Twenty Two
“Where to?” Fox asks. His SUV glides away from the ballroom. When your ride is as nice as Fox’s, you can drive yourself to such affairs.
The vehicle smoothly shifts into gear, and a fogginess weighs in my brain.
I’m prone to getting car sick, but I’m pretty sure I won’t throw up.
I focus on something in the distance—Arielle’s mansion.
It’s ridiculous that she has so many rooms to share with one man—a man who didn’t even search for her himself.
Suddenly, I’m not as jealous of the glass-walled pool in her basement as I used to be.
“Thanks for giving me an excuse to get out of there,” says Fox.
“Fox Levine wants to leave a party early?” I twist my hands in my pockets to keep steady. “Could tonight get any weirder?”
“Maddragon. You don’t become as awesome as I am without knowing how to bail when things turn boring. The cake is the best part of Hallowfest anyway. Sorry you didn’t get a piece.”
“Way to rub it in.”
People tear their hair out to receive an invitation to Hallowfest, literally.
Kristen told me her parents only donated to Phil’s campaign to score an invitation, which has to be all kinds of illegal, and Fox is saying that it’s over-hyped.
Would he still say that if he and Brynn weren’t invited every year?
“Sorry again for giving you a hard time about Damian,” says Fox. “I can’t explain why it didn’t occur to me that you’d want his number, but—”
I stop him. “It’s alright. I think I know.”
Fox stares at the road. He finally answers with just a nod.
“Does Molly know?” I ask.
“I would assume so.” He flicks on his turn signal, and we pull away from the cars behind us. “Given that they were fake dating, and it was all her idea.”
I gasp. WHAT? They were fake dating this whole time?
Fox shrugs, aware he just dropped a bomb.
“They’ve been friends for forever, and she wanted to help him.
You’ve met his parents. While he dated Molly, he could give everyone what they expected of him, while also having freedom to do his own thing.
They agreed it would only be until college, or until one of them found someone else they wanted to date for real. That’s how I saw it, anyway.”
“Wow,” I answer. Wow , but it still doesn’t add up for me. It was a lot for Molly to do that for Damian, and he could have easily hidden his preferences without the fake dating. No, Molly must have a secret that Damian could help her with in return, not that it’s my business.
Fox squints as we turn onto a windy road. “Not sure if you’ve noticed, Madeline, but there’s something weird going on with your family.”
“Why didn’t you say anything before?” I ask. “About hearing me scream outside the pool? Or call the police?”
“Come on,” says Fox. “The police?”
Right. Golden Ace is truly the only option.
“Things are weird,” I say. If anything D.S.
has told me is even remotely true, I understand why my family is a constant target.
But I have to wonder, as I sit beside Fox, why me and not him?
Both of Fox’s parents had died that evening.
They could also have known too much. While my mom’s was the only death to be officially ruled murder, that doesn’t mean theirs weren’t murders too.
I remember seeing Fox and Arielle talking before practice a few weeks ago, when they stopped as soon as they saw me. I assumed he was getting extra practices, but maybe they’d been discussing something else, and maybe that something else is why he wants to help find her.
I sip more water, surprised at connecting these dots. Is the water making me smarter?
Fox points to a diner on my side of the road. “Remember? We used to go there on Saturdays.”
Dog’s Diner. Home of the world’s worst waffles, but also the best sugar-overloaded orange juice. Fox’s family brought Arielle and me there after every swim practice when we were young. “You lost your first tooth there.”
“You did too.”
It had been on the same day, on overcooked pieces of bacon. “How are they still in business? Also—”
“We’re here,” he interrupts, and I swallow my thought. Yes, we are.
We’ve reached a secluded house with porch lights that flick on as we pull up.
We climb out of the SUV, and I yank down the sleeves of Arielle’s sweatshirt.
The night has cooled and the chilly air is harsh but stimulating, and every piece of me is awake.
A faint light glows around the backyard: someone is home. Fox waits for me to move first.
“Should we check back there?” I ask.
Fox follows and we examine the house. It’s in good shape, and the freshly painted siding doesn’t give it an air of creepiness, like Ms. Pellingham’s does. The lawn is full and green, odd for this time of year.
“Does this house seem too perfect to you?” whispers Fox, nailing why it feels eerie. “Even the Bridges’ home has the occasional blade of grass that’s taller than another.”
“Can I help you?” A call comes from the back porch, where a man reads a book in a wicker armchair.
