Mayhem Read online

  So I leave her hands empty.

  “Going back to bed,” I say. “I didn’t sleep much.”

  She nods as though she knew this would be my answer and her arms drop to her sides. I know Lyle’s call is not a secret I should keep, but she’s already in the other room, and she seems a sloppy kind of happy, like when we walked into the house from the movies before we left Taylor, totally unaware of what was coming. Let her be there a while longer.

  It’s only when I’m back in bed, folded around Kidd, who hasn’t moved an inch, that I let Lyle’s words come back.

  I’m going to see you soon. Real soon. And I’m bringing a bar of soap for your dirty, ugly mouth.

  In the silent dark punctuated only by the flutter of wings, it’s impossible to pretend it’s any different.

  Lyle is coming.

  He’s coming.

  PART THREE

  Brayburn lady knows your sins Reads your mind and kills your friends

  TWENTY-SIX

  SHIFT CHANGE

  The boardwalk is filled with so many tourists I can hardly move at all. Neve and I have been sent down by Elle to try to identify the Sand Snatcher, based on my now-faded certainty that he’s a lifeguard. It seems just as plausible that everything I experienced last night was made up. Meanwhile, Roxy is at Marcy’s store. She was gone when I woke up after my nap, having left me a note that she’d be at VHYes, so I haven’t told her about Lyle yet, and I haven’t told Elle either because she’s been totally preoccupied with this. I know avoiding it won’t stop Lyle from coming, but I try to concentrate on what Neve is saying.

  “The shift change happens in about thirty minutes, where the night guards come on and the guys who have been here since morning step down.” She points to the lifeguard hut and the tall chairs lined along the beach, visible from here. “That’s where they all converge before they go on duty.”

  I head through the break in the fence, toward the hut. Ever since the phone call with Lyle this morning and Roxy coming in giddy with possibility, I want to kick someone, bite someone hard, and this Sand Snatcher seems as good a place to start as any. Even though I may have been wrong about who he is and where he’ll be now, I feel a pull to this place and to him that tells me different, that’s almost like someone standing behind me, physically pushing me onto the beach, over to the little white hut filled with surfboards and lockers and a time clock I can see from here.

  “Whoa, tiger.” Neve yanks me back and speaks low. “What are you going to do? Walk right in and demand his identity? You still have a lot to learn and you’re having to learn it too fast, so let’s get everything oiled up before we go after the big boy. We have time, okay? Look.” The chairs are still occupied by the daytime lifeguards. “You said he’s a night guard so he’s not on yet. He might not even be on the beach. Hey, hey look at me.”

  I do, but my breathing is coming short and my fists are clenched. I feel him nearby. He’s somewhere close and the magnetic pull is almost too much for me to handle.

  “You need to take a major chill pill, and I can’t believe I’m saying that to you. This doesn’t work if you’re off your trolley.” Neve clutches her hand to her heart. “I have to admit it’s cute, though, like watching a baby birdy fly from the nest and turn into a man-eating pterodactyl.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I say. She has broken the spell though and whatever had its grip on me has backed off. I take a few deep breaths.

  “So let’s get you warmed up, because even though you did some odd and impressive things last night, this takes precision. You have to be able to look and see, not just have your feelings or whatever, and you don’t want that part taking you by surprise. Come, Grasshopper, I will teach you.”

  She pulls on me, and I force myself to follow her. We climb up to the boardwalk, back to the blinking lights and street performers and the zinging, screaming rides. It’s swarming with people, and though I’m electric with possibility and what might come with the dark tonight, I settle as soon as we’re away from the lifeguard station.

  “Okay, so there are a lot of things in life that people make a big deal about that are actually not at all a big deal.” She takes me by the shoulders. “This is not one of those times.”

  “I get it.”

  “You really don’t. But you will.”

  A shiver barrels up my spine.

