I rubbed my hand against my head, which was still throbbing. Only made worse by the sound of her voice. “Really? You choose now to do all your talking for the entire year?”
“I guess you’re feeling better. Back to your same old self.”
“Where is he?” I asked through clenched teeth.
“You mean Mr. Ambiguous?”
I nodded.
“I guess back where I left him,” she said with a careless shrug of her shoulders.
“How’d you get away?”
“He just let me go. He asked me if I wanted to follow my friend.”
“He just let you go?”
Carrie nodded. “I think he wanted us to trust him. Not that I do. There’s just something about that guy that gives me the creeps.”
I understood what she meant. “How’d you know I’d be here?” I asked, fighting the urge to look back on Jenna’s body. God, Jenna.
“Where else would you go?” Carrie asked quietly.
“I didn’t know you knew her,” I replied, suddenly finding it impossible to look at Carrie. I stared at the carpet instead, wishing to be anywhere but there.
Carrie sighed. I looked up at the noise to see her pull her hoodie further down over her face. No longer could I see her eyes. “I used to live across the street.”
I hadn’t known that. I heard Carrie was a ward of the state, something about her mother being dead and her father in jail. Maybe that meant I should have given her some sympathy over the years, but she was a freak. She never seemed to want or need any affection from anyone.
“So what do you think happened?” I asked. I couldn’t stop myself. Without looking back, I reached my hand behind me and placed it on Jenna’s stomach. I wanted to feel her underneath my hands before she wasted away, before she was completely gone from whatever fucked up world I seemed to be stuck in.
“I think there had to have been some sort of attack, maybe biological, and the sickness took out the humans,” Carrie replied, stoically.
Sickness. I pulled my t-shirt over my nose.
Carrie’s hand reached out and pulled my shirt from off my face. “I think we’re immune, dumbass. Why else would we be chosen to stop all this? Whatever the hell that means?”
“What does any of this mean? I mean are we supposed to believe that crap he said about being shifters? I mean time travel? Really? How is that even remotely possible?”
“I don’t know what were supposed to believe, Logan. But I guess you’re gonna want to believe we can stop this, because otherwise this is your future,” Carrie replied.
No. I couldn’t believe this was final. I just damn well couldn’t.
“Is all of this real?” I asked.
I watched as Carrie turned her head to look past me at Jenna. “It sure feels real.”
“Isn’t there someone you want to check on?” I asked, clearing my throat. Even though she was trying to hide it, I could see Carrie felt something concerning Jenna’s death. This made her a little more likable in my eyes. I wondered what caused Carrie to feel anything for her at all.
Carrie shook her head. “Nope.”
That one word seemed to summarize the biggest difference between Scary Carrie and me, a difference that could change who a person was.
I stood and pushed my way past Carrie. I couldn’t spend one more second sitting still. I had answers to find. What the hell was a shifter? How was it possible to stop the destruction that consumed my world? Why was Carrie here with me? Why me?
I continued to walk towards the front door. I couldn’t stand to be in this house anymore. It did me good to see these things. It gave me a purpose, something that I hadn’t ever really had in my life. Winning a football game and scoring with your girlfriend really didn’t seem so damn important when compared to this.
I was going to stop this. I would have to believe that it was possible. Everything I knew to be possible and true told me all of this was beyond reason, but I believed. I felt my girlfriend’s skin come off into my hand. I had to become a believer.
“Where you going?” Carrie called after me.
“To find Mr. Ambiguous.”
“Why?”
“To force him to give us some answers.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
I turned to face Carrie. I needed her. I knew that, but I didn’t need her attitude. “And why won’t it work? I can be pretty convincing,” I said, curling my hands into fist. Granted, the last time I got in a fight was with Steven Oliver who weighed twenty pounds less than me.
“Because your eyes are watering,” she snapped.
“What?” I asked, reaching up to find a tear roll down my face. My skin began to prickle.