“I’m fine.” I kissed her and wiped away the tears. “Really, he didn’t do much damage.” I held her gaze to reassure her. “Did you see how Tommy looked?”
Anita started laughing through the tears. “Oh god, I thought he was hit by a bus! He had two black eyes and his lips were all fat and split open. Rumor has it you knocked some of his teeth loose. I’m surprised he even showed up to school. You’ll see him today. He looks like total shit!”
Though he needed a good ass whooping, I just couldn’t feel good about it. I knew far worse was coming his way, and soon.
The day rolled out smoothly. I was in high spirits through first period shop class and second period English.
Right up until lunch.
I was sitting in the cafeteria eating pizza and fries with Anita when Vice Principal Arnez entered. Arnez, a short, half bald Hispanic man in his fifties, walked into the center of the room and announced, “I was just informed that a tenth grade student here at Moses Lake High School passed away late yesterday evening. Thomas Schroeder died in a motorcycle accident in the sand dunes last night. I’d like to offer my condolences to all his friends and family. Thomas will be sorely missed here at school. If any of you feel a need to talk with someone my door is always open. Counselors Luna and Channing will also be available for you at any time.”
The world slid out from underneath me. I knew it was coming, but …
Anita asked if I was okay, and I couldn’t speak to answer. I felt the eyes of the entire room on me as I slowly got up and walked out of the cafeteria. My feet moved independent of my thought processes, carrying me out to the parking lot, away from the stares of my fellow students that felt like a jury convicting me for Tommy’s death.
Anita followed me outside. “Slow down, wait.” I kept walking on automatic, Robomike. “Are you okay? Mike, are you okay?”
I needed to breathe, to think, to be alone, to get away from everything and everyone. I couldn’t face people while my conscience screamed with the guilt of Tommy’s untimely death.
I turned on Anita and yelled in her face, “Leave me alone!” My feet carried me off to my car, leaving her standing at the edge of the parking lot, bewildered.
I drove aimlessly, my body on auto pilot while my mind raced to find some sense of equilibrium. It was easy to hate Tommy when he was such an asshole, but now I faced the fact that I had allowed his death to happen. I hadn’t really done much about it. Tommy’s death settled on my shoulders in soul-crushing guilt.
The past few days slid through my mind. Tommy drunk, walking out of the dance to leave Rachelle there alone. Rachelle staring me down, hate in her eyes, as I danced the night away. Then Tommy, mad as a hornet swinging at me at school. Tommy acted as if he really believed I had jumped him homecoming night. And then that vision of Tommy flying through the night air with his motorbike, smashing into the pit floor at breakneck velocity. My guts turned cold. Then my final memory of Tommy, of attacking him in mindless rage, punishing his face ruthlessly, relentlessly. And there at the end of it all, Nadia, cradling my head in her hands.
I suddenly saw her face as her lips morphed to a cold smile, her golden cat eyes taking on an aspect of menace, her smile that drifted into a wicked-serious look. Snatches of her words over the past few weeks rose to the surface of my mind, and aligned to form new possibilities.
“I think he’s gonna be a problem. Would you like me to take care of him for you?”
“Let’s just say that I’ll make sure he never bothers you again.”
“I showed up when they were leaving. Very fortunate for them. I was too worried about you to go after them, but they’ll get theirs soon enough. Every dog has its day.”
“I will take care of everything. This has gone too far. I cannot permit it to continue.”
Deep in the recesses of my mind, I reached towards strange fuzzy logic conclusions. Was it really a coincidence that Nadia had made threats and Tommy was dead?
Right. “Stop blaming people. This is all on me. I didn’t stop it when I could have.” There’s no way Tommy’s death had anything to do with Nadia. It was an unfortunate accident. My heart rejected the idea that Nadia was capable of such a thing. There was nowhere to lay blame apart from myself, my own failure to change what I knew would happen.
