Henry took a break to call his dad and let him know where I lived, so he could set up a ride. I observed him curiously on the phone, the professional tone his voice adopted while he crossed his eyes.
He went over geometry with me for hours, the minutes rushing by. We didn't stop until lights appeared outside the window, shining a zigzag pattern on the curtains. I got up and looked out to see a black Lexus idling at the curb.
"Is that your chariot?" I asked.
He nodded.
"Nice car." I dropped the blind slat and turned around. "So you really are rich?"
The instant I spoke I realized my words sounded tactless. "I mean, you know. Your family. With them being lawyers, I suppose you'd have to be."
He just laughed again. "I suppose so. Why are you so shocked?"
"You seem too humble to be from that kind of money," I admitted.
"It's just part of who I am. Not the sum total."
Retrieving his still-damp hoodie from the dining chair, he pulled it over his head. For a moment, I flashed back to my dream: Henry sliding his shirt off, nothing underneath due to my naive imagination. I looked away, but he didn't notice my distraction.
I followed him to the front door. He noticed Claire's sign and pointed at it.
"Uh, should I be going this way? Would not want to piss those vacuums off." He eyed them warily.
"You're fine, don't worry about it. If you leave a mark, I'll clean it up."
"Well, thank you," he said. He opened the door, books clutched beneath his arm. He grinned, rakish and unfairly good looking. "Bye, Ariel."
"Bye," I repeated, leaning in the doorway, wishing I had a reason to make him stay. He started walking off the porch, then stopped and faced me again, flipping his hood over his dark hair. Blackbirds were printed on the white fabric inside his hood, framing his face as though they were tethered to him.
"We could do this every week, if it would help. I wouldn't mind," he offered.
"Okay," I said, feeling a smile bloom on my face.
"It was fun. And besides, I have nothing better to do. Please don't relegate me to putzing around my house." He put his hands together as if in prayer. "Save me from my boredom."
I couldn't help but laugh. It was extremely flattering. My laughter pleased him, one side of his mouth tilting up in a satisfied smirk. He went from impossibly cute to incredibly sexy.
"Same time, same place?"
"Sure," I said.
Henry waved at me and jogged towards his father's car. Hugh came up behind me and watched the Lexus pull away.
"Did you have a good time?" he asked. "Learn a lot?"
"I learned plenty, thank you," I said, still cross with him. "You really didn't need to ask so many questions."
"I should have asked him what his dad's name was," Hugh said. "He said he was born here."
"Your interrogation skills are getting rusty," I said dryly.
"What's his last name?"
"Rhodes. Why?" I cocked my head and looked at him quizzically.
A cloud passed across his features. He wasn't frowning, but there was something darker there, something I couldn't read. "Phillip Rhodes' son. Yes, they used to live here."
CHAPTER 10
"ALL RIGHT, WHAT happened?" Theo asked. She ambushed me the second I walked into the commons the next day before school. Polka dot skull barrettes held up either side of her fiery hair, and her eyes sparkled with questions.
"What happened with what?" I asked, feigning innocence.
"Your tutoring session." She made bunny ears with her fingers. "You're making me resort to air quotes."
"Oh."
"Oh? I saw Henry coming out of your house, late. Well, semi-late. It was dark. So, how many bases did you run? Was there tongue?"
"Whoa, whoa." I pulled her by her skinny arm to a free corner. I didn't need everyone in the commons hearing, or thinking they heard, juicy gossip. "He was helping me study. The whole time. That doesn't require tongue, unless you count speaking."
I thought about what she'd said for a second.
"Do you just spy on my house all the time?" I asked.
"Pretty much," she admitted, shrugging. "Don't feel special. I spy on all the neighbors. It makes for interesting drawing material sometimes. Lots of naked people by their windows. Now 'fess up."
I recounted what had happened with Henry the night before. In truth, I was kind of dying to gossip about it. The sparks between us had seemed real. Theo looked disappointed by the time I was finished, though, deflating my enthusiasm.
