After the final bell, Lana Loud walked three blocks in the opposite direction of her house. She wore jeans, a green flannel shirt, and a red cap pulled low on her head, as if to hide her face. She kept her head down and her shoulders square; she had no reason to expect a fight, but if one came, she intended to win it. At Cleveland Street, she turned left and followed the sidewalk, hazarding a glance up. The Norman house sat across the way, and though it was completely normal looking in every respect, darkness seemed to ooze from its very pores. Lana stopped and regarded it with a sour expression. Thanks to the asshole who lived behind those four walls, her sister Lucy was suspended, lost her club, and had almost her whole family turned against her. Last night, looking into her eyes, Lana saw hurt, confusion, and pain beneath her anger, and that made her furious. She wasn't especially close with some of her siblings, but her parents taught her that family was everything, and when you messed with her brother or one of her sisters, you messed with her.
She leaned against a tree trunk and pulled out her cellphone so she looked like she was casually texting a friend, maybe waiting on them to come outside, instead of casing the house across the street. She stayed that way for nearly ten minutes, growing more and more self-conscious until she was certain she stuck out like a sore thumb and that someone would notice and call the police. Finally, a boy clad in a pair of jeans and a gray hoodie with white writing across the chest turned onto the street. Lana tensed and stared at him. Was he the one?
He walked with the easy stride of a man who had never done anything wrong in his entire, charmed little life. At a glance, he was roughly fifteen or sixteen and handsome in a delicate sort of way, his skin clear and his eyes deep, limpid puddles. Lana tracked him, suspense building inside of her, and when he went up the walkway to the Norman house, her brow lowered. So it was him. What's your bitch name, kid? I'm gonna kick your ass for what you did to my sister.
Balling her hands into fists, Lana stalked into the street, intent on knocking and breaking his jaw when he opened the door, but Lucy's words stopped her. Don't do anything stupid, she had said. Right now the focus is intelligence gathering, not retribution.
She was right, of course - they needed to know who this guy was and who he was working with - but Lana really wanted to plow him in his face. He looked like a real soyboy; he'd probably shatter under her first, then cry about it.
Blowing an agitated puff of air through her teeth, she wheeled around and stalked away before she found herself doing anything stupid. As satisfying as it would be to deck Norman right here, Lana's ultimate goal was to help Lucy, and beating the crap out of anybody right now would only serve to make things worse.
She didn't often think much of long-term prospects, because why would she? If something needed to be done she would do it as soon as she could. If a car got a flat tire or if something around the house needed fixing, she grabbed what she needed for the repair and got down to it as soon as she could. Having a broken piece of equipment or an unfinished home improvement bugged her immensely, and it would rest on her mind until the moment she fixed it. She hated putting things off.
And as such, it made waiting difficult, especially with the rage that burned inside her for what this kid did to her sister. If it were up to Lana, she'd grab the dude, push him up against a wall, and interrogate him to find out who the other people in his group were… and then beat the crap out of him for good measure. But she knew that Lucy wouldn't like that. There was the chance, after all, that he could lie to her, feed her false information, and then when Lana went away, he'd tell his gang of trouble-makers about what she did to him and they'd come after her. They might even track her down to her house and throw a brick through the window or something - doing something like that was certainly not beyond their nature.
That wouldn't just put Lana and Lucy at risk, but the rest of their family as well. Thinking it over, Lana found that Lucy was right. At the present moment, all they could do was to gather intelligence and then submit it to the proper authorities. That way, if this guy and his gang got any funny ideas about getting vengeance on the people who caught them and turned them in, they would have no clue as to who it was that caught them. They'd probably even suspect one of their own. Lana smiled at the idea of the delinquents beating up a kid in their group whom they assumed to be the rat, when it was really her and Lucy that were the cause of their downfall.
When the kid was a good distance away, Lana put her phone away and began to follow at great distance on the opposite side of the road. He carried on down Cleveland Street for a while then hung a right at Westfield. He moved normally, and with confidence; if anyone but Lana saw him walking down the street, they'd likely assume he was a normal, everyday kid, and not one who had just been defacing his school the night before, and getting other people suspended for it in the process.
She trudged along trying to keep the farthest following distance she could while still keeping him well within her line of sight. Lana checked her surroundings as she went, making sure nobody was following her. She didn't think any of the vandals saw her last night, but if they did, whos to say the Norman kid wasn't leading her right into a trap? It was an unlikely prospect, but a scary one nonetheless, and Lana made sure to keep aware of her surroundings as she moved, just in case.
