Shocking Pink

“I do not have a weak stomach!” Andie couldn’t believe she and Raven were arguing like this. “I have a feeling something really bad is going to happen to us.”

Julie’s eyes widened. “Like what?”

Raven began clucking her tongue at her. At them both. “Chickenshits … chickenshits.”

“Stop it!” Andie shouted, scrambling to her feet and glaring down at Raven. “You’re really starting to piss me off!”

Julie whimpered. “Guys, don’t fight. We’re supposed to be friends.”

Ignoring Julie, Raven launched to her feet and faced Andie. “And I’m getting pretty sick of your pansy-ass whining.”

“Whining!”

“That’s right. We decided that Mr. X was a freak. We decided to pursue this a little longer. We made a deal.”

“Well, we were wrong. We weren’t thinking clearly.”

“Speak for yourself. I was thinking plenty clear.” Raven fisted her fingers. “Just ’cause your parents are splitting up, you think everybody should do what you want. Well, you’re not the only one whose home life is shit, okay? Welcome to the club.”

Andie flinched and took a step backward. “I can’t believe you said that to me. How could you? You know how much—”

Andie bit back the words, her eyes flooding with tears. She started past Raven, intent on grabbing her binoculars and heading home. At the same moment, Julie jumped to her feet. Andie knocked into the other girl, unbalancing her.

As if in slow motion, Andie watched as Julie swung her arms trying to rebalance herself. A cry on her lips, Andie grabbed for her friend; she wasn’t fast enough. Julie went over the side of the platform.

She landed on her side with a sickening thud. She lay there, eyes open but completely still.

“Julie!” Andie cried, her heart in her throat. It didn’t look as if she was breathing. “Are you okay?”

She didn’t reply, and Andie and Raven rushed down the ladder to their friend. They knelt beside her. “Are you all right?” Andie asked again, voice shaking. “Please … please … tell me you’re okay.”

“I … I think I am,” Julie said, beginning to shake. “But I’m afraid to move.”

“Then don’t,” Andie said. “Give yourself a minute to catch your breath.” She met Raven’s eyes. She saw her own concern mirrored in her friend’s gaze.

“I can’t be hurt,” Julie whispered. “If I am, my dad’s going to find out what we’ve been doing. He’ll kill me.” She started to cry then, softly, heartbreaking mewls of despair.

“He won’t find out.” Raven squeezed her hand. “I won’t let him. I promise.”

“Okay,” Andie said. “Let’s see if anything’s broken.”

Carefully, they tested Julie’s arms and legs; they had her move her head, fingers and toes, then helped her sit up. She was fine, they realized. Just shaken.

They all were, Andie decided. Even Raven.

Andie swallowed hard. “I’m really … really sorry, Julie. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

“I know. It was an accident.” Julie drew in a hiccoughing breath. “No more fighting. You’re supposed to be best friends. Best friends don’t hurt each other like that.”

“Julie’s right, Rave.” Andie looked at her friend, a lump forming in her throat. “Now do you see what’s happening to us? Ever since this started, we’ve changed. We’re at each other’s throats all the time. Either that, or not speaking at all. This thing’s tearing us apart.”

Raven stared at her for long moments, then looked away. “I just wanted to figure this guy out.”

“I know,” Andie said softly, touching her arm. “But it’s hurting us. And I don’t want to lose you two.”

“Please, Rave,” Julie said, her voice quivering. “I want to go back to the way we were before.”

Raven moved her gaze from one to the other, then nodded. “Okay, guys. Starting now, none of this ever happened.”

12

But Raven wasn’t about to forget about Mr. and Mrs. X. No matter what Andie said. Andie was wrong. She and Julie didn’t understand. They didn’t see how important what had happened to them was. They had been given an opportunity, an open door.

To the secrets. The way.

But she saw. She understood.

And that was okay. She was the strong one; she always had been. Andie was a do-gooder with a weak stomach. She worried about everybody, but didn’t have the backbone to take a stand. Julie, on the other hand, was a boy-crazy space cadet and would follow whoever was stronger.

In this case, Julie would follow her.

