Uncanny Read online

“What plan?” Kelly said.

  “The Life Plan,” I said. “Capital L. Capital P. The one we started in middle school.”

  “Right,” Siobhan said. “You gotta have it all laid out for when you get knocked up, Willow says. It’s très importante.”

  “Very très,” I said. “More importante than the husband.”

  “What the hell,” Kelly said, “are you guys talking about?”

  “The plan.”

  “What plan?”

  “The Life Plan!” we said together.

  “We’ve had it since middle school,” I said.

  Siobhan cut her eyes at Kelly. “All three of us.”

  “Oh, that. Seriously? Middle school?” Kelly rolled her eyes so far back, they turned white. “God, you guys. I swear, sometimes we don’t even speak the same language.”

  No, we didn’t and hadn’t for a long time, since probably ninth grade, but Kelly never seemed to notice before. The Three Musketeers had become two, and Kelly was only an honorary member of the group, a Snickers bar alongside two chunks of whipped nougat. But she was still our friend, even if she and Siobhan were waging a silent battle.

  Fighting the wind, we continued down the sidewalk toward B Street and an Urban Gourmet Market, the organic foods store, and then past a mini-mart with a sign that read BOYCOTT URBAN GOURMET!

  “Awesome,” Siobhan said. “Love that sign.”

  “What’s wrong with Urban Gourmet?” Kelly asked. “I like their cheese.”

  “Their cheese? Their effing cheese?” Siobhan said. “It’s a chain, and chains run the locals out of business.”

  I stared through the plate-glass window of Urban Gourmet at the middle-class white women in yoga pants squeezing organic avocados. They looked nothing like my ma, and their shopping baskets had no potatoes, no pierogi, no sliced white bread. If Daddy were still alive, he would barely recognize South Boston, any more than I recognized myself when my gaze shifted from the shoppers inside to my face reflected in the glass. I hadn’t grown an inch since middle school, but my face was longer, more angular, and my hips were hippier. I felt like a little girl with her nose pressed against a store window, but a young woman was staring back at me.

  “So what? They have good cheese.” Kelly shrugged. “Good chicken, too. It’s free range.”

  “You’re free range,” Siobhan said. “Just like Willow Jane’s boyfriend.”

  “Ex-boyfriend,” I said. “Heavy emphasis on the ex.”

  “I just don’t get why you broke up with him,” Kelly said. “He’s superhot, and his mom has buckets of money. Also? Those abs when he plays shirts and skins in gym? Girl.”

  “Uh,” I said. “Yeah.”

  “Oh, yeah, duh.” Kelly smacked her forehead. “But you guys had like the perfect name mash-ups—Will-O.”

  “Wouldn’t that be Will-Ow?” Siobhan said.

  “No, Will-O, like Jell-O?” Kelly said. “Like Kimye and Bennifer but even more perfect.”

  “Or more jiggly,” Siobhan said.

  “Doesn’t matter how hot he is on the outside,” I said. “He’s a huge jerk—”

  “Douche,” Siobhan said.

  “—on the inside. He’s looking for a hookup, not a girlfriend.”

  “Ahem. Best friend standing here?” Siobhan said. “Why’ve I not heard about this hookup-seeking behavior before now?”

  Will Patrick and I had dated for about three months. The first couple of dates were cool. He was cool. This hot guy with a lock of hair that he flipped nonchalantly to the side when he laughed. He had huge charisma, and Kelly was right about him. He had longish blond hair and almost translucent blue eyes. He could turn out to be a supermodel or a sociopath.

  Or both.

  The more we dated, the more he started pushing me. We started out by kissing, and no lie, it was awesome. Then he started asking for more. When I would tell him no, he’d laugh at first and play it off like it was no big deal. “You’re worth waiting for,” he’d say. Then a couple weeks ago he started getting serious. The playfulness turned sour, and he looked at me like, well, like he was starving and I was a coupon item on a fast-food menu.

  “Because it’s so cliché, it’s not even worth talking about,” I said. “He just wanted to quote, get some of that sweet stuff, end quote. Can you believe it? He kept calling it sweet stuff, like my vagina was a cinnamon roll.”

  Kelly blew spit. “Like a what?”

  “A cinnamon roll.”

  “Willow Jane.” Siobhan blinked twice at me. “Did you just say vagina?”

