Temptation: A Novel
TEMPTATION
Published by David C Cook
4050 Lee Vance View
Colorado Springs, CO 80918 U.S.A.
David C Cook Distribution Canada
55 Woodslee Avenue, Paris, Ontario, Canada N3L 3E5
David C Cook U.K., Kingsway Communications
Eastbourne, East Sussex BN23 6NT, England
The graphic circle C logo is a registered trademark of David C Cook.
All rights reserved. Except for brief excerpts for review purposes,
no part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form
without written permission from the publisher.
The website addresses recommended throughout this book are offered as a resource to you. These websites are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement on the part of David C Cook, nor do we vouch for their content.
This story is a work of fiction. All characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is coincidental.
LCCN 2012930869
ISBN 978-1-4347-6417-1
eISBN 978-1-4347-0503-7
© 2012 Travis Thrasher
The Team: Don Pape, LoraBeth Norton, Nick Lee, Caitlyn York, Karen Athen
Cover Design: Amy Konyndyk
Cover Photo: iStockPhoto
First Edition 2012
For Madison
Contents
Preface
1. Elegia
2. Made for You
3. The Breakfast Club
4. Memories
5. Keys
6. Trying to Outrun Reason
7. Back Roads Party
8. A Night Like This
9. Like Mother, Like Son
10. You Owe Me
11. Just a Shadow
12. Pity Party
13. Warning Sign
14. Similarities
15. Bad Romance
16. End of the Discussion
17. A Slap and a Punch
18. The World Will Be Yours
19. The Fantasy
20. Poe
21. Answers?
22. A Little Care
23. What I’m Doing
24. The Card Game
25. Following the Rules
26. Banana Split
27. Rolling in the Deep
28. Rolling in Something Else
29. A Slice of Normal
30. Sun in Your Eyes
31. Anticipation
32. A Great Day
33. A Voice from the Past
34. Mess with the Bull You’ll Get the Horns
35. The Cold Hard Facts of Life
36. Don’t You Forget about Me
37. How Old I Am
38. Dreams
39. Bloodline
40. Handling Things
41. Prisoners
42. Some Weird Voodoo Stuff
43. Partial Answers
44. Now We’re Even
45. Another Story
46. One Big, Gigantic Pool
47. Drama
48. Alone
49. Broken
50. Summertime Rolls
51. Who Knows
52. The Spoon
53. Petrified
54. Cold and Soft and Dead
55. Breathturn
56. A Different Story Again
57. Stuck and Hidden Somewhere
58. The Boy Who Cried Wells
59. Madly Crazy
60. Losing My Mind
61. The Sex Chapter
62. The Dream Is Never the Same
63. Coming Back Again
64. A Little More Trouble
65. Lies
66. When the Creepies Come Calling
67. Living in the Moment
68. Harder to Breathe
69. Texts
70. Lovesong
71. Dr. Everything’ll Be All Right
72. Shadowplay
73. Finally
74. Slave to Love
75. Long Gone
76. The Routine
77. Trying to Kill Me
78. The Conversation
79. Destiny
80. Angry
81. Deliverance
82. Midnight City
83. The Boxcar
84. A Song and a Dance
85. Temptation
86. Temptation Remix
87. Clean Slate
88. Exchanging Information
89. Dirt
90. Nothing to Dislike
91. Definitely Not Brotherly
92. The Pit
93. Fear
94. So …
95. No Reply at All
96. The Darkness Is Easier
97. Dream or Reality
98. A Lost Battle
99. Elegia II
100. Whatever You Need
101. Real
102. What’s in a Name?
103. Where This Will Lead
104. The Gift
105. Chicago
106. Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
107. The Stranger
108. Remorse
AfterWords
Three Recommended Playlists
Behind the Book: Sixteen Candles
A Snapshot
TONIGHT I THINK I’LL WALK ALONE
I’LL FIND MY SOUL AS I GO HOME.
—“TEMPTATION” BY NEW ORDER
Preface
The night changes everything.
So she told me.
Final words to her little boy.
In the passenger seat of the SUV, I look out and see the city. It glows and breathes and welcomes me. I hear the words and believe them.
I never knew Chicago could look so beautiful.
It’s late, and I feel like we’ve been driving forever. My ears are sore from the earbuds attached to my iPod. My butt is sore from sitting in place for so long. The last time we stopped was around Lexington. I’m ready to get out and stretch my legs and step back onto flat Illinois land.
Solitary is over a dozen hours away.
Not far enough, if you ask me, but it’ll have to do.
It’s quiet in the car. I look out the front window at the skyline in the distance. That’s where we’re headed, toward the city and not the suburbs.
The city means more people. More people means more help in case—well, in case of anything.
“You awake?”
I glance over at my father. “Never fell asleep.”
