Messed Up Read online

  I went to the back of the store and started mopping. I tried my best not to let it bother me, but I couldn’t get Bryce’s reaction out of my head. I wondered if Levi had lied to me about being at Bryce’s house, but I couldn’t make sense of why he would. There was something on the tip of my mind that wouldn’t quit harassing me. I should remember to bring my iPod with me to work next time, I thought, it would make this mopping business less solitary. I smiled to myself as I thought about the pink iPod. How cute is it that he remembered my favorite color, I thought happily. I replayed the moment in my mind when I spotted that little red package on my desk.

  Then it dawned on me. When did Levi put the iPod in my room? I tried to think logically. The note of apology was taped to the inside of the wrapping. That means he must have gotten it for me, or at least wrapped it after the whole Toby debacle. He had to have snuck back into my room that night after I had fallen asleep, and if he was willing to do it then, was that what he did last night? And if so, why? I started to feel my stomach twist. I found it to be disturbingly creepy as well as slightly embarrassing to have anyone breaking into my room while I was unconscious, probably with drool oozing out the corner of my mouth. Especially if that someone happened to be the most amazing, drop-dead gorgeous guy I’d ever met.

  While rinsing the mop bucket I began to consider my options carefully. On the one hand, if I confronted Levi with my theory and he hadn’t broken into my room like a stalker, he would either think I was crazy or pathetic, most likely both. On the other hand, if he had broken into my room he’d probably just deny it. Either way I would be worse off, so I decided to let it go and just be sure to lock my window. I admit that this was probably not the most sensible decision to come to, but I was fully obsessed, okay?

  Just as I was beginning to empty the trash cans, cursing Bryce silently all the while for sticking me with the dirty work, I heard Levi’s voice from the front of the store. My stomach did its obligatory backhand springs. I was about to burst through the door when I heard Bryce say, “It’d be nice if you’d warned me that I’d be lying for you.” I froze, listening silently.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Levi replied, unfazed.

  “What was that all about anyway?” Bryce asked.

  “Nothing you need to know about,” he said firmly. Bryce dropped the subject like a bedbug infested pillow, and they went on to talk about some band that would be playing soon. I quickly realized they weren’t going to say anything more of interest, so I walked into the front of the store acting surprised to see Levi.

  “Hey beautiful,” he said leaning over the counter and kissing me gently, taking the time to look deeply into my eyes before straightening himself.

  “Hey. I hope you didn’t come early to help me mop, because I already finished. Don’t be too disappointed,” I said, all my concerns melting away as soon as I looked at his perfect eyes, nose, mouth.

  “You are so cruel,” he smiled, “Actually, I was hoping that your manager would let you off a little early,” his eyes flashed to Bryce.

  Bryce nodded, “Sure. What are you guys doing?”

  “I’m going to drag Chelsea to The Valencia, if she’ll go?” he looked at me.

  “I’ll go. But drag gently.” Not that I knew what The Valencia was, but frankly I could have cared less. What’s that? Spend the night hanging by my ankles covered in poisonous spiders? Will Levi be there? Yes? Then count me in.

  “You want to meet us over there?” Levi asked Bryce.

  “Nah. I’ve got to get home early tonight.”

  I turned to Bryce, “Are you sure you don’t mind if I leave? I think I pretty much finished the closing list.”

  “It’s fine,” Levi interjected, “You ready?”

  I glanced at Bryce who had gone back to his magazine. His face looked a little too serious for his reading material. I shrugged to myself, grabbed my backpack and ducked under the counter.

  We were stopped at a red light when Levi looked over at me and asked, “So aren’t you going to demand that I tell you where I’m taking you?”

  “The Valencia, right?”

  “And you know what that is?”

  “Nope, I’m just going to blindly follow you,” I replied, scrolling though his iPod.

  “Are you sure that’s a wise idea?” he smiled.

  “Actually, I’m sure it’s not a wise idea, but I’m a teenager. Small frontal lobe.”

