Valkyrie Symptoms

by Ingrid Paulson

“Better question: What’s right about it?” she replies.

  “We’d just be there to, you know, facilitate,” I say.

  “What are you up to?” She puts one hand on my arm. Only it’s not an intimate gesture. She’s just trying to make me look at her. All the nerve endings on my skin start firing like crazy.

  “Making two people happy?” I venture.

  “No. You either owe Jack or want him to do something,” she says. “You’d trade my friend like a baseball card for it. But you know what? I’m not going to let you or Jack get away with this.”

  When she puts it like that, I feel like crap. “Do they even make baseball cards anymore?” It’s the first lame thing out of my mouth.

  She waves one hand at me as she walks away. “When you’re ready to actually talk, call me.”

  This isn’t going how I’d planned. Then again, things never do with Ells. Most girls would get all caught up in the excitement of a secret crush. Not Ells. She has to examine everything from every single angle. Something I’m suddenly wishing I’d stopped to do myself.

  I lean on the deck railing and look out into the night. Maybe I should just tell Ellie the whole story.

  By the time I decide to come clean and step back through the sliding glass door, she’s on the far side of the room, already making her way toward the door. Ellie’s the master of dropping by a party without lingering.

  But she stops along the wall. She’s talking to someone. I crane my neck but still can’t see who it is. Then whatever she’s saying gets animated. Really animated. She waves her hand. Then she staggers back a step.

  Like someone shoved her.

  Suddenly I’m the one shoving, making my way through the party. I’ve picked only a handful of fights in my life, but we are about to meet lucky number six.

  Ellie shouts something. You can hear her over the music. It’s so out of character, my whole body tenses up. Whatever’s happening is bad. Heads are starting to turn.

  Then I see Jack, backed up against the wall. Hands up in surrender.

  Ellie takes one step back. Plants her feet.

  Then her hand flies. She lands a fist square on the nose. Graham must have taught her that, because it’s a flawless punch.

  Screw his uncle. I grab Jack by the front of his shirt.

  “What did you do to her?”

  “Nothing.” Both his hands are still up, palms facing me. His shoulders are up to his earlobes. “We were talking, and she flipped out.”

  “Why don’t I believe you?” I ask, pushing him so the back of his head knocks into the wall. It’s a pretty cool move. “Oh, I remember.” I shake him, just hard enough to get his attention. “It’s because Ellie wouldn’t hurt a fly. Even when the fly deserves it.”

  “Dude, she attacked me,” Jack says.

  I turn to hear Ellie’s side of it. Only she’s just staring at us both, wide-eyed. I’ve never seen her so scared.

  “Let go.” Jack knocks my hand away. I let him. “And you can forget about my uncle.”

  Everyone is watching. A couple of guys are laughing. Ellie turns and practically sprints to the front door. She fumbles with the handle but finally manages to swing it open. I start to take off after her.

  “What’s the hell is going on?” It’s Graham. I really want to handle this one myself. He totally overreacts when Ellie is involved. Plus he’ll give me hell for sleeping through that meeting. “What about his uncle?” His forehead creases. For a smart guy, sometimes he looks downright dense.

  “It’s nothing.” I say.

  “Your sister came after me,” Jack says. “Halloway got her riled up or something.”

  “My sister?” Graham repeats. “My sister, Ellie?”

  “No, the sister you keep locked in the attic,” I say.

  Graham shoots me a look. He’s annoyed. “Tuck’s kidding.”

  Like people wouldn’t know that. Still, everyone laughs.

  “We let her out ages ago,” he adds.

  He’s good with a crowd. The tension in the room evaporates. People start going back to whatever they were doing.

  “Look, Graham, I’ll talk to Ellie.”

  “No, I should go. Make sure she’s okay.” But I can tell he doesn’t want to leave. If I give him an out, it’ll blunt his irritation when I tell him the full story later. Plus this is all my fault, and I really want to talk to Ells.

  Two birds, one stone, and all that.

