The Fire and the Veil (Veronica Barry Book 2)

by Sophia Martin

  “Nice,” Shelby said, and she sat down cross-legged on the floor at the foot of the bed, taking the joint from Rich.

  Mos tried to sit as close to her as he could.

  Lola groaned. “This is boring,” she said.

  “Shut up and take a hit,” Maricela said.

  “We should go out,” Lola said.

  “The last time we went out you nearly got smeared across the freeway, Lola,” Shelby said with a wicked grin. “Maybe you should just slow down and chill.”

  Lola took a step closer to her and grabbed the joint from her fingers. She put it to her mouth and dragged in the smoke. “Happy?” she said as she let the air leave her lungs.

  Shelby gazed up at her, still grinning. “Absolutely.”

  Lola shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Here,” she said, handing the joint to Mos.

  Lola looked from him to Shelby, and then left the room. She walked back down the hallway, feeling faintly dizzy and loose from the hit. When she reached the doorway to the living room, she stopped and peered in. Caitlin was gone, but the boy still sat on the couch. Lola didn’t wait. She marched across the room and around to the front of the couch. She swung a leg over his knees and sat on his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him.

  She kept her eyes open, watching the doorway to the hall, though. In a moment, Caitlin appeared. Lola closed her eyes and kissed the boy some more.

  “You fucking bitch!” Caitlin screamed. She yanked Lola’s arm, her nails digging in to Lola’s bicep. “You cunt whore! Get off him!”

  Lola allowed Caitlin to drag her off the boy, and she began to laugh. “Couldn’t keep him for five minutes, bitch,” she said.

  “Fuck you, you whore!” Caitlin screamed, and she brought her arm back to swing at Lola. Lola lurched out of the way and used her momentum to punch Caitlin in the stomach. Then she stepped back and brought her fist around, smashing Caitlin in the jaw.

  “What are you doing?” shouted the boy. “Stop! Fucking stop!”

  Caitlin’s tried to scratch Lola’s face. Lola grabbed her wrists and thrust them to the side, jerking her head forward in an attempt to head-butt Caitlin. Caitlin dodged.

  “Stop it!” the boy shouted.

  “Hey!” cried Rich, who had come through the hall. “Hey! Knock it off!”

  Caitlin made an animal sound of rage. She brought her knee up and caught Lola on her right side, bashing her ribs. Lola released Caitlin’s wrists with one hand, using the free arm to elbow her in the face. Caitlin cried out.

  “Lola, stop!” Shelby yelled. “Stop!”

  “She attacked me!” Lola said through clenched teeth. “Imma fucking smash in her teeth!”

  Lola felt hands around her waist, dragging her away from Caitlin. The boy jumped behind Caitlin, grabbing her arms and keeping her from going after Lola.

  “Let me go!” Lola said, looking around at who held her. It was Shelby.

  “Stop it,” Shelby said in a low voice.

  All of the fight left Lola, and she drooped in Shelby’s grasp.

  “God, what the fuck,” Rich said.

  Mos, Maricela, and the other boy stood in the hall, watching.

  Caitlin began to sob. She turned and buried her face in the chest of the boy who held her. Lola watched her, hating her.

  “Can I let you go?” Shelby asked. “Are you going to go after her again?”

  “I ought to shut her up for good,” Lola muttered. “Now all she’s going to do is whine some more.”

  Caitlin looked round, her blue eyes blazing. But then she seemed to remember the boy’s part in the incident, and she pushed away from him. “Don’t touch me,” she said, backing away from him, and turning to make space between her and Lola. “I’m outta here.” Caitlin let herself out of the front door, slamming it behind her.

  “Finally,” Lola whispered.

  Shelby let her go.

  “What the fuck happened?” Rich asked.

  Lola looked straight at Caitlin’s boy, cocking her head to the side and crossing her arms over her chest.

  “Nothing,” he said, shifting uncomfortably. “Caitlin attacked Lola. Like she said.”

  “Jesus,” Rich said.

  “Yeah, what really happened?” Maricela called from the hallway. She entered the room, giving Lola a disdainful once-over. “I bet Caitlin didn’t just attack her out of nowhere.”

