Nerve

by Kirsten Krueger

  A crafty grin spread across Lavisa’s lips. “Do you want to see Adara?”

  “N-no.” The faintest bit of color surfaced in his cheeks, but Eliana’s brain was too muddled for her to discern or even care if Tray was lying. “I just—There might come a time when we need to visit her. And if the Reggs are so quick to take away one privilege, who’s to say they won’t make other, more impactful changes?”

  “The Rosses are all about intimidation, from what I saw.” Strolling away from the group, Lavisa opened her door. “All they’ll do is sit up in Angor’s old office and avoid social interaction, just like the last principal. Everything will be the same as it has been.”

  “Yeah, except that Adara’s in jail and Hastings is dead. Sorry,” Seth added, but Eliana was actually relieved someone had finally mentioned it. “I just don’t see how anything will ever be the same.”

  Tray cleared his throat and nodded toward the door to room 305. “Will you…be okay alone?”

  Knowing how hard it was for him to contrive a sympathetic question, Eliana forced the briefest smile. “I was alone last night. I do best alone.”

  “I’ve already disproved my previous statement that everything will be the same,” Lavisa announced from her dormitory’s doorway. “Kiki ditched Periculand.”

  “What?” Seth hurried over to Lavisa and peered into her room. Through his mind, Eliana vaguely saw the empty side that Kiki had previously occupied, and her stomach dropped. Of this entire group, Kiki was the only one Eliana felt a connection with. Could she really be gone?

  As if hearing her mental question, Seth shook his head. “She…she was with us twenty minutes a—”

  “She’s not gone.” That familiar consciousness hit Eliana with a wave of relief, radiating like a beacon—from her dormitory. With mechanical movements, she turned the knob of her new door and revealed Kiki within, redecorating Adara’s side with her own belongings. A single, carelessly packed box contained Adara’s possessions, leaving ample space for Kiki’s posters, magazines, and makeup.

  As Eliana had sensed, Hartman’s roommate was present, servilely aiding Kiki. What she had not expected was that the Belven girl wore only a t-shirt and purple underwear, exposing a generous portion of her legs and…bottom.

  When Hartman stepped up beside Eliana, his eyes nearly popped from their sockets. “Carrick? What are you—and whoa, Seth, will you punch me if I say your ex-girlfriend is sexy?”

  Seth jogged over. “Is she clothed?”

  His brother grimaced at the sight of her. “Barely.”

  “Oh, hello,” Kiki greeted, briefly glancing at the visitors. Carrick handed her a skimpy blue dress, which she carefully hung in her new closet.

  “Why aren’t you wearing pants?” Ackerly asked, eyes darting around uncomfortably. “Are you…trying to become Adara?”

  “No.” Kiki snatched another dress from Carrick. “It’s just overly warm in here. And this is my sleep attire—my non-sexy sleep attire.”

  “Can we see your sexy sleep attire?”

  Seth elbowed Hartman in the gut. “She’s my ex, man.”

  “Hold on,” Tray said with growing uncertainty. “Did…Adara walk around in just her underwear in front of you, Ackerly?”

  “Well, no, but she didn’t care when we all saw her naked after her clothes burned off.”

  “Stop talking about Adara,” Kiki snapped. “She isn’t here anymore.”

  Biting her lip, Eliana eyed the posters of pop bands and magazines full of celebrity gossip. “Is that why you’re taking over her spot?”

  “You can read minds; you should know I hate Lavisa.” This was said while Lavisa stood in the doorway, within Kiki’s line of sight, but both girls seemed unruffled. “I could move into Seth’s room, since Hastings is…” Her words came to a halt, along with her movements. Instead of finishing her thought, she simply continued with, “But he’s my ex, so…eh.”

  “This has ended well for me, but it’s unfortunate for you,” Lavisa said to Eliana. Though her tone was emotionless, Eliana heard a sincere apology from her mind before she disappeared.

  “I wouldn’t want to move into my room either,” Seth agreed as he leaned on the doorframe. “Was gettin’ some weird vibes in there last night. Do you think it was Hastings’s ghost? Can you sense that kinda thing, Ellie?”

