Scare Crow

  SCARE

  CROW

  A CROW’S ROW LOVE STORY

  JULIE HOCKLEY

  iUniverse LLC

  Bloomington

  Scare Crow

  A Crow’s Row Love Story

  Copyright © 2014 Julie Hockley.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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  ISBN: 978-1-4917-2615-0 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-1-4917-2655-6 (hc)

  ISBN: 978-1-4917-2616-7 (e)

  iUniverse rev. date: 3/24/2014

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter One: Emily

  Chapter Two: Cameron

  Chapter Three: Emily

  Chapter Four: Cameron

  Chapter Five: Emmy

  Chapter Six: Cameron

  Chapter Seven: Emmy

  Chapter Eight: Cameron

  Chapter Nine: Emmy

  Chapter Ten: Cameron

  Chapter 11: Emily

  Chapter 12: Cameron

  Chapter 13: Emily

  Chapter 14: Cameron

  Chapter 15: Emily

  Chapter 16: Cameron

  Chapter 17: Emily

  Chapter 18: Cameron

  Chapter 19: Emily

  Chapter 20: Cameron

  Emily’s Epilogue

  Cameron’s Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  To my two smart, strong, beautiful babies, G and M.

  Remember, broken hearts will heal.

  And to anyone who breaks my babies’ hearts, run.

  And these children that you spit on

  As they try to change their worlds

  Are immune to your consultations

  They’re quite aware of what they’re going through.

  —“Changes,” song by David Bowie

  PROLOGUE

  Watch the whales from your backyard!

  Emmy—my Emmy—was in a tiny bikini, lying on the sand with a book leaning against her knee.

  A spectacular opportunity to own this pristine piece of heaven. Enjoy this quaint little island of just over five acres of unexplored terrain surrounded by sandy shoreline.

  There was a mountain of greenery behind her that looked like an elephant’s rump. Our shack was somewhere in the depths of our jungle. But only we knew it was there. It had a tin roof. Emmy loved to hear the clack of the rain against the metal. So did I.

  This island offers a serene and remote setting, where you can be at one with nature and forget about the rest of the world.

  I was standing in the water, hip deep in the ocean, facing the shore. The waves crashed against my backside, and I watched her, wishing this moment would last forever, noticing that the ocean water was almost touching her toes, resisting the urge to disturb her.

  Just a twenty-minute helicopter ride from Bora Bora International Airport …

  Then again, life was short. I fought the current and found my rightful place on top of her. Bathing suits were for the rest of the free world. Not for us.

  CHAPTER ONE: EMILY

  OMEN

  When the strap of my bra snapped, fanned out like a goose taking flight, and took a bend in the road just so it could whack me in the face, I knew it was a bad omen. Getting dressed had seemed like a necessary step. Not a step forward or a step backward. Just a step. At least it was something. Better than just sitting there. Better than waiting for something to happen.

  But I had to admit—the sting of the strap against my cheek had felt almost enlivening.

  I stared at my face in the plate-sized mirror of my bedroom wall, floating my fingers over the strap-length redness on my cheek. And I decided, to a 99 percent certainty, that the pleasure of physical pain didn’t mean that I had been reduced to masochism. After weeks of having the emotional quotient of a rock, feeling something, feeling anything, was better than the numbness that had engulfed me.

  Though I did wish that my human need to feel hadn’t left yet another blemish on my cheek.

  The other bruises and cuts, the ones that Victor had left behind, were just a pale pink now—easily concealed with a touch of foundation. I supposed that the newest addition to the facial collection was a reminder that, no matter what I tried, big or small—even getting dressed—I would never be quite the same again.

  I realized how bad of an omen the breaking of my bra strap was when I remembered that this was my one and only bra. The other one had already been eaten by the demonically possessed washing machine at the Laundromat.

  I sighed, pulled myself away from the reflection in the mirror, and tied a knot to hold what was left together.

  Meatball was hiding under my bed, where I longed to be. He had adjusted pretty quickly to our new existence—like moving in with me was just a vacation, a change of scenery. Within minutes of Carly dropping him off, he strolled around the place like he was renting it—sniffing everything, leaving his scent in creative places, like my roommate’s bedpost. He wagged his tail, he jumped around, he begged to go out to run and play. To him, nothing was different other than the setting. It was as if nothing were wrong, as if Cameron were coming back. There were days when I envied him for his ability to forget so quickly. But sometimes I felt like he was a traitor. Cameron was something we had once shared, but only I was left with the pain of his memory.

  I couldn’t even think of Cameron’s name without my breath being cut short, feeling like I was going to throw up. Cameron’s face colored my every thought, like everything I was seeing and feeling was through the veil of his beautiful face—like I was looking out through a window, and Cameron was my windowpane. It was excruciating.

