Hush, Hush #1 (22 page)

He reached behind his seat and dragged out a large gun. I screamed.

He leaned over and sealed my mouth with his hand. “Paintball gun,” he said. His tone had chilled.

I divided looks between the gun and Patch, feeling a lot of white showing around my eyes.

“I played paintball earlier this week,” he said. “I thought we went over this.”

“Th-that doesn’t explain the blood on the flashlight.”

“Not blood,” he said, “paint. We were playing Capture the Flag.”

My eyes shifted back to the glove compartment storing the flashlight.

The flashlight was … the flag. A mix of relief, idiocy, and guilt at accusing Patch swam through me. “Oh,” I said lamely. “I’m—sorry.”

But it seemed a little too late for sorry.

Patch stared straight ahead through the windshield, his breathing deep. I wondered if he was using the silence to let go of a little steam. I had just accused him of assault, after all. I felt terrible about it, but my mind was too rattled to come up with the right apology.

“From your description of Marcie, it sounds like she’s probably racked up a few enemies,” he said.

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“I’m pretty sure Vee and I top the list,” I said, trying to lighten the mood, but not entirely joking, either.

Patch pulled up to the farmhouse and killed the engine. His ball cap was low over his eyes, but now his mouth held the suggestion of a smile. His lips looked soft and smooth, and I was having a hard time averting my eyes. Most of all, I was grateful he seemed to have forgiven me.

“We’re going to have to work on your pool game, Angel,” Patch said.

“Speaking of pool.” I cleared my throat. “I’d like to know when and how you’re going to collect on that …
thing
I owe you.”

“Not tonight.” His eyes watched mine closely, judging my response. I was caught between an easing of my mind and disappointment. But mostly disappointment.

“I have something for you,” Patch said. He reached under his seat and pulled out a white paper bag with red chili peppers printed across it. A to-go bag from the Borderline. He set it between us.

“What’s this for?” I asked, peeking inside the bag, having absolutely no idea as to what might be inside.

“Open it.”

I pulled a brown cardboard box out of the to-go bag and lifted the lid.

Inside was a snow globe with a miniature Delphic Seaport Amusement Park captured inside. Brass wires were bent roughly into a circle for the Ferris wheel and twisting loops for the roller coaster; flat sheets of tarnished metal formed the Magic Carpet ride.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, a little astonished that Patch had thought of me, 226

let alone gone to the trouble of buying me a present. “Thank you. I mean it. I love it.”

He touched the curved glass. “There’s the Archangel, before it was remodeled.” Behind the Ferris wheel a thin wire ribboned to form the hills and valleys of the Archangel. An angel with broken wings stood at the highest point, bowing his head, gazing down without eyes. “What really happened the night we rode it together?” I asked.

“You don’t want to know.”

“If you tell me you’ll have to kill me?” I half joked.

“We’re not alone,” Patch answered, looking through the wind-shield.

I glanced up and caught my mom standing in the open doorway. To my horror, she stepped out and walked toward the Jeep.

“Let me do all the talking,” I said, stuffing the snow globe back in the box. “Don’t say a word—not one word!”

Patch hopped out and came around for my door. We met my mom halfway up the driveway.

“I didn’t know you were going out,” she told me, smiling, but not in a relaxed way. It was a smile that said,
We’ll talk later
.

“It was sort of last minute,” I explained.

“I came home right after yoga,” she said. The rest was implied.
Lucky
for me, not so lucky for you
. I’d been counting on her going out for smoothies with her friends after class. Nine times out of ten, she did. She turned her attention to Patch. “It’s nice to finally meet you. Apparently my daughter’s a big fan.”

227

I opened my mouth to give an extremely concise introduction and send Patch on his way, but Mom beat me to it. “I’m Nora’s mom. Blythe Grey.”

“This is Patch,” I said, racking my brain for something to say that would bring the pleasantries to an abrupt halt. But the only things I could think of were screaming
Fire!
or faking a seizure. Somehow, both seemed more humiliating than braving a conversation between Patch and my mom.

“Nora tells me you’re a swimmer,” Mom said.

I felt Patch shake with laughter beside me. “A swimmer?”

“Are you on the school swim team, or is it a city league?”

“More … recreational,” said Patch, passing me a questioning glance.

