Chapter Nine
ALICE JAMMED ON THE BRAKES, FLUNG OPEN HER DOOR, AND leaped out of the Pea Pod, landing smack in the middle of a pricker bush. Compared to the heart attack she’d been having for the past ten minutes, a few minor scrapes were nothing. Her brain screamed directions at her body like it was shouting through a megaphone: Keep moving forward. Get away from the archangel. There’s nothing to see here, people. Just go! Go! Go!
How had she let this happen? How had she ended up in Lord Knows Where, West Virginia, with a man who at best was a known criminal, and at worst—well, she didn’t want to go there.
She took off down the hill after Summer, Tiernan, Toad, and Phred—all of whom had bolted from the van before it was even in park. Gee, guys, thanks for waiting up. But Alice was too scared to bother staying mad. She just wanted to get to the swimming hole. Alive.
“It’s only me,” Alice whispered, the sound of her footsteps joining Summer’s and Tiernan’s in the darkness. She could just make out Toad’s and Phred’s bodies running away in the shadows ahead.
“Hurry up,” Summer hissed.
“No need to rush!” Michael’s voice made Alice jump. “That swimming hole ain’t goin’ nowhere.” From the sound of it, Michael wasn’t right behind them, but he was getting close.
“We’ll meet you there!” Summer called back. She sounded polite, even cheerful. It was a strange gift she had—making everything seem fine no matter how un-fine things actually were.
Without a word, all three of them quickened their stride, entering a dark, thickly wooded area where the treetops blocked all the moonlight.
“Shoot!” Alice cried out, stumbling over something on the trail—a rock or a root. Prince of Light. What they needed was a Prince of Flashlight. That, and an exit strategy.
“Here’s my plan,” she whispered. “I say we go down to the swimming hole, grab Toad and Phred, then, when Michael’s not looking, the five of us hop in the Pea Pod and cruise on out of here.”
“I’m down with that,” Tiernan agreed.
Summer was about to answer when Michael’s voice leaped out of the darkness. “Last one in’s a rotten egg!”
Alice didn’t turn to look, but she could feel Michael gaining on them—his towering frame looming behind her, those stringy, muscular arms of his swinging apelike at his side. The guy gave off so much crazy energy, Alice wouldn’t be surprised to hear a sizzle when he touched the water.
“Darn it.” Tiernan slowed her pace as she spoke. “We forgot our bathing suits. We’re just gonna run back and get—”
But there was no point in finishing her sentence. The swimming hole emerged out of the darkness like a silvery oasis. And from the looks of things, the only suit you needed to wear here was the one you’d been born in.
“Water’s nice and warm tonight,” a completely nude man called out from a rock in the middle of the pond. He was in his sixties, white hair, full white beard, and a twinkle in his eye. It was Naked Santa Claus, and his stocking was most definitely hung. Well, that just ruined Christmas forever, Alice thought to herself as Naked Santa did a swan dive into the water.
Alice looked at Tiernan and Summer. Must flee now, she said telepathically. She was pretty sure they’d understood her message but she kept her eyes on theirs, the one view in the entire place guaranteed to be free of saggy man butt.
Michael didn’t seem to notice or care that it appeared to be Senior’s Day at the swimming hole, happily undressing not two feet from them, without even the slightest bit of self-consciousness.
Alice pretended to pick at a hangnail as she listened to the clink of his belt buckle, then his jeans crumpling to the grass. She didn’t dare look up again until she heard the sloshing noise of Michael’s legs hitting the water.
“Water’s nice and warm, ladies,” Michael called out when he was up to his knees (it was just a quick peek, but the guy was definitely no Santa). Then he was gone.
“Let’s get out of here,” Summer whispered, turning back toward the van.
“Wait.” Alice pulled Summer’s arm. “What about Phred and Toad?”
“They’re way over there.” Tiernan pointed to the opposite side of the pond. “By the time we go get them, Michael could come back.”
Summer nodded. “I say we bolt without them. They’re big boys.”
“And personally”—Tiernan leveled Alice with a look—“I think you can do better.”
