The Well Page 5

  I ignored the dog and shoved into the woods. Branches grabbed at me, long, sharp wooden fingers reaching, stabbing. Roots snaked out to trip my feet, as if the forest didn’t want me to find her.

  I shouted her name, then tried to run faster, but my body wouldn’t cooperate. My lungs and legs had had enough, and they slowed, a train running down. The dog kept pace easily, running circles around my legs, nearly tangling me. I cursed and tried to push him away with my feet, searching all the while for Megan’s tall, thin frame. She wasn’t near our tree, the huge, ancient oak in the center of the woods that stood taller than all the others.

  No. She couldn’t have. But some instinct told me, some sickened knot of dread said the worst.

  I kept going, deeper and deeper into the woods. Through the trees, I could see the vineyard way off to my right. Whipple barked and jumped at my legs, bouncing off them with his front paws. “Cut it out!”

  The dog kept it up. The vines tangled around me, a ropy spider web blocking my way into the cove surrounding the well.

  And then, buried between the tall, thick trees, I thought I saw a flash of light blue among the greens and browns. Was it Megan’s jacket?

  But that flash of blue was close, too close, to the well.

  What if …

  “Megan!” I started running again, calling her name, looking, looking, looking. Not seeing anything but vines and more vines-

  And then I saw her.

  Standing beside the well. She was looking down into it, her hands braced on either side of the opening. I screamed her name again.

  Finally she pivoted, slow, dreamlike, as if she were in a trance. I kept yelling her name, a broken record of Megans. Then she blinked and took a step away from the well, and her face began to fill with color, her eyes starting to focus. “Cooper, why are you running?”

  “Couldn’t … couldn’t .”Breathe, breathe … “Couldn’t wait to … see you.”

  A smile crossed her face, but it didn’t pack the usual wattage. Dimmed because she was still mad? Or dimmed because of what she’d seen in the well?

  She took a couple of steps toward me and I swear the color inked up in her face. Her cheeks flushed, nearly as red as the bandanna holding her hair back. “I skipped practice.” A couple more steps, and now her words became stronger, her voice louder. Like the fog was lifting. “Mrs. Parker’s probably going to have a coronary, but”-Megan raised a shoulder, dropped it-“I had a personal crisis.”

  Meaning me. Being a jerk.

  Damn. I regretted all over again standing her up, even if it hadn’t been my fault. Me and Megan had a really good thing going, and the last thing I wanted to do was blow it. But what was I supposed to tell her?

  She stood there, waiting, I was sure, for an explanation. Me to make nice, play the I’m-sorry card from the loserguy deck.

  Instead I stood there like an idiot. Whipple circling me like a hawk, pausing every few seconds to bark, then jump on me. He kept looking over at Megan, as if he was worried.

  She shot me the look usually reserved for Thursday’s mystery-meat sandwiches. “Well?”

  “I had a personal crisis, too.” If there was a more stupid answer on the planet, I couldn’t think of it.

  Megan rolled her eyes. Apparently, she agreed. “What do you mean by that? What kind of personal crisis could you possibly have that would make you stand me up? I mean, we’ve been going out for six months, Cooper. You can talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.”

  Yeah, about pretty much anything else I could.

  “Not about this. I’m sorry, Megan.”

  She shook her head, disgusted with me.

  I gave the well another glance. I tried not to inhale. Tried not to smell that smell again, but it was there, lurking on the fringes of my nose.

  Whipple rustled in the leaves around the well, nosing at something. He barked. I looked down and saw a khakicolored hat, the wide kind with the band around the rim. I knew only one person who wore a Grandpa hat like that.

  “Hey,” Megan said. “Isn’t that Paolo’s hat?”

  Paolo was this guy who had worked at the vineyard forever. One of those guys who was everybody’s friend. He’d been at Sam’s house for Christmas parties and let Megan and me borrow the Mule, which was like a glorified golf cart, for joy rides when Sam wasn’t looking.

