Bound by Earth: The Nature Hunters Academy Series, Book 1

by Quinn Loftis

  Once Tara was dressed, hair fixed, and a small amount of eye makeup applied, she stood in front of the mirror and actually smiled. “You’ll do,” Tara murmured as she turned and looked over her shoulder at her back. The jeans did make her butt look good. And she filled out the tank top nicely. If she was a dude, she’d be attracted to her. Did that even make sense? And did it sound crazy? No, and yes. Or maybe it was yes, and no? Tara shook her head. She really needed to get out more, or find a hobby, or something. She snagged her phone, took a quick picture of herself in the mirror, and shot off a text to Shelly. She didn’t have to wait long for a response.

  Holy crap, I’d do you.

  Came her friend’s brilliant compliment. Don’t smack your best friend, don’t smack your best friend, Tara chanted in her mind.

  I have an impervious hymen, remember? You couldn’t do me. Besides, I wouldn’t do you. Find someone else to prey upon with your obsessive tendencies. See you in a few.

  The weather was nice. There was a little chill in the air as the last bit of winter attempted to cling to the morning, though it was expected to be warm and sunny this afternoon. Still, it wasn’t too cold to walk. Carol was asleep, having worked another night shift, so Tara didn’t say goodbye but left a note on the counter instead.

  The walk to school was uneventful, and Tara sighed as she trudged up the front steps and paused at the front doors. She wanted to stay outside in the sun. She needed to listen to the rustle of the leaves and smell the grass, rather than be surrounded by the four walls of the classroom, the droning of the teacher, and the overwhelming smell of too much body spray and sweat from the guys who had morning practice … or who simply thought a quick shot of body spray was an adequate substitute for a shower.

  “Hey, Tara.”

  Tucker’s voice caused her to pull her hand back from the handle. She turned her head to find her recent admirer staring down at her with a crooked smile. He really was handsome. Why couldn’t she be attracted to him on a level that made her want to do more than stare and sigh? “Hey, Tucker,” she said and smiled in return. “How are you?”

  His smile grew, and there was a small playful glint in his blue eyes. “I’d be better if a certain beautiful girl would finally say yes to a date with me.” He glanced down her body and then back up to her face. “You look ravishing today, by the way.”

  Tara’s face instantly got hot as her skin flushed. She might not desire the guy, but it was flattering nonetheless to have his attention. “Tucker, we’ve had this conversation, multiple times. I don’t want to date you, and you don’t really want to date me. You simply see me as a challenge. I promise the fascination would wear off after one date,” she said and finally looked up at him when he didn’t reply. His eyes searched her face, and she wondered what he saw. She didn’t give him a chance to tell her. “You seem nice enough, and it’s only natural to be curious about someone you don’t really know,” she said. “But I’m just…” She faltered, unsure of what she was, exactly.

  He leaned close. “You’re just something special, Tara. Not going to lie, I wish I was the lucky guy your special was meant for. I guess you just haven’t met your soul mate yet. And you’re wrong. I don’t want to date you because you’re a novelty. I want to date you because I’m attracted to you and find you engaging and interesting.”

  Her eyes widened at his words. What guy talked like that? Soul mate? Did he really believe in that crap? Did she? And engaging? Please. The first time he’d asked her out she’d told him hell would freeze over and she’d go ice skating there before she’d go on a date with him. He’d continued to pursue her, and she’d tempered her responses because he really did seem nice, and it was hard to keep being bitchy to someone who seemed genuinely kind.

  He chuckled, obviously amused by the look on her face. “Not all guys are shallow. Some of us do have a little depth.”

  “I’m not an idiot. Of course, some guys have depth,” Tara said, feeling defensive, even though she had sort of mentally implied that a guy shouldn’t be able to emotionally process the things Tucker had just verbalized. “It’s just that you don’t hear eighteen-year-old guys talk about soul mates or imply he wants to be yours. And why on earth would you even think I’d want a soul mate? People require energy and effort. I’m fresh out of both.”

