Fury (30 page)

Just before getting out of the car, Gabby swiveled in her seat. “You’ll be at the pep rally tonight, right? I cannot deal with it by myself.”

Em hesitated for just a second. The pep rally was the last place she wanted to go. But she wouldn’t let Gabby down again. “Of course I’ll be there,” she said.

As they walked from the parking lot to their first-period classes, Em thought they must have looked like a formidable two-person army.

Em looked for Drea before the first bell rang, to no avail. Again as classes switched. Nothing. They didn’t have any classes together, and Em had no idea where punked-out-Rainbow-Brite-goth types hung out during their off periods. Not near the theater, of course, and not down by the gym. Had she seen them loitering in the arts hallway in the past? She made a mental note:
Pay more attention to where different cliques hang out for next time you’re being homicidally stalked by someone—something—that wants to punish you for your mistakes.

Then, right before Em’s lunch period, she caught sight of Drea’s part-purple, part-black hair as it bobbed down the hallway toward the library.

“Drea!” she shouted, pushing her way through the throng of students pouring out of precalc. “Drea,” she called again, getting close enough to grab her shoulder. She was out of breath. “We need to talk.”

Drea, whose eyes were rimmed with purple eyeliner, didn’t seem surprised that Em was chasing her down. “Oh, hi.”

“Hey. I’m so glad I found you.” Em fingered the snake charm at her sternum, hoping Drea would notice that she was wearing it. “How are you?” As she said it she realized that Drea must know by now that her best friend was dead. “I mean, really, how are you doing?” she repeated more earnestly. “Like, about Sasha.”

“I don’t want to talk to you about Sasha, thank you.” Drea’s tone was measured but not rude. Just firm. There were circles under her eyes. She shoved her hands into her jeans pockets.

“Oh. Okay. Sorry.” Em licked her lips, nodding, trying to seem as approachable as possible.

“What did you want to talk to me about?” Drea stared at Em with something akin to boredom.

“Oh . . . well.” Em felt ridiculous; until all the insanity had started, she had never had more than a two-minute conversation with Drea, usually limited to: jumbo popcorn, extra butter. But she had a feeling that Drea was her last hope. “You told me to come find you when I was ready to talk. About, you know. The flower and everything? The red orchid?”

“Shhh!”
Drea’s veil of boredom dropped in an instant, and she turned to look over her shoulder. “We can’t talk about this here.”

“Um. Okay.”

Drea spoke under her breath. Unconsciously, she was touching the snake pin, which was affixed to her coat. “Can you meet me after school?”

Em hated the thought of waiting another three hours to get some answers, but apparently she had no choice. “Yes, sure, of course. Where?”

Drea hesitated, narrowing her eyes. Em had the uncomfortable feeling that Drea was evaluating her, or testing her in some way.

“My house,” Drea finally said. “It’s here.” She fished a pen from her messenger bag and grabbed Em’s hand. Her chipped gray nail polish was all Em could see as Drea scrawled an address on the inside of her palm. It tickled slightly and gave her goose bumps. Em nodded. Drea walked away without another word.

The next three hours were agony. Gabby texted her during lunch to say she’d gotten her mom to pick her up from school for an emergency therapy shopping trip. Classic Marty Dove. Em went back to eating in the library, alone. Then she sat through European history, unable to concentrate on a class discussion about fascism. All she could do was replay in her mind Ali’s appearance on her doorstep. The heavy knocking. The shock-red orchid. Em’s eyes pricked again with anxious tears and she jiggled her knees under her desk. Earth science was even worse. Zach was finally back at school—funny, Em thought, that he’d been too broken up about Chase to survive school, but not so broken up that he couldn’t find time to cheat on Gabby—and the back of his head was the first thing Em saw
as she walked into the classroom. She was glad he didn’t turn around, not once through the whole period.

Her stuff was in her bag ten minutes before the final bell rang, and she was out the doors and headed for Drea’s, before it had even finished sounding.

She knew her way
to
Drea’s neighborhood, but she didn’t know her way around it. Drea’s street was close to the center of town, where there were older houses that must have existed even in the 1800s. This area stretched back into the woods, cutting a kind of ruralish strip through Ascension. The back of the neighborhood bordered the Behemoth, if Em had her directions right.

