Bad Girl Gone Read online

  Andy’s shoulders were tightening up into a knot, his whole body pulling into itself, coiling like a snake.

  “Just let her go!” yelled Hank.

  And then Andy struck, jumping up and lashing out at his father.

  “Shut up! You have no right to bring this shit down on me!”

  He swung wildly. Hank had been in the Marines (he never stopped talking about it) and he grabbed Andy’s arm, not only stopping the blow but twisting Andy’s arm so badly that he cried out in pain.

  “Mess with the bull and get the horns.”

  Hank used the leverage he had on Andy’s arm to throw him to the ground. But Andy wouldn’t stay down. He jumped back up.

  “I’m not going to let you talk about her that way!” he screamed.

  Stay down, Andy, I thought, just stay down. It was too late—he’d taken another swing at his dad and this time Hank swung back with a cupped palm and slapped Andy so hard I thought he’d knocked him out. Andy went down on his knees.

  I summoned up the loudest, most bloodcurdling scream I could muster. It rose up from the depths of my soul and pierced the night—at least in my mind. I wasn’t going to stand by and watch Andy get beaten up by anyone. Hank’s eyes went wild—like he’d seen or sensed something. I rushed at him, forgetting that I couldn’t even touch him, intending to knock him backward, but instead—I entered him.

  Like the other times, it was like leaping into a hurricane, with thoughts whirling around madly, sights and sounds and fragments clashing. There was a hideous sound track going on in Hank’s brain, a death metal thing with screams and the sound of steel being sawed and bricks smashing. He was angry and frustrated. I was assaulted by dozens of images—some of me even, and I latched on to one of those and rode it into a dark chamber of his brain. Hank was chasing me, reaching for me. But I kept eluding his grasp, which only fed his frustration. Inside him I was spinning wildly, out of control. I knew this wasn’t going to last long. If I held on, if I could just hold on, I might find the memory where he killed me in cold blood. My head felt like it was going to explode, and though I tried to stay inside him, I couldn’t bear the pain. I pushed with my shoulder and leapt free.

  I sat on the grass and stared up at Hank, who looked like he’d just thrown up. He took a step back and felt his heart with his hand.

  “This … this thing you’re doing—it’s messing with all of us, Andy.”

  He held out a hand for his son and helped him to his feet. He tried for a hug but Andy would have none of it.

  “We’re all sorry for her. And sorry for you. But it’s time to put it behind us. Come on inside. I’ll make us sandwiches.”

  Hank turned and went back into the house. Andy stared at his feet. After what I’d experienced in Hank’s whack job of a brain, I had a hard time believing he was even remotely sorry for me. Maybe he was sorry for what he’d done to me. Maybe he’d ripped the Saint Christopher medallion from my neck and then stabbed me. I’d always known he disliked me—didn’t think I was good enough for Andy—but did he actually hate me enough to kill me? That would be one way to break up a relationship.

  A wind kicked up leaves. The weather was changing. Andy ran to his Jeep, got in, and took off. I flew after him. He drove like a maniac, running stoplights and careening around corners. I kept up with him and pleaded.

  “Andy, don’t! Slow down! Do you want to get yourself killed?”

  As if in defiance, he sped forward faster, roaring up a hill, fishtailing around a sharp switchback in the road, his back tires sliding, his rear end clipping a guardrail. He looked like he was on a mission to die. I flew in front of the car—right in front of his face—to no avail. Finally he skidded to a halt. He sat for a moment, then pulled off the road onto the shoulder. He got out of the car and walked to the bluff of Chalmers Cliff. Down below, waves crashed on boulders piled next to the train tracks.

  Andy had a distant, empty stare going, as though searching for something way beyond what he could see.

  “I want to be with you,” he whispered.

  The implication was not lost on me.

  “Oh god, not like this…” I said.

  His scream echoed into the night.

  “I WANT TO BE WITH YOU!”

  I’d been so stupid. My adoration, my truly undying love, had caused this. If only I’d just left him alone and not reached out! I’d only caused him to become so distraught that he was contemplating the unthinkable. He stepped over the railing and past the sign that read, “DANGER—STEEP CLIFF!”

