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  Chapter

  VII

  “Jason,” my father said reprovingly. “I thought you knew better than to go to a party on a school night and to drink.”

  I averted my gaze and stared at the run-of-the-mill whitewashed walls. My father had so much authority that it automatically made you feel bad when he spoke. The thing is my father is a cop and not just any cop, but a sex crime cop which means the assertion of his tone made you want to confess even if you did nothing wrong. It seemed as if my family was quite fond of law enforcement.

  I half shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m tired of everything seeming so perfect.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You wanted her to get hurt?”

  “No,” I clarified quickly. “You guys are always telling us what’s right and what’s wrong. What if your perception of wrong is my perception of right? I’ve decided that I’m going to find out for myself what’s good and what isn’t and you can’t stop me.”

  My father narrowed his eyes at me as if he thought I was joking. “Listen here, kid, I can still arrest you, like it or not.”

  It was even more embarrassing when I heard a new voice laugh uproariously. “Wow, that was hilarious!”

  I turned slowly just to make my eyes and face grow steely. “What’re you doing here?” She always seemed to show up at the wrong time; in fact, she was showing up too much for my liking.

  “Hey, don’t be like that,” my father reproved, turning off his authoritative voice and on his charm. He loved it when people found him funny because we at home never did.

  “You wouldn’t be saying that if you knew who she really was,” I muttered under my breath.

  Avery looked at me with an eyebrow raised, perhaps challenging me to say something else or to repeat louder. Maybe I should’ve been nervous knowing what this girl was capable of but I couldn’t be, she looked so small and innocent as if she couldn’t harm a fly. Something was wrong here.

  I met her challenging gaze with a defiant look; I wasn’t going to let her get under my skin.

  “Avery, this is Detective Forbes, my father,” I said brightly, trying to look unaffected.

  For a brief moment, I saw a daunted look cross her features before she quickly masked it with a flippant guise. “Nice to meet you,” she said, extending her hand for him to shake. “I’m your son’s worst nightmare.”

  I choked in surprise while my father laughed loudly, no doubt disturbing every conscious patient in the hospital. “I like your sense of humor,” he commented, slapping her on the back. I grinned a little at the obvious discomfort slipping onto her face.

  “If you don’t mind,” a very stern voice called, soundly oddly near to Mr. Myers’, “we’d like some peace and quiet.”

  My father, probably all mellowed out by Avery, rolled his eyes and led us down the hallway. I wasn’t quite sure I was willing to leave yet; especially since it was probably my fault Gina was here—me and my uncontrollable male hormones.

  “I’m not sure I want to leave Gina,” I said after a while, still not slowing down.

  My father pursed his lips as if he knew better. “If you stayed there for another moment, I’m sure they’d start shooting lasers out of their eyes at you. And besides, I don’t think your friend here likes the smell of death very much.”

  If I was driving, I’d have screeched to a halt but I’m sure you can imagine just how fast I slowed down. “What?”

  “Learn to take a joke kid,” he said, slapping me on the back forcibly, making me cough. “You should be glad that this Avery here is willing to be your worst nightmare."

  I fell back a little to get a good look at Avery. I could tell she found this amusing. I hadn’t noticed before but she had her hair pulled back in a severe pony-tail. It looked so tightly drawn that I wondered why her eyebrows were still in place. If I’d ever seen a masochist…

  The cold air of midnight hit us as we exited the sliding doors of the hospital. I was lagging behind a bit until my father called out a loud greeting to a friend and Avery fell back lamely as well. I took it as a cue to grab her wrist and examine it. Like the rest of her skin, her wrist was completely smooth, no marks or scars from chickenpox or something as normal as that.

  “What are you doing?” she hissed, yanking her hand from my grasp. “I don’t care if your father is a cop or not I can still break your nose.”

  I raised an eyebrow at her. “You wish.” I looked at her small frame and wondered how she could’ve killed someone; it was impossible to imagine.