  “I say vagina all the time,” I said, my voice rising in mock self-righteousness. “It’s a body part. Just like ears, eyes, mouth.”

  “And penis,” Siobhan said.

  “Yes, penis, too. Penis is also a body part.”

  “Boobs,” Siobhan said.

  “That’s a dysphemism, not a body part.”

  “Tell that to my bras.” Kelly wiped her face and made sure no soda had touched her dress. “Your mom’s right. We are a bad influence on you.”

  “You are a bad influence.” Siobhan covered my ears like Ma’d covered Devon’s. “I only spell out p-e-n-u-s.”

  “I’m not seven.” I pulled her hands away. “So you can stop protecting my virgin ears. You misspelled penis, by the way.”

  Siobhan said something smartass in reply. I heard her tone but not the words because they were washed away by the rush of an MBTA bus blasting down Broadway. The bus was awash in thick gray mist that curled in on itself, as if it were breathing, then exhaling. I peered through it at the swirling shapes of my friends crossing the street ahead of me, but I stayed put, my feet feeling like they had sunk into the concrete. The fog clung to me, damp and sticky on my skin. The hair on my neck stood up, and I had the sudden unmistakable sensation that someone was following me.

  I gasped and inhaled a stinging breath, and I saw red and blue lights rippling inside the mist. The haunting xylophone sound returned for a few seconds, followed by a loud bam-bam-bam, as if a battering ram was trying to break through a door.

  “Blood,” the voice whispered.

  What the hell? I snapped my head around, expecting to find someone looming behind me. But the street was deserted, except for an empty coffee cup blowing in the wind. I watched the cup bounce, then evaporate into the last remnants of the mist. My heart pounded again, and I felt a pain in my chest. Don’t panic, I told myself, it’s just a stressful day, and some old memories were seeping from the swamp I called a brain.

  “Willow Jane!” Siobhan yelled from the corner. “Hurry up! The T’s coming!”

  The sound of her voice snapped me out of the spell. “It’s just stress,” I mumbled and ran on, trying to make as little sound as possible, unable to shake the feeling that something dangerous was stirring and I didn’t want to disturb it.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE Park Street T stop let out on the lip of the Common, right on Tremont Street. Up the hill was the Granary Burying Ground, and around the corner was the Orpheum Theatre, which was famously haunted by a variety of ghosts. But when I left the warm, oily air of the T station with Siobhan and Kelly, it wasn’t to chase ghosts. We had tickets to see a digitally remastered version of Nosferatu. It was a birthday gift from Kelly via her dad, who knew I liked horror movies.

  When we reached the street, a light rain was falling from the heavens and a three-block line was snaking from the entrance of the Orpheum.

  “The hell is this line?” Siobhan eyed the crowd. “Effing half of Boston stands on line for a black-and-white movie? A silent black-and-white movie?”

  “A silent black-and-white vampyre movie,” Kelly said. “It’s a classic, so yes, half the effing city is here.”

  “Half of effing Boston’s a huge exaggeration.” I calculated the number of people on line and compared it to the population of the Boston metropolitan area. “Less than one percent of the city is here.”

  “What percentage is that, Willie?” Siobhan said.


  “Percentage of what?”

  “Of the effing city,” Siobhan said. “Meaning only those who are sexually active, which we assume is a significant percentage of younger adults and a disproportionate number of those over the age of forty, after which we all know there is no more effing to be had.”

  “You’re so, so . . .” My brain fritzed, and I couldn’t think of the right word, for the first time in my life.

  “I broke Willie’s marbles!” Siobhan cackled. “Wicked awesome!”

  There was a plethora of words I could use to describe Siobhan. Impulsive. Indefatigable. Moxie. Formidable. I was running through the vocab list in my brain, trying to pick the perfect one for the moment, when my mind hiccupped. My whole body jerked, and I heard a singsong whispering and the fluttering of wings. I could smell the stink of decay on the air, the wet, fecund odor of organisms decomposing. My stomach turned, and I felt so queasy, I almost puked.

  “You okay?” Siobhan asked when I leaned against a light pole. “Cause you’re acting—”

  “Speaking of wicked and awesome.” Kelly unzipped her coat and produced a can of UFO, which she drank to be ironic. “A toast to Sam Adams. The dude who invented beer.”