  “Yeah.” I swallowed hard. Bent forward, picked it up. And immediately wished I hadn’t.

  “Oh my God.” Megan pressed a hand to her mouth. “I think I’m going to be sick. That’s not … that’s not what I think it is, is it?”

  “I don’t think so.” But I was lying and I knew it. I turned the hat away from her, so she couldn’t really see it. Whatever was inside made the hat heavy in my hand. “I think, like, an animal crawled into it and died or something.” Then I took a look inside, curiosity shoving common sense into a closet, and almost screamed.

  I had to breathe through my mouth so I wouldn’t upchuck. Because when I looked into Paolo’s hat, I didn’t see leaves caught on the inside. Or dirt. Or an animal.

  I saw gray matter. Blood. White hairs.

  Like his head had exploded in there.

  I glanced at the well and couldn’t even let my mind go there. No freakin’ way. Impossible.

  I threw the hat to the ground and backed up, way fast. Told myself I didn’t know what the hell a brain looked like. That it was some decayed squirrel.

  Yeah. Dead squirrel.

  Or dead guy.

  Oh my God.

  Had the thing in the well done that? To Paolo? Was that what would have happened to me if-

  If I hadn’t escaped that day?

  The knot in my stomach was so tight, I could have bounced an airplane off it. “Megan, we gotta get out of here. Now.”

  Megan ignored me and pivoted back toward the well. It stood three feet out of the ground, its rough stone walls covered in moss. From here, it looked as innocent as a newborn, but I knew better. “So, what’s this thing? I don’t think I’ve ever noticed it before. It’s kinda cool. Looks really old.” She took a few steps closer, reaching out a hand to the stone ledge that ringed the top. Whipple started barking as though he’d gone insane.

  I lunged for her. “Don’t touch that! Don’t go near it!” I grabbed her arm, pulling her back just as she was moving to peer down into the well’s inky depths.

  She let out a shriek of protest and stumbled back. She gave me the Crazy Uncle Earl look-for that one guy at the family get-togethers who kept a piece of foil under his Red Sox cap just in case the aliens came calling. “Cooper, what are you doing?”

  “I told you to stay away from that. It’s … dangerous.”

  Yeah, like hand grenades were dangerous toys.

  “I’m not two. And you’re not my mother.” She glared at me. “In fact, you’re not my anything. I thought we had something going, and then you start backing off. For days, no calls. No notes. Then you make this big date, tell me it’s going to be a big, fancy thing, and I get all excited, Cooper, thinking we’re back to normal. Back to you and me. And what happens? You stand me up-no phone call, no nothing. Again.” She shook her head, a glimmer in her eyes that sliced me like a knife. “Just get away from me, Cooper.”

  She flung off my arm and moved forward. I yanked on her sleeve again, as if she were a yo-yo. “Stop, Megan.”

  I didn’t want her to go, but what was I going to say? How could I explain the distance I’d put between us? How my home life kept getting in the way of everything I had that was good?

  “Why should I do anything you say?” Her face crumpled like a tissue, and I knew I’d hurt her. Megan. The one person in the world I didn’t want to hurt. “What happened? Everything was fine, we were fine, and all of a sudden, you just cut me off. What did I do?”

  The well stood a foot away from her, so close, still too close. The stench of death-those rotting pigs, maggots swarming over their bodies, feasting on the decaying skin, and for one second, the image of decaying s
kin became Megan’s skin and I nearly barfed-almost overpowered me. I kept one eye on the well, afraid that the web of green would start climbing over the edge, reach out for Megan, drag her down there.

  With Paolo?

  God no. That hadn’t happened. Hadn’t freakin’ happened.

  And those weren’t his brains in that hat. No way. Impossible.

  Yeah. Was there such a thing as being a pathological liar to yourself?

  Nothing moved; nothing came crawling over the edge. And one look at Megan’s face told me she didn’t smell the same scent I did.