"Boring," she declared, crossing her arms behind her head.
"What were you expecting?" I asked, half amused and half disappointed by her reaction.
"After the other day, I had no idea," Theo said. "At least something PG-13. Not just a boring math powwow."
"Why does it matter?"
"Well, since I can't get a boyfriend, I'm living through your romantic life. In order to do that, you need to have a romantic life for me to live through."
"I'll get right on that," I said, rolling my eyes.
"Good." She looked satisfied.
"I've never really had a boyfriend, either," I admitted. "This is all weird to me."
"Well, just go with it," Theo said. "And make sure you tell me next time."
I realized that we were closer friends than I'd made us out to be, that telling her felt better than keeping the info to myself. It was an odd feeling, partly like a betrayal to Jenna. She was the one who I was supposed to be gossiping about boys with.
At lunch, Theo and I sat together in what had become our usual spot up against the wall. I brought up McPherson again. When I'd heard his voice on the morning announcements, it revived my concern about his shady meeting at the Blind Devil.
"I knew there was something wrong with him," Theo said, peeling the tomatoes off of her sandwich. "He creeps me out. No one should get that excited about lunch menus."
"You like spying on people," I said bluntly. "You said you do it all the time."
"Yep. I had a spy kit as a kid, magnifying glass and all. Until my mom caught me peeping into our neighbor's window. What's your point?"
"I want to make use of your talents, let's say." I felt like I should be stroking my chin as I revealed my nefarious scheme.
"How so?" She looked suspicious, sandwich hovering in mid-air.
"What if we were to follow McPherson's moves and see what he's up to?" I suggested. I knew I sounded like a paranoid nut, but I had a feeling Theo would go along with my idea. "Then we could figure out what's going on with him. For all we know, it's just a poker game or something, but it could be something more sinister."
She thought for a moment, eyes tilted up towards her purple-tinted eyelashes, then shrugged. "All right, I'm game. If McPherson's part of a drug smuggling cartel, we could get on the news. So what, we just track him between classes?"
That's exactly what we did. It seemed like as good a place as any to start. Maybe he would slip during business hours. His companions at the restaurant had had familiar voices, so it was possible they worked at Hawthorne.
Between history and English, I found our shady principal in the hallway, staying several yards behind him. I navigated around people getting to class, trying not to take my eyes off of the back of his balding head.
I don't know what I expected to see him do, especially in school. I thought maybe I could get some clues, no matter how vague.
But he didn't do anything out of the ordinary. He stopped once to chat with some boys in varsity jackets, then with one of the female teachers. Attempted flirting, by the looks of her uncomfortable grin. It didn't help that I only had the brief spans between periods and had to rush to class each time to avoid being tardy.
On my way to art, still following McPherson out of routine more than anything else, I rounded the corner to the electives hall.
"Hello, Ms. Donovan," McPherson said as I practically ran into h
im. He had been waiting for me on the other side.
I let out an involuntary shriek. He smiled a lemon-toothed grin, hands clasped in front of him. I wondered if he had been on to me the whole time, realizing with a start that he probably had. Perhaps he wasn't as stupid as I had assumed.
"Do you need my help with anything?" he asked in a syrupy voice. We both knew he'd caught me. McPherson never spoke that nicely to me.
"No," I said, shaking my head slowly, my eyes widening as I stepped back. He crossed his hands more tightly, accentuating the elbow patches on his ugly suit.
"Then how about getting to class?" he suggested, in the same sickeningly sweet tone.
I rushed around him and raced to Vore's room, flying all the way into the seat next to Theo. She hadn't seen him do anything out of the ordinary, either.
"What do we do now?" Theo asked.
"We wait until he lets his guard down. It might be a while." But although my suspicion took a back seat, it continued to nag at me.
###
October arrived, bringing the cold with it. I started wearing a jacket I'd gotten from Hugh for my birthday on my chilly morning walks, watching the white puffs of my breath swirl.
