“SueEllen. SueEllen . . . look! Flynn O’Mara has a tat!”
“Yeah . . . I wonder if his father has one to match.”
As soon as Tara looked at the skull-and-barbed-wire tattoo showing beneath the sleeve of Flynn O’Mara’s tight t-shirt, she flashed on a jail cell. Bummer. His Dad’s in jail.
Suddenly Uncle Pat’s quirks weren’t so bad after all. She dared one more quick look at the tat, but her attention soon moved to the size of the muscle on which it had been inked. Definitely leer-worthy. When he passed beside her on his way toward the back of the room, she caught a whiff of sexy aftershave and stifled a groan. Millicent was going to be all a-twitter over him. Tara just knew it.
When she heard someone behind her whisper, “He’s sooo hot,” she couldn’t help but silently agree.
But it was another girl’s answer that made her curious. “Yeah . . . but no one in her right mind would mess with him.”
“Bethany did.”
“But not for long.”
“Yeah. Right.”
Ahah. Bethany must be the girl glaring at him beside the teacher’s desk.
Then the teacher entered the classroom and Tara’s curiosity was left dangling. It was sort of like tuning into the middle of one of Uncle Pat’s reality TV shows. Didn’t know the characters. Didn’t know the plot. Just knew that someone cute was bound to have a bad moment before the hour was up. Something told her that this Flynn guy had already had his bad moment—maybe more than one. But he was definitely cute. And it wasn’t a half-bad start to the second hour of the first day of her senior year.
It wasn’t until lunch that she was faced with her first test of endurance, and it all began when, trying to maintain a low profile, she sat down at a table in the middle of the school cafeteria.
“Hey. New girl. You can’t sit there.”
Tara looked up at the blonde who was balancing her tray while glaring at Tara.
“Were you talking to me?” Tara asked.
“Do you see anyone else who looks new?”
Tara grinned. “From where I’m sitting, pretty much everyone.”
The blonde rolled her eyes. “These seats are taken.”
Tara had spent her life trying to fit in. She thought about just getting up and moving, but it was her senior year, and she was tired of being low-man on the social totem pole.
“Who are you?” Tara asked.
“I’m Prissy.”
“I’ve always admired a girl who can admit to her faults.”
The blank look on Prissy’s face was all the proof Tara needed to know that the joke had gone right over her head. So she started again.
“Okay, Prissy, why can’t I sit here? It’s empty.”
Prissy rolled her eyes. “You’re new, or you wouldn’t be so stupid.”
“Um . . . actually, I’m not new. I’ve been around for seventeen years now.”
Another zinger that Prissy completely missed.
“Whatever,” she drawled. “You still can’t sit here. This is the cheerleaders’ table.”
Tara groaned.
The sound must have carried, because the room went silent. She knew she should just take her tray and move, but she couldn’t bring herself to fold at the first challenge. Just once, why couldn’t the universe bend to fit her world, instead of her always having to bend to fit its?
She stood and jerked the edge of her tray against her belly.
“Cheerleaders,” she drawled, and began bowing up and down as she slowly backed away, carrying her tray.
Laughter ricocheted from one end of the lunchroom to the other. Tara lifted her chin and swaggered all the way to the back of the room. When she got to an empty table, she set down her tray then turned and yelled, “Hey Prissy! Prissy!”
Prissy turned, then gaped, unable to believe that the new girl was still trying to communicate with her in any way. Two other girls who’d now joined her at the cheerleaders’ table frowned. One of them was Bethany Fanning—the Bethany from second hour who’d had the thing with Mr. Bad Dude Flynn O’ Mara. The other was a girl named Melanie Smith, who went by the name of Mel. The trio were all part of Stillwater High’s cheerleading squad, and all three were blonde.
“Who’s she?” Bethany asked.
“I saw her in the hall earlier,” Mel added.
Prissy turned bright red as Tara waved at her cheerfully. Tara stopped and pointed to the table where she’d set her tray.