Before long, they took a left and went straight, now heading straight for Royal Woods mall. The
big building became visible in the distance as they went along. Was he going to the mall?
Evidently, he was, because before long they were approaching it's east parking lot. Here, there were many more people than before, so Lana could better blend in. Though, now she had to follow at a closer distance as they went deeper and deeper into the mall so that she wouldn't lose the kid to the crush of people.
They entered the mall through a BestBuy, and there were more people inside than had been outside. Moreover, they were packed more closely together. This meant that though Lana was able to better blend in with the crowd, it was also more difficult to stay following her target.
Hiding behind a shelf of movie DVDs, Lana watched as the kid disappeared behind a nearby refrigerator display a few feet away… and not come back out on the other side. Quickly, she moved in his direction, not wanting to lose him.
She came out on the other side of the fridge display, where she had last seen him, but he was nowhere in sight. Shit. She quickly looked around, no longer worried about looking suspicious, focused on not letting him slip away from her.
Then, she saw a kid in a hoodie near the exit, leaving the store, slipping out just as Lana saw him.
She scurried to the exit, but struggled finding him again when she walked out of Best Buy. She was at a two way junction not knowing which way he went, and the crowd of people was much bigger. How was she supposed to find him now?
Frantically looking around left and right, unable to spot any boy his height wearing a hoodie, Lana determined that she lost him.
Rats.
She reluctantly threw in the towel and sulked home, where Lana spent the rest of the day silently kicking herself, but got over it eventually. She and Lucy still knew where the kid lived, and that was a good start. They needed more information, though, so they agreed to sneak out again under the cover of night at least once more.
That night, Lucy and Lana climbed down the tree outside Lucy's window at half past nine. Mom and Dad had only been in bed a half an hour and leaving so soon was risky, but Lucy wanted an early start.
The air was frosty and bitter, and within moments Lucy's normally pale cheeks were rosy with wind burn. She wore her peacoat, a dark gray watch cap, and purple knit gloves that came, if she remembered correctly, from Luna. Lana wore scuffed white Adidas, a red toboggan pulled low on her forehead, and what is classically referred to as a Canadian tuxedo: Jeans, a denim workshirt, and a denim jacket.
"I want you to go around the back of the school when we get there," Lucy explained as she and her sister made their way through the woods. "They're stupid, but I don't think they're stupid enough to strike in the same exact spot twice. I can watch the front and and left side of the school from my tree. I want you to find a spot where you have a good view of the back and the right side."
"Got it."
It had been lightly raining on and off throughout their walk, and the wet, black asphalt almost seemed to glow in the moonlight. They eventually came to the road, looked both ways, and scurried across. Wordlessly, the two separated and went their own ways; Lucy to her tree and Lana to the back of the school to scope out a hiding spot for the night.
Lucy arrived at her spot and quickly began to climb up. Pure habit for her at this point, her movements were automatic and it took less than twenty seconds to position herself atop of the largest branch.
About twenty-five minutes later, Lucy felt something begin to hit her skin and looked up from her book. It was beginning to sprinkle lightly again, and the sprinkle was quickly turning into a heavier rain.
Lucy's blood ran cold and she froze as she heard a pittering not too far away - in fact, the sound was dangerously close. It sounded like water on metal. Metal? Why would there be metal nearby?
Quickly, she reached into her pocket and clumsily took out her small flashlight, almost dropping it in haste. She turned it on and shined it around in the general direction of the pittering sound,
flashing back in forth in the nighttime to see what she could uncover.
On the road not even twenty feet away from her, Lucy spotted a 2019 Plymouth Fury that had previously been hidden by the nighttime. It's chrome grill reflected the light back at Lucy and her eyes widened. How long had it been there? Why was it there? If they needed to park, they'd have done so at the school. Were they trying to avoid detection? Were they part of the gang terrorizing the school?
All of this went through Lucy's head in the span of a couple of seconds, and she quickly turned off her flashlight when she realized that whoever was in the car could clearly see the light pointing at them. She had given away her position.
Quickly, she fumbled to turn off the light, but it was too late. Even before the beam turned off she heard the telltale sign of the car doors opening.
"Who are you!" bellowed a male voice.
"Show yourself!" yelled another.
Lucy panicked. The thought went through her mind to stay up in the tree, remain perfectly still, and hope that the insurgents passed her by, but that was stupid - they knew her exact location. They were coming for her. She had to leave. Now.
