Dark Before Dawn Page 11

  He let Rorie go abruptly, leaving her to stumble back against the curb, catching her breath as it came in broken gasps. Luke rolled up the windows as he pulled away. Macey didn’t even look back.

  She wanted to be with him, Rorie realized.

  Rorie’s hands trailed up to her neck, fingering the tender spot where he’d choked her with her own shirt. For the first time in her life, she didn’t know what to do. There was no one she could turn to.

  No one.

  nine

  HOPE

  “Honey, you’re being awfully quiet. How is school going?”

  Rorie fiddled with her silverware, not looking up from her plate. “Okay, I guess.”

  Something was not right. My mother saw it. I saw it. Tabby and Arthur, both of whom were having dinner with us, saw it. Our normally sunny girl was withdrawn and reserved. How long she’d been this way, I didn’t know. I cursed myself for having been so preoccupied with my own problems that I hadn’t been paying attention.

  “What’s up, buttercup?” I cajoled. “You’re normally a chatter-box. Did you have a bad test today or something?”

  She shrugged. “No.”

  “Bad basketball practice?”

  “No.”

  My mother raised an eyebrow and looked at me over her glasses.

  “Your friends haven’t been around lately,” she said to Rorie. “How are they doing?”

  Another shrug. “Fine, I guess.”

  “You guess?” My mother was not one for vague answers. “Don’t you know?”

  “They’re fine, Mom,” Rorie mumbled, stabbing at her chicken breast. “They’re all fine.”

  My mother and I looked at one another, puzzled by her recalcitrance.

  “Well, I don’t like all this moodiness lately,” my mother added as gently as she could. “At least try to be pleasant at the dinner table, especially while we have guests.”

  Rorie rolled her eyes. “As if Tabby and Arthur are guests. They practically live here,” she pronounced, drawing out the word “live” with dramatic flair.

  Tabby and I hid our smiles in our napkins. Our own teen years weren’t all that distant.

  Arthur diplomatically tried another direction. “How is that friend of yours, Macey, adjusting to school? Do you still see much of her?”

  At the mention of Macey’s name, Rorie’s head whipped up from her plate, fixing Arthur with a stare.

  “Why are you asking about Macey?” she pressed.

  Arthur looked bewildered. “I just haven’t heard you talking about her lately. She used to be here all the time—you were virtually inseparable all summer. She seemed like a nice girl.”

  Rorie gulped hard. “I guess so.”

  Arthur continued. “Why aren’t you spending as much time with her anymore?”

  Rorie turned beet red, and then she looked down at her plate. “Macey has a boyfriend now,” she answered curtly.

  We looked around at each other, unsure what to make of this news. I felt a bit ashamed of my own reaction of disbelief that someone as mousy and plain as Macey could have a boyfriend while Rorie did not. Tabby had a completely different reaction, however.

  “Rorie,” she said sternly, fixing my sister with a hard look through her glasses, “you aren’t jealous of Macey, are you? Please tell me you aren’t fighting over a boy.”

  “No!” Rorie shouted back, her face turning a deeper shade of red. She jumped to her feet, throwing her napkin down on her plate. “I can’t believe you would say that. You don’t understand. None of you do!”

  As she stomped off toward the staircase, Arthur caught her hand and tugged her back, pulling her up close to him where he could wrap a protective arm around her.

  “Tell us then,” he urged quietly. “Tell us what is going on.”

  Rorie’s lips were quivering. I thought about the last real conversation I’d had with her—her frustration at trying to help a friend and having things go wrong. I had chalked it up to petty middle school mean girl behavior. But the way Rorie was acting, I could tell this was something bigger.

  The buzzy feeling I’d reluctantly learned to accept as my own angelic intuition—the inadvertent transfer of Michael’s powers to me—surged in my head, taking my breath away. I began to feel alarmed. Something was seriously wrong. Something to do with Macey. Pulse quickening, I peered closer at my sister, still and silent in Arthur’s embrace.

  “I can’t,” Rorie whispered, staring at her feet. “I can’t tell you.”

