“You’re in a coal chute. Those manacles are anchored into limestone with masonry screws. I’ve learned a lot about containment in my life, and trust me, you’re not getting out.”
“This is insane,” I spit at her, not sparing my words. “Hugh will be looking for me.”
“Hugh is currently distracted,” she says, and she sounds so confident that I feel a ripple of unease, something different from the panic that hit earlier. Before I was an animal, reacting with venom. Now I’m a human . . . a scared one who hears a voice inside her head say, This is really happening. Then, underneath that, the little voice that whispers in my ear at night . . . You deserve it.
Fuck that, is usually how I respond to the voice before falling asleep. And I do the same now. I’m Felicity Turnado, and I can’t just disappear from a party without anybody noticing.
“My friends will know I’m gone,” I say. “Remember what those are? Friends?”
That last bit is shitty, but so is hitting someone with a brick. Tress only shakes her head, not bothered in the least.
“You really need to know the consequences before you talk.” I go still, my voice a dead thing in my throat, gaze following Tress as she walks back to the chair, the bulb above her head making her eyes dark pools.
“I want to know what happened that night,” she says again. “But I’ve got a lot of other things to say to you, too. So we’re going to take our time, and we’re going to talk everything out.”
I nod enthusiastically. This is something I’ve actually wanted to do forever.
“But,” Tress says, holding one finger in the air. “If I don’t like what you say . . .”
She walks over to a pile of bricks, one that looks like it’s been sitting there since the beginning of time, left over from what they didn’t use on the house. Tress picks one up, comes closer to my little nook. My pulse jumps, tight and hot where the metal bites into my wrist.
“If I don’t like what you say . . .” She fades off, shrugging her chin over her shoulder. Behind her there’s a smooth brick wall, the face uninterrupted, each brick notched into the next in a tightly constructed pattern. One section is slightly brighter than the rest, out of place.
“There were two coal chutes,” Tress says. “I practiced.”
Chapter 13
Tress
Felicity totally loses her shit.
I can’t blame her, but I also don’t have to watch it. I go back upstairs, partially to double-check that the noise level of her freak-out isn’t penetrating to the partiers. Her screeches are fading when I’m halfway up the stairs, drowned out by the music in the kitchen. I can still pick out a few words—ones that I doubt her mother knows she uses—when I put my ear to the wooden door, trying to ascertain if there’s anyone in there before I open it. I can’t hear any movement, so I flick the hook off and take the plunge.
A couple of juniors are going at each other in the corner, but they’re really into what they’re doing and their eyes are closed. I let the door click shut, then edge past them, out into the main room. More people have shown up, and the staircase is packed, the geeks who are working on the clock giving everyone orders about tiptoeing around the pieces and parts they’ve got laid out everywhere.
“Hello! There’s a system at work here!” One of the boys shouts at a football player who trounces right past him. But the jock isn’t interested; he’s got one hand on his stomach, the other covering his mouth, his skin a sickly green.
Huh . . . Maybe Felicity wasn’t totally wrong about the flu.
I pause for a second, anxious to know if her screams are coming up through the floorboards. They’re not. All I can hear is the low hum of party talk, and crying from somewhere outside, high-pitched and desperate. Curious, I follow the sound out onto the porch, where Hugh, David, and Brynn have shifted the underclassmen out onto the lawn and are gathered around Gretchen in a protective circle.
“He probably had to take a piss,” David says, his skin still sallow, one hand on Gretchen’s shoulder. She shakes her head.
“William Wilson wouldn’t get out of the car unless I told him he could,” she hiccups, wiping her face with the edge of David’s shirt. “He’s a very good boy.”
She gets to her feet, swaying a little, her own color not good. “William!” she calls out into the dark. “William Wilson Astor, you get back here right now!”
“Wow, whipping out the full name, huh?” Brynn says.
Hugh pats Gretchen’s hair, carefully avoiding a splatter of puke from earlier. “I’m sure he’ll come back.”
“What if he doesn’t,” Gretchen wails. “What if it’s like last time? He got so scared and nobody knew where he was, and the only person who actually helped me was”—she hiccups again—“Ribbit.”
Hugh’s jaw tenses, and my cousin appears out of the darkness, the light on his phone flicking off. I go to his side, grabbing his arm as he’s about to step up onto the porch.
“You might want to split,” I tell him.
“Huh, why?” His breath has beer on it, his eyes bleary. It only takes one, with Ribbit.
“Because Hugh doesn’t exactly like you, and—”
“Hey!” As if I’d conjured him, Hugh elbows his way through the crowd on the porch, his fist tight around the neck of Ribbit’s T-shirt before he can even get his hands up in surrender.
“You sick little shit,” he seethes into Ribbit’s face. “You hide that little dog away so you can save the day again, get a little off Gretchen?”
“Whoa, hey.” I put my hand on Hugh’s arm, but it’s like metal.
“I know he’s your cousin, Tress, but this is between us,” he says to me.
So I hit him.
Hitting Hugh Broward with my bare hand is like pitting a mosquito against a car going eighty miles an hour. Nothing happens except I get hurt. I cradle my hand to my chest, and Hugh’s eyes bounce off Ribbit for one second to meet mine, then settle back on his prey. We know each other well enough to be aware he’s not going to let go of my cousin, and I’m not going to stand down and let Ribbit get hurt.
“He didn’t do anything,” I say. “Leave him alone.”
“You don’t know shit,” Hugh says. “I’ve told you before; he’s a squirrelly little bastard.”
“I’m not . . . ,” Ribbit argues, his voice shaky. “I’m a good guy.”
“Dude.” David comes over, puts his hand on Hugh’s shoulder. “I don’t think it was him. He’s been with us the whole time.”
“Of course he has,” Huge says, giving Ribbit a little shake. “Parasite.”
“No, man,” David goes on, his skin still green, wobbly on his feet. “He didn’t do anything to the dog.”
“That’s your area, right?” I snipe at David, thinking of Goldie’s hair floating on the surface of the gator pond, the wet paint on our sign, someone putting a name to us that isn’t Allan or Usher. Just white trash.
David blinks slowly, his gaze dull. “What the fuck are you talking about?”