Fearscape (17 page)

Did Gavin drink that blood at the pet store?

Is there something wrong with him?

Am I in danger?

“
Lisa's very worried about you. She told me to tell you that.”

Val looked up. “Why didn't she tell me herself?”

“
She's tried. But you haven't exactly been around lately.” And his eyes went across the room.

Oh.

Val could feel the weight of Gavin's gaze, hot and unwavering as the dry heat of an oven. James had a point. Maybe. She worked on the castle's outline, sketching the turrets, the complex design of the portcullis, and avoided looking at both boys.
No, he's right.

James gave her a disappointed look, but at her pointed silence he left her alone and when the bell rang he left without saying goodbye. She had never put much stock in James's opinion, so she wondered that his silent disapprobation could elicit such a wave of guilt inside her now.

Ms. Wilcox clucked over James's messy work station, but she smiled at Val's picture. “Good use of perspective.”

“
Thanks, Ms. Wilcox.” A smile, but unmistakable flush of pleasure rose in her cheeks, overriding for the moment the feelings of despair and guilt and anxiety that blended to form a spectrum of hazy emotions from her own internal palette. “I used to have a playset like this, I think, when I was a little girl.”

Ms. Wilcox smiled again; it was a sad smile. “This was my little girl's. She grew up, too.”

For a moment the same unspoken thought hung suspended between them, like a bead of water clinging tenuously on to an edge.
Things are so much easier when you're young.
Then Ms. Wilcox gave a flippant little shrug and began to straighten up the messy desks.

If only Val could shake off her own feelings so easily.

Gavin seized that moment to approach, his footsteps firm and sure.
As if
, she couldn't help thinking,
in his mind he already owns me
. “Good morning,” he said, and he leaned over the desk and kissed her, causing her eyes to open wide. She glanced at Ms. Wilcox, but she hadn't seen.

“
I — um, hi,” she said, and could have kicked herself. She sounded like she'd overdosed on helium. “What do you want?”

“
Only to say hello.” He paused, “I hope you're well.”

Val blanched. “Yes, I'm fine.”

“
Good. You've been acting so strange lately. I've been concerned.”

Threat lanced through his words, but to whom? And about what? Or was she imagining it?

“
I'm fine,” she said again.

Gavin nodded thoughtfully, turning away.
No, I didn't imagine it.
Val, on her feet by now, hurried after him. “Wait!”

He turned. “Yes, Val?”

Her name from his lips was like a piece of velvet being pulled through a shredder. “Remember when you drove me home that one time in the rain? And taught me how to play chess?”

“
That happened recently.” Something in his eyes snapped into focus. “How could I forget?”

Val swallowed. Or tried to. A persistent lump kept rising in her throat.
His eyes
, she found herself thinking again. His eyes were beautiful: textured, metallic gray with bubbles of onyx and crystal caught in the twin pools of his irises — but they were shallow, empty, cold, and nothing, not even the thick lashes which framed them, could soften the arctic chill in that gaze. “I was wondering if maybe — do you think you could teach me more?”

He smiled, and she wanted to run. It was the smile of one who had eaten cat, cream, and canary alike. “It would be my distinct pleasure. You can come tomorrow, if you like, or after my shift tonight — I get off at seven.”

“
Tomorrow is fine,” she made herself say.

“
Tomorrow it is then. Shall I pick you up at home? Around, oh, shall we say five?”

Wordlessly, she nodded. If she opened her mouth she was afraid of what would come out. Or wouldn't.

“
See you then,” he said.

Chapter Eleven

Getting dressed that morning was an exercise in futility. What did one wear gearing up for such a confrontation? And how did one don armor for a weakness of the heart? Normally, Val went to her mother for fashion advice but in this case she knew what the answer would be.
Don't confront him. Run.

It was good advice. Sensible. Val disregarded it.

She settled on a white camisole, a green button-down henley, and a pair of mid-length khaki shorts that made her butt look big. Lisa would not have approved of the outfit at all, shorts aside. She would have pointed out that Val looked like she should be going door-to-door, peddling copies of
The Watchtower
. Val put her hair into pigtails for good measure.

Her mother blinked when she saw her. “Is that what you're wearing?”

“
Yup.”

Mrs. Kimble seemed about to say something. Then she closed her mouth and shook her head. “Are you ready to leave?”

As ready as I'll ever be.
Val nodded.

“
I have a doctor's appointment, so you'll have to take the bus home today. Do you need money for the fare?”

“
No.”

“
All right then.” Her mother dropped her off at the front gates. “Have a good day.”

Val walked to her classroom, unable to shake the feeling that the other students were laughing at her. She sat in the corner of the art room, sandwiched between two girls she didn't know who kept shooting her dirty looks. Val tried not to notice and spent the next half hour pretending nothing existed beyond the bowl of fruit Ms. Wilcox had placed up front for that day's lesson.

As she sketched, she studied Gavin from the corner of her eye. He made no attempts to talk to her, which she took as a good sign. He did smile at her, though. It chilled her, that his smile could make his face look so handsome and yet still be so cruel. And then she wondered if she had imagined the cruelty, because she had never really fixated on it before.

You're supposed to be drawing.

It was just that Gavin was so fascinating. Val had never met a boy like him before: he was so mature, so intense and mysterious — oh, and brilliant. Even sexy, she admitted to herself. But what did she really know about him as a person? She had spent more time with him than she had with Lisa these past few weeks, and yet she knew him about as well as Emily Abernathy.