  Tears fell from his bloodshot eyes. He didn’t bother wiping them away. He must have been crying in the car all the way up here. He took two more steps, right to the edge, his toes poking over. A strong wind blew at his back. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to get blown right over.

  “Baby, don’t do it … I’m begging you,” I pleaded.

  His ears were deaf to me, his senses shut down. He was jacked up on his own body’s fight-or-flight chemicals and had tuned the world out. A car sped past behind him, the stupid driver laying on his horn. Who does that?

  I hovered in front of him, pleading, begging, trying to hug him, trying to kiss him, but he was immune to my existence. He teetered forward and back, rocking on the balls of his feet. A jackrabbit hopped out of the scrub and along the shoulder. I was desperate. I flew across the street and screeched a high-pitched wail. The rabbit froze, alarmed—and I rushed into it. A car was coming, fast. I took aim with my new skewed rabbit vision and darted into the road. A screech of tires and wham! I was knocked into the air. The car kept on going.

  I could see stars, and some vague images of grass and what looked like a warren of rabbits. Then I saw Andy. He’d rushed over from the cliff and picked me up. I jerked myself out of the little creature and miraculously it jumped out of his hands and hopped off into the night. I’d only succeeded in getting clipped by the car, not run over. But it was enough to bring Andy out of his death-wish trance. Shoulders slumped in despair, he walked to his Jeep, got in, and drove off. I didn’t follow him. I’d done enough damage to the boy I loved.

  PRISONER

  As I flew toward my new home, I contemplated how badly my play for Andy had gone. The last thing I wanted was for him to leave the world of the living. I had to do something to stop him from such madness, but I didn’t know what. How could I save him?

  Fog was rolling in off Puget Sound. I soared through the mist. A mile from Middle House I saw an orange glow. I flew faster and landed. My mouth fell open. I stared in disbelief. Middle House was on fire. I could think of only one thing. Cole. I flew around the side and entered. I expected to be met with a blast of flames and be burned alive. Fat chance of that. There was heat but no flames. I rushed down a hallway and screamed.

  “Cole!”

  Kids were flying up and down the hallways carrying buckets and pans and bowls of water. I followed the line, which led to Miss Torvous’s room. It was inundated with flames. And not just ordinary fire, but small balls of fire, wicked-looking things that ran up and down the walls, screaming as they dodged the incoming volleys of water. Miss Torvous was sitting in her chair, crying with a vengeance, sobs and moans racking her body.

  A gangly kid lurched by me and tossed a pan of water at the flames, killing a couple of them. They hissed as they died. Gangly shouted at me.

  “Don’t just stand there! Help us!”

  He took off. I couldn’t move, couldn’t stop staring at Miss Torvous, who was overcome with grief. She was clawing at her cheeks, dragging her fingernails over them. The more she cried, the more flames appeared. I took a closer look. The tears that fell from her eyes morphed into tiny flames and then grew and grew. Un-freaking-believable. She was shedding tears of fire.

  “Miss Torvous!”

  It was Cole, behind me. He wrapped an arm around my shoulder, tightly. Too tightly. What was going on? I tried to squirm away but he wouldn’t let me.

  “She’s here! See? Right here!”

  Miss
Torvous looked over. Her eyes were huge, at least twice the size of normal. She looked like some kind of freakazoid zombie and her chin was trembling. She stared at me. I swear she could read my mind.

  “She was just outside … up on the roof,” said Cole.

  “That’s why we couldn’t find her,” said Zipperhead.

  He and Dougie, Lucy, Darby, and Cameron had all showed up—looking sickly—carrying buckets of water, but they dropped them because the fire was rapidly dying out on its own, just magically disappearing, the result of Miss Torvous’s will. Things returned to normal, and oddly enough, nothing looked like it was charred. There’d been no fire—it was all a spectacular illusion created by the headmistress to torment her charges. Her eyes were locked on me.

  “Come here, little one…”

  All my inner voices were screaming, NO WAY! And yet when prodded by Cole, I stepped toward her, slowly.

