As she and Felix sat on a bench under the Lovin’ Cup’s awning, Rachel turned on her phone to find messages from her father, each more urgent than the last.
Back in September, when she’d come here to attend Johnson State, she’d often put off returning her father’s calls, even when she’d missed him; especially when she’d missed him. She’d wanted to prove to herself she could be on her own. All she’d proven was she could choke back her homesickness and wound her father with unnecessary worry. In not getting back to him she’d denied herself and her father a chance to share in her transition, and she had come to regret it.
Now she wanted to hear her father’s voice as much as he apparently wanted to hear hers, perhaps more.
“Hey,” Felix said.
Rachel pressed her fingertips to Felix’s lips.
Her father picked up first ring.
“Where are you?” His voice was all wrong, aggrieved.
“School. Well. In town.”
Water dripped from the awning above Rachel.
Felix got up and stood at the edge of the sidewalk.
“Get home,” her father said.
“I can’t, I have my evening English Lit in an hour. My Civic’s dead. And—”
“Not home home. Your apartment. Get over here now. Meet me here.”
His severe manner scared her. She’d had enough of fear. “What are you doing there?” she said.
Felix was looking across the street.
“Get here as soon as you can,” Rachel’s father stressed.
Water dripped from the awning, spattered the toe of her boot. It was tinged red, like thinned blood.
Felix crossed the street and looked back at her, though Rachel could not make out the look on his face. The rain and fog, and the strange glow of the wet pavement cast that entire side of the street in a silvery halo.
“Fast as you can,” her father said.
“OK. Hang up. Everything’s OK.”
“Right.”
Felix stared at her. No. Not at her. At the awning?
The bloodred water dripped.
What the hell was going on?
Rachel stepped out onto the curb and shielded her eyes against the rain and the disappearing sun to look up at the awning. What was Felix staring at? She saw nothing, except the red water, trickling from rusted nails’ heads in the tin roofing.
She suddenly felt a presence behind her, at her neck. Heard breathing. Too close.
She spun around.
Felix.
“Damn it. What are you doing sneaking up on me,” Rachel said.
“I wasn’t sneaking. You were spacing.”
“We gotta go see my dad. He’s at our place. Why are you acting so sketchy?” Rachel said.
“Trying to figure out what that guy was looking at.”
“What guy?” Rachel’s pulse fluttered at her temple.
Felix pointed across the street. “Some guy was over there. I tried to tell you, but you shut me up. I swore he was looking at you. Like. Weird.”
“What did he look like?”
“Hard to tell. And he had his hood pulled up over his head. But he just stood there. I don’t know how to describe it. I went over to see what was up, but he was gone. I looked to see what else he might have been staring at.” He tipped his chin up toward the balcony a story above the awning, where patrons of the Lovin’ Cup sat in warm weather. There was no one there. “I thought maybe someone was up there.” Felix frowned. “No one was.”
“We need to see my dad,” Rachel said. “Something weird is going on.”
Water dripped from the awning into Rachel’s pixie cut she’d bleached platinum for kicks, and now wished she hadn’t. Her sprouting roots looked moronic; soon she’d sport a reverse skunk stripe for her middle part. She wiped at the water on her cheek. Rubbed it between her fingers.
In the fast-falling dark, she’d have bet her life it was blood.