Gravity

chapter 17

School felt like a crime scene. After my parents received word of Susan's disappearance, I wasn't allowed to walk to school anymore. I had a feeling that the time was coming, but getting rid of the one big freedom I treasured was still a blow.

The fact that I saw a ghost didn't surprise me as much as perhaps it should have. Instead, I felt more relief than anything. Even though it was entirely subjective, I felt like it proved that I wasn't crazy, especially after hearing about Eleanor from Corinne. I had inherited mommy's, well, grandma's little gift, after it skipped a generation. But I didn't know what to do now. I kept expecting her to pop up again, but I didn't see anything unusual, for a change. But I knew with total certainty that what I had seen was real.

Hugh dropped me off Monday morning. I had forgotten to set my alarm, and the bell was due to ring in a few minutes. I wasn't late yet but I was close.

I walked up the stone steps and opened the door to the vestibule, rubbing sleep from my eyes. When I took my hand away, I gasped.

Jenna laughing. In front of me. And next to her was Alyssa.

Their faces were printed on black and white flyers that someone had taped to the entrance doors, and Susan's face joined them. The word MISSING was typed in thick font below each photo. Shaken, I opened the door and walked inside.

Lainey and Madison sat at a metal card table, like they were at a bingo meet, in the front hall. Stacks of neat flyers were piled in front of them. Their own missing girl committee. My stomach did a somersault.

I walked over to the wall and ripped down one of the Alyssa's flyers. I couldn't bear to do it with one of Jenna's. I went up and shook the piece of paper in Lainey's face. She leaned back in her seat, her chin doubling.

"What are you doing?" I barked.

"What does it look like?" she asked, a condescending smile on her bow-shaped lips. "I assume your eyes still work. We're helping."

"If I had any inkling that you had an ounce of good intentions, I would thank you," I said. "But this is nothing more than a ploy to get more attention to yourself. You don't need it!"

"I'm just a concerned citizen, Ariel," she said, her chocolate chip eyes round and innocent. "Even if Jenna was a waste."

I had never had such a massive urge to punch someone, especially when she said, "I haven't seen you do much for her, and trying to get into Henry's pants doesn't count."

I crumpled the flyer and tossed it in Lainey's face. It bounced off her powdered forehead. Madison scoffed and leaned back in her own seat, glaring at me as I stomped away.

Despite the events at the dance, school kept going like nothing had happened. A lot of people were talking about it, and the dance in general, but the teachers seemed to stay away from the topic, even with the gaudy flyers in every hallway. I wondered if they had a meeting on how to deal with us. For damage control, counselors wandered into first period, offering "someone to talk to" in case we needed it.

In gym class, we were starting tennis. It was always the one sport that I kind of enjoyed. Claire and I used to drive up to the court at the middle school during the summer and play until the sun went down, drinking Kool-Aid mixed in water bottles. I had even taken a few lessons.

Theo and I paired up, grabbing rackets out of the metal bin.

"Why Alex?" I finally got the chance to inquire, still curious about how that pairing had been established.

"I honestly have no idea," she said, shrugging. "He's just really into me. It's flattering. And he's not as bad as he seems. After I left your house on Saturday, we talked online for an hour. He has a sweet side; it's just buried deep, deep below the douchey act and terrible jokes."

We played against the other pairings in class. It felt nice to get my body moving, almost like I was taking out my stress on every swing, successful or not. I hoped the hour would run out before we had to play Lainey.

But of course, it didn't, and we were pitted against the torture twins. We made the slow march to their net. They were stretching their shoulders out, using their rackets for resistance. Lainey's eyes held a curious fixation as she looked at me. I wondered what insults were brewing in her tiny mind.

Theo served first, tossing the ball too high in the air in her fervor. She swung clumsily and grazed the ball with the edge of her racket. Her second try whizzed right into our side of the net. This had been her experience the whole time, but this was the only match where it really counted.

Lainey and Madison tittered with laughter. I looked at Theo sympathetically. Her face was almost as red as her hair.

