Envy (Fury) (13 page)

His toolbox. He’d left it outside, and an icy mix of snow and rain was still falling from the sky. She knew he wouldn’t want it to rust—maybe she would just bring it to his door. A gesture of goodwill.

She peeled off her leggings and the robe and threw on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. She ran downstairs and rummaged through the pantry, pulling out some Dr Pepper, and taking a pint of vanilla ice cream from the freezer—his favorite combo. Just in case JD wanted to talk. And in case the talk went well, she grabbed
Best in Show
, his preferred cringe-humor movie. She threw it all in a tote bag. Then she was out the door and running from her yard to his, stopping to pick up the toolbox.

Just as she was about to knock on the Founts’ front door, she heard a big, hearty
girl’s
laugh from inside. She froze.

Who was JD hanging out with on a Saturday night? The laugh sounded again, vaguely familiar. It wasn’t JD’s mom, and it wasn’t Melissa, his little sister—but it was definitely a laugh that Em recognized. Guiltily, feeling a little like a criminal, she snuck around the side of the house to the window that looked into JD’s TV room.

Through the frosted pane she saw JD sitting on the couch.

And Drea Feiffer practically sitting on top of him.

It took a moment for Em to register what she was seeing. Drea and JD, gabbing it up like best friends—like
more
than friends. They were bent over something on the coffee table, thighs touching, fingers practically interlaced. What she would have given to switch places with Drea right then. Seeing JD like that only fed Em’s appetite—and her anger. She turned on her heel, ran back to JD’s door, and blasted through it.

She wasn’t thinking anymore. She was just moving, charging ahead, blind and furious. Through the entryway, through the foyer, ignoring a confused hello from Melissa, and into the den.

It wasn’t until that moment that she realized, with sudden clarity, that she had no plausible reason to be there. Drea and JD looked up at her, both clearly startled by her sudden appearance.

“Um . . . hi?” JD finally said.

Drea just looked at her. Mute. And . . . guilty? Was that guilt Em saw in Drea’s eyes? The moment was beyond awkward, and Em didn’t know what to say. Thank god the Dr Pepper and the DVD were in the tote bag, where JD and Drea couldn’t see them. She shifted on her feet, furious, confused, and unable to think straight. She and JD had barely spoken in weeks, and now she’d shown up like a madwoman, without being invited, and interrupted . . . something. Something between JD, her oldest friend and greatest love, and Drea—the only person she trusted with the biggest problem in her life. At least, she’d thought she trusted her.

“I—uh, I came over to borrow some coffee.” The lame excuse flew out of her mouth before she could think of a better one.

JD raised his eyebrows. “Coffee? Now?”

“I have a lot of studying to do,” she said sharply.

“Okay.” JD shrugged. “Right this way.” JD looked skeptical as he dragged himself off the couch and headed into the
kitchen. Em didn’t make eye contact with Drea as she followed him out.

She walked behind him down the hall, her heart breaking as she wondered how many times she and JD had hung out just like JD and Drea were doing. Probably hundreds. And she’d always taken it for granted.

“You want it, like, in a plastic baggie?” JD still looked confused as he pulled a tin of coffee out of the cupboard.

This was unbearable. She pointed to a small bag still on the shelf. “I’ll take that one,” she said. She had to get out of there as quickly as possible. Grabbing the coffee—which was the last thing she needed—she rushed out of the kitchen and toward the front door, calling over her shoulder, “Thank your mom for me. I’ll pay her back.”

She burst into the cold night, fighting back tears, and was at the bottom of JD’s stoop when Drea appeared in the doorway, wearing socks and JD’s flannel over her jeans. Em recognized the yellow lumberjack plaid. It made her want to scream; a cloud of black bitterness seemed to well up from her stomach, through her ribs, and into her mouth.

“Wait, Em!” The light from inside JD’s house lit Drea from behind, making her look like a cutout silhouette. “What’s up?”

Em exploded. “How could you?” She felt like she had no control over her words; they came flying out, surging on a tide of confusion and hurt. “What are you doing? You’re into JD now?
That’s odd, since you’ve
never
expressed interest in him before.” She felt like she was on a conveyer belt, being pulled farther and farther away from Drea and JD. She was sliding backward, unable to gain traction. “Or were you just keeping that a secret from me? Were you using me to get to him? It must have ruined your plans that we don’t talk anymore, me and JD. Or did that make it easier for you to move in?”

