Deadgirl

think even brain surgery was that complex.

As I wandered through the aisles, looking for the Shake ’N Bake, a voice drifted over my musings. Finally, an arm tugged my shoulder and turned me around. A mangled scream choked out of my throat, but I was too terrified to do anything.

“Lucy!”

Morgan, standing in front of me, holding my upper arm with one hand, threw the carton of eggs she was holding. It arced behind her and exploded on the tile, sending runs of yellow and clear goo streaking in a starburst around the broken Styrofoam.

I held my hand over my heart, the universal sign of you just scared the hell out of me.

“Holy crap! I’m sorry, I just…I saw you and I didn’t think. Of how. Of what you’re… I mean…”

I raised an eyebrow. Her skin was flushed a bright scarlet. Her usually gorgeous curtain of blonde hair was half mangled into a ponytail—with wide unintentionally loose crescents of hair dangling at strange angles around her head. She wasn’t wearing any make-up, and her skin looked sallow and greasy.

“Are you okay?” I asked her. I only got to the you part before she hugged-tackled me into the Hamburger Helper shelf.

I sucked in a deep breath through my nose, inhaling a strange scent. She smelled like old fear. I pictured her in the cute dress she’d been wearing for the date night, but an unfamiliar bulky denim jacket covered her top half. Her bare calves sported long lines of dull red scratches, and her sandals and feet were caked in dirt. She wandered through a long stretch of green shrubs next to a chain-link fence, clutching a cheap blue plastic flashlight in one hand and her cellphone in the other. Her face was cast in stone, but her eyes, wide like a doll’s, gave everything away. Only the passing strobe of the cars on the freeway lit her trembling body.

The image cracked and fell apart. I was staring at Morgan now, who was holding me at arm’s length and staring at me. I covered my mouth, a thrill of fear poisoning my stomach. What was I seeing?

“Sorry,” I said, and went right to my go-to excuse. “I’m still… My head.”

I touched the back of my head, and this time I felt a sharp stab of pain. I winced, the only real one so far, and probed the tender flesh again. Something crunched under my fingers, and I knew it was blood drying on a long gash on my head. A goose-egg the size of a plum rose from the center of the dried-up cut. I sucked in another breath.

The back of my head had only been scraped, nothing more. Not cut, not swollen. My hand fell loosely from the back of my head. Morgan caught the horrified look on my face.

“Luce, what’s going on? Your mom told me what happened, but I didn’t know if… I didn’t know if you told them the whole story.”

Anger. A bright red cherry of it, burning the back of my eyes. The next person to ask me in gentle baby tones if I had been raped was going to get a fist in the mouth. Still, the rational part of me, somewhere napping in the back of my head, knew I was being a child. Everyone just wanted to make sure the worst hadn’t happened.

Of course, it had, but not in the way they imagined.

“I told her the whole story,” I said. “I’m okay. Just a little shell-shocked I guess.”

Morgan nodded, but the look of gentle probing pity didn’t recede. It was a mask I was seeing on every face all of a sudden. “Okay.”

She didn’t believe me.

“Morgan, it was scary and awful and a nightmare,” I said. “But that’s all. I didn’t even get robbed.”

That didn’t help my case, I realized. It made the whole thing hinge on implausibility. What band of thugs knocks out girls for kicks and makes a run for it? None, that’s who. It sounded like a lie because it was one, I reminded myself. People around me were smart, and I was pissed off because of it.

“Okay,” Morgan said again. It was the “okay” that I hated so much. It was a crazy person’s okay. If I had told her that a tribe of pygmies had saved me from my attackers, she would have given me the same okay. There wouldn’t even be a change in inflection.

Of everyone in the world who would believe me unconditionally, I thought it would be her.

“Okay,” I said. My voice dripped icicles. “Well, it’s good to see you.”

Again, Morgan wasn’t stupid. I didn’t get anything past her. She leaned forward and grabbed my wrist again. The mask of pity was replaced with something resembling confusion. Better, I supposed.

“I’m sorry, Luce,” she said. “I just… We all searched for you, you know? We all thought… You aren’t exactly the run-away type. Not in the middle of a date. I’m just… I don’t know how to deal with this.”

I nodded, but I couldn’t get rid of my disapproving frown and the cold set of my features. It was stupid and stubborn, but I don’t care. I’d believe her in a heartbeat. I wouldn’t vomit pity on her like she was insane.

“I have to go,” I said. A pair of stock boys had already spotted Morgan’s egg carton mess and were moving in with mops and buckets.

“Wait,” she said. “Can I call you tonight?”

I paused, looking down at the hand on my wrist. “I just need some alone time.”

She nodded and let go of my hand with a sudden crispness.

“Okay,” she said. That damn okay.

As I scooped up my box of Shake ’N Bake from the shelf and made for the check-out aisle, Morgan spoke up. I only half-turned toward her when she did.

“I’ll see you Monday?”

I nodded. “Still want a ride?”

She frowned. “Yeah.”

She said it like she’d taken a swig of bad milk.

“See you Monday.”

I paid for the Shake ’N Bake and headed out the door. I welcomed the gray dimness of the overcast sky, and it reminded me more than a little of the beach and the highway and the foggy nothingness of my dreams. I’d been a regular bitch to Morgan, for no reason. Plus I’d terrified everyone, gotten Morgan and probably Daphne in deep trouble with their parents. All for what?A stupid date?

When I got to my bike, and I was holding the bike lock in one hand, a sudden spike of panic shot through my body. Run. Run run run run run. Run or die. Run or die.

Sweat slicked my skin, and I stumbled under the incredible weight of the terror spreading through every pore in my body. I dropped the bike lock with a dull rattle and ran. A pair of soda machines stood against the side of the building not far away, and I jumped into the nook between them and pressed myself as hard as I could against the white brick wall.

My heart hammered and my lungs bellowed. I knew I was hyperventilating, pulling in tiny shocks of air and gushing them out just as quickly. But I couldn’t calm down. My mind wouldn’t even form rational thoughts. Despite the warm sweat glistening on my skin, my core felt cold. Like I’d swallowed an icicle the size of a baseball bat.

It smelled like urine between the soda machines, but only a distant part of me recognized it. My ears were turned up to their maximum gain. Every rattle in the soda machines, the shriek of every grease-starved shopping cart wheel. The dull whoosh of the sliding doors of the store not twenty feet from where I cowered. The sound of cars starting up and dying off. The creak of car suspension and the groan of tires.

One car was moving fast. Its rush swept from my right, but it was coming quick. I tucked my face against the soda machine and pulled my elbow up to cover my head. Through a tiny crack in my defenses, I saw the car fly past the soda machines. In that split second, I saw a long white boxy car with green-tinted windows, and the outline of the driver’s head. The supernova of terror exploded inside my chest, a crescendo of horror. My breath stuck in my throat, and I tried to burrow into the brick wall, anything to get away from that terrible source…

The car whipped a right turn back into the bulk of the parking lot, zipped through one lane, and turned another right to skirt the furthest edge of the parking lot. Without fanfare it pulled out onto Lincoln Street and disappeared down the road.

The panic disappeared. My hands trembled, and I could feel the hiccup of my shaking breath. The sweat on my skin had turned into ice-water, and I knew I was trembling from more than just adrenaline. I was freezing.