  I knew what move she was going to make before she made it. Her right fist moved at an immaculate speed and if I hadn’t fought before she probably would’ve hit me. My hand closed around her fist a few centimeters from my face. I watched as her mouth fell open in surprise, calculating her next move.

  “You’ve got to be—” I started but stopped abruptly as her left foot attempted to kick me. The second time I blocked was pure luck but she still gaped at me in irritated silence. I held her foot at the ankle and met her gaze

  I smirked. “Due to your precarious position, I suggest you listen to what I have to say.”

  Avery raised a brow at me, she was obviously not afraid of me but I could tell she was interested. “Go ahead.”

  “Tell me; were you serious at the party?” I asked quite earnest. She just stared at me innocently. “Aren’t you going to answer?”

  Avery shrugged. “You said you were going to talk not me.”

  I hiked her foot further up my arm and a look of fear seeped into her expression. “Willing to reconsider?” I asked, acutely aware of how close her face was but I tried to ignore it, not with Gina a few floors away. I needed answers.

  “Fine,” she huffed, averting her gaze. “I was being serious; you can run away now if you’d like,” she said, trailing off into a whisper.

  I sighed and let her foot fall to the ground. I couldn’t keep up with faux anger while I was trying to figure out what my jumbled thoughts were. I pulled her into a hug despite the small warning my brain was emitting.

  An awkward sound of a throat clearing met my ear and I reluctantly released the grip I had around her shoulder. Instead of letting her go completely, I let my arm remain around her shoulder. My father regarded us with raised eyebrows but said nothing, I was glad.

  Avery noticed I was leading her to my father’s excessively pristine black van and she stopped abruptly despite my attempts to move her.

  “That’s fine, I can find my way home,” she said quietly, removing my arm from her shoulder but holding it.

  My father tried his best to ignore our hands but I could see how aware he was of it. “No can do. I know how many perpetrators are out there. I’m not letting you go home alone.”

  “It’s okay—”

  “I won’t take no for an answer,” he said, turning and heading back to the car.

  She glared at me before continuing to the car. “Now I see where you get it from.”

  I didn’t bother to ask what she meant by that, I was just glad my father was so assertive and actually got to take her home.

  Instead of sitting in the back with Avery and making my father more suspicious, I climbed into the front with him. There was a tense silence as my father left the almost desolate parking lot and onto the dark street.

  “So Avery, where are you headed?”

  The car was engulfed with silence while we crept along uncharacteristically slow. There was a small mumbling from the backseat and my father and I looked around to make sense of what she was saying.

  She didn’t even look up at us; instead, she chose to stare at the door she was leaning against. “Aspiration Park,” she said quickly and quietly.

  Immediately I realized a change in my father’s whole demeanor, he sat up straighter in his seat and his hands were wound tight around the steering wheel. Aspiration Park, despite its name, was an extremely ruthless area. My father had many incidents with the criminals in that area and they didn’t like him much. Actually, that
was an understatement really; they’d send death threats to him.

  I stared out the window thoughtfully, I wasn’t judging Avery in any way but I had to wonder what her life there was like. Normally new residents weren’t welcomed much in those areas and more so if you possessed any vulnerability.

  The dark streets approaching us looked ominous, it seemed as if instead of the car moving because my father was driving, it was moving because the road was pulling us into deeper trouble. Typically, the streetlights flickered and buzzed noisily leaving an eerie feeling in the air. Avery told my father exactly where she was headed and he complied, the remnants of his jolly mood dissipating.

  We soon pulled up to the address and I regarded the house warily. To say it was dilapidated was an extreme understatement. Vines swung up the sides of the house gently caressing the off-white and stripping paint. The house didn’t even look like they had electricity.

  “Uh, Avery,” I called, stopping her from exiting the car completely. “Who do you live with?”

  “My sister,” she said and got out, coming around to the passenger side of the car. “Why?”

  “I was just wondering,” I muttered, looking past her and to the house, noticing a light flicker on suddenly inside. “So she’s there now?”

