“Wait.
Follow
us?” I narrowed my eyes as I stood there, looking at him over the top of Garrett’s car.
Garrett, genius that he was, realized he’d said too much, and his face flushed with color. “Well, I mean… Let me start over—”
“No,” I said, pointing a finger at him. “You said you
followed
us here. Why are you following us? And don’t even
try
pretending that you wanted to apologize.”
“Look,” Garrett said again, playing it cool and failing. He couldn’t have appeared guiltier if he’d actively tried. “I can explain everything.”
“No time,” Cal said without hesitation. “Call my assistant, Jane, at 555-Screw-you. She’ll set up an appointment for… Hmmm, how’s never? Does never work for you?”
It was an old and tired joke, but Calvin’s delivery was pretty damn awesome, and I couldn’t help but laugh as I climbed into the car.
But Garrett opened the back door and got in, too, pushing aside the water guns to make room. “Just—let me ride with you, wherever you’re going, it doesn’t matter, and I’ll explain.” And then he repeated that word I thought I’d never hear from his entitled lips. “
Please
.”
As I looked back at Garrett, I saw tight desperation on his usually too-cool-to-care face. I could smell Calvin’s surprise, and then I caught a whiff of something else, too.
It was that god-awful fish smell. The smell of all-encompassing fear.
Yes. As I’ve mentioned, one of my unique
skills
as a Greater-Than, besides being able to move water around with my mind, is my ability to smell emotions. And yes again. It sounds crazy. But it’s not made up. It’s a thing.
I narrowed my eyes at Garrett again, because that fishy smell was emanating from his pores like stale BO. He was scared about something. But his fear smelled slightly different than what I thought of as the usual nasty dead-fish
Help, Mommy, I’m gonna die
smell that most people gave off when under duress. Garrett’s fear had an overtone of lemon to it, which made it oddly less awful.
I realized that although Garrett was definitely scared about something, he wasn’t scared for himself. He was scared for someone else. That was new. And he wasn’t joking around. He
really
wanted our help.
“All right,” I said. I looked at Cal. “Drive.”
“Sky!” Cal scoffed. “For real?”
“You’ll have about ten minutes,” I informed Garrett. “Fifteen tops.”
He was already nodding. “Okay. Yeah. I think I can—”
“Giiiiiirl,” Cal growled warningly through clenched teeth. “What the fuuuuuh.” He silently mouthed the words, “Dana’s gonna shit monkeys if we show up with McDouche in the car.”
“We’ll get rid of him before that,” I said aloud then turned to tell Garrett, “FYI, we’re gonna drop you at the Sav’A’Buck. You’ll have to find your way home from there.”
That gave Garrett pause. “The
Sav’A’Buck
,” he repeated incredulously. “You mean, in freaking Harrisburg?”
“In mother-freaking Harrisburg,” I confirmed. “Or you can get out now.”
Garrett looked from me to Cal, who was glaring at him in his rearview mirror, and swallowed hard. And now I smelled a more regular fish scent. Garrett was afraid of going to Harrisburg. Who wouldn’t be? It was a dangerous place.
“Do I need to count to three?” I said. “One…”
I smelled that lemony smell again as he finally squared his football-player shoulders and simultaneously shook his head
and
nodded. I realized his concern for someone else—I couldn’t wait to find out who—trumped his fear for his own safety.
“Okay,” he said. “You can drop me at the Sav’A’Buck.”
“Go,” I ordered Cal, who grimly used his hand-controls to jerk his car into gear. He came the closest that he’d ever come to peeling out of the parking lot as I turned back to Garrett and tapped my watch. “Talk. Fast.”
Chapter
Three
“My dad’s latest girlfriend,” Garrett said as we pulled onto the interstate heading for Harrisburg, “has a daughter named Jilly, who’s kind of a freak show, and I think maybe Rochelle, her mother—you know, my dad’s girlfriend? I think Rochelle did something bad to Jilly, because Jilly’s just, like, gone. You know?”
I nodded. I got it, but what I didn’t understand was what this Jilly girl being gone had to do with Calvin and me.
Garrett continued. “And it’s doubly weird, because for the first, I don’t know, five months that Rochelle dated my dad—her name’s really Rachel, but she calls herself Rochelle, and I think it’s because she thinks sounding French makes her hotter, and she
is
pretty hot for, like, a forty-year-old or whatever—”
It’s possible my snort of disdain or maybe the expression of incredulity on my face got Garrett back on track.
