Deep Betrayal

chapter 22

BOUND



Surrounded by dog-eared books and crumpled paper balls, I barricaded myself in my room to await my sentence for spying on Dad and Calder. Two days had passed. If I didn’t miss him so much, I would have applauded Calder for his sense of justice; punishing me for eavesdropping with the silent treatment was pure poetic genius.

While I waited for him to return—and for him to tell me how he’d answered Dad’s questions—I reread the same Emily Brontë poem I’d been reading since breakfast:

There is not room for Death

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Thou art Being and Breath,

And what Thou art may never be destroyed.

I couldn’t have agreed more. In recent days, I’d never felt stronger. Maybe not indestructible, but I was definitely not as afraid of Maris as I should have been. Or Pavati, for that matter. Calder might be mad about my newfound listening skill, and that scared me a little—he’d probably be even madder when he learned about the rest of my breath control experiments—but there was no denying that I could serve a valuable purpose.

Dad and Calder might not be able to find Maris to warn her about Jack, but I could. Or at least, I was pretty sure I could if Calder would let me. If I could find Maris, if I could reason with her that there was no more room for death, maybe no one else would have to die.

Reason with Maris. Yeah, I hated to think what Calder would say about that.

“Lily!” Mom’s voice called up the stairs.

Why was it I could never get five minutes to put a solid thought together? “What?”

“Could you come down here? Sophie has something she wants to do for us.”

“Yeah, I’m kind of busy,” I hollered back.

“It will only take a second.”

I tossed my book to the end of the bed and protested by clomping down the stairs more loudly than necessary. Mom was sitting on the couch. Sophie was standing in front of her with a poster leaning up against a chair. Rainbow beams of light circled the room.

“What’s all this?” I asked.

“Your sister is going for her Science Investigator badge, and she’s giving her presentation to her troop tonight. She wants to practice on an audience.”

“I was kind of in the middle of something,” I said, glancing back toward the stairs and the solace of my room.

“Sit,” Mom said.

I barked once and found a seat on the floor by Mom’s feet.

Sophie smiled and cleared her throat. Her blond curls bobbed at her shoulders.

“Have you ever wondered how a rainbow works?” she asked, her voice bubbling over with a forced enthusiasm. I immediately picked up on the intonation she’d stolen from kids on TV. It made me want to say, “No, I never did!” but I kept the sarcasm to myself.

“I did,” continued Sophie, answering her own question, “and that’s why I did my science project on rainbows. Tonight I’m going to demonstrate for you the science behind rainbows, using this.” She held up a pear-shaped crystal hanging from an invisible string. It spun in front of her face, casting red, blue, and green squares around the walls.

“A crystal is a prism, and because it has all these different cut sides, it bends light. Here’s what happens:

“Light travels at different speeds when it goes through different things, like the air or the rain or this crystal.” She glanced down at her notes.

“Think of it like this: You move differently on different things. You move one way when you’re walking on an icy sidewalk. You walk a different way on a sandy beach. And you walk a different way when you’re pushing something. If you pushed a baby stroller through sand, sometimes the wheels get caught and you go sideways.” She demonstrated, lurching her body around, which made me laugh. Mom slapped me on top of the head.

Sophie wasn’t rattled. “That’s what happens with light. When light is going through the air, it’s white. But when it goes through something else, like raindrops, or this crystal, it changes speed and bends and goes sideways. Different speeds and different angles make different colors.”

She put the crystal down, consulted her notes, and then picked up the crystal again. “Sometimes, like in this prism, the light bends twice, and that’s why you can see more than one color at once. That’s what happens in rainbows, too. All those raindrops act like thousands of prisms that separate all the colors out of the white light, all at once.”

Then she bowed, and Mom clapped like her baby had won an Academy Award. I clapped, too. It was actually pretty decent. Sophie blushed as Mom went to check the clock.

“Mrs. Larson will be here soon to pick you up,” Mom said. “Make sure you have everything you need.”

