Chapter 4 - Refract
I started running through scenarios at record speed. I could go outside, pick up the phone, and get threatened by a computer-generated voice to do unspeakable things. I could ignore it, stay inside, and anger a computer-generated voice to hunt me down and slash me to pieces in my own room. I could go outside and bump into a killer who was waiting right in the kitchen. I could ignore it and have the call turn out to be an emergency broadcast from the police station.
Before I could make a decision, the ringing stopped. Silence—nothing except the smallest groan from the floorboards beneath my feet. I touched my forehead and my fingers came back slick with cold sweat.
One tense second passed. Another crawled by.
The ringing started up again.
"Alright," I spat. "Fine."
I grabbed a nearby textbook, choosing one with a hard cover that made it heavier than a baseball bat, and stormed into the hallway. I could barely catch my breath, but I walked as if I was barging into an enemy stronghold, skidding into the kitchen ready to smack anyone waiting there.
But it was just me and the phone. I picked up.
"Hello?" I barked.
Try me, I dare you, I wanted to add.
Silence. More agonising silence—each micro-moment that ticked by convincing me of a Scream-like caller on the other end. Then:
"Luca, dear?"
Every muscle in my body loosened into a heap. "Mrs. Nguyen?" I exclaimed, recognising her voice. "Is everything okay?"
"Oh, I'm fine," my elderly neighbour replied. "I should be asking you that question—I heard screaming."
I sighed in relief, expelling my tension. That would explain a 3AM phone call.
"It was just a nightmare," I said, using my sleeve to dry the sweat along my neck. "No one's getting murdered." I tried to crack a smile at my own joke, but it was a long stretch.
"Oh, dear," Mrs. Nguyen said. "Is your father there with you?"
"Um—" The last thing I wanted was to worry the old woman. "He is," I lied. "I'm fine now, don't worry."
Mrs. Nguyen seemed appeased by my answer. "That's good, dear. If you need anything, just come over, alrighty?"
"Will do," I said. Then, frowning, I asked, "Mrs. Nguyen, how are you even calling? We never got a number for this phone."
"Oh, I just dialled the same one as the old neighbour's," she replied. "I figured it wouldn't change."
That explained half of it, but last I checked, our landline was unplugged too. I peered at the wires behind the phone. It was too dark to confirm anything.
I said goodbye to Mrs. Nguyen and hung up, unnerved by the whole encounter.
"You're fine," I whispered, picking up my textbook. "You're fine now."
I put a hand on my stomach to ease my twisting insides, but it did more harm than good. As I walked back to my bedroom, I could feel the scar tissue on my torso through my thin shirt, the result of a gaping hole that Rebekah had put in me with a piping hot bullet. When I passed the mirror in my vanity table, I halted, almost frozen at the sight of my own face, the one that had been twisted with such hatred in my dream.
My panic was coming back. I sank to the floor, needing to sit down.
"Dad?" I whispered, even though I knew he wasn't home. My voice wobbled. "Dad, where are you?"
I reached for my cell, and tried to call him, but I went straight to voicemail. Suddenly I was thirteen years old again, waking up in a dark apartment and remembering that I had a dead mother, panicking when I couldn't find my live father anywhere either. I was thirteen and wandering around the block sobbing, until I ran into Dad carrying an armful of groceries that he immediately dropped to hold me close.
I shook my head free of the memories. I was almost eighteen. And I was in no danger.
But still, there was an ache building behind my eyes and a sour prickling spreading from my nose to my throat. I brought my phone screen close, allowing the brightness to sting my retinas as I registered the incredibly late hour. I was selfish. I called the next name on my speed dial anyway.
After two rings, a sleep-riddled voice answered.
"Hi, babe."
I smiled despite myself. "Babe?" I repeated croakily. "Is that a thing we do now?"
Gabriel didn't grumble about why I was calling at 3AM. If it wasn't for his throaty timbre, I wouldn't have guessed that he had just been woken up by my annoying personalised ringtone.
