Reborn Series Box Set (Books 1-3.5)

by S. L. Stacy

  “Hey, Jimmy.”

  “Hey. What’s up?

  I shrug even though he can’t see me. “Just waiting for my class to start. You?”

  “Just going into work.” He breathes heavily into the phone. “I was running a little late this morning. Anyway, I still really want to take you out this week. Are you free tonight? I know it’s last minute. I just realized, between bartending and playing a few gigs this week, I don’t have as much time as I thought. I mean, I know you’re busy too, it’s just—”

  “It’s okay,” I assure him mid-apologetic rambling. “We have our board meeting Mondays, but I’m free after. What do you have in mind?”

  “Dinner at The End?” he asks, sounding embarrassed. “Sorry, I know that’s lame, it’s just I have to work until six, and then we’re playing a set at nine.”

  “Sounds great. I should be free by six thirty.”

  “Cool. I’ll pick you up then. Anna said I could borrow her truck while she’s away.”

  “Away?” I echo. “Where did she go?”

  “She’s at some retreat for the next couple days. I’m not really sure what it’s for. She just told me about it before she left this morning. Well, I should get going. My boss is giving me the evil eye.”

  I laugh. “Yeah, my class is going to start soon. I’m looking forward to tonight.”

  “Me, too.”

  I’m smiling even after the call has ended. Anticipation for tonight bubbles up inside me, displacing my anxiety over Jasper and Farrah. I devour the rest of the protein bar and toss the wrapper in a nearby garbage can before heading back inside Frasier Hall.

  Most of the class is already seated when I walk into the auditorium. Dr. Mars isn’t here yet; instead Jasper stands behind the lecture podium, hands clasping its sides as he skims a page in the book open before him. Glancing up at me as I walk by, he doesn’t smile but finds my gaze and holds it steady. A second or two later I break eye contact with him to go find a seat. At least I have that excuse. After spending the night at his place and what I saw this morning, I’m not really sure how to act around him. I’m still holding his jacket hostage, but it would just be awkward if I gave it to him now, in front of everyone.

  “Let’s get started,” Jasper says a few minutes after ten as the last students trickle in. “Eric will be out for the next few days, so I’m taking over his classes. As you know from the reading, today we’re going to discuss the differences and parallels between flood stories from various ancient cultures.

  “So, let’s start off simple. Can someone give me an example of what the Sumerian and Hebrew flood stories have in common?” Enraptured, wide-eyed faces surround me, but no one actually volunteers an answer.

  “Anyone?” Jasper comes around to stand in front of the podium. “You guys did the reading, right?” He draws out the last word, his tone coaxing rather than scolding. Heads bob. “Okay, then. Amritha,” he says to an Indian girl sitting in the front row. She straightens up as he walks up to her. “I know it’s hard sometimes to speak up in front of a big class like this, but don’t be shy. We value everyone’s opinion here. So. Can you give us an example?”

  She clears her throat quietly before answering him. “In both stories, birds were sent out to find dry land once the flood was over.”

  “You’re exactly right, Amritha.” Jasper’s smile is appreciative. I can’t see Amritha’s face, but I’m sure she’s beaming at him. “Can someone give me another one?”

  Class flies by. Probably because it senses I want to talk and not talk to Jasper at the same time. Jasper’s lecture-style is different from Eric’s—and I’m not sure it’s necessarily in a good way. Both men have that larger-than-life quality. Eric’s sheer size makes him difficult to ignore, but even outside of class, his every word is direct, laced with a shot of aggression, and demands all of your attention. A quieter, more insidious intensity infuses Jasper’s words. Although people are initially reluctant to participate, his tactic of sympathizing with them followed by discreet flattery eventually draws them forward in their seats and their hands into the air. On the surface it seems innocent enough, but something sinister lurks beneath it. He’s manipulative, and I’m starting to realize he’s like this with everyone. I couldn’t actually hear his conversation with Liz at the Black and White party, but I could see it in his face and in his actions. He’s even like this with me. Does he realize it?