  She smiled at me in a loving way and held out her arms. I took two more baby steps.

  “NOW!” she screamed.

  That was it! “Okay, lady, you can go screw yourself.” I turned to run but Zipperhead, Darby, Cameron, and the others grabbed me.

  “Sorry, Echo,” said Darby. “She’s been wacko, tormenting the hell out of all of us.”

  “She took away all our food. All our privileges,” said Zipperhead. He looked truly pained to be ganging up on me.

  “She’s been working us like slaves,” said Lucy. I looked at her and the others. They looked absolutely terrible, depleted, exhausted, and gaunt. Like they’d been exerting themselves for hours and hours.

  “What does it have to do with me?”

  “Nobody knows,” said Dougie, who was sweating like a pig in the desert. “But we have to do what she wants or there’s going to be more hell to pay.”

  “Just do what you’re told,” said Lucy.

  I wasn’t going anywhere without putting up a fight. I kicked and screamed, but I was overpowered and finally delivered into the waiting grasp of Miss Torvous’s talon-like grip.

  “Where have you been, my lovely?”

  “Out doing what I’m supposed to be doing. Finding out who murdered me!”

  Her face jerked violently, then she calmed herself down by touching her own cheek and then mine.

  “No one murdered you. You’re right here. With me.”

  “But … I’m not alive.”

  She appeared alarmed, then threw her head back and laughed.

  “Of course you’re alive! Look! I can touch and feel you!”

  She began touching me affectionately. I was getting more confused with each passing second. This woman was batshit crazy.

  “Why are you doing this?” I said.

  “I’m only trying to comfort you, my darling…”

  She relaxed her grip and I used the opportunity to wrench free of her iron grasp and flew toward the doorway, feinting left and going right, which enabled me to bypass Darby and the others, who were slow due to their sickly state.

  I flew down the hallway. Miss Torvous’s screeching voice bounced off the walls.

  “Get her!”

  They were after me in a heartbeat. Darby and Lucy and Zipperhead and Cameron and dozens of other kids, too, hands grabbing at me. But I was getting out of there once and for all. I pushed through a wall and was met by four kids who rushed right at me.

  “She’s over here!” one of them screamed.

  I somehow managed to kick into overdrive and flew incredibly fast, leaping up and squeezing through the ceiling. I was alone, in a hallway. At the end was an open window. I made for it like a hawk, flying fast and straight. Liberation was at hand. I was only three feet from the window when Cole stepped out of the shadows and blocked my path.

  “This isn’t the way, Echo.”

  “It sure as hell looks like it to me!”

  “No. I mean running. Listen to me!”

  I was in no mood to listen to anyone. I tried to duck around him but he grabbed me, pulling me close.

  “Echo … you have to trust me.”

  Dammit! Even now I loved his stupid bedroom eyes. My chest heaved and my heart pounded. But his eyes … they held nothing but calm and adoration. I relaxed my shoulders and in a tiny mouse voice I capitulated.

  “All right, Cole, I’ll do whatever you say.”

  In two seconds, the hallway was flooded with other kids, all forming a barrier around me as Cole escorted me back.

  We stood in her doorway. Miss Torvous looked at me now like she had when I’d first arrived, like I was some unsanitary, unwanted pest. She dismissed me with a wave of her hand.

  “Put her in the chamber.”

  The chamber?

  Cole and the others nodded. Miss Torvous’s door shut of its own accord. I glared at my captors.

  “Guys! Will someone please tell me what’s going on?”

  Cole whispered in my ear.

  “Trust me. We’re not going to put you—”

  He had to stop because Miss Torvous had flung open her door with a bang and pushed out into the hallway.

  “Sometimes people have to be taught a lesson,” she said.

  She latched a talon onto my wrist. I was terrified and squirmed to get away. Wasn’t going to happen.

  I was marched downstairs through the laundry room and into some kind of subbasement, down a narrow hallway—an access thing, really—at the end of which was a large, round chamber with a door in the middle. Cole opened it. We stared inside. The walls were coated with a crusty white substance.