  “You’re being insensitive, Seth,” his twin groaned with an apologetic look in Eliana’s direction.

  “It was an honest question. Would you rather me ask her personal details about her relationship with Hastings? Don’t you think it’d be more insensitive if I asked her if she banged the guy before he died?”

  Tray choked out a cough, Ackerly fidgeted with his glasses, and Hartman vanished from the room entirely. Eliana wished she had an Affinity for melting into the wall.

  “I don’t know why you’re all being so uncomfortable about this,” Kiki said. “We all want to know; Seth’s just the only one indecent enough to ask.” With a conniving smirk, she pivoted toward Eliana. “If you didn’t at least get a little sexy with Hastings, you were really wasting his talents. I mean, he could have given you a hickey and then erased it with his Affinity! If I’d known what he could do, I would have probably hooked up with him myself. Or, um, you know—gotten him to heal my hickeys.”

  Evading Seth’s gaze, Kiki turned back to the closet and resumed organization. After working through the logic, he finally asked, “Since when have you gotten a hickey? I haven’t given you one since before we came here.”

  “I was talking about the future, Seth. Like…when I date someone new,” she replied, her voice muffled beyond the closet walls within which she intentionally remained.

  “Date someone new? I thought you were done with boys? Have you seen yourself with a new boyfriend? Or a new girlfriend?”

  “Shut up, primies!” a voice called from beyond the wall, accompanied by a bang.

  Kiki jumped, but Eliana was accustomed to Calder shouting at Adara through the wall. “That’s Adara’s Pixie Prince.”

  “That guy still scares me,” Ackerly whispered, wincing at the wall as if he could see him through it.

  “I can hear you!” Calder yelled with another bang. “You primies are more annoying than Stromer’s sleep-complaining!”

  “We should probably go before he comes in here and tries to drown us,” Tray muttered. Less grudgingly, he met Eliana’s eyes. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  The boys’ concerned thoughts flowed freely from their minds; even Seth seemed worried for her, but whether because Hastings was dead or because Kiki was her new roommate, she couldn’t exactly be sure. Either way, her situation seemed grim, but she broadened her shoulders and nodded at Tray.

  “You should leave, too,” he advised Carrick before departing with his roommate and brother. “You don’t need to be Belven’s slave anymore.”

  “Slave!” Kiki’s outrage was the final push Carrick needed to scamper from the room. “I was going to pay you!”

  “I’ll help you,” Eliana offered as she closed their new door, sealing her dormitory for the first time in over a month. “Did you, um, ask someone to fix this?”

  “Obviously. Do you think I want to be watched?”

  Gingerly, Eliana picked up a shirt and brought it to the closet. “Well…you seem like the kind of person who wouldn’t mind.”

  When she presented the shirt, Kiki snatched it without any gratitude. “You don’t help me, okay? You’re my friend, and I don’t force my friends to help me.”

  “Um—”

  “Stop acting confused. You can read my mind. What am I thinking?”

  Eliana’s eyebrows screwed together as she stared into Kiki’s eyes. The cool blue was streaked with highlights of pink now, and she could mentally detect the shift in the girl’s mind, a result of her Affinity’s discovery.

  “You, uh…saw us as friends?”

  “Can’t you see it, too?”

  “Not exactly… I can tell you’re thinkin
g about it, though.”

  With a dramatic sigh, Kiki plopped onto the bed that had previously belonged to her childhood enemy. “I’ve never had real friends, but when I saw this—this blurry vision of you and me together—I knew that was what it was like to have a friend. So…you might think I’m a rude, selfish bitch now, but one day you won’t. I just have to impatiently wait for that day, because…that’s all I’ve ever wanted. I don’t want everyone watching me all the time. I want one person who knows me and…cares about me. I thought being popular would win me at least one true friend, but—”

  “What about Seth?” Eliana knew the answer to this question, but she also knew Kiki’s expression of emotion was wildly different than Hastings’s. Where he had chosen to convey his most intimate sentiments mentally, Kiki’s thoughts were far less organized, making verbal communication the best means through which to articulate her deepest concerns.

