Read Online Dark Lie (9781101607084) by Nancy; Springer - Free Book Online Page B

I crashed into the wall. In that moment I found out what the word “thunderstruck” meant. A bolt of lightning out of the black sky couldn’t have incapacitated me more. None of my other faculties functioned at all as I sat staring.
    CANDY GOT LAID HERE
    It still said the same thing.
    Nothing made sense. I wasn’t dead and laid to rest. Nobody except Blake had ever called me Candy. And where was “here”? This building—
    Oh, God.
    It was the library.
    I recognized it now, lopsided old edifice, the way one recognizes a face without being able to describe the exact features. With a jolt like an earthquake’s aftershock I viscerally remembered this utilitarian Victorian pile, which had been a cigar factory before it had become the Appletree Public Library.
    Where I used to go rather frequently after school.
    CANDY GOT LAID HERE
    A fist of fire clenched my heart, and my vocabulary comprehension improved again as I found out what the word “mortified” means. It means wanting to die.
    God. Who had painted that—that—that slap in the face?
    Not Blake. It couldn’t have been Blake.
    But who else knew?
    Grandpa knows all about it.
    That was ridiculous. I’d never even met Blake’s grandfather.
    It must have been that girl, the one who had tried to warn me off. Spying. Jealous. Mean.
She
must have written it.
    CANDY GOT LAID HERE
    Had my parents seen it, way back then when we lived here? Had Mom maybe gotten Dad to drive her down to the library so she could check on me, see whether I was really going there every day after school? They had parked the car here, and—dear Lord, no wonder they had rushed home, packed their bags, left town for good, and never told me why. They were trying to spare me—
    No, wait, was I losing my mind? Letting myself think as if this had all happened yesterday, letting that babyish whimper wind out of my mouth, letting my buttocks clench as if I expected to be spanked
. Get a grip, Dorrie.
That misery was seventeen years ago.
    Yet—
    CANDY GOT LAID HERE
    It should be faded, worn away, nearly gone. But it looked freshly painted. Not spray-painted either. Brush printed. Big angular lettering.
    Nothing made sense. Either time had slipped off track or I had gone insane. Either way, this place was to blame. Appletree. Making me crazy. Panic kicked me in the gut; I had to get out of here.
    Shaking, I whipped the car around and gunned it toward the old parking lot’s single entrance/exit. Jouncing, scraping asphalt, I bolted onto the side street—
    Saw the pay phone.
    God Almighty. Juliet.
    For a few minutes I had completely forgotten about her. I hated me. Every second of time passing put her in worse danger. Where was she? What was happening to her?
    I had to get to that phone.
    NO PARKING, read the signs.
    What I should have done was just stop the car in the middle of the empty street. What I actually did showed how badly that graffito was making me lose it. Muttering, “No Parking, Schmarking, Farking,” I aimed my poor Kia at the curb, pushed the gas, whammed my way up onto the sidewalk, and stopped beside the public phone.
    There, dammit.
    Dammit? Where had that come from? I never swore.
    Darn it. I turned off the car and tried to get out.
    My body didn’t want to function. For all the usual reasons, lupus aches and pains and fatigue, but beyond that, I felt as if I’d just been punched out. I reeled like a drunk from my car to the phone, then had to lean against its Plexiglas housing as I dialed 911. By the light of the corner streetlamp I looked at the palm of my left hand for the license number I’d written there, the magic number that would make the police find and stop the kidnapper, wherever he was.
    It wasn’t there.
    I stared and squinted. Detail was hard to see in the peckish streetlamp light. Hard to see when my eyes stung with weariness and unshed tears, hurting almost as badly as my heart.