When Em pulled up to Drea’s house, something about the sagging structure made her recoil slightly. There was nothing outwardly weird about it, but it looked very . . . lived in. As though in a few more years it might just collapse in on itself. Someone had started to shovel the walk, out from the front door, but the project had clearly been abandoned halfway through. Em walked to the front door, tramping over footsteps that were bigger than her own.

The doorbell was a jarring buzz. Em found herself looking over her shoulder as she waited for Drea. The fluttering feeling at her back returned, like there were moths there, leaving their dust all over her skin. She itched.

“Hi,” Drea said as she swung open the door. Her longsleeved,
black waffle-knit shirt was open slightly at the neck to reveal a swath of silver chains, some with pendants and some without. Her hair—the half that wasn’t shaved—was pinned back.

“I’m glad you came,” Drea said, motioning for Em to follow her down the dim hallway. An obnoxious infomercial blared. As they passed the second room on the left, Drea reached in to close the door; before it shut completely, Em caught a glimpse of an older man—Drea’s dad, she supposed—sitting in front of the television. Its blue light bounced off his glassy eyes. Em dimly remembered hearing something about Drea’s dad having had a nervous breakdown. Drea kept walking, down the hall and then down a flight of stairs. Em followed hesitantly.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to, like, kill you or anything,” Drea said sarcastically, observing Em’s nervous expression with a smirk. “My study is down here.”

Her study? Em’s parents had studies. Sixteen-year-old girls did not. But sure enough, Drea led Em to the back of the basement, to a makeshift door composed of a sheet hung between two beams. Clipped to the sheet was an orange-and-black
NO TRESPASSING
sign. Drea pulled back the curtain.

Tugging on a string that hung from a single bulb in the ceiling, Drea illuminated her “study”—a paint-stained workbench piled with books, papers, folders, and newspaper clippings. Next to the workbench were two similarly stuffed bookshelves.
In front of all this was a ratty recliner that sat alongside a small desk and a floor lamp. The lamp was strung to the wall by an orange extension cord. Attached to that same cord was a plug that ran to a small dorm-room-type refrigerator. It was all enclosed by sheets. One of the sheets, the one closest to the wall, was decorated with cupcakes.

“Whoa,” Em breathed.

“I know, it’s kind of ghetto,” Drea said, propping open a folding chair that she dug out from under the workbench. “But it serves its purpose. It’s quiet down here. My dad never bugs me. And I have a system. I know where everything is.”

“It’s . . . it’s awesome, Drea.” Em was serious. “It’s so . . . real.”

“Yeah, it’s
real
-ly dusty down here. Now let’s get to work.” Drea marched over to the fridge and opened it. “Tell me what’s going on. Do you want a Coke?”

“Um, sure.”

Drea pulled out two sodas and handed one to Em. Then she sat in the recliner, turned on the floor lamp, which cast a greenish glow on the whole space, and stared. Em shifted in her Bean boots, then started in.

“Well . . . I think that Chase—”

“We’re not here to talk about Chase,” Drea said sharply. “We’re here to talk about you. Right?”

Em blushed. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“So what’s going on?”

Looking up at the ceiling as though it might offer a suggestion, Em asked, “Where should I start?”

“Well, what’s freaking you out?” Drea took a slug of Coke, raising her eyebrows, and propped her feet up on the workbench in front of her. She was wearing steel-toed boots.

Em swallowed, and then said in a rush: “Okay, well, there’s this girl—these girls—who are following me. I think. One of them keeps, like, appearing. In my windows and in Boston and everywhere. And I think there are two others like her. Chase Singer knew one of them, I think.” Em looked at Drea, eyebrows raised, waiting for a laugh or a dismissal. But Drea was listening, face serious. “And I think they’re part of the reason that he’s dead. I think . . . I think they killed him because of what he did to Sasha.”

There was a long silence then, between them. Drea looked like she’d been slapped. Em cursed herself for bringing up Sasha so indelicately. Drea probably didn’t even know that Sasha and Chase had been involved; she certainly wouldn’t know that Chase had been the one to circulate Sasha’s pictures and messages. She hoped Drea wouldn’t ask for more details.

But then Drea cleared her throat and leaned forward. “What did
you
do?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you,” Drea said, pointing right at the middle of Em’s chest.

“I . . . well . . .” For some reason, Em couldn’t force the words out, even though what she’d done was already pretty public knowledge. For all she knew, Drea might have already heard about it.

