anightwithoutstarsfinal Page 5

  “Ferg saw a snake,” the guy called, splashing water as he heaved himself up on a rock. “No big deal. You coming in or what?”

  “Everett, wait.” I had my hand wrapped around his wrist before I knew what I was doing. He glanced down at my fingers. Up at my face.

  “If you want to jump in together just say the word, baby. I’ll hold you all the way down.”

  “No, I don’t want… Gross.” Temporarily ignoring him, I did another quick count. Four guys in the water, one on the rock. Five in total, when before there had been six. “Something’s wrong. There should be six.”

  Everett regarded me with a lazy smile. “Six what, babe?”

  “Guys! Six guys, you idiot!”

  “Whatever. If you’re too chicken to jump in, just admit it.” He pulled his arm free from my grasp and bent his knees. “LOOK OUT BELOW BOYS!”

  My pulse roared in my ears. My tongue felt dry, like I’d swallowed cotton. I didn’t know why or how I knew something was wrong, I just knew it was. “Hold on a second, I think we—”

  But with one final whoop he pushed off the ledge and soared into the air with effortless grace. Arching his body, he dove head first into the water and disappeared with barely a splash.

  In hindsight, if I had known that would be the last time I saw Everett James alive, I probably wouldn’t have called him an idiot.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Hacked

  Call it gut instinct. Call it self-preservation. Call it whatever the hell you want, but the second Everett hit the water I was out of there.

  Grabbing my clothes off the picnic table I dressed as I ran, not even stopping to twist my shirt around when I put it on backwards. I burst from the tree line out of breath and on the verge of a full-blown anxiety attack the likes of which I hadn’t suffered since Mom walked out the door.

  Doubling over, I braced my hands on my knees and took deep, calming breaths; a technique the shrink had told me about on our very first visit.

  They’re fine, I told myself. Nothing is going to happen to them. They’re just boys, screwing around. They go to the quarry all the time.

  Except this time… This time had been different.

  The moment I heard that awful scream I was brought back to the Livingston’s house, and I knew something was wrong. A boy didn’t scream like that because of a snake. A boy didn’t vanish because of a snake. I didn’t count incorrectly. There were five. There should have been six. Something happened to Ferguson. In the dark, murky depths of the water something happened to him, and even though I didn’t know what it was, I knew I was helpless to stop it.

  I took the long way home. It would have been quicker to cut through the heart of town, but I kept to the edges, following the train tracks until I could hop over and race across a small, litter-strewn field to the apartment complex.

  The smell of stale beer and reheated chicken wings made my nose tingle when I walked into the living room. A plate filled with tiny bones and bits of congealed fat sat on the coffee table, surrounded by a ring of beer cans. I left the plate and cans where they were and went into the kitchen. Picking up the phone and cradling it against my ear, I dialed the three numbers every child is told to memorize by heart.

  “9-1-1, what is your emergency?”

  My knees wobbled and I sagged against the counter. I think I even laughed, which probably isn’t the best thing to do when you’re calling 9-1-1, but I was so relieved to hear an actual human voice I couldn’t help myself. Abruptly remembering the reason I’d called, I tightened my fingers around the receiver and said, “Uh, yes, I’ve never done this before but, um, I would like to report something.”

  “Can I please have your name and location, ma’am?”

  “No,” I blurted out. “I mean, can’t I be, like, anonymous or something?”

  “Are you reporting an incident?”

  “Sort of. I mean, I guess I am. I think.” I knew I sounded like an idiot. I suppose that’s what happens when a girl raised on e-mails and text messages attempts to make the most serious phone call of her life. I focused hard on a chipped piece of linoleum tile on the floor and took a deep breath. “There are boys down at the quarry. Six of them. No, seven,” I corrected, not wanting to exclude Everett. “I think they may be in trouble.”

  “What sort of trouble, ma’am?”

  “I don’t know. They’re not supposed to be there, right? I mean, the quarry is off limits. Shouldn’t you send an officer out to check on them?”

