The Stranger Inside (7 page)

“You have me,” he said, stretching his arms out on either side of the booth. “I work.” He raised his eyebrows. “I work in the mall.”

Whoa, hello. “You do?”

“Yeah, in The Game Shop.”

I sat up, thinking
I seriously don’t know this guy
, but also thinking
cool
. Because The Game Shop would be an awesome place to work. They sold more than just computer and video games; they sold a lot of music too. “And you’ll get me a job there?”

“Well, no,” he said, totally making my head hurt. “We aren’t hiring. But I have a friend that works in the clothes store next to it. She said they’re hiring. She’ll put in a good word for you.”

I blinked. When did all this happen?—at work today? The boy had been busy. Making plans. Directing my life. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that—a boy pulling strings on my life. I never let anyone near my strings since Jeremy—not even Grey. Scary!

I rocked a little in my seat. “But this girl—she doesn’t even know me. Why would she do that?”

“Because she knows me,” Sawyer said matter-of-factly. “And she likes me. She’ll do it.”

I sat back, hoping he knew what he was talking about. Working in a clothes store, that’s what I’d wanted in the first place. I figured I could meet a lot of people from school, and get a decent wardrobe at the same time—and yeah, get my mind off blood. Okay, that was mostly what I wanted, the ditching the blood part.

“See, you’ll be able to leave the house saying you have to go to work,” Sawyer said, “even when you don’t. It’ll just be a good excuse, in case your mom starts thinking you’re spending too much time with Parker or something.”

“Boy, you really are devious,” I mumbled, realizing it would suck to be on his bad side

The waitress came and took our order—mine being banana pancakes and a chocolate shake, exactly what I used to have like, every day of the week before I’d moved away.

I blew my straw wrapper at Sawyer, carefully aiming. It landed in the pocket of his jacket. “Score!”

Like I was demanding a prize, I finally asked, “So, why does my mom hate you?”

Sawyer’s mouth quirked again. “Well, I guess
hate
is a little strong,” he said, fishing the wrapper out of his pocket, then flicked it at me. “I hope it is anyway. She just doesn’t like me very much.” He wadded up another wrapper, absently fingering it into a ball. “See, do you know Erica?”

“Yeah,” I said, like
duh
. “She’s my stepsister. Of course I know her.”

“I used to go out with her. That’s all.”

I choked out a laugh, amazed. “You went out with Erica?”

Erica—not to be confused with Sara, Jeremy’s married sister, who now, thanks to me, he was now living with—was a couple of years older than us. I sort of hated her. The weird thing was though, she used to “baby-sit” Jeremy and me when Mom and Craig went out of town on business. Not like,
babysitting
babysitting, but we would have to ask her permission before we could leave the house. And Sawyer had dated her?

“So that’s why my mom hates you? Because you went out with Erica?” My mom was psycho, yeah, but I didn’t see how Erica dating a boy two years younger than her could make her mad.

“Yeah.” Sawyer didn’t look up from the straw wrapper he was mangling. “I just don’t think your mom would like me dating another one of her daughters—not that she ever caught us doing anything.”

That made me blush, thinking about Mom catching Jeremy and me in bed together. We weren’t doing anything either—nothing—just innocently sleeping. He’d soothed me after I’d had a nightmare—Mom sure hadn’t been around to calm me down. But her anger at seeing us together … Just thinking about it, even now, made me feel sick.

“You must know Jeremy,” I said, trying to change the subject, yet actually saying his name aloud somehow gave me a perverse sense of release. “He goes to Roosevelt too.”

“Yeah, I know him.” The way Sawyer said it—somewhat guarded—gave me the feeling they weren’t exactly friends. Maybe even enemies. My interest was instantly
piqued
, but I tried to stay aloof, like a normal, casual,
it’s-all-in-the-past-and-I-don’t-care-very-much
, kind of way.

“He plays the guitar too,” I said, dipping my sausage link in syrup, swirling it all around. That’s the only way I like sausage. It either has to be covered in syrup or dunked in a chocolate shake.

Sawyer watched me plop the link in my mouth. His lips parted and his blue eyes glistened. He cleared his throat. But all he said was about Jeremy, “Yeah. I know.”

