Pretty Dark Nothing (2 page)

Quinn stepped back into the light of the hallway determined to keep calm, but the minute her feet hit the landing, the hair on her arms stood on end. Whipping her head around, she scanned the empty space behind her. She kept to the wall, scanning for any gathering fog as she followed the pools of light to the bottom of the stairs. She was acting seven instead of seventeen, creeping down the steps in broad daylight. Scratch that. Even a seven-year-old wouldn’t let their dreams freak them out this much. What would people think if they saw her cowering from imaginary beasts in the dark? She was starting to question her own sanity. They were only dreams. Shadows didn’t come to life, and they didn’t try to kill you, but no matter how irrational it seemed, her fear felt as real as a cold knife pressed to her throat.

Her muscles began to unknot as she stepped onto the solid stone of the kitchen floor. With its wall of glass windows, downstairs felt safe. The sun streamed through tall panes of glass, and Quinn shaded her eyes until they adjusted to the brightness. The kitchen gleamed like a show home. She couldn’t remember the last time an actual meal had been cooked in it.

Andrew Jackson peeked from beneath her car keys on the black granite countertop. She folded the twenty and put it in her pocket. Maybe she would order Chinese tonight, a nice change from pizza. She grabbed a cereal bar and two more cans of Red Bull from the cabinet, popping the top and guzzling half of one as she headed out.

Fifteen minutes later, Quinn pulled into one of the last empty spaces in the school parking lot and glanced at her watch. Just enough time to get to class—if she ran. Slamming the door of her cherry-red Mustang, she darted for the main entrance.

She rounded the corner of a white pickup and froze. There, blocking her way through the front doors, were Jeff and Kerstin. Kissing.

Quinn ducked behind the truck bed and hoped they wouldn’t notice her. She wanted to look away, but her eyes were drawn to them like metal to a magnet. Jeff stroked Kerstin’s hair and nuzzled Kerstin’s neck like he had once nuzzled hers. Kerstin nibbled his ear. He laughed. Jeff looked happy. Without her.

Quinn swiped at the tear that fell down her cheek.
Don’t you dare cry,
she told herself, but her emotions were stubborn, and the pain of losing Jeff to that succubus was too raw. A hard knot tightened in her stomach, and she clutched at her belly to keep her insides from ripping into a million pieces.
He’s not worth it.
She repeated the mantra and choked back a sob.

Relief washed over Quinn as Kerstin grabbed Jeff’s hand, and they disappeared into the building. She leaned against the truck, the cool metal calming the heat that rose in her cheeks. The pain in her chest eased as she released the tears she’d been holding back. At least they hadn’t noticed her hiding and blubbering like a fool.

Hurried footsteps approached her from the school steps and stopped on the other side of the truck. Damn, Kerstin had seen her after all and decided to come back and call her on it. Her stomach twisted again. Defending herself to Kerstin was the last thing she needed this morning.

Act natural, Quinn, like you dropped something. You stopped to pick it up, that’s all, nothing to do with her and Jeff.

Quinn wiped the last tear away and took a deep breath. Head held high, she casually adjusted her backpack and stepped out to meet her. Kerstin wasn’t there. Quinn circled the truck looking for the source of the footsteps. Someone giggled behind her. Quinn whipped her head around, scanning the rows of parked vehicles, but she didn’t see anyone.

“Kerstin!” She hoped Kerstin’s smirking face would appear from behind a car. “Not funny!”

Another giggle and soft footsteps echoed down the row directly to her right, stopping on the other side of a blue Honda. “I know you’re out there.” She paused, waiting for a response that never came. If Kerstin wasn’t playing a trick on her, who was?

A shadow crossed to her left. Sunlight drenched the concrete around it, intensifying the contrast of absolute blackness forming beside her. Quinn held her breath as a tremor inched up her leg.

The dark silhouette lay as if painted on the concrete, long and lean, clearly defined, backpack slung across one shoulder. She twisted, and it twisted with her.

When the sun dimmed behind another bank of clouds, the silhouette faded with it, lines blurring from black to gray. Afraid of her own shadow. Talk about pathetic. Quinn released her breath in a long sigh, shaking her head at her own absurdity, and headed toward the school entrance. This time, the shadowy mass split in two, one moving with her, the other moving to the left. Two distinct Quinn-shaped shades stood as mirror images on each side of her.