“What are you talking about?” Alice asked. “Phred and I are only friends, and we—”
Alice was about to list the many reasons why saving Toad and Phred was the right thing to do (none of which had anything to do with the fact that Phred had been hanging all over her) when Michael emerged from underwater, howling like a coyote and pounding his chest. That was all the convincing it took for her to turn tail and run—across the wet spongy grass, through the low brush, then back inside the dark cover of the woods. Man, was she out of shape. But she kept on running, even as Summer and Tiernan overtook her, trying her best to ignore the burning feeling in her hamstrings and focus on the noise of her shoes against the slippery gravel, the rhythm of her own labored breath, the blood whooshing through her veins. And then the one sound she was hoping never to hear again.
“Wait up!” Michael called out. Or was she imagining it? There was no way Alice could have heard him from all the way back at the water. But that would mean—could it even be possible?—that Michael the Archangel was chasing them through the woods. Naked?
Alice’s heart pounded in her chest, in her throat. Don’t turn around. You’re just imagining it. Why were Summer and Tiernan so much faster than she was? She did power yoga three times a week. Okay, maybe two. Don’t think about that. Just concentrate on running. Alice reached into her pocket, digging her keys into the palm of her hand.
The Pea Pod was finally in sight. Alice’s lungs were on fire, her eyes blurry with sweat. They were so close she could almost touch it.
Summer got there first, opening the back door and flinging herself inside in one seamless motion. Tiernan was right behind her. Alice ran around the front of the Pea Pod—straight through the pricker bush, again, duh—scrambling in through the driver’s side door. She was breathing too hard to speak.
“Headlights!” Summer shouted as Alice threw the Pea Pod in reverse.
When she turned on the lights, Alice half expected to see Michael in front of them, wild-eyed and naked and holding a bloody butcher knife. But the woods were empty and still. She could kill MJ for dragging her to all those stupid horror flicks. Not that she ever watched the really scary parts. Now that she was actually living a horror movie, she still wanted to hide behind her hands.
It was hard to steer in the darkness with only the dim rear lights, but backing out was definitely faster than making a twelve-point turn. She could only imagine what her father would say if he saw the Pea Pod doing thirty, backward, up the bumpy dirt road, but the wider the distance grew between the van and Michael, the safer Alice felt. Finally, at a bend in the road, she stopped to shift it into drive.
Up until this moment, Alice’s sole mission had been getting them away from the swimming hole. Now they were finally away. The only question was—where?
“We came in on that road, didn’t we?” Alice pointed left.
“I don’t remember taking a turn there,” Summer sounded uncertain.
“Don’t ask me.” Tiernan shrugged. “I couldn’t see crap.”
Nothing looked familiar, yet everything looked the same.
“Turn on Coach Quigley!” Alice commanded, taking the left.
Tiernan, the de facto copilot, sprang into action. “Still no signal,” she said, holding the GPS up to the windshield.
“Damn it.” Alice thought she knew where she was going. But the road she’d chosen quickly dwindled away into nothing more than a hiking trail. She backed out, continuing in the opposite direction.
“Aren’t you supposed to just stop?” Summer asked. “If you’re . . . you know, lost?” There it was. She’d gone and said the L word.
They’d been driving for at least ten minutes. They had to be close to the main road by now, didn’t they? Up ahead, Alice saw another crossroad and she took it. She was just starting to get a good feeling that this way their way out, when she saw the enormous pine tree lying across the road and jammed on the brakes.
“Why me?” Alice yelled, lifting her hands to the sky. Just then, the sky answered back as a curtain of rain pelted the Pea Pod’s roof like an audience bursting into sudden applause. It was a summertime downpour. Point one for Mother Nature.
Alice put the van into park. The rain was coming down so heavily, the droplets on the windshield had merged into a single, thick sheet of water.
“Why aren’t we moving?” Summer asked.
Um, maybe because I can’t see anything, Alice wanted to say. Instead, she took a long deep breath, determined not to let stress get the better of her. “I think it’s probably safer to wait out the storm here.”
Summer and Tiernan were quiet as they took this in, the rain drumming against the rooftop. All Alice wanted was one trouble-free minute in this godforsaken day. Just one tiny moment where they could all get along.