“How about here? Anybody got their name on this table?”
Another ripple of giggles rolled across the room.
At the sound of laughter, Prissy’s face flushed an even angrier pink. She wasn’t used to being laughed at. The other two blondes frowned, but said nothing.
Tara sat down and made a big production of setting her silverware in the proper place, opening her milk carton and inserting a straw, then salting and peppering everything on her plate before she began to eat. She was chewing her first bite when she happened to look up and catch Flynn grinning at her.
She smiled back, only afterward realizing that she’d been chewing salad when she smiled. She sighed, hoping nothing green had been sticking out from between her teeth, and finished her meal in silence.
As she’d feared, her transition into the new school was off to an awkward and uncomfortable start. What she hadn’t expected was for Millicent to intervene next.
Tara was on her way out of the lunchroom when she heard a loud shriek. She turned just in time to see Prissy’s plate of food levitate from the table and fly into her lap.
“Way to go, Millicent.” Tara kept on walking.
She heading for her locker when some guy behind her called out, “Hey! Hey! Wait up!”
Surely he’s not talking to me, she thought, and kept on walking. Suddenly the guy grabbed her by the arm. She spun, ready to do battle. OMG, it’s the hottie.
“Hey,” Flynn said, and quickly turned her loose. “I’m Flynn. You’re new, right?”
“Only to this school. Not to the world.”
He grinned. “Got a name to go with that mouth?”
“Tara Luna.”
His smile was hypnotizing. “Luna. That means moon, right?”
Her brain stopped working. She gazed up at him silently.
Talk to him, Tara. Say something witty. Say anything.
Tara sighed. Millicent. She should have known she’d get involved in this.
“So I’m told,” she said, then stifled the urge to roll her eyes. Could my answer have gotten any dumber?
“Moon girl. That’s not half bad.”
The bell rang, breaking up what might have been the defining moment of the day for Tara. Instead of an undying declaration of love, he gave her forearm a soft jab with his fist.
“See ya, moon girl.”
Tara was still trying to come up with a real cute way to say goodbye when he disappeared into the room across the hall.
Way to miss the opportunity of the day.
Can it, Millicent. Don’t you have someplace to be? Some half-naked jock to ogle?
Millicent laughed and went silent.
When the last bell rang, Tara was exhausted, both mentally and physically. She’d gotten lost trying to find her fourth-period classroom, and arrived to find Flynn the Hottie was in that class, as well. The fact that he kept looking at her with more than curiosity made her nervous. She thought she might like him—really like him—but she was cautious. The last thing she needed was to fall for someone again. Before the move from Denver, she’d had her first serious boyfriend. Millicent had gone along on every one of their dates, suddenly determined to play chaperone. Uncle Pat’s decision to move came just as the relationship was heating up
Tara sagged. Why bother falling for another guy? I
t would hurt too much when Uncle Pat pulled up stakes again.
My life sucks, she thought.
There was nothing to do but go home and hope tomorrow was a better day.
That evening, Tara was taking a meatloaf out of the oven when she heard the front door open. Uncle Pat was home.
“Just in time,” she called out, then set the hot dish on a trivet and gave the green beans a quick stir.
When her uncle didn’t answer, she decided he hadn’t heard her and she wiped her hands on a dish towel then went to the living room to greet him. But there was no one there.
“Uncle Pat?”
She glanced toward the hallway leading to their bedrooms, then went in search of him before their food got cold. She knocked on his bedroom door, then opened it for a peek. He wasn’t there.
“This is so weird,” she muttered. She knocked at the door to the hall bath. No Uncle Pat. “Okay. I heard the door open and close. So maybe he didn’t come in. Maybe he stepped back outside to get something from the car.”
She hurried back into the living room, but when she looked out, the car wasn’t in the driveway.
“Okay. This isn’t funny! Henry! Was that you?”
