Pyxis: The Discovery (Pyxis Series)

by K. C. Neal

  She texted me later that she was waiting outside, and I grabbed my bag and ran upstairs to the front door.

  “Bye, Mom!” I hollered in the direction of the kitchen, my hand on the knob.

  “Back by midnight!” she yelled back before I could close the door behind me.

  I rolled my eyes and jogged over to the idling Volvo. As if I really needed a curfew reminder. A couple months ago, I’d discovered the hard way that coming home even a few minutes late would get me in trouble. My brother, Bradley, on the other hand, could get away with almost anything, even though we’re in the same grade. Lame double standards.

  “Hey! You look cute!” I said as I slid into the passenger seat. Ang wore a cherry red, fitted, wool hoodie that brought out the rosiness in her cheeks. With her blonde hair curled in loose ringlets, she looked downright adorable.

  We blasted a dance mix from her iPod and turned onto the two-lane highway that wound around the lake to the cove.

  The cove was actually a little beach on Tapestry Lake, about a fifteen-minute drive from town. High school kids had partied there since forever.

  When we were little, Ang’s mom used to take us to the cove to play on the beach in the summer when my parents were working. The beach was a strip of gritty, white sand that melded into a meadow that looked like something out of a Disney movie. There were different mixes of wildflowers blooming practically every month of the year between April and October, and it always smelled earthy and sweet. The whole area was edged by giant, old Ponderosa pines that gave off a heavenly scent of pine wood and vanilla.

  Ang parked on the side of the dirt road leading to the cove. It wasn’t quite dark yet, but I could smell the bonfire smoke and hear the crackle of burning logs. We each grabbed a couple of pieces of firewood from the trunk—bonfire etiquette called for everyone to kick in some fuel for the fire—and crunched down the gravel road to the beach.

  “I think that’s Andy’s car.” Ang nodded at a non-descript Toyota pickup.

  “Yeah, he texted me he was already here.”

  “Maybe he’ll try to take you back to the meadow. Want me to, like, follow you and take a picture of you making out with him? I’ll post it, and then Mason will be jealous!”

  “Oh my God, no paparazzi, please! And anyway, I’m sure Mason wouldn’t even care.”

  I had no idea if Mason would be interested in the news that I’d moved on. Even though Ang had seen him making out with Sophie barely a day after he kissed me, she still insisted that Mason was in love with me and the two of us were meant to be.

  Whatever. He blew that chance.

  We dumped our firewood on the pile near one of the picnic tables and joined Kaitlin and some other sophomores sitting on sun-bleached logs that were set up in a crescent shape around the fire. My eyes darted from one knot of kids to the next until I found Andy with some juniors and seniors near the water’s edge.

  “Did you see your brother?” Kaitlin said, and laughed.

  I winced. “Oh God, what did he do now?”

  I spotted Bradley standing in his boxers, trying to wring out his soaked jeans. He hooted about how cold the water was. Some junior girls were watching him and giggling. I suddenly wished the beach was quicksand, so it would suck me down and away from my idiot brother.

  “He’s so funny!” Kaitlin said. I ground my teeth, and Ang gave me a sympathetic look.

  I felt someone sit down next to me and turned to see Andy’s grinning face. Kaitlin giggled.

  “Um, hi,” I said.

  I could feel Ang and Kaitlin watching us. I couldn’t believe Andy was sitting next to me and a bunch of other sophomore girls at the cove. I felt my cheeks heating up. Where was that damn quicksand? I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered a little, more out of nerves than chill.

  “Hey. Are you cold?” He scooted closer so we were touching from thigh to hip.

  My heart took off at a gallop. Part of me was waiting for the cameras, for the cheesy reality-show host to pop out of the trees and let me in on the big joke. But Andy just sat there waiting for my response. He didn’t look nearly as glassy-eyed as before, and the goofy grin was nowhere in sight. He actually seemed concerned about my well-being.

  “No, I’m okay.”

  “Oh.” Andy rubbed his forearm a bunch of times and cleared his throat. “I just wanted to come over and see you. We should go for a walk later.”