  “Look there, one at a time.” Neve points to the people on the boardwalk walking together, apart, laughing, hustling, slumped forlornly against walls. “Separate them out from each other. See them as individuals. We’re all connected, right, and that’s what we’re using to see. Essential energy. But we also have our own lives and our own problems and memories and plans. That’s what you’re hooking in to. You’re using the connection we all have to each other to find out what’s happening with the people you want to know about. So look. First see the web. Then see the person. Then see the truth.”

  She stands behind me as I try to do what she says. “They’re all little humans trying to live their lives. You only have to watch for so long before you find out whether they’re guppies or sharks.”

  A woman in jean shorts tries to hustle a small child out of the store that sells all the cheap, neon, plastic toys. The little girl shrieks and slaps at her mother’s thigh. The woman drags her a few paces and then the girl walks on her own and they disappear into the crowd.

  “And what are we?” I ask Neve, who’s pulled herself up onto the wooden fencing that runs along the beach. “Guppies or sharks?”

  “We eat the sharks.” Neve pats her belly. “Yum.”

  “And how do you know which is which?” I hoist myself up beside her. “How do you not make a mistake?”

  “You make demands. You make them show you the truth.”

  “Them who?”

  She furrows her brow. “You talk right to their inner selves. Bypass the skin they hide under. You make it happen because you can see. And here’s the most important thing to remember: People want to be seen. They want their secrets to be shared.”

  I think of this morning with Boner, of how when I asked to see, nothing happened. I didn’t get good or bad from him. There was just nothing at all, but I know there’s no such thing as a person with no history, no pain. “You know how I told you my mom hooked up with that neighbor cop?”

  “Right. The Boner guy Elle hates,” Neve says distractedly as she watches the boardwalk from her perch.

  “I tried to check him out.”

  “Good girl.” She’s still not paying attention, and I can feel her digging into these people one by one, checking them for distortions.

  “There was nothing. Just a blank. Did I do it wrong?”

  Neve seems to have given up and finally turns her attention my way. “What time was it?”

  “I don’t know. The phone woke me up. It was right after that.”

  Neve nods, the sky going pink behind her, hair fluttering in a salty breeze.

  No matter the time of day or night, no matter what we’re talking about, Neve always looks epic. She’s a piece of art, beach-waved hair blowing as dusk gathers, tide rising behind us. Her waist is thin, torso long, and her brown, tanned legs kick out in front of her. She’s the picture of what everyone wishes to be, down to the tiny mole at the upper left corner of her mouth and the large silver hoops in her ears.

  “You had just woken up,” she says. “Takes a minute to get everything up and running, know what I mean? Morning is the weakest time. Plus that Boner guy doesn’t have anything to hide. I already checked the first time he gave us grief when he found us on Brayburn Road and he didn’t know who we were.”

  “Oh.” I don’t know if I’m disappointed or not. Maybe I wanted an excuse to keep Roxy from hurling herself into yet another relationship.

  “Can we please focus? We’ve got more to think about than your mom and her romantic habits. Besides, everyone has the right to get laid.”

  “Neve!”

  “What? Stop being a prude. Your
mom’s a babe and Officer Biceps is a babe. Leave them alone. You have other things to think about. Like that…” Neve looks up and out again. “Can you hear yet? The air crackles and fizzes. You have to listen for it, but it’s there, and that’s when you know to ask. That’s how you know the water has something to tell you.”

  Crackles and fizzes like when you first open a can of soda, only instead of burning out it gets louder.

  Her head tilts to the side and her eyes narrow. “Over there,” she says. “Check out that guy.”

  There’s a boy maybe a little older than me, walking along the boardwalk. He has a little girl by the hand. I know right away it’s his sister. They have a similar shape to their faces and the same skin, but that’s not what tells me. I just know. And I know something else, too. This isn’t the Sand Snatcher, but something about him isn’t right.

  “Yeah, that’s the one.” Neve hops off the fence and signals for me to follow. “He’s perfect for practice.”

  Now that we’re following him, threading through people to keep him in view, the crackling starts up, and then it gets so loud I can’t hear anything else. Neve’s lips move, but she’s been overruled by fizzing and snapping.