As Em spoke, Drea stepped outside and closed JD’s front door firmly behind her. Now she stood there, eyes flashing, looking blindsided—and furious.

“Apparently, you don’t keep very good tabs on JD—or his friends,” she practically growled. “We have American history together this semester, and we’ve been hanging out.
Doing our homework
.” Drea crossed her arms and glared at Emily. “I was going to text you and see if I could come over after, but I figured it was Saturday night, so you’d probably be out with Gabby and your
real
friends.”

Em flinched. Even though she knew that Drea had a point, she still felt like her anger was justified.

“JD was just about to drive me home. Is that okay with you, Em?” Drea’s voice turned both defiant and syrupy sweet. “Do you need to approve of my friendships now? You flake out on me and then expect me to be there whenever you need me, and now you show up random places and completely flip your shit. What the hell is going on with you? What is this really about?”

“This is
about
you and JD,” Em said, staring at Drea, willing her to deny it.

“Are you accusing me of something?” Drea’s eyes narrowed. They stared at each other. Again Em felt a surge of emotion roiling through her body, making her nerves tingle. She tried to tamp it down.

“Just tell me,” she said, willing her voice not to break. “Tell me what’s going on.” She’d thought she could trust Drea. Was she wrong?

“Look,” Drea said, “we all know that you don’t hang with JD and his friends, and he doesn’t hang with yours—unless you ask him to. It’s kind of like our friendship, isn’t it? You spent most of your life ignoring me. Until you needed me.”

Em opened her mouth to respond, but found she had nothing to say. Everything Drea was saying was true. And it killed her.

“Face it, Em. You
never
really knew what was going on with JD, or who he hung out with, or what he was doing when you weren’t around. So now you’re not around. And his life goes on. That’s the way it is.”

Em’s fists clenched into balls and her cheeks went hot. A coil of fury burst through the tangle of her feelings, and Em shouted, “
Do not
try to educate me about JD! You don’t know anything about him, or us. And you don’t know anything about
me
, either,” she added, kicking a planter for emphasis.

Drea jerked back an inch, but her face remained impassive.
“Listen to yourself,” she said, infuriatingly calm. “Look what you’re doing. You’re acting crazy.”

As Drea spoke, Em saw JD peering out the front door’s window, trying to make sense of what was going on. It was too mortifying for words. She spun around without another word and stalked toward her house. Drea did not call her name; Em heard her go back inside and shut the door.

I am not crazy. I am not crazy. I am not crazy.
She repeated the words like a mantra as she tried to will back the tears that threatened to blur her vision. That scene
had
been weird and suspicious, and she had every right to be furious that Drea claimed to know anything about her and JD. She was totally grounded. Not crazy.

Maybe if she said it enough times, she’d believe it.

She approached her front door and stopped short. All the breath slammed out of her.

There were marks all over her front door. Red marks.

No. Handprints. A dozen of them, smeared and sticky-looking, like a child’s finger painting gone totally wrong. She snapped her head to look back over her shoulder. Nothing. A small whimper escaped from her throat.

She turned back to the door. The prints were rusty and red, unmistakably the color of blood. Bloody handprints, reaching up the door, like someone had been clawing to get in. Her legs felt weak beneath her, and for a second her vision flashed black. Again she twisted her head over her shoulder.

“Hel-hello?” she called out, even though she knew there was no one there.

Then she saw a flash of blond hair disappearing behind a copse of trees. She knew that hair. It was Ali. As in Alecto, the Fury who had stalked her, the one who avenged moral crimes according to the mythology Em had looked up. Ali, whose red-lipsticked smile was like the smell of flowers at a funeral—sweet but imbued with death. Was she here? Had her hands smeared their bloody mess all over her white door?

“Leave me alone!” Em shouted. But there was no one there, not even a shadow. For an instant she considered running back across the lawn to Drea. But she couldn’t, not after their blowout just a few minutes ago.

She was totally alone.