Raven had decided that she and Julie would continue their late-night stakeout of number twelve Mockingbird Lane. They would watch; Raven would learn. And someday she would need those lessons to protect the three of them, to keep her family together.

Raven didn’t know when or against whom they would need to be protected; she only knew, deep in her gut, that they would.

It would mean lying to Andie. She hated to do it, but it was for Andie’s own good. That made it okay, she reasoned. A necessary evil.

Raven called Julie. And as Raven had known she would, Julie hesitated briefly, then fell right in line with Raven’s plan, promising to keep their activities a secret from Andie.

They agreed to meet that night.

13

After her family had all gone to bed, Julie sneaked out of the house to meet Raven. They had agreed beforehand that they would wait for Mr. and Mrs. X for two hours. Two hours hadn’t seemed that long to Julie then, but now the minutes ticked past with agonizing slowness. She could hardly sit still. It was as if someone had plugged her in and turned her on, and she couldn’t find her Off switch.

Her mind raced; her thoughts whirled. She thought of Andie, Mrs. X, her nightmare, her father. The devil. She was torn between excitement and guilt, shame and arousal. She worked to hide her feelings from Raven, though a couple of times she had caught the other girl looking at her, her expression strange.

Julie swallowed hard. She couldn’t bear it if her friends found out the truth about her. If she kept this up, they would. They would figure it out.

“They’re not going to show,” Julie whispered, then glanced guiltily over her shoulder, as if someone stood nearby, listening. “Let’s just go.”

Raven released a frustrated breath and lowered the binoculars. “It hasn’t been two hours. We agreed, remember?”

“I know, but—”

“Shh. Look, a car.”

Sure enough, a car rolled down the street. It pulled into the driveway of number twelve. The automatic garage door slid up; the car eased in. The door shut.

Julie’s mouth had turned to dust. She fought to speak around the knot in her throat. “Was it him?”

“Her,” Raven corrected, lowering the binoculars, frowning.

“Her? Where’s Mr. X?”

“Late, maybe. Let’s hang a minute, he’ll come.”

They waited. Five minutes. Ten. Raven shook her head. “Something’s wrong. If he was coming, he’d be here.”

“Maybe he was in the car, like hiding in the back seat.”

They looked at each other, then scrambled off the platform. They made their way through the wooded lot and around the back of the house.

They found Mrs. X. She was alone, blindfolded and naked. She stood motionless in the center of the great room, waiting.

Julie gazed at her, confused, then nudged Raven. “What’s she doing?”

Raven didn’t glance over, but lifted her shoulders in response, indicating she didn’t know.

Julie frowned. “This is so weird. I wonder—”

Raven glared at her, bringing a finger to her lips. Julie swallowed the rest of her thought. Minutes passed, and though she didn’t know exactly how many, it seemed like forever.

The night was sticky; their half-crouching positions uncomfortable. A mosquito buzzed in Julie’s ear, and she swatted at it, annoyed. Why was she here, bored and hot and being eaten by bugs, when she could be home, curled up in her comfortable bed? It was stupid. This was stupid. She was taking a big chance just being here. And what for? She opened her mouth to tell Raven exactly that, when her friend caught her arm, stopping her.

“He’s here,” she hissed.

Heart in her throat, Julie popped up and peered over the ledge. Mr. X wore a ski mask. He had a rope. He came up behind Mrs. X; he brought the rope to her throat. Using it, he tugged her roughly against him.

Julie brought a hand to her mouth, shocked and frightened. Aroused. As she watched, he ran the rope over Mrs. X’s body, caressing her with it, making love to her with it. Julie watched as the rope coiled around the woman’s neck, then slithered over her shoulders, her breasts. Then lower.

He used it as another man might use hands and fingers. He brought it between her legs. Mrs. X arched; her mouth opened, though Julie heard no sound.

Julie’s breath came in fast, shallow gasps. Her cheeks were hot, her nipples hard. She closed her eyes, struggling to get control of herself, her runaway thoughts.

