Chapter Sixteen
She hadn't called my parents—but that's only because I had miraculously beeped in before she'd dialed the last two numbers.
"Cara, where are you? Are you in the hospital? Tell me which hospital you're in. Were you in a car accident? Are you still on the side of the road? Do I need to call nine-one-one? Were you abducted? Did you just now escape? Are you bleeding? Are you dressed? Did Nate ... did he survive? Let me come and get you. I'll come get you and I'll call the police."
Claudia was sobbing. I couldn't blame her, given the horrific scenarios she'd built.
"Claudia, it's okay," I assured her. I whispered so I wouldn't wake up Nate. "I'm fine. Nate's fine. There was no accident and no abduction. I'm at Nate's house and I'm fine."
"You're at his ... Tell me you didn't have sex with him. If you scared me like this to have sex with him, I'm going to slaughter you. No, first I'm going to make you tell me every single detail, then I'm going to slaughter you."
"I didn't have sex with him. Let me just come to your house. Does your mom think I'm there?"
"Depends how many Sominex she took. She'd have to believe you were in severe gastric distress and unable to come out of the bathroom for about five hours."
"How many Sominex do you think she took?"
"Double dose, with her Xanax. She believes it. Just know if you were a guy, I'd be castrating you."
"My balls are yours. I'm so sorry, Claude. I'll be right there."
I hung up. I was seriously thirsty. I found the water bottles Nate had brought up last night, but they were empty. I'd have to wait until I got to Claudia's. No way was I going to try to navigate this place.
I grabbed my bag, then looked over at Nate, still fast asleep on the bed. Even rumpled and unconscious, he was beautiful. I wondered what would have happened if I hadn't lost the ability to move last night. I wondered what would happen if I crawled in next to him right now ... woke him up by kissing him on his neck, nibbling his ear like he'd done to me...
But I knew what would happen. Claudia would hunt me down and skin me alive. I had to leave. Should I wake him up and say goodbye? Give him a kiss on the cheek? What's the protocol for ducking out on your kinda-sorta-boyfriend in the wee hours of the morning after you went catatonic on your first date? Would he be worried if he woke up and I was gone?
I looked for a pen and paper, but I'd already seen that nothing was around. How was that possible? Did he not do homework? My room was covered in notebooks, pens, and pencils.
I opened his desk—and found a pile of pictures. Nate couldn't have been more than eleven in the one on top. He wore a baseball uniform, and his short but scruffy dark hair peeked out from under the hat's brim. With his freckles and huge gap-toothed grin, he was the poster child for All-American Boy. He faced the camera, but he was looking up at a woman behind him who had to be his mom. She was blond and beautiful, with freckles that matched her son's, eyes that gleamed with life, and a huge smile. She had her arms wrapped around Nate, and her head rested on his.
If Nate was eleven here, it had to be, what, months before the accident? Weeks?
I looked again at the grinning boy in the picture, then at the tortured DangerZone sprawled out on the bed. I wondered how different he would have been if the accident hadn't happened.
My heart broke for Nate. Of course he was tortured. Of course he smoked pot all the time and lost himself in music. How else could he deal with everything? I imagined my own mom in the hospital for five years, Karl off with some girlfriend and never around. That would be different, though, wouldn't it? Would Karl even get custody of me if that happened, or would I have to live with my dad? Either way, it was too awful to even think about. I felt so bad, I almost did jump into bed next to Nate and wrap my arms around him, not to start making out again, but just so he knew I cared.
I realized I could make a huge difference in Nate's life. We were together now. I could be his rock, the one person he could open up to about everything. I couldn't change what had happened, but if I tried hard enough, maybe I could change him. Get him a little closer to the guy that kid in the picture would have been by his junior year in high school.
It felt incredibly special that, of all the girls at Chrysella, I was the one Nate had chosen to let in. I would be there for him. I would help.
My phone chirped. It was Claudia. "Even as I speak, I'm training a cobra to find you at Nate's house and kill you."
"I'm leaving now. I swear."
I took a second to send Nate a text saying I had an amazing time, I had to take off, and he should call me later. I gave his cheek the softest kiss, then tiptoed out of the room and down the stairs. I didn't need to be so quiet. As I opened the door to slip out, I heard wild beeping from the media room and Thackery's sleep-deprived croak. "Starscream will bring you down, Autobots!"
