Spree (YA Paranormal) (14 page)

Preggers chided him on, showing him my laughing again and again, until it grew too loud for him to control.

I sought any warmth, any light, but her dark aura won over both of us.

She was so dark now, so without light, that I knew that this was the event that would bring her to hell.

Her power grew, but I planted one small image in Zipper’s mind first…

“Can you believe John almost fell?” Cindy asked at the river’s edge.

“John’s cute,” I said to Cindy as we walked away. “We don’t need to lose the cute ones.”

…The moment calmed Zipper down for just a moment, brought him the vaguest hints of a smile. He then picked up the gun and made sure it was ready.

LATER ON THE DAY OF THE SHOOTING

Chapter 11

It’d be better for her to be with her friends.

She’s just been injured. Let her have a month, some time to get ready.

It’s not like she has to return to school immediately. But her friends. She needs to have as normal a life as possible.

She needs to adjust.

She has her whole life to adjust. She needs to be a regular teen girl
.

So went the arguments between Aliya’s parents when it came to their daughter.

I’d been keeping Aliya what company I could and not out of friendly love. I knew, somehow, that she held the key—that what she had seen needed to be told to Zipper, that he had to listen, had to hear. But in the days leading up to Aliya’s abrupt return from the hospital—just a week before she was scheduled to enter a facility that would help her learn how to live life as a paraplegic—she had forgotten about my visitation in her dreams. She had dismissed it as the dreams of a delusional, newly handicapped girl looking for any sign of the life she once knew but might never know again.

“Aliya,” I called.

The only time she almost heard me was when she was dreaming. I took full advantage, trying to share with her the hellish visions of blood, blasts, and limbs that the other Takers had shown to me.

But her only visions were full of her and Tom in the days when they used to be a couple. It was always sunny, eerily sunny, and she was always running away from a lengthening shadow. The Taker in me felt the potential nightmare, gravitated towards it, but the dream was Aliya’s and as soon as I attempted to set foot in her unconscious she pulled away.

I next took to showing her signs. I sent pop-ups on her laptop of school shooting articles. Baffled, she just closed them off. I tried to text, but I couldn’t, so I just sent static on her phone. She just complained about the service and tossed the phone aside.

That’s when I saw my opening.

One of the kids in Mrs. Walters’s class had written her assigned poem on a card and dropped off a copy for Aliya. After a few lines like “The light of our school is lost” and “Your smile will always be who you are to me,” there was a request: “Come to the game.”

Aliya tossed the card aside.

She was alone. Her two best friends, Preggers and me, were both gone, and she and Tom had broken up months ago. She was still getting over Tom the night of the accident and spent most her party preparation time trying to find outfits to make him jealous. Now, he’d never notice her again. He’d make an effort to turn his eyes away if, and when, she returned to school.

That game is the perfect place for her to touch base with her friends.

You want her rolled down in a wheelchair in front of everyone
?
For her first time out in public
?

They want to make her a guest of honor.

For what
?
Driving in a car with two dead, drunk girls
?

She’s a part of that school. The kids need to see that she’s okay.

Does she look okay to you
?
Besides, the lawyer said it’d be better if she didn’t make any appearances saying she was fine
.

Aliya could hear her parents still arguing over what was best for her.

“Nice of you to ask me,” she whispered towards the door.

She thought back to a kid who underwent surgery and spent time in a wheelchair. Daryl something or other. Kids were supportive to him. But he needed leg surgery. He didn’t get into a car and take someone else’s life.

“I’m never going back to that school,” Aliya whispered. “I can’t.”

I fought to show her pictures of her friends, including one where Tom had a gun and had come back from hunting with his dad. But nothing connected.

Aliya just sat there, listening to her parents argue out the rest of her life.

She’d need to make a decision, and fast.

* * *

That day Takers were causing accidents left and right.