When she opened them, Mr. X was binding the woman’s hands with the rope, roughly, yanking her arms behind her back. She didn’t fight him, didn’t struggle or try to break away. Julie didn’t understand. Mrs. X didn’t fight him, yet it looked as if he was scaring her, as if he was hurting her.

Did he own her? Julie wondered. Was she his slave, his property to do with as he wanted? Or was she in love with him, so in love she would give him anything he asked for?

Julie could understand that; she could imagine herself loving, needing to be loved in return, that much.

She was like Mrs. X.

Just like in her nightmare.

Mr. X forced her to her knees. Then, his intentions unmistakable, he unzipped his pants and pulled out his erection. Tangling his hands in her hair, he forced her to take him into her mouth.

Julie made a small sound, at once shocked and intrigued. Guilt and shame speared through her. She was wet. On fire.

Burning with shame. Guilt. Desire.

She ducked down, breathing hard, unable to watch another moment. Raven didn’t move. Julie covered her face with her hands. They trembled.

She was bad. This was bad. Every time she closed her eyes, she imagined her face on Mrs. X’s body, the man’s hands, the rope slithering over her skin.

Andie had been right. They never should have come here. This was wrong. She was going to burn in hell, just as her father said.

“We have to go,” she whispered. “Raven, please.” She reached up and caught her friend’s hand and tugged. “Please, Rave. Please.”

Raven met her eyes, the expression in them strange, almost feverish. She gazed at Julie a moment, almost as if she didn’t know her, then nodded, not speaking again until they reached Julie’s door.

Raven touched Julie’s cheek. “It’s going to be all right,” she whispered. “I’ll make sure of that.”

Julie held her friend’s gaze a moment, then nodded and slipped inside, not at all certain of that fact. In fact, Julie had a horrible feeling that nothing was ever going to be all right again.

14

The next week passed in a disjointed, confusing blur for Julie. Her days were spent pretending to be a good daughter and a normal fifteen-year-old. Her nights were spent peering through the window of number twelve Mockingbird Lane, watching acts that alternately shocked, horrified and aroused her.

Julie lived in fear that her father would discover what she was doing; she struggled to deal with what she saw. One time Mr. X would be tender, even loving with Mrs. X, making love with her in the traditional way. The way Julie had dreamed of being made love to. The next he would be cruel. He would torment her with his indifference, he would make her crawl or beg. Those times, he would take her in whatever way or position he chose, no matter how painful.

He was the devil, Julie decided. She was watching the devil himself.

And he was seducing her.

Julie lay on her bed and stared up at the ceiling, too frightened to close her eyes. She feared if she did, her subconscious would take over and she would be once again transformed into Mrs. X.

She didn’t want to be Mrs. X. She didn’t want to enjoy … that.

But she did enjoy it. It was sick, yet she watched in fascination. She hated it, yet she couldn’t stop thinking about it. She couldn’t understand why Mrs. X allowed the man to treat her that way, yet she did understand.

Maybe that was what frightened her most.

Julie rolled onto her side, then her back once more. The sheets twisted around her legs, binding them, trapping her. She began to sweat, her heart to pound. She was afraid.

Something terrible was happening to her. Had happened to her. She bit her bottom lip. She wasn’t the same person she had been before the window and Mr. and Mrs. X. Her life wasn’t the same.

She knew things now. She was afraid for her future.

She was afraid she was like Mrs. X.

A cry bubbled up to her throat. She wanted to go back. She didn’t want to know what she knew. She didn’t want him to be in her brain anymore. She pressed her face to the pillow. She wanted to make it all go away.

And she was afraid, too, for Mrs. X. Tonight, Mr. X had been brutal. He had all but raped Mrs. X, then left her bound, gagged and blindfolded. Alone in the dark.

He had gone to the garage and his car, and he’d driven off.

She and Raven had waited thirty minutes; he hadn’t returned. Julie had suggested they go inside and free Mrs. X; Raven had scoffed. It was all part of their game, she had said. Julie worried too much.

Did she worry too much? Julie wondered. Or was Mrs. X still there? Now, hours later? Had he left her to die alone in that house, bound and blinded by the silk scarf? Had he left her that way and gone to get a weapon to kill her?