The major topic in the news was that the little missing girl, Alyssa Chapman, had not been found yet. Signs with her face on them were stapled to electrical poles all over Hell, covering the missing pet flyers. Jenna's face had been there only a few short months ago.
Maybe it was that association that made me connect Alyssa and Jenna. No one else seemed to, but I felt like they were linked. I switched from checking Jenna's fanpage to checking Alyssa's name on the news, but there were no leads. The police were coming up stumped, theorizing it could possibly be a distant relative who had just been released from jail.
The fact that Hugh and Claire still let me walk by myself amazed me. But they didn't realize the link, either. They were sure that Jenna had run away. Still, they made me check in whenever I was out.
The trees outside dressed for autumn, in orange and scarlet leaves that appeared overnight, turning the town into a postcard. The colder days meant gray skies and drizzling rain, and the insulated feeling returned. Weight bogged down my limbs as I dragged myself to school and back.
Henry was flirty with me in art class, more openly than he had been before. When I got up to ask Ms. Vore a question one day, he followed behind me and fixed my folded collar. His warm, smooth fingers brushed against my neck, making me gulp.
After school, he walked home with me again for another tutoring session.
"My parents are never home," he said, as we were sitting around taking a break from studying. He was scribbling down flashcards with math terms for me.
"Most people would love that, you know," I said, giving him the side-eye.
"Yeah, probably. I told you I'm not normal."
"Are you lonely?" I asked. I wouldn't think someone as social as him, a person who could strike up a conversation with a complete stranger, would even know what being lonely meant. But he remained silent, debating the question. He put his hands behind his head and leaned back on the couch.
Part of me wanted to reach out and touch him, to brush his hair back from his forehead. I shook off the urge, squeezing my fingers together.
"Sometimes," he said finally. He regarded me, eyes sweeping down and then back up, slowly, as my stomach dropped. "Can you keep a little secret?"
"Sure, as long as it's little," I teased.
"My parents are mostly pushing me to hang out with specific people. To them, it's never too early to start networking."
"Ah." Sounded like Claire in overdrive.
"Ever since we moved back here in May, we've been to a ton of dinner parties and social get-togethers that I have no interest in. Let's just say it's a good thing I know how to wrangle a tie."
I pictured Henry dressed up in a suit, like in my sleeping fantasy. The image was too attractive. Then I thought of all the pretty girls who would have also been there, dressed in rich silks and satins, showing off their perfect, slender figures. It spoiled the image.
"So, why did your parents move away from Hell? I mean, if they were going to come back later?"
"I think they thought there was more opportunity in Pennsylvania. But they kept in touch with the folks back home. We visited a few times."
"It seems like my dad knew them," I said. "But that's not too surprising; pretty much everyone knows everyone here."
"And my dad knows everyone in any town," Henry said. "It's part of his image."
He didn't have to tell me that.
"I did like being alone, for a long time," he admitted. "But now I mostly just wander around my house all day, reading. I could make you some high class microwave dishes. Sometimes I just drink and fall asleep."
"Drink, like alcohol?" I didn't much like being around drunk people; they always found themselves far more hilarious than anyone else in the room did.
"Not often. Just nips from what my mother has in the cabinets. It helps me let go." He studied my expression. "Does that bother you?"
"Not that much." And it didn't. I was more concerned with what he'd said about reading. "What kind of books do you read? Most boys our age barely know how to write their own names."
Henry looked bashful, copying my stance with his hands gripping the edge of the couch. He looked up at me. "Fantasy novels."
I chuckled. "You mean like dragons and wizards and that kind of thing?"
"Yep, the very thing." He sat up a little, looking defensive. "And what do you like, romance novels? I bet you have a whole collection of sappy, sentimental vampire lover books sitting dog-eared on your nightstand."
He was only teasing, but he could see from my face that he had hit the nail on the head.
"I like escaping into a world that's more exciting than, well, this," I said, indicating our surroundings. "Mostly I read horror, anyway. And what's wrong with romance?"