“Well recreational is good too,” Mom said. “Where do you swim? The rec center?”

“I’m more of an outdoor guy. Rivers and lakes.”

“Isn’t that cold?” asked Mom.

At my side, Patch jerked. I wondered what I’d missed. Nothing about the conversation seemed out of the ordinary. And I had to side with my mom on this one. Maine was not a warm, tropical place. Outdoor swimming was cold, even in the summertime. If Patch really was swimming outdoors, he was either crazy or he had a high pain threshold.

“All right!” I said, taking advantage of the lull. “Patch needs to get going.”
Go!
I mouthed at him.

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“That’s a very nice Jeep,” Mom said. “Did your parents buy it for you?”

“I got it myself.”

“You must have quite a job.”

“I bus tables at the Borderline.”

Patch was saying as little as possible, keeping himself carefully shadowed in mystery. I wondered what his life was like when he wasn’t around me. At the way back of my mind, I couldn’t stop thinking about his frightening past. Up until now I’d fantasized about discovering his deep, dark secrets because I wanted to prove to myself and to Patch that I was capable of figuring him out. But now I wanted to know his secrets because they were a part of him. And despite the fact that I routinely tried to deny it, I felt something for him. The more time I spent with him, the more I knew the feelings weren’t going away.

Mom frowned. “I hope work doesn’t get in the way of studying.

Personally, I don’t believe high school students should work during the school year. You have enough on your plates already.”

Patch smiled. “It hasn’t been a problem.”

“Mind if I ask your GPA?” Mom said. “Is that too rude?”

“Gee, it’s getting late—,” I began loudly, consulting the watch I didn’t wear. I couldn’t believe my mom was being so uncool about this. It was a bad sign. It could only mean her first impression of Patch was worse than I’d feared. This wasn’t an introduction. It was an interview.

“Two-point-two,” Patch said.

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My mom stared at him.

“He’s joking,” I said quickly. I gave Patch a discreet push in the direction of the Jeep. “Patch has things to do. Places to go. Pool to play

—” I clamped a hand over my mouth.

“Play?” my mom said, sounding confused.

“Nora’s referring to Bo’s Arcade,” Patch explained. “But that’s not where I’m headed. I’ve got a few errands to run.”

“I’ve never been to Bo’s,” she said.

“It’s not all that exciting,” I said. “You’re not missing anything.”

“Wait,” said Mom, sounding a lot like a red flag had just sprung up in her memory. “Is it out on the coast? Close to Delphic Seaport? Wasn’t there a shootout at Bo’s several years ago?”

“It’s tamer than it used to be,” Patch said. I narrowed my eyes at him.

He’d beaten me to the punch. I’d planned on outright lying about Bo’s having any history of violence.

“Would you like to come in for ice cream?” Mom asked, sounding flustered, caught between doing the polite thing and acting on the impulse to drag me inside and bolt the door. “We only have vanilla,” she added to sour the deal. “It’s a few weeks old.”

Patch shook his head. “I’ve got to get going. Maybe next time. It was nice meeting you, Blythe.”

I took the break in conversation as my cue and pulled my mom toward the front door, relieved that the conversation hadn’t been as bad as it could have been. Suddenly Mom turned back.

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“What did you and Nora do tonight?” she asked Patch.

Patch looked at me and raised his eyebrows ever so slightly.

“We grabbed dinner in Topsham,” I answered quickly. “Sandwiches and sodas. Purely harmless night.”

The trouble was, my feelings for Patch
weren’t
harmless.

I LEFT THE SNOW GLOBE IN ITS BOX AND TUCKED it inside my closet behind a stack of argyle sweaters I’d poached from my dad. When I’d opened the present in front of Patch, Delphic had looked shimmery and beautiful, light swirling rainbows from the wires. But alone in my bedroom, the amusement park looked haunted. A camp ideal for disembodied spirits. And I wasn’t entirely sure there wasn’t a hidden camera inside.

After changing into a stretchy camisole and floral pj pants, I called Vee.

“Well?” she said. “How’d it go? Obviously he didn’t kill you, so that’s a good start.”

“We played pool.”

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“You hate pool.”

“He gave me a few pointers. Now that I know what I’m doing, it’s not so bad.”