“You closed your eyes.”
Sometimes it’s better that way.
I yawn and wipe my eyes.
“You’re going to enjoy it here,” Dad tells me.
“Yeah.”
I don’t really believe this. I want to. I really want to. But I just need to be away from that cursed town for a while. Maybe I can slowly begin to forget. Maybe I can slowly start to live again.
But that’s what you tried doing in the summertime, and look where it got you.
I don’t want to think about the last few months. The only thing that will bring is hurt, and I’ve got enough of that as it is.
“I think you’ll like the apartment,” Dad says.
“I think I’ll like anything that doesn’t have winding dirt roads around it.”
Or secret hidden tunnels below it.
Dad doesn’t know quite what to say. I don’t blame him. He probably still aches for Mom. Maybe he’s angry with himself for not being able to do anything more.
That’s how I feel. Angry with myself, with nothing left to say.
When someone dies, all you can do sometimes is stay quiet and keep moving.
I thought that losing Jocelyn hurt. But this … this is different. This is
worse.
The first time you did too little. But this time you did too much.
“Hungry?” Dad asks.
I was until I turned off the music and started hearing the voices. “No.”
The city with its lights and life invites us in. I’m glad to see civilization again. I no longer feel so remote and so alone.
Yet there’s a part of me that says I should have stayed.
There was no reason to stay.
There’s so much to think about that my head hurts. I can’t sort out the details. I think of the motorcycle, of the cards, of Marsh and Staunch, of Oli, of him. I can feel the Zippo lighter in my pocket.
Then I picture her face and feel the hurt again.
“I know Mom is proud of you.”
I let out a chuckle and then keep my voice down. “Proud of me for what?”
“Proud of you for being strong for her.”
It’s been quite some time since I’ve felt proud or strong. The irony is that it’s my father telling me this.
Seven months ago, there’d have been no chance ever that I’d be riding here with him.
But life sure has a way of crashing and burning around you.
The interstate eventually merges into Lake Shore Drive. Even though I can’t see it, I know Lake Michigan is out there in the darkness. I can feel it watching and waiting in silence. Eventually we take an exit and drive for a few minutes down block after block.
“This place will be busy tomorrow night around this time,” Dad says.
Everybody will be celebrating and toasting and laughing and living.
Wanna know what I was doing last year on New Year’s Eve, Dad? I was discovering that this girl I’d fallen crazy in love with had her throat slashed by a bunch of freaks in robes.
Even though Dad knows a few things, he doesn’t know that much. He can’t know much. I still don’t know everything, but I know enough now. I know a lot of answers to questions that circled inside my head a year ago.
Answers might fit the puzzle pieces together, but they still don’t block out the gaping hole in the picture. The hole that’s my heart.
1. Elegia
It’s June, and there’s a guy—a kid—a boy stuck in a ditch that’s called his life.
Sixteen.
Sad.
Stuck in summer school.
Stuck without a license. Without a job. Without friends.
Stuck in a town he hates and fears. Stuck in a family that’s leftover parts, with a mother who only has leftover love to give.
Surrounded on all sides by those who claim they know him, who claim there’s something about him, who claim this and that. Threatened and watched by unseen strangers.
A boy still haunted by memories of a girl he once knew.
A boy still haunted by memories of all the things he could have done.
There’s a teen who’s supposed to be playing the next track on the next album but instead is stuck repeating the same sad, endless song that keeps going around and around the turntable.
Yeah, there’s that guy. That poor, miserable guy.
But that guy’s not me.
2. Made for You
The front door used to frighten me. Now it frees me.
I swing it open, daring them to seize me. I walk downstairs, daring them to trip me. I know someone watches me, but only God knows why. But we know where things stand between me and God, don’t we, so let’s not go there.
I’m done going there.
I should be tired of not having a license and not having a car, but I’m not. Instead, I’m breaking the law on a Triumph motorcycle as I start it up and get on out.
I’m not afraid.
Yes you are.
I’m not plagued by the last eight months.
Says who?
The faster I rev this machine and turn the corners, the more unbound I feel. I can almost, almost, really almost escape.
Nope.
But I can and do, and soon even those nagging stupid swirling thoughts inside my head go away.
Just like that.
I don’t hear them anymore.
But I do see the road ahead, and for once I’m happy. I’m a happy boy. I’m not running for my life and I’m not covered in blood and I’m not seeing ghosts and I’m not crying.
Nope. I’m happy.
I’m happy because the sun is shining. School is over, and I don’t have to feel like a sore thumb sticking out. I can’t sleep in like Mom does because I’ve got summer school, but that’s fine. It just means I can avoid finding a job since my last one burned down. I can avoid thinking about all that, and you know what? The wind and the whipping streets all make it go far away.