  “Okay, yeah.” My face burned clear to the tips of my ears. A walk? That could only mean one thing: the meadow. And he actually seemed a little … nervous? Shy?

  He sat a second longer, gazing the fire and rubbing his arm, and then finally stood up. “Okay, later then,” he said softly.

  “You are so lucky, Corinne,” Kaitlin crooned as soon as Andy was out of earshot. “You know he’s just waiting until it gets dark, and then…”

  I buried my face in my hands. It was all just so awkward. I wasn’t even that interested in Andy.

  “Let’s get sticks for marshmallows,” Ang said. She stuck her hand in her bag and pulled out a package of jumbo marshmallows with a flourish. I telegraphed a thank you to her as I dropped my bag next to hers on a nearby picnic table.

  We fanned out to hunt for suitable marshmallow sticks, and I was glad to have a moment away from the fire and the rest of the cove crowd. I inhaled the smell of the forest, a mixture of pine, dirt, mildew, and crisp air that made me feel more at ease. I stuck a small pinecone in my jacket pocket to toss in the fire later. I liked to watch the pitch in pinecones ignite in little blue and orange flashes.

  I found my marshmallow stick and picked bark off the end while I walked back to join Ang and Kaitlin. Without warning, Sophie appeared in my path. Startled, I dropped my stick.

  Her hands were on her hips, and her lips pursed together in a pout.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m taking my stick back to the fire so I can toast a marshmallow,” I said slowly, as if she had mental issues.

  Sophie leaned forward and jabbed her polished forefinger at me. “I saw you at the bake sale today. And I’ve seen how all the other guys are acting. None of them ever looked at you twice until, like, a few hours ago.”

  “So what?” I said. My hand closed around the pinecone in my pocket, and I felt the sharp ends dig into my palm. “It’s really none of your business, so get out of my way.”

  I picked up my stick and brushed past her, but she followed me.

  “Well I don’t think they’re just suddenly interested in you, Corinne.” She said my name like it was poison on her tongue. She eyed me for a moment, turned, and strutted back to the bonfire like she owned the place.

  I joined the girls near the fire, and Ang handed me a marshmallow.

  “What was that all about?” she whispered.

  “I’ll tell you later,” I muttered, aware that Kaitlin a couple other girls were trying to pretend they weren’t eavesdropping.

  I decided to try to forget about Sophie for the moment. It was an amazing night, and I just wanted to chill. Andy and a couple other guys joined us after a while, and I toasted him a perfect, golden marshmallow. The guys made short work of the rest of the bag, daring each other to eat marshmallows singed to the point of ashen lumps.

  Andy lay back on the sand and groaned. “I feel like I’m gonna puke.”

  “Please go over there in the bushes if you have to do that. This is a no-hurl zone.” I swung my arm around, indicating a large area around me, and laughed.

  He chuckled and jumped to his feet, grabbed my hand, and pulled me up. “C’mon,” he said, his eyes mischievous.

  My pulse jumped and I could feel the flush returning to my cheeks. I turned just in time to see Ang covering her mouth with her hand, holding in a giggle explosion, no doubt.

  Andy led me down the path that curved back toward the meadow, and we stopped under a huge Ponderosa pine. I inhaled the vanilla-resin aroma of the tree and tilted my head back to look at the stars. A pink stripe of lig
ht streaked overhead and disappeared beyond the tree line. People in Tapestry always said it was good luck to see these lights. Sometimes in late June, colored lights would play across the sky all night. No one had ever been able to explain why the lights were visible only from the cove or the meadow.

  A yellow-green blob shimmered above the tree line and then winked out of sight.

  “Look!” I pointed skyward. “Twilight rainbow. Did you see it?”

  That probably made me sound like I was about eight years old. But I suspected that Andy was about to kiss me, and I was maybe more than a little nervous about it.

  My thoughts skittered back to the Winter Solstice Festival and standing on the corner of Main and Wild Rose with Mason. I tried to push the memory of that kiss out of my mind.

  Andy looked up and searched the sky. “Damn, must have missed it.”

  He inhaled deeply, looked down at me with a happy half-smile, and circled his arms around my waist. I could feel my heart thudding away in my chest, and I wondered if he could feel it, too.