  I swallowed. Just tell her, my inner voice whispered. Megan, of all people, would understand. I looked into her blue eyes, eyes the color of a spring-new sky, and started to speak-

  When I heard my name.

  Not even my name, really, just something that croaked two syllables out in a long, screechy whisper, the kind that sounded like nails on a chalkboard, only worse. I stumbled back a step, looking around.

  Cooper.

  “What’s the matter?” Megan asked.

  I spun in a circle. Whipple barked and backed up, his body low to the ground, a growl rumbling in his throat. “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  Come on down, Cooper.

  This time louder, like that guy on The Price Is Right. Inviting me to play the game.

  “That voice.” But even as I asked her and the whisper built in volume, I knew.

  Knew it was only in my head. Knew it was meant only for me to hear.

  I looked at the well. Felt everything inside me fall to my gut with a sickening realization.

  Come back. Bring her with you. Paolo’s already here. We’ll have a party.

  There was something in that well. And it wanted me. What was worse … it wanted Megan, too.

  Megan’s eyes were wide, her face pale. “Cooper. You’re freaking me out. What’s going on?”

  “Don’t touch me!” I took two more steps back, hands going to my ears, but it did nothing to block the sound, to keep it from crying now, like a wolf on a hill.

  “Cooper?” She sounded truly alarmed now.

  I shut my eyes and swallowed hard, even as the voice kept calling me, its tone changing now. It was taunting me. Laughing. I had to get Megan out of here, get her away from me, because anyone who came near me was in as much danger as I was.

  I kept my eyes shut because I knew I couldn’t look at Megan and do this. “Megan, just leave. Get out of here, damn it. I … I don’t ever want to see you again.”

  “You …” Her voice broke. “What? How could . .

  But she never finished her sentence. By the time I opened my eyes, Megan was gone. Whipple scuffled forward in the leaves and pressed his little body to my legs in sympathy.

  The voice had stopped calling my name, and all that was left was the trailing of its laughter in my head. I bent over, picked up a rock, and hucked it into the well.

  The laughter stopped.

  For now.

  Twenty-four hours later and I still had no solutions.

  Megan ignored me, like I’d told her to. But still, the cold shoulder stung really badly.

  I told myself it was for the best, even as everything within me hurt like hell and I missed her as if I’d had part of myself amputated. I might have ruined the best relationship I’d ever had, with the person I cared most about in the world.

  Keeping her away from me was right, though, until I figured out what to do. Had a plan. A solution. Or woke up from this nightmare.

  Still, it hurt. Every minute of every day. And a hundred times over, I wanted to call her, write a note, apologize. Just to see her smile again. Instead I suffered.

  Faulkner was out with Shelley, at some senior yearbook planning thing, leaving me to fend for myself at home. I hadn’t been able to come up with an excuse to leave and sleep somewhere else, so I stayed in on Tuesday night, figuring I’d stick to my room and lock the door if I had to. But so far, all had seemed pretty normal.

  Joey showed up a little after eight. StepScrooge Sam grudgingly let him in, and only because Joey said he was there for homework help. Joey burst through my bedroom door, cursing my father’s name. “Dude, you gotta help me write this paper. If I fail English this quarter, my parents will keep me on house arrest for the rest of my life.”

  “I thought you had a date,” I said.

  Joey shook his head. “Lindsay bailed on me.”

  “Joey, I don’t want to-“

  “Coop, I’m begging you here. Besides, you owe me.”

  “For what?”

  He stared at me, face blank. Thinking. Something Joey tried not to do too often. “Uh, maybe it’s the other way around. Doesn’t matter. We’re both failing, and you want a new cell phone, right? So you can have a link to the free world, like the rest of us?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then man up and let’s get this paper done.”

  Translation: Joey would sit on my bed while I did all the work. I was in no mood for that, so I pointed at my computer. “Do a Google cruise on Hamlet and see what you get.”

  He shrugged. “All right. First, I gotta check my vitals. My mother’s got my parental block up so high, all I can visit is Mickey Mouse.”

