Psyched Page 5

  He turned his back to her and lifted a leg off the ground with a satisfied grunt. The unmistakable sound of flatulence ripped through the air. The acrid smell of sulfur filled her nostrils and she cringed, stepping back to wave the fumes away from her face. She heard his icy voice echoing in her mind, “Vos frustror mihi…”

  “I disappoint you?” she repeated aloud, trying to make sense of what had just happened, when a voice that stopped her heart echoed as the overhead lights flickered to life again.

  “Oh, but you don’t disappoint me.”

  Giggling, Monica Hart stepped out from behind a garbage can holding her smart phone up, recording everything Aisi said. “This rocks. I have awesome footage of you being completely psychotic and talking to yourself! Wait ‘til I show Kalen!” She laughed. “This is so getting posted on MyFace tonight.”

  The frustration of the day finally hit Aisi full on, and she snapped. Her glare made Monica’s smile falter. The phone in the girl’s hands suddenly slipped from her fingers and flew across the room. Hitting the cinderblock wall with a crunch, it splintered and dropped to the floor in many pieces. “You go ahead and do that, Monica. Show the world how crazy I am.”

  The lockers where the phone lay began to shake. Aisi stood her ground but Monica jumped back as the lockers, which were bolted to the wall, crashed to the ground, crushing what little remained of her phone and whatever had been in it.

  “Will that make you feel bigger, better, more powerful?” Aisi asked, almost calm in her rage.

  “You’re such a freak!” Monica shrieked as she crouched behind a bench.

  “Yeah, I am.”

  She walked calmly past the girl huddled on the floor, the exit doors blowing open before her as she strode out and then slamming shut behind her. Monica’s hysterical screams echoed in the dark empty room as Aisi left her alone in the dark.

  Alone in the dark, Aisi thought as she ambled down the hall. Just like me.

  Chapter 6 Big Billy’s Diner

  The dinner rush passed at Big Billy’s. Aisi leaned forward, elbows on the Formica counter, looking around the almost empty diner. She should be cleaning, so she half-heartedly picked up the bleach-scented rag on the counter and made a few feeble swipes before noticing her last table was about to leave. The oldest couple in town came in every night and stayed the longest of any other customer, and they always took a few minutes to get out of their favorite booth.

  Leo and her dad laughed in the back, pretending to do dishes but really throwing a water fight with the diner’s industrial strength sprayer. Aisi watched them for a moment with a grin. As she turned back around and glanced outside, she gasped. Glowing red lights burned through windows streaked with rain. Her heart jumped for a second, but then she sighed with relief. She went to the door and opened it to see the town’s cop had pulled over his latest victim. With mild curiosity she leaned casually against the door frame to see who Padelski nailed this time, glad it wasn’t her for once.

  “Thank you, dear,” the little old lady yelled as Aisi stepped aside to let her customers out. She was a very sweet lady, but she thought everyone was as deaf as she was.

  Aisi’s ears still rang as she answered. “You’re welcome, Mrs. Cutler. Am I allowed to help you out of your booth next time?”

  “Nope,” she answered lightly as her husband helped her into an awesomely vintage, heavy wool coat with oversize buttons. She had probably worn that coat for four or five decades. “Thank you for such wonderful service, dear.” Mrs. Cutler patted Aisi’s cheek affectionately.

  “You have my walker?” Mr. Cutler howled. The Cutlers made the ideal pair, because they spoke at the right volume to hear each other perfectly.

  “Right here,” Aisi shouted back, pulling out the walker from behind the open door and unfolding it so she could set it before him.

  “You know I was a health inspector for the state, young lady,” Mr. Cutler said loudly as he grasped the walker from Aisi. “Forty years I worked for the great state of Pennsylvania. If I were on duty I would have to shut you down for a serious health violation because of those shoes.”

  Aisi grinned, wiggling her purple-painted toenails at him, which he could clearly see in her flip flops. “You tell me that every night. You gonna turn me in this time?”

  Mr. Cutler winked at her as he slipped a plaid page boy cap just as vintage as his wife’s coat onto his liver-spotted, bald head. “Long as you keep my coffee cup full, I’ll let it slide.” He headed out the door, but Mrs. Cutler turned to her.