So sad. I shook my head as I left, and drove to Claudia's as fast as I could.
She was waiting for me, of course. She stood on the porch and leaned on the rail, wearing a long-sleeved, high-necked, white flowy nightgown that billowed to her feet. It was a piece I knew for a fact she had never once slept in but that made her look incredibly dramatic, especially with her long black hair hanging loosely down her back. If she could have conjured up wind and a rainstorm to amplify the suffering she'd lived through by my hand, I knew she would have.
"Claudia, I am so, so sorry. I will never freak you out like that again."
"That's all you've got?"
"Pretty much. Except for the beer, the pot, the crazy making out, the Lord of the Flies mansion, the coma-mom—"
"That's it. Inside. Immediately. I need to hear everything."
We went into the living room and flopped onto the couch, each automatically pulling a quilt onto our lap. Claudia's mom was an artist, and one of her favorite projects was creating huge super-cozy quilts. Uniquely disturbing, super-cozy quilts. Claudia's featured scenes from Hieronymus Bosch's Hell paintings; mine was a Warhol-esque four-panel image of Charles Manson.
I told Claudia everything, though my mouth was still so dry that I couldn't get anything out before going to the kitchen to grab a giant glass of water and a box of Lucky Charms that Claudia and I now munched by the handful. I was almost done with the story when we heard Claude's mom pad downstairs. Claudia stared at me with alarm.
It took me a second, but then I remembered. I was still dressed and made up like the reaper's bride, a fact Lenore—not Claudia's mom's real name; she'd adopted it because she liked the Poe reference—would absolutely feel the need to share with my parents. I quickly ducked my entire head and body under the multicolored Manson blankie and wondered how I was going to pull this off.
"Morning, girls," Lenore said. I felt her move close to me. "Poor thing. Is your stomach still bothering you, Cara?"
Claudia kicked me under the covers. I remembered I'd spent the night in "gastric distress."
"Ohhhhh," I moaned.
Claudia's barely stifled snicker told me I was nowhere near the actress she was, but Lenore seemed satisfied.
"Think we have any Pepto?" Claudia asked her. "I bet it would help her a lot."
"Hmm. Somewhere we must," Lenore said. "I'll look."
Claudia was a genius. It could take forever for Lenore to dig up the medicine. I heard Lenore head upstairs. I raced into the bathroom and scoured my face, then Claudia slipped me pajamas she'd grabbed from my duffle bag so I could change. Disaster averted. And since Mom and Karl knew I'd be with Claudia all weekend, I'd have the freedom to zip off and see Nate whenever he called.
Except he didn't call. Even though we'd spent most of the night practically locked together and I'd specifically asked him to call in my text. Did he not get my text? But even if he hadn't, wouldn't he have woken up and wondered where I was? And if he'd assumed I'd gone home, wouldn't he have wanted to make sure I was okay?
I wanted to call him, but Claudia wouldn't let me. She dragged me into her room, sat me at her desk, and placed the familiar yellow binder in front of me.
"Please open your text to page one hundred and two," she said.
"I don't know what's more disturbing: that you put together more than a hundred pages or that you actually went through and numbered all of them." I got to the page she wanted. "It's a collage of men in combat."
"Flip forward at your leisure."
I did. More collages spread across the next several pages: men playing football, basketball, hockey, soccer; men wrestling; men boxing; men lifting disturbingly heavy weights at the gym; men at Coney Island scarfing hot dogs as a crowd cheered them on.
"You may cease flipping," Claudia said. Clearly she felt her point had been made, but I had no idea what it was. My blank expression must have said that loud and clear.
"A challenge," Claudia said. "Men love a challenge. You have to play hard to get. It's the only way you'll hold on to Nate long enough to get to the next rung of the Ladder."
Or long enough to help him, I thought. I kept that plan to myself. I had a feeling Claudia wouldn't appreciate me altering her masterwork.
Claudia did have a point. If Nate didn't seem that anxious to talk, I shouldn't be either. I'd let it go. I'd wait until Monday.