Page 58 of Sour Lollipops and Sweet Nightmares
It could’ve been a one-night stand. That was always a possibility, but that only led to more questions. The Society had a hard enough time tracking down Salem girls, what with marriages and name changes over the years.
Finding one that was the result of a one-night stand would be impossible, unless they were keeping tabs on them. And if that were true, The Society would’ve either killed her when she was a baby or taken her and raised her themselves like Aiden. Meaning, they just found her, which again, just led to more questions.
I set the notebook back on my bed and looked up at Ravi as he cracked open a can of soda. “What do we know about Georgia’s dad?”
He immediately choked back what he was swallowing.
Bingo.
“We don’t know who he is,” he coughed out.
Ravi’s tell was a slightly raised voice while avoiding eye contact. “Yes, you do.”
He stared at me, confirming my suspicions. Whatever he was hiding from me had to do with Georgia’s dad.
“Don’t you think you have other things to worry about?” he cocked a brow my way. “Like the claiming.”
That was classic deflection.
However, before I could call Ravi out on his bullshit, I was interrupted by the sound of someone clearing their throat.
Ravi and I both turned to the open doorway where a familiar blonde stood.
My eyes narrowed.
Look who came to the lion’s den.
Georgia
Everyone has moments in their life when forced to do something they don’t want to. Most of those moments for me came from my mother’s attempt to make me more social. None of which had the desired result.
The eighth-grade dance she dressed me up for was a complete disaster. I spent the entire night hiding in the bathroom from anyone who might try to talk to me. Including Karl, the neighbor’s son, whom Mom paid to take me. He, however, got to second base with one of my classmates, so atleast Karl had a good time. And he made fifty dollars while doing so.
That summer was when I attended my first sporting event. Mom’s second husband was a big baseball fan, and she thought it would be a great family outing. It was not. Baseball had to be one of the most boring sports ever invented.
There were other events. Homecoming, dinners, unwanted sleepovers, and the school fair. Thankfully, I managed to escape the nightmare that was senior prom. Dress shopping alone would’ve made me consider jumping into traffic.
The ironic part was that Mom made me do these things because she thought they would make me happy. I only did them to make her happy.
While I wasn’t currently standing outside a frat house because she talked me into it, I couldn’t help but think of how she would smile at this turn of events. It wouldn’t matter to her that I was only here to retrieve my bag—no one turned it in.
Meaning my only other option was Issac or one of his friends, all of whom were part of the same frat. Mom would see this as an opportunity for me to make friends. God forbid I be happy with a solitary life.
My eyes trickled over the black title on the roof, as I whispered, “This is a bad idea.”
The building didn’t appear ominous at all. It was oddly normal—a big white house with black shutters, reminiscent of what one might find in a gated community. But there was something about it that sent a shiver up my spine. Maybe it was the mundaneness of the building that I didn’t like.
Dangerous things tended to blend in. There was a reason why, when the authorities caught serial killers, none of the neighbors ever said, ‘I knew that guy was carving people up in his basement.’
Humanity in general feared the abnormal. In my opinion, it should be the things that seem too normal that we should be leery of. And this place, with its neatly mowed lawn and clean deck, looked plucked right out of Pleasantville. It was too welcoming. Even the air was sweet and crisp with the scent of fresh-cut grass. Underneath all of that were hints of the rotten core.
Faded handprints on one of the windows on the second floor, a high heel shoe forgotten in the garden on the left, what looked like scratches in the paint on the deck railing, and three small spots of dried blood on the walkway, only inches from the toe of my left shoe.
Any one of these things was odd, but when they were all put together, it painted a nefarious picture. Mind you, Mom watched a lot ofLaw and Order, so my opinion may have been biased.
“It’s fine,” I told myself. “It’s just a house.”
There was nothing suspicious about it. The door wasn’t going to grow teeth and bite me when I knocked. The people on the inside were what I was worried about, and I didn’t mean just Issac and his friends. I was standing in front of a house full of boys. My overall opinion of the male students on campus was not favorable.