  “Small frontal lobe?”

  “Yep. The frontal lobe of the brain controls logic and reason. It keeps you from taking hasty risks. Teenagers have underdeveloped frontal lobes,” I explained, “I would guess your frontal lobe is especially inadequate.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “What else would explain your getting naked in front of hundreds of strangers for a ten dollar hat?” I giggled.

  “Fifteen dollars, actually,” he corrected.

  “Oh, well… That makes all the difference.”

  Minutes later, Levi pulled his car to the side of a residential street and shut off the engine. “Hope you’re ready to see my small brain in action,” he said as he grabbed his skateboard from the back seat and hopped out of the car.

  I looked around the tree lined street. It was quiet and dark, warm light spilling from the windows of the single story homes.

  “Okay, now I’m curious. Where are we going?” I asked as I met him on the sidewalk, “And that was a small frontal lobe by the way, I’m sure the rest of your brain is perfectly proportioned.”

  He laughed and grabbed my hand, “Too late, you’ll just have to wait and see.”

  We walked for a couple blocks, and then turned down a cul-de-sac. Levi gestured to his lips for me to be quiet and led me down the side yard of a small dark house at the end of the street. The yard dead ended at a chain link fence. Levi seemed undeterred by the fence as he quickly hoisted me halfway up, and then easily scaled the fence himself. Once he was on the other side he spotted my own ungraceful descent.

  I found myself standing at the edge of what look like a thick forest. Levi pulled me by the wrist into the trees. It was a bright night with a huge full moon, but once under the thick canopy of foliage, all I could see was darkness. As we walked silently into the blackness, I began to feel uncomfortable. What did I really know about this person who was leading me to God knows where? I scolded myself for not being more practical. When I was with Hannah, I was always the logical voice of reason. She would be shocked at how quickly I’d slipped into the role of irrational flirt. Was I really so blinded by Levi’s stunning good looks that I would put myself in danger? The answer was a resounding, YES.

  On the flip side, I began to justify to myself as we walked, maybe I’m over thinking the whole thing. I remembered my sister pointing out that I was at the point in my life where I should be having fun. Maybe it was good that Hannah wasn’t here for me to be the responsible one for. Maybe this was the time in my life to be reckless. I sighed audibly. Debating my own conscious was driving me crazy.

  “You okay back there?” Levi asked in response to my sigh.

  “I’m fine. I just wish my brain would shut up every now and then,” I replied, annoyed.

  “We’re almost there,” he slowed down a bit to walk next to me. He moved his hand from my arm to my waist and pulled me closer to him, “Be nice to that brain of yours, I think it’s pretty damn cute.”

  The darkness was once again disrupted as we walked into a clearing, the moon shining its light on us. There looming before us was a colossal stone structure.

  “What is it?” I asked, in a whisper

  “The Valencia,” Levi smiled mockingly at the annoyed glare I shot at him, “It’s a hotel. Or was. I guess it was very popular at one time.”

  As we walked closer, I began to be able to make out the huge structure. The hotel had the feeling of a medieval stone castle, with a large turret on one corner and three peaked windows along the front. There were the remnants of a covered deck stretching around the entire buil
ding. The deck’s roof had caved in at several points, giving the hotel a frowning expression. Despite the decrepit condition of the rest of the structure, the front entrance looked almost untouched by time. The opulent grand entrance had a huge door made of a dark carved wood. An intricate stained glass window framed the door. I could picture long stretch limos driving down the circular driveway stopping at the front steps; a tuxedo clad bellboy bustling to help the rich and famous exit their cars.

  “What happened to it? Why did it close?” I wondered aloud.

  “That’s an interesting story actually. The hotel was built in the early 1920s by a wealthy man named Charles Hawksley. He was actually in the first graduating class at St. Jacobs, so he’s kind of a legend at my school. He grew up in Santa Juanita, and had inherited his family’s cattle ranch from his father. His young bride refused to live with him at the ranch because she felt the accommodations were not up to her standards. Santa Juanita was even more of a shit hole then, then it is now, so the hotels around were all subpar. So, Charles Hawksley built her this hotel.”

