Part 9 (1/2)
”Besides,” Jackie continued, ”I figured for the finale to the evening we could clip out that picture of Bobby from last week's newspaper, soak it in kerosene, and then see what the hot plate has to say about Blackwood's Scholar-Athlete of the Year.”
Ash squinted at Jackie. ”I can only envision that ending with one of us getting our eyebrows singed off, and possibly burning down the national park. I'd rather not give Bobby Jones that much credit.”
Jackie shrugged and took a swig of chocolate milk.
Ash wasn't sure how the girl could drink a gallon of it a day yet still remain so twiggy. ”We'll bring a fire extinguisher,” Jackie cajoled her. ”I'm sure the guys will get a kick out of it too. According to Darren's senior friends, Bobby tries to act like their best friend, but they all think he's just a thickheaded douche.”
106.
”If it walks like a duck . . . ,” Ash said.
Darren came wandering back from the next table with a broad grin on his face.
”What's got into you?” Ash asked. ”You look like Jackie at a handbag sale. Did some lucky guy just ask you to next week's ball?”
”Even better,” he said without missing a beat. ”You know how we always suspected that Monsieur Chevalier was an alcoholic?”
”He smells like a liquor store,” Ash replied. ”I don't think 'suspected' is really the accurate term.”
His grin intensified; any wider, and Ash figured it would split his cheeks open all the way to his earlobes.
”Well, for Brad Archer's community service he had to repaint some of the rooms in the faculty lodge . . . and he finagled his way into Chevalier's apartment.”
”He used his detention sentence as an opportunity for breaking and entering?” Jackie asked.
”Who cares?” Darren said. ”Brad Archer's a moron.”
He grabbed a fork from Jackie's tray and without consult-ing Ash attacked her macaroni cheese.
”Help yourself,” Ash muttered.
”Thanks.” He pulled the bowl of pasta across the table, shoveling the food into his mouth. ”Point is,” he said between mouthfuls, ”Brad Archer found a rack in the monsieur's room stacked with bottles of brandy. So he took one.”
Ash rolled her eyes. In the prep school scene it wasn't enough just to make trouble-it was about continuing to 107 push boundaries. When the thrill of underage drinking waned, what did you do? Steal liquor from teachers.
”Won't he notice that one of his darling children has gone missing?” Jackie asked.
Darren glanced at her as if this were the stupidest thing he'd ever heard. ”This is a dry campus, for students and faculty. What's he going to do? Tell Headmistress Riley that he's not sure but he thinks one of the students raided his easily accessible liquor stash? False. ”
”It's all a moot point.” Jackie sighed. ”I get the distinct impression that Ash is going to say no to our little s'mores-making excursion.”
On cue Darren and Jackie turned and gave her identical puppy dog faces, complete with the hopeful eyes and drooping frowns.
Ash huffed. ”Okay, okay. I'll come to your little faux bonfire on one condition: you let me take a nap until ten and don't wake me one minute earlier.”
”Yes!” Darren thumped his fist on the table. ”We're getting started in Jackie's room around eight when Brad comes by with the contraband, but we'll stop by and kidnap you around ten-ish.”
Ash shuddered at the word ”kidnap.” That was her cue to return to the womb she called a bed. She mumbled something about getting her rest and ten o'clock to Darren and Jackie and slipped away before they could protest.
When she reached her bedroom, she took a running 108 stumble across the floor and sprawled onto her bed. She was out nearly as soon as her head hit the pillow.
Ash hadn't dreamed of Lizzie Jacobs in weeks. Normally the dead field hockey player found her in the Scarsdale High School parking lot. The therapist Ashline had visited last fall thought there was a very simple explanation for why the scene in the parking lot was the one she replayed, instead of Lizzie's tragic ”fall” from the rooftop.