Fear had blanketed her, making it hard to breathe. She stepped closer to the door. Closer. Her mind was full of horrible images: palms sliced open and fingernails ripped off. She thought back to the palm readings she’d done with Gabby in fourth grade—finding the Heart Line and the Life Line in the wrinkles on their palms. These prints were flat and unmarked by even the swirls and coils of fingerprints: just flat, shiny, bloody shapes.

She knew she had to get rid of the markings before her parents came home. She wrapped her sweatshirt cuff around her hand, careful not to touch any of the dripping red substance, and
pushed open the door. She bolted inside, fumbling for cleaning supplies from under the kitchen sink.

Then, with her knees digging into the cold stone of her front stoop, she scrubbed and scrubbed until her hands were raw. The prints dissolved under the soapy water, staining the sponge a deep brownish red. It ran onto her sleeves, freezing her wrists. She gagged but kept on scrubbing until the stains grew faint. It wasn’t until she’d dragged herself upstairs, exhausted and trembling, and turned on the shower as hard and as hot as it would go, that she realized—from the red eyes that stared back at her in the mirror and the tears streaking her cheeks—that she’d been crying.

It just before seven o’clock on Wednesday when Skylar’s cell phone rang, and dread raced up her neck. She was sitting in the living room on one of Aunt Nora’s cushy chairs, where she’d been trying to focus on her math homework. She closed the book instantly and sat up straight in her chair.

She knew who it was. Had to be.

It was her forty-second birthday, after all.

Her mom. Valerie.

She hadn’t spoken to her mother in over a month now. When she picked up the phone from the coffee table, her hand was shaking.

“You would have forgotten, wouldn’t you?” Her mom announced as soon as Skylar answered. Her voice was slushy, and
it sounded like she was speaking with a cigarette in her mouth.

Skylar could picture her mom on the other end of the line, arranging her lips into a fake pout as she pulled her cigarette away to blow out the smoke.

Skylar tasted bile at the back of her throat. She cleared it.

“No, Mom, I was going to—” Skylar faltered. Had she really planned on calling her mother today?

Aunt Nora had encouraged Skylar to make a care package, or at least a card, to send to her mother in jail. She’d resisted. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to do it. She really was worried about how her mom was doing. She wanted to show that she cared. But she hated thinking about her mom’s reaction. It would be overly effusive. “Look at what my daughter sent me,” Skylar could picture her saying to her inmate pals. “We love each other so much.” It would be a farce.

“Lucy would have remembered,” her mom cut into Skylar’s thoughts, making her stomach turn. “Poor Lucy.”

Nora was hovering in the kitchen doorway, pretending not to eavesdrop. Skylar took a deep breath and willed herself not to cry.

“Yeah, Mom,” she said. “I’m sorry. About everything. I was . . . thinking of you today, though.”

“You better have been,” Valerie said with a barking laugh. “After all I’ve done for you.”

“I know, Mom,” she said meekly. And then, with false cheer,
she tried to change the subject. “Well, things are going okay up here. I’m on a dance committee. And I’m catching up in my classes.” Not that her mom had asked.

“Umm-hmmm,” Valerie murmured. Then there was silence on the other end, probably while she took another drag of her Camel Light. Skylar snuck a glance at the clock.

Meg was due over any second. Skylar hadn’t seen Meg in days—every single one of her teachers had decided to pile on the homework this week. She wanted to hear Meg’s opinion about what had happened at Gabby’s party. On the surface, everything was smoothed over. Skylar had stayed for the duration of the pajama party, but she’d gone to bed early feigning a stomachache. Then she’d ignored Gabby’s calls on Sunday. On Monday she’d put on her game face. And it was a good thing, too, because Gabby came running up to her first thing.

“Hey, Skylar,” Gabby said, her blue eyes shining and set off by a dusty-pink sweater. “Guess what?!”

“What?”

“The Dusters said yes!” Gabby squealed and slapped Skylar’s shoulder. “And it’s all thanks to you!”

Since then Skylar had done a great job of pretending everything was normal. The fact that Gabby was spreading the word that the Dusters had been Skylar’s idea helped a lot. So yeah. Skylar had been distracted by things other than her mom’s birthday.

“Skylar, we need to talk,” Valerie said then, and Skylar’s skin began to itch. Those were dreaded words.