  “Shut up, Maricela,” Lola said.

  “I bet she did something. Probably got on top of Doug or something, huh? What’d you do, wait until Caitlin went to the toilet?” Maricela asked.

  “Fuck you,” Lola said.

  “Lola,” Shelby said. “You didn’t do that, right?”

  Lola looked around at all of them, her mouth clamped shut, her chin jutting out.

  “Oh, fuck me,” Shelby said, rolling her eyes.

  “And what about him?” Lola demanded, pointing at the boy named Doug. “He didn’t exactly push me offa him! If he was her boyfriend he woulda pushed me offa him!”

  “Whatever,” Doug said.

  “Doug’s a man-ho,” Mos said. “Everybody knows that.”

  “So Caitlin shoulda known that, too,” Lola said, but her voice lacked conviction.

  “Why’d you have to do that, Lola?” Shelby asked.

  Lola gazed at her. “You know why.”

  Shelby shook her head, looking down at the floor. “You gotta learn to let things go.”

  “Fuck this shit,” Lola said, and she charged out of the door and into the night.

  ~~~

  Veronica blinked open her eyes, staring into the darkness of her bedroom. “God,” she muttered. Why was she seeing all of this? She didn’t know what to make of Lola. Was she going to hurt Caitlin? Worse than she had? She said she wanted to shut her up for good. Did that mean she intended to kill her? Was Veronica supposed to keep that from happening?

  She sat up and felt around on the bedside table for the bottle of water she always kept there. She had a long drink. Then she lay back down, sliding her feet under the covers carefully so as not to disrupt the two cats, who each curled at a bottom corner of the bed.

  Veronica wished she wasn’t alone. Or at least, the only human there. She wished Daniel was there beside her. She could roll over and wrap an arm around him, or lay her head in the crook of his arm. Right now, she couldn’t shake the awful feeling of being Lola—the stark, bitter reality of Lola’s life. She didn’t want to be Lola. She didn’t want to live like Lola, angry and surrounded by trash and obscenities.

  Lying there in her bed, the wisps of the dream still clinging to her, she found it hard to remember what was beautiful in her own life. All she felt was Lola’s hatred and bitterness. What had made her that way? What happened to her? Why was she so empty?

  Would she really go after Caitlin again? She hated her enough. Would she try to hurt her? Kill her? Was that why the spirits were letting Veronica see into Lola’s life? So she would know what Lola wanted to do? Maybe they wanted Veronica to stop her, but Veronica couldn’t imagine how. And she couldn’t bring the details of a dream to Lloyd Fisher and expect him to take it seriously. Besides, she didn’t know what Lola intended to do, not really. She wasn’t sure Lola knew. Veronica thought back to what Khalilah had said about Jahid and Hamza Ahmad. She didn’t know that either of them would actually try to kill Amani—so how could she report them to the police? All she really knew was that Jahid had witnessed the abduction of his daughter. Likewise, Veronica didn’t know that Lola intended to hurt Caitlin or to try to kill her. All she really knew was that she hated her enough to pull that stunt with Doug. If Lola wanted to kill Caitlin, wouldn’t she have done something more direct? And if all of this was because of jealousy over Doug, hadn’t she won this round?

  Veronica groaned. She reached over and hit the light on the alarm clock. 5:56. Well, she had to get up in a half an hour anyway. Might as well have an early start to the day. She sighed and rested her head back in her pillow, giving her
body one last chance to go back to sleep. But the dream still clung to the edges of her mind, and the darkness wasn’t helping. She rolled over and flicked on the light.

  The paintings of the angels surrounded her. For a moment, they comforted her as they used to, and she didn’t feel so alone. But then that faded. They just weren’t as comforting, now that she knew that the angel was her mother. She had too many twisted up feelings about her mother. She hadn’t known, all of these years, that the angel she painted over and over was Alcina Barry, the woman who’d abandoned her when she was four. It was one of the things Cybele revealed to her when Veronica was recovering in the hospital.

  It probably contributed more than her broken arm did to the way she’d slowed down on the commissioned painting. She just didn’t enjoy spending hours on a painting of her angel anymore. Instead of thinking about the colors and angling her brushstrokes just right to get the effect she desired, she’d think about her mother—what little she knew of her. She’d try to remember. She’d wonder if there were clues to her memories in the completed paintings on the walls.