"You serve first, Maddie," Lainey commanded.

Madison tossed the ball up daintily and swung her racket to meet it. Theo and I scrambled to the side of the court and ended up rebounding it.

Despite the bad start, we held our own for the duration. This seemed to make Lainey angry. Not only when I returned her shots, but when she missed mine. Her eyebrows puckered, and her hair was unraveling from the tight, slick ponytail at the top of her head.

I had never seen Lainey sweat, but little beads broke out across her tanned forehead. Her mascara was running underneath her eyes, making her look worn out.

The score had been tied the last few minutes. Every time the ball whizzed over the net I prayed we could hit it back and win.

Lainey got ready to serve. Her gaze locked right on mine. Hate made her eyes hard. She tossed the yellow ball up in the air and slammed it with all her strength, nailing me directly in the nose. I felt the sickening crack resound in my skull. My body fell backwards in slow motion. I expected to hit the hard parquet wood floor, but instead I fell through, the jolt I expected never coming.

I tumbled.

And then I stopped, and everything was black and silent.

I felt warmth on my cheeks, and I could smell the ocean. I opened my eyes and saw blue sky above me.

I could feel my limbs resting on a bed of sand. On a beach. Before I had much time to contemplate this, Jenna leaned over me. The necklace with her name on it dangled from around her neck. The sun caught the tiny rhinestones and they twinkled.

And then the sky was dark, raining. Large droplets splotched my skin. I felt paralyzed, unable to move much. The smell changed to something briny and complicated.

Jenna was still leaning over me, although now the necklace was missing. Her face was as blank as it had been the first time I saw her, like she was inspecting an alien. Curly hair like brambles fell around her face. Seeing her gave me no solace. Only fear.

I noticed with a chill that her eyes were entirely black. No longer sky blue, it was as if the pupils had taken over everything else. Who else had I seen with black eyes...with I start I realized it was the little dead girl. That meant...

My vision flickered again, and we were on the beach. I felt myself able to sit up, and began to do so. But as I moved the vision again wavered. We were on the shore of a lake, the muddy bank beneath me. My fingers sank into the muck. The green water boiled.

Again to the beach. Sunlight glittered off of the lazily moving waves.

You've never been to the beach, Jenna. I thought. You always wanted to go but your parents never had the time...

I tried to speak.

But I was tumbling again. The sun became the yellow orb of the tennis ball, whirling straight for me.

White hot pain split my face in two. The blackness swept up and pulled me under. A roar of noise filled my ears like water. It hurt.

Hawthorne Gymnasium crashed back to reality. I didn't remember opening my eyes; they were just open. My entire head and face hurt, radiating back to my ears. My eyelids were puffy, so I could only see through little slits.

I found my limbs again and brought my hand to the wetness on my upper lip. Blood coated my fingers. My mouth was full of the rusty metallic taste, choking me. Not to mention I had the worst migraine ever, even worse than my unfortunate head injury at the orphanage.

I sat up. My t-shirt was dyed with blood, the entire front so red it looked fake. I silently thanked the universe for my strong stomach. Seeing that much blood come from my own body terrified me. For a split second I wondered if I was going to die, before I pulled myself together. No one could die from a tennis ball.

The gym was chaos. Kids were shouting, screaming. Everyone had stopped playing and had formed a circle around me. A forest of faces, some scared, some flushed with excitement like this was the best entertainment they'd had in weeks. The attention I hadn't wanted was all on me. I caught a few phones filming me and I cringed, not wanting to see this particular video pop up online and knowing there was no way to prevent it.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Theo's voice rang out clearly, like a very pissed off bell.

"It was an accident!" Lainey replied, the ever-present self assured quality in her voice gone.

I searched the crowd for them, and found them by the red patch of Theo's hair. The people around them were backing away. Theo stood with her fists clenched, rising on her toes as if to unconsciously appear taller. Lainey held her ground, but she looked like she was shaking.

