the house. Once inside, she locked the door with trembling fingers, then hurried to the kitchen to test the back door locks as well. Upstairs, checking e-mail, she did not turn on music, but instead listened for any break in the house’s quiet.
Again, she was surprised by how few e-mails waited in her inbox. Half a dozen friends she’d seen at the vigil dropped notes, commenting on the sad event. Dale wrote her two notes, both of which she erased on sight. The ritual of e-mail comforted her. There was spam from an online clothing store where she’d bought a blouse once, an offer to buy Viagra online, and a note from a screen handle she didn’t immediately recognize.
Kylenevers
Subject: Me Again
Hey, sorry about yesterday. I know we don’t know each other. Kyle here. I feel kind of bad about IMing you like that. With everything going on with N., I just wanted to chat…don’t know a lot of people and was kind of upset. Going to the vigil last night helped. A really nice ceremony. Were you there? Anyway, sorry. Maybe we can chat some other time. I really did like your profile.;-) C ya.
K
“Not needing a looz for my buddy list,” Mandy said. She closed the e-mail and was navigating the cursor to the delete button when the doorbell rang.
The sound was so unexpected, her heart leaped into her throat. She stood, left the desk, and creeped to the window. Doing her best to look without being seen, she searched the curb, then looked down at her driveway.
“Oh, perfect,” she whispered, seeing Dale’s silver Audi parked on the white concrete.
The doorbell rang again. Mandy considered ignoring it, like she had ignored his phone calls and his e-mails, but told herself she was being childish. This wasn’t the mature way to handle a relationship. Not that being mature was one of Dale’s strong points. Still, she knew that if she didn’t talk to him, he’d keep coming around. Besides, if he was playing stupid jokes, like sending her twisted text messages, she wanted to put a stop to it. Right now.
At the front door, she looked through the window and saw Dale bouncing on his heels nervously. She hated to admit it, but he looked great, wearing a thin black leather jacket over a cream-colored sweater and perfectly faded jeans. His black hair was properly mussed and fixed with product. To her, he looked like a young Keanu Reeves. In fact, that’s what most people thought. Mandy reached up to pat down her hair, then stopped in defiance.
She didn’t care what she looked like, not for Dale. This wasn’t a date!
Mandy opened the door, consciously drawing a frown on her lips. “Dale,” she said dryly, as if already completely bored with the conversation, though her heart beat fast.
“Hey,” he said, still fidgeting with nervous energy. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said coolly.
“Yeah, good. Look, you didn’t return any of my messages or anything, and I was getting kind of worried. Things are kind of weird now with Nicki and all.”
“I’m a big girl,” Mandy told him. “I can take care of myself.”
“Sure, yeah, I know,” he said. “It’s just, well, I was worried.”
“You said that.”
“I know,” Dale replied, his voice shaky. He bounced on his heels again, looked over his shoulder at the street and the houses, looked back at Mandy. “Could I come in? I mean, so we can talk?”
“Dale, I’ve said all I intend to.” She liked the confident sound of her voice. It was strong and in control. This was the way she had sounded in her head, when she’d imagined all the things she would say to him. “We obviously have very different ideas about what a relationship is.”
“Come on, Mandy. No, we don’t. I was just flirting, being stupid. It’s no big deal. Nothing happened.”
“Well, Dale, something did happen. You got caught. Besides that, you humiliated me, and now I have to deal with that, and so do you.”
She could see him struggling for a comeback. He was trapped. She didn’t know if he was going to go the childish route and get angry with her, make some nasty comment, or if he was going to continue trying to talk his way out of it. When he did speak, he actually surprised her.
“You’re right,” he said. “I was stupid, too stupid to even know why I did it. But all of this stuff with Nicki is really getting to me. You know, making me think? About you and me and other stuff?”
Mandy’s heart warmed. He looked so sad. She actually felt sorry for Dale, even after everything he’d done. But for all she knew, this was just another trick, another game. Part of her wanted to hold him and kiss him and pretend she’d never seen the instant message. Another part of her, the intelligent part, wanted to remain strong. Maybe they could work things out, but not until she knew for certain Dale was sincere.
“We’ve all been thinking a lot,” she said. “I can’t believe Nicki’s gone, and it scares me, but I’m not going to use that as an excuse for us to get back together.”
“I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that things are different now. God, you never listen to me.” Anger was creeping into Dale’s voice. He wasn’t getting what he wanted, and since that was such a rare thing for Dale, he didn’t know how to deal with it.
“You should go,” Mandy said. “We can talk later.”
“I want to talk now,” he said.
“I don’t.”
“Why is it always about what you want?” he asked, the anger now clear. “It’s not always about you. I mean, you just show up at my house and spy on what I’m doing. Then you freak out, and you don’t even let me explain.”
“I believe your explanation was ‘Guys and girls are different.’”
“Well, they are,” Dale said, reverting back to his original argument. “I was just messing around. It didn’t mean anything to me, but to you it’s like some relationship nine-eleven.”
“Bye, Dale,” she said and closed the door. She threw the lock quickly and felt his fist hit the door through the handle.
Mandy leaped back, heard him shout, “God!” in frustration, then ran up the stairs, ignoring the ringing doorbell. He must have jabbed the button a dozen times before finally giving up.
In her room, Mandy sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the window. Her nerves were dancing on coals. That sick feeling took hold in her stomach again, and she gnawed on her thumb. Only when she heard Dale start his car and back out of the drive did she relax, and then just a little.
Mandy fell back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. She replayed their conversation in her head, always pausing at the moment he went from hurt to angry, wondering why his attitude changed so quickly. Maybe it was just hormones, like they talked about in Human Development class. She didn’t know, but it worried her. Would it always be like this? Were all guys like this? Even adults? Boy, she hoped not.
A tone from her computer announced she had new mail, but Mandy wasn’t interested. When her cell phone buzzed a few minutes later, she let it. She didn’t want to think about Dale, or Nicki, or her killer. In fact, she just wanted a few minutes of peace. No boyfriend. No tragedy. No monsters. No typing on a keyboard or talking into a microphone, having to think of clever things to say. She couldn’t remember the last time she just let herself zone out, ignoring messages inside and outside her head. She didn’t know if she could do it, but she was going to try.
Her experiment in mental deprivation did not go well. Mandy lay on her bed, stared at the ceiling, tried any number of tricks to block out Dale, Nicki, Laurel, Drew, and a man she thought resembled a cartoon witch. Instead of blocking them out, her mind jumbled them, and she went into a kind of daydream. Then, she fell asleep, and solid, true dreams took hold of her mind.
Dale and the Witchman sat together in the school cafeteria, joking and shaking their heads, talking about Mandy, she knew. The Witchman extended a long finger that looked like a scalpel and poked at the air. This made Dale double over with laughter, while the Witchman threw his hands up, miming the protests of a screaming victim.
Next to her, Drew said, “God, it’s so romantic. I mean, to have them thinking about you all the time.” Laurel nudged her shoulder. When Mandy turned to look at her friend, Laurel shook her head solemnly. Where her eyes should have been were empty black sockets. She held candles in both palms, and the wax dripped over her hands, sealing them in bumpy white gloves.