“I bet he could give you pointers in a few other areas of your life.”

“Hmm.” Normally, her comment might have incited at least a flush from me, but my mood was too serious. I was hard at work, thinking.

“I know I’ve said this before, but Patch doesn’t instill a deep sense of comfort in me,” Vee said. “I still have nightmares about the guy in the ski mask. In one of my nightmares, he ripped off his mask, and guess who was hiding under it? Patch. Personally, I think you should treat him like a loaded gun. Something about him isn’t normal.”

This was exactly what I wanted to talk about.

“What would cause someone to have a V-shaped scar on their back?” I asked her.

There was a moment of silence.

“Freak,” Vee choked. “You saw him naked? Where did it happen? His Jeep? His house? Your bedroom?”

“I did
not
see him naked! It was sort of an accident.”

“Uh-huh, I’ve heard that excuse before,” said Vee.

“He had a huge, upside down V-shaped scar on his back. Isn’t that a little weird?”

“Of course it’s weird. But this is Patch we’re talking about. He has a few 232

screws loose. I’m going to take a wild guess and say … gang fight?

Prison scars? Skid marks from a hit-and-run?”

One half of my brain was keeping track of my conversation with Vee, but the other, more subconscious half had strayed. My memory went back to the night Patch dared me to ride the Archangel. I recaptured the creepy and bizarre paintings on the side of the cars. I remembered the horned beasts ripping the wings off the angel. I remembered the black upside-down V where the angel’s wings used to be.

I almost dropped the phone.

“S-sorry, what?” I asked Vee when I realized she’d carried the conversation further and was waiting for my response.

“What. Happened. Next?” she repeated, enunciating each word. “Earth to Nora. I
need
details. I’m dying here.”

“He got in a fight and his shirt ripped. End of story. There’s no what-happened-next.”

Vee sucked in a breath. “This is what I’m talking about. The two of you are out together … and he gets in a fight? What’s his problem? It’s like he’s more animal than human.”

In my mind I switched back and forth between the painting of the angel’s scars and Patch’s scars. Both scars had healed to the color of black licorice, both ran from the shoulder blades to the kidneys, and both curved out as they traveled the length of the back. I told myself there was a good chance it was merely a very creepy coincidence that the paintings on the Archangel depicted Patch’s scars perfectly. I told myself a lot of things could cause scars like Patch’s. Gang fight, prison scars, skid marks—just like Vee said. Unfortunately, all the excuses felt like lies. Like the truth was staring me in the face, but I wasn’t brave enough 233

to look back.

“Was he an angel?” Vee asked.

I snapped to myself. “
What?
”

“Was he an angel, or did he live up to his bad-boy image? Because, honestly? I’m not buying this whole he-didn’t-try-anything version of the story.”

“Vee? I have to go.” My voice was strewn with cobwebs.

“I see how it is. You’re going to hang up before I get the details on the big shebang.”

“Nothing happened on the date, and nothing happened after. My mom met us in the driveway.”

“Shut up!”

“I don’t think she likes Patch.”

“You don’t say!” Vee said. “Who’d have guessed?”

“I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

“Sweet dreams, babe.”

Fat chance
, I thought.

After I got off the phone with Vee, I walked down the hall to my mom’s makeshift home office and booted up our vintage IBM. The room was small, with a pitched roof, more of a gable than a room. One greasy window with faded orange curtains from the 1970s looked out at the side 234

yard. I could stand up to my full height in about 30 percent of the room.

In the other 70 percent, the top of my hair brushed the exposed beams of the rafters. A single bare bulb hung there.

Ten minutes later the computer secured a dial-up connection to the Internet, and I typed “angel wing scars” into the Google search bar. I hovered with my finger above the enter key, afraid that if I went through with it, I’d have to admit I was actually considering the possibility that Patch was—well, not … human.

I hit enter and mouse-clicked on the first link before I could talk myself out of it.

FALLEN ANGELS: THE FRIGHTENING TRUTH

At the creation of the garden of Eden, heavenly angels were dispatched to Earth to watch over Adam and Eve. Soon, however, some angels set their sights on the world beyond the garden walls. They saw themselves as future rulers over the Earth’s population, lusting after power, money, and even human women.