  “I heard about what happened up at the school today, dear,” she whispered. “You just holler if you need any help getting this cleared up.”

  Aisi groaned. “Does everyone know?”

  Mrs. Cutler tipped her head thoughtfully. “Just everyone in town, but that isn’t many.”

  Aisi nodded, trying to smile. “I appreciate that, Mrs. Cutler. Thank you.” She pushed the door open and her customers stepped out. She stood looking past the dingy glass door, thinking vaguely that she should probably it down soon. Padelski shook his finger at the driver of the car he pulled over, probably giving a variation of the same lecture she got when he caught her driving.

  She moved back inside and began to clear the table where the Cutlers had eaten when jingling bells told her another customer arrived. Weird. The Cutlers were always her last table of the night.

  Two strangers entered. Clearly they were from out of town, and young. And pretty hot. They sported the ragged backpacks, ratty jeans, and unshaven faces of college guys. The first had a look of intensity on his face, and the second sat back in a booth and kicked his feet up, looking completely uninterested in everything around him.

  “I think a girl I went to summer camp with a couple of years ago lives in this town,” the second guy said as Aisi approached them with two menus.

  “Welcome to—” Aisi began, but the guy cut her off.

  “Hey, do you know if Zinnia Dalrymple lives around here?” he asked.

  Startled, Aisi nodded. “Yeah, she does, about five miles out of town. She’s my—”

  “That girl was great!” he continued. He pulled out his smart phone and started scrolling through his contacts. “I wonder if I still have her number? My mom would kill me if she knew I came up here and didn’t visit her family.” Aisi could see Zinnia’s name and an old picture of her appear on the screen as the guy rattled off a quick text message.

  The first guy, Mr. Intensity, hardly looked up from the equipment he pulled from his backpack. “I thought you tried never to do what your mom said.”

  The second guy grinned as he quickly sent a text. “But this girl was a great kisser.”

  Aisi stood patiently by their table, tapping her pencil on her order pad. She tried to repeat her opening spiel. “Welcome to—”

  The guy’s phone beeped at him, and he picked it up to read the text he just received. “She wants to come hang out! Sweet! Hey, what is this place anyway?” The intense friend ignored him as he switched on all the equipment, so he turned to look at Aisi. “Uh, do you know where we are?”

  Aisi blinked. Did this guy really just ask her if she knew where she lived and worked? “Just tell Zin to come find Aisi. She’ll know where to go.”

  The guy typed furiously. “Come find Ace?”

  “You say it like air conditioner. A.C. Aisi.”

  “Your parents named you after an air conditioner?” he asked, not looking up as he texted.

  Aisi rolled her eyes and glanced at Mr. Intensity, who looked carefully at all the stuff he unloaded from his backpack, lights flashing. The diner filled with little bleeps and blooping sounds as the equipment came to life.

  “If you guys want to order any actual food, toss something at me, okay?” she told them. Mr. Intensity nodded back at her without looking up from his toys. She flipped on the ancient TV in the far corner and began to sweep the floors, but she could still hear everything the two guys said over the television.

  The door jingled agai
n a few minutes later and Zinnia blew in like a fresh wind. She looked around and rushed over to the table excitedly. “Colby! What are you doing out here in the middle of stinking nowhere?” He stood and she hugged him tightly.

  Zinnia plopped down on the bench next to him and leaned her head on his shoulder. “Aisi!” she called. “Come and meet my camp friend!”

  “You got here pretty quickly,” Aisi said, leaning on her broom as the boys finally seemed to notice her existence.

  Zinnia sighed. “My mom makes me go to these lame D.A.R. teen meetings at the library two doors down. It’s me and like two other girls listening to the librarian go on and on about a bunch of dead people.”

  Colby nodded sympathetically. “I feel your pain. My dad tries to take me golfing and afterward, he likes to hit the steam room. And he makes me go in.” He shivered in disgust. “It’s just me and a bunch of old dudes sweating in their towels and nothing else.”

