The Evil Within Read Free

into my eyes from two directions, and a voice said, “Please come with us. You too.”
    Heather jerked, completely freaked. “ I didn’t do anything.” The light didn’t get any dimmer, so she grabbed her purse, slipping on hard candy and soda, and followed them down the aisle.
    I trailed after, mutely, too mortified to look back over my shoulder at Riley. The ushers led us down the stairs like prisoners while the other moviegoers applauded and laughed—this was more entertaining than the movie—and out the auditorium into the foyer.
    A man in a suit glowered down at me—I’m only five-two—while Heather took two steps away from me. My knees were sopping wet.
    “I didn’t do anything,” Heather said again, shaking her newly chopped head. “I didn’t know she was going to do that.”
    The ushers and the man in the suit—his name tag announced him as R. TELLENHEUSEN, MANAGER—stared stonily at me, as if they were waiting for me to explain myself. How could I? What could I possibly say? I shuffled my feet. There was a Jolly Rancher smashed against the sole of my right flip-flop.
    “Do you know that there’s a law against shouting ‘fire’ in a public theater?” Mr. Tellenheusen asked me. “Shall I call the police?”
    Shaking my head, which began to throb, I felt like I was going to throw up. Then I let his stern voice and Heather’s protests rush over me as we were taken to the exit and booted out the airlock, into the warm night and canned Christmas carols blaring too merry and bright.
    Riley hadn’t come out of the theater. Somehow he’d been granted a reprieve, not been associated with me and my OOC behavior. What was he thinking now? Would he tell Jane?
    “Why did you do that?” Heather’s voice was shrill; she was smoothing back her hair, over and over, staring at me as if she had never seen such a freak in her life.
    I swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
    “Sorry? God . Are you having another breakdown?”
    She didn’t sound sympathetic. She was pissed off and embarrassed, and . . . afraid. She was afraid of me.
    “No,” I said quickly. But was that it? Should I say that it was?
    “No,” I said again. “I thought . . . I was trying to be funny.” If she was still my best friend, she’d know that I was lying. I didn’t want her to be afraid of me; I wanted to let her know how terribly afraid I was. But from the way she was looking at me, I knew it wasn’t going to happen. Her mouth dropped and her eyes narrowed, as if she couldn’t believe what a jerk I was.
    The Christmas music was past ironic. I thought about taking it back, but honestly, it had been so left field . . . couldn’t she see that there was no way I meant it to be a joke?
    “Heather . . . ” I took a deep breath. “Heather, listen . . . ”
    She waited.
    “I fell asleep in the theater. I was having a nightmare.”
    She made a show of widening her eyes. “Oh my God! Jane taught you how to lie better than that.”
    “No—”
    “I was supposed to drive home. Come on.” She turned to go without even checking to see if I was following her. Without another word, she took the breezeway to the parking structure.
    Her silver Corolla was on the topmost level, and I climbed in. I felt sick, humiliated. My face was hot. She punched in Tori Amos and the singer’s goth-drama voice reverberated off the windshield as she backed out of the space and drove too quickly toward the exit. Heather and I had never listened to Tori Amos together in our lives. Gripping the armrest, I heard my heart beating too fast as we merged onto the 8. The terrifying clouds gathered above the freeway, smothering the moon. Not supernatural smoke, just stupid clouds, real ones this time.
    “Did you do it to get attention?” she finally asked. “Because Riley was there?”
    When I was with Jane, we did insane things to get attention. We demanded it. Sometimes Jane would count to three and then we would shriek at the top of our lungs. It had seemed so