Pawn (Nightmares Trilogy #1) (3 page)

“Party at the Bowers’!” Cynthia
Zeleski exclaimed in her high-pitched voice that was an assault to
the ears on a normal day, but was particularly grating
tonight.

Cynthia started into the woods,
followed by the majority of the others. Only Devon, Rick,
Elizabeth, Cooper, and Mandy remained.

I shoved my hand into the back pocket
of my jeans, searching for the jewelry I’d put there for
safekeeping. The new watch Devon’s parents gave me for my birthday
was still there. But the necklace, the one my father had given me
five years earlier, was missing.

“Liz? Where is my necklace?” I asked,
trying to keep my tone even.

“Huh?” Now that she knew I hadn’t met
a watery death, she was back to her bubbly self, laughing loudly at
something Cooper was saying.

“My necklace; where is my
necklace?”

“Oh, Eel, I’m so sorry. Is it not
there? I didn’t feel it drop, but…” Elizabeth’s voice trailed off
and all the laughter faded from her expression.

I checked my pockets, all four of
them. Nothing. I took a deep, calming breath. The necklace was
probably up on the cliff. All I had to do was take a flashlight and
a couple of volunteers and go look for it.

“Let’s go check up there.” I pointed
across the lake at the dark mound rising from the water on the far
bank.

“Eel, you’re soaked and shivering. You
really need to get some dry clothes,” Devon said.

“But ―” I started to protest, but she
cut me off with a wave of her hand.

“Rick and I will go look. You go to
Elizabeth’s and call your mom.”

The necklace was important to me. It
was all I had from my father and Devon knew that. She was right
though; I was freezing, and I needed to call my mother before she
sent a search party.

“Go,” Devon insisted. She turned to
Mandy and tossed her a set of keys. “Take my car. Don’t wreck
it.”

Chapter Two

Ten minutes later, I was sitting
shotgun in Devon’s Chevy. Mandy was behind the wheel, and Cooper
and Elizabeth were in the back seat giggling like school
children.

“Do you really think your mom will
call the cops?” Mandy asked nervously.

Yes, my mother would call
the cops ― she’d done it before. But there was no point worrying
Mandy further, and Caswell Lake was only a twenty-minute drive from
Elizabeth’s house.

“Probably. Mrs. Andrews is sort of
neurotic,” Elizabeth spoke up.

Neurotic was an
understatement. Mom went through my cell phone while I was in the
shower, or at least she had before the latest one stopped working
and she declined to replace it. On nights she stayed late at the
office – every night – a police cruiser drove past the house every
couple of hours. I had confronted her about the drive-bys once.
Instead of denying it, she’d insisted it was for my safety and not
because she didn’t trust me. Right, and the Tooth Fairy, Santa, and
the Easter Bunny had brunch together every Sunday.

“How much time do we have to get to
Liz’s?” Mandy asked, pressing the accelerator to the floor. The
Chevy’s engine groaned before reluctantly gaining speed.

I angled my wrist, trying
to catch enough moonlight to read the time on my new watch.
The hour hand was on the eight, the minute hand
between the fifth and sixth hash marks, and the second hand was
frozen over the twelve. A new record. I’d worn the watch for only
an hour before it stopped working.

Groaning, I flicked the
mother-of-pearl face, as if it would make the hands miraculously
start moving.

“What’s wrong?” Mandy
asked.

“The watch is broken,” I
muttered.

Elizabeth laughed. “Eel, the
electrocidal maniac, strikes again.”

That had been a joke among Devon and
Elizabeth since freshman year, ever since it had become apparent to
my friends that iPods, cell phones, watches, and anything else with
a battery mysteriously stopped working after I touched
them.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Cooper
asked, confused.

While he, and most everyone else,
called me Eel, few knew the nickname’s origins. Mandy had been part
of my inner circle since moving to Westwood the previous fall and
had picked up on Devon and Elizabeth’s teasing. To my more casual
friends, though, I didn’t advertise my bizarre talent for
short-circuiting electronics.

