Panting, I fight every instinct, every fiber of my being. My arms tremble, muscles burn. It’s so hard with a little bit of myself released…. The rest of me wants out, too.
For once, it’s the reverse. Me, straining to be human, to bury my draki.
Not. Now. Not now! I toss my head, catch hair in my mouth and spit it out.
Voices overlap outside my stall, but I can’t process them. Can only fight down the swamping heat.
Then I hear it.
Him.
The one voice I would hear even in death. A rotting corpse in the ground, I would sit up and take notice. It reaches inside me, stokes the fire.
My fear intensifies.
“Go away!” I beg, my voice already thick, garbled with char and smolder. I work my jaw, my throat, try to stop the altering of my speech, the conversion of my vocal cords.
He can’t be here. Can’t see me like this.
“Are you all right?” Will beats on the door. “Did they hurt you?”
“Hurt her?” Brooklyn snarls. “Look at my arm! She lit me on fire! I barely even looked at her and she attacked me! Come out of there!” A kick shudders the stall door, throwing it against my trembling palms. I jerk back.
My face tightens, cheeks sharpening, stretching — bones dragging into position. I’m losing the fight. I stare down at my arms, moan at the sight of the blurring flesh. Ancient instinct grips me. I need more time.
Why did he have to be here now?
My wings push, just a little, just enough, and I hear my shirt rip.
The cotton tee loosens around my shoulders, slithers down my arms. My wings unfurl, the gossamer membranes stretch behind me, rippling, eager for flight. Not yet fully manifested, my wings are still strong enough to raise me in the air.
The soles of my feet lift up from the tiled floor.
I grasp the slippery sides of the stall, fighting to still the quivering sheets of red-gold. Heat courses through me. Struggling to demanifest, I clench my teeth against a scream. A groan spills through.
“Jacinda! Open the door!”
Then there’s another sound. A slam. Shoes squeal on tile. A jarring thump. The stall shakes all around me.
A breathless “Jacinda…”
His voice isn’t at the front of my stall anymore. I follow it. Heart in my throat, I blink tightly, and look up.
Will stares down at me over the top of the stall, his mouth parted in a small O of shock. His hazel eyes gleam dully, something within dying as he looks at me.
“Will,” I manage to get out in a breath of steam, my English barely intelligible. “Please.”
I don’t know his face. The beauty is the same but not. Different. Terrible.
Then he’s gone. I hear the beat of his footsteps, hard smacks striking the floor, fleeing the bathroom. Fleeing me.
According to the clock above the principal’s desk, we’re still in seventh period.
I’m sure it’s a mistake. I didn’t betray my kind, lose everything, every hope and chance—Will—in so little time.
The principal hangs up the phone and faces me again. His eyes are a harsh blue beneath bushy gray brows. I’m sure it’s the type of stare that inflicts fear in most adolescents, but it has little effect on me. Not when right now, somewhere nearby, Will is connecting all the puzzle pieces.
I sit numbly, turning to stare out his office window at the red-brown earth edging the quad, cracked and wrinkly like an old man’s skin beneath the baking sun.
I managed to fully demanifest before the staff arrived to investigate the commotion. Despite Catherine’s assertion that we didn’t start it, that Brooklyn and her friends attacked us, I’ve been suspended.
Several of the girls showed their burns as evidence against me. Even though they couldn’t find a lighter on me, the theory was that I flushed it down the toilet.
“Your mother’s on her way.”
I nod, knowing she would be home by now. She promised to pick us up this afternoon.
I’m wearing a red Chaparral T-shirt that smells like the cardboard box from which it emerged. My ripped shirt sits at the bottom of a wastebasket. Everyone assumes it got that way during the fight. Another assumption I’m willing to play along with.
“We have a strict no-tolerance policy at this school, Ms. Jones. No violence, no bullying.”
I nod, barely processing his words. In my mind, I see only Will’s face. Hear the fast beat of his footsteps as he bolted away. Think how he must hate me.
Gradually, it sinks in, the dread settling deeper and deeper with every passing moment. Something else has happened. Even worse than Will hating me — as terrible as that is.