  “Stop.” I say it as I think it. “Stop,” I say again. “Show me.”

  Neve smiles and her teeth are pink from her Icee. They look like they’re covered in blood.

  The air whines and then whooshes, crystallizing the boy in his memories, ice all around him, but ice made of air instead of water. It’s thick and has facets, and inside each one, a story plays out. I can’t see anything specific because I’m too far away. These are the honeycombs.

  I’m so excited I jump up and down so my bracelets jingle against each other, and the lady across from us with the MOM sailor tattoo and the pink hair stares at me.

  “I see it! I see it!”

  “That’s my Mayhem.” Neve pats my back. “Now look closer.”

  I’m almost distracted as a girl steps past us, whirring with her own crackle and her own stories.

  “Eyes on the prize,” Neve says, pushing at my cheek. “Shut it down from everyone but him. One at a time. That’s the key. The longer you do it, the easier it will be to control. Now. Him. Only him. Everything about him. Ask.”

  Tell me, I think. Tell me everything.

  The ice around the boy fills the space and blurs everyone around him so they are erased. There is only me and Neve and the boy and the invisible monster he carries with him, brought to clicking life, a prehistoric, giant locustlike insect.

  Neve is a bird again, pale, her eyes gone hard and beady, head angled. “After a while, you can tell it to stay hidden. You can order it to show itself. It’s the click you have to listen for. That’s what tells you there’s more. But it kind of depends on your mood, right? Like, if you’re out on a date maybe you don’t want every sicko Tom, Dick, and Harry ruining your good time, but if you’re in the mood for a feast, you accept the invitation and find out what there is to see.”

  The guy mounts the carousel. Sunglasses on even though the light is dim, mirrors reflecting a warped world. He’s one of those preppie guys you see in the movies with his collar turned up. There’s nothing about him that would make you suspect him of evil. Nothing but the ice whirring and ticking, playing out scene after scene, each scene changing, unfolding. It’s alive and it buzzes.

  “My mama always told me never to trust a boy who won’t let you see his eyes.” Neve winks.

  I try not to watch what’s happening in the honeycombs too closely, while also trying to understand, because it’s not just that I’m seeing, I’m feeling, too. I’m knowing. “He would never hurt his sister.”

  “No,” Neve agrees. “You can see it.”

  “The girls have to be drunk or high. That’s how he justifies it.”

  Neve knits her eyebrows. “Yeah? You can see that?”

  I shake my head. “Not see it. Feel it.”

  “Hunh,” she says.

  We get tickets, hand them to the bearded guy manning the gate, and jump on the carousel after Preppie and the little girl. We choose stationary horses a couple behind them.

  A dull thud starts up in the center of my forehead, like a headache is coming on. My throat constricts and my mouth moistens. More than that, a rolling in my chest, restless, like I’ve got nothing in me but feathers and need more inside to hold me down, like I need his stories to fill me up. I want him to give them to me. I shiver and shake but the yearning hunger only grows. I’m holding on to the gilded pole in front of me, so hard my fingers are purple and white.

  “Doin’ okay, cowgirl?” Neve says.

  “Fine.” I grit the words against my closed jaw, lean my cheek against the ridges and push until it hurts. It helps me stop wanting.

  “Okay, then,” Neve pulls a pack of gum from her pocket and offers me one. “Sometimes having something to chew on can bring you down.”

  I shake my head, but she shoves the gum into my hand.

  “Put it in your mouth and chew. You’ll like it. Cinnamon.”

  I take the gum and the spicy sweetness rushes my mouth.

  Up, down, up, down, I think as I chew. But it’s almost impossible to focus on anything other than what’s in front of me. Because now I do see. Clearly. Scenes play out on repeat, slivers, moments. Girls, not moving, eyes closed, not even awake enough to fight. And I hate him worse than I ever hated anyone, maybe even Lyle.

  The carousel stops and the boy helps his sister step off.

  “What if what we’re seeing isn’t accurate?” I say. “What if it’s just thoughts?”