  If it hadn’t been for Meatball, I would have never left the house or the couch. I would have never gone to the supermarket to buy dog and people food; Meatball refused to eat anything unless I joined him. If it weren’t for him, I would have never gone to the supermarket to buy food, only to be stopped at the cash register because my card rang insufficient funds. Meatball’s needs, Meatball’s life, Meatball had kept me alive for the last few weeks.

  I was officially broke.

  I hadn’t been to work since May, since I had been taken from my lackluster life and thrust into the underworld—Cameron’s world. This was the world where I had longed to be so that I could stay with Cameron. Now I belonged nowhere.

  After missing work for over three months, I had lost my job, though my salary had stopped coming into my bank account only a few weeks ago. The fact that it took so long for the school to figure out that Emily Sheppard, a once-dedicated student employee, wasn’t showing up for work every day would have normally hurt my feelings. Nowadays I was indifferent to this.

  While I was getting dressed, my dog—it was still hard for me to call him “my” dog—remained sulking under the bed
. My bed was still the same. Still stilted on top of the milk crates I had stolen last year from the darkened parking lot of the corner store. After Meatball had spent his first night in his new house endlessly pacing around me, I had pulled my stuff out from under my bed so that he would have a space of his own, one that was—and would forever be—within my space.

  And the burrow under my stilted bed was where Meatball had plastered himself ever since my roommates had started filtering back a few days ago. He had grown too comfortable with our seclusion. Now we were being interrupted, overwhelmed.

  I had expected Spider’s and Victor’s minions to burst through the door, realizing what a liability I was. While Cameron had never shared too many details with me, I knew enough about them and their criminal enterprise to cause major problems.

  But Meatball and I had been left alone for weeks. And before we knew it, my roommates had started coming back, like everything was normal. Normal had never been my thing, and I wasn’t about to start now. Everything had changed. I had changed. Maybe Spider and Victor didn’t see me as a threat. I was just a girl, right? Little Emily Sheppard, nineteen years old, sheltered by the Fortune 500 Sheppard family, could never be a threat to the underworld.

  If only they knew how much I despised them.

  If only they knew how much my hate fueled me.

  Meatball’s big head was the only thing that was sticking out from under the bed. When I leaned down to pat that big head of his, he flattened his ears and closed his eyes. Apparently he was still mad at me for having ordered him to not bite anyone’s head off as my roommates came back, one by one, carrying baskets of the clean clothes their mothers had carefully packed for them. They came back from summer break with tans and absolutely no money saved.

  I came back from my so-called break completely lifeless.

  Meatball and I mostly kept to ourselves, staying hidden in my room, leaving only to go outside or make a quick meal. We avoided run-ins with the others as much as possible. Avoiding others had basically been my life before Cameron. So, as far as I knew, no one noticed a difference in me. Other than the fact that I now had a very hairy roomie living under my bed.

  I rubbed Meatball’s ears while he pretended that he didn’t care, though the low rumble betrayed him.

  I was about to switch my pajama bottoms for jeans when I noticed my curtain door flutter.

  “Just a minute,” I called out, pulling my bottoms back up, knowing full well that I wouldn’t have a minute. Hunter had already poked his head through the curtain door.

  “That wasn’t a minute,” I snapped, letting the elastic of my pants snap back to my waist.

  He folded his arms and leaned into the doorframe. “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

  I knew he was trying to be cute. But I had no smiles left in me.

  I sat on the floor and dug my flip-flops out from under the bed. They were a little wet and had canine-sized punctures along the toe line.

  Hunter stood waiting and cleared his throat.

  “What do you want, Hunter?” I wiped my chewed-up sandal against my shirt and narrowed my eyes at Meatball, who was looking a bit sheepish.

  “I need all of your rent checks for the year. The landlord insists that everyone needs to provide checks for the whole year upfront so that he doesn’t have to worry about the kids who’ll quit school midyear and take off without paying the rest of their rent.”

  Oh, crap. It wasn’t just money for food that I needed. I would need money for rent too.

  By default, because he was most likely to return to school—he had been coming back to school every year for the last eight years … still no degree to show for it—Hunter was the house “manager.” The landlord gave him a discount on his rent just for collecting checks and doing the chores that he was supposed to do but never did.

  “Is that it?” I tried to mask the mass of panic that was growing in my throat.

  Hunter hesitated, put off either by my irritability or by the guard dog whose head had popped up at the change in my tone of voice.

  “And your bins are blocking the hallway. It’s a fire hazard,” he added. “It’s my job to keep this place from burning to the ground, ya know.”

  “The power cords that snake between our rooms are fire hazards. The microwave that you found in the garbage, fixed with duct tape, and plugged in your room is a fire hazard. My bins are the least of our problems.” I knew full well that my bins were not the issue.