  “Of course,” the operator said smoothly. “Thank you for reporting the trespassing.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said automatically. I smiled, feeling better already. Sure, the guys would get in trouble when the cops showed up, but at least they wouldn’t wind up with broken necks. As far as Ferguson… Well, he’d probably just been out of sight. After all, I hadn’t really looked that hard.

  “Oh, and Lola dear?”

  I froze. “How – how do you know my name? I didn’t give you my name. This was supposed to be anonymous.”

  A soft, familiar chuckle purred through the receiver. “We know everyone, Lola. Don’t worry. They’ll be coming for you soon enough.”

  The line went dead a second before I flung the phone across the kitchen. It slammed into the fridge, knocking two magnets down. The plastic mouthpiece popped off and skittered under one of the cabinets. Breathing hard, unable to believe what I’d just heard, I sank slowly down on my haunches and dropped my head between my knees.

  They’ll be coming for you soon enough.

  It wasn’t my imagination. I wasn’t being paranoid. Either something was happening, or I was going crazy. Not surprisingly, neither scenario looked that great to me.

  Was I having some kind of weird mental break? Had the pressure finally gotten to be too much? I always tried to release it in little ways when it began to build up, letting off steam here and there to keep… well, to keep something exactly like this from happening. Yet here I was, curled up on the kitchen floor while images of silver teeth and serpents and the sound of a woman’s soft laughter echoed through my head.

  When the phone started to ring I jumped so hard I hit the back of my skull on a cabinet. Gritting my teeth against the pain and blinking the sudden spark of tears from my eyes I belly flopped across the linoleum to grab the phone, for once not caring about the sticky layer of grime that coated the floor.

  What was a little dirt when you were hearing voices?

  I glanced under the lip of the cabinets, searching for the mouthpiece, but it must have slid under the fridge. The phone continued to ring and in the silence the sound was blaring and offensive. I picked it up gingerly, holding it away from my face, and clicked the ‘talk’ button.

  “Hi, is Lola there?”

  Travis. His familiar voice, so calm and steady, sent a wave of relief crashing through me. I staggered to my feet, ignored the crumbs of food clinging to my shirt, and took the phone into the living room.

  “Travis, it’s me.”

  “Lola?”

  “Yeah. What’s up?” How normal I sounded. How sane. It made me think of a documentary on serial killers I’d watched once on TV.

  They were interviewing a guy who had murdered over fifteen women. He slept with them, strangled them, and dumped their bodies in a pit two miles away from his house. The authorities said he would have kept getting away with it if not for the neighbor’s dog who dragged home an arm one day with two rings still attached to the decomposing fingers.

  They asked the guy what he did after he killed the women. Looking straight into the camera he said, “Well, usually I made myself a snack and watched some football.”

  Just like that. Like it was no big deal.

  Lola, what did you do after the 9-1-1 operator called you by name and threatened your life?

  Oh, you know. Just had a little chat with my best friend. Made some dinner. Watched a movie. Nothing special.

  The idea of it all was so absurd I laughed, except it wasn’t a
normal laugh. More of a high pitched I-think-I’m-going-out-of-my-mind sort of laugh.

  “Lola, are you okay?” Travis sounded concerned.

  Good, I thought. He should be.

  Sitting on the edge of the sofa, I tucked up one leg and rested my chin on my bent knee. “I don’t know. Maybe. I… Have you noticed anything strange going on?”

  “That’s sort of why I called you.”

  “It is?” Had the crazy 9-1-1 women been calling him too?

  “Yeah.” Travis huffed out a breath. “I noticed it last night when I got home. At first I thought it was a glitch in the system, but it’s been getting worse since this morning. The average person wouldn’t notice anything, but if you try to run original HTML code through the server it bounces back at you. Nothing new can be entered. It’s running on one long loop, processing the same stuff over and over again.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose and groaned. “You know I don’t understand you when you start talking Computer Geek. English, Travis. Speak English.”