  “Ewww!” Zinnia shuddered. “That’s nasty. Hey, Colby, this is my best friend in the whole wide universe, Aisi Turay. Aisi, meet Thomas Colton Byington the….how many are you?” she asked, turning to Colby.

  Aisi glanced at Mr. Intensity, who had turned his attention back to a hand-held device that didn’t seem to work the way he wanted it to. He kept pushing buttons, ignoring everything else going on around him. She felt an odd flutter in her stomach as she watched him. He wouldn’t even look at her, but for some reason this guy made her nervous.

  “The fourth,” Colby replied in his best fake British accent, and Aisi smiled a little as she looked back at him. He might be okay.

  “The fourth,” Zinnia repeated, laughing. She took his hand and squeezed it, always a flirting pro. “But you can call him Colby, because no one wants to say that name over and over. What are you doing out here?”

  Colby pointed at his companion. “My cousin dragged me. It’s finals week and he wants some more evidence to back up one of his final projects.”

  “Where did you end up going?” Zinnia asked. “Your parents wanted you to get into some Ivy League school, right?”

  Colby laughed. “Not with my grades! Even with a big fat donation they wouldn’t take me. I got into my grandpa’s alma mater, Franklin Pierce U.”

  “So what are they going to rename now that you’re in?” Zinnia asked, raising her eyebrows with interest. Aisi raised hers too, but in confusion.

  “I’ll be studying in the Thomas Colton Byington, Jr., Library before I graduate,” he said.

  “If you actually studied,” the other guy muttered, twisting a knob on the stuff he wouldn’t stop fiddling with.

  Colby looked a little too guilty. “This is my cousin, Vance Alfaro.”

  Zinnia leaned forward. “Did I meet you at camp, too?”

  Aisi smiled, thinking her friend was wondering if she missed the chance to kiss yet another guy. She plopped down on the bench next to them. She shouldn’t sit with customers while on the job, but really, who cared? No one would come in for the rest of the night. It was odd enough that these two guys showed up.

  Vance looked up, annoyed with Zinnia’s question. “No, I’m the poor relative. No steam rooms or D.A.R. meetings for me, thankfully.” He looked back down, but then a quizzical expression crossed his face and he looked back up. He flicked his eyes toward Aisi to ask, “And your shoes. Isn’t it against some kind of law to wear flip flops while you work in a restaurant?”

  “Pretty much.” Aisi shrugged. She looked with mild interest at all the stuff covering the table. The one in his hand whistled loudly as she spoke. “And for the record, I don’t really care. I do think it’s kind of odd that you would ignore me until you noticed I knowingly violate health codes. How random are you?”

  Vance looked up at her with a sideways grin, eyes glimmering appreciatively before he turned his attention back to the thing being ten kinds of noisy in his hand.

  Aisi felt her stomach flop, but she shook her head and looked away. She decided to change to subject to something that didn’t make her feel like something was trying to beat its way out of her stomach. “Zinnia, you always go and complain about how those lame D.A.R. meetings are, but you never tell me what it stands for.”

  Vance’s equipment suddenly beeped loud and long, indicating it finally worked.

  “Daughters of the American Revolution,” Colby and Zinnia said together.

  “I should make my own D.A.R.,” Aisi mused as her dad appeared and looked out at them. Vance’s toys beeped again, and he shook his head in confusion. Big Billy walked out of the kitchen at that moment, and she looked at her father proudly. “Daughters of African Rebels. I can have my own meetings at the library!”

  Her voice rose with every word, because the equipment on the table started to malfunction loudly as her father approached. Vance and Colby looked up in awe as the tallest, widest man either of them had probably ever seen in their lives approached their table and frowned.

  “What is this?” he asked gently, his deep voice perfectly heard over the screeching machines on the table. “I can’t have my customers walk in here to all this noise.” He looked at Vance with particular interest, a look that bordered on anxiety and fear. She’d never seen her dad look like that before. Aisi sat back and watched them.

  Vance looked completely perplexed. “I don’t know, sir. I’m trying to fix it right now.”

  “Please do,” he said firmly, and as he walked away the equipment once again grew silent. Aisi and Vance both stared after him as he vanished around the corner, seemingly lost in thought.

