Delusion Road (18 page)

W
illa watched as Bailey pulled her phone from her bag and looked at the screen. Closing the distance between them, she could see her deliberating whether to answer a call from a number she didn’t recognize. “You want to tell me what’s going on, Bailey?” Willa asked when she reached her.

“Hey, Willa,” said Bailey, clearly surprised to see her. She held up her ringing phone. “Sorry, got a call.”

“No, you don’t.” Willa held up her own phone and pressed End, silencing Bailey’s.

“That was you?” Bailey slipped the phone back into her bag. “What’s up?” The question sounded natural enough, but the hesitation in her voice didn’t.

“I want to know what’s going on between you and Wynn.”

Resignation replaced the surprise in Bailey’s face. “What are you talking about?” she asked, but Willa could hear the defeat in her voice. She knew she’d been caught.

But caught at what?

“Why has he been calling and texting you?”

“You know about that?”

“Your number.” It seemed easier to focus on those digits, her mind unwilling to consider what they could mean. “It’s in his contacts.”

Bailey seemed to shrink slightly, like a balloon leaking air. “Willa, I promise you there’s nothing between him and me.”

“And I’m just supposed to accept that?”

“It’s the truth.”

“Then what’s with all the calls and messages?”

Bailey looked at her feet, her rust-coloured hair falling into her face.

Willa was astonished by her silence. “So you’ve got nothing to say?”

“Nothing you’d believe.”

Willa flushed with anger. “You know, I used to think you were different from your mother. I guess I was wrong.”

Bailey lifted her head, her cheeks flushed, too. “My mother has nothing to do with this.”

“Really? I heard she broke up two marriages, which makes me think she doesn’t have a whole lot of respect for relationships. Seems like you and she have
that
much in common.”

Willa expected her comment to hit home, but she wasn’t prepared for Bailey’s reaction. She burst into tears.

“What the
hell
?”

Willa turned to see Keegan Fraser behind her, his face a hard mask. “It isn’t enough giving people a hard time at school?” he demanded. “You have to do it here, too?”

Willa’s flush deepened as Keegan stepped toward Bailey, extending a hand to comfort her. Bailey flinched, her whole body recoiling from his reach.

He let his hand drop to his side. “Anything I can do, Bailey?” he asked.

The sobbing girl shook her head, pulling tissues from her
bag and dabbing at her tears. Willa could see nearby shoppers pause to stare at them, and embarrassment took the edge off her anger. But she still deserved an answer.

Apparently, Bailey agreed. Visibly struggling to stop weeping, she turned to Willa with red eyes. “You really want to know what’s going on?”

Willa nodded.

Bailey glanced around at the faces pointed in their direction. “Okay, but not here.”

Moments later, all three were sitting across from a lottery kiosk on a cheap leather sectional that served as a rest area. Bailey had asked Keegan to come, too, and he sat beside her, giving Willa a stony glare. Which pissed off Willa even more. The guy barely knew Bailey, so who’d he think he was, butting in and making
her
feel like the villain?

Because suddenly she
did
feel like that. A little, anyway. She sighed. “Look, Bailey,” she began, “I’m sorry for what I said about your mom. I was just repeating gossip, but I—”

“It isn’t true,” interrupted Bailey. “My mother never broke up any marriages.” She looked down at her hands twisting in her lap. “And I’m not trying to come between you and Wynn. I don’t want anything to do with him.”

“Then why is he call—”

“It began the week before school started. When you were away with your parents. I was at a party and Wynn showed up alone.”

Willa knew about that party. Wynn had told her about it, said it was boring and he hadn’t stayed long.

“I didn’t stay long,” Bailey continued, still looking at her lap. “Somebody gave me something to drink and I started feeling,
I don’t know, weird. Not myself. So I left.” She took a breath. “The party was only a few blocks from where I live, so I started walking. I didn’t get far before Wynn pulled up beside me and asked if I needed a ride.” She shrugged, a simple movement, but it seemed to take tremendous effort. “Maybe if I hadn’t said yes, none of it would have happened. But he was so friendly, nothing like how he’d acted before. He hadn’t said a word to me at the party, and here he was offering me a drive. Besides, the fresh air hadn’t made me feel any better, and I really wanted to get home. So I said okay.”