He stands, waiting to hear why we’re on his property after 9:00 P.M. on a Friday night.
A small tug pulls my sweatshirt as Fox holds onto it, urging me to speak.
If he hadn’t already known I’m terrible on the spot, he does now.
“I’m Arielle Bridges’ sister,” I begin.
“Didn’t realize she had a sister.” The man is somewhere between Arielle and my dad’s age. Not a young adult, but not middle-aged. “Isn’t she throwing some kind of party tonight? That’s where Beth is.”
Beth. Right. I’d forgotten Arielle’s friend’s name. “The party’s basically over,” I say. “And I think Arielle and Beth had plans to go somewhere, but she forgot her phone…” I struggle to invent a story.
Fox picks it up for me. “We were hoping they came here so we could drop it off. Can you tell us where they might have gone?”
“I wasn’t under the impression that Beth would come home tonight,” says the man. “She’s sleeping over with a friend.”
My sweatshirt tightens again as Fox gives a second tug, like he wants to take off.
“Alright, thanks anyway,” I say. “Sorry to interrupt you.” Fox and I turn to leave, and Fox’s expression reminds me of fearing the dark as a kid, where one moment everything is fine, but then there’s a creepy shiver across your neck because something feels just a little off.
“Madeline, what about your sister’s phone?” Leaves crunch as he walks up behind us. “Why don’t you stay, see if they come to pick it up?”
Fox’s cool palm closes tightly around my wrist. “She didn’t say her name was Madeline.”
We twist toward the man in time to see him lunge. Fox and I react at the same time. We race back to the front porch and across the too nice lawn. Fox keeps his hand on my wrist, as if to pull me, but I shake it loose. Yeah, right. It’s cute you think you’re faster than me.
We take fifteen seconds to sprint to Fox’s car, but the man takes twenty. The SUV beeps as Fox unlocks it. I leap inside to lock the doors behind us. Fox puts his baby into gear and shoots from zero to sixty before I can buckle my seatbelt.
The man remains on the dim sidewalk and holds a phone to his ear. Who is he calling? Phil? Phil couldn’t have known that I’d overheard Arielle’s friends talking about her in the rose garden, but he must have warned everyone he could think of that Arielle or I might swing by.
I slide down in the seat. The leather feels smooth against my clammy hands.
Fox clears his throat. “That was, you know, kinda odd.”
My adrenaline is coming down. Fox’s sarcasm helps. “That guy definitely didn’t want us to find Arielle.”
“Alright, next question,” says Fox. “Since you’re besties with that Super, why isn’t he helping? And where the heck is Golden Ace when you need him?”
“That’s two questions.” At the mention of Golden Ace and Dark Static, I want to deflect and ignore Fox. I crack the window to get some air.
“Oh, you’re going to be that guy, huh?” Fox checks his blind spot as he merges into downtown traffic. Halloween night seems to be a busy one, with cars backing up the intersection for about a quarter mile.
“I’m a girl.” I drink some water and gather my loose hair back into a ponytail to help me focus. “If you must know, Golden Ace is looking for Arielle too. As for Dark Static, well, let’s just say he might be one of the bad guys after all.”
“Is that so?” Fox asks, in the same way a dentist would ask about how your summer is going—not wondering about your vacation, so much as the amount of sugar that you ate.
Here, the amount of sugar I had eaten was my comment about Golden Ace.
“What makes you think Golden Ace is also looking for Arielle?”
Red and blue lights flash from the start of the traffic jam—that can’t be just because of extra busy streets. “Because there’s a blockade,” I say.
“There are tons of people out tonight, a lot of partying. It makes sense if they’d want to close the main roads.” Fox shifts into park because we’ve been idling for a few minutes.
“That’s what a normal person in a normal situation would say, isn’t it?
” I open my door and step out of the unmoving vehicle.
I want a better view of the blockade. “But we’re not regular people having an ordinary night.
The mayor’s wife is missing, and the police are closing streets? How is that helpful?”
“Because they want to contain a kidnapper.”
If you’re about to be kidnapped, do everything you can to stop them from taking you to a second location.
“Or they’re keeping tabs on us.” A shiver pools at the base of my neck, and that’s when it hits me, as if my brain had been moving so fast I overlooked the obvious. “It’s a coincidence.”
“The blockade?” Fox repeats. “Yeah, they do it on holidays sometimes.”