He believed that Ash was so burdened with guilt over her cla.s.smate's death that she wanted to travel back in time to stop herself from confronting Lizzie in the first place. According to the therapist, Ash subconsciously believed that if she hadn't instigated a fight with Lizzie, the other girl wouldn't have sought retaliation by vandal-izing Ashline's house, thus setting in motion the chain of events that would lead to her untimely demise. Like it or not, Ash admitted that there was probably some accuracy to the way he'd interpreted her dreams.
Tonight, submerged in the nocturnal shallows of a late evening nap, Lizzie found her again. And this time the two of them were on a rooftop-but not the familiar spray-painted roof of the Wilde residence back in Scarsdale. This time when Ash materialized in the dream, she was standing on top of the academic building.
Lizzie stood at the edge of the roof, just beside the spire of the clock tower, wearing the same black checkered trench coat and jeans in which she had spent her 109 final minutes among the living. The neon circle on her back gazed at Ash like an all-seeing eye. But Lizzie didn't turn, even as the plastic roof echoed hollowly beneath Ashline's footsteps.
Ash came up beside Lizzie, so that both of them had their toes perched on the edge of the roof. They were like two gargoyles scanning the earth below. The air around Lizzie reeked of ozone and burned hair. Her cheeks were blackened, grill marks seared along her cheekbones as if Lizzie had been roasted over a barbecue.
Worst of all, her eyes were missing.
”It's coming, you know,” Lizzie said calmly.
”What's coming?” Ash asked. A strong wind picked up from the north, sending her hair rippling back.
Lizzie ignored the question and responded only by reaching up and brus.h.i.+ng a dried piece of bloodied dirt from her hair-a souvenir from her fall to the Wildes'
yard. ”Do you really believe that you can escape the sins of your family, Ashline?”
Ash paused. ”Yes. I think I can.”
Lizzie shook her head, her charred face souring. ”You can never escape them. And sooner or later . . .” Her head snapped around, rotating grotesquely to face Ash.
”Sooner or later we pay for those sins.”
Her skeletal hand shot out and locked around Ash's throat. Her burned flesh flaked off in layers, revealing blood-caked finger bones beneath.
Lizzie's grip tightened, and Ash choked as she was lifted up into the air. The long fingers crushed her 110 windpipe, cutting off her air flow even as she made panicked gasps. And as she dangled over the ground below, she felt that familiar charge of electricity. Her hair parted and rose until it formed an orb around her face. She could even feel the static charges jumping from tooth to tooth within her mouth.
”Lightning is nature's proof,” Lizzie yelled over the climbing wind, ”that when positive and negative forces come together, the only outcomes are release and destruction.”
”You don't have to do this, Lizzie,” Ash croaked. The electricity crackled between her eyelashes.
Lizzie bowed her head. ”G.o.d help us all this time.”
The lightning forked down from the sky, and then there was only white.
When Ash opened her eyes, she was facedown on her carpet. Her face was pressed into the ropey ta.s.sels around the rug's edge, and when she pulled her cheek away, she could feel the rippled imprint of the cords in her skin.
She sneezed a few times to cleanse her sinuses of the dust that had ama.s.sed there during her floor-bound slumber.
She had no idea how she'd slept through a fall to the floor, although there was a telltale soreness on the left side of her ribs, where she'd probably landed.
The lights were still on; she hadn't even flipped the switch before she'd pa.s.sed out.
As she pulled a long hair from her mouth-gauging from its color and length, most likely one of hers-she 111 glanced at the alarm-clock-shaped void in the clutter on her nightstand before she remembered that she'd pulverized her clock in a failed attempt to maim Bobby Jones.
Her hand fumbled around on the nightstand until she found her cell phone, half-buried beneath a pile of gum wrappers. She flipped it open. 11:37 p.m. She groaned and flopped back onto the carpet. Her meager rations at dinner hadn't done much to satisfy her hunger, and the thought of melted marshmallow and chocolate smeared between graham crackers was heavenly. And now Jackie and Darren had run off to their mock bonfire without remembering to wake her.