  “It’s almost the end of your senior year. Go have fun. I’ve got it.”

  He looks at me for a long moment. But then someone calls his name. Distracting him.

  “You sure?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “Thanks,” he says, and claps me on the back. “And don’t tease her about this. She’s been acting a little funny all week. Like her temper’s on a hair trigger.”

  And here I’d thought it was just me. It bothers me more than a little that Graham has noticed it too.

  ELLIE IS OUTSIDE sitting on the curb, elbows propped on her knees, her chin resting on both palms.

  “Need a ride home?”

  “Yes.”

  But she keeps sitting there.

  “Let’s go.”

  “You’re taking me?”

  “It’s a pretty standard way of offering,” I say. “I wasn’t asking for informational purposes. Fascinating as the answer was.”

  She looks up at me. She’s been crying. You’d only notice the puffiness around her eyes if you knew her well.

  “I figured you were offering to find me one.”

  “I was, and I did,” I say. “I run a full-service operation.”

  She doesn’t smile.

  “You gonna tell me what that was all about?” I sit down next to her.

  A car goes past and into a driveway down the street. A man steps out and glares back at the party, hands resting on the hood of his car. He pulls out a phone.

  He’s totally calling the cops.

  “Let’s go,” I say. I offer her my hand, and she takes it. But she hesitates before getting up, like she thinks I’m messing with her or something. “We’ll talk on the way.”

  “Is Graham mad at me?”

  “Why?”

  She stops walking. “For acting like a psycho at a party. For embarrassing him.”

  “No,” I say. “We just want to know what Jack did to you.”

  “You already know.” Her voice gets soft. Sure, Ellie’s shy around other people. But not around me. Something’s seriously off. For once, I don’t know what to say. “I was mad at you. So I confronted Jack. Emma doesn’t want to go out with him, so he tries to use us to trick her? It’s pathologically creepy.”

  She’s right. I can’t believe I got her into this.

  “I don’t know what came over me,” she says. “It’s like anger took control. And this weird little voice was like Make him pay.” She says the last part in a harsh voice that doesn’t sound like her at all.

  “Sure, blame it on the voices,” I say. “Next you’ll blame them for that haircut last summer. With the weird bangs.”

  She slaps my arm. Hard. How does she always hit right on the funny bone?

  “What’s the deal with Jack’s uncle?” she asks as we reach my car. “He’s a college soccer coach, right?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  She looks at me sidelong, and I know she’ll do nothing of the sort.

  “Get in,” I say. “Or are the voices calling you a cab?”

  She scowls. But gets in. And I get this weird feeling in my stomach. It’s Friday night. All my friends are inside. Two different girls at that party flirted like they meant it.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  I’m finally exactly where I wanted to be—I wouldn’t change a thing. I look at Ellie and smile. She glares back at me. “Whatever you’re thinking, save it. The voices aren’t exactly happy with you either, Tucker Halloway.”

  But I know I’m forgiven because she tips her head back against the se
at and smiles at me.

  No, I wouldn’t change a thing at all.

  READ ON FOR THE BEGINNING OF ELLIE AND TUCK’S ADVENTURE IN

  1

  Half the school came to Graham’s eighteenth birthday party. People were everywhere—crowded around the pool, crawling all over the patio, and crammed onto the sofa in the family room. Even though they were within plain sight of my mother, almost everyone had added a little something to their Coke—or replaced the contents of the can altogether.

  That afternoon I was watching from a safe distance at the kitchen window, a whole story above the fray. I told myself I was up there to help keep the refreshments flowing, but truth be told, no one would note my absence. Even my friends were so focused on blending into Graham’s crowd, they’d probably forgotten I existed. After all, I wasn’t memorable in my own right. I was just Graham Overholt’s little sister—no different from his many other accessories. Something halfway between a lacrosse stick and a football helmet.

  I opened the sliding glass door and leaned on the deck railing outside the kitchen—one of the few places where I could watch my brother holding court without being seen. His height and shock of messy gold hair made him easy to spot. The group around him was laughing hard at something he’d said.

