I don't know if I'm going to continue this. I haven't posted in a while so I thought I'd see if anyone liked this new one. Happy reading.
CHAPTER ONE
The First Letter
It started out as some sick prank. Just a stupid, mean, creepy prank. There was really no way anyone could have known how seriously John would take it, no way anyone could have seen how utterly insane he would go.
Each one of us in the group had had to endure some kind of prank at one time or another. Granted, the one we played on John had been taking it one step further—no one had ever been hurt before—but he shouldn’t have snapped like that.
I don’t think anyone realized what had been done as soon as John ran away, blood dripping down his face. But afterwards, when we had all laughed it off, each of us carried our own unacknowledged guilt. I saw it on their faces, in the way some of us hunched our shoulders as we left the woods.
I was the guiltiest. I was the one who could have put a stop to things, should have killed the idea as soon as that stupid Ron brought it up.
But I did do it. I did help them with their plan. Because even I harbored some anger towards John Wenzel for what he’d done. I wanted to see him hurt, humiliated, scared. He was the one who drove a wedge between Chris and me. It was all his fault that the only boy I’d ever loved couldn’t stand the sight of me. The others wanted the same kind of revenge, holding their own grudges against him. John had done a lot to each of us over the years.
So I did it. And John came running just as we all knew he would. But when it was over I didn’t get the feeling I’d hoped I would, had counted on. There was none of the pleasure or even just gratification. I watched John run off into the darkness, tears streaming down his cheeks and the others laughing. I didn’t join in.
By the time our group decided to head home, I think they were all feeling what it had taken me only seconds to feel.
“He only got what he deserved,” Ron tried to reassure us. “He had it coming, didn’t he?”
Oddly enough, no one answered him. The silence of that night was a dead giveaway of the guilt—there was never quiet when we were all together. There was always someone talking, someone laughing, someone arguing. Noise. That was the Baxter clan.
We never saw John again. Millie told us he’d transferred to another home, and she never said why. But the way she looked at me, at Ron and the rest of them, told us that she knew something was up. And to make us pay for whatever it was that she knew we had done, she made all the girls cleans the bathrooms and the guys weed the garden.
Life went on. Chris still wouldn’t speak to me, no matter what I said or how I pleaded, and after a while I gave up. I loved him, but the way he ignored me whenever I was around—not to mention the fact that he started dating Gina Gilford—made me realize that this was one war I couldn’t win. I wasn’t that much of a fighter. I just tried to stick close to my friends, my family, and I didn’t like taking bullshit from anyone. But the bullshit form Chris was well-deserved, so I took it.
Eventually the prank was put in the past. Most of us tried to forget completely about it, and it was never mentioned again. Which was weird, because pranks like that and other stories were always brought up again in our house. Not the prank we pulled on John, though.
Everyone thought it was behind us. John never came around again, Millie didn’t mention him, and Ron graduated to picking on little Gwen. Which he quickly got beat up for by my big brother Greg, who had a soft spot for brown-eyed little girls.
It was over. There was no point in feeling bad about something that happened months ago. John was never coming back, and that night in the woods was the end of it. That’s what we all thought.
Until the letters started coming.
Ron got the first one. He didn’t tell us at first, because being Ron, he just assumed it was from one of us, trying to freak him out. He crumpled it up and threw it away.
Then Quinn got one. He had the biggest mouth out of all of us, and he wasn’t afraid of keeping it shut.
“All right, which one of you idiots wrote this?” he demanded one day after school, stalking up to us in the parking lot. We only took two cars to school—Greg’s and Tasha’s—to save gas, so every day we all had to meet at the same time and pile in, otherwise you were on your own finding a ride home.
Greg didn’t even look up and kept drumming his fingers impatiently against the steering wheel. Tasha was doing the same in her car, but she did throw a glare at Quinn. He ignored this.
“I know one of you did it,” he insisted, trying to stare me down. I shouldered my bag and sighed. “Was it you, Lily?”
“Actually, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I answered, rolling my eyes. My stomach was growling, and I was dying to get home and check my e-mail. Chris might have sent something. “Why don’t you check with Ron?” I added. He was walking up to the truck.
Quinn was already turning to him. “Was it you, dirtbag? You sent this to me?”