  “They’ve hacked the Internet, Lola.” He must have taken my silence for exactly what it was – dumbfounded amazement – because he continued after only the tiniest of pauses. “It’s sort of genius, actually. People have managed to get parts of the system down before, but they always give themselves away. This hack is different. Whoever did it, they’re not destroying anything. They’re just freezing what’s already there.”

  “I don’t… I don’t understand.” I had never been much of a technology whiz. Not like Travis. The kid was a certifiable nut when it came to computers. He knew everything about them. How they worked, how they operated and, apparently, how they could be broken.

  “What do you use the internet for?” he asked.

  I scrunched up my nose. “Uh, I don’t know. Facebook. E-Mail. Funny cat videos on Youtube.”

  “Exactly. And that’s what the majority of the population does too when they get on. With this hack, you can still do that. Everything that existed prior to seven o’clock last night is still there. Status updates. Websites. Search engine results. Cat videos. Which are creepy, by the way.”

  “They’re not creepy,” I protested. “They’re hilarious. Did you see the one where the cat flips off the table and lands in the trashcan? You should watch it. I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants.”

  Travis’ sigh was long and suffering. “What I’m trying to say is whoever did the hack did an almost perfect job. They have complete control of everything. People will notice eventually, but I’d say they have at least forty-eight hours before everyone really figures it out. Until then they’ll think it’s just a glitch, like I did at first. Even if they know it’s more than that they can’t post anything about it, because the system isn’t allowing any new input. Even the backdoors are closed.”

  I mentally added ‘broken internet’ to my list of Things That Are Wrong. “Where are you now?” I asked. “Can you come over?”

  “After dinner,” he said. “Mom’s making lasagna.”

  Dinner? Was it really that late? I looked at the clock hanging on the wall by the kitchen. The long spindle pointed to six. The short one to three. My stomach picked that exact moment to growl testily, reminding me I hadn’t eaten anything today except for ice cream. “Bring me leftovers, okay? I’ll be here.”

  “See you in an hour or so.”

  “Sounds good.”

  The long spindle was now all the way up to the eight, and there was still no sign of Travis. Dad had shuffled in around seven, grunted a hello, picked up a cold chicken wing, and disappeared into his room. I hadn’t heard a sound from him since, which wasn’t a surprise. He would stumble out in time to catch whatever late night game was playing on TV, polish off the rest of the beers in the fridge, and pass out on the sofa.

  Oh, the exciting life of a drunk.

  I considered calling my best friend, but the last time I’d interrupted his family at dinner time his mom picked up. It wasn’t a conversation I cared to repeat.

  When the phone rang I jumped for the second time, nearly upending the plate of chicken wings. After making sure they were safely in the middle of the coffee table I snatched up the phone from where it’d fallen between the two sofa cushions. “Hello?”

  “Lola, it’s Travis.” His voice was muffled, as though there was something between his mouth and the receiver. I rolled my eyes.

  “Are you hiding in the closet again? Travis, don’t be such a baby. Your mom isn’t going to beat you if she finds out you’re coming to see me.” Bringing my legs up I sprawled lengthwise on the sofa and toyed with a button that was coming loose from one of the cushions. “It’s time you told her about our relationship. Do you want me to do it? Give her the phone. I’ll tell her all about the wild crazy sex I’m having with her—”

  “Lola, shut up.”

  My jaw literally dropped. I know you read that a lot in books and you’re probably like ‘yeah right, no one’s jaw ever drops’, but mine really did. Travis and I had teased each other mercilessly over the years but never, not once, had he ever told me to shut up.

  “W-what did you say to me?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, sounding miserable, and I felt my feathers un-ruffle the tiniest bit.

  “Good. You should be.”

  “It’s just that you were talking so loud and I was afraid he would hear.”

