Chapter 21 #2
You were JGH’s missus, yeah? Not surprised he ditched you. He can do better.
I take a deep drag on my cigarette and call Betty again.
It goes straight to voicemail. More spiders crawl down my back.
Maybe she’s done with me. With my whole batshit plan.
My tongue hurts, but I inhale, demolishing a quarter of the cigarette in one go.
And that’s when I notice Cece’s car is bouncing from side to side.
I slow to a crawl, and the jolting increases, the car lurching forward like it’s drunk.
“It’s nothing,” I say, like that might make it true. Then a metallic screech starts up. I don’t know much about cars, but I’m pretty sure I’m riding one of Cece’s hubcaps.
“Cunting fuck!” I swear, wrenching the steering wheel left.
I park on the grass verge, flip on my hazards and sit there, my breath coming in pants. This can’t be what I think it is. And if it is, it can’t have happened the way my hyperactive brain is telling me it did. Still, it takes another cigarette to get me out of the car to investigate.
I walk to the back right wheel and see it. A slash. There’s no other word for it. There’s one long, clean line running the length of Cece’s back tyre. I didn’t run over a rock. There’s no glass shard buried in the rubber. Someone has slashed Cece’s tyre.
I dive back into the car, yanking my phone from the centre console. I call Cece, but it also goes straight to voicemail, and I don’t want to leave a voicemail. I don’t want to scare her. But maybe I should scare her? This is fucking scary.
My hands are shaking so hard that my phone slides into my lap and bounces onto the car floor. I pick it up, then drop it again. Someone slashed Cece’s tyre. Shannon, maybe. Although it could have been someone else from the pub. It must have happened while I was in the bathroom, or…
“Drop it,” I whisper. “What are you going to do now?”
I call Cece again, and this time, when it goes to voicemail, I leave a message.
“Hey, Cee, sorry this is shit timing, but I have a flat. I’m about fifteen minutes from the hotel, and I’d change the tyre, but you know I don’t know how.
I’m sorry. I’d call roadside assistance, but I think you need a membership, and I can’t remember if you have one.
Can you please come get me? I’ll give you…
a billion dollars. Okay. I hope you’re all good, but please call me soon because—”
The message cuts out, and it occurs to me that if Cece comes to change the tyre, Tristan might be with her. That would suck, but right now I’d take The Golden State Killer for a ride-along if it means getting safely back to the hotel.
I press the back of my head into the driver’s seat, a headache pounding in my temples.
If one of the guys at the pub slashed Cece’s tyre, they might be coming to find me right now.
I sit bolt upright, ready to bail, then realise that’s fucking ridiculous.
It would take ages to walk to the hotel, and if I approach any of the nearby properties, there’s every chance the occupants will know exactly who I am and why I shouldn’t be here.
I’m lighting a third cigarette when twin headlights appear in the rearview mirror.
They’re dazzlingly bright and so high up I know the car they belong to must be massive.
I hold my breath and pray for whoever it is to pass, but they seem to be slowing down.
I keep holding my breath. It could be a do-gooder, or it could be a man from the pub, eager to find the nosey bitch on her own.
I ball my fists, ready to scream when the owner of the headlights suddenly speeds up and zooms away.
My heart is pulsing so hard I taste blood. I scramble for my phone, but there’s no one left to call. Cece’s not answering. Betty’s not answering. Davis is miles away, and even if my parents could forgive my social media sluttiness, they’re off spraining their ankles on the slopes in Queenstown.
Then it hits me. There is someone else. Jake Graves-Holland is from Pukekohe, and he’ll be here this weekend for the reunion.
I deleted his number, but I know it by heart, because when I like someone, I always learn their number by heart.
I can’t help it. I start cataloguing every detail, building a profile of all the things they know and like, so I’ll never let them down.
And Jake might have let me down, and asking him for help might hurt like hell, but I know he will.
Before I can second-guess myself, I crush out my cigarette and dial Jake’s number.
I listen, my heart in my mouth, as it rings and rings.
Then there’s a beep, and a robot voice implores me to leave a message.
Another fucking voicemail. I want to cry.
I hang up and call again. Same result. I start talking, even though I shouldn’t, because now I am crying.
Big, loud sobs right into Jake’s voicemail.