I played the what-if game. Maybe if I’d been more persistent or persuasive, I could have talked my way through the situation instead of pummeling Tommy like a raving lunatic. Maybe I could’ve gotten Rachelle to admit to Tommy that my visions were real, serious. Maybe I could’ve done a focused text message campaign on them both. I didn’t even try to be diplomatic. I just brawled with him, like an animal.
I knew none of it would’ve gone down that way. Tommy wouldn’t have listened, Rachelle wasn’t really listening. No one but Nadia ever listened to me. Tommy wanted a fight, and Rachelle set me up. Short of kidnapping Tommy and tying him up, there was nothing I could have done to prevent what happened. I knew all this as I drove back and forth through the streets, but it didn’t help my sense of guilt over Tommy’s death.
I eventually found myself parked in front of the skatepark – no fucking skateboard. I needed to skate. I needed the Zen-like flow of running the halfpipe. I drove a few blocks to the skate shop and spent an hour deciding on a new board and accessories. I chose a board by Santa Cruz with Slime Ball wheels and Birdcage trucks by Tony Hawk. I spent every dime of Nadia’s money on the nicest board I had ever bought. Not even enough left to buy fries and a milkshake.
I headed back to the skatepark, trying not to think too much about anything but skating.
The harsh thunder of wheels on concrete and the sharp smacks of boards hitting pavement replaced the silence of an hour ago. The place teemed with activity. Of course, school had just let out.
I rode the ramps incessantly, breaking in the stiff joints of the new trucks and getting a feel for the new board. It was sheer heaven to ride. The board had great pop, bouncing up far better than my old setup.
As I flowed back and forth across the ramps, I caught snatches of conversation from nearby skaters. Then I overheard Cleo mention something about Rachelle to Taylor. Cleo faced away from me as she spoke. “Lindsey said she’s got second degree burns on like twenty percent of her body! Imagine how messed up that is, your boyfriend dies and then some asshole puts battery acid in your damn skin lotion!”
Taylor shook his head. “I bet it was one of those Buffalo Bill psychos!” Taylor’s voice dropped low for a Buffalo Bill impersonation from the movie Silence of the Lambs. “It puts the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose! Yes, precious, it gets the hose!”
Cleo started giggling, then she hushed up and leaned in close to whisper, “Do you think he did it? You know, that whole jealousy thing? If he can’t have her no one else can.” She sounded snide.
“You mean Mike?” Taylor whispered back.
“Yeah, did you see how he went off on Tommy? I thought he was gonna kill him.” Cleo glanced back over her shoulder to find me standing several feet away, listening. Her look said it all – she’d been talking about me.
I didn’t really care if they were gossiping at my expense. Wasn’t the first time, and probably wouldn’t be the last. “So, what’s goin’ on? What happened?”
Cleo looked like she’d rather be doing anything else in the world than speaking to me, but she answered. “Somebody put battery acid in Rachelle’s lotion bottle! She’s in the hospital with second and third degree burns!” Cleo spit her words in blatant accusation. She’d already made up her mind who was responsible.
“And she rubbed it on her skin?” Made no sense to me.
Taylor made a timely exit, skating off to the ramps. Cleo hit me with a healthy dose of attitude. “Well duh! She didn’t know! She thought it was lotion!”
“Who the hell would do that?”
“That’s a good question. Obviously somebody was pissed at her.” Cleo stepped up into my face.
“Well, it wasn’t me! I was hom
e sick all day yesterday! I didn’t even leave the house!”
“Somebody put it there. Somebody mad enough to kill.”
“Whatever. Sure wasn’t me.”
I had reached my daily tolerance limit for Cleo’s mouth. I skated off to try to recapture that moment of Zen on the halfpipe. I didn’t know what the hell to think. Acid in lotion? Gave me the creeps just thinking about it.
I skated a few more minutes till sunset, and then noticed Nadia waving from the picnic table as she chatted with some skaters. Looking at her adorable, pixie-in-a-hoodie profile, I couldn’t imagine her being involved in any of that nasty business with Rachelle or Tommy.
I kept rolling for a few more minutes, until my stomach growled. I hadn’t eaten since Vice Principal Arnez interrupted my lunch with the news of Tommy hours earlier.