Primal fear filled her to the brim and she swung her leg over the branch, wobbed, and in her haste, lost control, falling from the oak and hitting the ground with a yelp. The fall wasn't very high, but the shock of losing her purchase startled and momentarily disoriented the girl.
"Hey! Stop!"
She shot her head up and saw, under the light of a street lamp, a dark figure in all black making its way to her. And it was moving fast.
Lucy shot up and began to bolt.
"Hey!"
Lucy thought first of running to Lana to warn her that she had been spotted and to flee the school, but then realized that this would be stupid. The best thing for her to do would be to flee in the opposite direction of her sister, so she could continue hiding. If Lucy gave away Lana's position to the assailants, she, too, would be at risk.
She turned to her left and ran with animalistic abandon. She was prey, being chased by a predator. Being caught would mean certain death, or at least a very rough beatdown and interrogation. Lucy considered herself strong, but based on how far the people chasing her were willing to go - how much pain they were willing to make her endure - she could very well crack and admit everything that she had been doing. All the work she had been doing, all the risks she had been taking, all the risks she had let her little sister been taking with her, would all be for naught.
That more so than the threat of immediate pain at the hands of her chaser galvanized Lucy to move faster. Under no circumstances would she be found responsible for harm done to Lana as a result of her half baked plan to catch the true criminals behind the crimes.
In a matter of seconds, she made it up a small hill and to the fence separating the road from the school parking lot and jumped over, almost tripping herself in the process. She bolted away from the school and shot a quick look over her shoulder. To her surprise, Lucy was no longer being followed by the figure. Had he let her go?
About fifty feet behind her, the headlights of the car turned on and the rumble of a motor started. Lucy was right in it's view, exposed by the bright illumination of the headlights. Spotted. Vulnerable.
The car lurched forward, and for a second, Lucy was paralyzed with fear. In less than a second, though, she quickly took back control of her body and bolted straight ahead. The car was barreling toward her and picking up speed quicker and quicker. Were they trying to fucking kill her? Lucy came to know that there was a very real possibility now that she would die tonight, all over some stupid mystery that she was trying to solve to clear her name that should have never had to have been cleared in the first place.
She wasn't a real detective. She was just a high school freshman in over her head, someone who bit off more than they could chew. It was egotistical to think she could clear her name by herself, and now she would be paying the price for her ego - and that price may very well be death. Why had Lucy needed to be brought to almost certain demise to realize this? It was obvious and she should have came to her senses earlier.
The car was closing the gap in between it and Lucy quicker and quicker. Its rumble was like a roaring lion and Lucy was so small in comparison to the hunk of metal with wheels hurling at her that it was grotesque. Tonight, she was now sure, she would be killed.
Moments from certain death, senses came to Lucy and she jumped to the side, hurling herself over a guard rail. A steep hill was on the other side, and before she knew it, Lucy was tumbling down, and fastly so. She didn't know what way was up and what way was down. Pain overwhelming came to her - she scraped her knee on a patch of mud hardened by the cold, followed by her hair getting caught on a stick and being pulled, followed by her head hitting a rock and warm blood beginning to ooze slowly from her forehead.
She must have reached the bottom of the hill, because she stopped rolling and the night sky above her was still but blurry. The moon looked fuzzy and stars blurred against the blackness of space, almost like they were melting.
Lucy heard more voices but was too disoriented to make out any English from them. She could tell, however, that they were drawing near. Lucy, almost falling over her own feet, forced herself to get up and ran off into the woods. She was crippled and slow but if she could reach the trees before she was caught and keep a decent distance between her and her chasers, she could zigzag around the forest and lose their trail.
Running across a small grassy area, Lucy held her left arm across her chest and grabbed on to her right arm, which was bleeding. She struggled to move but the threat behind her pushed her past her natural limits. There was no telling what would be done to her if she allowed herself to fall into the hands of her enemies. Death, though, was a certain possibility.
14 and fighting for her life at far too young an age, Lucy made it past the treeline. Not looking behind her - not willing to waste the precious nanoseconds that it would take to do so - she did her best to lose those that were chasing after her. In her dazed mind, Lucy did her best to make the most confusing route. Straight, left, left, right, left, straight, left, right, right, right, right, left, right, left. She ran for at least 30 minutes (though it felt like thirty hours) before tripping over a stick and falling to the ground. Unable to pick herself back up, Lucy crawled to a tree and put her back up against it. The woods were silent in the night and moon rays filtered through the interlaced treetops above, silvery light dappling the leaf plastered ground. Lucy swallowed thickly and pressed her fingertips to the wound on her scalp with a sharp hiss; they came away wet and tacky with blood, and the sight disturbed her deeply. She had never been squeamish, even when it came to herself, but something about the ichor unsettled her and brought a fresh crop of tears to her eyes.