  I flopped onto my bed, picked up a Hacky Sack, and tossed it from one hand to the other, waiting while Joey ran through his MySpace page and his e-mail. I pretended to listen to Joey’s rambling account of life as an online stud. Finally, he managed to stumble onto the website for the CliffsNotes. “It’s got, like, four sentences on that stupid play,” Joey said.

  I flipped open my copy of Hamlet and skimmed the pages of act three. The words swam before me, a mountain of Old English gibberish. A ghost appearing before Hamlet, terrifying him and telling him someone was out to kill him. Then the play, mimicking murder. Murder. I didn’t want to think about that. English wasn’t a good alternative, but it was the only one I had right now. I ran a finger down the page, looking for something that would make sense.

  “The whole play would have been a lot shorter if someone had just told Hamlet to quit whining and do something already,” Joey said.

  I laughed. “Yeah.”

  Joey read some more, clicking from site to site. “Hey, what’s this supposed to mean?” he asked. “They keep mentioning this in the Google stuff. `The lady doth protest too much.’ What’s the big deal about that line?”

  “I think it means that the queen in the pretend play keeps on saying how innocent she is, and when you keep saying it over and over, that means you’re guilty.”

  Joey thought for a minute. “Like when Melissa Felton kept telling me she wasn’t doubling up with Eric Brown. Every time we were out somewhere, that girl was totally shoulder surfing, always looking for someone else when she should have been looking at me.”

  “Yeah, like that,” I said, not really listening as Joey kept going on about Melissa and his broken heart. “Joey. Joey.”

  “What?”

  “Dude, we should write this paper.”

  “No, we should go back to my house and get buzzed. I know where there’s some bonus beers from when my parents had a cookout on Labor Day. Back of the fridge in the garage. They’re Heinies. My dad hates those. He’ll never miss ‘em.”

  “No. I don’t feel like it.”

  “Dude, are you, like, dying or something?”

  I just might be. “Or something.” I got off the bed and switched places with Joey, who hadn’t typed a word anyway.

  “Man, get some sunshine. You’re making me depressed.”

  “Lot on my mind, that’s all. Let’s get this paper done and I’ll feel better.”

  He shrugged. “Plagiarize. It works for me.”

  I shook my head. “My dad has this computer program or website or something where he feeds in a few lines and knows in a minute if you copied. It’s like a lie detector for papers.”

  “What is he, the paper police?” Joey cursed. “We actually have to write this thing?�
��

  “Man up, Joey,” I said, repeating his words. And for twenty minutes, I did get Joey to do that-or at least, he typed while I did all the mental lifting. We worked out two separate papers-pretty much the same ideas, just different wording. I blathered on about how the play within a play was Hamlet’s way of proving guilt or innocence and helping himself make a decision, but that at the end he was no more decided than before, because when it came to family, murder was never an easy decision.

  Except, apparently, in my house.

  “Cooper, you’re a total Einstein,” Joey said, reading over the words we had on the screen. “Even I think this sounds good. An easy A, for sure.” He squinted at the paper. “Well, your dad is grammar Hitler. Probably a B.”

  “Yeah.” While the printer spewed out the pages with a coughing whine, I checked MySpace. I’d visit Megan’s page. See what was up. Make sure she wasn’t telling the world what a total loser freak-out I had been yesterday.

  “Hey, I’m gonna go raid your fridge. You want anything?”

  “No. I’m good.” I typed in my log-in information. Joey ducked out of my room. I waited for my page to come up. At first, it started to appear. The regular black and red punk background I’d pimped from another page filtered over the DSL.

  Then, like a virus, a web of green began spreading over the red and black, inching its way past the slashes of color, slipping beneath the comments section, under my friends section. It took over my background, leaving the photos and words. What the hell?

  I’d been hijacked. I cursed. I didn’t have time to rebuild my page and fix the background. There were more important things on my list than this. Forget it. Let whoever had flipped me to green win for now. I clicked over to the comments, looking for Megan.