Teen Hyde (High School Horror Story #2)(53)

“Do something,” I commanded. If we were going to be here, I wanted Cassidy to somehow feel it like I felt her. I wanted to exorcise her.

“Do what?”

“I don’t know. Something, anything.”

Lena hesitated, then cleared her throat. “To be or not to be…”

“Lame.” I lowered the lens. “Tell me something that nobody else knows.”

She shifted her weight. “Nobody?” Her hands twisted together. She stared off into the auditorium wings where a tangle of ropes and pulleys waited.

“I…” She started to say something and then appeared to change course. “Hate sleeping with socks on my feet. I can’t go to bed.”

I rolled my eyes. I lowered the camera to my chest so I could look at her dead on. “Something real,” I said. “Something for just us.” I raised the camera up again, nodded, and waited.

Lena looked off to the side wings of the stage and then, slowly, back at the camera. “Okay, then…,” she said. “I tried to kill myself last year.” I zoomed the shot tight on her pale face until practically all I could see were her eyes. I heard her sigh. “I took a handful of my dad’s sleeping pills and swallowed them all. Ten seconds later I realized what I was doing and forced myself to throw them all back up.” She looked straight into the camera. “Not too impressive, I know.”

“Why’d you do it then?”

“Because my mom committed suicide when I was little. I guess I just figured the same thing was probably in me, too. Bound to happen sooner or later.”

I walked left, and shot her profile. “But it’s not, then?” I asked, trying to imagine the Lena in front of me cold and lifeless with bluing lips.

“I guess I just don’t know yet. Like if you hadn’t found me that night. If those boys had … I don’t know. Maybe then … Maybe I’m just, like, waiting for my first big tragedy before I fall completely apart.”

I let the camera scan from her eyes to her mouth. She licked her lips nervously. She turned to me. Outside the viewfinder, I could see her roll her eyes. “Okay, not funny anymore. I feel like a moron. What is this, reality TV?” She walked toward me with her hand outstretched until it blacked out the screen.

“Hey!” I protested.

She wrestled the camera away from me. “Now let’s see who’s camera shy. Do something,” she said, mimicking me.

I held up my two middle fingers and walked back from her and then held them up to where the audience would sit, to the rows and rows of empty chairs. Somehow when I did this I felt like I was showing up Cassidy. A rush of power pulsed through me. I was here. I was invading her space. It was happening at last. I was taking over.

“Oh, that’s nice. Real nice.” Lena kept the camcorder aimed at me.

“I wasn’t made to be nice.”

“Hey, you called me lame.”

Then at once, Lena and I both froze. She lowered the camera. The whites of her eyes ringed her pupils. “What was that?”

“Shhhh … keep your voice down.” I listened. There was a metallic click followed by the whir of the air-conditioning starting up overhead.

My muscles unwound. “Just the unit clicking on.” I felt the flush behind my cheeks, radiating like a sunburn. My breathing was heavy. “Let’s go, though. We need to make sure we get this finished. We don’t have much time.”

She didn’t stop to ask why. Whatever I was, whatever we were, Lena had accepted it. She snapped the camcorder shut. “It’s this way.” I imagined her heart pounding beneath the thin sweater she wore and wondered if the possibility of getting caught made her wary or made her want to chase the rush, too.

I glanced once more at the stage, then followed Lena up the dark center aisle. We reached a short flight of stairs, scaled them, and found ourselves in a small glass room with a bird’s-eye view of the auditorium.

“This”—Lena plopped into a rolling chair and spun around—“is my domain.” She brushed her hands over the controls. There were two large monitors in the corner and a panel of switches and sliding knobs.

I took the seat beside her. “Great. Now tell me, what can you do with this?” I pulled out the memory card and placed it on the soundboard.

Lena took it and inserted the memory card into the side of the computer. She punched a few buttons and the screens lit up. She tilted her chin to stare into the blue glow. One monitor populated with the rows of thumbnails that I’d first seen in Mick’s room. This time, I told myself, I wouldn’t flinch.

Lena double clicked and the beginning of the video loaded on the first monitor with an editing bar along the bottom ribbon. I watched her face as the video began to play on low volume. Her forehead wrinkled. She chewed the side of her thumb and scooted her chair closer to the screens. “What is this?” She clicked to another clip and sucked in a sharp breath. “Am I on here?”

“You’re in good company,” I said.

She followed up with more taps of the mouse and then she froze the screen and zoomed in on her own tear-streaked face. “What do you want me to do with … all of these?” she whispered. “Marcy, I’m not sure I like this.”

“I want you to make them come to me. All of them. Tell a story. Make them understand that if they don’t come, they all have something to lose and the whole world will know who they are. Oh, and I’m going to need to ship you a few things. That I order. Okay?”