  I thought I was supposed to be special to him, so it’s like someone dumps a bucket of icy water on me when I admit to myself that, yes, he probably does.

  “Well, I think that’s enough for today,” he says, ending class a few minutes early. “Remember to read chapters three and four in the Walt book for Wednesday.”

  I wait until the auditorium clears out before approaching him at the front of the room. He’s busy stuffing his books and notes into a brown leather briefcase, but this time when he finally does look up at me, he sends me a loving smile. The warmth of it softens his features, sands down his dark, dangerous edge. My heart, which seems to have cut all ties with my brain, gives an excited leap as I hand him the jacket.

  “Thanks again,” I tell him. “Great class today, too.”

  “I’m a little surprised to hear you say that,” he says. He slips the jacket on, picks up his briefcase and starts the walk toward the door. “You seemed a little preoccupied. You should try participating more in class.”

  “Sorry, Dr. Hart,” I tease him lightly. He chuckles. We pause in the middle of the hall, both tense and uncertain.

  “Want to hang out in my office for a bit? You can watch me grade papers.” I realize he’s joking, but he even makes this sound like an appealing option. “Or we can go grab an early lunch.”

  “I’d love to, but I have to stop back at the house before my next class,” I say. “I don’t think it would give us enough time.” Actually, my next class isn’t until one, but he doesn’t have to know that.

  “Okay. Well, what about dinner tonight?”

  I sigh inwardly, hoping he can’t tell that I’m starting to get annoyed. Isn’t this what every girl wants after spending the night at a guy’s place? Would I really rather he ignore me? Well, in his case, I guess I would. He’s going to make it really hard for me to avoid him, isn’t he?

  “I can’t. I’m having dinner with Jimmy at The End. It’s not a date.” For some reason I add this in a rush even before he responds, and even though it probably is a date. Heck, I want it to be date. Just because I’m confused about Jasper doesn’t mean I don’t like Jimmy anymore.

  “I get it,” Jasper says, but his jaw is stiff, his usually sensuous mouth set in a thin, white line. “We’ll see each other later in the week. I’ll call you. Just promise me you’ll be careful around Farrah, okay?”

  “I promise.”

  We back away from each other slowly, Jasper toward the stairs, me toward the front doors. I give him a small wave before running through them, the sky splattering my face with a few sprinkles as I walk out onto the lawn. I forgot an umbrella, but I don’t mind rain, except when it’s that stinging cold rain we get in late November.

  At the Gamma Lambda Phi house, I open the door to a deserted downstairs. The door to the guest room is closed. I go up to it and knock.

  “Farrah?” I call.

  No answer.

  It’s only been a few hours. Could Liz have gotten to the stones already? I go to the entertainment console and open the back of the wood table clock, where we keep the master card key that opens all of the bedrooms.

  “You can use my key.”

  I jump at the sound of Tanya’s voice on the stairs. As she walks down the last several steps, she pulls her room key out of her wristlet.

  “I don’t need it for our room.” My eyes betray me by wandering over to the closed door of Farrah’s room. Tanya follows my gaze, and understanding dawns on her bronze face. Her lips curl into a mischievous smile.

  “Best idea ever,” she proclaims. “Let’s see what skeletons
House Monster has hiding in her closet.” She claps her hands eagerly. “I’ll go get Carly! She’ll want to help!”

  “No! I mean, let’s just keep this between—”

  “Help with what?” Carly asks from the landing.

  “We’re going to go through Farrah’s stuff!” Tanya tells her in a loud whisper.

  “Sounds naughty,” Carly says. “I’m in!”

  She and Tanya beat me to Farrah’s door. “What do you think we’ll find? Drugs? A sex tape?” They look back at me, my roommate motioning me forward. “Come on, Twin! You’re the one with the key!”

  As well as being a conniving, two-faced bitch, Farrah is also apparently a neat freak. If it weren’t for the sheets on the bed, the clothes in the closet and the books aligned neatly on the desk, you might think that no one lived here. She’s left the window open a crack, and a light breeze ruffles the pastel blue curtains. Otherwise, it doesn’t look like anything’s ever been moved or touched.

