in my journal.”
“You mean that creepy one you just put up on the wall?” She frowns. “The one that sounds like it was written by a serial killer?”
“That’s what you say about all poems,” I remind her. “And his was just deep.”
“Whatever, Em. In my opinion, the guy is a total creep… looking at you like that… you practically had an orgasm.”
“No, I didn’t,” I protest. “And why is he a creep? Because he knew my name and writes poetry?”
She laughs disdainfully. “I’m not jealous of you.”
I flip through the radio stations. “I never said you were.”
She smacks my hand away from the stereo and cranks up some upbeat pop song, knowing I’m not a fan of that kind of music. She belts out the lyrics at the top of her lungs, waving her hands and bobbing her head. I rest my head back and watch the trees drift by. I’m almost asleep when she slows down the car.
I open my eyes and start to unbuckle my seatbelt, but we’re stopped in a line of cars, not at the store. “Where are we?” I rub my tired eyes.
“Stuck in traffic.” She impatiently drums her fingers on the steering wheel.
“Wait, what… traffic?” I quickly sit up. The town is too small for traffic, yet there’s a row of cars lined each way over the bridge and down the road. Police vehicles barricade the street and uniformed policemen are sectioning off the center of the bridge with yellow tape and trying to detour everyone to the side.
“What’s going on?” I mumble, rolling the window all the way down to get a better look.
“Somebody probably did something stupid,” she replies in a bored tone as she inspects her fingernails for chips.
The line of cars crawls forward and Raven presses on the gas, driving by slowly. In the middle of the taped off section, an X is spray-painted across the asphalt and smashed into the cement barrier of the bridge is a rusted black Cadillac. The windows are broken, the hood is demolished, and there’s blood dripping from the back tire. And there are black feathers on the ground and on the hood.
“Isn’t that Laden’s?” I squint at the car. “Oh my God, it is.”
“Hmm… I guess he must have got into some trouble last night.” She smiles at the thought.
“This couldn’t have happened last night,” I say. “I just saw Laden this morning.”
“How can you be sure of what you saw?” she questions with a sparkle in her eye.
I eye her over questionably. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“There’s a lot of things I’m not telling you.” She grins and cranks up the stereo.
I turn back to the scene. There’s an hourglass painted on the back of the window in red, and feathers all over the hood and the ground. It’s the exact scene of when the police found my dad’s car, just a different location. And I worry that, like with my dad’s disappearance, I’ll become the prime suspect.
Chapter 6
When night arrives, I don’t visit the cemetery. The news announced that Laden is considered a missing person and that there is evidence of foul play. My mom ended up skipping out on dinner and so Raven took her place at the table. She acted like a lunatic, like she was high on the news of Laden’s disappearance, or high on something.
While Raven and I were out shopping, I tried to press her about the details of last night, but she shifted the conversation to clothes every time. I end up going to bed early, but late during the night, I’m woken up by the sound of my mom’s voice.
“Ian,” she yells up the stairs in a drunken slur. “I need your help.”
Ian is locked away in the attic, with his “muse,” a mysterious person that sneaks in every night so he can paint them. I climb out of bed and pad to the top of the stairway.
“Mom, Ian’s in the attic,” I say tiredly, rubbing my eyes and yawning. “What do you need?”
She frowns up at me. “I need help getting up the stairs.”
I sigh and trot to the bottom of the stairway. Her brown hair is disheveled and knotted and her eyes are bloodshot. She used to be pretty, but her lifestyle has rapidly aged her.
She tugs down the hem of her dress and drapes her arm around my neck, sighing. She smells like tequila and cigarettes and her death omen smothers me, like it always does when I come