  More than once, she considered taking them down, but where would she store them? She didn’t want to get rid of them. But she did wish she could stop looking at them for a while.

  She knew they meant that Alcina was out there, watching her, by her side. When Veronica had fallen down in the woods on the steep hillside by the American River, when she and the others were searching for Angie and Grant Slecterson, she passed out from the pain of breaking her arm. When she woke, or perhaps just before she did, her angel—her mother—had appeared to her, floating in the most astonishing glow of light. It was amazing, and comforting, Veronica remembered. But soon enough, Alcina vanished, and the pain returned, and then Veronica was on her own. She had to get up and find her way out of the woods, and that was when she found Angie and Grant. She’d seen that he was going to kill Angie, and watched as Daniel shot him. It was an awful, awful memory. And where had her mother been then? No, Alcina Barry had abandoned her in life, and Veronica didn’t think she could be counted on to stick around in death, either.

  Veronica got out of bed and headed for the bathroom. She’d just have to finish the current painting, she told herself, and then figure out what to do with the rest. Then find a new subject to paint.

  She’d pretty much only painted angels since she was five years old. But lately she stopped doodling them, and she started trying out flowers and cats and dogs. She’d also just done some abstract designs in the margins of her BTSA notebook at the last meeting. Maybe that was the key—go abstract until she found something concrete she wanted to spend time painting.

  Veronica turned on the shower and stepped in after a moment.

  Maybe Daniel’s face, she mused. Yes, that would be nice. She always admired the sharp planes of his face, the angles of the corners of his eyes, the slope of his eyelids. The delicate lines of the hairs of his eyebrows.

  Veronica stood under the hot water, and she began to feel more like herself again. Maybe the angel paintings needed to go, but they had succeeded in distracting her from the nightmare of Lola’s life. They’d done so by bringing up her own painful issues with her mother, but she’d take what she could get if it meant she could shake the arid bitterness of Lola’s mind.

  Chapter 8

  Veronica walked as quickly as she could through the crowded hallways of ERHS. Today all Veronica had was two sections of French I, so she would not see Lola or Angie. She was relieved about the former—she did not think she would be able to interact normally with Lola after seeing what she’d gotten up to the night before. After school Veronica really had to get through some of her grading or she’d never make it when Friday came and grades were due.

  “Miss Barry! Miss Barry!”

  Veronica looked around, for a moment thinking Lola was calling her, but it wasn’t her. It was Shona Little, one of her best French III students. Shona was an African American girl, very sporty, with hundreds of tiny braids twisted on top of her head in a bun. She wore a track uniform. Another African American girl was with her—she was dressed in jeans and a fancy pink hoodie with a fur-lined hood and sparkly designs.

  “Miss Barry,” Shona said as she got through the crowd to Veronica’s side, her friend in tow.

  “Bonjour, Shona,” Veronica said.

  “Bonjour,” Shona said with a grin. “Voilà ma amie Regina Carter.”

  “Mon amie,” Veronica said.

  “But she’s a girl! Elle est une fille!” Shona protested.

  “Yes, but ‘amie’ starts with a vowel. You can’t have a word ending in a vowel in front of it. You know that, Shona, we covered that in French I.”

  “Oh…” Shona said, rolling her eyes. “Anyway! I needed to ask you for a favor, Miss Barry. Please please please please please…” she said, smiling widely and grasping her hands together under her chin. Regina giggled a little and then imitated her.

  Veronica frowned. “What is it?”

  “You won’t just say yes?” Shona asked hopefully.

  Veronica snorted and shook her head. Shona was a good student and Veronica would probably agree to whatever it was, but you just never knew what the students would come up with. Even the good ones.

  “We need a room to make posters for our club,” Shona said.

  “What club?” Veronica asked, wondering if it was the Black Student Union. She had no issue with that, but she thought David Harris, one of the history teachers, was in charge of it.