Two cars ran into each other on White Mountain Road. One was a police officer, Danielson, the one who told my mother that I was dead. The Takers’s energy told me that Danielson might’ve spotted Zipper at the game before he had a chance to open fire. Now, he’d be too busy going back and forth with the other driver and the insurance company.

Another kid, Big Adam, broke his leg. I never knew him. He was a few years out of high school, but judging from his aura he was the type of guy who might run and tackle a shooter.

Everywhere Takers fluttered, and everywhere they were winning.

A new thought struck me, no doubt inspired by my fellow Takers.

I was a Taker too. Maybe I wasn’t here to stop anything. Maybe I was here to take the souls of some of my friends to wherever they needed to go.

Suddenly, a new picture formed before me.

It was Steph, with her long, slightly snarled hair, her vibrant eyes now empty of light.

“Not her,” I whispered.

I expected to hear Crazy T taunt me, but he was too busy making sure every detail was perfect.

Instead, a hazy black mist, the once human form of Preggers, appeared before me.

“If Zipper doesn’t do what’s right, Steph will,” she told me.

“Impossible,” I said.

I stared straight into the dark mass that was my former best friend.

“If there’s any humanity left in you, help Aliya,” I said.

I hoped to conjure some of that humanity.

Instead, Preggers smirked and then said to me: “Aliya will drink from the same cup we have. She’ll be dead before the week is out.”

As Preggers faded, taunting me, I felt confused. Was Zipper my best target? Steph? Aliya?

I couldn’t protect that many kids.

I reached into the darkness, into the Taker within me.

I realized everything Preggers said could be true.

There was very little I could still do, but I had to fight.

* * *

My first strike against the Takers was an unexpected one. The day of the shooting Alex and Steph bumped into each other. It was right before fourth position. Alex was lost in texting and Steph was skimming over a book for a makeup test she couldn’t put off any longer. Steph’s book dropped, and she started cursing.

“Easy,” Alex said.

He put up his free hand as if that would change anything.

“Don’t you people ever watch where you’re going?” Steph asked.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Alex replied.

“You just crash into whoever you like, don’t you, you drunk?” Steph said in accusation.

Alex looked coldly, plainly, and said: “I wasn’t in the car.”

Steph picked up her own book, muttered: “It’d be better if you were” as she walked away.

Alex followed.

I stood by, watching their aching auras mingle. There was so much volatility there, so much anger, but together their auras held in check.

“That’s a real crappy attitude you’ve got there,” Alex said.

Steph turned around. “
I
have the crappy attitude? I wasn’t the one who drove his girlfriend to drink.”

“Fay had problems when I met her.”

“And you just made them worse, didn’t you?”

“So it’s my fault she got behind the wheel drunk, is that it?” Alex asked.

His voice broke. Steph had hit a nerve.

“She was going to meet some guy at my party,” Alex said. “She loved to torture me. We’d broken up. She’d cheated on me, and she still punished
me
for it. Like it was my fault or something.”

Steph stood silent, said nothing.

“Maybe I should’ve thrown some kind of intervention like you see on reality TV. But I was too busy partying. I was a rotten boyfriend, and she was rotten girlfriend, but that doesn’t mean I drove her to it. Hell, I even tried to empty bottles, to get her away from it. That’s why she dumped me.”

Just then, even Alex’s glasses couldn’t hide the tremors of pain on his face. Tears flowed freely. He looked around, to see if anyone else in the hall noticed. They did. He dried the tears with his sleeve.

“If I never threw that party, everyone would be alive and this nightmare would just disappear,” Alex said.

The bell rang, perfectly timed, I might add, like in some teen TV show.

“I have to go,” Steph said.

Alex nodded.

Steph started walking.

“What I’m trying to say,” Alex said. “I’m trying to say sorry.”

Steph’s gaze lowered to the hallway. She didn’t look down, but she did call back: “It wasn’t your fault. It was hers.”

Steph kept walking, but then turned around right as Alex headed to his first class.

“And in science class,” Steph said, “you touched me. Don’t. Not without my permission.”

