Change Of Season (16 page)

“You got it.  No way you didn’t.”

Veronica sighed. “That’s what I thought about Nadia in
bare
and we know how that turned out.  I’ll see you in Math?”

“Definitely.  Thanks, V, for everything.”

Veronica grinned. “Hey, what’s a fake girlfriend for?  Night!”

“Night.”

Locking the door behind Veronica, Autumn surveyed her bedroom, debating angles and lighting.  The windowsill was probably out.  It wouldn’t be possible to angle the camera.  The desks at the foot of each bed were low, but still a more viable vantage point for capturing… something.  Several test adjustments later, she finally had her webcam aimed to capture the room entrance, bathroom door, and the area near Autumn’s bed.  The spare bed was somewhat out of frame, but it would have to do.

It was nine-thirty now: lights out hit in half an hour. 
And soon after, Nikki weeps
, she recalled. 

“I’m not waiting up.  Screw it.”

Popping the Ativan into her mouth, she slowly changed into her pajamas, set her alarm, and dropped her earbuds into her ears.  Sleep would come.  It had to.  And then…

Guiltily, she fingered the large brown envelope tucked in the drawer beneath her bed. 
Veronica doesn’t need to know about this
, she affirmed. 
I don’t even know what all of this is
.  Forcing her mind away from the whole haunted dorm mess, she found herself recalling the student who’d found her in his film editing suite.  So much anger, and yet, it wasn’t anger at her, really.  Layers of hurt.  There was a familiarity to him, as if they’d met before.  But where?

And why did she care?

No dating
, she reminded herself. 
It’s not worth it.  Wallflower.  Veronica is more than enough interaction
. 

For all of her protests, it was futile: Autumn drifted off, haunted not by a redhead, but a dark-haired boy with piercing blue eyes and a bewildered expression, as he called out to her from a darkened corridor…

“Miraj, wait up!”

Autumn ran across the grassy expanse between the parking lot and the boardwalk, dodging icy patches where snow had melted, frozen and melted anew.  March Break had finally arrived, and not a moment too soon.  If one more teacher gave her the Disappointed Glare that Jarvis apparently trained staff to display, she’d hang herself.

Why did they care so much about her grades, anyway?

Miraj skipped along the boardwalk, twirling in wide circles, her long black waves dancing in the bitter wind.  Her red coat was a sharp contrast to the winter wonderland surrounding them, icy grey-blue water sloshing against frosty sand.  With a laugh, she halted, waving her arms.

“Freedom!  Sweet freedom!”

Miraj had been grounded for the last week, forbidden to come to the phone or to hang out.  It had been a lonely week:  Heather no longer spoke to her daily, and Miraj attended Catholic school.  But now they were reunited, and ready to party.

“I wish I never had to go back to school,” Autumn said, joining her friend.

“So don’t!”

“Don’t think my parents will allow that,” Autumn replied, rolling her eyes.

Miraj withdrew a flask from her coat pocket, her gloved hands struggling with the cap.  Knocking back a shot, she passed it to Autumn, who swallowed down the bitter herbal liqueur reluctantly.

“This is my last year.  You’ll see,” Miraj said angrily.  “I’m so tired of my parents being on my ass.  Maybe my ambitions do include McDonald’s as a career choice.  It’s not their life, it’s mine.”

“Can I get fries with that shake, baby?” Autumn teased, laughing as Miraj shook her hips in reply.

“Tastes so good, makes a schoolboy cry. Sweet apple pie!” Miraj sing-songed, stumbling to a halt. “Oh dude!  We should climb the lifeguard tower.”

“What? There’s only room for one up there.”

Miraj shrugged, tossing her hair over her shoulders. “You can sit on my lap, stupid.  C’mon!”  She pulled at Autumn’s arm, but she dug in her heels.

“I don’t like heights.  Can’t we just go to the rocks?”

With an exasperated whine, Miraj shoved her sideways. “Why must you ruin everything?”

- And a wall collided with her head, skull bouncing off the surface.  Her vision exploded into a sea of stars as he yanked her back to him, his voice low in her ear.

“You’re mine, Autumn.  Mine.”

She awoke suddenly, gasping for air.  Outside, a faint hue of pink lit the sky, warning of impending sunrise.  With a yawn, Autumn slung her legs onto the floor, stretching overhead as she glanced at the time.  Half an hour remained until her alarm was set to blare. 
At least I’ll get a head start on the showers
, she thought happily.  Her eyes drifted to the laptop, perched on the spare desk, and she remembered the experiment Veronica had suggested.

Or I could start reviewing footage
…

The latter option won as curiousity clobbered a love of shower gels and loofah, and she found herself switching the webcam off and moving to the archived file library… and cursing.  There was no file – the recording had glitched somehow.  Frantically, she checked and re-checked her settings, baffled to find all in order.

“It
should
have recorded indefinitely!” she grumbled. “Stupid piece of crap!”

Exasperated, she shut down the software, and moved to launch her internet browser.  Scrolling the cursor down, she noticed that her word processor was open.  Frowning, she maximized the window.

Your turn.

The words seemed to loom, reach out from the screen, snaking around her throat and choking the breath from her.  A cursor blinked, mocking her with its innocent presence.  It insisted that all was in order, 1’s and 0’s in perfect binary code.  As if it was perfectly fine that someone had typed a message into her computer.

Someone very much dead.

TEN

Oakville; Oct 7th, 2011

“How has your week been?”

Autumn stared at Dr. Stieg apathetically, unsure of where to begin, if at all.  The lights were so bright in here; her eyes watered and ached in their sockets.  Her doctor leaned forward, a wisp of auburn hair tumbling into her eyes.