  “Kelly,” I said to divert Siobhan attention. “You’re underage, and it’s in public.”

  “What she said,” Siobhan said. “Where’s mine?”

  “Sorry it’s warm.” Kelly produced a second can. “Had to keep it stashed during the party.”

  “Hell’s yeah!” Siobhan grabbed the UFO. “Wanna sip, Willie?”

  I waved off the offering. “You know I don’t drink.”

  “That’s why I only brought two,” Kelly said.

  “Only brought two of what?” a guy behind us said.

  I turned to face Will Patrick, my ex-boyfriend. He was six-one with sandy blond hair, blue eyes, and pink cheeks that practically glowed in the cold wind. He smiled, his gaze fixed intensely on my face. I could hardly look back at him, both because he was so handsome it hurt and because I had the sudden sensation that I was sprinkled with cinnamon and glazed with warm frosting.

  “Hey, ladies,” he said. “What brings you to this side of town?”

  “Hey, hey, and hey,” Kelly said. “Look who’s here. What a surprise!”

  Siobhan looked at me and rolled her eyes as if to say, This is no effing surprise.

  “Really?” I said.

  Kelly hugged Will Patrick and his friend Flanagan, who was smoking a cigarette, and Siobhan’s eyebrows almost shot off her face. Will Patrick was yuppie spawn like Kelly, but Flanagan was old-school Southie. I was surprised to see him playing wingman.

  “Saw your party on Snapchat.” Will Patrick held up his oversized phone. “Kells posted something about a vampire movie, so here we are.”

  “Oh, it’s Kells now,” Siobhan said.

  “I am so not interested in seeing you,” I told Will Patrick.

  “Who says I’m here to see you?” he said.

  Burn.

  Will Patrick’s condescending smirk made me want to ram a hockey puck down his angelic throat. But keeping with my philosophy of never letting jerks see me sweat, I lifted my chin and steeled my eyes and refused to let my face betray the stinging hurt in my heart.

  “What’re you boys doing out on a school night?” Kelly asked them.

  “Same as you, looking for a good time,” Flanagan said. He wasn’t the tallest guy in the world, but when you were barely five feet, every boy was a walking skyscraper. He wasn’t bad looking, either, with a tangled mess of brown hair and a gentle face. Too bad he stank of cigarettes. “Sup, Siobhan. How you, Conning?”

  “She has a first name, y’know,” Siobhan said.

  “Two of them,” I said softly.

  “So,” Will Patrick said, “about that beer?”

  “What beer?” Siobhan hid the evidence. “You see any beer, Butt Chin?”

  Kelly took an ironic sip. “None in these parts, sheriff.”

  Flanagan laughed too loud. He finished his cigarette and ground the butt into the sidewalk.

  “You should really pick that up,” I said, pointing to a trash can three feet away.

  “You should really mind your own business, uptight little bitch.”

  Siobhan turned on Flanagan. “What’d you call my friend?”

  “I said, she’s an uptight bitchlette.”

  “Watch your mouth, Flanagan.” Siobhan pushed her beer into my hand. “If anybody’s the little bitch here, it’s you.”

  Flanagan stepped back. He was a small guy, and Siobhan was easily four inches taller, with a better right cross. She would squash him like a grasshopper under her Doc Martens boot.

  “Hey, hey!” Will Patrick stepped between them and held up his hands. “We’re all friends here. Flanagan, apologize for being an asshole.”

  “C’mon, man,” Flanagan whined. “It’s just Conning. You said she was just a—”

  “Do it, Flanagan.” Will Patrick nudged him. “Say you’re sorry for being an asshole.”

  “Sorry for being an asshole, Conning,” Flanagan mumbled.

  “Her name,” Siobhan said, “is Willow Jane.”

  “Yeah, a pretty screwed-up name,” Flanagan blurted out, which earned him a punch. “Hey! What was that for?”

  “It’s a very pretty name.” Will Patrick flashed his cherubic smile at me. “For a very pretty girl.”

  I shot him the bird.

  He laughed.

  I flicked a second finger, and he laughed even harder and winked, and then their plan became obvious. Will Patrick was trying to get back together, and he had somehow gotten Kelly to help him. Well, they could shove their plan because it wasn’t going to work. Was it?