Henry appeared in the far corner of the room. “Not I,” he said. “Millicent, did you open the door?”
No. Doors are so trite. Any ghost can do doors.
“Well, excuse me.” She looked around one last time then shrugged and started toward the kitchen. Suddenly a dark shadow appeared in the doorway, blocking her path. She froze.
This couldn’t be good.
The shadow came toward her, then through her, leaving her so cold she couldn’t move and so shocked she couldn’t speak. That was beyond rude. A kind of ghostly slap in the face.
“Something smells good! I’m starving!”
Uncle Pat’s voice shattered Tara’s focus. She shivered, then turned. The shadow was gone. It was only Uncle Pat in his flower power t-shirt and old bell-bottom pants coming in the front door. It was hard to say which was freakier—the ghost that had passed through her or Uncle Pat’s crazy clothes.
“It’s meatloaf,” she said, and then swiped her hands across her face and headed back to the kitchen to finish up the meal. It wasn’t the first time she’d been confronted by a dark spirit, and it probably wouldn’t be the last, but she absolutely hated it.
“Let me wash up and I’ll help you,” Uncle Pat said, and hurried down the hall.
Tara was dishing up green beans when he came back into the kitchen.
“How was school?”
She rolled her eyes. “Where do I start? Let’s see . . . I chose the wrong place to sit in the lunchroom. I got lost on the way to gym class, and there’s a cute guy named Flynn in two of my classes, with what might be some kind of prison tattoo on his arm.”
Pat frowned. “I’m not liking this Flynn guy.”
Tara sighed. “Don’t worry. He barely noticed me.”
“You do remember my lecture about sex, right? I mean . . . I’m not advocating you have sex , but I do not want you unprepared, either. If you want, I’ll take you to a doctor and—”
“Uncle Pat! Trust me, I’m not going to have sex with a guy I just met today. I am not stupid, okay?”
Her uncle’s frown deepened.
“All right, but be careful.” He poked at the meatloaf. “This looks good. Did you put some hot peppers in it?”
“No.”
“Oh. I was hoping for some jalapenos at least. Why not?”
“Because you didn’t buy any.”
“Oh. Right. I’ll add it to the next grocery list. For now, let’s eat. I’m starved.”
Thankful that their conversation had taken a less embarrassing turn, Tara finished dishing up the food, filled their glasses with iced tea, and then joined her uncle at the table and handed him her plate. He loaded it with a thick slab of meatloaf. Tara added a spoonful of green beans, a helping of mashed potatoes, and then reached for the ketchup. Hamburger in any form was always better with ketchup and anything was better than her Uncle Pat launching into one of his attempts at parental advice.
Chapter Two
Four days later, the dark shadow came back.
It was three minutes after four in the morning when Tara woke up needing to go to the bathroom. She was on her way back to bed when she sensed she was no longer alone. Her heart skipped a beat as the darkness between her and the hallway moved into her room. A normal girl’s first instinct would have been to scream or run away, but Tara was used to spooks. She stomped into her bedroom with her hand in the air.
“Look, Smokey . . . I’m bordering on PMS, so you don’t want to mess with me. State your business or make yourself scarce. And don’t go through me again to do it. I’ll tell Henry and Millicent to kick your behind so hard you’ll never be able to put two ectoplasmic molecules together again. Do you read me?”
The shadow shifted then disappeared through the floor.
“That’s better,” Tara muttered, then headed to the dresser, where she’d left her jewelry box. She dug through it until she found her Saint Benedict’s medal, fastened the chain around her neck, and then crawled back into bed. “Like I don’t already have enough to deal with,” she said wearily, then punched her pillow a couple of times before settling back to sleep.
All too soon, the alarm was going off and another strange day was in motion.
The first week at school sped by without further trouble. At home, Uncle Pat got cable hooked up to the TV and internet to Tara’s laptop. She caught up on episodes of Glee and Gossip Girl. She was beginning to believe everything was smoothing out. Then week two came, reminding her she was still the new kid in school.