“So you think it was good?” Sophie asked.

“Actually,” I said, “it was. I am very, very impressed.”

“You gave me the idea,” she said.

“I did? How?”

Sophie smiled and didn’t say anything more. She threw her notes and the prism into her backpack, carefully rolled up her poster, and raced out the door.

Before I could give her any more thought, the phone rang. It wasn’t on the charger. The muffled sound came from under the couch cushions. I dug around, finding it just in time.

“Hello?” I huffed into the receiver.

“Lily? Oh, good! I need a huge favor. Huge!” It was Gabby.

I groaned mentally. I really didn’t have time for a favor. “What?”

“I’m in Duluth with some friends, and Brady Peterman called.”

“So?” I asked. I walked into the kitchen and I hoisted myself up onto the counter to sit.

“He’s totally drunk.”

“I’m not following you, Gabby, and I’m kind of busy.” I twirled my hair around my finger and flipped the ends back and forth against my nose.

“He said a bunch of them were up at Marsden’s Orchard. He said I need to get up there and pick up Jack, but I’m too far away, and if Jack’s in half the shape Brady’s in, he won’t be able to get himself home. Obviously I can’t call Dad.”

I rolled my eyes and exhaled. “Where exactly is he?” There was leftover mac and cheese in the pot in the sink. I dug out a mouthful.

“Brady said Jack’s still at Marsden’s barn. Can you go get him? He’s not answering his phone. I’m afraid he passed out or something.”

“You so owe me,” I said, sucking my fingers. “Both of you. Maybe Jack should have thought about this before he got lit.”

“Great! You’re a lifesaver, Lil,” Gabby said, and she hung up before I could say goodbye.

The car keys hung on a peg in the kitchen. I tossed them in the air, catching them with an overhand grab, and walked out the door. Turning the key in the ignition, the car stutter-started, vibrating under the soles of my feet. The gas gauge hovered around empty, but there was enough to get me up to the orchards.

Marsden’s was two orchards past the strawberry fields and hard to miss because of its old red barn that doubled as an everything-apple retail store. The faded and peeling paint made it look more pink than red, and the long, rectangular MARSDEN’S sign hung left of center over the barn door.

The gravel parking lot was empty and a cardboard Closed sign sat propped against the window.

“Great,” I said to no one. “Awesome.” The place looked deserted. Maybe Jack managed to stagger home on his own after all.

I got out of my car and crossed the parking lot to the barn. I peered into the dark windows, but it seemed empty. “Jack!” I called, cupping my hands to the glass. “Jack, are you in there?”

“Here,” said a voice from behind a dilapidated outbuilding, twenty yards from the barn. “Help me.”

I strode toward his voice, preparing to scold him for being so stupid, but what I saw stopped every scathing word in my throat. “Holy …! Jack! Are you okay?” I ran to him and dropped to my knees.

Jack Pettit lay flat on his back, stripped naked. His hands were tied over his head to a rusty ring on the side of the building, his legs tightly bound together with bright blue duct tape that came up past his waist, immobilizing him with a sadistic merman’s tail. Someone had written FREAK on his chest in black Sharpie.

How many people did it take to hold him down? Gray dirt caked his face. Tears plowed wide tracks down his soiled cheeks. I couldn’t help but take a breath at the realization that Jack was—in this grotesque state—closer to his original desire than he’d ever been before. If Pavati came back … if she said that she wanted him after all … would he want this life? Now that he was vulnerable and beached, would he choose this life if she wanted him in hers? Would I, if the choice was mine?

My hands came up to do something—anything—but I stopped at the prospect of pulling all that tape off. What would come with it? “Please tell me you’re wearing shorts under there.”

“Damn it,” he said, fighting back tears. “Why did it have to be you? Why you?” Veins pulsed at his temples.

“You don’t want my help? I can leave, y’know.”

Jack looked up at me, panicked.

“Gabby called,” I said. “Brady called her and told her where you were.”