  “We have to be really careful to leave this the way we found it,” I say, but Carly and Tanya are already descending upon the closet.

  “One of us should be lookout.” And not me, I want to add, but they’re acting like they don’t hear me. I survey the lifeless living room one last time before closing the door, leaving it open just a crack.

  When I turn back to the bedroom, regret and hopelessness overwhelm me. What was I thinking, snooping around Farrah’s room? I glance again at the bare, dust-free surfaces and perfectly made bed. I don’t know where to start looking. I don’t even really know what I’m looking for. How big are these stones? How many of them are there? Will I know when I find them?

  The best place to start seems to be the desk. I rummage through the contents of each drawer, being careful not to disturb them too much. The desk is less severe than the rest of the room, but it’s still organized better than mine, which I basically use to hide stuff so that Tanya thinks I’m neat. Each drawer is lined with blue and yellow plaid shelf paper. In the first are her combs, brushes, curling iron and other hair necessities. Stationary, envelopes and notepads are in the second.

  “Oh, my God! Better than a sex tape!” Tanya sings excitedly behind me. I look up from where I’m crouched to see her and Carly peering into a pretty pink and lavender box, its contents cushioned by a white silk lining.

  “What’s this?” Carly wonders. At first I’m not exactly sure what the object is clasped in her small, dainty hand, although it reminds me of something. It’s about six-inches long and made of a cheap-looking peach-colored jelly rubber—

  I clamp a hand over my mouth to stifle my laughter.

  Tanya is less successful at hiding her own and gives a loud snort. “You might want to put that down.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a dildo.”

  Carly shrieks and drops it. It lands with a smack on the hardwood floor and rolls up to Tanya’s feet.

  Tears of laughter streaming down her face, Tanya bends down to carefully pick it up, pinching it between her thumb and forefinger. She tosses it back inside Farrah’s special box. In the box there’s also a bottle of lubricant, a black feather tickler and something else none of us recognize. Carly and Tanya finally return the box to its spot on the top shelf in the closet, and I rummage through the last drawer in Farrah’s desk.

  “Find anything interesting on your end?” Tanya asks me.

  “Nope.”

  No pet rocks here.

  I plop down in Farrah’s desk chair and reevaluate my strategy. I suppose I could go through her bureau as well, but I don’t have the impetus anymore. I know I’m not going to find them there. There probably isn’t anything to find—if they’re important enough for Jasper to want, she probably keeps them on her person at all times. The big gold bag she carries looks pretty heavy.

  “This might be something,” Carly says, pulling a red satin bag cinched with a white ribbon down from the closet shelf. Whatever’s inside of it clicks against each other as she feels the bottom of it before opening it up. Tanya coaxes the lip of the bag further open with her finger.

  “It’s just a bunch of rocks.”

  “Rocks?” I dart up from the chair.

  “You sounded way too excited just now,” Tanya informs me.

  I take out one of the stones. It’s oval-shaped, the pale gray surface smooth under my fingers, except for where there’s a swirly Greek letter “gamma” etched into the center. The gamma glows a faint white.

  “It looks like some sci-fi thing,” says Carly. “Maybe Farrah’s a closet nerd.”

  “It does look like something out of Stargate,” I muse. Carly and Tanya look at me strangely. “How many of them are there?” I ask it, but I already suspect there are three in total: a gamma, a lambda and a phi—

  “What are you guys doing in here?”

  Chapter 20

  Victoria pushes the door open a little further and steps inside. I drop the stone back in its pouch.

  “You’re going through Farrah’s room,” she realizes, a dumbfounded expression on her angular features.

  “It was my idea,” I confess hastily. “Tanya and Carly didn’t want to, but I talked them into it.”

  “Please. You don’t have to cover for us,” Tanya says. She comes up to stand beside me, hands on her hips. “We were willing participants.” Carly nods in agreement.