“Nothing. Liz is just being silly,” I
told Cooper and shot Elizabeth a warning glance over my
shoulder.

Several seconds of awkward
silence passed in the car; J.T.’s
Suit
& Tie
played in the background.
The rural landscape passed in a blur of trees
interspersed with a random house. I stared out the window,
pondering the irony of nearly dying exactly eighteen years after
being born. Even more ironic, it was also exactly eighteen years
since I’d died the first time. I shuddered at the memory - well,
not exactly the memory. I didn’t actually remember
dying.

“Wasn’t your party awesome?” Elizabeth
asked, dragging me from my thoughts.

I blinked in amazement. Was she
serious? Sure, the party was fun, at least until I practically
jumped to my own death. Nearly drowning kind of put a damper on the
night, though.

“Yeah, it was great, Liz,” I replied
with a sarcasm that was lost on her. “Best birthday
ever.”

All the lights in Elizabeth’s house
were off when Mandy pulled into the circular driveway with minutes
to spare before my mother’s deadline. At the front door, Elizabeth
fumbled with her house keys, trying to fit several wrong ones in
the lock before she found the right one.

“Mom! We’re home!” Elizabeth shouted
once the four of us were inside, standing in the foyer. Mrs. Bowers
didn’t answer. “Figures,” Elizabeth mumbled. She took off through
the foyer, up the staircase, and headed for her mother’s
bedroom.

I hurried to the house phone sitting
on a small table to the right of the doorway and dialed my own
house phone number from memory.

My mother answered on the first ring.
“Endora,” she said crisply.

“Hey, Mom. We’re back at Elizabeth’s
now. We decided to go to the theater instead of renting movies,” I
told her.

“Is that so?” she asked, employing the
tone she normally reserved for cross-examining lying
witnesses.

Crap. I’d violated the first rule of
testifying: don’t offer more information than was asked
for.

“What movie did you see?” Mom asked. I
envisioned her ears perking up like a bloodhound that had caught a
scent.

“Night of Horrors,” I replied
automatically. The movie was currently playing at the local
theater, and I had seen it the weekend before.

“How was it?”

“Bad. You know, your typical horror
movie.” I forced a laugh. “Well, we have to get to bed. Lacrosse
practice in the morning.”

“I expect you home afterwards,” Mom
told me.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Goodnight, Endora. Happy
birthday.”

“Thanks. Night, Mom,” I whispered as
the dial tone filled my ear.

I replaced the receiver and turned to
find Mandy and Cooper staring at me. Mandy’s hazel eyes softened
when she asked, “Everything okay?”

“Yeah. Fine.” Everything
was fine. Mom had remembered my birthday, at least; that was
something. Mom didn’t believe in birthdays.
“Celebrating one’s own birth is narcissistic,” my mother
always said. “You weren’t the one in labor for thirty-three hours.
You had nothing to do with bringing yourself into this world. If
anyone should get gifts and a cake, it is me.” Admittedly, she had
a point. But her logic was little comfort when I was five and the
only girl in kindergarten without a
Dora
the Explorer
cake. Or when I turned eight
and Tia Ross accused me of intentionally not inviting her to a
birthday party that I never had.

The front door opened and Cynthia
walked in, followed by a handful of junior girls from the lacrosse
team and their boyfriends.

“Eel, you look awful!” Cynthia
exclaimed.

“I did nearly drown, Cynthia,” I
snapped, only to immediately feel badly about biting her head
off.

“Rowr.” Cynthia clawed the air in my
direction in a good imitation of a cat. With her obsidian eyes and
ginger hair, Cynthia sort of resembled a tabby, too.

I glanced at a mirror hanging on the
wall above the phone. My brown-green eyes were bloodshot, dirt
streaked both of my cheeks, and a dime-sized patch blazed red
against the unusually pale skin over my right cheekbone. Tangled
clumps of half-dried auburn hair framed my face. I really did look
awful. And I felt worse than I looked. My entire body ached, my
head throbbed, and the places where I’d imagined the lake creature
touching me burned. The rest of me was numb, still cold from the
water.