“Don’t tell my dad about this,” he whispered.

“Why would I do that?”

“Or Gabrielle.”

I promised, although I didn’t think he stood any chance of having Peterman keep his mouth shut. Chances were he’d sent pictures to everyone he knew. There were probably pictures popping up online already.

I surveyed the bindings and tried to figure out how to get him free. I couldn’t find where the tape started.

“Cut it,” he said. “Don’t rip it.” Sweat beaded above his upper lip.

“I don’t have anything to cut it with,” I said.

“Check your glove compartment. Check your trunk. You’ve got to have something.”

I ran back to the car and frantically checked every storage place I could find. Single socks, hair binders, and gum wrappers … those I had plenty of. Sharp, sharp, something sharp. I came up with a paper clip and some nail clippers.

I raced back and started puncturing and cutting the tape. At one point I bit at it. Picking and tearing, I made slow progress. When I got it down to a thin-enough layer, I perforated the tape with the end of the paper clip and ripped up the middle, ankles to thighs, liberating his legs.

“Get my hands,” Jack said. “I can do the rest.”

I tore at the tape around his wrists and cold gray fingers. “Jack, you’ve got to let up on this obsession. Things are only going to get worse for you if you keep trying to convince everyone there are mermaids in the lake.”

“There are mermaids in the lake. I know it. You know it. Why aren’t you siding with me on this? Forget about Calder White.” He made the last name sound like a curse. “His sisters are dangerous. He’ll turn on you, too. Just like Pavati turned on me.”

I closed my eyes and shook my head. I’d heard all this before.

When the last bit of tape gave way, Jack yanked his hands free and the iron ring creaked on its rusty hinge. He rubbed the circulation back into his hands, then started peeling the layers of tape off his belly gingerly, pulling off hair and skin. He cringed and made strangled cries high in his throat, grimacing and sucking at his teeth. Watching the agony on his face, it reminded me of an actual merman transformation.

Jack paused to gather himself before he started to pull off the tape on his thighs.

“Maybe if you rip it off fast it won’t hurt as much,” I said.

His face glistened with sweat and he eyed me cruelly. “Don’t watch,” he said. “Go find my clothes. I think they threw them behind that old gas tank.”

I got up and searched, grateful for something else to do. When I came back, a T-shirt and swim trunks in my hand, there was another angry ripping sound, fast and loud. He screamed; then his back hunched before he rolled over and puked in the grass.

When there was nothing more but dry heaves, Jack sat in the dust, covering his nakedness. Filthy and bleeding, he spit and wiped his mouth. I stayed back and tossed his clothes to him. He pulled on his shorts and then curled into a fetal position, his head on his knees.

“She said she loved me,” he said, his voice low. “We had plans. I put everything on hold for her. She said she wanted a baby. We were going to be a family.”

Jack’s confidences made me feel young and naive. But he must have misunderstood her. Pavati wasn’t the mothering type. And Jack was only nineteen.

“Then it got cold. And she left,” he said.

“But she must have told you she’d come back with the spring migration.”

“That’s what got me through the winter. But all spring I watched for her. She never came back. Or, I should say, she never came back for me.

“I don’t know what I was thinking—trying to have a future with her. She betrayed me. She’s not normal.” His face clouded over, and I could almost taste the bitterness on the air. “If I can’t have her …” But he never finished the thought.

We both sat in silence for several minutes. I rocked back and forth, trying to think of something reassuring to say, but I could come up with nothing.

Jack spoke first. “Whatever. I did what I could to warn everyone. I’m done trying. The next dead body is going to be on their heads. Not mine.”

I shuddered at his complete lack of hyperbole. “That’s a little extreme, don’t you think?”

“It’s a little too late to worry about what’s extreme. This whole town can go to hell for all I care.” He pushed himself to his feet and staggered into the woods.

“Don’t you want a ride?” I called out to him.

“Just stay away from me,” he said, leaving me alone on the bloodstained ground.