I heard Coach Fletcher's voice in the back of the crowd.

"Get out of my way!" she shouted.

I tried to stand, but I was still disoriented, not only from the pain and the shock but from the vision of my absent friend that I had just been wrenched from. Reality didn't feel real or right. It felt more like watching a badly filmed movie.

Theo stepped up so that she was now nose to nose with Lainey. "You can't get away with this," she said, putting both small hands on Lainey's shoulders and pushing her.

Lainey stumbled a fraction of an inch. A switch flicked on inside her.

"Get your grimy hands off of me!" she squealed. She pushed back with her palms flat, sending Theo staggering into some onlookers. My trauma was all but forgotten, and they were the new sideshow. The paparazzi of camera phones turned their way.

Lainey hauled her fist back in a decidedly unladylike gesture to punch Theo. Before I could yell, Coach Fletcher appeared, with an unfamiliar woman in a white uniform at her side. She caught Lainey's punching arm by the dainty wrist.

"Enough!" she growled. "Office. Both of you. Now!"

"But..." Lainey spluttered, her face flushed.

"Not fair!" Theo said.

"Go. Now!" Coach repeated, pointing to the open gym doors. The fact that everybody had lost the ability to use complete sentences tickled me. Maybe due to massive blood loss. I snorted a laugh and immediately regretted it as blood sprayed out of my nose.

Lainey screamed in frustration, clenching her fists so hard her manicured nails must have cut her palms. She stormed off, messy ponytail swishing behind her. Madison followed, meekly, even though I hadn't seen her involved in anything.

"You too," Coach said to Theo.

"But she's my friend," Theo objected.

"I'll tend to her." Her statement was final.

Theo looked at me, frowning. She looked caught between crying and rage. I attempted a little wave and fell back on my elbows. For a moment she looked as though she would shirk Coach's orders. Then she was gone, too.

A moment later Coach and the other woman kneeled down next to me. "How are you feeling?" I was surprised by how kind Coach sounded. People change when you're wounded. She held up starched white towels to my still-bleeding nose.

"Lightheaded," I said, my voice crackling.

"I brought the school nurse," she said, and it almost sounded like an apology.

"Lie down," the nurse said, rolling up a towel and placing it on the floor. She guided me back down, putting my head on it. She was pretty and young-looking, with coffee colored skin and kind eyes. Sparkly green baubles dangled in her ears. "You look like you were in a prize fight," she said, smirking at me.

"The nose is bad enough, but she hit the back of her head pretty hard when she went down," Coach said to her as if I wasn't there. She seemed scared. The nurse nodded, her face professionally emotionless. She pulled out a stethoscope and held the metal end to my chest.

"What about us?" A boy in basketball shorts whined. Now that the entertainment was gone, the masses were getting restless.

"You're dismissed, go change," Coach said distractedly, as she cracked an ice pack and placed it gingerly on my nose. The gym emptied out quickly, everyone chatting loudly. In that moment, I would have given anything to know what they were saying. The nurse continued checking my vitals.

"I'm Nurse Callie, by the way," she said. "I'm going to take you to the office. It's really important that you see a doctor, okay? So either we call your parents, or we call an ambulance if they're working and can't come pick you up."

"Call Hugh...my dad, he can come. He'll...be able..." The lightheadedness was getting worse even on the floor, and the gym was twirling gently like a ferris wheel.

"Okay. Does the office have his number?" She asked, maintaining eye contact with me. I nodded. She checked my pupils with her pen flashlight.

"Can you stand?" she asked finally.

"I don't know, but I can try."

They each took hold of one of my arms, and I pushed my body up. I was unsteady on my feet, but I figured I could make it out to the office. It wasn't very far from the gym through the commons.

"Lean on me, we can make it," Nurse Callie said resolutely.

"Can I get a new shirt? This one is gross," I said. I didn't even want to know what my face looked like. From the feel of it, Quasimodo would be about right.