  Even so, she struggled to produce a coherent sentence, and after crossing and uncrossing her legs five times, she finally groaned. “Seth didn’t care about me—not really. He was the closest thing I had to a friend, I guess, but…he always liked Adara more.”

  “Which was the real reason you always picked on Adara,” Eliana said as Kiki’s memories flooded her awareness. “You always had a crush on Seth, so you always despised Adara.”

  Kiki hugged herself defensively. “Don’t act like I’m a criminal. You know Adara’s more of a bitch than I am.”

  “Well, her thoughts are often far less…tender than yours are. Her mind is guarded almost always. Yours is raw…and broken.”

  Puffing out a breath, Kiki jumped off her new bed and threw a pair of purple cargo pants at Eliana in the process. “Stop reading my mind and start helping me. We aren’t friends yet. As the gracious prophetess I am, though, I should probably let you know that I saw your sister—”

  “Zeela? You saw a vision of her?”

  Kiki padded over to the closet again, careless and elusive. “A vague one. It was…blurry, like most of them are, but in it she was with that pink-haired Wacko, or she will be, I guess.”

  With Hastings’s death, Eliana had forgotten about her sister’s request for her to join them in breaking the Wacko out of jail. In hindsight, it was for the best that Eliana hadn’t helped, otherwise she’d be in a cell with Adara, but she still felt guilty for failing to aid her sister. “Is she okay? Did they make it to the Wacko hideout?”

  “I…don’t know,” Kiki admitted with a hint of remorse. “But in the vision they were both smiling, so…probably.”

  Though finding Maddy and the Wackos would bring happiness to both Zeela and Naretha, Eliana couldn’t imagine either of them succumbing to their emotions in such a tense situation. She couldn’t predict the future, though—only Kiki could—and so she hoped that, wherever her sister was, she was safe.

  The nighttime air felt colder now than it had when Avner had emerged from the river a few hours ago. Perhaps it was Jamad’s presence chilling the atmosphere; his mother had been unable to thaw his strong frigidity.

  Colette had returned inside after half an hour of arguing with Jamad, tears frozen on her cheeks as she retreated to her bedroom without a word. Elias had put an end to their discussion to console his wife, leaving Naretha to make a few rude remarks while Zeela implored Avner to confront their friend.

  On the front porch, Jamad leaned over the white railing, gazing out into the grassy field they’d trekked through. In that moment, Avner realized the boy he’d known for the past three years was only a fragment of Jamad Solberg. There were layers beneath the frivolousness of his friend—layers he had buried with no intention of unearthing.

  Avner stepped next to him and placed his elbows on the icy railing. “Naretha’s probably gonna kill Zeela in there.”

  “Then why did you leave them alone?” He recited the words as if they were part of a script he had no interest in.

  “Z told me to,” Avner admitted reluctantly. “She thinks I’m angry with you.”

  “Are you?”

  Sighing, Avner fixed his vision on a light in the distance—one of the houses beyond the field, maybe the Mensens’. From here, Beverly felt like an endless chasm they were trapped in, sirens still echoing through the quietness. The police would probably find them soon and they would probably go to jail, but this…tension between him and Jamad seemed like the most pressing issue.

  “I should be mad, I guess, but I’m mostly just…confused. You were adopted, you were stuck in a snowstorm, you’re a drama queen—”

  “My dad said that?”

  “Yeah.”

  Rolling his shoulders, Jamad stood straight and stretched his arms behind his head. “He always says that, and maybe it’s true. I dunno… Would you be upset if you found out your parents replaced you?”

  Avner raised his eyebrows. “You’re really asking me that?”

  “Right, no parents.” Jamad released a breath and dropped his arms, staring out at a barren tree. “I am a shitty friend, aren’t I?”

  “I never told you much about my foster family.” Avner spun around to sit on the railing. “We both suck at communicating. And, for the record, I probably wouldn’t have cared if my foster parents replaced me. They probably have by now. They always had other foster kids—always tried to help everyone. It was nice, but it didn’t make me feel…special or loved. You are loved—your parents love you, man. Don’t you see that? They didn’t want another kid to replace you; they wanted her for you. Honestly, though, little sisters are a pain.”