“Jake. Hi. Hey. Sorry for calling. I don’t know if you’re around, but I can’t get onto Cece, and I don’t know what’s… There’s just so much shit happening. Everything’s so fucked up—”
I wipe my face and try to get control of my breathing. “Someone slashed my tyres. Cece’s tyres. I’m in Cece’s car. I went to the pub near Thompson Farm, and now everyone’s mad at me, and I don’t know—”
A loud screech makes me jump out of my skin. I turn to see a truck pulled up behind me. A shiny-black Dodge RAM. The driver’s door swings open, and a huge figure gets out. A man almost as big as his chode vehicle.
“Shit,” I breathe. “Gotta go. Someone’s here. Outside the car. I’ve gotta—”
I hang up. My limbs are water, but something inside me stays steely, because I can see who the man is now. Shannon Strom. I smile at him in the rearview as I select the Voice Notes app on my phone and hit record. My entire body is shaking like a leaf in a hurricane.
Sliding my phone into my pocket, I open the driver’s side door and get out to speak to my ex-classmate once again.
“Hi,” I say brightly. “What’s up?”
Shannon Strom grins, and that grin says he knew he’d find me here. Been counting on it, in fact.
“Car trouble?” he says, smirking like we’re in a porno.
“Looks that way. You make a habit of rescuing damsels in distress?”
His grin stretches wider. “Dunno what you mean, but if it’s a flat, I can change it for ya?”
“It’s all good. Cece’s already on her way.”
Shannon tilts his head to the side as though guesstimating how much meat he might be able to carve off my bones. “You sure? I wanna help.”
“And that’s great, but—”
“Because if I help, you might get that you should stop hanging around the farm. Talking to people. Then you might not need so much help.”
I pray my trusty friend, Autism, is keeping the fear from my face because this situation has gone from scary to terrifying. “I didn’t know I wasn’t allowed to talk to people?”
Shannon’s smile thins, his lips vanishing into his beard. “I think you do. Or you should.”
I say nothing. He’s bordering on outright threats, and I don’t need to give him a reason to make them explicit. I just need to remind him civilisation is a mere button-push away. I take my phone out of my pocket, careful not to block the speakers with my fingertips.
“Not gonna answer, huh?”
“Guess not.” I open Instagram and start scrolling. “You can get going by the way. I told you, Cece’s coming. Her brother, too. You know Tristan Taylor?”
He glances over his shoulder.
That’s right. Clock’s on, asshole. It’s a fake clock, but you don’t know that, so fuck off.
He doesn’t. He just keeps smiling that same thin-lipped smile. “You keep acting the way you are, Ada, something bad’s gonna happen. Worse than a busted tyre.”
I stay silent. I don’t need the cops hearing me call Shannon Strom a miserable cunt on the recording I intend to give them.
“Something probably will, you know?”
“Mmm.” I double-tap a picture of someone’s kid wearing a Cinderella costume. “Is that right?”
Heavy boots crunch on the gravel toward me.
The hairs on the back of my neck prick up, but I force myself to stay still and keep scrolling.
As petrifying as he is, I’m pretty sure Shannon Strom’s never killed before.
So, unless he wants to murder me in cold blood by the side of the road, there’s nothing he can do. I just have to hold the line.
“I mean it. Bad things happen all the time. ‘Specially to girls like you.”
He’s right beside me, above me, around me, and all I have is a phone and a social code to protect me.
Blood rushes to my head, and for a second, I think I’m going to pass out.
Then a switch inside me flips. I round on Shannon Strom like I once rounded on Jenny Wallis, the same brutal rage flooding through me, electrifying me to my bones.
“What...” I snarl. “… the ever-loving fuck is that supposed to mean, Shannon?”
He takes a step backward. “Calm down.”
“Fuck you.” It’s too late to dig around for my knuckledusters. I wrap my fingers around my phone. Fuck the recording, and fuck the evidence, I’ll smash it into his balls if I have to. I’ll die before I let this animal think he’s scared me.
“So you’re gonna do something bad to me if I don’t back off the farm?” I ask. “That’s what you’re getting at, talking to me in little riddles like you’re fuckin’ Yoda?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” he snarls.
“Oh, yeah?” I say stepping right into his BO cloud. “I’m an idiot, am I? I’m wrong about the fact you’re here, having slashed my tyre to intimidate, then threaten me? That’s your angle? That I’m crackers?”
“Yeah, you’re psycho,” he says, his voice lifting an octave. “Everyone knows that. You’re acting like I’m tryna rape you or something.”
I laugh, a crazy jangling laugh. “Am I? Because I was just thinking you look really fucking great in your hideous workpants. Why don’t you give it a try, Shan? You never know, I might want to get fucked on the hood of my best mate’s car by a dude who cuts up tyres for his boss.”