She never should have done this. She was arrogant and full of herself; she thought she was a genius and infallible, but sitting here in this lonely place, surrounded by twisted tree trunks and bitterly cold wind, the stark realization that she was wrong came upon her like a biblical revelation. Being blamed for the vandalisms not only hurt her, it offended her. She took it as a personal affront, and it boggled her mind how they could ever suspect her. She was perfect, after all, an intellectual Gulliver among the denizens of Lilliputia, so far beyond reproach that she was scarcely even in earshot. A well-worn maxim says that pride goeth before the fall, and if this was her fall, then everything leading up to it was her pride. She was conceited, condescending, and borderline sociopathic, her self-absorption so total that she dismissed everyone as cretins and dullards and disdained those who weren't like her because she believed she was better.
A tight fist of panic, both primal and existential, closed around her chest, and breathing became suddenly difficult. She gasped for air and tried to calm her racing heart. She did deserve this. Being blamed for a crime she didn't commit, chased and hunted like a dog, bleeding, hurt, and waiting to die; deep down, she was a terrible person and whatever came, she had earned it.
Her stomach turned and vertigo came over her. The woods were devoid of sound save for the ragged wheeze of her panting and the roar of blood crashing against her temples. It was cold, so cold, and she wrapped her arms protectively around her chest.
She was so wrapped up in her suffering that she didn't hear the crunch of leaves until it was almost on top of her. Her heart crashed to an agonizing halt and her body went completely rigid. A bright, white beam, as if from a flashlight, cut through the darkness ahead. A gasp of terror escaped her throat, and it whipped in her direction, blinding brilliance consuming the world. Her stomach dropped, and in that moment, she knew she was going to die.
The idea of death had never scared Lucy before - in fact, it held a strange sort of allure. Death was the final frontier, the one mystery of life that one could never chart or fully know. She didn't believe in God, but she was intellectually open enough to understand that she simply did not know what waited on the other side. Darkness? Paradise? Something in between? She was curious by nature, and had spent the majority of her years contemplating the matter, turning it over and over in her mind like an interesting but unexplainable object, a secret wrapped in an enigma, so to speak. She was not excited to die, but she vaguely longed to finally find out what exactly existed past the veil, if anything. She always imagined she would meet her death with grim if not stoic resignation, like one of the brave and admirable characters in the books she so loved.
Instead, she started to cry.
Tears slid unashamedly down her pallid cheeks and her shoulders shook violently. She wanted to be home, safe and warm in her bed, wanted to be far away from here, wanted to live...and wanted her mother.
The beam jiggled as her murderer approached, and Lucy hugged herself tighter, sobbed harder. She squeezed her eyes closed against the onslaught and trembled in expectation of being beaten or choked; her spine tingled, her stomach rolled, and a moan drifted from her constricting throat.
"H-Hey," a low voice whispered. She couldn't see who it was behind the light, but it sounded like a boy.
"Don't kill me," Lucy sputtered. "Please don't kill me."
The boy didn't respond. The light clicked off, and Lucy's heart blasted into her mouth. Leaves rustled as he knelt, and she tried frantically to crawl away. "Hey," he said. When his hand fell on her shoulder, electric terror shot through her, and she tried to scream, but it came out as a broken, airless gasp. "Hey," he said, firmer this time. He pulled her back and she flopped against the tree trunk. Her light dazzled eyes could only make out his profile, thin, delicate features and messy hair with only a suggestion of eyes. Lucy's breath caught and she waited for him to throttle her.
But he didn't.
"I'm not going to hurt you," he whispered, "okay?" He shot a wary glance to the right, as though he'd heard something, and Lucy tensed. "What were you doing back there?"
She didn't respond. Couldn't respond.
"Huh?" he pressed
"I...I was watching…"
"Yeah. Why?"
"Because I got blamed for what you're doing."
He sighed. "Alright, look, I'm sorry you took the fall, but drop it. This is bigger than you know. If you're smart, you'll go home and -"
In the distance, a faint voice rang out, drifting through the woods like a phantom cry. "Yo, Lucas!"
