I frowned at his reaction. “I know, but it’s hard. But anyway, I have been feeling better, I’ve been going to the bootcamp and I feel stronger and-”

“You look amazing and you know it.”

I did a double-take at him.

“But you don’t need me to tell you that,” he continued. “And you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t need to have to lose some weight in order to feel better about yourself.”

“Well, OK, Oprah. When did you become a self-help guru for women’s self-esteem?” I said testily.

He laughed and started walking. I followed alongside him. “OK, fair enough. I am probably the last person you should listen to. But look, Rebecca likes you and wants to take you out. And I think you should go.”

“Well, of course I’ll go. I just didn’t think she liked me.”

“She can be bit…rough…at times. She speaks her mind, she’s blunt. And she’s a bit of a shit disturber to tell you the truth. But you could use a woman like her in your life. And everyone likes you, Perry.”

“Seb and Dean?”

“Yeah. They liked you even before they met you. And I know other people will be won over by you too. My friend Todd is dying to meet you. He and his wife are really…just…the best.”

“And does Jenn like me?” I asked cautiously.

Dex rubbed his chin quickly and looked down at his phone in the other one. “What should I tell Rebecca? You’re on?”

“Yes. We’re on. But don’t ignore the question.”

He lifted a finger to shush me and quickly typed something out on the screen. Then he put the phone away, came out with a piece of Nicorette and popped it in his mouth.

“Jenn likes you,” he said between chews. “You’re just a lot different. She’s probably trying to figure you out. But she likes you, she really does.”

I didn’t say anything to that. As we walked back to the apartment, all I could think about was that Dex had just lied to my face. Old habits do die hard.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“This is it,” Tara said, her face a shiny silver in the moonlight.

I looked at the house at the end of the block, the throngs of people outside, their laughter and drunken cries filling the air. Cars littered the street, all to be driven home drunk later.

“You having second thoughts?” she asked. Her voice was small, telling me how much she was depending on me. If I didn’t go into the party with her, she wouldn’t go at all. And all her hopes of winning over Angus, Adrianna Gee’s boyfriend, would be dashed. Tara was my closest friend and yet I was still nothing but an excuse for her to come here.

I nodded quickly, despite the warnings from Jacob. The warnings that Adrianna couldn’t be trusted. That she had some deal with the devil. That all her friends were against me, waiting to eat my soul. Even though I hadn’t seen Jacob for a while, his inane ramblings were still fresh in my mind. I hadn’t told Tara any of this, of course. I knew she wanted to go to the party, even though we weren’t invited.

Luckily, Tara wasn’t a fat ugmo like myself. She was freakishly tall for her age, which did garner her a few choice nicknames, but honestly I’d rather be tall than fat. Besides, she was pretty and slim and if she wore dresses and short skirts instead of her tomboy outfit of cargo pants and vintage camp shirts, she would have turned more than a few heads. The point was, she’d be allowed into the party. I wasn’t too sure about me.

“Yeah, I’m having second thoughts,” I admitted. “But I’m down. I told you’d come and I will. I just…”

“Just what?” Tara said, pulling out a joint and lighting it.

I watched her puff back on the crinkly paper and inhale until she was a shade paler. Then she exhaled, the pot smoke drifting up into starry late winter sky.

She passed the joint to me and I inhaled half-heartedly. It would take the edge off but pot just felt like child’s play these days.

“But…” I said slowly, already losing my train of thought. Should I tell her? Oh, fuck it.

I gave her back the joint and said, “I just heard that these people didn’t like me.”

“Who told you that?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. A boy.”

“What boy?” she asked suspiciously.

“You wouldn’t know him. His name’s Jacob.”

She gave me a disbelieving look before coughing her lungs out.

“Jacob? Mohawk dude who killed himself?” she asked between coughs.

“He attempted to kill himself,” I explained. “And yeah, so what, it’s him. He’s been walking me home a lot.” Every day for weeks, until the last week when he was acting just a little too crazy for my liking.

“I’m pretty sure he died, Perry,” Tara said.

“Oh yeah, so I’ve been talking to a dead person,” I said, laughing. Child’s play or not, the pot was strong and I was already becoming more removed from the situation.

Tara laughed too. “Well I dunno. His funeral was in the paper the other week but maybe I was too fucked up.”

I let the giggles flow. “Or I’m too fucked up and I’m talking to ghosts.”

“Either way, he sounds like a liar. No one hates you Perry. No one even knows who you are.”

That would have stung more a few minutes ago but now her words left just a soft pang in my heart. “Hey…”

“Sorry, Palomino. I just meant that no one cares about you.”

I raised my brow at her. Still no better.

“I mean, you’re harmless, Perry. No one hates you. Seriously. Let’s just go inside and you’ll see. It’ll be cool.”