Nadia was gone from the picnic tables.
I checked my car, but she wasn’t there waiting. Then I remembered the one vision that hadn’t happened yet, of Nadia being attacked. I began checking all the cars, my heart up in my throat.
I found her a moment later, sitting in the passenger seat of Taylor’s black Chevy Monte Carlo. My view of her was slightly obscured by the tinted window, exactly like my vision. The icy fingers of déjà vu sent a shiver down my spine as I watched the real-life events of my vision unfold. Taylor was all over Nadia, kissing at her wildly.
My stomach turned in a surge of revulsion so powerful, I almost hurled right there on the sidewalk. But I was furious enough to swallow it down.
Nadia needed me to be strong.
An irrational surge of possessiveness grabbed hold of me. Nadia was mine, my special friend. Not exactly my girlfriend, but still mine.
I yanked open the door, seized Taylor by the back of his jacket, and hauled him out onto the pavement to give her a chance to breathe. Taylor had been smothering her with his lanky body pressed up on her tightly.
As he fell out of the car door, Nadia came with him. She was latched onto his shoulders with her head buried in his neck. Seeing her like this reminded me of the countless times Nadia had embraced me the same way, her dainty little head snuggled close into the hollow of my neck. Taylor landed hard on his back with a thud, and a grunt of pain. Nadia let go of him and sat up, coming face to face with me as I reached down to help her.
I started to ask if she was alright, but the words died in my throat.
Her jaw was wide open, inhumanly wide. She hissed, an unmistakable sound of menace, baring half inch long canine teeth. I stared into the face of an enraged predator, super pissed off at having been interrupted in the middle of feeding.
I thought she was about to bite my face off, her jaw opened wide enough to give it a decent shot. Her gaping mouth was smeared red, blood dripped down off her chin. Her tongue slid out to wrap around her lips, stretching all the way to jawline to lap up the last drops of Taylor’s blood.
I fell over backwards in shock, frozen in terror. My butthole puckered and I suddenly felt the need to shit and piss simultaneously. I watched in horrified awe as Nadia’s huge jaw closed back up and her freakish tongue snaked back into her mouth with a wet slurpy sound.
She glared at me and threatened in a menacing growl, “DON’T. EVER. DO. THAT. AGAIN!”
Then she looked down at Taylor who lay in a dazed stupor from whatever she’d done to him. Fixing him with the full power of her gaze, she spoke in her low, Jedi-mind-trick voice, “Go home and get some rest.”
I sat on my butt and watched as this tiny fourteen year old girl-creature stood up and jerked Taylor to his feet by one arm. The kid outweighed her two to one, but she pulled him off the ground like a rag doll and promptly sent him on his way.
It hit me like a slap to the face. The power she had just exerted over Taylor, was the very same influence she used on me nightly. I made a girly squeal and backpedaled in a crab walk on hands and feet, scrambling to get away from her, as far away as possible. I took off in a dead run for my car, terror driving me, my sphincters ready to release any second.
I tore out of the skatepark with the same urgency that had seized me the night I first met Nadia on Stratford highway. Then, I’d been trying to save her life. Now I just wanted to get away from her as fast as my little Geo would take me.
I thought I heard her yell as I drove off, “You can run but you can’t hide!” I slammed the accelerator to the floor.
I drove out of town following Broadway south to Interstate Highway nine (I-9) east, and then exited to the south end of Moses Lake. I didn’t have a plan. I just wanted to go somewhere she’d never expect me to be, a safe hideout. Then it occurred to me that Tommy had died out here at the south end sand dunes. I could stay away from the Nadia-thing and see for myself where Tommy died, see if it was the same pit of my vision.
I ran through the unbelievable scene of the Nadia-creature and Taylor, over and over in my mind, seeking a way to quantify it somehow. No matter how many times I looked at it, there wasn’t a single logical or plausible explanation. The situation defied reality. I started reaching towards fantasy-horror concepts like vampires and werewolves.
