Fluorescence: The Complete Tetralogy Read online

  . . .

  Sam was right. Kareena lived at the end of the block and her house was even bigger than Sam’s.

  “Wow,” I said quietly, taking in the stupid-large house she lived in. I imagined it having a heated indoor pool. Sauna. Marble hot tubs. Elevator. Gold-plated sinks. I couldn’t see anything beyond the short, white picket fence out front or through the window blinds, which were closed tight at this hour.

  “This was a stupid idea,” I said, looking back at her. She had a black scarf wrapped around her face like a ninja. She’d taken this mission thing way too seriously. “We can’t see inside the house anyway.”

  “You’re right. Sorry, Allie. Let’s go back.”

  We turned and started walking back up the sidewalk toward her house when I heard a familiar voice.

  Brian!?

  It was faint, but I heard him talking. Then I heard a girl’s voice. Kareena. Definitely. No mistaking that diva accent of hers. I turned and caught the two of them walking through the grass of the front yard. They were heading our way!

  I shoved Sam ahead of me and we ducked down behind a line of hedges in the neighbor’s yard. A stick poked the top of my ear and I grunted.

  Please don’t come this way. Please.

  I couldn’t begin to imagine explaining myself to either of them if they spotted us. Kareena would have a cow for sure, and Brian… well… I could only hope he’d understand.

  They took a few steps across the driveway and Brian sat down on the curb. Kareena sat beside him. The streetlamp overhead provided enough ambient light to watch.

  I held my breath. Sam scooted behind me.

  “What are they saying?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know.” I put a finger to my lips. “Shh.” Then I pushed her away from my face.

  I listened hard. Harder than I’d ever listened in my life.

  “I just needed some air, alright?” said Brian, shrugging.

  Kareena pushed him playfully on the shoulder and added a fake girly giggle. I scoffed.

  “Are you sure you didn’t want to take me out here because it’s dark… and private?” She tipped her head and batted her lashes.

  “Why would that matter? Your parents aren’t even home.”

  My eyes widened. Her parents weren’t home!?

  Kareena shook her head and looked off toward the distance. “Wishful thinking.”

  “Sorry. By the way, I should really be going.”

  “Aw, so soon? But we hardly had time to do anything.”

  “We’ve been talking for the past two hours.”

  “Oh, I know. But…” She reached up and combed her fingers through his hair.

  Sam gasped.

  I clenched my fists. Hell if I’d I let her touch my boyfriend like that. I moved a step forward and Sam grabbed my arm. I gave her a dirty look but she shook her head and yanked me back.

  I took a deep breath and tried to cool down. Focus. Listen.

  “Kareena.” He moved her hand away from his face.

  “I love the way you say my name.” She grinned.

  I tried not to gag.

  Brian came to his feet. “Kareena, please, I really need to go. Can’t you just take me back home?” He walked over to a red sports car parked in front of the driveway.

  Kareena stood and heaved a sigh. “You could have anything you want from me, Brian. Anything at all.” She marched over to join him near her car. “My parents are out of town and I have practically thrown myself at you. But no, you have to be all noble. Worrying about your little—”

  “Is that what you want, Kareena? For guys to treat you like crap? Because I can do that if you really want it, but I don’t think that’s what you need.”

  “What would you know about my needs!?”

  “Enough to know you’ve never been touched by another guy who didn’t want to sleep with you.”

  “Ugh!” She huffed, stamping her shoe on the ground. The stick-thin heel snapped off and she tumbled forward. Brian lunged to catch her.

  “Let go of me!” She shoved him away and stumbled over the curb.

  “I’m sorry, Kareena,” he said. “But it’s the truth and you know it. You can’t keep living like this. Letting people use you. Filling some kind of void with meaningless sex.”

  “What kind of guy are you, really? Are you gay?”