She raised her eyes to Willa. “I never led him on. You have to believe me. I asked him where you were and he told me at your parents’ cottage. He said that Todd and Jay were away, too. He seemed lonely, and I kind of felt sorry for him.”

Willa felt her stomach shift uneasily as she anticipated what Bailey would say next.
I never led him on.
She sat waiting for the rest of it, like the blade of a guillotine.

“He got out and opened my door. Nobody’s ever done that before, held a car door open and then shut it for me. Afterwards, he didn’t bother opening his own, just swung his legs over and slid behind the wheel. Something you’d see in a movie, you know?”

Willa
did
know. She’d seen him do it lots of times during the past week.

“He talked the whole time he was driving,” Bailey continued. “Two minutes in that car and he’d already said more to me than he’d said all last year. I guess that’s why I didn’t notice.”

“Didn’t notice what?” said Keegan, his voice tentative as if unsure he should pose the question. It was the very question Willa would have asked if she could have, but she was afraid to
speak, afraid she’d start saying the kinds of things again that had brought Bailey to tears.

“We’d passed my street,” said Bailey. “I figured maybe he didn’t know where I lived.”

He knows, Willa thought. How many times had she heard Wynn make fun of that dilapidated apartment building? Or, as he called it,
the dump where Francine Holloway spreads her legs.

“I told him we’d gone by it,” said Bailey, “but by that time we’d made it to Valley View Road, and he said it was such a nice evening, why didn’t we drive up to the look-off?” She lowered her eyes again, her fingers lacing and loosening as she struggled to continue. “It was a bad idea. You know what people do up there, right? But I was enjoying myself. Here I was riding in a new T-bird with the top down, talking with Wynn d’Entremont—Wynn frigging
d’Entremont
—and feeling really relaxed, so I said sure. It was still early, just starting to get dark.” She turned away, staring silently down the concourse for a long moment, and Willa could see she was fighting tears again. Keegan reached for her hand and this time she didn’t draw away.

Staring at Bailey’s hand in Keegan’s much larger one, Willa felt disconnected somehow from the story she’d been listening to. It was like hearing a conversation over a bad connection, the caller fading in—
It was a bad idea
—and fading out—
You know what people do up there
. What the hell was Bailey trying to say?

Keegan squeezed Bailey’s hand. “You don’t have to tell us any more,” he said softly.

A sudden sob racked the girl, and a moment passed before she could respond. “No, I
need
to. I haven’t said anything to anyone before now.” She cleared her throat, wiped her nose. “There was
nobody else at the look-off. The sun was setting, and the view was amazing. It was like you could see forever. I’d never been up there with a boy before. When I told Wynn that, he laughed. Loud. ‘
Right
,’ he said,” Bailey’s voice thick with the sarcasm she’d obviously heard in his. “He was sure there were some
other
things I’d done before, too. And he wanted me to do them with
him.
”

“Son of a bitch,” breathed Keegan.

Bailey swallowed hard. “But I’ve
never
done those things. Not ever.” She paused again as if summoning the strength to go on. “I told him no, told him to stop, but he kept putting his hands …” She swallowed again. “I opened the door and he tried to stop me, grabbed at me, but my top ripped and I pulled free. I ended up
falling
out. My legs felt like rubber, but I made myself get up and run. I could hear him cursing, shouting for me to come back, but I hid in the trees. I was terrified he’d find me, but he didn’t get out of the car. It was like he was afraid something might happen to it if he did. Or maybe he was afraid of the dark.” She made a strangled sound like choked laughter. “Finally, he drove off. I thought he might be waiting somewhere for me so I stayed hidden for a long time. By then, my head was clearer, and I headed back to the road and started walking. It took me almost three hours to get home. Whenever I saw car lights coming, I’d hide in the ditch. It was after midnight and everybody was in bed when I finally made it. I had to—” Her face twisted momentarily, but she pressed on. “I felt dirty. All over. I took a shower, stood under the water until it ran cold. Afterwards, I put my clothes in the garbage.” She lowered her eyes, and her next words were barely audible. “That’s how I felt, too. Like garbage.”