Lucy felt Lucas watching her, perhaps conflicted, then he sighed and got to his feet. "Stay here until morning," he said.
"Lucas! You find her?"
The boy turned in the direction of his comrade's voice and cupped his hands to his mouth. "She's gone!"
"Fuck."
Lucy swallowed around a lump of raw emotion and jerked a fearful glance at Lucas when he took a step forward. "Forget all of it, okay?" he asked.
Before she could reply, he was gone, kicking through the leaves and disappearing into the shadows. Lucy watched him until the sound of his footfalls faded, dreadfully certain he would come back with his friends. Forgot to mention, I lied. After a while, when it became clear that he wouldn't, Lucy hugged her knees to her chest, buried her face, and openly wept. She had never felt so weak and afraid in her life, and the terrible knowledge that when faced with peril, she cracked made her cry even harder.
She needed to get control of herself; it was starting to rain harder now, droplets beating a plopping tempo on the leaves, and if she stayed out here until morning like Lucas told her to, she would die of exposure.
She waited another ten minutes before struggling to her feet. Her knees were weak and her head spun. She held her arms out on either side to retain her balance and picked along the uneven ground. The terrain sloped down to a rushing brook, and Lucy stumbled, nearly falling but keeping her foot. She forded the stream, getting her socks and shoes wet in the process, and climbed the other side. Her head ached monstrously and slick nausea gurgled through her
stomach. She leaned heavily against a tree trunk and fought back the urge to vomit. When it passed, she continued on and eventually came to a moon dappled trail. She couldn't be sure but she thought -
Behind her, twigs snapped and bushes rustled. Her chest clutched and she spun around; a terrible white faced apparatition with gaping black eyes stared back at her, and she let out a scream of mind-bending madness. The thing grabbed her by the arms and Lucy tried to break free, stopping only when her younger sister spoke. "Lucy, stop, it's just me."
"L-Lana?" Lucy asked. Lana leaned forward and a shaft of moonlight fell across her countenance, banishing the shows and revealing it to be her alright.
"It's me," Lana said, "what happened? I've been looking for you for hours."
Lucy opened her mouth to reply, but stinging tears welled in her eyes. Lana frowned and wrapped her arms around her; Lucy offered no resistance, and allowed her sister to pull her close like a mother consoling her desolate child. "What happened?"
Lucy tried to speak, but her lips trembled, and instead, she buried her face in Lana's chest.
Later, as they walked home through the park, the waning moon hovering low over the treetops, she told Lana everything, beginning with the chase and ending with "Lucas" finding her and letting her go. As she spoke, Lana stiffened, and the air around her filled with dark tension. "What did he look like?" Lana asked.
"I didn't see him very well," Lucy said.
She described him as best she could, and Lana furrowed her brows in thought. They were at the end of Franklin now. The houses along its length watched with sinister intent, and Lucy's heart skipped a jagged beat. Hours ago, they were simply houses, but after her ordeal, they harbored potential danger. She threw a worried glance over her shoulder, certain that Lucas and his friends would be there, like demonic shadow-people escaped from the nightmare hellscape of the 5th dimension, but the sidewalk was empty.
"That sounds like the Norman guy," Lana said dubiously. "The one we followed."
Lucy didn't see him well enough to know. If it was...what should their next step be? They knew his name and where he lived, but nothing else. They didn't have any evidence so they couldn't go to the police, and they probably couldn't bluff him. He may have shown her mercy back in the forest, but that didn't make him a good person. He and his compatriots were obviously willing to hurt or even kill if they had to, and if she and Lana backed him into a corner, he might come out swinging.
Echoing her own question, Lana asked, "What now?"
They reached the bottom of the driveway, and though the house was wrapped in night, it was beautiful, and Lucy had never been happier to see it. "I'm not sure," she admitted. "He and his friends are dangerous." She meant to say more, but cut off and meditated for a long, silent moment. "Maybe we should just give it up."
Lana gaped, and Lucy contritely lowered her gaze. "Really? After what they did to you?"
"They didn't technically do anything but chase me," Lucy said.
"And what if they caught you?"
She started to reply, but she didn't know, didn't even want to think about what may have happened.
At this point, she didn't care about clearing her name. She just wanted to go to bed and sleep off the trauma.
Maybe she'd feel differently in the morning...and maybe she wouldn't. "I just wanna go to bed," she muttered, "we can talk about this in the morning."
With that, she went up the walk, inside, and to her room.