No. Less. Something that did not bode well.

Don't think about that. Draw.

Her fruit kept coming out lopsided. She couldn't keep her hand steady. The eraser on her pencil had been worn clear down to the metal cap.

James kept shooting her these incredulous little glances. What James knew about fashion could fill a thimble and leave plenty of room for one's finger besides, and Val began to worry that she'd overdone it. If James had noticed then Gavin almost certainly had, and unlike James, he would know why.

Val glared at her drawing of the fruit.
Stupid James.

She sighed.

No. Stupid Val.

School drudged on, slowly as a day in purgatory.

English was no better. Val's essay on
Titus Andronicus
, which she had done in place of the film, was returned to her by Mrs. Vasquez with a grim-looking “C” at the top. Her reading quiz for
Wuthering Heights
, which they had started just last week, earned her an equally dismal 6/10.

Preoccupation with the stalker and Gavin's intense and unequivocal attention had diminished her ability to focus on schoolwork. Val had mixed up quotations from Nelly Dean and Zillah, and had written a hackneyed, self-referential response to the question regarding whether or not Heathcliff was “evil” or a “victim of evil.”

Val's argument had been, simply, that Heathcliff had not always been evil, but he had been
bad
, and 'bad' had progressed to 'worse' as he was gradually corrupted by the morally stunting environment of the manor, which eventually culminated into a pretty good approximation of evil.

The teacher had written,
Next time provide more concrete examples and include quotations from the text.

If only she had taken the quiz this week instead of last. She certainly had more concrete examples of evil under her belt now. She only half-listened as Mrs. Vasquez used
Wuthering Heights
to segue into
Romeo and Juliet.
She lectured about star-crossed love and screwed-up characters so ill-suited to one another that they repelled even as they attracted, thus dooming their stories to certain tragedy. All Val could think about was 5 o' clock, and whether or not she was dooming
herself
to certain tragedy. The closer she got to 5 o' clock, the more she began to suspect that she was. This was a bad idea.

Even the video on pregnancy in Health (which prompted all the boys to make retching noises and all the girls to cross their legs beneath their short skirts and declare that they would never, under any circumstance, subject themselves to such a painful and humiliating procedure and that's exactly what adoption was for, thank you very much) couldn't rouse Val from her thoughts, even long enough to be nauseated.

I'm an idiot. I should cancel.

But she didn't have his phone number — he had never offered it, and she hadn't asked.

Why didn't he give it to me?

Maybe his plan sucked. Maybe he had one of those Go-Phones. When they had talked about his family he'd implied that he paid for everything himself, out of pocket. But still.

If I meant something to him, he'd want me to be able to contact him. I mean, even James's number is in my cell phone.

The bus dropped off Val a block from her house and she fretted the whole walk home. As she walked through the door she caught a glimpse of herself in the foyer mirror and winced, wondering if she should change into something a little less ridiculous. But then he'd know that she had changed for him, which was precisely what she had been trying to avoid in the first place. Her reflection's face fell.

I really do look like a dork. No wonder people laughed at me.

She poured herself a glass of water she didn't drink and ended up spending the next hour and fifteen minutes pacing. At five o' clock sharp the white Camaro pulled up in front of Val's house. She wrote her mother a note on the fridge, grabbed her bag, and latched the front door behind her.

Gavin reached over to unlock the door for her. He was wearing a fitted leather jacket, which he definitely hadn't been wearing earlier, and she realized with an unexpected lurch that his arms were just as muscular as they had been in his archery photo on the school's website.

“
Good afternoon,” he said. And was it her imagination or was there an edge of anticipation in his voice?

“
Hi.”

“
I like your outfit.”

“
Are you making fun of me?”

His lips quirked. “Perhaps a little. No track uniform today?”

She gulped. “No.”

“
How disappointing.” He flipped the blinker on. “I'm surprised your mother let you come out to play with me.”

“
What?”

“
She didn't seem to care for me.” His eyes met hers briefly as he turned to signal over his shoulder.

“
I didn't tell her,” Val said, surprising herself with her boldness. He didn't have to know about the note she'd left taped on the fridge. “She doesn't know.”

“
Naughty girl.” And he smiled to himself, as if he found that thought, and the images which accompanied it, particularly pleasing, in a way that made Val feel slightly less foolish about the knife with the broken handle secreted away in the pocket of her shorts.

Just in case
, she'd told herself, feeling as if she were mad.

As before, he parked inside his garage though it wasn't raining. “There have been some problems with vandals in the area,” he explained, though she hadn't asked. “They cruise around the neighborhood stealing things — petty theft.”

“
I don't think they'd steal your car.”

The moment she said the words she realized how that sounded, but instead of looking offended he laughed. “Not for the car alone, perhaps, but I keep some valuable things in there.”

“
Like what?”
Like a body?

He gave her a measured look. “I'm a dealer.”

“
Of
drugs?
” Val blurted.

“
Of antiques.” He located the house key and fitted it in the lock. “I buy, sell, and trade.” He pushed open the door and waited.

She squeezed by, thinking over what he'd said. That fit in with his possessive, acquisitive nature. It was logical that he'd want to own things, as well as people. He probably considered them on the same scale.
If he even is the stalker
, she reminded herself sternly albeit without much gumption.
You don't have proof yet.
Distantly, she heard herself say, “You're kind of young.”