It was as though that faulty connection had somehow
corrected itself, the words reaching Willa’s brain in a sudden raucous burst of clarity. “I don’t believe
any
of this!” she said. “Wynn would
never
—” She couldn’t even find the words for it.

Looking up, Bailey nodded. “That’s what
he
said the first time he phoned me. He’s good-looking, popular, the son of the mayor. He could have anybody he wanted, right? Who would believe me over somebody like him?”

She had only said what Willa herself had thought. He could have anybody he wanted. And then on the heels of that thought came another. Why her and not me? She said nothing for a long moment. Finally, “If what you’re saying is true—”

“It
is
,” said Bailey. “Remember that bandage he wore for a couple days? What did he say happened to him?”

Please don’t let that be a lie. “He cut his cheek on a nail.”

“Well, there’s
some
truth in that.” She drew another deep breath, as though preparing for an incline. “I was picking up a prescription for my mother that night. Just as I left the drugstore, it started to drizzle and a car pulled over. It was Wynn, asking if I wanted a lift. I wouldn’t even look at him. I kept walking, but he drove along beside me with the window down telling me he just wanted to apologize, put the whole thing behind us. He even said, ‘I’m wearing a
tux
, for Christ’s sake. Do you think I’d try anything in a tux?’” She grimaced. “You can’t believe how much I wanted it to be true. This is our senior year. The best year ever, right?”

Those five words nearly undid Willa, and she struggled not to give in to tears of her own.

Bailey’s eyes seemed to plead for understanding. “I didn’t want to spend the whole year worrying every time I saw him.”
She rubbed her forehead, as though trying to erase a memory. “You want to know the crazy part? I’d begun to think that maybe it was
my
fault. Maybe I’d given him the wrong idea by going to the look-off in the first place.”

Keegan shook his head. “None of this was your fault, Bailey. None of it.”

She looked down at her hand still in his, seemed to draw strength from it, then began again. “So there I was on the street with a block still to go and it started to pour. I was getting soaked. And I desperately wanted what he’d said to be true, that he just wanted to make up for what he’d done to me. So I got in.” Her voice grew small again. “He didn’t take me home.”

Willa looked away. She couldn’t bear to hear any more, wanted to get up and put as much distance as she could between herself and whatever details Bailey was about to share. And as though she’d read Willa’s mind—or perhaps because she’d chosen to put
herself
as far from those details as she could—Bailey was brief. “He used the driver’s override control to lock my door this time, but I fought back. He—” She wiped at brimming tears. “He was so much stronger than me. But I kept kicking, slapping him, and I managed to claw his face with my fingernails. When he saw the blood on his tux, he suddenly stopped. Practically pushed me out of the car. Called me a slut and a whore and—” There was no stopping those tears now, her body slumping against Keegan’s as she sobbed.

Keegan lowered his head to hers and murmured words that Willa couldn’t hear. Or maybe they weren’t words, just sounds
meant to soothe. And they did. After a few moments, Bailey had herself under control.

Witnessing Bailey’s torment, Willa could tell that elements of the story she’d heard were true. But she needed to see Wynn, needed to hear his version of those events. Every story had two sides, didn’t it? Surely there was another that made sense of all this. Getting to her feet, she knew she should say something, but all she could think of were questions. One in particular. “Why does he keep calling you?”

But it was Keegan who spoke for Bailey. “I think you know, Willa.”

Willa wanted to tell him to go to hell, that he was an outsider who didn’t know anything about anything. But she didn’t. Because Keegan Fraser was right. She did know. “He doesn’t like to lose,” she said quietly, then turned and left.

G
etting off the bus, Keegan looked up at Bailey still sitting by the window and mustered a smile for her. In return, she did something with her mouth that might have passed for a smile if not for her eyes. They looked empty. He’d seen eyes like those before—his own, viewed in the mirror those days and weeks after his mother was killed. They were the eyes of a person who no longer believed in happiness, no longer believed that life would ever be anything more than something you coped with. The only thing that a person with eyes like those believed in was fear. Because fear kept you safe.