  Avery shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not, who knows? One of her latest conquests may be there or perhaps three,” she mumbled, rubbing her hands to fight the cold.

  I stared at her innocent-looking features and tried to decipher if she was being treated well. A few wisps of hair swirled around her face and she slapped them roughly, I measured the action with my eyebrows raised.

  “Well, goodbye. Thanks for the ride Mr. Forbes,” she said before heading up the short concrete path.

  We waited until she was inside before pulling away. As we pulled away though I heard a loud commotion for a few moments before it died down as if nothing had happened.

  The car was the only sound to be heard in the strangely silent community, there was only a brief silence in the vehicle before my father broke it with a heavy sigh.

  “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into,” he said, not taking his eyes off the dark roadway.

  My brows furrowed. “What are you talking about?”

  The radio crackled for a moment before dying down. “Your girlfriend is in the hospital…don’t do it.”

  I clenched my fists. “I’m not doing anything. Avery’s just my friend. I haven’t even known the girl for a full week.”

  “I’ve seen how you act around her. Don’t deny it and worst, don’t cheat,” he said grimly.

  I was starting to get angry—unnecessarily so. “I’m not going to cheat. I hardly know the girl.”

  “That’s true, for all we know she may be a murderer on the loose.”

  I immediately shut up; my father was smarter than he gave himself credit for.

  Chapter

  VIII

  Today could’ve officially been classified as the worst day of the term; nothing was going the way I wanted it to. First off on the ‘I hate Jason’ list was the fact that my alarm somehow chose to disarm itself, making me half an hour late. Another frustrating fact was that my head decided to throb as soon as the sunlight hit my eyes. It was beyond belief that I had the effects of a hangover without even drinking a lot.

  When I got to school I was already too late for the first session and a teacher, who I was convinced hated my guts so much that she looked for every opportunity to punish me, gave me a detention when she saw me in the hallway for being late. I didn’t even argue with her; I just had one thing in mind—seeing Avery.

  Chemistry class was situated at the extreme back of the school and getting there was an absolute hassle. I wove in and out of classrooms, desperate for a short cut. Nothing was going my way though and by the time I got to the room I was sweaty and out of breath. As soon as I entered the room and lifted my shirt to wipe my drippy forehead – which in retrospect probably wasn’t a good idea – the girls cheered and made many comments.

  As a normal reaction my head snapped over to where Avery and I share a desk but she wasn’t there, all I saw was a couple of papers bearing the assignment. I couldn’t help the small sense of disappointment that encompassed me.

  “Mr. Forbes, if you’re quite done wooing the girls in this class, you may sit,” Mr. Pierce said with a smirk.

  I thawed a bit and nodded absently at him. I was still practically out of breath as I sat down. If I had my van, I’d have been able to shave a whole 5 minutes off the time I took to get to school. I made a mental note to pick it up after school.

  After a few minutes of explaining the experiment, Mr. Pierce left to get the supplies we needed and everyone ran amok. People who weren’t breaking all the school’s PDA rules were talking, texting or planning an intricate prank for Mr. Pierce. A small girl in un-breathable clothing perched on my desk and batted her lashes at me.

  “I’m sorry about your girlfriend,” she whispered, sounding anything but sorry.

  I sighed heavily and ran a hand over my face. “She isn’t dead; you know she just—”

  “Whatever, that’s not important,” she said quickly, sitting beside me in the vacant seat. “How are you though?”

  I shrugged. “Since everything happened just last night, I’m not in the correct mental state to answer that.”

  The girl smiled widely and used her hand to caress my cheek. “Oh, the poor baby, maybe I should help with that.”

  I fought the urge to roll my eyes; I’d probably have to teach these girls good pick-up lines, I tried to say no thanks, but this girl obviously couldn’t take rejection. Before I could move away she created a lock around my neck and was almost straddling me. I tried prying her hands from around my neck but she had arms of steel.