“Autumn, are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah,” she lied.  “Just tired.  Long week.”

“Did you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.” 

She was shutting Emma out again, as usual.  Why she bothered to try and dig through the remnants of the old Autumn anymore, she didn’t know. 
She should just write me off
, Autumn thought angrily. 
Pretty much everyone else has
.  Like Heather, who was apparently too busy to answer an email for two weeks and counting.

“Are you upset with me?” Emma asked quietly.

“What? No!  I just… I don’t get the point.  I tried to explain this to Miraj on the weekend, but she just kept insisting she was right and I was wrong.”

“Your friend, Miraj?  She phoned?”

Autumn hesitated.  “She visited.  I know, I know, against the rules.  But she doesn’t listen to anyone’s rules, so explaining them to her is wasted breath.  She didn’t stay long.”

“That’s alright, what Elise doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” Emma replied.  “Does Miraj go to your old school?”

Autumn shook her head. “No, her parents are huge Catholics.  Causes lots of problems since she’s an atheist trapped in a school with Religion as a mandatory course.  We met kinda randomly, on the street…”

They were definitely following her.  Laughing, joking to themselves, they kept a distance but matched her brisk pace.  She hugged her arms around herself, guarding as much against the frigid temperatures as her unwanted shadows.  Her hair whipped in the wind, blinding her in tangled waves.

“Think she’s good to go?”

The other laughed. “Look at her. What else is she good for?”

“Nothing,” Autumn murmured to herself.

Maybe she shouldn’t have ditched out of school today.

Chest stinging from the icy air striking hot lungs, she hurried on down the side street, her destination not much farther off.  Warmth, Wi-Fi, and a place to hide: she just had to make it there.  But now, they moved faster, and her short legs protested her speed, shin splints seizing her.

“Hey!  Slow down, baby!  We just want to talk.”

“Yeah!” Tweedle Dumber shouted.  “What’s the rush?”

The slur in their voices betrayed the liquid bravado behind their animalistic pursuit.  Two more blocks.  Just two more blocks.  If she made it that far.

“Please go away,” she whispered.  “Just go away…”

“Hey assholes!”

Autumn glanced up from her feet, startled by the shouted greeting.  Dead ahead stood a slight girl, her long hair in wild waves of black and orange.  Arms akimbo, her gaze was fixed upon the pursuing duo.  Puzzled, Aututmn stared at this stranger, transfixed.

“C’mon baby, don’t you like us?” Idiot One pleaded, stumbling audibly over something behind her.

“No, she doesn’t! Now fuck off, or I’ll castrate you!” her stranger-ally yelled.  Turning to Autumn, she said, “You have to tell them, too.  I got your back.”

“Just bring that ass back here-”

And then, Autumn snapped.

Spinning around, she shouted, “Enough!  I’m sorry your dicks are too small to get willing dates, but so help me, you come near me or say one more goddamn word, and you’ll find out all of the things I can do with a switchblade when enraged.”

Taken aback, the duo froze in their tracks, drunken brain cells computing.  The stranger laughed and cheered behind her, and for one minute, Autumn felt powerful.  Strong. 

“Fuck her, man.  Let’s go get burgers!”

Stunned at this turn of events, her attention shifted onto the strange girl.  She was still chuckling, waving goodbye to the Dimwitted Duo. 

“Told ya.  They’re never brave when the numbers are even.”  She winked playfully, her hand trying in vain to tame her hair.

“Thanks,” Autumn managed, her throat parched.  “You didn’t have to-”

“Yeah, I did.  They were total pricks!  I would have decked them two blocks ago if I were you.”  The girl shuffled her feet, jerking her head towards the Starbucks at the corner.  “It’s too damn cold out, even for Canada.  I’m getting coffee.  You coming?”

Autumn tilted her head.  “I don’t even know you.”

“Pssh!  Easily fixed.”  Extending her hand, the girl solemnly said, “My name is Marianna, but no one with any sense uses that.  I prefer Miraj, with a J.  There, now you know me, Miss…”

“Um, Autumn.  No other name.”

Miraj grinned.  “Love it!  Let’s go.  It’s colder than Kim Kardashian’s heart out here.”

“She kinda became my bodyguard slash confidante, I guess.  Heather and I were drifting, and Miraj was there.  She doesn’t judge.  She knows everything, pretty much.”

“But you disagree about therapy?” Emma asked.

Autumn sunk deeper into the couch, shielding her eyes with her hand.  “I just don’t see the point in bringing up the past and talking about awful shit.  All that matters is being okay now, right? So why go there if I don’t want to?”

“What did Miraj think?”

“That the way out is through, blah-blah cliché.  I happen to like going the long way around.  I enjoy the scenery.”

Emma considered this for a moment, the room silent, save the faint strains of an old Counting Crows song emanating from the tiny computer speakers.  Nodding to herself slightly, she smiled faintly.

“Well, I see the value of both sides.  On one hand, why bring up what’s past if it will hurt to remember it?  In fact, some styles of therapy for specific conditions advocate leaving any trauma alone until much later in the process.  But at the same time, it’s rather like a medical condition: I don’t need to know how you broke your arm pretending to fly and jumping off a shed, but I do need to know that there was a hard fall to understand why your arm is painful, limp and sitting weird.”

“Okay… so what does that mean?”

Emma shrugged. “No one says this process need be chronological.  This is your space, for your work.  If you need to focus a session on a current problem, that’s fine.  Similarly, I don’t need to know the history of how you feel and think to help improve things now.  I just need to know the results of said history, so I can help you reduce the impact of those events.  Does that make sense?  I’m admittedly running on an empty stomach right now, so my brain might be sugar starved.”