“But see, the weirdness is that Rochelle didn’t even mention she had a daughter until, like, I don’t know, maybe a month or two ago, when she suddenly went up north and then came back with Jilly in tow. Like, here’s my daughter,
boom
,” Garrett told us. “It was freaking bizarre. And now, again,
boom
, Jilly’s just gone.”
“Maybe she went back north,” I suggested. “If she was living there with her dad—”
“Yeah, no. She told me she was staying here in Florida,” Garrett insisted. “That she was here for like forever—and believe me, she wasn’t happy about that. And her crap’s still scattered all around Rochelle’s living room—she rents a beach house not too far from ours.”
Garrett’s dad’s “beach house” was a castle at the water’s edge in one of the extra-wealthy parts of Coconut Key. I glanced over to meet Cal’s eyes, and the look he was giving me was pure
I can’t even
.
“Maybe Jilly’s super-rich,” I suggested, “and she just left it all behind.”
“No.” Again Garrett was absolute. “She told me her dad didn’t have any money—none. That’s why she was living with Rochelle. Who calls their mom by her first name, anyway? And I know for a fact that Rochelle herself doesn’t have a lot of cash. She’s been sponging off my dad from day one—and it’s gotten way worse. Remember how we were supposed to go skiing in the Alps? That shit got canceled because Dad just ran away to some weeklong medical conference up in New York—which is step one when it comes to jettisoning his girlfriend. Step two will be when he finds a reason to not come home. I’m pretty sure there’s a trip to LA or Houston in his immediate future, during which Rochelle will discover that the credit card he gave her doesn’t work anymore.”
“Nice,” Calvin murmured. “The stealth breakup approach.”
Garrett missed that Cal’s words dripped with sarcasm, and heartily agreed. “It’s definitely easier that way, especially when the GF’s crazy, and my dad
does
go for the extra-crazy. Anyway, before he left, I heard them fighting about money, and it was ugly. I’m not completely sure what happened, but I think Ro used his credit card for drugs, but I don’t know for sure, ’cause she never seems strung out or high.
“In fact, ever since she brought Jilly home, she’s been looking, I don’t know,
better
? Weirdly younger and even hotter, like she’s been taking Botox on steroids, but it’s not just her face; it’s her…” Garrett held out both hands, cupping them in front of him, making the international asshole’s symbol for a woman’s breasts. “But her bitchiness seems to be increasing, too. Radically.”
I glanced at Calvin again. I had a bad feeling about this, a seriously bad feeling. It sounded a lot like Rochelle was, in fact, on drugs.
Cal knew exactly what I was thinking, and as he met my gaze he nodded.
Destiny
. Rochelle sounded an awful lot like a Destiny addict, since the drug’s biggest side effect was that it made its users literally younger. And no wonder she and Garrett’s dad had fought about money. Destiny was insanely expensive. Even the cheapest, nastiest, impure Street D was thousands of dollars for a single dose. And the designer boutique version of the drug could run close to five figures. I’d heard that some heavy users needed an injection more than once a week.
“And
then
?” Garrett continued. “This is pretty crazy, so get ready.”
“Ready,” Cal said from the front seat. He’d ditched any and all sarcasm and was listening intently as he drove.
“I went over to her place after my dad left for New York,” Garrett told us, “and Rochelle answers the door and I’m like,
Hey, Ro, I’m looking for Jilly
, and she goes,
I’m sorry, who?
” He falsettoed what had to be a terrible imitation of his dad’s soon-to-be ex-girlfriend. “And I go,
Jilly? Your daughter?
And she starts laughing, like
Ha-ha-ha-ha! Oh my goodness, you thought Jilly was
my
daughter? She’s my older sister’s daughter. I’m
much
too young to have a daughter Jilly’s age! Did you honestly think I had her when I was ten?
I was so freaked out that I just left, because I swear, she introduced Jilly to me and Dad as her daughter.
Her
daughter. I heard her say it. I know this.”
“How old’s Jilly?” Cal asked, looking back at Garrett in his rearview.
Garrett cleared his throat. “Fifteen.”
That throat-clear meant something to Calvin that I didn’t pick up, because it made him laugh a little, and not because he thought it was funny. His next question took me by surprise. “You doing her?”