  “How come we never talked before?” he asked.

  “It’s a big school.” I shrugged one shoulder. Even though Tapestry was a smaller town, Tapestry High was the only high school in the county, and it had nearly two thousand students. But really, Andy and I had never spoken to each other because we traveled in completely different social circles.

  “Well, it’s not that big,” he said. He got quiet for a moment and sucked in his lower lip. “And … I always thought you were kind of hot. I mean—sorry, that sounded stupid. You just seemed different. And well, yeah—hot. I’ll stick with hot.”

  He lowered his eyes to the vicinity of my chin, then met my gaze with a tiny shrug.

  “Oh … well, thanks,” I said, feeling lame. It was all I could do to stand there act like this was just a normal event in the course the life of Corinne Finley. I felt like I’d entered some alternate universe.

  He bent down and kissed me. I could taste marshmallow on his lips. And, it was okay. I mean, Andy didn’t fumble or burp or try to jam his tongue down my throat or anything, but it felt nothing like it had with Mason.

  We walked back to the beach and sat on the sand against one of the logs. A few other couples huddled up against the chilly air. Ang stood in a little circle with some girls, but her eyes followed Toby Ellison’s every move.

  With Andy’s arm slung around my shoulders, we watched the fire, and I zoned out on the glow, trying to decide if I really could forget about Mason.

  My phone buzzed with a text from Ang: Ready to go?

  I glanced toward Ang’s group and noticed Toby was gone. I suppressed a grin. No Toby, and Ang was suddenly ready to split.

  I stood up and said a quick goodbye to Andy—I didn’t want him trying to kiss me in front of everybody—and met Ang at the table where we’d left our bags. She waited until we were picking our way up the dirt road in the dark before beginning her barrage.

  “So? Did he kiss you? Did you make out? Do you like him?”

  I laughed. “A little.”

  “A little which? C’mon, I’m your best friend!” she wailed.

  “A little … all of it,” I said, and then sighed. “It was okay. I mean, it was fun. But not, not like…” Not like Mason.

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  We walked the rest of the way to the car in silence.

  “Want to hear something weird?” Ang asked as she pulled onto the highway. “I swear there were a bunch of guys watching you all night. Like, really watching your every move.”

  “Really? You make it sound seriously creepy. “Who?”

  She named six different guys, including Jordan. A senior, three sophomores, and two juniors. I frowned and ran over the list of names in my head. They didn’t seem to have anything in common with each other, or with me for that matter, and yet … I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I knew something was there.

  Ang dropped me off at ten until midnight. I tiptoed downstairs to my room, peeled off my smoky clothes, and pulled on boxer shorts and a t-shirt. I went online to see who’d posted pics from the cove, but there wasn’t much to look at. By the time I climbed into bed, it was well past midnight, and Bradley still wasn’t home. Typical.

  Just as I began to drift into unconsciousness, my eyes popped open. I suddenly realized all the guys Ang named had been my bake sale customers. I was almost positive they’d all bought blue-frosted petits fours from me.

  || 4 ||

  I LAY AWAKE FOR another half hour, going over the list of guys again and again, but couldn’t think of any good reason why they’d be connected or suddenly interested in me.

  When my tired eyes finally closed, my dead grandmother stood before me. She held a glass bottle of white liquid, and pushed it at me.

  “You must give this to Aunt Dorothy,” Grandma Doris said. Her blue eyes looked strained with urgency. “Corinne, focus.”

  “Grandma Doris.” I felt a lump form in my throat. “I miss you so much. I—”

  “There’s no time for that, dear. Listen to me. You must remember. Give Aunt Dorothy some of the liquid from this bottle.”

  “But Aunt Dorothy is…” I tried to remember. There was something wrong with my Great-Aunt Dorothy, Grandma Doris’s twin sister, but I couldn’t quite remember what it was. “She’s gone … or sick. I don’t understand what you want me to do!”

  “In the pyxis. The box.” Grandma Doris spoke slowly and clearly. “Get the white bottle. Aunt Dorothy needs some of the liquid in the white bottle. Now repeat it back to me.”