  “What is that gunk?” I said.

  “Plaster mixed with sea salt, cinnamon, and garlic,” he said.

  “She made us build it when you were gone,” said Darby.

  “We worked like slaves—it sucked. I kept wanting to puke,” said Zipperhead.

  I remembered that sea salt and burning sage had made us all queasy at Mike Walker’s office.

  “What’s the point?”

  “She calls it a ‘time-out’ chamber,” said Lucy.

  “Well, I’m not going in there.”

  I tried to push my way past Cole and the others but there were too many of them. I screamed as they forced me inside and shut the door.

  “Cole! COLE!”

  I searched frantically for an exit that didn’t exist. But there were a dozen holes that had been drilled in the walls, holes just big enough for an eyeball to see through, and they were out there … peering in at me.

  “Cole, help me!”

  There were crusty clumps of salt on the floor. I picked some up and threw them at the eyeballs. They disappeared as the watchers backed off, but soon they reappeared, gawking.

  The walls of sea salt had a horrible effect on me, making me queasy and weak. I found the centermost part of the room and sat down. A salt chamber. How very clever. I had to give her badass credit. Miss Torvous was one devious, sadistic bitch. My head was spinning. Dizzy, I lay down. Minutes passed. I felt like I was going to vomit my guts out.

  The door opened and Cole entered. He came to me and knelt down.

  “Why didn’t you stop them?” I whimpered.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Do I look okay?”

  “You look like shit. But still pretty.”

  He smiled weakly.

  “Why is she suddenly fixating on me?” I asked.

  “I don’t know but I promise we’ll find out.”

  “I feel like I’m going to die.” The irony hit me quick, but it wasn’t enough to make me laugh. This sucked.

  “Cole … I have to get out of here. You have to help me.”

  “I know; I have a plan. Just … curl up here like you have been, and I’ll be back.”

  He started to go and I clutched his leg.

  “Cole?”

  “Trust me, Echo—you have to trust me.”

  “With my life?”

  “Yes. Now play dead.”

  That I could do. I closed my eyes and dreamt the dream of the dying.

  I
NTRUDERS

  In the chamber I could barely feel my heartbeat. It had slowed down considerably, my pulse steady but sluggish and fading. My consciousness was slipping away, my thoughts thinning into wispy strands of nothingness. I was dying … again. I tried to open my eyes but didn’t have the strength. I heard noises but couldn’t identify them. A shriek, I think, and its echo, like a continuous reverb. I finally opened my eyes. Then things came into focus.

  Miss Torvous was in the chamber with Cole, trembling.

  “I think she may be dead,” said Cole.

  “I never … I didn’t think…” stammered Miss Torvous.

  “Let me pick her up,” said Cole.

  Miss Torvous nodded. She was in shock. Her head tilted back and forth like her brain was gyrating.

  “What have I done?”

  What she’d done was kill me. My afterlife was coming to an end.

  I felt arms scooping me up. I could smell Cole’s scent. I felt myself being moved—he was carrying me out of the room. Then I heard the earsplitting slam of a door and a scream so loud and terrifying it made my eyes pop open. Cole held me in his arms. Darby had just slammed the door of the salt chamber shut, locking Miss Torvous inside.

  “Let me out of here!”

  She pounded on the door.

  “LET ME OUT OF HERE NOW!”

  More pounding on the door, followed by a moaning, keening, braying kind of sound.

  “Oh my god, was that her?”

  “Yeah. You want me to put you down?”

  I looked up at Cole. I liked it in his arms and didn’t particularly want to be put down just yet.

  “Um … can you wait a second?”

  “Sure.”

  Darby shot us a look. Then backed away from the salt chamber door.

  “She’s gone mental, that’s for sure. Something happened to her when you arrived, Echo. We all talked about it and didn’t want to say anything to you. You were scared enough already.”

  “No one knows what, but you sure as shit triggered something in her,” said Cameron.

  I wanted to stay in Cole’s arms a long, long time, but my head had cleared, my stomach felt fine, and I knew it was time to get busy—on my own two feet.