  “T, you’re a riot,” he said good-naturedly. The nickname was something he’d heard Shelly call her and had taken the liberty to start calling her. “Who doesn’t want a soul mate? Someone who will cherish you and desire to make you happy and see you thrive.”

  “You sound like a Hallmark card,” Tara said.

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  “It’s a weird thing. Eighteen-year-old guys are supposed to tell you they think you’re hot. Not go on a tangent about soul mates and seeing you thrive. Are you sure you’re eighteen? Did you fail freshman year like ten times and you’re actually closer to thirty?”

  Someone cleared their throat behind them, and Tara remembered they were standing in front of one of the doors that entered into the school. She had no idea how long they’d stood there having the weird conversation, but she felt it was way past time to move on. “Okay, well, this was … peculiar,” she said before she could stop herself.

  Tucker pulled the door open and motioned for her to enter. “A little,” he admitted. “But everyone needs a little bizarre in life. It keeps things exciting.”

  Tara started off for her locker but stopped when Tucker said her name. She turned to look at him.

  “You really are beautiful,” he said a little louder than she would have liked, considering the catcalls from the peanut gallery filling the hall.

  Tara, by sheer force of will, kept from blushing and, instead, held up her hand and flipped him the bird … because she was feeling super mature. Tucker winked at her with a big grin, knowing he’d just ticked her off. She was finding that he really did enjoy poking her. Tara sighed and turned. She held her hand high in the air to the rest of the students who were whistling and catcalling and gave them her flipped-off greeting as well. They could all suck it. Was she being ridiculous and overreacting to his stupid declaration? Yes. Did she particularly care at that moment? Not a bit. She might feel a tiny bit of remorse later, but she’d cross that bridge when she got there.

  She focused on getting to her locker without tripping over her feet or the flat floor. She wasn’t naturally clumsy, but it just seemed like something that would happen after having one of the best-looking guys in the school flirt with you in a very public way and then flipping him off. And yes, she knew her life wasn’t a romance novel, but she read so much she often related her life to what she found in her books. That’s pathetic. She mentally kicked herself. Tara sincerely hoped that whatever came after high school would come with less need to kick her own ass and the possibility of maybe kicking someone else's.

  When she reached the row of lockers where hers was located, she saw Shelly had beaten her there and was grinning like a kid who’d just been given the keys to a candy store with no admonition as to how much she could eat.

  “Why are you smiling like that? It’s creepy. Stop or I’ll be forced to smack you.”

  “Wish I could, and we obviously need to have another heart to heart about how violence doesn’t fix things, but I feel like a proud mama. I’ve worked so hard to teach you all the knowledge and here you are, grown-up and using it to turn the heads of every boy in school.”

  Tara frowned. “All the knowledge? You realize that isn’t correct grammar, right?”

  Shelly sighed. “Don’t be a grammar Nazi.”

  “Then don’t give me a reason to be a grammar Nazi.”

  Shelly held up a hand. “Let me bask in my moment. I mean, damn, you fill those jeans and that shirt. Where have you been hiding all”—she motioned to Tara’s entire body with her hand—“that?”

  “I haven’t been hiding anything,” Tara said, frowning as she walked down the row to locker #150. “Just because I don’t
wear things that mold to my every inch of flesh doesn’t mean I’m hiding anything.”

  “When you have flesh that worthy of being molded to, it’s a crime not to get to molding.”

  “Why do our conversations always veer into bizarre territory so quickly?”

  “Bizarre is our thing. Thelma and Louise had suicide, Velma and Daphne had spooky spy crap, and we have bizarre. Every girlfriend couple has a thing. It’s an unwritten law.” Shelly looked quite pleased with her explanation.

  Tara’s face scrunched up. “Girlfriend couple? Is that what we are? Did we discuss this? I feel like this is something we ought to have discussed and I should have had a say in, and my say would have been no. Definitely no.”

