Lost Girls(60)

Do you remember the address of where you went?

I didn’t. The landscape of my past was full of holes, parts of it disappearing off the edges of my vision, as if only a few city blocks existed and everything beyond that was fantasy. And that blinding white light—it erased everything, it mesmerized and it destroyed. The other side of the door wasn’t real. It was the edge of the universe, it was hell, it was the end of everything.

How did you get away?

Why wouldn’t he let that drop? I got away because I got away, because somebody left a door open or because they didn’t tie my ropes tight enough. I didn’t know. I might never know. I only wanted to catch whoever killed Nicole and make him burn. Forever and ever and ever.

“Do you have the answer to the next problem?”

That was my algebra teacher, Mr. Buchanan, interrupting me while I was trying to work out a plan to destroy the network of thugs who were kidnapping and killing girls my age.

“Yes,” I answered, slightly thankful that I had spent the past two nights working with a tutor. Now I could get through the day without my teachers knowing that I was only partly here. The other part of me was hunting monsters. I got out my worksheet, walked to the front of the class, and wrote the equation and the answer on the whiteboard.

When I turned around my gaze fell on Dylan.

We had broken up, right before I went missing. But I couldn’t remember why.

What happened? I wanted to demand. Why had we broken up and why had I felt like I didn’t have any friends? He saw something in my eyes, maybe anger or confusion or maybe the fact that I finally had a specific question to ask him, and he flinched.

You don’t remember all the things I’ve done, things I regret.

Yeah, I thought. Things that I need to know.

I marched past him, refusing to look at him again. Once I got back to my desk I continued to text Agent Bennet. Before I knew it, class was over and the bell rang. Dylan stood next to my desk, looking like he wasn’t about to let me leave the room.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “I tried to call and text you about a jillion times since Friday night—”

“Why didn’t you tell me we broke up right before I went missing?” I asked as I stood up, my voice louder than it should have been. The teacher raised his head and looked at both of us. I stabbed a finger at Dylan’s chest. “Why have you been acting like everything’s fine and has been all along, except it couldn’t have been, could it?”

A long beat passed, then a flicker of guilt settled on his face and his brows pinched together. “I—it—you were the one who broke up with me.”

“Why would I do that?”

“You don’t remember?” A moment of relief flashed in his eyes. Then it disappeared because he knew this wasn’t over yet. “We can’t talk about it here.” He tried to take my arm, but I yanked it away.

“Is everything okay, Rachel?” Mr. Buchanan asked from the front of the room.

“Oh, it’s just peachy,” I said as I huffed out of the room, Dylan a step behind me. I pushed my way into the crowds that shuffled down the hall, amidst students heading zombie-like to period two, half of them not even awake from the weekend yet. Dylan grabbed my arm again and pulled us over to the side of the hallway. “Nice,” I said. “Are you going to give me some answers now?”

He glanced around us, a look on his face that said he didn’t care who knew about our double lives anymore. I certainly didn’t.

“Why did we break up?” I asked again. “What did you do and how did I end up without my team?”

“You didn’t lose your team because of me. We were at the club and you were having the worst fight ever, so bad I thought about going up there and stopping it—”

“With who?”

“Cyclone, one of the Blue Hurricanes.”

My brow lowered as I tried to figure out who that was. Then a girl who looked like Katy Perry appeared in my memory. It was Janie Deluca and she was slamming her fist in my gut, again and again.

“She was double tapping,” he said, then explained what that meant when I gave him a blank expression. “She took two hits of Pink Lightning and turned into a killing machine, shoving you around. No matter what you did, she wouldn’t back down. It was like she wasn’t human.”

My hands were on my hips and I tried to remember, but all I could see was one image, like a snapshot—Janie’s eyes narrowed and swollen, her mouth dripping blood, a bruise darkening her jaw and her fist reaching toward me, sweat flying off strands of her blue hair—

“She was wearing you out,” he continued, “and your fight had already dragged on for twenty minutes, way longer than you normally fight. You’re usually done within five to ten. At that point you had to get serious—”

So far, none of this explained why Dylan and I had broken up. I got impatient, my left foot tapping the floor, my arms crossed. The school crowd around us thinned until only a few kids still lounged against lockers, some of them staring at us whenever our voices raised.

“You delivered one bone-crunching kick after another until, finally, she tumbled to the floor, a hot mess of blue hair and bruised skin, blood streaming from her nose. But—”

He paused and I could tell by his expression that whatever was coming up next was bad.