Chapter Five – Part 1
Mr. Counter passed out papers to the class. When Allison tuned over her paper, it was the love scene from Restless Nights. Mr. Counter had covered the scene with illegible red corrections. Across the top he'd scrawled a great big "F" and the comment "do over."
The phone rang.
Allison turned, half-asleep, and startled a cat. Rhett jumped out of bed right across the front of her face, waking her fully.
The phone stopped ringing.
It's nearly three in the morning, she thought, simultaneously irritated at the caller and remembering the last call that'd roused her in the middle of the night.
From downstairs she faintly heard Mom yelling, "— dare you call here again!"
Something in Mom's voice frightened Allison. It was the same tone she'd heard in the previous call. But it tore at something else in her memory, something a long time ago that she couldn't quite place. She tried to force the scary thought to the front of her mind, but the more she tried, the more it evaporated like her nightmare class with Mr. Counter.
What's going on?
Hating herself for doing it, Allison gently lifted the handset on her extension so she could hear both ends of the conversation. She held it away from the sound of her breathing as she clicked the pone on. The receiver came alive with a heart-stopping beep, but no one seemed to notice.
She heard a strained, agonizingly familiar, male voice say, "I deserve the chance to talk to her, Carol." The sound came through a lot of interference, as if the man was speaking on a cheap cell phone.
"You have the nerve to say you deserve anything? After all this? Good-bye, John."
Allison had never heard her mother sound like this, and a tiny voice was screaming at her to hang up, that she didn't want to hear any more. . .
However, the male voice was beginning to register even though it had been such a long time since she had heard it. Even though every instinct she had told her to hang up, the voice, in connection with the name, froze her so that she couldn't even breathe.
John was a common name. It was the strongest objection she had to the crazy thoughts running through her head. There wasn't any way it could really be him. Mom would have told her.
The man spoke as if he actually heard Allison's thoughts. "Don't you under— Damn it, tell her! You owe me nothing, but you owe her."
"Don't tell me how to treat my daughter."
"If they're looking, they can find out about the doctor's appointments."
Allison could hear tears and near panic in Mom's voice. "Those were nothing, nothing! It was the stress of school. The doctor said that himself. It didn't mean anything. It cleared up right after the visit—"
"Did the doctor know the other possibility?"
There was silence on the line.
"Carol, there's always been the chance."
Allison's mother made a noise it sounded like a sob.
"They already have info on a class one in the area. If they find out she's a—"
"LEAVE US ALONE!" The yell made Allison drop the phone in shock. It bounced off the bed and landed on the floor. Even so, Allison could still hear her mother yelling. It came through the tinny speaker of the phone and it also came, muffled, through the floor of her room. "Those people are crazy. Stone's crazy. I don't believe in any of this, none of it. And I won't have my daughter believing it. You're insane, John. They're insane. I'll go to court this time, publicly, if you call me again. I don't care who gets pulled in. And if you come near my daughter I swear to God I'll kill you!"
She could hear the phone slam downstairs. She tried to get the receiver before her dad hung up, but by the time she'd gotten to the phone, there was only a dial-tone.
Allison switched it off and gently replaced the receiver. She felt dirty for listening in, but the feeling of confusion was worse. She had just heard an argument about her and she didn't understand any of it.
Worst was the awful thing that ate at Allison's heart as she tried to sleep.
Mom had told her that her father was dead.