  When Hunter began fidgeting, scratching his goatee, I took a calming breath. “I need the extra room under my bed. Now that Meatball sleeps there. But I’m happy to send him to your room to sleep.”

  He eyed my mammoth-sized pet. “My room already smells like urine thanks to him. And I’m pretty sure it’s not Joseph’s doing.”

  Hunter had to share a room with Joseph, who spent almost all his time in their room in front of his computer screen. Since moving in a year ago, I’d only spoken maybe twenty words to him. We got along famously. And Meatball’s scent was definitely an improvement to the smell of their room.

  I had brought up the subject of Meatball on purpose—to give Hunter the window he was obviously looking for to warn me about having a dog in a no-pet-allowed zone. I faced the fact that I might have to move out, though finding a place that was so cheap, in September, at the beginning of the school year—when students still had hopes that they would make it, that they wouldn’t be dropping out three months later—would have been nearly impossible. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but whatever happened, Meatball and I were going together. And the faster Hunter and I dealt with it, the faster he was out of my room.

  But Hunter continued to tiptoe around the issue. “Why did you name him Meatball?”

  “I didn’t.” I passed him and stopped outside my curtained doorway, where my blue bins were neatly stacked, one on top of the other, in a non-fire-hazard type of way. I pulled the lid off the top bin and pretended to be looking for my checkbook.

  “I thought you said you found him on the street.”

  “I did,” I answered, eyes trained on my task.

  I lifted one sock at a time, as if my checkbook might magically be hidden in the rolls. I felt more eyes on my back. I knew that Cassie was behind me and that I wasn’t going to be left alone. Once I was out of my room, I was easy prey to my roommates.

  I poked my head out of the Rubbermaid bin and confirmed the apparition. There was Cassie, drenched in black clothes, black hair, and enough eyeliner to supply three Vegas showgirls for a year.

  It was hard for me to understand why Cassie felt the need to look like a zombie quarterback.

  Last year, someone (who we suspected to be Hunter) left dirty socks on the radiator. When the socks started smoking in the early morning hours, the fire alarm went off, and all seven of us crashed into each other as we charged down the stairs and out the front door. Cassie didn’t have any makeup on, and it turned out that she was really pretty, with full pink lips and blonde—blonde!—eyebrows.

  That was the first and last time that I had seen Cassie without makeup. After that, she slept with her game face on.

  While Cassie stood expressionless, waiting, Hunter did something that he rarely ever did—he stuck around. He and Cassie were as similar as a monkey and a cobra. And they got along similarly. They were rarely within the same breathing space.

  Cassie didn’t look like she was trying to do me any favors by interrupting the inevitable revelation that I was bankrupt. Rather, she had continued to stand staring, straight-faced, holding up a piece of paper. I was shocked when I recognized the name at the top of the form.

  “Is that my class schedule?” I accused.

  “Looks like we’re in the same ethics class,” she told me.

  All of a sudden, an image flashed through my head. I was back at the Farm in the study, my favorite room apart from Cameron’s bedroom. Cameron watched me while my fingers floated over book spines. There was a whole shelf dedicated to ancien
t philosophy.

  Then I was on one of the chairs, Plato book in hand, sitting across from Rocco while he ate cheesies and wouldn’t give me any quiet time.

  I closed my eyes for a mere moment and steadied myself on my Rubbermaid bins.

  Then I snatched the piece of paper from Cassie. “Where did you find it?”

  “It came in the mail.” She said this like opening someone else’s mail was a perfectly normal thing to do and not at all a felony.

  “You read my mail?”

  She grabbed my schedule back and pointed to the first rows. “You’ve already missed four classes.”

  Meatball had kept his station under my bed, his eyes following the tug-of-war with my mail. I snatched the paper from Cassie’s grasp, again. But this time I quickly folded it and stuck it in the waistband of my pajamas. It wasn’t until more roommates popped their nosy heads out of doorways that I realized this discussion wasn’t a coincidence. It was an intervention.

  But I stood my ground. “That’s right. I missed my classes. And?”

  “I thought you were on a scholarship?”

  I was. It was a microscopic, merit-based scholarship that barely covered my tuition and books. And at one point, a few months ago, this was my only saving grace, the only way I could be on my own without having to take my parents’ money.

  “The school will pull your scholarship if you miss too many classes,” Cassie pointed out while everyone else watched. “Our ethics class is in a few minutes. We can walk together.”

  ****

  I stood outside in a T-shirt and my pajama bottoms while Cassie ran back into the house, probably to put on another layer of vampire makeup. The great thing about college was that going to class in flip-flops and pajama bottoms was a completely normal thing to do.

  I had agreed to walk to class with Cassie. Ethics, a branch of philosophy, was my favorite subject. In my first year at Callister University, I had never missed any of my classes, no matter how boring they were, but philosophy was the sole class that I actually looked forward to.