Tara was on her way to first period when she turned a corner in the hall and came up on the cheerleader trio who she now thought of as The Blonde Mafia. Prissy saw Tara, then pointed at her and said something that sent the other two into a fit of giggles.
“You are so lame. You’re almost as funny as your name,” Prissy said, as Tara walked past.
Tara rolled her eyes. “Is that rhyme supposed to pass for white girl rap?”
Prissy’s face flushed angrily as kids standing nearby heard it go down and started laughing, but Tara didn’t hang around for a second stanza. She didn’t have time for their petty crap. She walked about ten feet further down the hall when she heard a shriek and turned just in time to see two hanks of Prissy’s hair suddenly standing straight up on either side of her face like donkey ears.
Millicent! Tara stifled a grin. “I knew that was gonna happen,” she said, and kept on walking.
Tara’s first-period teacher was at her desk, poking frantically at the screen of her smart phone. She looked up when Tara walked in, nodded distractedly, then returned to what she’d been doing. The air was so thick with distress that Tara immediately sensed what was wrong.
Mrs. Farmer had money troubles.
That was something she understood. She and Uncle Pat rarely had an excess of the green stuff, themselves. And considering that his new job with the city of Stillwater involved reading electric meters, they weren’t going to get rich this year, either.
She slipped into her seat, then took her book out of her backpack, trying to concentrate on something besides the misery Mrs. Farmer was projecting. But for a psychic, it was like trying to ignore the water while going through a car wash. Tara was inundated with wave after wave of her teacher’s thoughts and emotions.
All of a sudden she knew Mrs. Farmer’s husband drank too much. Her mother was a nag. Her sister was married to a doctor, which made her own husband’s problems seem even worse. And suddenly Tara knew something Mrs. Farmer did not.
It wasn’t that Mrs. Farmer couldn’t manage her money. Someone was stealing it.
The room began to fill wi
th other students, and a few minutes later the bell rang, signaling the beginning of class. Tara felt Mrs. Farmer trying to focus on her job and Tara tried to do the same. English was one of her favorite classes.
“Good morning,” Mrs. Farmer said. “Your assignment over the weekend was to read the poem, The Female of the Species, by Rudyard Kipling, then write a one-hundred word paper on it. This morning we’re going to read your papers aloud in class.”
The collective groan that followed her announcement was no surprise. Tara sensed that half the class hadn’t even read the poem and of the ones who had, less than a dozen had completed the assignment. Tara pulled out her notes but had a difficult time focusing. She kept keying in on Mrs. Farmer’s plight.
She knew what needed to be done to help her, but it meant making herself vulnerable.
The hour passed, and when the bell rang students scattered, even as Mrs. Farmer was still giving them their assignment for tomorrow. Tara had argued with herself all through class, when she really hadn’t had an option. If she’d seen someone stealing, she would have told. Knowing it was happening and who was doing it and not telling was the same thing to her. She waited until the last of the students were gone, then headed toward the front of the room, where her teacher was erasing the blackboard.
“Mrs. Farmer, may I speak with you a minute?”
Unaware anyone had lingered behind, Mrs. Farmer whirled around, startled. “Oh, my. You startled me, dear. I didn’t know anyone was still here. You’re Tara, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Tara sighed. There was nothing to do but jump in with both feet. “I need to ask you something, and then I need to tell you something.”
She could see the confusion on her teacher’s face, but she had to hurry or she’d be late for second period.
“Who’s Carla?” Tara asked.
“Why . . . that’s my babysitter,” Mrs. Farmer said. “She stays at my home during the day and takes care of my twin daughters. They’re only three.”
“Okay . . . I need to tell you that she’s stealing money from you. She’s taking blank checks out of the new pads of checks in the box and forging your signature. That’s why you’re account stays overdrawn.”
Sharon Sala - [Lunatic Life 01] Page 2