I glanced up at him. “Do you not get along?”

“Well, we don’t
hate
each other.” He eyed me curiously. “Do you get along with him?”

“I used to …” Really used to. I swirled another sausage link around, swirled and swirled and swirled, not looking into Sawyer’s avid eyes—he seemed so interested, like he was holding his breath, waiting for my answer. “Back when I lived here before.”

Ugh. I pushed my plate away, feeling sick. Why were we talking about this? “But no, I guess we don’t get along. Not anymore.”

Sawyer’s gaze flicked from my abandoned plate to my eyes. He cocked his eyebrows. “Why not?”

I let out a breath, doubting I could talk about it without crying. Which was pathetic. “There’s a lot of reasons. It’s complicated.”

 The thing was, I hadn’t seen Jeremy in almost three years. I’d come back because I’d been forced to—because Dad had died. So, Mom made Jeremy move out of the house and in with his sister, Sara. Because of me. She didn’t want Jeremy and me living in the same house again—ever. But everything was horrible, right from the start. The first night I moved back I heard a message Jeremy left on the answering machine for my mom—an angry message. It was like… bad.

Just thinking about Jeremy’s message now made me clutch my stomach. His words had been like a knife twisted into my heart. Hearing his caustic voice had caused me physical pain. I didn’t know the boy on the phone—so angry and bitter. I didn’t want to know him. I wanted
my
Jeremy back. So bad, I ached. But I knew he was gone—I knew it three years ago when he dumped me, so cruelly. I just had to deal with it, somehow. Get over it.

I rummaged through my backpack, trying to look casual, unscathed, but mostly just trying to shake the memory. Memor
ies
. Not just of the phone call, but of everything—the break up, loving Jeremy. I tried locking it away in the back of my mind, back with all of the other unthinkables in my life—back in the darkness with Dad’s gruesome death and Kenzie. I refused to think about any of it. It all sucked too much.

I pulled out a pen from my backpack, ‘cause it was something to pull out, then doodled on my napkin. I didn’t look at Sawyer but still felt his gaze. I drew a heart, then stabbed an arrow through it and colored it in with my pen. I wasn’t paying attention though. I was trying to distract myself, put distance between me and everything. Jeremy hating me. It seemed he did. It really, truly seemed he did. He was so mad that he had to move out. I didn’t blame him though. I mean it was his house. And Sara, his sister, has three little kids, and lives in this tiny, little duplex. She wouldn’t even let him bring his dog. He loves that dog.

When we were done eating, Sawyer took me back to his house and we played pool for a while down in his basement. Basically, we just hung out and had a good time. It was strange, but I felt as though I’d known him for a long time.

“Look, I’m sorry to end this so soon,” he said as we lingered at his car. It was well past seven, but he didn’t seem to want to say goodbye.

“I seriously can’t come to the practice?” I peered into his eyes, searching for the problem. “I’ll sit in a different room. You won’t even know I’m there.”

“I’d know,” he said quietly. “Look, I lied about not having people over when we practice. We always have people—lots of people. They really do distract us though, and sometimes we start showing off for them instead of practicing.” He was silent for a moment, as if searching for the right words. When he spoke again, I could tell it was from his heart. “The thing is, I like you—a lot. I want you to get to know me, and like me too, before you meet my friends.”

I blinked, then sighed.
Relief!
He wasn’t embarrassed of me, wasn’t afraid Kenzie would pop up. Good. I hadn’t let myself realize I’d been so worried about that being the reason—until I learned it wasn’t.

“Sawyer, I do like you.”

“No. I want you to like me
more
,” he said. “I don’t want you to go to my practice with us just friends, or we’re going to stay that way.” He took my hand, then linked his fingers through mine. “I don’t want to just be friends with you. I have a lot of friends.”

“I don’t,” I said quietly, trying to make him understand. “I really need a friend, Sawyer.”

“Okay—well, I’m that for you. But I don’t want you to come to The Clutch practices—not until we’re more than that.” He squeezed my hand. “So hurry and fall for me, okay?”

“Right,” I said lamely. “I’ll get right on it.”

He played with a tendril of my hair, apologetic or something. Then his eyes lit on something in his car and he furrowed his brow. “What’s that?”

