The Locket (25 page)

I stood up, reaching for him, but he held up a hand and backed away. “You’re only with me because you’ve always been with me.”

“But I love you,” I said, tears in my eyes.

“Well . . . I’m not sure I love you,” he said.

The words cut straight into me, puncturing the place deep inside where I’d stored away my own jealousy and suspicion. “Is that why you messed around with Rachel? Because you don’t love me?”

“What?” His brow wrinkled, his confusion so sincere I couldn’t doubt that his next words were true. “I never touched Rachel.”

My mouth opened and closed, my shock so complete I couldn’t think what to say. I’d been wrong. How could I have been so wrong? “But I thought . . . and Sarah said—”

“Sarah said she wouldn’t tell is what Sarah said. But I guess she changed her mind.” Isaac shook his head, apparently disgusted with my best friend. “Whatever she told you, it’s not true. Rachel and I were never together and with Sarah it was just that one time. One kiss at a stupid party, nothing else.”

“Sarah . . .” I shook my head, my mind refusing to process this new information. “You and
Sarah
?”

“Just one time. One kiss. We were both really drunk.”

Oh my God. My boyfriend had kissed my best girlfriend and they’d both lied to me about it for weeks. I felt sick and sad and broken inside, like there was no one in the world I could trust and I’d been a fool to trust anyone in the first place. Something soft and sweet at my core soured, turning rotten and bitter.

Still, even as anger and hurt made my cheeks heat and my palms sweat, the irony of the complete turning of the tables wasn’t lost on me. I couldn’t help but wonder if the locket hadn’t had some hand in making things work out like this, in making sure I learned firsthand what it felt like to be betrayed.

“I’m glad you know,” Isaac said, a hint of shame in his voice. “Not like it matters now, but still . . .”

“Not like it matters now?” I repeated dumbly.

“It’s over, Katie. You know it is.” His words made a desperate, horrible mix of excitement and fear rip through my chest, tearing up my heart. We were breaking up. I
knew
we were and it terrified me. Losing Isaac was the worst feeling in the world, but it was also . . . almost . . . a relief.

No more trying to fit in with his friends, no more worrying that I wasn’t as important to him as basketball, no more fear that he was going to decide he was too cool for me and dump me for someone prettier, better. No more searching for ways to connect with Isaac other than talking about Isaac.

And no blue eyes smiling just for me, no more Isaac hugs, no more Xbox marathons on rainy days, no more movie nights, no more kisses that feel so safe. No more first love.

Panic rushed in, banishing any shred of relief. “Isaac, wait. Let’s just talk about this some more.”

“I don’t want to talk.” He turned to the door and opened it wide. The light from the hall made me squint and cover my eyes. “You can put my stuff on my porch. I want my homecoming shirt from last year back for sure.”

“Please, Isaac . . .” But he was gone, stomping down the hall in time with some angsty song from the Lithium XM radio channel. Ally’s dad had hooked up the XM to the speakers after the band bailed, and the party had continued like nothing much had happened. Like three people hadn’t had their hearts broken and their entire world turned upside down.

The temptation to beg for the locket’s help came again, tiptoeing into the quiet room, teasing me with the idea that all this pain could go away if the locket would turn back the clock. But I knew better. The locket didn’t make the pain go away. Here I was, two weeks from the day I’d traveled through time to change and everything that mattered was still the same.

Isaac and I were over. Mitch and I were wrecked. And my birthday was going to end in a walk through the rain because there was no way I was going to ask Isaac or any of the people at the party for a ride.

The tears came, hot and fast. I was sobbing by the time I made it down the stairs and out the front door, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care who saw me, I didn’t care what Rachel and her friends would say about me when I was gone or the fact that I’d probably be one of the “out crowd” again by Monday, once everyone learned that Isaac had dumped me. I didn’t care about anything except getting home, back to the one thing in my life that was still standing.

My dad didn’t have gardening shears that I knew of, but we had the table saw, the one I’d used to build Mitch’s tree house. Getting my face that close to a blade that could slice through a two-by-four in a few seconds was probably one of my stupider ideas, but I didn’t care about that either.