  “Don’t get your ovaries in a twist. It’s without the coupling, of course, and not just because nothing can get all up in that business of yours, what with your—”

  Tara quickly cut her off. “Don’t say it or I’ll be forced to kill you, tie a concrete block to your ankle, and throw you in a lake.” Her nostrils flared as her irritation over her friend’s fascination with her lady bits in regard to her weird condition.

  “Wow, that was oddly specific. Have you been planning my demise for a while now? And does looking good make you cranky?” Shelly asked. “Wait, don’t answer that. Breathing makes you cranky. It’s a dumb question.

  Tara ignored both her questions and asked, “So when is this college-and-career fair thingy, as you called it? And do we even know what colleges or careers we are interested in? I’m pretty sure we were supposed to think about this last year.” In fact, Tara knew they were, but she’d been so focused on playing soccer and trying to ignore the emptiness inside of her, pretending that she wasn’t a freak of nature with her invulnerable body, that she’d completely procrastinated on the whole college thing.

  “It’s right now,” Shelly said as she slapped the locker closed, almost slamming Tara’s fingers in it. She started pulling Tara in the direction of the school gym. Their school wasn’t big. So, pretty much anything and everything was held in the school gym. “I figured I’d wind up going to the community college in Riverbend,” said Shelly.

  Riverbend was a town thirty minutes away and about ten thousand people larger. It wasn’t a huge improvement, but it did have a community college, at least. “Then why are we going to this thing?”

  Shelly gave her an exasperated look. “Because the colleges usually have upperclassmen come with the recruiters.” When Tara didn’t respond appropriately, Shelly rolled her eyes. “Hot, older college guys, Tara-Bear. If high school guys aren’t to your liking, then maybe we will find you a man in here.” She pulled the gym door open, and the noise inside spilled out into the hall.

  “And where exactly did you ever glean from any of our conversations that you forced, I might add, that I wanted an older guy, let alone any guy?” Tara asked, her voice getting louder with every word.

  “I could just tell. I could see it in your lonely, longing soul,” Shelly said with a small sigh. “But, T, please don’t think this is all for you. I’m not that selfless. I’m hunting for myself as well. You always say I’m so beautiful and apparently high school guys don’t see what a catch I am. Maybe someone older and more mature will.” She flipped her hair and stuck her cute nose in the air.

  Shelly’s words might have been flippant, but Tara could hear the doubt in them. Shelly, deep down—way deep down—was insecure over her single status. Though she was confident in herself in many ways, it was the whole lack of a love life that was a constant pea in her princess bed. Like Tara, Shelly had never dated anyone, but not because she wasn’t interested. Tara didn’t understand it. Shelly looked like a model. She was stunning. But none of the guys in their school ever approached her. Even the ones Tara had heard talking about how hot her friend was.

  Tara forced herself not to groan or stomp her feet like a four-year-old. Shelly was a butthead and annoying and pushy. But she was also incredibly tolerant of Tara’s crappy attitude. Pay it forward and all that nonsense. She pulled her hand from Shelly’s because she was no longer dragging Tara behind her. They were simply standing there holding hands. Then she patted her friend on the shoulder awkwardly. “Okay, let’s go attempt to find us some guys.” She tried to sound enthusiastic, but it wound up sounding like a robot whose batteries were about to die. Wow, she sucked. Tara was going to have to work on her BFF skills, or Shelly might actually wind up kicking her to the curb or using the voodoo doll she no doubt had. On a positive note, at least Shelly wasn’t bombarding her about the mutation thing, as Shelly called it. That was something. Tara smiled to herself. Look at me being all silver lining and stuff.

  As far as the guys went, the reality was, probably, neither one of them would find someone they were interested in or anyone interested in two high school seniors, so there really was no harm in checking out the prospects. Not to mention, she’d never see these people again.

  “Let’s go hunt,” Tara said with a grin plastered on her face and all the false bravado she could muster.