  “Did you promise Macey you would keep a secret for her, Rorie?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice level.

  Rorie shrugged, refusing to meet my eye.

  “Honey, if it is bothering you, you should tell us,” my mother coaxed. “Sometimes children are entrusted with secrets that are too big for them to handle. Sometimes the best thing you can do is tell an adult.”

  “I’m not a baby!” she protested, her head rising proudly. Her eyes were defiant, daring us to contradict her.

  I looked at her, this girl caught on the edge between childhood and adolescence, and my heart caught. I wondered how any of us made it through when the world was sending so many mixed messages about who we were and what we were supposed to do. I thought of the piles of teen magazines Rorie voraciously read— their barrage of headlines about losing weight, having a “beach ready” body, and being sexy; articles about having the “right” clothes and the “right” hair, what was “in” and “out,” and how to tell if you were popular—as if such things really mattered. And then there was the endless circling around the topic of boys—“Does He Like You? Take this Test and Find Out!” “How to Tell if He’s Cheating On You!” The self-doubt the media could engender, even in a girl as strong as Rorie, could make anything seem like a crisis of epic proportions. My heart felt a pang of pity for what she was going through.

  And now this. Whatever it was, it was clearly overwhelming her. I tried to banish the background noise in my brain so that I could focus on my sister. For now, I made myself stay back. It wouldn’t help if all four of us jumped into the fray, making her feel like we were ganging up on her.

  “Of course you’re not a baby, Rorie,” Arthur soothed, his low voice calming all of us. “Your mother was just offering you an alternative to keeping it bottled up inside. If Macey made you make a promise that you’re uncomfortable with, you have a safe place—a safe set of people—with whom you can share it. We all need that— no matter what age we’re at.”

  Rorie looked doubtful.

  “Do you want to tell just one of us?” Tabby prompted, peering at Rorie over her glasses. I always found it disconcerting when she did that, as if she were somehow silently reprimanding me, but Rorie didn’t seem to mind. She hesitated, as if unsure how to answer.

  “Rorie,” I said calmly. “Remember when we talked about how sometimes when we try to help, we inadvertently make things worse? Keeping promises that should never have been made can work the same way. If a promise puts someone you love in a bad position, you don’t have to keep it.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” I said it with as much certainty as I could muster.

  “But what if by telling it, somebody else I care about gets hurt?” she asked.

  My head was pounding so violently now that I thought I could hear my own blood, rushing through my veins.

  “You can’t worry about that. You can’t know for certain that any of those things you fear will come to pass. You can only act on what you know for sure. To help the friend you know needs help,” I offered, trying to draw her out.

  “Even telling one of us might make you feel better, Aurora,” Tabby said carefully.

  Rorie hesitated, then nodded. “Just one of you.”

  “I can understand that.” Tabby rose from the table. “It was time for me to go anyway. C’mon, Arthur, you can walk me out.”

  “No, wait!” Rorie cried. “I want you to stay.”

  “Me?” Tabby nearly squeaked. “You want to
tell me?”

  Rorie nodded quickly. “I need to tell you. I’m only going to tell you. But Hope can listen if she wants. I mean, it’s okay if Hope overhears me telling you. But I’m only telling you, all right?”

  Tabby shot me a look. It was a strange distinction she was making, but it seemed important to her. I shrugged my shoulders. Whatever it was, we would just go with it.

  “Okay, then,” Tabby said, looking oddly pleased. “If that’s what you want. Mona, Arthur—is this all okay with you?”

  “Of course,” my mother smiled wistfully. Try as she might, she always seemed to be the odd one out. But she, too, seemed to agree that the most important thing was getting Rorie to spit it out—no matter what it took. “Why don’t you girls go out on the back porch? Arthur can help me clean up.”

  I took Rorie’s hand and led her to the porch swing, pulling her down between Tabby and me. The winter air was crisp. In the dying light, I could see the last of the dead leaves clinging to bare branches, shades of gold and russet and crimson that danced as the sun’s last rays glanced off their edges.