"Nothing at all, dear," he said. It was a strange word for him to use again, something my grandmother would say. But out of his perfect mouth it sounded lovely. "I hope to someday fall head over heels myself."
I let a little breath out of my nose, tugging a loose thread from the couch with wandering fingers.
"Under this dashing exterior, I'm a huge nerd," he continued. "I'm just warning you before we continue any farther down the rabbit hole. Promise you won't tell anyone."
"You keep making me promise you things," I observed dryly, although secretly I was delighted. "What do I get out of it?"
"Something great. I'll figure it out," he said, and winked at me.
###
"Who would name a town 'Hell,' anyway?" asked Alex Perkins in history. He had been the class clown eight years running: almost seventeen, but smart enough to always be in Honors.
Warwick perked up, turning from the blackboard where he'd been scribbling bullet points in his hard-to-read scrawl. Our teacher had a bad habit of going off on tangents, something I knew well. It seemed to be getting worse each week, though. Today he had begun with the settling of the North, then drifted to the fur trapping trade, and ended up talking about the original settlement of Hell.
He perched on his worn spot at the front lip of the desk, where he often sat while spinning tales. Taking pause, he seemed to gather his words.
"Hell was originally settled by George Reeves, as I was saying. When he was asked what to name the settlement, he said 'Call it Hell, for all I care.'"
A few chuckles rippled through the room.
"At least, that's the charming anecdote that the mayor likes to tell at town meetings," Warwick said.
"So what's the real story?" Henry asked behind me. My hearing automatically sharpened at the sound of his hypnotic, low-pitched voice.
"Depends on whose account you want to trust," Warwick said. His voice had taken on the quality of a Discovery Channel narrator. "There are several theories, with a hundred years' worth of super
stition behind each of them. The most prevalent is that Hell was settled on a spot of evil earth."
There were more giggles, some of them genuine, some nervous. He waited patiently until the quiet laughter stopped. I couldn't tell if he took what he was saying seriously or if it was just an act. I never could.
A born storyteller, he'd told me a million wild, embellished tales when I was a child, about far off places and mythical beasts. I'd believed in jackalopes and unicorns until I was ten, when Jenna had convinced me that he was making it all up, and scoffed at me for ever believing him. She'd stopped thinking Santa was real in first grade.
"We have more than our fair share of haunted houses," Warwick offered as proof. "A higher rate of accidental death than other towns in the county."
"Supposedly haunted," Henry argued. I could almost see his eyes darkening, even without looking at him. "Everybody thinks they've seen a ghost at one time or another. Doesn't mean they have. And accidents are accidents."
"Fair enough," Warwick said. "You are your father's son."
The dry laugh I heard from Henry was surprisingly cold. I finally turned to look at him, and he looked much more serious than usual.
"But there have been numerous sightings throughout the years," Warwick continued. "Of dead relatives, flashing lights, wandering shadows. And many of the accounts were from people who had upstanding reputations in Hell. When I was sixteen, our town sheriff was committed to Bernhardt Asylum when he insisted the shadow of his dead sister kept sneaking into his bedroom and stealing his breath."
"So there's crazy in the tap water," Henry said, not willing to budge. Warwick seemed a little irritated that someone else was stealing the stage. "Still doesn't prove anything."
Warwick went on, trying to ignore Henry. He stood and started pacing slowly back and forth across the front of the desks.
"On the subject of haunted houses: I'm sure some of you know a few. Maybe even live next to one. There are still whispers of trapped spirits." He ticked off the locations on his fingers. "The blue house on Court Street, the abandoned fire house, the orphanage...."
I perked up, as if snapped out of a trance, and shot up my hand.
"You have a question, Ariel?" He tilted his head at me.
"Are you talking about the Dexter Orphanage?"
"I believe that's the only one in town. So yes," he said, smiling gently.
"Do you know anything about that one in particular?"
I had begun twisting my pencil in my hands. Sharp lead bit into my palm.