“What? Jilly?
No! God!
” Garrett’s indignation was over the top, and I suspected that he was way more into the girl than he was willing to admit. “She’s fifteen! Besides, she’s not… She’s…”
“A freak show?” I finished for him, repeating his own words.
“Well, yeah,” Garrett said.
“What does that even mean,
freak show
?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Garrett said, and it was obvious he was lying. It was clear that he thought both Calvin and I were
freak shows
, too, and he was nervous about insulting us—which might’ve been a first for him. “I guess it’s because, she’s, you know, all punk and emo? First her hair’s green and then it’s purple. And she wears these weird sunglasses, and God, the music she listens to.” He made a face like he’d just tasted bad milk. “It’s bad. Like, screaming angry-girl rock. And…” He shook his head.
“And what?” Calvin pushed. There was definitely something Garrett wasn’t telling us.
“Well—she’s creepy. Like, instead of watching TV and stuff like normal people do, she sits around with her e-reader all day and actually uses it to read instead of play games. Who does that? And then, even the
books
she chooses are weird! Like, a few weeks ago, she and Rochelle were over at the house, I was on my way to take a piss, and before I got to the bathroom, I read a couple lines over her shoulder, just to see what the hell. And she was deep into this story about a beating heart under the floorboards. How spooky is
that
?”
So the girl liked to read Poe and dye her hair different colors. Jilly actually sounded way cooler than Garrett would ever be—in fact, I already really liked the girl. But Garrett was still clearly leaving information out.
“All right, doooode.” I knew Cal had started to say
douche
but then changed it last minute to
dude
, in an attempt to be diplomatic. “Seriously. It’s time to get to the part that you
really
want to tell us about.”
Garrett sighed deeply. “See, I promised her I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
Who would’ve believed it? Garrett McDouche Hathaway was reluctant to break a promise. Maybe there
was
hope for him yet.
“If she’s really missing,” I told him as Calvin took the ramp for Harrisburg. We were almost out of time—the Sav’A’Buck was right off the exit. “Whatever this secret is might help us find her.”
“Are you going to help me?” Garrett said eagerly, leaning forward in his seat at my inadvertent
us
. “You know. Find her? Jilly? Because I heard that you helped find that dead girl, Tasha.”
“Her name is Sasha,” I said wearily. “And she wasn’t dead.”
“And we didn’t find her,” Cal interjected as he braked to a stop at the end of the exit ramp. “She escaped her kidnapper and called Skylar’s cell phone for help. She hid until we picked her up and brought her back home.” He was sticking to our cover story—what we’d told everyone, my mom and the police included—about what had happened. Because
We used Sky’s Greater-Than psychic homing superpowers to find Sasha, and then risked our lives going into battle against a giant, bat-wielding beast of a psycho-guard in order to free her and twenty other little girls
wouldn’t fly, even though it was the truth.
“Yeah, well,” Garrett said, “I also heard that
Sasha
”—he was careful to get her name right this time—“was kinda freaky, too. Like, um, Jilly freaky.”
I shot another look at Calvin. Uh-oh.
“Because that day?” Garrett continued. “After I came back from the bathroom? I saw something deeply freaky.”
My stomach did a somersault. I had a serious idea about where this was going.
“Jilly was still sitting on the couch, reading that creepy-ass story. Except, I’d left the football game on TV. She’d been complaining about how it was bugging her, it was super-distracting, whatever. And I told her to deal with it, since it’s my house and stuff, and anyway,
everything
pisses her off. She was going all bitch-mode on me about how I could at least be considerate enough to turn the volume down. So I told her basically that she was SOL—”
“Shit out of luck.” Calvin quietly interpreted the guy-speak for me, as if I didn’t already know.
“—and to go read her creepy shit somewhere else.” Garrett crossed his arms and sat back in Calvin’s backseat as we pulled into the potholed parking lot of the low-end grocery store. “Anyway, I was only in the bathroom for two seconds. But as I’m walking back into the living room, the TV shuts off.
“I dunno if Jilly just didn’t hear me coming—she definitely didn’t
see
me at first, because the couch faces the TV and she had her back to me,” Garrett continued. “But that effing TV goes black, just like that. At first I couldn’t figure out how it happened, because Jilly was still sitting on the couch, and I’d put the remote way up high, on top of the entertainment center where she can’t reach it since she’s really short.”