Shadow of the Past (24 page)

“Bother me?” she said incredulously.
“Mark, stop it. Why would you think telling me about an accident
would be a bother?” Her voice lowered, became more serious. “Were
you embarrassed? I mean, I’m not going to think less of you because
you had some accident.”

“It’s not like that,” he snapped. “It’s
not like I was hot-rodding or anything like that. I was hit by a
fucking car!”

“Oh my god!” she gasped. “And you’re
okay? Thank god you weren’t hurt worse.”

He heaved a long sigh, annoyed that he
had been still prideful enough to blurt that out. “I didn’t get
this hurt by getting hit by the car.”

“Then how--” she started, but he cut
her off.

“Look, I’m only telling you this
because I want you to be careful, okay? I don’t want to make a big
deal about this or anything. I just want to make sure that you’re
okay.” He paused again, and thankfully, she didn’t
interrupt.

“This car that hit me ran me off the
road, and then someone got out and beat the crap out of me with a
bat or something. That’s what fucked me up.”

He couldn’t even hear her breathing on
the other end of the line.

“Are you serious?” she
whispered.

“I couldn’t kid about this if I tried,”
he said closing his eyes.

“Mark . . . oh God, I thought this was
over. How could--”

“You thought what was over?” he said,
taken completely by surprise.

“There hasn’t been anything about the
killings or anything in so long, I just thought that finally it was
safe.”

“Look,” Mark snapped, cutting her off,
“this and that other thing have nothing to do with one another.
This was just some stupid, macho bullshit, okay? That other thing,
you don’t have to worry about it, okay? That’s my problem, not
yours.”

“Mark!” she shot back, “You don’t get
the monopoly on being worried about people getting killed, okay? I
mean, how do you even know that this doesn’t have anything to do
with it. I mean, you . . .”

“I? I what?”

“It’s like you said before, how you’re
the only link between the two, and then this happens.”

He could feel it boiling up in him, and
as much as he tried to keep it down it exploded out of
him.

“It was Jack, okay! God
damn! It was Jack, I saw him, but I’m not going to say anything
because that’s just . . . I’m just not going to do anything, okay?
He beat me. He won. He’s the alpha-fucking-male. I was stupid to
think he would just let shit go, and I was stupid to get involved
in that macho shit when I knew, I fucking
knew
that he’d just take it further.
So yeah, I get that the only thing to think if I get attacked is
that some crazy killer is after me, but I told you that wasn’t the
case, alright?”

She was quiet again, and it gave Mark
time to reflect on what a totally stupid ass he was.

“God, you stupid boys and your macho
horseshit. I’m so sorry that it bugged you so much that I was
worried for you, but I was, okay? I don’t think it’s so fucking
unreasonable. Especially with that’s happened. People getting
killed is actually kind of scary, y’know?”

“Christine,” he said, trying to find a
way to squirm into his bed. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m scared too,
okay?”

“Fine,” she said, sniffling, and then
she hung up.

She sat and looked at the phone for a
long time. Anger at him for being a dick wrestled with concern
about his accident, and it looked like they were going to stay
locked in battle for a while. It was bad enough some teenage head
case wanted to hurt Mark so badly he’d run him off the road and
attack him, but having to worry about some murderer on the loose
was getting to hard to ignore. As much as she hated to admit it,
she’d been waiting for either some report on the news to tell her
that the killer was caught or for someone that wasn’t a friend of
Mark’s to get killed.

She was wondering if she could call
back and apologize or wait to see if he would when her phone rang.
He hopes that he’d snapped out of his self-pitying funk were dashed
when she saw the name on the ID.

“So what’s the verdict?” Steve said on
the other end of the line before she could even say
hello.

“What?” she said. “Oh, you mean with
Mark?”

“Yeah, I figured you’d have called him
already, and your number is easier to dial.”

“Really?” she smirked.

“Well, it sounded good on paper,” he
chuckled. “So is it the flu, the kissing disease, what?”

“Actually, it’s a lot worse than that.
He told me he got into an accident on the way back from my house on
Sunday night.”

“You’re kidding,” Steve said, sounding
less concerned than she’d have thought. “He drives like an old lady
on that thing.”

“Well, it wasn’t his fault,” she said,
her temper rising. “He was run off the road and attacked with like,
a bat or something.”

Steve made a low whistle. “Jesus, this
doesn’t have anything to do with the whole specter of death thing
lurking about, does it?”

“No, he told me that it was Jack that
did it, and he definitely seems crazy enough for something like
this.”

“Most definitely. In fact, one of his
goony little friends was giving me the stink eye in class today. I
thought he was just going to ask me out or something.” He paused,
and then added, “Mark’s okay, right? He’s not in the hospital or
anything, is he?”

“No,” she said. “He just has a sprained
wrist and some stitches, he said. Of course, knowing him, he could
be paralyzed from the waist down and he wouldn’t tell me because he
wouldn’t want to be a bother. Why does he do this? I just want to .
. . I dunno. It’s very frustrating.”

“Mark can be a very
frustrating guy. I mean, he’s real sweet and all, and I love him to
death, but he’s so closed off, y’know? We were friends for
years
before he told me
about his parents, and I remember when his aunt died, he just shut
down. He didn’t say a thing to me about it.”

“That’s so sad,” she
murmured.

“Don’t let it get you down. You’re
really the best thing that’s ever happened to him, it’s just that
your timing sucks.”

“I feel bad,” she said. “We kinda had
this fight about it when I called him, cause I was all freaked out
he was hurt and I think he got pissed off that I jumped to the
whole ‘people getting killed’ thing.”