The locket was coming off. Tonight.

Chapter Nineteen

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 11, 12:32 A.M.

I
was soaked through by the time I reached the end of my driveway, so wet and cold I could barely feel my hands, but I didn’t go inside to get warm. I couldn’t wait. I had to get the locket off, I had to know this ended tonight.

Shivering, rain dripping off the end of my nose, I ran around to the side of the garage and shoved the sticky side door until it flew inward, banging against the wall. Inside, tools and boxes and bicycles and antiques my dad meant to refinish but rarely got around to touching fought for space in the dust. Dad and Mom and I parked our cars outside in the driveway. We always had, but in this new reality it was even more necessary. The clutter was insane.

I flicked on the light, a single bulb that cast our family trash in sickly orange and yellow, and hurried over to my dad’s work-bench, hunting for the table saw.

But the saw wasn’t there.

“No. No!” I yelled, not caring if my mom and dad could hear me over the thunder shaking the world outside. How could the saw be gone? How? I’d used it a week ago to build Mitch’s tree house.

Rachel. The falling light. I hadn’t used the saw since the
second
time I’d used the locket. Now my family didn’t have a saw anymore.

On some level I believed the vanishing act was just another little shift in reality, but on a more powerful, gut-based level I suspected the locket had made the saw disappear on purpose. It had known I’d resort to extreme measures and hadn’t wanted to make it easy for me to escape, to free myself from whatever hold it had on me.

“I don’t want you anymore. I don’t want to change anything, ever again.” I sobbed as I stumbled around the room, searching for something, anything, to use to cut the chain around my neck and finding . . . nothing. Nothing.

“Get off of me. Get off!” I tugged at the locket, pulling it up and over my chin. I was talking to an inanimate object and probably half out of my mind, but I didn’t care. I suddenly felt like I would die if I didn’t get it off, if I didn’t—

The locket slipped another centimeter, until it was pressed against the tip of my nose, balanced between the world of here and there.

“Oh,” I whispered, afraid to move for fear I’d make the locket fall back down around my neck. I’d never gotten it this far over my head before.

But then, I’d never been this cold and wet. Maybe the cold and the rain . . .

Moving slowly, making sure not to release my tension on the locket, I walked to the door and out into the backyard, until I was once again alone with the storm. Freezing cold droplets stung at me through my soaked shirt, but I refused to flinch. Instead, I pulled harder on the chain, tilting my face back to catch the full force of the rain, letting the water swim into my eyes and out again, blurring the twisting tree branches above my head until I felt like I was going blind.

Still, I pulled and pulled, until the skin on my nose tore and the chain claimed hairs at the back of my neck, until it felt like my face might be cut in half if I didn’t let go and allow the locket to fall back into place, back onto the warm chest it had already scarred twice.

No. No more. Not me!

I cried out and fell to my knees in the muddy grass, crying and shaking, but not giving up. I couldn’t give up. It was going to come off, even if I had to ruin my face to do it. I didn’t care about my face. I didn’t care about anything except being free to be myself again, to make stupid mistakes and deal with them without all this shame and terror.

The locket gave under my pressure, sliding up and over my eyes. My trembling, frozen fingers worked it over my forehead, untangled it from my hair, and, in another breathless second, I was holding it in my palm. Breathing hard, I stared down at the benign-looking hunk of silver.

It was off. It was over.

Another sob shook my entire body. I pressed the back of my hand against my lips, muffling the moan as it escaped, muting the damaged sound just enough for it to be bearable. It was okay. It was all going to be okay. It was off. It really was.

Now I just had to find somewhere to put the locket where no one could ever find it, where even
I
couldn’t find it. Just in case.

I struggled to my feet. My last beer had been several hours ago and I had never felt more sober in my life. I was fine to drive. I’d just sneak into the house, grab my keys, and go for a drive out to the nearest bridge over the Cumberland. Let the locket get swept away in the current and swallowed by a catfish for all I cared. It belonged at the bottom of the river, where no one would be tempted to use it again.