  “Why a hotel and not just a big house or something?” I interrupted.

  “He was a business man and probably figured he may as well make a little cash out of the deal, I guess. Anyway, the hotel became very successful. Lots of San Francisco elites would stay here on the weekends and go horseback riding or hunting. It became quite the retreat for the rich and famous.

  “Nobody knows exactly what happened, but Hawksley began to go crazy. One theory is that he got lead poisoning from the old pipes at his ranch. Some think he just had a mental breakdown, but in any case, he became jealous and suspicious of his wife. She was a lot younger than him and stunningly beautiful. He ordered his hotel staff to stop booking guests. He kept his wife secluded here all the time, completely isolated from her friends and family. Then one day he came home to find her in bed with a bellboy. That is what ultimately pushed him over the edge.

  “He decided the only way to keep his wife from ever being with another man was to trap her at The Valencia. He sent the hotel staff away. Then he sold off all of his assets, and put his money into gold bullions. He hired a couple kids from St. Jacobs to help him bury the gold somewhere in Santa Juanita. Hawksley was determined to keep his fortune from everyone.”

  “How noble of him,” I said sarcastically.

  “Yeah. He was a real philanthropist. But get this, when he died about a year later he was alone,” Levi paused.

  “So?” I said not getting his point.

  “Nobody ever saw his wife or the two St. Jacobs boys again.”

  “But what happened to them?” I asked, the story was giving me the creeps.

  Levi leaned closer to me and lowered his voice, “Nobody knows for sure, but the last person to see his wife alive was the cook. She was cleaning out the pantry and came out to get something just as Hawksley was leading the wife into the cellar. Several years after he died the cook came back, curious about what had happened to the wife. She had a hunch that something was not quite right. She went down into the cellar and found a dozen tiny cells, none much larger than a coffin. The cells were once used for storing wine, but the shelves had been removed and small holes had been drilled into the steel doors. The cook looked into every cell and in each she found the same thing,” Levi’s voice trailed off.

  “What?” I asked.

  “It just occurred to me that this is not the best story to tell a claustrophobic, especially a particularly cute one who I am trying to impress.”

  “Tell me! What was in the cells?” I demanded.

  “Bloody fingerprints. Like someone had been trying to scratch their way out.”

  We stood silently staring at the hotel. It now looked more like a prison to me than a fancy hotel.

  Levi took a breath and added the finishing touches to his story, “As the years went by the hotel fell into disrepair. The gold has never been found. It’s crazy to think that somewhere in this town is enough gold to buy half of California, but nobody knows where it is.”

  “Do you think he kept his wife and those St. Jacobs boys like prisoners in the cells?” I asked my voice on the verge of shaking.

  He looked at me and smiled, “It’s just a story, Chelsea. The whole thing is probably a myth. Of course, if you want we could go down into the basement and look for them...”

  I punched him in the stomach, “You suck!”

  He laughed, wrapping his strong arms around me in a hug, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to let anyone put you in a cell. Come on, I want to show you why we came here.”

  He led me around to the back of the building, where we came to a large room that jetted out of the rear of the hotel. It was made entirely up of small glass windows. Many of the windows were cracked or shattered, but far more were intact. Levi stepped through one window that had been totally busted out. I hesitated for a good thirty seconds before eventually allowing myself to be led in.

  In the center of the large cavernous room was an enormous swimming pool. I wondered how long it had been dry. The moonlight was spilling in through the glass ceiling, lighting the room and making it possible to distinguish the intricate blue and gold-leafed tiles that adorned the pool. Around the perimeter of the room were benches and tables made of concrete and also covered in elaborately detailed tile. The room would have been a breathtaking if not for a century of disrepair.

  Levi’s phone buzzed and he read a text, “My friends should be here any minute,” he said in response.

  “So what exactly do you guys do here?” I asked, still unsure of our purpose for being at the abandoned and probably haunted hotel.

