Mallory leaned between the two front seats of Derrick’s car and directed him along the back roads that led home. Every now and again he gave her an enticing smile in the rearview mirror, and when he did, she tried her best to hold his stare without blushing.
She sat back in her seat once more when they pulled into the driveway and glanced to Tim. During the ride home, he’d sat quietly at her side, gazing out the window, oblivious to everything but the night. Twice, she’d asked him if his head felt any better, and both times he simply shrugged in response. Only once did he even look at her when he did.
Everyone piled out after Derrick switched off the engine, and Mallory frowned up at the house, not finding a single light in any of the windows.
Behind her, Troy’s battered Bronco parked along the curb and the rest of the group hopped out onto the lawn.
She turned her attention back to Tim. He lingered in the driveway, face expressionless, gazing at his mother’s car.
“So, how are you feeling?” she asked.
“I’ll be fine,” he answered. “I think I’m going to walk home instead of waiting for my mom, though. I’ll talk to you later.”
And with that, he started away.
“Wait a second,” she said, stopping him before he could take another step. “Walk home? That’s like two miles. I can’t let you do that.”
“I’ll be okay,” he began, but she wouldn’t let him finish. He’d paid for her entire evening, she’d had a fabulous time, and she wouldn’t stand to watch him walk off into the night with a migraine. “Come on, you don’t have to walk. My friends can drive you.”
He smirked. “No thanks.”
The others made their way up the driveway, remarking on the house.
“How about a tour?” Elsa asked. “Becky said your pool was huge. Let’s see it.”
“Yeah, sure,” Mallory answered. She just prayed BJ hadn’t trashed the place.
Taking Tim’s hand, she said, “Come inside with us. At least let me give you some medicine for your head. I feel really bad about you having a headache while I was having such a good time tonight.” She put on her most pleading expression and pulled him toward the front steps. Once again, he tried to decline, but she held fast, towing him with her.
Inside, Mallory called toward the second floor. “Hello? Lori? Tim and I are back.”
When no one answered, she proceeded toward the rear of the house, repeating her announcement and adding the news that her dad wouldn’t return until later than planned. She was about to say that she’d take over watching BJ, when she suddenly realized the first floor was vacant.
Lori didn’t attempt to cry out when the front door banged open, nor did she scramble from where she’d tucked herself between the house’s foundation and the water heater when the sounds of footsteps thumped through the floorboards.
She didn’t dare.
Three sides of her provided safety, but ahead lay an unknown realm of near-perfect darkness where she knew the attacker waited with a heart of ice and glacial patience.
To her, the cramped space of the utility closet had lost all sense of its original architectural dimension. Whatever existed beyond her curled legs might be nothing more than a few feet of empty concrete-lined room, or an entirely alien world with unattainably distant horizons. She didn’t know anymore. Her only certainty was that the attacker was still out there, somewhere, huddled in anticipation, waiting for her to make the move that would give her away.
And she didn’t plan on making that mistake.
Just go into the living room, she thought. Please, please go into the living room.
Mallory passed by the dark living room and hurried down the front hall to the kitchen, eager to find Lori and send her home. A note had been left on the counter, written in black Magic marker across a torn paper towel. She picked it up and frowned at the massive block lettering of the words and the chaotic manner in which it had been scrawled.
“Went to Lori’s,” Mallory read aloud. Why would Lori take BJ over to her house?
“Where’s the midget?” Becky asked.
Mallory dropped the note. “I guess he’s at the babysitter’s.”
“All right,” Elsa cheered. “We’ve got the whole house to ourselves.”
“I don’t think so,” Mallory responded. “They’ll probably be back any second.”
Becky opened the door to the deck, and everyone filed out to the pool area while Mallory flipped on the switches that activated the lights in and around the water.
“Wow,” Lisa said, watching the backyard light up. “Now this is livin’.”
Mallory stepped outside, about to accompany Derrick to the seating area at the pool’s shallow end, when she stopped and looked back. Tim still stood in the kitchen, looking miserable and out of place.
“I’ll be out in a sec,” she called to the others.
“Let’s get some Tylenol for your head,” she said to Tim. “Follow me.”
In the hallway bathroom, she gave him the medicine and a glass of water to wash it down with. “I’m really sorry you’re not having fun,” she said.
“I am,” he replied, and smiled for the first time since the beginning of the night.
“No, you’re not. You’ve hardly spoken a word since my friends showed up. You were so lively earlier. What happened?”
The bogus smile faded. “They haven’t exactly said much to me.”
“I know. I’m not blaming you for anything. After all, it was only supposed to be you and me tonight, not a whole group of my friends.”
Mallory stood in silence while he took the second pill and gulped it down with a mouthful of water. She was acutely aware of the voices of her friends outside and couldn’t help wondering what she was missing. More than anything, she wanted Tim to get along with them, wanted him to fit in and enjoy himself. At the same time, however, she wanted to get back to Derrick.
“Come on,” Mallory said, “we can go back out there and talk about something we’re all interested in.”
He shook his head. “I think I’d rather go home.”
“Are you sure?”
He nodded.
“Well, let Derrick drive you so you don’t have to walk.”
He shook his head again, this time with a look of distaste. “No offense, but I don’t like that guy.”
She blinked. “Why not?”
His lips parted and closed without speaking.
“You can tell me,” she encouraged, biting her lower lip and playing dumb in the face of his evident jealousy. She knew that was the reason behind his dispirited attitude, and she wished she could convey her guilt at being the cause of it.
“It doesn’t matter,” Tim said.
She thought of the kiss she’d given him at the fair, and the reaction on his face. Of course whatever he had to tell her mattered.
He moved for the door and she stepped in front of him.