I nodded and we resumed walking down the dark, barely lit suburban street. I was high as a kite for some reason, though it could have been the two-liter of Canadian cider that we shared on the bus earlier.

And then Tara was gone. And I was alone on the street.

I looked around me wildly, seeing only shapely shadows created by the moon and an empty, wide cul-de-sac. Tara was nowhere to be seen and the noise from the party had ceased. It was like time stopped, everyone on earth had left, and only I remained.

“Perry,” I heard a whisper.

I turned and looked in the direction of the house. In the blackness, a lone streetlight turned on. It illuminated Jacob’s spikey-haired silhouette as he stood there, frozen on the spot, a gas can in his hand.

“Let’s go in together,” he said. And without rhyme or reason, I found myself moving toward him, a creeping shadow on the lifeless street.

~~

I woke up with an extremely uneasy feeling and for a few seconds I couldn’t remember where I was. I wasn’t at home. The room was way too dark and windowless.

I slowly sat up and tried to get my eyes to adjust. There were a bunch of blinking lights in the corner coming from Dex’s computer and other gadgets.

It was the second night in the last week that I was dreaming about the past. I don’t know why. Normally if I dreamed about weird things, they had something to do with the spirits we were about to encounter. I had begun to rely on my dreams as being prophetic, or maybe a quick glimpse into the mind of a dead person (as lovely as that sounds). But I was dreaming about high school and things that I had pushed out of my mind with the help of medication, doctors and therapy sessions. I didn’t like how they were suddenly coming up now. I hope they didn’t mean anything. They couldn’t. It was all the drug use, that’s all it ever was.

Not that I could remember all that much about the dreams. I knew my friend Tara had been in it, maybe Dr. Freedman, my old shrink. Nothing scary had happened. Yet there was something so disturbingly realistic about the whole thing that my heart was pounding away and I was sweating profusely. I felt the sheets. They were a damp. Jenn would probably burn them by the time I left.

Earlier that evening, Dex had cooked Jenn and me dinner (his cooking skills were still surprising) and I had a bit too much wine with it. Just to calm the nerves. Actually, we all had imbibed a tad much, which made the conversation easier. Probably helped that we all ate in the living room, watching TV, and didn’t have to stare at each other. I had avoided looking at either of them, the conversation I had with Dex still fresh in my head. We were putting it all past us.

Now my head was spinning from the dream and I was thirsty from the night sweats and the wine. I didn’t want to get up for a glass of water; the black room was a bit creepy, and it was always weird being in someone else’s place in the middle of the night, but if I didn’t, I’d never go back to sleep. I carefully eased myself out of the single bed, unsure if I was going to walk into anything in the blackness. I made it to the door, opened it quietly, and poked my head out into the apartment. Their bedroom door was closed. The bathroom wasn’t. Fat Rabbit probably slept with them. I hope he messed up their sex life.

I tiptoed to the kitchen, my socks silent on the floor, careful not to wake them or the dog, and plucked a glass from a high cupboard and filled it up at the kitchen tap. The garish, yellow streetlights from outside came in through the balcony doors, filtered by a gauzy curtain that moved slowly, teased by a draft. Even though the apartment was small and beautiful, there was something so…strange about it. Strange and off-putting.

I finished my drink and filled the cup up again, mulling it over. There was no reason for me to be creeped out and yet I was. I listened hard; I could hear the comforting sound of someone’s light snoring in the bedroom, the occasional subdued rumble of a car outside, the tick of a clock on the wall. Everything was normal for a middle of the night Monday but that inkling of the unknown was undeniable. The hairs on my arms were rising with each second I stood there.

I gulped down the rest of the water and quietly placed the empty cup in the sink. If I hung around any longer I would just freak myself out.

I started to walk back to the room, wondering if perhaps I needed to go to the washroom, but something made me pause as I passed through the middle of the apartment.

It was that feeling.

That nauseating, lung-seizing feeling that someone, or something, was standing behind me. I could feel it, feel this solid presence at my back, watching me.

I wasn’t alone.

And I couldn’t move even if I wanted to. I felt frozen, my legs locked to the hardwood floors.

Then…

A dripping sound. My ears were so fine-tuned that the sound made my heart jump. A steady, slow drip. Had I turned off the tap properly?

But I knew it wasn’t the sink. The splatter didn’t echo, it fell in small, thick pats and from a greater distance. If it wasn’t the tap, what was dripping?

I looked at my door. It was so close. I could run into the room and lock it. I could prop the bed up against the door for security, pull the covers over my head and pray for sleep. Or I could swallow my pride and run into Dex and Jenn’s room like a child who has had a bad dream.

Or I could turn around. And see that there was nothing to be afraid of. Then my fears would be put to bed and I would follow.

I tensed up and very, very slowly, turned around on the spot.

I expected that if anyone was behind me, they would be way back in the kitchen.