  “I don’t care whose idea it was…” Victoria’s face is getting red. Any minute now I’m pretty sure she’s going to breathe fire. She shakes her head. “Put that back,” she says, pointing to the red bag, and Carly immediately slides it into its spot on the shelf. “Let’s just get out of here.” She holds open the door for us and waits for us to march through it before flipping off the lights.

  “I don’t even know what to say. I am so disappointed in you three.”

  Carly crosses her arms and gives an obvious eye roll. “Sorry, Mom.”

  “This isn’t funny!” Victoria looks around in momentary panic after this outburst. She takes a deep breath to recover herself. “I know that having Farrah around hasn’t been easy, but she’s on our side. She needs to know that we’re on hers.”

  “On our side?” Tanya scoffs.

  “She has a funny way of showing it,” I put in.

  Victoria turns her round, piercing amber glare to me. “Look, I know you haven’t liked her from the beginning—”

  “Because she hates me for no reason! I don’t trust her.”

  “Do you trust me?” Victoria reaches out to clasp my shoulder and give it an earnest shake, or something. I never find out because I take an automatic step back as I watch the hand come toward me. I jump, feeling just as startled as Victoria looks. Her arm drops, her brow furrowing in confusion.

  “Of course,” Tanya says, coming to the rescue. The three of us nod eagerly in unison.

  “Then please trust that this will all make sense soon. I promise,” Victoria vows, still looking at me through narrowed eyes. “In the meantime, let’s try not to piss her off.” She cocks her head toward the now firmly shut door to Farrah’s room.

  Victoria goes into the kitchen, and I return the master key to its hiding place. I wait until Tanya and Carly leave for class, then join my big sister at the stove, where she watches tiny bubbles start to form in a saucepan of hissing water.

  “Keep an eye on Liz,” I tell her. She probably won’t have any idea what I’m talking about, but I have to warn someone.

  “Okay. I will,” she says without looking up at me. I drum my fingers on the counter, reading the back of a box of granola, but she doesn’t say anything else, her eyes never leaving the pot. Finally I go back out into the living room. I guess I’m being paranoid—Victoria probably didn’t even notice my reaction earlier. A pang of guilt curdles my stomach. This is Victoria, my big sister, my friend. Of course she doesn’t like me in that way. Even if she did, she knows I’m straight. Still, I can’t seem to silence the whispered memory of Jasper’s casual observation: I think she has a little c
rush on you…

  ***

  While everything this morning happened very quickly, the afternoon drags on. Endless rainfall pours from a steel gray sky. At four thirty I return to the house after my last class, shaking out my leopard print umbrella before going inside. My purple rain boots make squelching noises on the hardwood floor. I tug them off and leave them by the door. I head upstairs for some big-little bonding time with Victoria before our board meeting, to make up for earlier today. I knock politely on the half-closed door and peek around it only to find out everyone is already there—even Liz.

  “Did we change the time?” I ask uncertainly, closing the door behind me.

  Victoria shakes her head “You’re fine. Today is all about you,” she adds as I sit down on the bed next to Carly. “What do you need us to do for Friday?”

  “Oh, right,” I say, opening my notebook on my lap and uncapping a pen. “So, my committee is decorating the venue in shifts from one to four Friday afternoon. Carly and Rachel said they could drive—” A wide-eyed look of alarm from Victoria makes me stop.

  “Rachel won’t be able to drive,” Victoria says cryptically.

  “In other words—she didn’t make the cut,” Tanya explains.

  “Farrah wants to help out in any way she can,” Victoria assures me. “I’ll let her know we need another driver to shuttle committee members that afternoon.”

  I nod helplessly and move on. “I think we have everything we need, actually. All of the decorations are ready to go. We’ll give out wristbands here before we get on the bus.” The distant chime of the doorbell sounds from downstairs. “We’re going to have the sisters line up and put on blindfolds, and then each guy will take the blindfold off his date.” When the doorbell rings again, we give a collective sigh.

  “I’ll go,” Tanya says, getting up and whisking out the door. A beat later, my phone vibrates beside me on the bed.

  “Oh, shoot,” I say. I look up. “That’s Jimmy. We’re going to dinner, but he got here early.”