“Hey, guys,” Elizabeth called,
appearing at the top of the staircase. “Hot tub’s on the back deck.
You know the way.”

“What about your mom?” Cooper
whispered loudly.

Mandy and I exchanged a knowing
look.

After Mr. Bowers married Mrs. Bowers
#2, Elizabeth’s mother turned to sleeping pills and copious amounts
of Merlot to console her bruised ego. While the affair and
subsequent divorce were still town gossip, Mrs. Bowers’ coping
mechanisms were not.

“She’s a heavy sleeper,” I mumbled.
Technically, that was true.

Elizabeth bounded down the staircase a
moment later. “Let’s take this party outside.”

Cynthia, Cooper, and the others
followed Elizabeth through the house, towards the sliding glass
doors that led to the back deck, leaving Mandy and me standing in
the foyer. Headlights pierced the windows on either side of the
front door, signaling the arrival of more partiers.

“I don’t feel like swimming,” I said.
Actually, I didn’t feel like doing anything besides crawling into
bed and pretending like the entire night was nothing more than a
bad dream. “I’m just going to go lie down.”

“Want me to come with you?” Mandy
offered.

I shook my head. “Nah. I’m exhausted.
You go have fun with the others.”

Mandy chewed her thumbnail, hesitating
for a moment before mumbling, “If you’re sure.”

In response, I made a shooing motion,
indicating that she should go. Mandy opened the front door and
stepped outside. “Hey, Kevin,” I heard her call.

Glad I have an excuse to
miss spending time with Kevin Mathis
, I
thought. He was Rick’s best friend, and I’d been the unwilling
object of his lecherous affections for a while now. He always made
excuses to put his arm around me or touch my hair, and no matter
how many times I shot him down, he never gave up. I headed for the
stairs before he decided to come inside.

Elizabeth’s bedroom was on the second
floor at the far end of a long hallway. I flipped the light switch
on the wall, and a soft glow illuminated the room. Elizabeth’s
bedroom was comforting to me, and her canopy bed with its burgundy
drapes was as familiar to me as my own. I spent a lot of time at my
friends’ houses. As always, the room smelled like Elizabeth: a
mixture of Pleasures perfume and Dr. Pepper lip gloss.

Weariness had settled into my bones,
and my foot and head throbbed in perfect unison. I sat on the edge
of Elizabeth’s bed and removed my tennis shoes. The inside of my
left sneaker was stained red. The sight of my own blood caught me
off guard and I gasped.

A sliver of shiny material,
as long as my pinkie and half as wide as its nail, was lodged in
the arch. The memory of kicking the lake creature came back to
me.
Just a hallucination,
I reminded myself.
She
isn’t real; lack of oxygen plays tricks on the brain.

Fingers trembling slightly, I tried to
grab the sliver with the nails of my thumb and index
fingers.

“Hey,” a voice said, startling
me.

My head shot up, and I saw Devon
standing in the doorway to the bedroom. “Did you find my necklace?”
I asked immediately.

Devon shook her head, blonde curls
bouncing around her shoulders. “Rick and I looked, but even with a
flashlight it was too dark up there to really see anything. We can
go back tomorrow or Sunday.”

“It’s not a big deal,” I mumbled,
disappointment clouding my words. The necklace meant a lot to me,
but there was no telling where or when it had fallen from my jeans
pocket; daylight wasn’t going to change that fact.

“I’m sorry, Eel.”

“Not your fault.” I resumed trying to
pull out the sliver protruding from the bottom of my
foot.

Devon crossed the room. “What
happened?”

“Cut my foot in the lake,” I said
uneasily.

“On what?”

I shrugged. “Dunno.”

“Well, don’t use your fingers. I’ll
get tweezers,” Devon said. She hurried to the bathroom adjoining
the bedroom, returning moments later with a pair of eyebrow
tweezers and two hand towels, one damp and one dry. She handed me
the wet one and I began gently wiping the blood away from the
wound.