“We could play Scrabble!” Tiernan said, her eyes all lit up. She sounded more enthusiastic than anyone should ever sound about a board game. And Alice liked board games. But considering that they’d just cheated death at the hands of a delusional maniac, her next thought hadn’t necessarily been Q words that didn’t require the letter U.
“Come on,” Tiernan whined. “It’ll be a good distraction.”
“Yeah, the last distraction you had for us turned out great.” Summer glared.
Alice bit her lip. She needed to find something they could all agree on, something with the potential to be a bonding experience (and that didn’t involve burying live animals or fleeing through the woods from a deranged maniac).
“How was I supposed to know he was crazy?” Tiernan asked as a flash of lightning illuminated them all in white.
Summer just shook her head, the din of rolling thunder filling their silence.
In the two short days between buying the Level3 tickets and now, Alice had done nothing but prepare for this trip. She’d planned their route, precalculated the cost of gas, and cross-referenced weather reports from three different websites. Aside from occasional late-night thunderstorms north of the Alleghenies (cue thunder now), their trip was supposed to be sunny and clear. But the meteorologists gave no forecast for the storm brewing inside the Pea Pod.
And then it came to her. “I have something we can do,” Alice said, trying to make it sound like a casual suggestion as opposed to a desperate plea. “A distraction,” she added, giving Tiernan a nod. “What would you guys think about making a collage?”
“Hmm.” Summer smiled. “The old standby.”
Tiernan stood up to review their old masterpieces. “Sure. Let’s do it.”
Alice hadn’t realized how tense her shoulders were until she felt them relax away from her ears back to their usual position. A collage. They’d always worked so well together when they were making collages, each of them so essential to the process that Alice wasn’t sure if she’d even know how to make one if she had to do it alone.
Tiernan usually came up with the concept. Alice was the detail person—selecting all the right pictures, then meticulously cutting them out. Summer handled the assembly, arranging and rearranging the pieces to make sure they all came together in the most artistic way possible.
“What about a map?” Tiernan asked, looking directly at Alice. “I know you’ve got some kind of plan about where we can and can’t stop on our way to Austin. But maybe, between the three of us, we could come up with something more . . . more . . .”
“Democratic?” Summer offered.
Tiernan just smiled.
It was interesting, Alice noted, how Tiernan and Summer always got along best when they were trying to overthrow one of her own well-laid plans. Oh, well. At least when those two were in cahoots against her, it meant they were getting along. And Alice was more than happy to volunteer herself as the sacrificial lamb in exchange for a little peace and quiet.
“What I was thinking was”—Tiernan looked inspired—“that maybe the three of us could decide where to stop between here and Texas based on places that have to do with Level3. Like the stopping points on our map could come from things mentioned in Level3 songs, you know?”
“I have one!” Summer said enthusiastically. “You know the song ‘Rock Me To and Fro’?”
Alice nodded.
“Well, we could make a collage for that and put it in Little Rock, Arkansas. Get it? ‘Rock Me,’ Little Rock?”
“Exactly.” Tiernan had a satisfied look on her face. “That’s just what I’m talking about.”
Alice sighed. She was resistant to change by nature, not to mention the fact that she’d spent hours planning their route. But she could already see that Summer’s and Tiernan’s wheels were turning, and once those two got brainstorming, it was safer to just move aside and let their creative genius flow. Whether or not she actually adhered to the route on this new collage map was a different story. That is, if they ever made it out of the woods.
“Well, did anyone bring glue or scissors?” Summer asked.
Had the girl not been her best friend for five years?
“Don’t let the shovel incident besmirch my good reputation,” Alice joked, pulling a small plastic bin marked “Craft Supplies” out from under the sink. Just one of the many boxes she’d started to organize for Brown. Knock on wood.
“The only thing is . . .” Tiernan carefully peeled an old collage off the wall. “We’re gonna need to cut up these old collages to make the new one.”
“But we put so much work into those,” Alice cried. She knew she was probably being overly sentimental, but could she help it if she hated to throw things away? Whenever MJ looked inside Alice’s closet, she’d pretend she was making an emergency phone call to the producers of the TV show Hoarders.