I’ve done it. Exposed all draki. Revealed our greatest secret. The one thing that has protected us for centuries. The one thing the hunters and enkros don’t know. Can never know.
Now they do.
Well, at least one of them knows. All because of me. I close my eyes. My stomach cramps. Cold misery washes over me, prickling my flesh.
Apparently, the principal reads my misery. Mistakes its source. “I see you are contrite. Good. At least you appreciate the gravity of your actions. I expect you’ll behave yourself when you return to school. You’re new here, Ms. Jones, and you’re not starting out on a very good note. Think about that.”
I manage a nod.
“Good. You can wait for your mother outside.” He motions to the door. “I’ll speak to her about your suspension when she arrives.”
I rise and leave the room. My body moves slowly, weakly, too tired from the hard fight with itself. I sink into a chair and suffer the secretary’s narrow-eyed gaze. No doubt word has traveled that I’m some kind of bullying pyromaniac. Crossing my arms over my chest, I drop my head back on the wall and wait for Mom. Wait and worry.
Worry about what Will will do. Will he tell his dad? His cousins? Or will he simply confront me? How can I convince him that he didn’t see what he clearly saw? Especially after he caught me snooping around in his house.
I’m actually glad that I’m suspended. Glad that it will be a while before I have to face him and find out. Assuming he doesn’t show up on my doorstep, cavalry in tow, all eager to obliterate me.
School is over by the time Mom finishes talking with the principal. I’m relieved that when we step out of the front office, the building is deserted, the halls stripped bare.
Mom doesn’t speak to me as we exit the front door and head into the parking lot. She’s ominously silent. I shoot her a few glances, want to ask about her trip, want to know about the amber. Even now, after everything that has happened, I need confirmation that that piece of me is lost.
Tamra is waiting at the car. Red splotches mottle her creamy complexion, and I know it’s not because we’ve left her waiting in the sun. She’s been crying. Her red shorts and white T-shirt explain everything. Tryouts were this afternoon. In all the excitement, I almost forgot that today was her big day.
She wastes no time. “How could you?” Her face burns bright. “It didn’t matter what I did. I could have been a gold medalist gymnast and they wouldn’t have voted me in! Not after you attacked them!”
Air hisses from my lips in a pained breath. Little does she know I was trying to defend her. Nor does she realize just how evil those girls are. One look at her face though and I know she’s not in the mood to listen to any of that. “I’m sorry, Tamra, but—”
“Sorry?” She shakes her head, the motion bleak. “No matter where we go, it will always be this way.” She waves her arms, groping for words. “Why does everything have to be about you?”
I stare at her. Into eyes like mine, and wish I could answer. Wish I could deny the accusation, but I can’t.
Mom’s voice lashes us both. “This isn’t the place. Get in the car. Now.” She darts a nervous look around. We’re not unnoticed. A few people linger in the parking lot.
I slide into the back. I’m already buckled in when Mom slams her door.
“We don’t need you two going at it
in public.” She looks over her shoulder, keys in hand. “I already talked with the principal. Now do you want to explain what really happened?”
I bite my lip, release it with a gust of breath. There’s no good way to say it. “I got jumped in the bathroom.” I shrug like that’s an everyday occurrence. “So I manifested.”
My sister groans.
Mom’s shoulders slump. Turning, she starts the car. Warm air pants from the vents. “How bad?”
Because manifesting can only ever be bad. And I guess, this time, it was.
“I hid in the bathroom stall. They didn’t see. Or didn’t know what they saw. But I burned one of them. To get free.” I wince. “Maybe more than one of them.”
My sister is furious, shaking in her seat. “This is terrific.”
“Tamra,” Mom says, sighing deeply. Her nostrils flare in and out. “None of this has been easy for Jacinda. She’s held up better than we could have hoped.”
I start a little, wondering if she means that. I haven’t felt like I’m “holding up.” I feel like I’m barely hanging on.
Mom puts the car in drive and rolls out of the parking lot. “A week at home might be just what you need.”