  That got my attention. Travis may have been terrified of his mom, but his dad was a pushover, which meant his father wasn’t the ‘he’ in question. Plus it wasn’t even his weekend to come visit. I sat up and hunched forward, clutching the phone tight against my ear. “Travis, where are you?”

  He spoke so fast and so quietly it was hard to understand. I only caught every third or fourth word. “…the way, you know? And… he would be… Not who he says… help me.”

  My palms were slick with sweat, making it difficult to hold the phone. I gripped it extra hard. My thumb pressed a random number, and the resulting beep made me jolt. “Travis where are you?” I asked again, even as I dreaded what the answer would be.

  There was a long pause. A muffled cough. And then…

  “The Livingston’s, Lola. I went back to the Livingston’s.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Beginning

  My best friend was an idiot.

  Fortunately for him, I had a soft spot for idiots. Which was why, for no reason other than sheer stupidity (and a strong desire not to see Travis killed or otherwise maimed), I was racing towards the house I’d run away from the night before.

  With Travis’ plea for help echoing in my head I retraced my steps, ducking in and out of shadows and avoiding the glow of street lamps like the plague. A sense of unease followed me, nipping at my heels and tickling the back of my neck as I ducked down beside the very same dumpster Travis and I had crouched behind when the world made sense and my only fear was getting in trouble for stealing a car.

  The street the Livingston’s house was on stretched out before me, suspiciously empty. It was half past eight on a Wednesday night, but there was a warm breeze in the air and the night was clear. People should have been out walking their dogs or putting out trash or adjusting their sprinklers or doing whatever preppy yuppies did before they went to bed. Instead there wasn’t a soul in sight. In fact, now that I thought about it, I hadn’t seen a single person since I left the apartment.

  Once again, I know what you’re thinking. Travis isn’t the only idiot, right? And you would be absolutely correct. But what else could I do? Call the police? Yeah, that worked out so well for me the last two times. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. Do not dial 9-1-1 unless you want to hear the crazy lady.

  Asking my dad for help was also out of the question. I hadn’t even bothered to wake him up before I left. What was the point? He couldn’t help me. He couldn’t even help himself.

  I suppose, looking back now, I could have called Travis’ home phone and told his mom what was going on, but I’m prett
y sure we’ve already established I don’t always make the best decisions.

  So here I was, all alone, crouched behind a dumpster with my heart threatening to pound right out of my chest. There was a cramp in my right side – an athlete I was not – and I pinched my hip as I scurried down the sidewalk and up the Livingston’s tiny driveway.

  The Toyota was still there. I gave it a dirty look as I edged along the side and, forgoing the front door, wiggled my way between a thicket of bushes and the side of the house in an attempt to peer into one of the windows.

  Before he abruptly hung up I thought I heard Travis say he was in the living room, but as I paused to untangle the end of my braid from a branch I realized I had no idea where the living room was. In the front or the back? On the left side or the right? On the first floor or the second? Stupid rich people and their big houses.

  Hooking my fingers on the edge of the windowsill I hauled myself up on the toes of my battered sneakers and squinted, looking for signs of movement through the dark glass.

  Nothing.

  My own reflection stared back at me: a frightened girl with wide eyes and a mess of tangled hair. I looked far younger than my sixteen years, and far more scared than I was willing to admit.

  I moved to the next window, but the result was the same. If the matching leather sofa set and 60” flat screen TV were any indication it looked like I’d found the living room, but Travis was nowhere in sight. Hissing out an impatient breath I started to duck back down… only to freeze in place when a light flicked on.

  Without waiting to see who it was I dropped to my hands and knees, catching a mouthful of leaves on the way down. Spitting them out, I huddled under the window with absolutely no idea of what to do next.

  Some hero I was. Travis had been kidnapped and I was cowering in the bushes. I hadn’t even thought to bring a weapon, not that I would have had many options. Dad didn’t own a gun and our set of kitchen knives were so dull they could barely cut a sandwich in half let alone pierce human flesh.