“Think of it as a tribute to the past,” Tiernan said. “It’s not like we’re getting rid of the old collages. We’re just repurposing them. Like an extended remix.”
Alice shot her a skeptical look. It was a well-known fact that Tiernan got off on destroying things.
“I say out with the old, in with the new,” Summer said. She held a heart-shaped collage of Travis in her hands, circa fifth grade.
“Okay, I guess.” Alice shrugged. She had to admit a collage map was a pretty cool idea. And why hang on to faded memories when making a new collage would give them new ones?
By the time they’d finished, the storm had passed. On the surface, their new collage looked like a map, only without the benefit of being geographically correct or even remotely to scale. But what it lacked in accuracy, it made up for in heart. Most of the stopping points were selected at random, like the snow-cone collage (inspired by the song “Snow Cone”) Tiernan had stuck in the center of Kentucky, implying they’d stop to get snow cones sometime on their way through the state. But where the lyrics or a song title allowed, their stopping points were location specific, like the T-Rex-shaped collage Alice had placed in Nashville, Tennessee, (based on the song “Dinosaur”). “Jeff Goldblum may have died in Jurassic Park, but I swear that I saw him in Nashville.”
“You guys just want to sleep here for the night?” Alice asked.
“You don’t think he might be out there lurking, do you?” Summer nodded toward the window.
No one had mentioned Michael’s name for hours, but Alice had locked all the doors and closed the curtains just in case.
“I don’t think we should even start thinking about that,” Alice said. As time passed, the less anxious she felt about Michael attacking them and the more guilty she felt for abandoning Toad and Phred.
“What do you think happened to Toad and Phred?” Alice asked.
“Maybe they hitched a ride back on Santa’s sleigh,” Tiernan said. “Did you guys see that dude?”
“In way too much detail.” Summer yawned.
“Who knew Santa was packing that kind of heat?” Tiernan said with a laugh.
Clearly, Summer and Tiernan weren’t wasting their time worrying about Toad and Phred, so why should she? Sure, Alice liked Phred’s attention, but she’d only known him a couple of hours. Sometimes she felt like she spent so much time concerned with everyone else’s happiness, she ended up sabotaging her own.
“I vote we stay here,” Tiernan offered. “Not that you guys want to listen to any more of my suggestions.”
“You can say that again.” Alice smiled. She could tell Tiernan felt bad about the Michael incident. But poking fun at herself was about the closest Tiernan ever got to an apology.
“Fine by me.” Summer nodded. “But first, we make a rule.” She stuck out her hand like she was getting ready to do a soccer cheer. “No more strangers in the van.”
“No strangers in the van.” Alice placed a hand on Summer’s.
Tiernan slapped her hand on top. “Ditto.”
It took Alice a long time to fall asleep that night, but it wasn’t from fear of Michael the Archangel. This was a different kind of nervousness keeping her awake, making her all too aware of the high-pitched whistling sound coming from her left nostril, the creak of the bed every time she shifted positions.
It should have felt familiar, sleeping in the Pea Pod next to Tiernan, with Summer up on the top bunk in her usual spot. But for some reason the Pea Pod never felt so small as it did right now.
Had Alice made a mistake coming on this trip with them? After all, knowing who someone was was different than knowing who they are. And what had she expected? That things would be the same as they were four years ago?
When Alice finally drifted off, she was thinking about the rule they’d all agreed to, wondering if “no strangers in the van” was meant only for outsiders, or if it also applied to the people inside.
“BURIED TREASURE”
IT WAS YOUR IDEA
TO GO INTO THE DIAMOND MINE
SO I FOLLOWED YOU
DEEP INSIDE THE EARTH.
WE WERE LOOKING FOR TREASURE
BUT ALL WE FOUND WAS COAL
SO I PUT SOME IN YOUR POCKET
AND YOU CRIED.
AND I SAID, DON’T CRY, DON’T CRY
JUST GIVE IT TIME
AND THEY WILL BE DIAMONDS
IN TIME, THEY WILL SHINE.
—from Level3’s self-titled first CD