Ron shoved him out of the way, apparently pissed about something. “Why would I send you a freaking letter when you live in the same house as me?” he snapped. Ron jerked the passenger door open on Greg’s truck. It only took one glare from my brother for Ron to slam the door right back shut and climb in the backseat instead. Greg made a motion at me, and I reluctantly got in the passenger seat. I’d been waiting to see if Chris would walk by, maybe even want to talk to me. What, dreams do come true, don’t they?
“Well I know one of you did it,” Quinn muttered. “Gwen is a freaking six year old; she wouldn’t have the brains to writer a letter.”
Greg growled.
“And if it wasn’t Tasha or Lily,” Quinn went on, ignoring him, “or Greg, then it has to be either Ron, Joanna, or Vince. The twins don’t have enough guts to pull something like this.”
“I just told you I didn’t send you any retarded letter!” Ron burst out.
“Well, who else here would be retarded enough to write something like this?” Quinn shook the letter in the air.
“Why is it such a big deal?” I asked, curious. “Can I see it?”
Quinn looked at me with suspicion. “You really didn’t write it?”
“She said she didn’t,” Greg rumbled with warning. He didn’t speak up that often, but he was definitely overprotective of me and wouldn’t put up with much from our foster siblings whenever it involved me.
“Wait,” Ron suddenly sat up straight, frowning some more. “A letter? You got a letter? What kind?”
“Welcome to earth, idiot,” Quinn said. “Haven’t you heard anything I’ve been saying for the past two minutes?”
“Can I see it?” I asked again.
Quinn squinted at the two of us, both looking at him eagerly. “Something’s up. Don’t think I don’t see it.” He didn’t accuse me again, because anyone with brains wouldn’t in front of Greg when he was obviously in one of his moods.
I was still holding my hand out the window. Rolling his eyes, Quinn plopped a crumpled envelope into my palm, jerked the truck door open, and slid in beside Ron.
The instant Quinn had handed me the letter, Ron leaned over the seat to breathe down my neck, trying to get a look at it.
“Uh, I’m not a big fan of having drool down my shirt,” I said, scooting to the edge of my seat.
“Just open it,” Ron snarled. He didn’t usually act like this, and I turned to frown at him.
“What’s—”
“We won!” A blur of red and blue flew past the truck and to Tasha’s car. I forgot about the letter momentarily as I watched Joanna in amusement. She held a sheaf of papers in her hand, and she shoved them in Tasha’s face triumphantly.
Tasha scowled and pushed Joanna’s hand away. “You won what?” she asked, sounding generally irritated.
Joanna beamed, bright red hair glinting in the sun. “The petition forced the principal to reconsider those horrible chicken burgers”—she shuddered in revulsion—“and soon we’ll be dining on much finer here at Thorndale High!”
“Real neat,” Tasha muttered. “Get in. We’ve been waiting for you.”
Joanna pouted, moving around the car again. She grinned when she saw me. “Lily! Did you hear what I said about the petition?”
“Yeah, I signed it, remember?” I smiled back.
“Oh. That’s right.” She nodded at me in approval. “And because of your support, we will never have to endure the sight of those horrendous sandwiches.”
“Will you just open the freaking letter?” Ron hissed in my ear. I drew back again, glaring at him, and Joanna plopped down into Tasha’s car.
“Fine, jeez,” I said, slipping my fingers in the envelope to pull out a single piece of paper.
“What’s with you?” Quinn added.
We were all waiting on the twins now. I could see that Greg was itching to leave the school, and it really was stupid that we couldn’t just go, since the twins always rode in Tasha’s car. But ever since Warren was left behind because neither Greg nor Tasha waited for him, Millie forbade us from leaving until everyone was in the vehicles.
Pulling my gaze away from Greg, I unfolded and looked down at Quinn’s letter, expecting to see something stupid and insulting. Why else would Quinn be so riled?
It read:
Quinton Alexander:
Do you really think you’ve gotten away with it? Do you really think that you can live, after doing what you’ve done? I know what you’re thinking, Quinn, and this isn’t some joke… You do like your jokes, don’t you? Well, there’s one about to be played on you soon. Just wait. I’m coming soon. And I’m watching. Don’t forget that. Always watching.
Signed,
Little Honeybee
“‘Little Honeybee’?” I repeated, handing the letter back to Quinn. He snatched it out of my fingers, glaring at Ron, who was weirdly quiet.
“It’s what my mom used to call me before she ditched me,” Quinn snapped, scowling some more. “Who would know that, anyway? I never told you that, Ron.”