  At moments like that, it blew my mind that we were related. But maybe he’d have felt the same way if he had looked up just then, to see me peering out at the party from behind Mom’s potted geraniums like some senile old hermit. It was ironic that I got nervous at parties, given that I shared a gene pool with the most popular person on the planet. Then again, trying to live up to Graham’s legacy was what usually triggered the diamond-crushing pressure behind my eyes.

  It was pretty much impossible to say or do anything that wasn’t somehow eclipsed by or attributed to Graham. By the time I’d hit high school, I had gotten tired of trying.

  While I stood there playing Peeping Tom, Graham’s best friend, Tucker Halloway, snuck up behind me and pinched my arm. Hard. Then he took a long step forward and leaned on the railing right at my side. I turned my head, just enough that I could smell his breath.

  “What if my mom catches you?” I wrinkled my nose and glanced down at the silver flask dangling loosely in his grasp. “You’re screwed. She’ll absolutely call Colette.”

  “Can’t.” Tuck gave me a smug smile. “Colette has a migraine. She’s at the spa.”

  I raised an eyebrow at that. “Again? What’s this—her third time this week?”

  “Fifth,” Tuck said.

  Colette, Tucker’s mom, was from another planet. France, specifically. She was exotic, glamorous, and the only person I knew whose parties required cocktail attire. Or were catered, for that matter.

  Tuck never had food in the fridge, but he always had designer clothes on his back—his appearance was the one thing about him that held Colette’s interest. But that was no surprise. Tuck made pretty much every female pause and smooth down her hair.

  I had to resist the urge to do it myself as I turned to look him straight in those impassive gray eyes. I never could tell what he was thinking, even after knowing him my entire life. “Still, though, my mom will totally tell Colette,” I repeated lamely.

  Tuck grinned. That famous wicked smile. “Is that really supposed to scare me?” He put his arm around my shoulders and leaned in. I staggered a step to keep my balance. “Where do you think we got this in the first place? Colette sent me over here with a bottle of thirty-year-old scotch for Graham with, I quote, her compliments.”

  I had to admit that was a bit shocking, even for Colette. “Her compliments on what, exactly? Your ability to talk your way out of anything? My mom won’t let it slide this time. And don’t pretend her opinion doesn’t matter to you.”

  “True,” he conceded, sliding the flask into his back pocket. “But your opinion matters to me even more.” His tone was as silky smooth as his words, but I wasn’t taken in for a second. Well, maybe for a second—the exact second he turned to meet my gaze, a mere six inches from my face. When I looked at him that closely, at those white teeth framed by that deceptively innocent smile, I knew why Tucker Halloway excelled at getting whatever he wanted—especially from girls.

  And I couldn’t fathom why he was wasting that particular talent on me when bullying and mockery had always been the accepted currency between the two of us.

  “What do you want?” I asked, instantly wary. “Shouldn’t you be enjoying the party?”

  His smile curled up at one corner, proof positive he was up to no good.

  But then he did something weird. He just shrugged and stood there, looking back down at the party without saying anything at all. After a minute like that, his silence was more unnerving than his usual fast talk. Anyone who looked up at us then could definitely get the wrong idea.

  I glanced down toward the pool, half expecting to see an army of girls watching me, planning their revenge.

  “Are you leaning on me because you’re drunk?” I choked out, once the silence had stretched itself so far and thin it was fine dust coating my throat. Then I grasped for the only logical explanation. “If you’re trying to make some girl down there jealous, you should cozy up to someone else. No one would ever see me as a threat.”

  “Why do you say that?” His grin reappeared, settling in and preparing to stay for a while. And marking the return to familiar footing. The muscles in my shoulder started to uncoil.

  “Because of who I am.” Freshman year, Graham had thrown a boy out of a party for ignoring my polite hints. And he had interpreted my one-time plea for help as an open-door invitation into my love life. Or lack thereof, thanks to his constant interference. I wasn’t supposed to know that my touch carried a social stigma second only to leprosy, but word gets back to you eventually.