"Only I can say it," he replied easily. There was a rustle on his end, like sheets being pulled back. "You'll have to think of better names for me."
I hugged my knees tightly, making myself comfortable on the floor. "That hardly sounds fair."
"Don't worry, it's not a chauvinistic macho thing," Gabriel said. "It's only because babe sounds too similar to Gabe, and my mother calls me that, so it would be weird."
A laugh was surprised out of me, but then so too was a sob, one that had been lurking in my throat, waiting for a prime moment to jump out. I pressed a fist to my mouth, but I couldn't pull the sound back.
"Luca?" Gabriel asked, immediately concerned. "What happened?"
"Nothing," I whispered. "I just wanted to hear your voice."
"Luca." He dragged my name out this time, conveying, Come on, don't lie to me.
"It was nothing, really," I sighed. "Just a nightmare, it happens—" I stopped, hearing a peculiar noise over the line. It sounded like a leaf crunching underfoot. "Gabriel, are you outside?"
"Yeah, I'll be five minutes. I can't take the car because my parents would notice, but I'm a fast jogger."
"Five minutes?" I blinked. "Wait, are you coming over here?"
"You sound like you need the company."
True to his word, four and a half minutes later, I stood and watched his figure stroll up my driveway. I ended the call, pulling my window up instead.
"You are so extra," I said in greeting.
He grinned lazily, as if he hadn't just trekked across dozens of empty streets at 3AM in the morning. I once thought of this time as the ghost hour—when every occasional bird hoot was sharper than usual and every thud on the pavement was more haunted than the next.
I forgot about all of that as soon as Gabriel reached in through the window and hugged me, the soft fabric of his sweatshirt swallowing me up and encasing me in the nicest scent that I could never identify but always recognised as Gabriel's.
"Luca, you're freezing," he whispered, pulling back. "Tell me what's up."
Gabriel climbed in through the window, and shut it firmly after himself. He was wearing sweatpants with his giant sweatshirt—his favourite pyjama combination, usually in mismatched colours.
"Honestly, it was just a really bad nightmare," I said, leaning on the foot of my bed frame. "I was in a forest, and then I was being strangled by myself, and then Joshua was shooting me, and—I don't know, it was really weird."
Gabriel's eyes were wide, concerned.
"Is this the first time it's happened recently?" he asked quietly. "It's because of Maire Reeve, isn't it?"
I shook my head. "No, it's not— well, I suppose, maybe— but—" I couldn't quite vocalise what I meant.
"Maybe you should get your doctor to look at your meds again," Gabriel went on. "It could help. You did say you were getting accustomed to the dosage—" He stopped, realising that I had stiffened. "Luca?"
I looked up, biting the insides of my cheeks. "Promise me you won't freak out."
"Freak out?" Gabriel echoed. His eyebrows were furrowed in confusion as he cupped my face in his hands, warming my cold skin. "I won't."
"I stopped taking my meds."
Gabriel blinked at me. Once. Twice. "Luca, why?" He only sounded more confused.
"I don't need them," I insisted. "I wasn't bullshitting Joshua when I said I was healed. I am—I'm not scared all the time anymore."
"What if it comes back?" Gabriel asked quietly. He was being generous with his selection of words, and we both knew it. It wasn't a matter of if anymore. My nightmare tonight and the shortage of little pills I was chucking down my throat had a correlation.
"Then I'll deal with it then," I said stubbornly. "Gabriel, look." I showed him my hands. "No shaking. You can be a substitute for my anxiety meds."
He didn't laugh, he just brushed my hair out of my face and tried to look at me.
It was a poor attempt at humour, and even I knew it. He couldn't fix me—only I could fix me, and in all these years, I still hadn't entirely decided if this was a thing to be fixed or just dealt with.
"I'll never be able to fully understand what it's like inside your head," Gabriel said slowly, carefully. "But I promise I'm trying to learn. And from what I've learnt so far, you can't go off your meds. It's going to end badly."