  “Okay, Rorie. Tell us what’s going on,” I prompted.

  “You won’t judge me?” she pleaded.

  “Of course not,” I answered, startled that she would even think such a thing.

  “Spit it out,” Tabby pressed as she set the swing in motion with her foot. “Tell us—or, I mean, only me—everything.”

  Rorie settled into the cushions with a deep sigh, turning away from me and directing her speech to Tabby alone.

  “So, remember how I said Macey has a boyfriend?”

  Tabby nodded, spurring her on.

  “We met him at the mall. He was with a big group of boys. Older boys. I don’t even think they’re in high school anymore. I don’t know what they do, though. They hang out all the time, so I don’t think they’re in college, either.”

  Tabby shot me a concerned look over Rorie’s head.

  “The day we met him, he went straight for Macey. It was like nobody else existed. And, I don’t mean this in a vicious way—you’ve got to believe me, ’cause I like Macey, I really do—but I was suspicious. I mean, out of all of us, why would he pick her? Especially an older boy like him? But I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, so I didn’t say anything to her. I just decided to keep an eye on things. And the more I watched them, the more it worried me.”

  “That was very insightful of you, Macey. But what made you so worried?” Tabby pressed.

  “It was like the whole world centered around him,” Rorie answered. “None of us even existed for her anymore. He wanted all of her spare time to be with him. He even arranged somehow to pick her up after school, with a carpool pass and everything. Macey started lying about being in drama club so that she could stay after school with him without having to tell her parents.”

  “You mean they didn’t know about Macey and this boy?”

  Rorie shook her head vehemently. “Not at all. See what I mean? Why would you hide it if it was okay?

  “And she started acting different. When she was with him, he would make her change into these outfits he brought for her. Even at school, in her uniform, he made her wear all this makeup and do her hair funny. It was like he was trying to make her look grown up.

  “At school she wouldn’t talk to any of us. She never had her homework done.”

  Her tone was getting almost desperate now. I nodded at Tabby over my sister’s head. She needed to keep drawing Rorie out.

  “So as you were noticing all these things, what did you and your friends do?” Tabby asked, keeping her tone steady and calm.

  Rorie shrugged. “Most of my friends hadn’t really liked her anyway. They said it just proved them right, that she didn’t belong. But I was really worried. So one day I asked if I could go with her after school.”

  Tabby gave the swing a push with her foot. “That was brave of you, Rorie. It takes a really good friend to do such a thing.”

  Rorie didn’t answer at first. “I was scared,” she admitted. “But I didn’t trust Luke. I wanted to see what he was doing with her for myself.”

  I froze.

  “Rorie, what did you say his name was?” I interrupted.

  “Luke,” she said, forgetting that she wasn’t supposed to be telling me anything. “Why?”

  Luke. Lucas. Luke. Lucas.

  The two names, interchangeable, kept repeating on an endless loop through my brain.

  I had been through too much to believe in coincidences any more. But how could it be? How could it be that Lucas was free, stalking the earth, stalking my family? I’d expected him to be jailed forever—at least as long as my forever. But he’d seemingly insinuated himself into the heart of my family—into my baby sister’s very life—without me even knowing he was at large.

  Tabby and I looked at each other. I knew we were worried about the same thing.

  “Rorie,” I said, forcing myself to remain calm, needing to get the full story from her while I let this new information sift through my mind. “When you went with them, where did you go?”

  “He said he was taking Macey to a recording studio. But it was in a really scary part of town I’d never been to. It looked like a war zone, and everybody seemed like they were dazed. I should have stayed with Macey, but I was afraid. I made them take me to the MARTA station. And now I think he takes her there every day after school. Sometimes she doesn’t even come to school anymore. When she does, she’s not the same. She’s always smelly and unwashed, and she’s too tired to pay attention. She even sleeps during tests! I was trying to help her, but she wouldn’t listen to me.”

  I tried to ignore the horrible images that were rushing through my mind, pressing themselves against my conscience, demanding attention. “Do you remember the name of the neighborhood?” I asked.