  “It’s new, we haven’t decided on a name yet,” Shona said.

  “I think we should call it ‘Furry Heroes,’” Regina said.

  “Girl, that makes it sound like we don’t shave our legs,” Shona said with a grimace.

  “It does not! Did I say anything about legs?”

  “What is the club for?” Veronica asked.

  “We want to do things for animals,” Shona said. “Like, raise money for no-kill shelters, or have special days where we do volunteer work at the Humane Society. Or like, just go walk the puppies at the mall after school when I don’t have track.”

  Veronica smiled. “Well, you know I love animals.”

  “Yes, that’s why I thought of you!” Shona exclaimed. “So can we come in your room at lunch today?”

  Veronica had been hoping to leave right after her second section of French I, but she was tempted to let Shona and her friends come and have their club meeting—it was hard to turn down kids who wanted to help animals.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Yes!” Shona cried, turning to grin at Regina. “I told you she was cool!”

  “I need to do some grading while you’re in there, though, so it can’t get rowdy.”

  “Miss Barry, you know me,” Shona said, putting a firm hand on Veronica’s arm. “I will not let anybody get outta line.”

  Angie’s face popped into Veronica’s head. Veronica peered at Shona. “I have a condition,” she said gravely.

  “Oh here we go,” said Regina.

  “Girl, quit trippin’,” Shona told her. She turned back to Veronica. “What is your condition, Miss Barry?”

  “There’s a new student,” Veronica said. “I know her mom, and we’d both like to see her make some friends at this school. If she agrees to come to your meeting, will you girls take her under your wing for me?”

  “What does that mean?” Regina asked skeptically.

  “Oh, no, I feel you, Miss Barry,” Shona said nodding. “You want us to be nice to this girl, make sure she’s included in the meeting, maybe look out for her at lunch or something?”

  “Exactly,” Veronica said. “Can I count on you?”

  “Who is she?” Regina asked.

  “Angela Dukas, do you know her?” Veronica asked.

  Both girls shook their heads.

  “Like I said, she’s new. I doubt you’d have run into her, you’re both juniors, right?”

  “Yeah,” Shona said.

  “She’s a sophomor
e,” Veronica said. “She’s a friend of mine’s daughter, and she’s kind of been through a rough patch recently. She didn’t do anything wrong, but things haven’t been easy, you know what I mean?”

  “Is that why she had to switch schools?” Shona asked.

  “Yep,” Veronica nodded.

  “Okay,” Shona said, looking at Regina for confirmation. “We’ll look out for her.”

  Regina nodded. “Easy peasy.”

  “Then you have a deal, girls. See you at lunch.”

  Now Veronica had to find Angie and invite her. She only had ten minutes before class started, and she had hoped to have time to make copies. Luckily, she had a TA in both French I classes. She could have the TA in the first class do the copies, which meant if she hurried, Veronica could talk to Angie before school started.

  Veronica jogged from building D to building A, over to one of the secretaries whose desk was near the copiers.

  “Hi Marisol,” Veronica said, giving the woman her best help-me smile. “Busy morning?”

  Marisol raised her eyes to heaven. “Busy doesn’t begin to cover it,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I need to find a student before class, and I was hoping you’d look her up for me.”

  “You know, you can pull up her info on your computer,” Marisol said, but she was already typing. “What’s her name?”

  “Dukas, Angela.”

  “Angela Dukas is in room… B5. Mr. Lopez-Rivera’s class.”

  “Thank you, Marisol!” Veronica said and bolted.

  B-hall was notoriously difficult to cross between classes, and it reminded Veronica with a pang of her own school days, when navigating a packed hallway had seemed like an insurmountable ordeal, at times. As a teacher it was a little easier. When she demanded that people let her through, they generally obeyed.

  At last she reached Lopez-Rivera’s door. It was a lab class, but she wasn’t sure which—Lopez-Rivera taught all of the lab sciences. She opened his door and stuck her head into his class, fingers crossed that Angie was already there. Veronica was in luck. She spotted her sitting at the third row of lab stations from the door. She waved to Lopez-Rivera, who was still setting up at the board—something Veronica needed to get to her class and do immediately. She hurried across to where Angie sat and crouched near her.