The dark, her fears, pressed in on her. Julie reached across to the bedside table and switched on her light, squinting against the sudden brightness. Next to the light, in a pretty flowered frame, was a picture of her, Andie and Raven. Julie reached for her glasses and slipped them on, then took the framed photo into her hands and gazed at it. The picture had been snapped last summer, when Andie’s folks had taken them all camping. They had their arms around each other, they were smiling.

Now, she could hardly look Andie in the eyes. Now, she and Raven hardly spoke. It was as if there was a glass wall separating the three of them; they could see one another but not touch, not connect. They didn’t laugh together, they didn’t whisper together, sharing their deepest, darkest secrets.

Now, they kept those secrets all to themselves.

It was tearing them apart. Tearing her apart. But as much as she longed to, Julie didn’t know how to stop it.

15

Andie couldn’t put Mr. and Mrs. X out of her mind, no matter how she tried. She threw herself into her friends and summer activities, but still the image of the woman on her knees before the man haunted her.

If only she understood what drove the couple, if only she could fathom why the woman allowed herself to be treated that way. If she understood, she decided, she would be able to let it go and move on.

If she didn’t, she feared she would go crazy.

She remembered that Julie had said she’d read something in a psychology book about this; sexual deviation, she had called it. Andie decided a trip to the Thistledown Public Library would do the trick.

Andie found a limited amount of information there. It was frustrating, because she needed to ask the librarian for help but couldn’t. Thistledown was a small town; the librarian knew her. But more important, she knew her mom and dad.

No sooner would the question be out of her mouth than the librarian would be on the phone to Andie’s mom.

Andie didn’t consider that an option, so, knowing that her mother wouldn’t miss her, she made the two-hour bus trek to Columbia and the University of Missouri. In the sprawling, book-filled building that housed the library she found more information than she would have time to read before she had to catch the bus back home. The librarian didn’t even blink at Andie’s request and directed her to the psychology section. She explained how to use the microfiche and how to find the bound periodicals.

Sexual deviation, Andie learned, was a behavior that varied from what a society or people called “normal.” She learned that some people enjoyed being dominated during sex, others punishing or being punished. She learned that they found the pain, the humiliation and powerlessness exciting. Some could achieve sexual gratification in no other way.

The experts rarely agreed on why these people found dominance, submission or pain pleasurable—their theories ranged from traumatic childhood experiences to environmental influences to genetics. They did agree, however, that sexual deviance had been a part of every culture, back as far as there were records to study.

No closer to understanding, but slightly reassured by the sheer volume of information, Andie checked her watch. She had time for one more article before she left. Her head already swimming with what she’d learned, she thought about passing on the article and going for a Coke instead, then took a deep breath. She had come all this way, she might as well get as much information as she could.

She would just skim it, she decided, looking longingly at the front doors, then back at the scientific journal. Then she still might have time for that Coke.

She flipped open the journal and began to read quickly. A sentence jumped out at her. She stopped, her world tipping on its axis.

Sometimes, death provides the ultimate sexual thrill.

She struggled to calm herself, to catch hold of the fear racing through her. With forced calm, Andie went back and carefully read the entire article. It went on to explain that such instances were rare, though quite a number had been documented. One man had actually killed four partners over the course of three years, before he was caught. During his pretrial psychiatric evaluation, he had insisted that his partners had been willing victims, that they had helped plan the tableau that had been their last and that they had received as much pleasure in the act as he. A half-dozen or so graphic photographs were included.

Andie gazed at the images, stomach lurching up to her throat. She had been right to be afraid for Mrs. X, she knew now. The woman was in real danger.

A sense of urgency pressing at her, Andie snatched up the journal, and went in search of a copier. She found one, dug in her pocket for change, then began photocopying the article, pictures and all. She had to make Raven and Julie understand; had to get them to see the danger Mrs. X was in. She had to make them as certain as she of what they had to do.

They had to go to their parents. They had to.

16

The minute Andie got home, she called her friends. She told them to meet her at the toolshed, a.s.a.p. It was an emergency, she told them. They had to talk; they couldn’t chance being overheard.