Nurse Callie chucked. "A little blood goes a long way. I'm sure we have a few extras lying around. Never know when someone is going to throw up."

I reflexively wrinkled my nose at the image, and winced at the sharp pain that followed.

"You okay?" she asked. We were finally out of the gym. We passed by the trophy case that took up half of the opposite wall.

"Can we just rest here for a moment?" I asked hoarsely. The ferris wheel was turned up to high and nausea was overtaking me. Although I hadn't had lunch, I didn't want to revisit breakfast.

"Of course," she said, helping me lean up against the trophy case.

"McPherson would hate me even touching this...with my unworthy fingers..." I said, shutting my eyes and laughing a little.

To my surprise, I heard Nurse Callie laugh back. "What he doesn't know won't hurt him."

After a moment we began again, me still leaning on her for support. We went out into the commons, where everyone who had been dismissed was sitting around, enjoying their free time. I groaned. Several of them openly gaped at me.

"Just ignore them," Nurse Callie whispered in my ear. I tried to focus on my steps on the floor. I had never realized just how huge the commons was. We finally navigated out, and down the long, empty hall to the front of the school. When we arrived at the office, the bell rang for the end of class.

"Good timing," Callie said.

She held the door to the office open and ushered me in. The door shut with a shushing sound, shutting us off. The secretary behind the desk gasped beneath her blonde, poodle-permed hairdo, nearly dropping the phone in her hand.

"What happened to you?" she asked. "Were you in a fight?"

"Sports accident," Callie said, picking up a clipboard off of the counter and scribbling on it. "Got it covered."

She led me back down the hall and into a little closet of a room with a cot. Fluffy white clouds were sponged on the baby blue walls. My nausea rolled into my throat again. The starchy cot sagged as I sat down.

"Just lie down here and I'll call your dad, okay?" She said with her smile. I wondered how old she was; she couldn't have been more than twenty-five. "And I'll get you some less gruesome clothing."

She returned a second later with an oversized t-shirt with Hawthorne's mascot on it, the Hawthorne Hellcat. It had always looked like a tiger with horns pasted on the head to me.

"Thank you," I said, realizing I hadn't before. She just nodded and shut the door for my privacy.

I peeled off the bloody t-shirt and my bra, for once thankful I didn't really need it. Those went into the biohazard bag Callie had provided and into the trash.

I grabbed some paper towels from the dispenser on the wall and wet them in the little sink that stood in the corner. For the first time I glimpsed myself in the mirror. As I wiped blood off of my chest, I examined my face. Blood choked my nostrils and ran down to my chin. The bridge of my nose and my cheeks were puffy and purple. All and all it wasn't as bad as I expected beneath the gruesomeness, but I still looked like crap. I had no idea how someone could cause that much damage with a tennis ball, and the hatred that had to fuel that made me shudder.

Now that I no longer looked like a murder victim, I sat down on the cot, leaning my head back against the wall. My legs wouldn't stop jiggling. Hugh would be so worried, not to mention Claire...I hoped he wouldn't tell her until she got out of work, knowing that was futile.

I looked around the room for distraction. Flyers addressing good health habits filled a plastic rack on the wall. The whole room smelled of illness, with hints of cough syrup and vapor rub.

I sat up when I recognized Theo's voice. It was coming from out in the hallway.

I stood up on still-weak legs and crept over to the door. Voices filtered through, one of them Theo's and the other Lainey's. I opened the door carefully to avoid making noise.

"I already told you a million times, it was an accident," Lainey said. In the minutes since she had left the gym she must have composed herself, because her voice was as steady as ever.

They were sitting a few doors down the hallway in McPherson's office. The door was cracked. I couldn't see them but I could hear them clearly.

"You aimed for her face, Lainey," Theo said. I imagined her pushing up her glasses. I had never heard her so mad, despite the few demonstrations of her anger streak I had witnessed.

"What motive would she have to hurt Ms. Donovan?" McPherson interjected, his tone maddeningly disinterested. For a split second, I remembered the strange odor in his shed, the impersonal way his house was decorated.