“A week at home?” Tamra twists around to glare at me. “You were suspended?”
Mom continues, “Maybe I rushed you, Jacinda. Shouldn’t have stuck you in school right away. All of this…has been a lot.”
“I wanted to go to school,” Tamra’s voice rings out.
“I shouldn’t have expected you to change overnight. We’re almost through May. If you can just make it until summer, I’m sure by the time school starts again in the fall—”
“Can anyone hear me?” Tamra exclaims. “I lost something I really wanted today!” She beats a fist against her thigh.
Mom looks at her, startled.
Tamra shakes her head side to side, as if she just can’t understand. “Why is it always about Jacinda?”
Mom’s voice soothes. “Give it time, Tamra. Soon all this will be over—”
“You mean I’ll be dead,” I insert accusingly. “Why don’t you say what you mean? You mean that my draki will soon be dead. Can’t you ever stop? Quit acting like killing a part of me…killing me is this inevitable thing that you’re happy about. Why can’t you just accept me for me?”
Mom’s lips press into a thin line. She stares at the road.
Tamra drops her head against the back of her seat with a disgusted grunt.
And I realize both of them will never do that. They’re the only family I have left, but they may as well be strangers for how disconnected I feel from them.
I’ve lost Will. Exposed my draki. Alienated my family. Even my pride wants to break me.
I have nowhere to go, no escape.
But I can’t stay here.
My sister has a date that night. The same night Will was supposed to take me out for our official first date. The irony isn’t lost on me. Dinner. Movies. Popcorn. She’ll have that. Not me. I don’t expect Will to come now. Not after today. And yet when I hear the knock at the front door my heart skips and butterflies dance with hope in my belly.
I recognize her date from school as he stands nervously in our small living room, rubbing sweaty palms on his jeans. His name is Ben. Cute with nice eyes. Blond. Not quite as tall as Tamra and I are.
I try not to think about Will and what I’m going to do now that he knows. I can’t expect him to pretend he didn’t see me the way he did. Any moment he and his family could storm through the door and snatch me up. It’s the memory of the first time we met that keeps me going, that gives me hope. He let me go then. Certainly knowing me as he does now, he couldn’t bear to see me hurt, couldn’t turn me over to his family. Right? A family he wants no part of. That he hates.
Still, it’s a huge leap of faith. I should come clean with Mom so we can leave Chaparral, but I just can’t make myself say the words. Words that will take me forever away from him. Not that I have any hold on him. Especially now. Stupid, Jacinda. I can’t just do nothing. Can’t risk my family this way…can’t count on the fact that Will won’t become the hunter he was bred to be and expose me to his family.
As I watch Tamra and Ben from the window, I sit in silence, saying nothing.
I feel terrible. Not because Tamra’s on a date and I’m not, but because I didn’t know she’d even been asked out. I didn’t know she liked anyone. I can’t say anything to ruin this for her. At least not tonight. Maybe tomorrow…
She’s right. It’s always about me. That realization leads to another. One that makes tears spring to my eyes.
Soon it will only ever be about me.
When I leave this place, I have to go alone. Be alone. Maybe forever.
26
I’m awake when Tamra leaves for school on Monday morning, but I don’t get up. I pretend to be asleep as she dresses. When she and Mom are gone, I rise and make a cheese omelet like Dad used to make and eat it in front of a morning talk show with dull awareness.
In the afternoon, I’ve had enough of the tomblike stillness of the house. Enough worrying over what Will will or won’t do. I take a walk. Within five minutes, I’m plucking at my tank clinging to my sweating body. When I reach the golf course, I pause to feast my eyes on the verdant expanse so out of place in the midst of dry, cracked earth. I park myself on the edge of the green and run my fingers through the grass until I earn curious stares from silver-haired retirees in bad pants. Vowing to try another flight this week, I head for home, plotting my next move — breaking into Will’s house and getting another look at that map.
When I arrive, Mrs. Hennessey is outside watering her plants. “So you’re the one.”
I stop. “Excuse me?”
“Your mother told me one of you got suspended from school.”