  “You know exactly the kind of guy I am. Who do you want to be? Do you want to be seen as a whore for the rest of your life? Or do you want people to respect you and actually care about you? How many people do you know would be there for you if you needed them? I mean really, actually needed them to help you for nothing in return?”

  She leaned against the hood of her car and crossed her arms, pouting. “I’m not getting used. I chose this life. It’s always been this way.”

  “No one wants to be used, Kareena. Stop fooling yourself.”

  “Well, maybe I don’t like being alone. How do I make friends if everyone hates me?”

  What a joke. I almost laughed.

  “Everyone doesn’t hate you.” Brian sat beside her on the car hood.

  “Yeah, right. Even in my stupid-ass dreams, I’m alone. Trapped and freaking alone. I was so damn scared. I…” She crumpled over. “I called out for help and no one could hear me.” Her voice trembled. “It’s not fair.” She covered her face with her hands. “Please, just don’t look at me like this. Jesus…”

  I leaned forward, holding a clump of hedge branches down to keep them from obstructing my view.

  “So you had it, too, Kareena?” Brian moved closer and gently pried her hands from her face. “That was you buried beneath all that rubble?”

  Her eyes widened. “How do you know about that?”

  “That’s what I needed to talk to you about, but you didn’t…”

  Sam’s phone chirped—e-mail. I swerved around. My jaw dropped. “Sam!” I mouthed angrily. She shrugged and pulled her phone out of her pocket.

  “I thought I silenced the ringer,” she whispered frantically, scrambling to change some settings.

  “What the hell was that?” Kareena turned, raising her voice. I swallowed hard and ducked down behind the hedges, backing up a few feet. Her heel clicked against the pavement. She staggered closer and closer.

  “Probably nothing,” said Brian. “What I was trying to say was—”

  “Oh, hell no!”

  Kareena had spotted us. I froze in place, holding my breath.

  “I see you. Come out of there right now!” she roared.

  Sam and I crept out from behind the bushes.

  The appalled look on Brian’s face made me feel like an idiot.

  Kareena turned toward him and propped a hand on her hip. “Oh, don’t act like you didn’t know about this, Brian. You had to bring along your little lame parade, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t know about them, I swear,” he defended.

  She pointed at him accusingly. “You know what? You can walk your lying ass home. In fact, why don’t you take your little sisters with you? I am done here.” She threw up her hands and turned away.

  “Maybe if you weren’t such a bitch all of the time, people would actually like you,” he retorted. “I hope you’re happy with yourself.”

  “I am.” She stuck up her nose and marched back up her driveway, tripping once on her broken heel.

  Brian looked at me, disappointed, and my heart sank.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, looking down. “I really am.”

  “I asked you to trust me, Alice. What were you so worried about that you had to stalk me?”

  Sam came out from behind me and held up her hand. “It was sort of my idea. I’m sorry, too.”

  He shook his head. “Jesus, Alice. I was kind of hoping you trusted me just a little bit more than—”

  Kareena shrieked.

  We veered our heads toward the sound but she had already disappeared from the driveway. Bria
n darted up the brick walkway toward the front door of her house and vanished into the shadows.

  “Guys!” he called out.

  I ran to meet him and my heart plummeted into my stomach. Brian was kneeling on the ground at the base of the porch, Kareena sprawled lifelessly across his lap.

  “What happened?” I fell to my knees beside them and tried to find someplace to put my hands. I touched something warm and damp. Blood on the concrete. I gasped and frantically wiped my fingers off on my jeans.

  Brian swept her long tangled hair away from her face, his blood-covered hands shaking.

  “I-I think she tripped on the steps,” he said, a shudder in his voice, cradling her head in his lap. An open wound on her forehead oozed blood. A streak of crimson trickled down her face. “She’s unconscious. Those damn high heels of hers.”

  “What do we do? What do we do?” Sam whimpered.

  A splash of red darkened Brian’s jeans and I winced.

  “We should call 9-1-1,” I said. “Definitely.”

  Sam scrambled with her cell phone. “On it!”