  Humor didn’t meet Jamad’s eyes when he snorted. “Nothing feels the same as it used to. Everything looks the same, but it’s all different.”

  “Maybe you’re just different,” Avner offered, studying his friend’s light blue features. “When I met you, your hair and eyes were darker. You weren’t as good at your Affinity, and you definitely weren’t as cocky.”

  “It’s not cockiness if I’m as awesome as I think I am,” Jamad said, drawing a grin from his friend. “It just sucks being here. I’ve wanted to see them for years, but now…they barely feel like my parents anymore, and that baby…she doesn’t feel like my sister. She’s almost three and I didn’t even know she exists. I’ll never watch her grow up. If I ever see her again, she’ll probably be a grown stranger. It just feels…wrong.”

  “If it makes you feel better, I’ll probably never see Adara again.”

  “Oh, bull. You’ll see her when we get back to Periculand. Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing for you, though, brother.”

  Avner licked his lips and peeked past Jamad through the window, where Naretha listlessly sprinkled salt onto her plate. “We can’t go back to Periculand, J. We broke a Wacko out of jail. Even if it was something Angor wanted to do himself, he’ll have to punish us. We’re fugitives now.”

  Crossing his arms, Jamad leaned back against the brick wall. “So, what? We join the Wackos?”

  “No, we’ll…figure something out. For now, we need to focus on getting to the Wackos and saving Maddy. We talked with your dad a bit; he said he has a few connections in town who might be able to get us to the hideout without raising suspicion. Naretha said, ‘The shadier the better.’”

  “Of course she did.” Jamad turned his head toward the window to observe as the Wacko flicked crystals of salt across her plate. “Why’d she save Z earlier? Why didn’t she ditch us?”

  “Figured she wouldn’t make it to Cleveland alone? Has a crush on you?”

  “You’re probably right. Who doesn’t have a crush on me?”

  “Well, I’m hoping Zeela doesn’t.” At Jamad’s cheeky grin, Avner kicked him in the shin. “Thanks for the reassurance, J.”

  His friend’s laugh softened any remaining coldness between them. “In all seriousness, though…do you think Naretha’s got some hidden motive? What if she doesn’t bring us where she says? What if Maddy’s not even where she assumes she is?”

  Avner drummed his fingers on the railing as the sa
me worries wove through his mind. “I don’t think we have any option but to trust Naretha at this point. Our main focus should be leaving Beverly. Your dad said we could stay for the weekend, just so we have everything prepared.”

  “That’s…nice,” Jamad said, but he squirmed against the wall. “I’d like to leave as soon as possible, though. There aren’t a lot of crimes around here—I bet the cops will be coming door to door soon, trying to find us.”

  “I don’t like the idea of sitting around, either, but it’ll be better if we’re thoroughly prepared before departing. That way, maybe we can avoid a repeat of today. We weren’t ready for this mission.”

  Longing was etched into Jamad’s face as he gazed into his childhood home, likely remembering better times. “No, we weren’t.”

  7

  Usurpers’ Dominion

  Eliana’s bare feet mounted each step of the spiral staircase with gradual precision. Not one thought penetrated her awareness, and the absence of minds resulted in a startling quiet. The incandescence of the white stairs was stark in comparison to her wispy dress, strewn from the same fabric as her darkest thoughts.

  Strange.

  These little details, coupled with her inability to slow her ascent, alerted her that something was fundamentally wrong, even before she reached the third floor of the tower and discovered a ghost.

  Facing her new door was Hastings Lanio, his posture as guarded as always with his hands in the pockets of his purple cargo pants. His pants, however, weren’t fully purple. They kept oscillating between purple and another color—one that made Eliana’s head ache.

  Trying to read his mind was like trying to claw through a cement wall, so she gingerly approached, waiting for him to hear her delicate footsteps. When he didn’t turn, she reached out, but her hand flowed freely through him, confirming the truth that he was not present. He continued to stare at her door without any inkling that she loomed behind him. Her voice was inaudible when she tried to speak, but his voice echoed through the corridor, its origin everywhere but nowhere all at once.