“Oh, I doubt he could stay
mad at you. Just give him a little space and he’ll calm down. Trust
me, guys
love
space. Why do you think guys like science fiction so much?
Space.”

“Okay, okay,” she chuckled. “I’ll give
him his space. It just goes against my grain, that’s
all.”

“Well, you can go against my grain any
day, okay?”

“Riiiiight,” she said. “I’ll keep that
in mind. But anyway, what about that history paper? Did you find
your notes for it? I’m kind of in a bad way here.” Thanks to the
late start of the school year and covering a completely different
time period at her old school she had found herself almost
completely lost in the history class she was in. Steve had the same
class last year and had volunteered some of his notes to help her
out.

“Really? How bad a way?”

“Steve.”

“Right. No, I think I’ve got them. Do
you want to come over sometime and I can go over them with you? My
handwriting’s really bad but I’m sure I can make up some kind of
Rosetta Stone for you.”

“Sounds good. How about Friday? I don’t
think Mark is going to be up for doing anything.”

“Sounds like a plan. How about you come
over here, we get some pizza and get our learn on.”

She opened her mouth to say yes, but
paused. “Steve, do you think Mark would be okay with
this?”

There was a pause from Steve as well,
and when he spoke again, he actually sounded like he wasn’t just
joking around.

“I understand what you’re saying, and
yeah, Mark may find this to be a little . . . I dunno, a little
something. I mean, you and I have had lunch a couple of times by
ourselves without anything weird happening, so I think we’re
okay.”

“Yeah. Should we tell Mark? I mean,
it’s no big deal, and if I was seeing anyone else, I wouldn’t even
think to mention it, but . . .”

“It’s Mark, I know what you mean.”
After a moment, he said “Look, I’m not going to go out of my way to
tell him. With all of this other stuff going on, he doesn’t need
anything else to stress and obsess about. If you want to tell him,
though, that’s fine with me.”

“Okay. I didn’t even ask if he was
going to be in school tomorrow but maybe I’ll bring it
up.”

“That’s cool. And besides,” he said,
switching into some weird, European accent, “I promise it won’t get
weird, baby.”

“What was that?” she
laughed.

“That was my Austin Powers!” he
indignantly. “What, no good?”

“I think you need to workshop it,
that’s all.”

“So that’s the way it’s going to be,
huh?”

“Looks like,” she said with a
smile.

Chapter
Twenty-Three

It was Friday when Joe put his foot
down and made Mark go to school. Mark tried to get him to hold off
until the next Monday, but it was clear Joe’s charitable streak had
been worn thin. Mark stared at his face in the mirror in his room
for ten minutes before Joe began leaning on the car horn as he
waited in the driveway. He tried to tell himself that he didn’t
look so bad, but he wasn’t that self-delusional. Between getting
the shit kicked out of him, the laying in bed for days straight,
and his newfound aversion to food and sleep, he was a wreck. One of
the bruises on his check was an odd mix of yellow and purple, and
his eyes were baggy and bloodshot. If it weren’t for the bandage on
his wrist, he’d probably have been able to pass for just being
tired or sick, but as it was, he was sure everyone would be
wondering what kind of trouble he had gotten himself into this
time.

Joe grumbled at him when Mark finally
got into the car, but he didn’t care. If his back didn’t still feel
tight and compressed, he’d have walked the mile and a half, but Joe
had actually offered (if “I’m driving you to school” can be
considered “offering”). On the drive, Mark tried to convince
himself not to be so self-conscious. It was ridiculous to assume
that people wouldn’t have anything better than him to talk about,
but at the same time he was sure that Jack and his cronies had done
their share of gloating to select people, most likely about “what
they heard” or some other thin lie to cover their
involvement.

His stomach clenched at the thought of
seeing them again. Any joy he may have had about handing Jack a
beating was long gone. They’d reasserted themselves, and now it was
just a matter of time before they let that be known in a more
public forum.

Or they could just try to
kill you again.

“Keep out of trouble,” was all Joe said
before he drove off, and Mark couldn’t even come up with a smart
remark before he sped off. It was probably for the best.

When he finally found Christine, he
wasn’t sure how she was going to react, but she kissed him and gave
him a hug. “I’m sorry,” he whispered in her ear.

“It’s okay,” she said. She pulled away
from him to examine the damage. “How’re you feeling?” she
asked.

“I’m fine,” he said, as they walked
down the hall towards class. “My back hurts a little, but I’m
okay.” He’d been hoping that his disappearance would have made
folks forget about his little jaunt to the police station but
apparently disappearing for almost a week and showing back up
bruised and beaten up just added fuel to the fire of
speculation.

“It doesn’t look too bad,” she lied
with a smile, and Mark tried to smile back.

“How’s the scooter?” she
asked.

“Not totaled, but I think the wheels
might have gotten bent. Not to mention the body damage.”

“That sucks.”

“Yeah. I have no idea how I’m going to
afford to pay for it.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure something out,”
she said with a less than convincing smile.

Oh yeah, because if there’s
anything that Mark Watson knows it’s figuring things out,
right?

“Oh geez,” Steve said, when
he met them outside for lunch. “The way she made it sound I thought
you were in a wheelchair or something. I got worse than this
when
I
fell of
that thing of yours.”

When lunch was over, Mark felt the
panic from earlier in the morning begin to rise. He had been
dreading gym all day, even though he was going to get out of it for
the next few weeks or so.

Oh Jesus, can you be more of
a girl? Why don’t you just cry and run and hide? You won’t even
have to be in the locker room with him, and it’s not like he’s
going to grab a piece of gym equipment and try to finish the
job.