Alex nodded weakly.

But I could see Steph still looking at him.

It was official. Steph fell for Alex. I recognized the light in her eyes. I’d been there before.

“Fight for her,” I whispered to Alex as he walked away. “She’ll be your chance to be a good boyfriend.”

He stopped the moment I said that. I could swear he heard me.

“Just let me go,” I said.

Alex said nothing, started walking to class again.

I looked at him as if I was seeing him for the last time. My boyfriend. The love of my short life. How I needed him. How Steph did too.

* * *

Right before the next class Principal Buckley called an emergency assembly in the guise of a pep rally.

The cheerleaders were there, kicking, tossing each other up and down, while the team players were called one by one, even given nicknames like Tom “Night Terror” Harrington and Alex “The Annihilator”. He refused to use his last name. It messed up the flow. I laughed at how tough these kids thought they were and reveled in the energy of my friends. It was good to see kids cheering, laughing again, even if my fatal accident was still a cloud over the entire championship game.

Alex reminded anyone who forgot by stepping up and saying, on the microphone, “For Fay.”

The crowd roared.

“For Cindy,” he added.

Again, there was thunderous applause.

“For Ms. Lynn Carson,” Alex added.

The applause ceased the moment the words came out of his mouth.

All eyes turned on Steph, who herself turned around, looking back at the stunned crowd.

The crowd was silent, even though Mr. Higgins and Mrs. Walters attempted to lead the claps and the cheerleaders called out, following the teachers’ lead. Some polite applause followed from the kids, at which point Steph got up and walked out, cursing and shaking her head.

Alex followed.

That’s when Mr. Buckley took the microphone, attempting to make the save.

“We understand that you guys have a big party planned after school,” Mr. Buckley said, “with a bigger party planned tonight. We ask that our players remember their championship game and do the school proud by getting rest.”

The crowd booed. The pep rally was breaking apart.

Coach Ryan stepped forward and added: “Any of my players who have even a trace of alcohol on their breath won’t be playing.”

No one dared boo the coach. The kids grew quiet.

“We also ask,” Mr. Buckley said, “that you remember the show of support you’re giving for Fay, Cindy, and Ms. Carson and that you don’t drink at tonight’s party. Please remember your friends. We want a safe, dry game tonight.”

The booing started up again.

“So that you know, effective immediately, we will have breathalyzers at each game. Franklin Shore is our guest tonight. Let’s be hospitable.”

The jeers grew so loud Mr. Buckley had to stop.

Coach Ryan hollered and only then did the kids quiet down.

He was shouting a chant and the kids were picking it up.

“How do you spell soccer?”

“B-u-r-g-u-n-d-y!”

I laughed. Most kids probably didn’t know the answer to that one anyway.

“I can’t hear you! How do you spell soccer?”

“B-U-R-G-U-N-D-Y H-I-L-L!”

The chants became louder until only one voice, one pulsing cry, echoed across the gymnasium.

Mr. Buckley then stepped forward to undertake the unenviable task of dismissing the kids back to their classes.

* * *

Steph was in the corridor, crying.

Alex kept calling her name, but Steph didn’t want to come out.

Her pain pulled me in, but I knew I couldn’t help her.

Because of me, a piece of her would be gone her entire life.

I thought of guiding Alex toward her, but her aura was so distraught, in such reds and dark pinks, that I knew I’d have to play Cupid another time.

Instead, I concentrated on a memory I had of Steph when she was just a girl.

She skipped around, jump roping until she hit one-hundred.

All the girls stood around, watching to see if she could do it.

I was there; Cindy was; Sue, everyone.

When she jumped the rope for the hundredth time, we roared as if we were sending off a queen.

I dropped a hint of a shy guy in the background, Alex. He was so young, such a cute little kid with sloppy, shifting bangs and darting eyes.

I saw Steph smile as she thought of the memory.

She began to grasp that Alex liked her once before, that he might like her once again.