Quinn’s heart sped.

“Kerstin?” She watched the twin shadows and took another step. The right one followed, but the left one moved a fraction of a second later, stalking her. “Jeff?” She whimpered his name.

Her shadow stalker leaned forward, bending at the waist until its shaded lips touched her ear. Its cold breath sent a shiver through every muscle, freezing her in place. “They’ve already gone to class with no thought of you. Look around. You’re alone, Quinn,” it said.

Waking up would be the only way to get out of this nightmare. Quinn pinched herself hard enough to leave a mark, pain flooding her arm. She gasped, fully awake.

The other shadow joined in, bending forward like its doppelganger. “You did see them though, right?”

She stuck her fingers in her ears and hummed Mary Had a Little Lamb, but the voices wouldn’t be hushed.
Shadows don’t talk. Your crazy sleep deprived mind is making it all up.

“Kissing, groping. They can’t get enough of each other.”

She rocked back and forth in rhythm with the song, as if the repetition would drive them from her mind, but it only made the voices louder, more determined.

“Did he kiss you like that? Like he wanted to devour you?” The voices provoked her to remember their last kiss.

“He said he’d call you every night. Did he? Six weeks, and he called you how many times?”

Quinn shook her head, the humming turning to singing. She didn’t want to think about how he’d promised he would call every night, but after the first week, the calls all but stopped.

“And that kiss before he left?”

Their last kiss, the worst kind of kiss, the kind you give a sister, a peck.

“No.” The shadows confirmed the very question that crossed her mind. “He never loved you
.
Not like he loves Kerstin.”

Quinn choked as her throat tightened. Now they were reading her thoughts. “Get out of my head.”

The dark Quinns laughed and joined hands. “But you’ve got us. We’ll never leave you.” They circled her, dancing, singing, and teasing, like psychotic little children on a playground. “Kerstin is pretty.” The dark masses spun past her, blurring everything in gray mist.

“Shut up,” she pleaded under her breath. Quinn looked up to see a short, blond girl stop half way up the steps to the school entrance and stare at her, mouth agape. Did the girl see them too? Quinn pulled her hands through her hair as if she were brushing it back into a ponytail and not covering her ears and talking to disembodied voices.
This is what it feels like to lose it. Padded cell, here we come.
The girl looked at the ground and hurried into the building.

“Kerstin is smart.”

“Shut up,” Quinn snapped.

“Kerstin is … ”

“Shut up!” Quinn’s words echoed off the cars in the empty parking lot and collided with the clang of the first period bell.

“You’re late, Quinn.” The taunting spirits snickered.

Balling her fist, Quinn closed her eyes, gritted her teeth, and took a swing at a smoky face. Her fist collided with air, and when she opened her eyes, they were gone. She stood alone, shadow-less in the perfectly normal parking lot on a normal school day. But in that moment, everything had changed. Either she had fallen asleep, or her nightmares were no longer the stuff of dreams.

CHAPTER TWO

Aaron Collier shifted his backpack over his shoulder and glanced down the hall as he deftly spun his locker combination, glancing up between numbers to make sure Quinn hadn’t escaped into the cafeteria. Just fifteen rows away, she flickered in and out of his vision as the crowd of hungry students came and went.

In AP English, they’d been put in the same discussion group to debate if Hamlet really loved Ophelia. Quinn curled her hair around the finger of her left hand, strangely silent, as he’d argued Hamlet’s love for Ophelia had been true, but his need for revenge had overpowered all other emotions.

“Quinn, what do you think?” he’d asked.

She’d startled. Her eyes locked on his: bloodshot, tired, no makeup could have hidden the dark circles and bags. Clearly she hadn’t slept for days.

“I agree.” She’d turned from him, glanced over her shoulder, and went back to the absent-minded hair twisting while the discussion moved on.

He’d wanted to touch her, to get a glimpse of what troubled her, but there was no guarantee his ability would have worked. It was unreliable at best, and his connection probably wasn’t strong enough to evoke anything other than his own desire. Then he would have had to explain an unwarranted touch. Instead, he had pulled his hands inside his shirtsleeves, like he didn’t trust them.