I followed his gaze.

Folded on the driver’s seat was a note. Sawyer unpinned me and reached through his open window. He grabbed the pink slip of paper and unfolded it, then read. His brow furrowed, then a grin crept on his lips, like whatever it was, was weird—but amused him.

“What?”

He sniffed the paper, his grin growing, then he handed me the note. It was sprayed with perfume. I rolled my eyes, then read the note aloud: “Hey Sawyer, I know a secret. Love, L.”

I looked up at him, cocking an eyebrow. “Who’s L?”

He shook his head, still grinning, but he looked baffled. “I have no idea.”

***

After Sawyer dropped me off, the memories of everything flooded back. I paced around my room, disturbed, thinking about multiple personalities. I’d tried to make an appointment with a psychiatrist I’d found on the internet who specialized in grieving disorders, but their phone lines were busy. So far, they hadn’t returned my call or email. Maybe they were super busy. Maybe a lot of people were running around, turning into wild party girls with multiple personalities because their dads had offed themselves in gruesome ways—or more like their dads had been actually
murdered
but the police were just too stupid to realize what they were saying just couldn’t be true.

I paced and paced, but suddenly, I remembered something.

I got out the notebook I put under my mattress the first night I got here. My laptop battery had given out on the plane, but Dad had just died and I was grieving and freaking. I’d needed to write and get all my feelings out or I would explode. So, I’d written in my school notebook, the whole time bawling.

I had planned to transfer everything I’d written that day over to my laptop since it was password protected and my notebook wasn’t. Mom was a nosey alien these days. I didn’t want her snooping in on my thoughts. But geesh, I had written a lot on the plane. Too much. It was all pretty much rambling anyway. Just a pile of confusion. The way Dad died—it was grisly, gruesome. Full on scary. And the freaked out police—the idiots—they surmised he did it to himself. But I knew Dad. He wouldn’t do that. No way. And definitely, definitely, DEFINITELY not like that.

I thumbed through the notebook and read my woe-is-me ranting. No, no, no. Nope. No need to keep any of it. Ready to trash the whole book, I accidentally caught sight of the last page. My stomach lurched. In big, bold print were the words:
He was trying to save you, idiot
.

I gasped, starting to shake uncontrollably as I stared at the words. Who wrote that? Who? Not me, but who else knew about the notebook? No one.

But who could have written that message?

My heart jolted as realization washed over me.

It was Kenzie.

CHAPTER 4

That notebook message had me sick and shaking and sweating for days. But two weeks had passed since Kenzie popped up. I was starting to think—really believe—my alternate personality would never show up again. I knew she just showed due to all the grief I was feeling over losing Dad. And it didn’t help I had no one to talk about it with. The pain and confusion had all been bottled up inside me, waiting to explode. It made me long for a “best friend” more than usual. Someone to confide things in.

But now … it was kind of weird. Now I had Sawyer. That was something I hadn’t expected. He would catch me lost in dark thoughts and whisper in my ear, “I’m here if you want to talk.”

It was comforting to hear that. But I couldn’t do it—couldn’t confide.

 Jeremy was the only friend I’d ever had who I’d trusted like that—with everything—my heart, my secrets, my whole life. So when he betrayed me, that was it. It destroyed me. What we had was to the soul. That’s why it hurt so much now, being here, in this house again, where Jeremy had loved me, because now everything was awful. So messed up. He didn’t love me anymore, didn’t even want to see me. Knowing that made me shake and feel cold all the time, like I needed a jacket. Jeremy had been my jacket.

And Mom was so—I don’t even know—
baffling
. She tried ignoring the fact I even knew Jeremy, or even that there
was
a Jeremy. She tried to smile at me and act all
, isn’t it great we’re together again
. Act like Dad hadn’t died and I hadn’t been forced to come back here.

She smiled at me now, then smoothed down my wild morning hair. She placed a plate of toast slathered in peanut butter next to my orange juice at the kitchen table. “I remember how much you love peanut butter,” she said, moving on to get herself another cup of coffee.

I eyed the toast, the mounds of peanut butter Mom had heaped on to it. It made me clutch my stomach, overcome with a memory:

 
“Here—try this.”