“Still friends, right?”
Tim held her gaze, but she didn’t see the gleam in his eyes he’d had at the fair.
“Yeah, still friends,” he said.
Then tell me what’s wrong, she started to say when her friends beat her to it. Everyone erupted in a loud cheer of wonder, sounding like a crowd of people viewing a Fourth of July fireworks display.
She listened to the voices coming through the wall change into laughter, followed by a second array of shouts, hoots, and whistles.
“I’ve got to tell them to keep it down,” she told Tim. “My dad said I could have a pool party, but he never said when. The last thing I need is one of the neighbors calling the cops. Just stay here and I’ll be back in a minute.”
Outside, Mallory found the group had fanned out among the lawn chairs positioned around the pool. All eyes were now focused on Elsa while she tread water in the deep end. A crumpled pile of her clothes lay near the diving board and even through the screen of waves covering her body Mallory saw that she’d jumped in wearing only her underwear.
“Woo-ee,” she breathed. “This feels great.”
“I’ll bet you do,” Adam answered.
The comment earned him a slap on the shoulder from Becky.
Mallory giggled, automatically looking to see Derrick’s reaction. She found him sitting at the patio table, and out of all her friends he seemed to be the only person not eyeballing Elsa’s slim form while she glided through the water. Instead, he stripped off his tank top and reclined in one of the patio chairs.
Mallory gazed at the way his tan skin lay taut over the muscles of his abdomen and chest. She hadn’t noticed it earlier, but now that he’d shed the tank top she saw silver barbells pierced through both his nipples.
He smiled at her, and a hot blush rushed into her face. She began to turn away, then stopped short when she spotted the small bags of cellophane his friends had laid out on the table behind him.
“What’s that?” she asked Troy.
“Glitter.”
“What?”
“Glitter,” Troy repeated.
“You mean drugs?”
The kid smirked. “I prefer the term, mood-enhancers.”
Mallory glared at him. “No way,” she said. “Not cool. Definitely not cool! If I get caught—”
“Don’t wet yourself,” the boy laughed. “This stuff is like high-end caffeine tablets. It’s nothing hardcore.”
She turned to Derrick for assistance, arguing that if her dad came home and found them all hyped up on “mood-enhancers” it would be the end of any pool parties for the remainder of her life.
“You said the kid was gone,” Derrick replied. “And your dad’s at the movies. He won’t be back till after twelve at the earliest.”
Chris nodded. “Yeah, we can blaze out of here by then. He’ll never know.”
Mallory fell silent, not certain how to reply. She didn’t want to disappoint Derrick, who obviously didn’t think the situation was anything serious, but she didn’t want to lose her father’s trust, either. Then, while her mouth fumbled to find a reply to Chris’s last statement, she suddenly had a brainstorm.
“I’ve got an idea,” she said. “I know the perfect place to hang out, somewhere we won’t be seen or bothered by anyone. There’s an old barn in the back woods, behind the neighborhood. It must have a dirt road or a driveway that connects to it off one of the county roads. We could go there.”
The group glanced to one another for reactions, and all seemed to like the idea of exploring an abandoned farm.
“Cool, let’s do it,” Adam proclaimed, clearly eager to sample Troy’s goods.
“Sounds like fun,” Lisa added.
Derrick’s friends looked annoyed by the idea of having to relocate again, but they both obeyed when he told them to pack up their shit and get moving.
They all waited for Elsa to collect her clothes then left the yard together, hurrying back through the house and out the front door. In the foyer again, Mallory started to set the alarm—which Lori had carelessly left off—when she suddenly realized they were one person short.
She glanced back into the house while the others continued out to the cars. “Hey, Tim, come on, we’re going to go check out the old barn.”
When he didn’t reply, she walked to the bathroom but found the room empty.
“Are you coming or what?” Becky called from the front door.
“Tim’s gone,” Mallory answered, rejoining her friend. “He must’ve left when we were out at the pool.”
“So?”
“He didn’t even say goodbye. I think he’s mad because of Derrick.”
Becky shrugged. “Well, there’s nothing you can do about it now, right? Make it up to him later. Let’s go.
“Yeah, I guess.”
Exiting the house, she closed the door and locked it with her key, wishing that she’d had at least once more chance to thank Tim for inviting her to the fair. She cringed with another stab of guilt, realizing now that she’d just been setting him up for a fall by going.
She tried not to think about it. Instead, she hurried down the front steps and rounded the Mercedes, eventually settling down into the front seat next to Derrick.
Lori listened to the action upstairs.
The sound of footsteps trailed from one end of the house to the other, accompanied by the muffled noises of half a dozen voices.
She didn’t budge.
Overhead, she caught the clearer sound of a girl calling out to someone named Tim—Tim Fleming?—mentioning something about a barn.
Lori remained silent, not daring to speak.
It could be a trick. Maybe the girl was really… that thing.
After a moment of calm, the girl’s footsteps trailed to the front of the house and then came the sound of the front door closing.
Lori remained motionless.
Higher up the wall, she caught the subtle sound of insect legs scuttling over the cinderblock wall, a June bug or some other sizable beetle that had entered through the window frame.
Bugs! her brain wailed. Oh, God, please no, not bugs!
She stuffed a fist in her mouth, knowing that to scream at the bug or to lash out in hope of squashing it would call attention to her location, the same way calling out to the girl moments ago would have done.
Outside, a car engine came to life. Then another.
Don’t move. He’s out there. He wants you to cry for help.
She listened to car doors closing.
Suddenly, something dropped onto her face, something hard and smooth, about the size of a gumball. Half a dozen prickly legs gripped the skin of her cheek.
Covering the fading whir of the departing car engines, Lori screamed.