  “The white bottle,” I said obediently. “I need to give the white liquid to Aunt Dorothy. But Grandma Doris, I—”

  But even as I spoke, Grandma Doris faded, and the cove materialized before me. The bonfire blazed high into the night, but I stood alone on the beach. Twilight rainbows of every color raced across the sky, one after the other. The effect was dizzying.

  A low rumbling echoed off the mountains, and trying to locate the source of the sound, I turned toward the lake. My breath caught at the sight of a dense, dirty-looking wall of fog billowing over the water toward me at an alarming speed. Panic surged through my veins as I imagined the fog overtaking me, filling my nose and ears, creeping into my lungs, soaking into my blood, and eating me from the inside out.

  My heart pounding in my ears, I whipped around, desperate for some way to protect myself. I turned to the bonfire, thinking the heat of the flames might stave off the fog. But the fire ring was dark, and Mason stood in the center of it.

  “Mason? When did you get back to—” I started to ask, but he grabbed my shoulder and pushed me behind him, shielding me with his body.

  He held me with one arm and lifted the other arm, palm out. A burst of blue-white light swelled out from Mason’s hand, and for a second, I could make out the silhouette of a person in the fog before I squeezed my eyes shut against the painful intensity of the light. When I opened them, after-images bounced around in my vision. Both the fog and Mason were gone.

  I tried to sit up in bed, groggy and struggling against the sheets twisted around me. I untangled myself and groped around for my pillow, which I’d pushed onto the floor. Nestled back in bed, I took a deep breath, and blew out slowly.

  I knew it was just a dream, but it clung to me. My mouth felt gritty, as if I’d tasted the sooty fog, and the smell of Mason’s shampoo filled my nose.

  There was something from my dreams I wanted to remember. Grandma Doris. What was it? Something about Aunt Dorothy. I closed my eyes, trying to force the memory back to the forefront of my mind, but it was no use.

  I reached for my jacket, which was hanging on the back of my desk chair next to the bed, and pulled out the pinecone I’d picked up at the cove. I cupped it in my palms and inhaled its woody, resinous smell, and some of the tension melted from my body. Curled into a ball, with my blankets pulled tight around me, I stared at the window and waited for the gray light of daybreak.

  * * *

 
When I woke up, my head felt like a balloon stuffed with dirty cotton balls. Still in my t-shirt and boxers, I sat on my bed against a wall of pillows and fired up my laptop. I wanted to check for updates about the bonfire last night, to see if anyone had said anything about me and Andy or posted any pictures. I browsed for several minutes and didn’t find anything of interest, but that didn’t mean someone hadn’t messaged Mason. For all I knew, he might already think Andy and I were a couple.

  I logged into my e-mail account, and saw a new message from Mason.

  Hey Corinne, The project is going to finish ahead of schedule, so we’ll be coming home soon. I really wish you’d write back. I miss you. Mason

  P.S. Had a strange dream about you last night. We were at the cove, but it was like something out of a Stephen King book.

  No mention of me and Andy, but … Mason had had a dream about me and the cove? The image of him warding off the fog flashed through my mind, and a crawly sensation slithered up the back of my neck. He knew everyone would be hanging out at the cove this weekend, and that’s probably why he had a dream about it. It had to be coincidence.

  He’d attached a photo of him and his family. I opened it and leaned closer to the screen. The Flints had spent the past few months in Africa, helping build wells for small villages. In the photo, it looked like they were standing in front of one of the wells they’d built. In the picture, he was nearly as tall as his dad. Up until a couple of years ago, Mason and I had always been about the same height. His face looked more angular than I remembered, too. He looked so much older than how I always pictured him. I wondered if I’d look different to him, too.

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about Mason coming back to Tapestry. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to think about it, actually.

  I logged out of my email and went back to surfing for updates from Tapestry High students. Sophie’s profile featured a pic of herself draped over Hunter Smith, her current victim/boyfriend. I browsed the profiles of the guys Ang had listed last night.

  I grabbed my phone and typed a text to Ang: I remembered something last nite. All those guys u said were staring at me bought blue cakes at the bake sale. ???