreds all around them. He was staring at the stage, at Mitch, so still he looked frozen. I followed his eyes, finding Mitch and his guitar bathed in blue and red light only twenty or so feet away.

“Kaley, will you ever tell me it’s time? Will you ever tell me you’re mine?” Mitch sang, his eyes meeting mine above the dancers. In that second, the tension in the tent shot to unbearable levels, the air so thick with what-the-hell-is-going-to-happen that it was impossible to move, to breathe, to think.

Mitch stared at me,
into
me as the drum cut off and the last note of the song hung in the air. His voice drifted out alone, even more naked without the accompaniment underneath. “Kaley, tell him you’re through. Kaley, I love you.”

He loved me.
Mitch
loved me and he’d written a song about it and sung it in front of the entire world as we knew it. For a second, the weight of that wrapped around my shoulders and shoved me into the ground, rendering my legs useless. All I could do was stare at the stage, at Mitch, my skin prickling as applause stung through the air.

“Did you know about this?”

Isaac. I turned, numb and ultra-sensitized at the same time, and shook my head. I couldn’t seem to get my lips to move, couldn’t think of what to say. One of the boys I loved was staring down at me from the stage, expectation hanging all over him like strangling vines. The other was glaring at me from a few inches away, an all-too-familiar anger growing in his bright blue eyes.

It hadn’t happened yet, but I could see revulsion beginning to twist Isaac’s features, to transform him into the boy who didn’t love me anymore, the boy who had left me on the side of the road and ended three years together in a squeal of tires. No matter what, I couldn’t let that happen, couldn’t let everything we’d planned be ruined by a song.

So I did the only thing I could think of, the only thing that would make it clear who “Kaley” loved. I hurled myself at Isaac, arms around his neck, pulling his lips down to mine, pressing myself against him.

For one horrible second, he stayed stiff and cold, but then I felt his arm around my waist, pulling me closer, his hand fisting in my hair, deepening our kiss, his mouth moving on mine in a way it had only ever done in the privacy of my room. All around us, people hooted and cheered, but somehow I still heard the sound of footsteps running off the stage.

I still knew the instant that Mitch was gone.

Chapter Eighteen

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10, 11:42 P.M.

C
ome on, no one’s going to come in.” Isaac’s fingers fumbled with the button on my jeans, but he was too drunk to get it through the hole.

We were back in the blue bedroom where I’d hidden only a few hours ago, when I’d assumed life couldn’t get any worse. Before I’d lost my best friend and my boyfriend drank enough beer to float an oil tanker and decided he didn’t want to wait for a ride to my house to be together for the first time in two weeks, a month in “my” time.

“Wait, Isaac,” I said, covering Isaac’s hand with my own. “Everyone saw us come up here and I—”

“So what? They’re all too drunk to care.” He pushed my hand away. He was probably right—Ally’s parents actually seemed to be encouraging everyone to get smashed—but this still felt wrong.

I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to be at the Home Depot, buying something serious enough to cut through the hateful chain still looped around my neck. Besides, Isaac was so drunk he hadn’t even noticed the two huge scars on my chest when he’d taken off my shirt. Did I really want to be with him when his mind was in a state like that?

“
I’m
not too drunk to care.” I moved my hand back to his, squeezing his fingers until he rolled onto his back with a sigh. “It doesn’t feel right.”

“Like it ‘didn’t feel right’ to leave without seeing Mitch Wednesday night?” he asked, a nasty edge to his tone that made the hairs on my arms stand on end.

“No, it
didn’t
feel right,” I said. “I didn’t want to be rude.”

“Oh. Right.” He laughed and pushed himself up to sit at the edge of the bed. “You wouldn’t want to be
rude
to Mitch. Since he’s your best friend and all.”

“He is my best friend . . . or was my best friend.”

“Is that why you invited him on all our dates lately? Because you’re such good friends?”

“We are
all
good friends.” I sat up and reached for my shirt, suddenly wanting to be fully clothed. “We’ve been friends forever. You know that. I just wanted us to be close again, the way we used to be.”

“Back when you had two little boys with crushes on you instead of one?”

“What?” I pulled my shirt over my head and tugged it down, crossing my arms over my cramping stomach. “No way, that’s not it at all. I just wanted—”

“Mitch has always had a thing for you. You knew that. I
know
you knew that.”

“That’s not true,” I said, even though Isaac was right. I
had
known, deep down, but I hadn’t meant to hurt anyone. “I’ve always thought of Mitch as a friend.” I reached for Isaac, running my hands in soothing circles on his back.

“A friend who, all of a sudden, you want to spend every waking second with?” He stood up, moving away from me, pacing around the small room. “A friend you built a fucking tree house for?”

“He was really upset about—”

“A friend who’s so important to you that you let me go home alone Wednesday so you could spend more time with
him
instead of me?”

“
You
ditched
me
and Mitch. You’re the one who wanted to go home!”

“With you! Not alone.” Isaac whipped around, glaring down at where I sat on the edge of the bed. “So what, Katie? One boyfriend wasn’t enough for you? You had to have two?”

The only light came from the Chinese lanterns glowing outside in the rain, creeping through the window blinds, but I could see the anger and doubt on Isaac’s face. He was lashing out because he was scared. No matter how cool he’d played it in the hours following Mitch’s song, he didn’t completely believe that
he
was the one. He still wondered if a part of me hadn’t wanted to run up onstage and kiss someone else.

“You are the person I love. You’re the one I kissed tonight,” I said, voice low and even. “I made it clear to Mitch that you’re the one that I want.”

“Well, you didn’t make it clear to me.”

“Why? Because I don’t want to do it in some strange house while everyone we know is downstairs?” I asked, starting to get angry.

“No, because you don’t want to do it at all.”

My breath rushed out between my lips. “Yes, I do. I love you, I—”

“You’ve hardly wanted to touch me the past few weeks. And then, every time I turn around, you’re hugging Mitch, leaning on Mitch, any excuse to hang all over him.”

“That’s not true,” I said, but there was a part of me, a tiny little voice that wondered if Isaac might be right.

My mind flashed on the way it had felt to dance with Mitch, the minutes in the apple tree when we’d stood so close, the way his forehead against mine had made me ache to kiss him that night at the cast party.

And the way he’d made me feel that night—his lips on my stomach, his hand up my shirt, the longing in his voice as he said my name. He’d made me burn in a way as beautiful as the locket’s burn was awful. In a way Isaac had never made me burn, never made me ache and yearn and
need
to be close to him more than anything else in the world.

Isaac was my first love, and being with him had been sweet and good. It had been a big decision for both of us—good Catholic girls and good Baptist boys were strongly encouraged to choose abstinence—but I’d rationalized a little rule breaking because Isaac and I had every intention of getting married. But now . . . a part of me wondered if Isaac and I were meant to be. A part of me wondered if love—and sex—couldn’t be something deeper, something more, with someone else . . . someone like Mitch.

“It is true,” Isaac said, his voice breaking. He was going to cry. I’d never seen Isaac cry. Never. Not even when he’d broken his arm in three places doing stunt jumps on his bike in sixth grade.