  “I’ll show you,” he said dropping my hand, and tossing his skateboard in front of him. He stepped onto it easily and with two quick pushes went flying toward the empty pool. Every muscle in my body seized for an instant as he plunged off the edge. He effortlessly skated to the other end of the pool where he flew three feet in the air, releasing the board for a second, and then making contact in time for another steep decent to the bottom of the pool. Levi came back up to the side where I stood. staring, transfixed. He flipped his board in the air and caught it in his hand.

  “You’re such a showoff,” I said shaking my head and smiling, “Anybody could do that.”

  He wrapped his free arm around my waist and pulled me tight against his body. He kissed me deeply, and then said, “You want to give it a try, Punky?”

  I smiled up at him, liking the way my new nickname sounded, “I’m trying to give it up.”

  He shook his head with a grin.

  Soon a group of Levi’s friends came giggling into the room. I was less than thrilled to see that the beautiful girl whom I recognized from the concert, Camille, was there. She was joined by Noah, a tall skinny kid named Calvin, a dark kid with really saggy pants named Jeremy, and a blond girl, also beautiful, named Mandy.

  The boys went immediately to the pool, taking turns flying off one side and coming up the other. From what I could surmise, the goal was to get as much air as possible between the skateboard and one’s feet at the precise moment between ascending and descending. I watched in awe at how simple Levi made this look. While the others appeared to be somewhat timid at times, and often fell off their skateboards, Levi did his tricks flawlessly, and with easy concentration. There was an instant, just before the fall, when I could see a flash of fear dash across the faces of Noah, Calvin, and Jeremy. But not for Levi. There was nothing but complete calm in his expression.

  I watched the skateboarding show curiously, trying to ignore the hushed giggles coming from Camille and Mandy. They had taken out monogrammed flasks filled with what I assumed to be alcohol, and isolated themselves in a corner. There has always been something so nerve wracking to me about the sound of laughter from teenage girls. No matter when I hear it, I am always positive it is directed at me. And that night, I was more certain than ever.

  Camille and Mandy were quintessential St. Jacobs girls. They both had rich girl hair.
You know, hair that looks soft and wavy in just the right way, like from a shampoo commercial. Their nails were clearly manicured professionally, and I didn’t even have to see their toes to know it was the same story there. They both wore designer clothes and shoes and had Louis Vuitton purses clutched under their arms.

  I sat undisturbed for a while, until Levi rolled over to where I sat to take of his sweatshirt. He dropped it next to me and bent down to kiss me sweetly on the forehead, before skating back to the pool. This show of affection was enough to alert Camille to my presence. She stumbled over toward me, and looked down at me with scowling eyes. I stood up, so as not to be literally looked down upon.

  “So you’re with Levi?” she asked, slurring.

  “I guess,” I replied with a shrug, not looking at her.

  “You don’t even know what you’re doing,” she stated, moving her body in front of mine, and putting her face closer then was absolutely necessary.

  “I’m fine. You’re the one who drank a fifth of vodka, from the smell of it,” I said snidely, continuing to avoid eye contact.

  “You don’t have a fucking clue what you’re doing,” she repeated.

  “What’s that about calling the kettle black?” I asked sarcastically. This made her push her chest closer to mine. I could feel her hot alcohol ridden breath on my face.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but Levi interrupted her, yelling fiercely, “Camille!”

  His harsh and cutting tone took me by surprise and I nearly jumped. Everyone seemed to freeze and stare at Levi. My eyes flashed to Noah, who held his hands in two tight fists, as if bracing himself for something.

  Camille whispered quickly, “You’ve been warned,” before returning to her corner with Mandy.

  The guys went back to their skateboarding. I slowly sat down on the hard, cold tile, feeling suddenly ready to get the hell out of there, and far away from Camille and her sidekick. I wondered how long Levi would want to stay. There was no way that I would be able find my way through the overgrowth and back to humanity without his guidance.