  “If I were into chicks, I would have totally just fallen in love with you,” Shelly said as they walked into the gym and began meandering past booths filled with advertising paraphernalia and brochures touting everything from the University of Kentucky to large companies offering entry-level telemarketing jobs and everything in between. They stopped at a few and glanced at the brochures, grabbed free pens, because, hey, they were free. They pretended to be interested in each of the recruiters’ spiels, nodding at what they guessed was the appropriate time.

  Tara pursed her lips and absently flipped through a brochure as they walked away from the US Army recruiting booth. “Maybe this wouldn’t be too bad,” she said. “I’d get my college paid for, anyway. It’d be nice not to have student loans. Mom and dad didn’t exactly leave me a trust fund when they died. And since I can’t be injured, I’d be like a super soldier or something.”

  “Sir, yes, sir!” Shelly saluted Tara. “Private Smith reporting for duty.”

  “Shut up,” Tara said as she glanced around to see if anyone had noticed her idiot friend.

  “What’s that, Sergeant Thompson? You’d like me to double-time it back to the barracks to clean the showers?”

  Tara winced. “Please shut up?”

  Shelly started marching in place, heedless of the glances she was receiving. “And you’d like me to take Corporals Rodriguez and Johnson back with me because those two boys know their way around the showers so well?”

  “You’re not going to shut up, are you?”

  “And everyone else is going to be out on patrol for hours so no one will disturb us as we clean the showers? And absolutely anything could happen?” Shelly had a big, stupid grin on her face that made it clear she was enjoying her little impromptu performance way too much.

  “How in the world can you make the Army sexual? That’s, like, completely next level sexualization. You have a gift. You really do.”

  Shelly just ignored her and kept right on going. “And after we clean the showers, they should show me their long rifles?”

  “Stop, stop, stop!” Tara pleaded though she couldn’t stop the laughter because despite the fact that her BFF was an idiot, she was a funny idiot.

  “What’s that? You want me to polish their bazookas?”

  “Okay, stop. Seriously, I’m begging you. I’ll do anything.” Tara decided that when your friend had reduced you to begging, it might be time to reconsider the parameters of your relationship. Then again, she was pretty sure Shelly didn’t have parameters, boundaries, or any other type of limits she applied to her friendships.

  “First, Sergeant Thompson, you must never criticize my intelligent insults ever again.”

  Tara snapped up from her laughing position, and her smile was gone. “That’s going too far.”

  “What’s that, Sergeant Thompson?” Shelly yelled louder, her stomping restarting even more dramatically. “You want an oral report on the—”

&nbs
p; Tara slapped her hand over Shelly’s mouth and narrowed her eyes. “Fine. No criticism.” Tara dropped her hand as her friend stopped marching.

  “And you have to never, ever mention enlisting in the army ever, ever again,” she said. “I mean, c’mon, Tara. How do you think I’d look in fatigues? I could never pull that off. And as a girl couple, where you go, I go. I don’t do ‘Army Strong,’ or ‘Air Force High,’”

  “Don’t think that’s a thing.”

  “Or ‘Marine Proud.’”

  “That one you got.”

  “Or ‘Navy Deep.’”

  “That’s definitely not a thing.”

  “Do you get me?” Shelly finished with her hands on her hips and her lips pursed.

  “Fine, you made your point. No army or any other branch of the military. Cut me some slack. I’m grasping at straws here. I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. I’m just trying to survive high school and make sure no one finds out my secret. How the heck am I going to make it through college?”

  “We’ll do it together, Tara. Say it with me … Riverbend.” She whispered dramatically and put her hands out as if she were reading a giant marquee.

  Tara shrugged. “I guess Riverbend is as good an option as any.”

  Shelly mimed dusting off her hands. “There, now that that’s settled, let’s get back to scoping for eye candy.

  By the time they rounded the second row of booths, Tara was beginning to think the colleges had somehow collaborated to bring only female upperclassmen with them. And the businesses and local government agencies looking for fresh young recruits apparently couldn’t spare anyone but balding, middle-aged men who looked as excited about clerical accounting as Tara was.