Then she’d sat next to him in calculus, tormenting him with the sweet apple scent of her perfume. Her scarf pulled tight around her throat, a shield from the world. She tapped the end of her pencil on the back of her hand and shifted in her seat as Mr. Gordon droned on about the rules of differentiation. A can of Red Bull peeked from her backpack. She slipped her hand over the top of the can every few minutes like an addict.

Aaron had been distracted, too, with his Quinn addiction. He’d spent the hour watching her, his muse, and the words flowed from his pen:

Under the pale moon my life began.

Hand in hand

The soulless garden of my heart

bloomed in the light of your eyes

To know you

To love you

Alpha and Omega

Beginning and end

Of life as I know it.

He had rewritten it five times to make the handwriting perfect, memorizing it as he memorized her face. He waited for Mr. Gordon to turn back to the whiteboard and folded the paper into a small square. He’d planned to drop it into her half open backpack, perhaps accidentally brush her hand as she reached for the comfort of the can.

The minutes ticked by. The folded piece of paper never detached from his hand, and soon, the bell rang. Quinn had grabbed the backpack and bolted. Aaron balled the paper in his fist and sunk it in the bottom of the wastebasket.

Now, lucky chance number three presented itself, and he was determined to take it.
Say something to her before Reese and the others show up.

Aaron rehearsed what he could say to her in his head.
I’ve been in love with you since I first saw you. Jeff is an idiot. Go out with me. We’re made for each other.
He shook his head. That line screamed restraining order. He could do better. She was just another girl, and he talked to girls all the time—had talked to
her
hundreds of times. But now that she was single, his words stuck in his throat.

“Yo, Aaron! What’s up?” Marcus leaned against the neighboring locker, an overly muscled shoulder blocking Aaron’s view of Quinn.

Aaron shuffled to the right until her golden hair flashed back into sight
. Kerstin’s a slut, and Jeff’s an asshole. They deserve each other, and you deserve more.
True, but maybe a little too blunt.

“Dude, you’re not a Jedi. You can’t use the force to pull the clothes off her body just by staring at her. Believe me, I’ve tried.” Marcus turned to focus all his attention on Quinn. “Nope. Still doesn’t work.” He sighed and crossed his arms. “I wonder why Luke Skywalker never used his powers to see what was under Leia’s gold bikini.”

“Because she was his sister?” Aaron rifled through his locker for his Economics book.
Hey, Quinn, are you okay? Let me know if you need anything. I’m a great listener.
No, too girlie
.

“That’s wrong on so many levels.” Marcus shivered. “Since she’s not my sister, I can still fantasize about her, right?”

Hey Quinn, you rock my world.
That sounded like Marcus. Aaron needed to be himself.

“Look, I know you’ve been drooling over that one since you moved here, and she’s finally single, but she’s damaged, man. First Jeff breaks up with her, then there’s the cheerleading controversy, now people are saying she was late this morning because she was talking to herself in the parking lot. Dude, are you listening to me?” Marcus thumped him on the ear.

Aaron flinched, still sore from the piercing. “Yeah, I heard you.” He slammed his locker. “So she’s a little stressed. Haven’t you ever been late to class before? And who doesn’t talk to themselves once in a while? Maybe she was using one of those Bluetooth things, talking to someone on the phone.”

“Hey, man, I didn’t mean anything by it.” Marcus raised his hands in surrender. “It’s just unusual for Quinn Perfect to be late, that’s all. You know I’d never dis your girl.”

“She’s not my girl. And nobody’s perfect.”

“Yeah, right. Not perfect? Look at her, man! The hair, the butt, the legs leading right up into that short little cheerleading skirt.” Marcus grinned. “Don’t tell me you don’t think about the short little cheerleading skirt.”

“The skirt’s an added perk,” Aaron admitted. “And her smile.”

“Yeah, her face ain’t bad either.”

“And smart.” Aaron slipped his guitar plectrum from his pocket and twirled it between his fingers, wondering how many steps stood between them.

“And still hung up on her ex. Seriously damaged goods, bro. Look, but don’t touch, that’s my advice. We’re seniors, man. You can have any girl you want. Have you seen the fresh meat walking the halls? Let’s line up for the all you can eat buffet.”