EIGHTEEN

The sky is black with clouds. No moon to light the way as I take off down the road. Not even a hint of a trace of a sliver. Still, it helps to know it’s up there somewhere. Yeah, there are times in life when faith is the only thing you’ve got. I know this for a fact.

Emma is only pretending to be your friend, chants a nasty little voice in my right ear. Do you really think she cares about a not-even-halfway-normal, forever-a-disappointment, oxymoronically named, and permanently introverted nocturnal mutant like you? Her father told her to do it.

Does that make Emma the pathetic one? Or me? I’m too upset to know for sure.

Who cares why she did it? whispers the voice in my other ear. Fact is, she was your friend … is your friend. Emma made an effort, when nobody else would. Doesn’t she get points for that?

“Justshutupshutupshutup!” I yell at the voices, shaking my head to knock them loose from my ears. I pick up the pace in case they’re planning on following me. Crunch … crunch … crunch go my shoes on the gravel as I stumble through the darkness. Past Derry’s, past Beachy Keen, past the Spotted Dick, all the way to the one place in the world I need to be. Ignoring the hissing speaker, I go straight to the window of the crappy little cubicle. I don’t care if I wake him up. I don’t care how grumpy he’ll be. I just have to see him.

But when I look through the window, it isn’t him at all. Merde. It’s another one of those hallucinations. It has to be. This is exactly the kind of thing that happens when you don’t sleep for twenty-six days. I close my eyes and shake my head, trying to knock my brain back to reality. But when I open my eyes again a few seconds later, it still isn’t Ben. I can feel my chest twisting with dread. This is no hallucination.

“Where is he?” I demand.

Jake Hudson, a senior from my high school, lowers his BlackBerry and frowns.

“Lily MacArthur? Where’s your car? This is a drive-thru, you know?”

I’m running out of patience. Fast. “What are you doing here?” I holler at him. “Where’s Ben?”

He shrugs. “How should I know? He just pulled me aside today and offered me the shift. Said it was the easiest job in the world. This is my first night.”

“When will he be back?” My words are like poisonous darts. But sadly, this guy isn’t sharp enough to notice. It’s a well-known fact that Jake Hudson has failed grade eleven twice. Not exactly the brightest star in the galaxy.

He shakes his thick head and shrugs again. “Ben won’t be back. He quit.”

Ben quit? Why? Where did he go? He wouldn’t have moved back to Toronto without telling me. Would he? In a flash, my angry voice dissolves into an anxious whine.

“But … do you know where he went? I mean, did he take another job?”

“Sorry, I don’t know anything about it,” says Jake. “Can I get you some fries? There’s a fresh batch …”

I turn away before he can finish his sentence. Across the parking lot over to the Docks, back through the strip, I march — eyes sweeping the village for Ben. But everything is shut down like a blackout. There’s no sign of him anywhere. If I knew where he lived, I’d go to his house. But I don’t know where he lives. In fact, I know almost nothing about him. I take to the main road, all the while trying to tell myself it doesn’t matter, that I don’t care if he’s gone. Why should I care, anyway? I barely know the guy! And what I do know isn’t all that great. I’ll be better off without having to avoid his scowling face at school. Truly. And now I’m free to go get some fries at three o’clock in the morning without worrying about running into His Grumpiness.

For some weird reason, that last thought makes me unbearably sad. Tears burn my eyes. I break into a jog that quickly turns into a run that quickly grows into a frantic gallop. I race down the road as if an invisible monster is on my tail. And the tears keep coming, no matter how fast I try to outrun them. Blinded by the darkness, I don’t even know where I’m running until I find myself back on Aunt Su’s front lawn. Even through the pitch black sky, I know where I am by the familiar sweet smell of mint in the air. Also by the fact that I trip over the obnoxious, hairy gnome. It’s so dark, I can barely make out the shape of the house, but I know it’s there. This little cabin has pulled me towards it like a giant magnet. I stumble around to the back, almost totally blinded by the night. The sound of the waves lapping up against the circular dock is almost as familiar as my aunt’s voice. I close my eyes and struggle to find my breath.

In… out … in… out …

Better.

Then …

A sudden snap of a twig to my right. A cold touch of something

brushing against my arm. A shiver crawling up my spine. And then the sinister hint of an invisible monster’s breath blowing on my skin, stealing my own breath right from my mouth.

Oh my God!

With a yank, I pull my arm away and start running again. Heart pounding, breath panting, lungs exploding. The cool night air is suddenly thick, hot, burning against my skin. There’s barely enough of it to pull into my lungs. My feet punch the ground as I fly up the road. The chomping footsteps of the stranger behind me fill my heart with ice cold terror. Don’t look. Don’t look! He’ll catch you if you turn around to look!

I can’t help it. I turn around to look. Dark shadows everywhere. It’s too black to see much of anything, which just makes it worse because I can hear him following right on my heels. How can this lunatic see me through the darkness? Is he some serial psychopath who’s invested in night goggles or something? This latest thought jacks my panic up to a whole new level.

Oh my God! He can see in the dark! He’s going to catch me! I want to scream. Believe you me, I know it’s my only defence. I try so hard to scream.

Help! Somebody help! There’s a lunatic chasing me!

The words are so clear in my head, but for the life of me I can’t push them out. My voice is frozen in my throat. Caught up inside my panicked breath. If I want to live, I’ll have to keep running until I find a house. But my poor muscles are screeching at me to give up. There are no neighbours for kilometres, Lily! And at the same time, there’s a logical little voice somewhere at the back of my brain calmly informing me I’ll never make it. Let it go. Drop out of the race. You’re dying a slow death-by-exhaustion anyway — why not let this serial psychopath put you out of your misery?

What choice do I have? Truly, it’s almost a relief to do it. My muscles serenade me with a chorus of love songs as I let my feet slow up their pace. Little sparks of light swirl in front of my eyes.

Another second and his cold hands will be around my throat, squeezing the breath right out of my body. I let the serenade take over my thoughts and brace myself for a final, violent end. I’ve managed to survive for twenty-six days with no sleep and this crazed lunatic with hi-tech night-vision goggles is about to finish me off on a dark, lonely road.

Quel injustice!

My whole body hurts at the thought of never seeing Ben again.

Then, suddenly, out of the darkness comes a beam of light. Shining through my eyes to the back of my skull — blinding me more absolutely than any darkness. I stumble over my feet and feel myself crashing down onto the gravel road. Little stones cut through the knees of my jeans and slice into the skin of my palms. Like miniature teeth.

And then a voice.

“Lily? Is that you?”