  “Wait!” Brian held up his hand.

  “What?” Sam paused and loomed over us, panicking. “What?”

  A rosy pink color radiated up the right side of Kareena’s face, followed by tiny sparks of hot pink light forking both up toward her brow and down toward her collar bone.

  “We were right!” Brian took Kareena’s hand.

  I untangled the stringy scarf from around her neck and bundled it up into my hand to press against her forehead, hoping it might stop the bleeding.

  “We need to call an ambulance!” Sam paced behind me.

  “We can’t let anyone see her like this,” Brian replied.

  “She could DIE!” Sam cried.

  The pink grew brighter and brighter, coloring the entire side of Kareena’s face with a fuchsia glow.

  “Alice!” Brian brought his other hand out from behind her back. His fingers resonated with fiery white-blue light. The veins snaked up his arms, burning much more intensely than before. An aura of color came to the surface of his skin and blue vapor wafted from his fingertips, like dust in a sunny window. He touched her face, tinting the pink of her cheek a rich purple with his light.

  “Kareena, come back to us, please,” I said, holding tightly to her frigid hand. Her body temperature was dropping fast, her grip weakening. “I might hate you, but I don’t want you to die!”

  “It’s doing something. I can feel it,” Brian said, readjusting his grasp on Kareena and propping her up against his leg. “The heat. The light. Something’s changing. Take that away.” He pointed at the scarf.

  I carefully peeled it back and watched as a violet glow webbed around the torn flesh, lighting and blurring the edges of the wound.

  The bleeding stopped.

  Kareena opened her eyes and cried out in pain. She choked on a drizzle of blood streaming down her face and Brian wiped it from her cheek.

  “It hurts!” she muttered, the agony in her words making my stomach sick.

  Brian cupped her face in his glowing hand.

  Beneath the dingy yellow cast of the porch light, I saw the wound closing—healing. It softened and smoothed over, the new skin forming like a fresh coat of paint overlaying the gash. It was as if nothing had ever happened to her perfect olive skin.

  “Are you doing that?” I asked Brian. He looked me in the eye.

  “I… think so. I can feel the energy moving through me.”

  “Leave me alone!” Kareena growled, pushing me off her and struggling feebly to shove Brian away, too. “What the hell is going on?” She came to her feet and took another step up the porch steps, wobbling and mumbling to herself furiously. Brian followed.

  She stopped cold in her tracks, looked down at her hands and screamed. There was blood on everything. The ground. Her shoes. Her clothes. She took a clumsy step closer toward the door and reached for the handle, her hand shaking. Then she let out another piercing shriek.

  The reflection in the glass front door revealed her pink face glinting back at her.

  Brian held up his glowing blue hand. “You’re one of us now,” he said.

  Chapter 17

  The police officer opened the car door for me and I stepped out, nauseated. Mom stood in the driveway, fuming.

  “Your daughter and some friends were loitering in the street past curfew. Neighbors heard some bickering and called it in. Thankfully, it was only an accident.”

  “An accident?” Mom shot me an angry glare. “What happened?”

  “The older girl they were with apparently had a fall on the pavement. A paramedic checked her out and said she should be fine.”

  “Paramedic?” Mom’s angry look transformed into a death stare. Her eyes narrowed. “Alice?” Her voice turned really gruff. “What the hell were you doing out in the street in the dark? I thought you were with Sam.”

  “I was. I really was. But…”

  “I don’t want excuses right now. Get in the house.” She pointed sternly at the door. “Now!”

  “Yes, Mom.” I slunk past her and rushed into the house.

  She stayed outside with the officer for a while longer. I had no idea what they were discussing. It was just a lot of nodding on the officer’s behalf and some angry shaking of Mom’s head in response. It scared me to death imagining what she’d say to me when she came back inside. She looked furious.

  The door slammed behind her.

  “Alice!” Mom yelled hoarsely. “Get down here right this second!”