I spun so fast that my boots slid in the mud, bringing me back to my knees. Suddenly I was face-to-face with the rusty drain near the entrance to the garage, the one with the miniature bars I’d pretended kept a troll under the ground when I was a little girl. Water rushed into the drain and disappeared, never to be seen again. I had no idea where it emptied out—into a stream somewhere or into the Brantley Hills sewer system—but even if I did, there would be no way for me to find the locket once I threw it inside. It would be swept away, out of my life forever.

For a moment, I hesitated, wondering if the river might be better, if maybe there was an even safer place I hadn’t thought of yet, if maybe I should—

The locket burned a little hotter in my hand, making my decision for me. I flung the hateful thing into the drain and watched it slip between the narrow bars without a tinge of regret. The only thing I regretted was picking it up in the first place.

I crept a little closer on my hands and knees, peering into the drain. The glow from the garage light revealed nothing but pipe with some kind of slimy black stuff growing on the edges. It plunged deep into the ground and the storm was supplying plenty of cold, rushing water to carry the locket along through the drainage system to destinations unknown.

It was gone. Forever.

“Thank God,” I whispered, burying my face in my hands, so relieved I felt like crying and laughing at the same time. I pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly, a vague notion that I needed to get out of the rain and into a hot shower floating across my mind before I heard the music and tension threaded through my muscles once more.

It was the song. The Kaley song. This time there were no words, just harsh guitar chords fighting a vengeful path through the rain, but I recognized it immediately.

The cold settled deeper into my bones as I turned toward the tree house. There was no moon, no stars, only the slight glow of the Birnbaums’ porch light to illuminate the treetops, but I could still see the vague outline of someone on the platform I’d made.

Mitch.

My heart punched at me from the inside and for a second all those memories swam inside me again. Me and Mitch—talking, laughing, riding bikes, dancing . . . kissing. He’d been a part of my life for so long, a constant I’d taken for granted, a friend who maybe . . .
maybe
. . . should have been something more. Who
could
have been something more if I’d made a different call a few hours ago.

But what about now? What were we now? What did I want us to be? Did it matter what I wanted? And was it my fault that he was playing his guitar in the rain? Did he hate me as much as Isaac hated me? Maybe even more?

Whatever the answers, I would deal with them. Just me. I could do this, I could face the mistakes I’d made. I didn’t need supernatural intervention or magic, I just needed to be strong, and honest, and brave. It still wasn’t easy to hear those angry notes or take that first step across the lawn, but I could do it. I
would
do it.

With one last look at the drain where the locket had disappeared, I started toward Mitch, and all those scary tree house steps that separated him from me.

Chapter Twenty

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 11, 12:43 A.M.

I
t was raining so hard that I could barely see my hands as I wrapped my fingers around the fourth step and started to climb. Even the shelter of the leaves still clinging to the branches didn’t offer much relief from the downpour. I was climbing blind, the lack of visual cues making the swaying of the massive trunk and the groans lurching from deep inside the tree even more disturbing.

It was a horrible storm, worse than it had been the first time around. Freezing wind whipped through the little valley between my and Mitch’s houses, cutting through the tightly woven fabric of my fleece V-neck, plastering it to my skin with another layer of cold and wet.

But still I climbed, shouting Mitch’s name as I went. I had no choice but to go to him. He hadn’t heard me the first or second or
third
time I’d called from the ground.

Or maybe he was just ignoring me.

“Mitch! Mitch! I’m coming up!” I screamed again, the act of forcing my stiff lips to form words helping keep my mind off the fact that I was six . . . seven . . . ten . . .
twelve
feet in the air. I shivered, fingers clawing into the damp wood.

This was even worse than the light grid. I could feel the empty space behind me growling, a hungry void that wanted my slick hands to slip, wanted to watch me fall and gobble up my fear as I dropped. I licked my lips, tasting salt and something sticky, thinking for a second I must have bitten myself.