I almost stomped my foot and tried to pick an argument about how he would know, but one look at Gabriel's face and any indignation that was building in my chest faded. My shoulders sagged.
He was trying—for me.
"Okay, do you want the truth?" I asked, twisting my hands together. "I'm afraid of what those meds can do. Joshua controlled me with them. He could manipulate what I remembered, he made me doubt myself. I don't—" My voice broke, "—I don't want to go through that again."
"And you won't," Gabriel insisted fiercely. "That I can promise you. Every memory will be your own, I'll make sure of it."
I felt the corner of my lip quirk up. "Pray tell, how are you going to do that?"
"I'll ask you about your day everyday, so we know you never have a memory gap," Gabriel said, shaking my shoulder a little to emphasise his point. "If anyone comes near you with anything that looks vaguely chemical, I'll deck them."
At my eyebrow raise, he backtracked. "I'll give them a friendly shove?"
I snorted quietly, but it was enough. Gabriel took it for approval and dragged me to the kitchen, flicking on every light switch that we passed. With the hazy glow of the kitchen lightbulb, my eyes landed on the landline again, though this time, I could confirm that all of its wires were innocently connected to the wall outlets.
"They're in here, right?" Gabriel asked, digging through the third cupboard.
"Near the back," I said.
Gabriel found the bottles and placed them on the counter for me. Obediently, I shook out the necessary pills, then made a face at him as I raised them all to my mouth.
"Wait, wait!"
My hand stilled. "What?"
He filled a glass with water. "Don't swallow them dry, that's bad."
If I wasn't so on edge, I would have laughed. I gestured for him to pour the water into my mouth, like I was some sort of aquatic sea creature asking for a treat. In one gulp, I knocked the pills down with the water, trying not to think too hard.
"All gone," I said, opening my mouth. "Wanna check?"
"I'll take your word for it. You feeling okay?"
Surprisingly, I was. I didn't get hit with a sense of dread as the pills dissolved into my blood stream like I thought I would. Instead, my tumultuous insides seemed to calm considerably, stilling from their rebellion and going back to what they were supposed to be doing. I knew the meds wouldn't work that quickly, but I would take the placebo effect over nothing.
I nodded as we traipsed back down the hallway. The late hour was truly settling in, dragging at my weary limbs. I shut my bedroom door after us, and paused in front of the mirror again, waiting for my reaction.
No cold sweat, but my pulse still picked up. If I started becoming afraid of my own face, I was going to have a problem.
"Can you stay?" I asked.
Gabriel hesitated. "Is that a good idea?"
"We've had slumber parties before," I teased. I jumped onto my bed, bouncing with the mattress.
"That was before we became a little more than just friends, Fern."
I patted the space beside me. "I'll keep my hands to myself."
Gabriel didn't need too much convincing. He kicked off his shoes and jumped on, squirming into my blankets.
"Just wondering," I began, when we had settled comfortably, "does Altswood High keep archives of their old yearbooks?"
Gabriel turned to face me, not expecting the bizarre question. "Yeah, of course," he replied. "They're all in the library." He squinted at me. "Why?"
I stretched over and wound my arms around him, despite my earlier promise about keeping my hands to myself. "If I tell you, you need to pretend not to know."
"Well, we've already been accused of murder together," he sighed. "What's another shared secret?"
With my chin resting on his shoulder, I told Gabriel about everything that I had deciphered earlier in Maire's file, keeping my voice at a constant low whisper. The entire time, he was combing my hair with his fingers, frowning each time he met a tangle and frowning each time I covered a strange detail. When I finished talking, Gabriel's face had melded into a permanent frown.
"None of that makes any sense," he said. "The weird note is the only thing at the crime scene? No suspicious papers? No strange symbology?"
I shook my head. "I suppose they're not going to make it easy for us, but there's usually some sort of tell, you know? Rebekah liked to herald The real Hunt has begun. Joshua passed his kills off as accidents. Maire's death? It could be anything."