  “Enough bullshit. What do you shitdoodles want?” Siobhan said. “Besides our beer?”

  “You came to see the film. We came to see the film.” Will Patrick winked. “Coincidence? Or kismet? Or fate?”

  “Or beer,” Kelly said.

  “That, too,” Will Patrick said, putting his arm around Kelly.

  He co-opted her brew and took a long swallow. She giggled, and I felt an icy stab of jealousy. Will Patrick was a jerk, but he was my ex-jerk, and there were rules about exes and friends. One of those rules was your almost best friend was not allowed to flirt with your ex-jerk in the same weekend you broke up. Especially not in front of you. On your birthday.

  Siobhan looked at me. “I cannot believe he’s showing you up like that. In public.” She hooked my arm. “Come on, Willow Jane. You’re not spending your birthday with losers.”

  “Hey, guys!” Kelly called. “Where’re you going?”

  “Back to Southie!” Siobhan decided without consulting me. “You want to hang with a douchebag, go ahead.”

  “I’m a douche?” Will Patrick yelled back. “No offense, but a player’s got to play.”

  “Suck on that!” Siobhan fired her can at him. “No offense!”

  Will Patrick spazzed and covered his face as the beer can sailed toward his head. It hit the light post next to him and sprayed suds in a rooster tail arc that soaked his crotch. “What the hell, man? Kells was right about you!” He shook the beer off his pants and stepped back, his heel caught on the lip of the curb, and he stumbled into the glaring headlights of the 43 MBTA bus.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  WILL Patrick’s body floated like a ghost, into the bus lights. His hands grasped helplessly for some invisible rope, but there was no lifeline for him. He was a dead douchebag the instant the driver laid on the horn and slammed the brakes. It was a useless effort. An eighteen-ton bus couldn’t stop in time, and it would send Will Patrick to the afterlife as soon as its grille splintered his body.

  “No,” I whispered.

  That’s when Will Patrick truly froze. Not in a Snapchat snapshot way, but in the super slow-motion way that lets you see a bullet tearing through a balloon. His eyes were wide, the pupils dilated and reflecting the bus’s headlights. He didn’t even react when I hook
ed my elbow around a guy wire for support, snagged him, and yanked him away from death’s door.

  His butt hit the sidewalk as Kelly screamed, face buried in her hands, and Siobhan’s mouth hung open.

  I staggered away and pressed a palm to my forehead. It felt like an ice pick had been rammed through my skull. The xylophone exploded in my ears, followed by the sound of banging, as if a monstrous fist was hammering on a door to be let in.

  In a snap it was gone, and my head was clear.

  Will Patrick sat on the sidewalk holding his chest like he’d had a heart attack, but I knew it was for effect. The others surrounded him, saying things that I couldn’t hear. The crowd turned toward him for a few seconds, but it all had happened so fast, nobody else seemed to really understand. We were just a pack of kids screaming and behaving like idiots, and they were all too busy texting and tweeting and Snapchatting to notice that I had just moved faster than the Flash after a double espresso.

  My heart was pounding again, but this time it was from an adrenaline rush. I had felt like this before, winding up for a slap shot and watching the stick bend as it hit the puck. Except this time it was even more slo-mo and I hadn’t just scored a goal, I had just saved someone, and every nerve in my body was firing.

  Will Patrick got to his feet and screamed at Siobhan, “God damn! You could’ve killed me.”

  “Sorry, jerk face,” Siobhan said. “I didn’t see the bus.”

  “And you!” Will Patrick turned to me. “You saved my life.”

  He lifted me from the ground, twirling around so quickly my shoes flew off. He set me down barefoot, lifted my face to his, and kissed me. But it wasn’t his kiss I was thinking about—it was how fast I’d moved, the way I wished I could’ve moved when my father was shot. When I only watched and did nothing.

  Why hadn’t I moved that fast before? Why had I just stood there paralyzed and watched the bastard pull the trigger again and again? Why did I save Will but let my father die? I felt hate welling up in me, like something stuck in my throat that I couldn’t cough up, making me want to sink my fingernails into his soft, pretty face.

  “No! I am not your cinnamon roll!” I pushed Will Patrick away and wiped my mouth. “I dump you, and you still have the nerve to kiss me?”