  The commotion in the room quickly died down. I craned my neck to see who/what had this placating effect. It wasn’t surprising that Avery was standing there, her eyes totally blood-shot and flashing. Everyone was cringing away from her as if they thought she’d pop out a gun and kill us all.

  They had no reason to worry though; she was staring at me, her eyes narrowed. I gave the girl beside me one futile push before she stormed over to me.

  “Move,” Avery said threateningly, her voice dangerously low.

  The girl pulled briefly away from me and glared at Avery. “Do you mind?”

  “Yes, I do. I don’t appreciate you slobbering over my seat,” she said sweetly, a kind of sickly sweet way, making her sound dangerous. “Now move.”

  The girl seemed pretty rattled and disentangled herself from me. Avery sat, not hiding her disgust. Everyone was still staring at Avery although not directly. Obviously, news had spread quite quickly and almost everyone was weary of her. Mr. Pierce came back all smiling and ignorant of the tension in the room.

  “Listen, Avery—”

  She gave me a look so chilling I shut up immediately. The instruments were passed around the room and my eyes met the same girl fixing her lip color. If she was doing that then it meant that she was wearing some before and that meant that my neck and shoulder was probably a barrage of pink color. I looked down and pulled my shirt slightly away from my shoulder, I groaned in frustration, her lips made so many imprints on my shoulder that it appeared as if someone had stamped my skin repeatedly.

  Something cold, soft and wet hit my cheek and I then realized that Avery had thrown a wet wipe to me. Her expression was still the same and I briefly wondered why she was emitting so much anger, she wasn’t even my girlfriend. I peeled the wipe of my cheek and scrubbed my neck, eager to rid my skin of whatever germy thing she’d left on it.

  “Your girlfriend isn’t even out for a day,” she snarled, snatching a test-tube from someone so forcibly it almost broke.

  I sat the wipe on the table before yanking the powder out of the person who was passing it to me’s hand without checking their expression. “Why are you even this interested?”

  She pulled her hair bac
k and snapped on her goggles. “I told you, I like Gina,” she replied in a harsh whisper.

  “Yeah right,” I retorted, snapping my gloves on so hard that they pinched my skin. “If you did like her you wouldn’t have broken her heart like you did.”

  Avery scoffed indignantly. “You broke her heart, you idiot,” she whispered loudly, shaking the powered substance vigorously into a test tube.

  I stirred my mixture around forcibly. “I don’t know what your problem is.”

  “My problem is you, moron!” she shouted, making almost every head in the classroom turn, giving us wary looks. “My problem is you,” she said again, now whispering.

  I slowed my furious stirring of the chemical and tried to calm my nerves. I didn’t know why we were even getting so worked up over nothing. Avery and I knew nothing about each other, I tried to tell myself. I knew I was trying to convince myself of something and I was failing miserably.

  “I’m sorry,” I said after a minute, not meeting her gaze.

  She didn’t miss a beat. “Don’t apologize to me, apologize to Gina.”

  I watched the mixture bubble up and wrote what I observed while I mulled over what she said, she was right I probably should apologize to Gina for being such an awful person undeserving of her kindness. I tried writing without pause but I couldn’t focus on doing it properly, my eyes were watching Avery as she did her best not to come into contact with me. She was acting as if I had some contagious disease. I gritted my teeth in frustration and turned away from her. My eyes met Marc’s; he was looking at me with pity deep in his eyes.

  Marc raised his index finger and moved it in a circle around the side of his head to show that she was crazy. I urged myself not to laugh but a snicker left my mouth and Marc grinned in response. As soon as I turned around Avery’s murderous gaze met mine, she may have caught the entire exchange.

  Immediately, as I opened my mouth to placate her, she shot daggers at me and knocked my test-tube out of my hand. I watched as the small, oblong glass object fell to the ground and shattered, all the contents spilling out. I grasped the pen in my hand so tightly it almost broke in half; I wasn’t even finished writing my observations.