  Rorie shook her head, shoulders slumping.

  Tabitha had a glint in her eye. “Honey, could you see any big buildings from where you were? In the skyline? Think carefully.”

  Rorie paused, her forehead crumpling up in concentration. “There was a big dome. And I could see the Coca-Cola building.”

  “Was the MARTA station they took you to the Vine City MARTA?”

  “Yes!” She turned to Tabby, excited and proud that she’d remembered. “Yes, that was it. How did you know?”

  “My congregation volunteers in the Neighborhood Association Gardens there. There aren’t that many parts of town that desolate.” She shot me a cautionary look over Rorie’s head. “They call it the Bluff. It’s infamous. One of the most dangerous neighborhoods in America, with one of the biggest open-air heroin markets anywhere. It’s been like that for decades—generations of people, lured into the drug trade and drug use, trapped in an endless cycle of poverty. Though now most of the customers are suburban rich kids driving in from the Perimeter.”

  She shifted in the swing to face Rorie, drawing my sister’s hands into hers. “Rorie, is that the secret? That he is taking her to the Bluff? Did he tell you he was going to shoot videos or pictures of Macey? Did he try to get you to go, too?”

  I felt nauseated, afraid to hear her answer. Rorie couldn’t speak. She was sobbing, her wracked body shaking the chains of the swing. Tabby enfolded Rorie in her arms.

  “There’s no recording studio, is there?” Rorie asked, turning her tear-streaked face to mine.

  There was no good answer—none that would soothe her broken heart.

  “It will be okay, Rorie,” said Tabby finally. “You did the right thing telling us. Now we can get the police.”

  “No!” Rorie shrieked, flailing wildly. “You can’t go to the police. Tell her, Hope!” She turned and clung to me, begging. “You can’t tell anybody. I promised! I promised! He made me promise not to tell anybody, especially not you and Mom!”

  “Whoa, whoa, hold on, sweetie. Of course we need to go the police. They can help Macey. They can get her away from Luke.” My tongue stumbled over his name, thick with fear.


  “No!” she wailed, a long, mournful cry. “He said he’ll kill you! He’ll kill you all if he knows I told!”

  A cold wave of shock went through me.

  “Aurora,” I said, a little too sharply. “Luke told you he’d kill us?”

  She nodded, still sobbing. “He knows where we live, Hope. He knows everything about Mom. And you. He said he would kill us all. Please, please don’t go to the police!” She draped her arms around my neck and pulled me close. I could feel her heart racing as I squeezed her hard.

  “Go get my mother and Arthur,” I told Tabby.

  She shot off the swing in an instant. Rorie was shaking, quivering against me, her body wracked by heaving sobs. I held her close, rocking her gently, trying to get her to calm down.

  “Shhhh. You did the right thing, Rorie. Nobody is going to hurt us. I promise you, nobody can touch us.”

  I hoped I’d be able to keep that promise.

  Soon, Tabby came back, my mom and Arthur in tow.

  “Tabby, can you take Rorie upstairs? See if you can get her to lie down for a while?”

  “Sure thing,” Tabby said, briskly.

  “No! Don’t make me go. I want to stay with you,” my sister protested.

  Tabby was all business. “No need for that. Let’s take you upstairs and get you cleaned up. Come on, now,” she tutted at Rorie, hustling her off the swing. “There’s my girl.” It was the same gentle firmness I’d seen her use on errant churchgoers: no nonsense, but kind. Rorie had no chance to protest before Tabby whisked her away, out of earshot.

  I turned to Arthur and Mom.

  “Did Tabby tell you what’s going on?”

  They shook their heads, confused. “Just that the big secret was something to do with Macey. What’s going on, Hope?”

  I let out a shaky breath.

  “I think Macey’s gotten herself into trouble. It sounds like she’s taken up with an older boy, one who may be taking advantage of her. I hope I’m wrong, but I think he might be forcing her into child pornography—or worse. The way Rorie describes it, he may be trafficking her for sex.”