Great. I’ve fulfilled her every suspicion that she let a family of miscreants rent her pool house.
“I guessed it was you,” she adds with a certain amount of relish.
Nice, I think, slinking toward the pool house.
“I made goulash,” she calls out.
I pause. “What’s that?”
“Beef, onions, paprika. Little sour cream on top.” She shrugs. “In case you’re hungry. I made plenty. Never did get used to cooking for one.”
I stare at her for a moment, reevaluating my opinion of her. Maybe she’s not nosy so much as lonely. Especially stuck all day and night alone in a quiet house. Lonely, I get.
“Sure,” I reply. “When?”
“It’s hot now.” She shuffles inside.
After a moment, I follow.
The next day, I don’t wait for an invitation. I head over to Mrs. Hennessey’s soon after Mom and Tamra leave.
Mrs. Hennessey doesn’t talk much. She cooks. And bakes. A lot. She wasn’t kidding about always making too much food. She feeds me like I’m an invalid who needs fattening up. It’s kind of nice.
The company helps keep my mind off Will.
Over a breakfast of French toast sprinkled liberally with powdered sugar and dripping syrup, I hear a sound. Knocking. I lower my fork to my plate.
Mrs. Hennessey hears it, too. “That your door?”
I shake my head, rising and moving to her living room window. “I don’t know who it could be,” I say as I peer through the blinds.
Will stands at the pool house door.
I freeze, weighing my options. Can I drop to the floor and hide without him catching the movement? I’m not ready for this. For him.
“Is that your boyfriend?”
I angle my head. “No…yes…no.”
Mrs. Hennessey laughs, the sound rusty. “Well, he’s something to look at, that’s for sure. Why don’t you go talk to him?”
I swing her a glance.
“What? Bad idea?” she asks. “What’re you afraid of?”
I shake my head a little too fiercely. “Nothing.”
But it’s a lie. Yes, I’m afraid. Afraid of what he’ll say. Afraid o
f the words that he failed to say in the girls’ bathroom but were there, in his eyes. And now, he would have them solidified, ready to fling at me like barbed arrows.
I scoot to the side of the window, peering out. Watching him knock again.
He calls my name through the door. “Jacinda?”
Mrs. Hennessey squints through the open blinds. “If you’re not afraid, why are you hiding? He’s not abusive, is he?”
“No. He wouldn’t hurt me.” At least I don’t think he would. He didn’t the first time we met. But now…I snort. Bury shaking hands in my shirt.
My skin tightens. I scan the backyard as if I expect to see his cousins hiding in the bushes, waiting to pounce. I glance upward through the blinds. No buzzard-circling choppers.
I remember him in that bathroom. Looking over the stall at me. I haven’t been able to shake off the expression on his face. The wide-eyed horror. The shock as he looked down at me — a girl he liked — transformed into the very creature he’d been raised to hunt. Such a contrast from the last time he saw me in draki form. That difference is what makes my stomach twist into knots.
“Well, then what are you waiting for?” Mrs. Hennessey asks.
For it to get easier. For life to stop being so hard.
Since that’s not going to happen, I send Mrs. Hennessey a shaky smile and step outside.
“Hi, Will,” I say softly.
He spins around. Looks me over like he’s checking for something. What? Does he expect me to stand before him in full manifest? Wings, fiery skin, and all?
His gaze shifts over my shoulder and I know he sees Mrs. Hennessey in the window.
“Let’s go inside.” I quickly walk past him into the pool house, into the blast of icy air that acts like a salve to my steaming skin. I turned the thermostat lower when Mom and Tamra left, craving the coolness, the frigid air on my skin.
I’m especially glad for it now. With him here.
I hear the door close after me. In the middle of our small living room, I turn and face him. Dig my hands deep into the pockets of my shorts. The waistband rides low. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
He stares at me. His eyes intense. Bright. More gold today than brown or green, and my heart pinches a bit as I’m reminded of the amber Mom sold, a piece of my soul lost. His eyes have always been piercing, but this is different. It’s like he’s seeing me for the first time.
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