  “It’s not just thoughts,” Neve says. “When it’s just thoughts the honeycombs are blurry.”

  The guy meanders for a minute, then gets in line for cotton candy or peanuts. Now that I’m not looking into it anymore, his honeycomb shrinks down to a shimmering aura. The line for cotton candy is long, so Neve drops her Icee into the trash and we stand off to the side.

  NO ONE GETS OUT ALIVE is scrawled on the wall across the way, outside Dark Side of the Spoon, where everyone gets their yogurt.

  The seagulls squawk from the trash can, picking at scraps. “It’s about karma, the great wheel of cause and effect. There’s no escaping it, right, except sometimes people do. They get away with things. Terrible, awful things. We’re just cleaning up where the law can’t, in corners the universe has forgotten.”

  I wish I could see Neve’s past, because she’s heating up, the air around her charged.

  “It’s about doing bad things and getting exactly what you deserve,” she goes on. “It’s about dirty little secrets that would go undiscovered if we weren’t here. It’s about people paying for what they’ve done and not just getting away with it all the time.” Neve is near hysteria, like she’s not talking in theory anymore, but speaking from experience.

  I put my arm around her shoulder, and she leans her head onto mine, so silky strands of hair tickle at my skin. She lets her breath settle.

  “He’s looking at me,” Neve whispers. “Isn’t he?”

  He’s almost to the front of the line, staring at us and for a brief second of insanity I’m afraid he knows what we’re doing, that somehow he has sight, too, but then I realize what’s happening. The guy is ogling Neve, checking her out, running his eyes up and down over her form.

  “Yep.” I try to look casual, like we’re talking about lipstick and eye shadow instead of good and evil and secrets we want to keep but that leak out of us anyway.

  “Good.” She gathers herself, pushing back whatever emotions had surfaced. “He’ll be dessert. Now for the main course.”

  My stomach coils.

  “Let’s go.” She skips a few steps toward the water. “That’s all the training you’re going to get. Now it’s time for the shift change.”

  We leap onto the beach, the two of us, hand in hand. The sunset is love as a color, the smell of suntan lotion and salt rising up as the heat dies down. The lifeguards aren’t the only th
ing changing right now. The daytime beach bodies are being traded in for the night crew, bikinis replaced by leather jackets, a now familiar transition. We plant ourselves about thirty feet from the lifeguard hut, up on the small sandhill where a bunch of people are gathered to watch the sky change.

  “This will probably be harder than usual,” Neve says. “These kinds of psychos, they believe their own stories. When they’re playing normal, they can even hide from themselves.”

  But I can hear him coming.

  “No,” I say, chest tightening. “He’s right there.”

  Neve scans the beach.

  “Straight ahead.”

  “Where?” Neve clutches her own arms and squints hard. “I got nothin’. You sure?”

  “I’m sure.” I can barely get the words out now, because he’s headed straight for us. This isn’t a joke or a game we’re playing. This is real and as he saunters my way I feel myself slip under the cave water and choke on it.

  “May, are you okay? Say something.” Neve nudges me hard, but I’m hypnotized and still trying to catch my breath, my hand at my own throat.

  The whirs and clicks, the ice so massive. His sickness cuts through everyone he passes. When I feel stable enough, I look into one of the honeycombs and then away, bury my forehead in Neve’s shoulder.

  I don’t need to see that.

  No one does.

  She shrugs me off, seems annoyed. “Come on, don’t be a baby. Where is he?” she says.

  “There.”

  “Him?”

  I nod.

  He has brown hair, blue eyes, a blinding smile, a shell necklace at his throat. He stands out because he blends in so well. He’s practically flawless. He’s loping toward us in a wetsuit, a board under his arm, taking his time, owning the whole wide world. He pauses between us and the hut.

  “This is where I leave you, babe. Out of the water and into the grind,” he tells a pretty girl who is keeping pace next to him.

  “For sure.” She adjusts her board, tosses her wet hair. “At least there will be waves again tomorrow.”