  “I’m coming.” My voice broke. I tiptoed down the staircase.

  “Alice! What the hell do you think you were doing outside this late? With Brian? And that… older girl. Whoever the hell she is. Really, Alice?”

  “I didn’t mean for anything to happen. I just… wanted to check on Brian.” I couldn’t tell her the whole truth.

  “Oh yeah? Well, I’ll tell you what. How about we make this little escapade the last time you see him? How’s that sound?”

  “Mom, no! He didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “But you did. I can’t tell them what to do. If their parents are idiots, that’s their problem. What I say to my own daughter is what matters to me. You need to listen to me, Alice.”

  “Mom, please! This is crazy!”

  “No. You being brought home by a police officer past 10:00 at night is crazy! Seeing that car pull up into the driveway scared the crap out of me. I tried to call you three times, Alice. Three times and you didn’t pick up.”

  Oh, God. I pulled out my cell and turned on the ringer. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Then I called Sam’s parents to check on you, thinking maybe you were just in the basement watching movies and weren’t getting a signal, but no, they told me they didn’t know where you two had gone. Do you know how goddamn scared I got when I heard that?”

  “I’m sorry…”

  “Sorry is not good enough right now.”

  “Mom.”

  “I don’t know what to do about Sam, but… I don’t want you talking to Brian anymore. Do you understand?”

  “You can’t make me—”

  “Don’t talk back. And yes, I can. He’s not allowed over. You’re not allowed to call him. No texting—and believe me, I can get those records if I need to. If I catch you emailing him or anything else, I will take your computer away. I swear.”

  “No! I need it!”

  “Apparently not as much as you need to keep secrets from me. I trusted you, Alice, and you lied.”

  “I didn’t lie.”

  “You told me you were going to see Sam and somehow… somehow the night ends with you, Brian, and the police. I gave you two a chance but apparently that was a mistake. You’re not mature enough to be in a relationship. This stupid little game is over.”

  “Please listen.”

  “You didn’t listen to me.” Her lips thinned. She crossed her a
rms and looked away. “Go to your room!”

  . . .

  Sam had been smart enough to grab the garden hose and wash down the steps of the patio, but the police showed up literally minutes later, asking questions. Nosey neighbors… We had such little time to clear things up with Kareena before everything went south. To make things worse, our stupid city had an early curfew for teens under seventeen. Kareena was exempt—lucky her. Brian, Sam and I didn’t get off so easily.

  I hadn’t heard from Brian since last night but found him at lunch time, resting on a table, his head nestled in his folded arms. Sleeping? His wrinkled clothes made him look like he’d stayed in the woods overnight.

  “Hi,” I said quietly.

  He looked up at me almost mechanically, exhausted. Dark circles shadowed under his eyes. He didn’t even acknowledge Sam, who was standing right beside me.

  I brushed a hand through his hair and frowned. “Oh, Brian. You look so worn out. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” he groaned beneath his breath and cupped his face with his hand. “Three sodas and I still feel like shit. Sorry, Alice. I mean…”

  I’d told him before I didn’t like him swearing. He was so tired, though, I had to let it go.

  “It’s alright.” I nudged him in the shoulder and sat down on the bench, scooting closer. Sam sat down across from us.

  I leaned over to kiss his cheek, playfully tickling the back of his neck with my fingernails. He forced a smile. It faded with his next heaving sigh. It was tough seeing him like this.

  “When did your mom pick you up from the police station?” I pulled a little compact brush out of my bag and brushed his messy hair, straightening it as best I could. He scowled at me.

  He dropped his head onto the edge of the table with a thud. “She didn’t,” he grumbled.

  “I’m sorry.” I put my brush back in my bag.

  “She told them to keep me there because I deserved it. I was at the freaking police department all… freaking… night. They hauled me back to school this morning.”

  “That’s why you weren’t on the bus. I’m so sorry, Brian. You should have called me. Maybe…”