Her Terrifying Love

Part 52

The rain hadn't subsided by the time Lyla drove into the student parking lot. Darcy stood in the downpour, a curtain of raindrops rolling from her umbrella. She yanked open the driver's door and stuffed her umbrella into the back seat. The smell of rain rushed in.

"Move over," she said brusquely and got behind the steering wheel.

"Sorry I'm late," Lyla sighed. She climbed over the console into the passenger seat, then retrieved her silent phone from the glove box, and reluctantly turned it on.

Darcy wiped her wet hands on her jeans before taking the wheel. "You're gonna need to come back to school someday, you know."

"I'm coming back tomorrow morning."

"You better reserve a bed at the burn unit," Darcy warned. "Carissa is gonna be spitting the hot fire of hate at you, girl."

"What?"

"Noah's post?"

Her reaction was a blank stare and a shrug.

"You let your phone die again?" Darcy huffed and handed her phone to Lyla. 

A video was cued up. She pressed play.

"Look familiar?" asked Darcy. 

It was grainy night time footage of Lyla and Jack on the sidewalk in front of the coffee shop, locked in a passionate kiss.

Lyla's eyes widened, her jaw dropped. "Noah posted this on his Facebook?!" she stammered.

"Uh, welcome to the twenty-first century, girl."

She averted her eyes from the video.

"With one post, he burned both you and Jack to the ground." Darcy shook her head. "There's no coming back from that one."

She felt sick.

Darcy drove her car out of the parking lot. 

"You told me nothing happened last night. You call making out with the hottest guy in school nothing?!"

"He asked me not to say anything."

"And how did that work out for you?"

They rode for a few minutes without speaking. The only sounds were the slap-slap-slap of the windshield wipers and the rhythmic cadence of raindrops on the roof of the car. Darcy glanced at her odometer.

"So you're not gonna tell me where you went?"

"I can't," she barely whispered.

Darcy was chafed. "I'm sorry, I forgot I only exist when you need something."

She couldn't blame Darcy for being angry. They'd been best friends since middle school, they shared everything. Lyla had been holding back far too many secrets but she needed to protect her friend.

When she got home, she texted Jack. She needed to tell him that she'd found the Ames' burial site but he didn't respond. 

She texted – Call me?

He didn't call.

With a deep sigh, she went into the kitchen to make herself a strong cup of coffee. As she ran water in the sink, she heard tapping. She turned off the faucet and listened. The noise seemed to be coming from the front door. Lyla went to the entryway.

TAP. TAP. TAP.

She could see through the window that no one was on the porch, no person, anyway. The tapping persisted. Could it be the blackbird knocking its beak against the door? Lyla refused to  open the door. No way in hell.

"Go away!" she shouted.

Silence.

She returned to the kitchen, scooped far too much sugar into her coffee mug, and added a splash of milk. The overhead light flickered and buzzed, or was it the product of an overactive imagination, like the annoying tapping, like the blackbird, like everything else that's happened since that Saturday night?

Her coffee splashed as she jogged up the stairs to her room.

She took the novel from her bookbag, determined to finish it. She plopped onto her bed and gulped her coffee. Despite the dose of caffeine, her eyelids grew heavy, her eyes burned. It would be easy to drift off to sleep, but she wouldn't allow it. Finish. This. Damn. Book.

She read aloud from The Awakening, "She was still under the spell of her infatuation. She had tried to forget him, realizing the inutility of remembering." Lyla squinted at the word. "Inutility? What the hell does that even mean?"

She struggled through two chapters when suddenly, her ringtone made her jump. Her heart fluttered when she saw an incoming call from Jack.

"Hey," said Lyla.

No immediate response. 

"Jack?" she said, her optimism fading.

The longer the pause extended, the more certain she felt that what he was about to say would break her heart.