Within twenty minutes the three of them were sitting cross-legged on the shed floor. Julie looked guilty and nervous, Raven curious. Seeing them now, Andie realized she had hardly spoken to them in two days.

Without waiting for their questions, Andie launched into the reason she had called them together. She told them how she had gone by bus to Columbia and the university library, describing in detail what she had discovered there, finishing with the last, most devastating piece of information.

“Look.” She took the article from her back pocket, unfolded it and handed it to her friends, hands shaking. “Our imaginations weren’t running away with us. We were right to be afraid. This guy’s bad news.”

Julie stared at the photocopy, her eyes huge behind her glasses. “Do you think he … he’s … going to kill her?”

Andie swallowed hard. “I think he might.”

“Oh, God.” Julie wrapped her arms around her drawn-up knees and looked pleadingly at Raven. The other girl sent her a warning glance, and Julie moaned and pressed her face to her knees.

Andie watched them, frowning. “What’s going on, you guys?”

“Nothing,” Raven said smoothly. She handed the article back. “This doesn’t prove anything.”

“Of course it does. It proves he could hurt her. It proves we can’t just sit back and do nothing. We have to go to our—”

“Parents?” Raven supplied. “I don’t think so.” When Andie opened her mouth to argue her point, Raven cut her off. “She likes what they’re doing, and if she’s not afraid for herself, why should we risk our butts for her?”

“But the article said—”

“That sometimes the dominator can’t stop and kills his partner. I know.” Raven tossed aside the pages. “But it doesn’t say how often, Andie. It could be one time in a million.”

“And what if this is that time?”

Julie lifted her head, her expression stricken. “Raven … we have to.”

Raven ignored her. “This is Thistledown, Andie. Not New York. Not even St. Louis. Stuff like that doesn’t happen here. Besides, can you imagine what Julie’s dad would do if he found out? Can you imagine what mine would do?”

Julie began to whimper, and Andie cut her a worried glance. “I’ll keep you guys out of it. I’ll tell my mom it was only me.”

“Do you really think she’ll believe that? The three of us spend almost every minute together, we have, almost all summer. Do you really think she won’t know the truth.”

Andie pressed her lips together to keep them from trembling. She and her friends had never disagreed this way before. It made her feel funny, almost as if she were on trial and they were judging her. Why couldn’t they see this the way she did?

Andie scrambled around for another solution. “How about this? Instead of our parents, we go to the police. We make them promise not to tell our folks. We tell them—”

“It’ll never work,” Raven inserted, flushing. “We’re minors, Andie. Get it? Minors. The first thing they’d do is call our folks. It’s like a rule. And then we’re dead. Grounded. Separated from each other, probably. Shipped off to some private school. And for what? Your imagination? To help a woman we don’t know, a woman involved in a kinky love affair? I don’t think so.”

“You can’t tell! Please, Andie.” Julie began to cry. She bent and pressed her face to her folded knees and rocked, her sobs high and scary-sounding.

Sending Andie a furious glance, Raven went to Julie and put her arms around her. “You’ve got to drop this, Andie. You’re flipping out, or something. I know it’s been a tough summer for you with your parents splitting up and all, but don’t screw up our lives … our friendship because of it.”

Tears flooded Andie eyes. “But what about … what if something happens to her?”

“Instead of worrying so damn much about this Mrs. X, why don’t you try worrying about us? We’re the ones you’re supposed to care about.”

Julie lifted her head then, her face blotchy from crying. “Rave, what if she’s right? What if he’s killed her?”

“Shut up,” Raven hissed. “You promised.”

“We have to tell her. We have to.”

Andie’s blood ran cold. “Tell me what?”

“I’m sorry, Rave,” Julie whispered. “But she could be dead.” Her voice rose. “What are we going to do if she’s dead?”

“She’s not, but if you have to, fine. Tell her. I’m not stopping you, am I?” Raven stood and walked to the doorway, now just a big, rectangular hole in the wall. She folded her arms across her chest and glared at them.

Julie looked at Andie, then slid her gaze guiltily away, her chin trembling. “Raven and I went back to the house and spied on Mr. and Mrs. X.”