“That’s because I didn’t write that,” Ron hissed, eyes burning. “You think you’re so hilarious, don’t you?”
“What?” Quinn asked. “What do you mean, dimwit?”
“There’re the twins,” I said to anyone who cared, noticing two bright blonde heads making their way to the car. Greg revved the engine and peeled out of the parking lot so quickly that Quinn was thrown up against Ron. Both of them made sounds of disgust and scrambled away from each other.
“Are you going to be late for work or something?” I asked Greg, teasing. He didn’t have a job, couldn’t because of his track record, and that just pissed him off.
“Corey’s going to pay me to mow the lawn,” he replied in his low voice. “Wants it done before the Schaffers come over.”
“Schaffers?” My heart leaped, and I glanced over my shoulder when I felt one of the boys kick the back of my seat. Ron was swearing and Quinn had him in a headlock. I turned back to Greg. “Did Millie invite them over for dinner?” There was no way Chris’s mom would let him get out of another get-together…
As if he knew what I was thinking, my brother looked down at me. “We’ll talk later,” he told me. Greg knew everything about Chris and me, just like I knew everything about him and Paula. We never kept secrets from each other, and it had always been that way. Greg just hated saying anything in front of the others, no matter what it was about.
Quinn uttered a short girly scream. One more quick glance told me that Ron was pinning him down on the seat. “Why did we let them ride together?” I asked Greg. “Should’ve had Joanna switch with Quinn.”
He shrugged, and, sensing that his time for talking was over, I turned to the window and watched Thorndale pass by. I saw Tasha’s car close behind in the review mirror.
The Baxter clan, as we were called, had been around since middle school. None of us were actually related, of course, and none of us were actually Baxters. Millie and Corey Baxter had taken each and every one of us in their foster home and treated us like their own over the years. Six-year-old Gwen was their only real child. But we might as well have been their real children, because Millie acted just like an overbearing mother, and the boys could have been my brothers for all the scrapes we got in together.
No one at school approached any of us. It was just common knowledge that we all stuck together, despite the fact that Tasha hated Quinn and that the twins barely said a word to anyone ever. We’d grown up together. There were bonds there, and I tried to avoid looking to the future, when Tasha and Greg would both graduate at the end of the year.
The first of us to live at Millie and Corey’s was Tasha. Her parents had both been heroin addicts, and the neighbors called the police one night after they’d knocked on the door and opened it to find both of Tasha’s parents completely baked on the couch. Tasha bounced around from foster home to foster home for two years, until she finally settled down under Millie’s wing.
The next in line was Ron. He’d been living in his own for a year in an abandoned farmhouse until a police officer followed him home one night and made some inquires. Ron never told anyone where his parents had gone, why he was alone. Only Millie and Corey really knew. He didn’t like to talk about it, so none of us knew much about him.
A few weeks after Ron had been living there, John appeared. And the weird thing? No one knew anything about him or his history. Not even Millie or Corey. He’d been found huddling underneath a tarp in some woods. The group of hunters that’d found him called the police, and John didn’t answer any of their questions besides telling them his name: John Phillip Wenzel. Apparently, there was no record of a John Phillip Wenzel being born in any hospital in Pennsylvania—or anywhere else. The police held him for a little while longer, before finally releasing him to the state. And he was brought to the Baxter’s.
After John, Greg and I came along. We’d been living alone with our dad for three years—ever since Mom left. Greg had been into hard drugs, stayed out all night and had a habit of skipping all of his classes. I’d been left to take care of myself, mostly, since Dad worked late and left early for his office. He never seemed to care about Greg or me, and that became even more apparent after he shot himself. Greg was still a minor and we had no other known relatives, so we were sent to Corey and Millie’s. It took Greg a long time to straighten out. But with Corey’s help and a focus on basketball, he did.
Quinn and Joanna came to the Baxter’s not long after us. Looking at the two of them, you could never tell that they were siblings. Joanna had the bright carrot-colored hair and freckles while Quinn looked almost Indian, with his dark hair and eyes. All of us suspected that they were only half-brother and sister. They’d lived with their mother in a trailer parked at some casino. Their mother was a dealer, and sold salt to two kids one night, trying to pass it off as the real thing. When she wouldn’t give the kids their money back, she was reported on and put in jail on charges of neglect and handling illegal substances.