“Stupid.” I had been the sole witness. No one else had been anywhere near Taylor’s car to see the creature masquerading as a girl while it munched on Taylor. Taylor seemed clueless, totally unaware of what had happened to him.
A stack of details assembled in my mind like the pieces of a puzzle aligning for the first time. Nadia was inhuman, a creature of the night. She never came out in daylight.
I had never seen her while the sun was up. Why didn’t I notice it before, why only now? She must have been manipulating me, using her Jedi-mind-tricks. And what of the night we met? Bloody and broken in my bed, smashed by that car doing fifty plus miles an hour, she still had the fortitude to pop her own shoulder back into socket with only a little help from me.
I had been living in a world of fantasy and denial, lying to myself because I was so attached to her. And then there was the money. I’d overlooked every facet of her strangeness.
Like the shoplifting incident when she hypnotized the undercover security guard. She was completely fearless, took whatever she wanted. And why should she be afraid? She was obviously much more dangerous than she looked. And she recovered immediately from those traumatic wounds on the highway. Her skin had healed completely, not a mark. She’d run my hand over the smooth skin of her hip to prove it while I stood there like a retard.
I must have been hypnotized into stupidity to miss that one.
Then that night she drove me home after the fight, that wasn’t a dream, she was actually licking my wounds! She had licked me up and down with that creepy ass freaky tongue of hers! She must have done something to make me heal faster, like a cat licks its wounds.
And all those dreams, the insane erotic dreams of Nadia rubbing all over me. Those weren’t just dreams either. What about the money? And why was she paying me anyway? What was she really doing while I slept? Maybe she was doing the same thing she did to Taylor, munching on me in my sleep – feeding from me.
But during all this time, she had never hurt me, not once. If she wanted to hurt me she could’ve done it a hundred times. In fact she had stepped into the path of an oncoming car to save my life. No matter how I looked at it, I had to admit she’d never hurt me. In fact, she seemed protective.
Why should I fear her?
She had some other agenda, but it wasn’t about hurting me. My fear dissolved into anger and hurt.
I had trusted her more than any other person in my life, even more than Anita. She tricked me, pretended to be this vulnerable little girl in need of help. She weaseled her way into my life, lying to me every step of the way.
I no longer cared about Tommy or the scene of his accident. I wanted to face down the Nadia-creature, right now. She had a lot to answer for. I’d introduced her to my friends, brought her into my home!
No more ignoring the freaky truth.
I skidded down the graveled Sand Dunes Road throu
gh the south end, racing to the other side of the sand dunes to take the back-roads leading to the one place I knew she’d come, my home. Minutes earlier I’d been on the run from what I couldn’t face, but now I was ready to confront her and learn the truth.
As I passed the main recreation area by the lakefront, I spotted the silhouette of someone standing alone. A girl in a hoodie sweatshirt.
It had to be her. It was always her – everywhere I went, in every part of my life. She’d become like a second skin, always there, always finding me no matter where I went. How is it I never noticed the freakish way she always found me, always showing up? Stalking me, lying to me.
I turned off into the sand leading down to the beach. I caught another flash of her in the headlights, the flawless pale skin that never saw the light of day, the reddish shine of her hair. She was running away faster than I could drive through the heavy sand. I plowed through the sand to chase her down to the edge of the waterline where she stood boldly waiting for me. She had chosen this time and place, manipulating me – like always.
I was so worked up I didn’t care what she was, or how dangerous she might be. I was so sick of the lies, I just wanted answers. I braked to a stop five feet from the Nadia-creature and leaped out the car door coming face to face with the little monster. She watched me serenely, no trace of the predatory thing beneath the girlish façade.
“I want answers! No more lies! What are you? Who are you? What do you want from me?” I screamed into her calm little face, using aggression to overcome the lingering fear gnawing at my guts.
She simply nodded, which was even more infuriating. I stepped up to grab her arm and found that same slender girl underneath the hoodie, the girl who had spent her nights hugging me tightly, as if I was the last human being on the planet.