It’s been a few weeks since graduation, and it’s gone away.
This is the fifth day back at the dump I’d gotten away from, but I’m a different person.
I’m changed.
I am different from the guy who climbed the steps of the school last October and proceeded to slowly waste away with worry.
I pull my bike up in the parking lot and get off.
I’m riding a bike. I mean—come on.
It’s a new day.
The first day of the rest of your life.
So I’ve been telling myself over and over and over.
It’s a Friday, and the weekend is almost here. A weekend that no longer frightens me.
I’d take off my helmet, but I didn’t wear a helmet because that’s how I roll.
You don’t roll anyplace.
“Shut up,” I say.
Then I look around to make sure nobody saw me talking to …
Yeah, myself.
Guess some things never change.
3. The Breakfast Club
The beautiful thing about being here at Harrington High is that nobody else is there to taunt or watch or mock or spy. This is the first of my two three-week summer school sessions. Nothing like spending most of the summer at the school I desperately wanted to get away from. But after a week of this, everything has changed. The dark, creepy cobwebs have been cleaned up. Now everything is actually …
Normal.
The weeks since graduation—since everything happened with Pastor Marsh—have been awesome because I’ve gotten used to not doing anything. Not hearing anything going BOO in the middle of the night. Not having to deal with any craziness. Just living day after day as a normal teen. Learning how to start and ride the motorcycle that an elderly woman named Iris left me, the one that belonged to Uncle Robert when he used to work for her at the Crag’s Inn. No Iris or missing uncle has been spotted, which is okay.
It’s all okay.
I’ve come to realize that whatever the reason my teachers decided to fail me (well, not my French teacher, because I deserved that F, but my English and algebra teachers), it doesn’t really matter anymore because this is a glorified recess. Summer school is like a study hall minus the studying and the students.
So far, I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to be doing and how I’m supposed to be graded, but then again, it’s a new day, and it’s a new Chris.
There are reasons for that.
One in particular.
I’m among the first to get to the class today. I take my regular seat, a second chair from the back row. Since the first day, we’ve all sat in the same seats, all seven of us. Thankfully there’s no Gus. That was my big fear. But I remembered who his father was and bet that he probably wouldn’t have to spend his summer mornings at school regardless of his grades.
There weren’t any formal introductions to the kids in the class. There were only two I actually recognized. One who terrified me a bit until he started amusing me.
And then …
Well, I’ll get to that in a minute.
Gin is in the back row, her monstrous black glasses and straight falling black hair hiding her face. I honestly don’t know yet if Gin can speak English. Or if her name is Gin or Jen or Ginny. Her last name is Chang or Wang or something like tha
t. The teacher said it quickly the first day, and that’s been that. I’m not sure if she’s Chinese or Japanese and whether this is all one big blur to her. Someone said they thought she was a freshman.
So yeah, all I know is that she wears big glasses.
The pudgy short kid with the red curly ’fro is Shawn. He’s a junior, and he’s just—Shawn. He’s that kid. The one everybody knows, nobody really loves, but everybody loves to not love. He makes you laugh, but he says the most outrageous stuff. You wonder what he’ll be doing when he grows up. Here in school, he can be dumb and say crazy things, but there’s no telling what the guy will do when he gets out of here.
“Christopher,” he says to me in a Russian-sounding accent.
No connection to anything. Probably some random thing going off in his head.
Shawn sits in front of me, which is fine because that way I can avoid Mr. Taggart. Mr. Taggart is the last one to show up every day. Usually he stumbles in looking like he went to the same party my mother went to the night before. He’s mostly bald, with a nice thick mustache that looks two decades out of place and a nice thick belly that looks two belt sizes out of shape. They say he used to be the coach of the football team.
These are things I hear mentioned casually. Like Gin being a freshman.
The next to come in is the movie-star wannabe. Roger struts into the classroom as if it’s a red carpet and the paparazzi are out in full force. He smiles a crystal smile that shows through the airbrushed beard he’s got going on. I still haven’t quite figured out how he can cut it that short, so short it looks like shoe polish. His hair slants forward and upward in a faux-hawk style.
Guy has to use a lot of gel to get his hair to do that.
He fist-bumps Shawn, who idolizes the guy for some reason.
Roger is a senior who needs this summer class to graduate. He says he’s going to the University of Southern California. I don’t know whether to believe him or not.
But at least he’s not telling you he’s your cousin. That didn’t turn out so well, did it?
“How’re we gonna kill three hours today?” Roger says to me.
Roger’s one of those kids who doesn’t really talk with you. He talks at you. I shrug, because he’s not really looking for an answer.
He looks at the quiet figure in the back. “Hey, Gin.”
Roger’s not a bad guy. He’s just a politician. A politician or a
Don’t say it