Gabriel thought it over. "In the interrogation room, the officer got in my face about Maire's monetary deposits to Rebekah and Joshua," he said. "That seems to be the link the police are drawing."
"Officer Louws said the same to me," I realised. I scoffed in disbelief. "They think it's a revenge killing. They think we blamed Maire so much for funding Rebekah and Joshua that we transformed from victims to murderers."
"Do you think the police have already flipped through the yearbook and found what Maire wanted them to see?" Gabriel asked. "Do you think they've even figured out that Maire was pointing at it?"
I shrugged. "I guess I'll ask Dad about it tomorrow. We can see for ourselves at school anyway. There's nothing illegal about that, right?"
Gabriel laughed softly. "Has that ever stopped you before?"
"Certainly not," I said. "I'm a rebel."
"A rebel who looked both ways before crossing the road this morning—"
I covered his mouth with my hand. "Shh..."
Gabriel licked my palm.
"Ew!" I cried, yanking my hand away as he cackled. His full body was trembling in glee. I felt happy simply watching him.
"How are we going to find the two people on the footage?" Gabriel asked once he had calmed down.
"Where do we even start?" I added. "I don't suppose we can go around interviewing anyone that vaguely resembles our height and weight."
"That may take a while," Gabriel agreed.
I rolled over until our noses brushed. "You don't think..." I couldn't quite continue. The words seemed to get stuck in my throat.
"That this is only the start of another spree?" Gabriel finished, reading my mind. "I don't know, Luca. I don't know."
It was a fear lodged deep in my brain, but something about this did feel different. I couldn't verbalise it: I could only hope.
***
I was awoken in the morning by the sound of plates being dumped into the sink.
The loud noises from my kitchen told me Dad had finally come home, and that left me blinking at my ceiling in a state of confusion, bleary-eyed with half my brain yet to resurface from Sleep Mode.
I was trying to figure out what day it was and why my initial reaction was panic.
Then, in a flash, I remembered: it was Thursday, I had to go to school, I had been accused of murdering Maire Reeve yesterday, and my boyfriend was still in my bed.
I scrambled to sit upright as footsteps clicked down the hallway. In the split second before Dad rapped his knuckles on my bedroom door and opened it, I yanked my blankets up and covered Gabriel's sleeping head entirely. He made a startled noise, waking, and I was forced to press my hand over his mouth underneath the covers, telling him to shush for a moment.
I may have outsmarted two serial killers, but clearly, I still wasn't very smart.
"Hey, Loosh," Dad said, poking his head in. Though he looked clean and freshly shaven, he had shadows underneath his eyes. As if I was the one who looked sleep-deprived, he squinted at me. "You didn't stay up too late last night reading the file, did you?"
I shook my head, trying to appear calm. As long as my blankets didn't suddenly move, I could get away with this.
"I went to bed at a respectable hour," I reported. "Though I do have many points to discuss about that file."
"No problem, but later." Dad checked his watch. "You need to be at school in an hour."
Even if I was a murder suspect, I needed my education.
"I have to run back to the station again for a press conference," he continued. "Are you fine getting to school on your own?"
I nodded, perhaps too eagerly. "I'll be fine."
"Alright," he said, already wandering off. I heard papers being shuffled in the lounge and a briefcase being clicked shut. "I'm off then."
I sent my invisible thanks up to whatever cosmic force was listening.
"Bye, Dad!"
I was too hasty.
"See you later," Dad shouted, opening the front door loudly as he likely struggled with everything in his hands. "Make yourself some toast, and Gabriel, there's instant coffee in the second cupboard."
The front door closed.
I couldn't react for a full half minute, uncertain if I had heard Dad correctly.
Gabriel's head emerged from my blankets, blinking in shock. Most of his hair was in his eyes, and he had to flip all his messy curls back, before exclaiming, "Did he just—"
With no other reaction left, I could only burst out laughing.