"Are you kidding me?" Theo asked. "Do you pay any attention?"

"I am your principal, Ms. Weaver, I would care for you to show me some respect." he said coldly.

"Why, when you don't respect any of us whose parents aren't rich?" Theo said, baiting him.

C'mon, Theo, don't get in trouble, I silently begged. What I wouldn't give for telepathy.

And I knew why Lainey had attacked me. Henry. It was because I went to the dance with Henry, who she had branded on day one as hers. Whether he agreed with that or not. There was every possibility she had started that rumor about them dating, as well.

"That's enough," McPherson growled.

"Yeah, I mean, I was hoping that Ariel and I could be friends," Lainey purred. "But it's like they won't accept me into their little club." Now she was just pushing buttons.

"Don't exaggerate," McPherson said to her. "We need to talk about a fair punishment."

"Punishment?" Lainey sputtered.

"You were fighting in class. We have a no tolerance policy for fighting. I think that three lunch detentions, for both of you, is an extremely fair and mild discipline..."

"What?" Theo asked. "What about punishing her for the fact that she broke my friend's face?"

In my lightheadedness that made me giggle again. I noticed warm wetness seeping out of my nose. More bleeding. I rushed over and grabbed some paper towels. I walked too fast and swayed on my feet, so I had to sit on the cot. Unfortunately I missed the last few minutes of the discipline meeting, and Theo and Lainey were in the hall.

They must have stopped right outside the sick bay door.

"How would you like it if Ariel's family sued the crap out of you?" Theo asked bitterly.

"I'd like to see them try," Lainey snorted, in the same tone of voice that she probably used to talk about the weather. "My father's lawyer has never lost a case, and we'd bankrupt her family with legal fees before it was over. But give her my condolences for her nose, anyway. My uncle's a plastic surgeon; I should give her his card."

"What is wrong with you? Are you even human?" Theo asked incredulously, speaking my feelings out loud.

Lainey dropped her voice low. "Maybe she shouldn't have gone after what was mine."

I heard hear footsteps going down the hall. When I was sure she was gone, I cracked the door open. Theo was still standing in the hall, frozen, the detention slip in her hand.

"Well, didn't that just suck?" I said. Theo turned unfocused eyes to me. Without a word she came over and hugged me tightly. She pulled back and studied my face, wincing. Okay, maybe it was a little bad.

Pink glitter was smudged all over her cheeks and forehead, and her eyes were bright red from crying.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"For what?" I asked.

"That all of this happened."

"Uh, it's not your fault," I said, leaning against the door.

"Are you okay? It looks terrible." She tilted her head to inspect my wound from a different angle.

"Well, it hurts, yeah."

"It made a really nasty sound when you hit the floor," she said, shaking her head. "That was really twisted."

"That's Lainey for you."

"He didn't even punish her for hitting you," Theo said, jerking her thumb in the direction of McPherson's office. "He said it was an unfortunate accident. He just gave us detention for fighting."

"I heard," I sighed. "We just can't win."

"Because everyone puts up with it," Theo reasoned. Her anger was coming back. I could tell she had quite the temper buried beneath the colorful cuteness.

"Can I remind you not to piss Lainey off?" I said gently. "Remember, more money, more connections, way more power than we lowly worker ants?"

She pounded her fist against the wall. "That's the same crap she pulled when she sprained my ankle."

"What?" I asked, frowning.

"She knocked me down at the mall, and my ankle got twisted." Her eyes flickered to one of the many pictures of missing girls that were in the hallway. "And I wasn't going to say this, but...I'm pretty sure that she was there, too. I recognized her when the posters went up."

I glanced at the picture. She was talking about Jenna.

"But that was back in May, so I didn't think it was important," she continued.

A bell rang, the perfect excuse for her to bolt.

"I've got to go," Theo said, scampering away before I had a chance to digest what she was saying.

"Theo?" I called, but she just ignored me.