Jess and Aimee are sitting casually on top of old wine barrels as they wait for Tom to try and pop open a bottle without a corkscrew. As soon as they see Rory and me, they hop down and put on their most guilty looks. Tom, on the other hand, ignores us and puts the top of the wine bottle in his teeth in a stupid, testosterone-filled attempt to pull the cork out.
I don’t know how he does it, not when Rory is standing here looking like rage itself incarnate.
“Get out!” Rory bellows at them. Even Tom stops now. “You all need to get out of this house, off this property, right now.”
“Dude, look, we’re sorry we came in without asking, but we weren’t going to—” Tom is interrupted by Rory’s most vicious hollering yet.
“I said get OUT! And don’t stop running until you get to the cabin.”
The girls both look terrified enough to wet their pants, and try as he might to look nonchalant, so does Tom. He finally sets the wine bottle down and scrambles along with them back up to the front doors to leave.
I quickly start to follow them, anxious to get back in my house but not looking forward to the three of them spending the night, since there’s no way I’m letting a single one of them get back behind the wheel. Not now, after they’ve raided what looks like a half-century’s collection of fine wine.
This whole expedition was a dumb idea.
More than dumb. I’ve never seen anyone as angry as Rory right now, and I’ve seen angry. I just want to get out of here as fast as I can.
But as I get ready to run up the stairs behind the others, Rory grabs my wrist and pulls me around to face him. For a minute, I’m afraid he’s going to hit me. I flinch up against his touch, readying myself for the blow that never comes.
For a second, he looks taken aback. He freezes when I flinch, his eyes searching my face in confusion. Instead of hitting me, he pulls his face close to mine and whispers in my ear.
“Please, Sabrina … get back to your cabin fast and stay inside.” I can feel the breath of his words on the side of my neck.
When he pulls his head away, he looks at me and I see something in his eyes that I didn’t see there before.
Not rage. Not simmering anger. Not even disappointment.
It’s fear.
I can’t imagine that Rory would be afraid of anyone, but perhaps it’s not himself that he’s afraid for. Perhaps it’s me.
13
Sabrina
Rory’s warning isn’t the first I’ve been given since I arrived. This time, the sound of it chills me to the core. As soon as Rory lets go of my wrist, I run up the stairs and out the front door. The others are already well ahead of me, fueled by their numbing inebriation.
I run as fast as I can until my lungs are on fire, and I don’t stop until I reach the cabin.
By Monday morning, the adrenaline from the events of the other night have finally faded enough for my heart to beat at a normal pace again. I managed to keep a good poker face when I told my mom that I spent the weekend doing a whole lot of nothing, when in reality I spent most of it mopping vomit from the cabin floor.
Not my vomit, mind you. From the way my head was spinning after my run-in with Rory, it should have been.
The encounter was dream-like enough that somehow, I’m still surprised to see him, Marlowe, and Kaleb back at school on Monday. As much as part of me wants to know where they’ve been, I try my hardest to avoid all three of them so that I don’t end up having to meet with Rory’s wrath again. And even though I have a million questions to ask them, I’m not sure that I’m ready to find out the answers.
So I take the roundabout way to my locker and end up spending a few minutes pushing through kids that can barely reach up to my shoulders just to get back to the high school hallways so I can grab a few things from my locker.
All my efforts are for nothing, however, because as soon as I close my locker door I have to stifle a scream when I discover Kaleb standing right on the other side.
“He
y,” I say, trying not to seem as startled as I actually am. I’m not very convincing.
He doesn’t waste time with any sort of greeting. His eyes are intense and he’s looking me over as if I were just in a dogfight.
“Did you get bit?” he asks.
“Excuse me?”