Then there were the twins. They were the newest addition to our big family, not to mention the strangest. Both of them kept quiet. Vince seemed like the more outgoing of the two, because he snapped at Quinn and Ron once in a while, but Warren was the one that hung out with us the most. Sometimes Vince just disappeared, leaving quiet Warren alone with the rest of the big kids. They were the youngest, too. Eleven. They had lived with their aunt for a while, because their parents were both abusive. But then the aunt was arrested and put in jail for prostitution. Vince and Warren, like Tasha, traveled around in foster homes for a while—three years. Then they came here to stay.
Every single one of us had been there the night we played that prank on John. Every one of us played a part. John had been the one that none of us could stand, the one that deliberately pissed all of us off. He brought our pasts up in our faces, taunting and cruel. Though the eight of us had almost nothing in common, there was one thing we shared: We hated the past.
John knew it. He didn’t seem to have one, so there was nothing we could use against him.
Until Ron looked in the library archives and found something. Something that we grabbed hold of and never let go. Something that I threw in John’s face that night in the woods, something we laughed about and pointed at. And the revenge that should have been sweet tasted sour in my mouth, despite all the times John spoke of my father.
“Hey, Lily,” Quinn said in my ear. Starting, I whipped around to face him.
“Huh?” My mind struggled to close against the memories of that night, to catch up with the present again.
“I asked you if you would let me and Ron borrow that rat of yours,” he repeated, trying to smile persuasively.
My eyes narrowed, and I temporarily forgot about John. “No. Abe is off limits.”
Ron popped up beside Quinn, rolling his eyes. “We’re not going to hurt him. We just want to use him for a little… experiment.”
“No,” I said again. “Last time you borrowed Abe, Millie grounded me for two weeks and put him in the garage. And I really don’t think Tasha’s going to like you putting him in her bed or whatever it is that you’re planning.”
Ron snorted. “We’re not going to use him on Tasha. She’s not afraid of rats.”
“Joanna is, though.” Quinn’s smile was wicked now.
I just shook my head, and Greg turned into our driveway. We lived in the middle of nowhere, and it always took forever to get home.
“I’ll let you play Hero,” Ron wheedled. I glanced at him, tempted for a second.
“Lily,” Greg warned.
I sighed. “I know. No, Ron. You and Quinn aren’t going to touch Abe.”
The boys leaned back again, obviously pouting, and Greg parked next to the house. It was an old farmhouse, built sometime in the seventies, and the two-story needed a paint job badly. The porch surrounding the base of the house could use some touching-up, too.
“I’ll be up in your room in an hour,” my brother told me as he killed the engine and got out of the truck. He had that look in his eyes, like he had something to tell me that I wouldn’t like. I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to hear it.
“I was actually thinking about biking out to Natalie’s—”I began as Ron and Quinn raced to the front door.
“Lily.” Just one word, but I knew he wasn’t going to let this go.
I sighed yet again. “Fine. I’ll just do my homework, I guess.”
He nodded, holding my gaze for a second more, and then slammed the door shut. Moving slowly, I opened the passenger door and slid to the ground, watching Greg stride to the ancient lawnmower Corey had parked on the overgrown lawn.
“Come on, Lily,” Joanna squealed as she flew past me, cheerleader uniform flying up in the back when the breeze picked up. “The O.C. will be on in a few minutes!” I grinned when I saw her Barbie underwear.
Tasha rolled her eyes at me as she followed the younger girl, shouldering her bag with ease. She worked out every night after dinner, and I envied her hard stomach and sinewy arms. I just didn’t have the motivation to work up a sweat, and preferred to read or write all night.
Vince and Warren strolled past me, identical faces smooth and unreadable, quiet as usual. Warren glanced at me once as he brushed by, and I smiled. He didn’t smile back.
They all went into the house, and still I stood there by the truck, staring at everything around me. Every since I’d woken up, I hadn’t felt right. I felt like something was weird about today, like something was going to come along and throw my life all off-kilter. The last time I’d had a feeling like this was… the day my father shot himself.
Greg started the lawn mower, and the loud thing roared as it came to life. The sound jarred me, and, pursing my lips, I cast one more look around the yard. I was probably just being stupid. Thinking about John lately was probably what was making me bug out.
Waving to Greg, I finally went into the house, where Millie was probably waiting to hear all about our day.