  “I don’t think that stuff works, dude,” Colby said, shoving some of it aside to get it out of the way. “Hey, Aisi, do you guys have cheeseburgers here?”

  “Yes, we do,” she replied. Beep. She rolled her eyes at all the stuff on the table, but Vance looked at her suspiciously.

  “Can I have a couple, and a chocolate shake?”

  “Sure,” she answered as she rose. Beep. “Do you want anything, Vance?”

  Beeeeep.

  “I’ll take a grilled cheese and some fries,” he said, dropping the equipment in his hands and looking at her through narrowed eyes. He folded his arms and studied her. Her stomach flipped again as she walked away. Why was a cute boy spending so much time looking at her?

  As Aisi stepped behind the counter, she heard Zinnia talking. “So what are you studying, Vance? What’s all this stuff for?”

  “He’s a ghost hunter,” Colby said, and from the tone of his voice it seemed clear he thought the whole thing was hilarious. “He’s just doing it to tick off his dad, who wanted him to go to med school.”

  Aisi heard Vance sigh. “My major is parapsychology. I study paranormal phenomenon. I wanted to come here because I’m doing a final project for my demonology class, and one of the world’s most respected and experienced demonologists lives around here.”

  Just then, the sound on the television rose to almost intolerable volumes. Aisi ripped the order paper from her pad and handed it to her father, who accepted it quietly while never taking his eyes from the guys and Zinnia. Aisi couldn’t read his expression. The television kept getting louder. She hurried to the corner and reached up to turn it off, but the knob on the ancient set snapped off in her hand. She turned to her father. “Should I just unplug it?”

  Beeeeep!

  “Wait!” Vance said excitedly, rising from his seat to get closer to the TV despite the volume that continued to turn itself higher. “That’s the guy I came looking for! That’s Father J!”

  The volume reached unbearable heights, and Aisi covered her ears. A picture of the little church in the trailer, the one she ran past every day, flickered onto the screen right before the camera panned over to the creepy old house right across from it. “…demonologist who prefers to be known simply as Father J has an impressive career exorcising some of the fiercest demons ever to possess a human soul,” the narrator said as the camera zoomed in on the image of a man.

  “Perhaps he seems young,” the v
oice continued as the picture changed from a still picture to an action shot of the priest on the screen. Aisi recognized him as the one who peeked from behind his curtains as she ran past earlier. “…but he has seen a lifetime of horrors in his impressive career. Where other demonologists and exorcists have failed, he steps in to send any evil presence back where it belongs.”

  “That’s the guy I came looking for!” Vance repeated with excitement. He turned to Zinnia. “He’s supposed to live around here. Do you know where that church is?”

  Zinnia shook her head, and Aisi sat back down in the booth as she handed a shake to Colby and a glass of ice water to Vance. “Never seen him,” Zinnia replied. “Pretty sure I know everyone in town, too, thanks to all those stupid meetings and hoity-toity parties my mom drags me to. Have you seen it, Aisi?”

  Aisi opened her mouth to tell them she knew that place better than she wanted to, but she felt Vance watching her closely, so she shrugged and got up. Spying the table she should have bussed when the Cutlers left, she walked over and started clearing dishes. A moment later, she felt Vance behind her and turned to face him. He was inches away.

  Startled by his closeness, Aisi let out a little squeal of surprise. She sighed and rolled her eyes when more beeps rose from his table. Colby reached over to turn everything off.

  “You know where that house is, don’t you?” he asked. He stood so near her, she almost couldn’t breathe. Aisi had experienced many things in her life, but she’d never been so close to a guy who was, it turned out, really nice to look at. She looked up into his probing gray eyes and then glanced away quickly. His deeply tanned hands took the coffee mugs she held and he walked them into the kitchen for her. Leo shouted, “Hey, thanks! Fist bump it!” Vance walked back out and helped her carry the rest of the dishes into the kitchen.

  “Why are you helping me?” Aisi whispered, looking over at the table where all his ghost hunter toys had now been switched off. Zinnia sat chatting and snuggling with Colby.