  “I meant, why play games? I get by just fine on looks alone.” His smile was blinding, driving his point home.

  “Don’t forget your charming personality,” I said, and my stomach flipped when his grin widened at my words. Making Tucker laugh was the best kind of rush. “I hear modesty is quite the aphrodisiac,” I added.

  “Listen to you.” He lifted those gray eyes to meet mine. “Graham would die if he heard sweet little Ellie use a word like that. And die all over again if he thought you knew what it meant.”

  “Lucky he’s not here,” I said.

  “Lucky indeed,” he said slowly. “For more than one reason.”

  His smile was so pretty, I almost sighed out loud. Fortunately, that was all it took to remind me of the manifold dangers of dropping my guard around Tuck. Because he was softening me up. It was a dance I knew all too well, even if he usually preferred a more direct assault with me.

  “What do you want?” I repeated.

  “Time with you,” he said sweetly. “Your undivided attention.”

  “Cut the crap, Tuck.”

  “Isn’t that the right answer?” he asked, all false innocence. Tipped with sarcasm. “Seems to me that’s what most girls want to hear.”

  “For the record, insincere compliments work better when you don’t point them out,” I said. “And I’m not most girls.”

  “Duly noted,” Tuck muttered before rallying and changing tactics. “I came to the right place, since you’re such a wise woman, seeing through all my subterfuge. I know you’ll be my savior.”

  Apparently his plan was to exasperate me into submission. “For the third and final time, what do you want, Tucker Halloway?”

  “Last name too? Bad sign. But here goes.” He leaned closer, knowing full well how destabilizing his proximity could be. Before I could help it, I was batting my eyelashes right back at him. A reflex as involuntary as the knee-jerk test at the doctor’s office.

  “Hypothetically speaking, if a person urgently needed the key to the cabinet in the china hutch, what would that person need to do to acquire it?”

  “Mug my mother,” I told him. “Hypothetically speaking, of course.” I held up one hand when
he started to object. “You have a flask. That should keep you busy for the afternoon. I’m not helping you steal more alcohol.”

  “Not everyone drinks scotch,” he said with a wink. “And Graham put me in charge of fun. Plus, I’ve already taken care of the hard part. We only need to put this back before anyone notices.” He held up a small glass bottle of gin that he pulled right out from the tangled green leaves of the geraniums. So that’s why he was really here, loitering around with me. He’d come to retrieve the bottle and was fortunate enough to find me standing here, a potential minion to do his dirty work. “You’ll be righting a wrong, so to speak,” he added. “Very noble of you, by the way.”

  “Impressive,” I said, and I meant it. “It’s not easy to get around my mother’s radar.”

  “Thank you, Ells,” he said. “It’s nice to be appreciated. Graham would have flipped. You, on the other hand, always understand.”

  “Graham doesn’t know?” As far as I knew, Tuck never kept secrets from Graham. I’d assumed Graham had sent him to me for damage control.

  “We don’t want to ruin his birthday with unnecessary stress,” Tuck said. “We owe it to him to handle this ourselves.”

  I wasn’t sure how Tuck’s problem had suddenly turned into a “we” situation. But no one was more persuasive than Tuck when he was in the zone like this. His smile. The sweet, beseeching look in his eyes. Like I really was the only girl on the planet who could give him what he needed. I couldn’t believe I was falling for it.

  Too many other girls had shown me where this particular road dead-ended.

  “Fine. I’ll make sure it’s unlocked tonight,” I heard myself say. “Just put it all back by morning, or we’ll both be screwed.” Then I wiggled free of his arm, ashamed when I immediately missed it. But it was pointless to let myself pretend he was there for any reason other than covering up his typically Tuckish crime.

  I expected him to leave now that his mission was a fait accompli. But he stood there a second longer, elbows propped on the railing, like he too needed a moment to catch his breath before plunging back downstairs.

  “What are you two doing up here?” Graham asked. We both jumped and turned in unison, a little too fast.