Drea just kept staring. “Em, did you come here to talk, or what?”

“Okay.” Em tucked her hands up inside the cuffs of her shirt, closed her eyes, and blurted out: “So, over break I hooked up with Zach.” There. She had said it. Em opened her eyes to check Drea for a reaction; there seemed to be none. “Zach McCord.” Still nothing. Drea looked at her impassively, eyebrows slightly raised. “Gabby’s boyfriend.”

“Gabby . . . ?” Drea waved her hands around questioningly.

“Gabby Dove. My best friend.” Em sat down heavily in the folding chair. If Drea didn’t know anything, how was she going to help?

“Ohhhhhhhh. It all becomes clear,” Drea said. “You hooked up with your best friend’s boyfriend.”

Em cringed. It sounded so trivial when it came out of Drea’s mouth. “Yeah, I did. But it wasn’t just, like, this terrible thing—”

Drea interrupted again. “Listen, Em. I don’t want to sound mean. But I don’t really care. I mean, I don’t care about why
you did it or anything. We’re not here to become besties. I just want to know what happened so I can explain to you what’s going on and maybe fix it.”

“Okay.” Em breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t feel like getting into the whole story again anyway. “Me too.”

“So. All this stuff.” With a sweep of her arm, Drea motioned to the literary debris that filled her nook. “It’s all about the Furies.”

“The who?” The word made an anxious feeling lash in Em’s stomach.

“The Furies,” Drea said again. The light caught her eyes, making them gleam golden. “Three girls. Three spirits. Three demons. Three witches. Whatever you want to call them. They’re here, for sure. They’re these three spirits who have been around forever.” The way Drea said it, it was like spirits and demons were a common thing. Em was shocked to find herself listening closely, waiting for her to finish explaining. “They have other names too,” she went on. “Sometimes they’re called the Erinyes, which means ‘the angry ones.’ They’re all over Greek mythology—I’m surprised you haven’t heard of them. They’ll haunt you if you’ve done something bad. They seek vengeance for wrongdoings. They basically wait for people to curse themselves and then decide what they think that person deserves. If they think you’re guilty, they’ll destroy you—regardless of the context,
regardless of the circumstance, regardless of whether or not it makes the situation better.”

“The Furies,” Em repeated. She rubbed her fingers against her temples. “So . . . they’re like ghosts?”

“Kind of. I think they take different forms in different places. I have a feeling that they’ve been appearing as humans in Ascension, though I haven’t seen them.”

“You actually believe this stuff?” Em scratched her neck uncomfortably.

“I don’t believe it. I
know
it.” Drea’s face was dead serious.

“So the girl who’s following me—you think she’s a Fury?” Em’s mind was clouded with questions and doubts. “Do you think that Sasha and Chase were connected to the Furies?”

Drea shrugged. “I don’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised. They’ve been around forever—there have always been stories about cruel, beautiful sisters in this town. And other towns around the world.”

“How do you know all this?” Em asked. Her brain was reeling.

Drea ran her finger around the rim of her soda can. “Hobby,” she said shortly.

“But why?” Em pressed. The basement wasn’t cold, but she was trembling. “When did you first hear about them? Why did you start to . . . collect all of this stuff?”

Drea stood abruptly, chucking the empty can forcefully
into the garbage in the corner. “Look. This isn’t about me, okay? This is about you, and what’s happening, and what you’re going to do about it.”

“But it’s crazy,” Em said. If anyone knew she was sitting in Drea Feiffer’s basement talking about ghosts . . . “Why—why should I believe you?”

As if she could read Em’s thoughts, Drea asked, with a perfectly straight face, “Does anyone else believe
you
?”

Em shook her head.

“I didn’t think so. That’s why you’re here. And that’s why you should trust me. Because I believe you.”

Em bit her lip. “So . . . let’s say the Furies really exist,” Em said. “Can they be stopped?”

“I’m not sure, but I’m going to find out.” Em saw the determination in Drea’s eyes. “I’m going to destroy them.”

Em groped for words. “But shouldn’t you, like, be on their side?” There was no way around it, she realized. She would have to tell Drea about Sasha and Chase. “Look, I’m pretty sure Chase was the one who made Sasha jump off the bridge. Now he’s dead. Isn’t that kind of what you wanted?”