by Inara Scott
“Heaven, huh?”
Her description made me feel a little better. I wouldn’t call what had happened in my backyard heaven. I’d enjoyed it, but there had been an edge of discomfort to the whole experience—like I knew it wasn’t quite right.
It would be much, much better if Cam kissed me. Heaven, probably.
Not that that seemed like a serious possibility. We’d been hanging out for weeks, and he’d never made a move on me—and he’d had plenty of opportunities. If Cam did like me as more than just a friend, he had a funny way of showing it.
“Are you positive you aren’t asking this question for a reason?” She narrowed her eyes. “Are you absolutely positive?”
“Oh, look.” I pointed across the lot, hoping to distract her. I wasn’t sure I could be a very convincing liar, especially if I had to repeat what I’d said to Hennie. She’d see through me in an instant. “Isn’t that Hennie’s car?”
“Yep, that looks like her.” She shook her finger at me. “But don’t think I’m going to forget about our little conversation.”
“Okay, okay.” This friend thing was a double-edged sword. It was nice to be able to ask these sorts of questions, but it also meant you couldn’t keep secrets. Or at least you couldn’t keep secrets about things like boys.
Hennie arrived, looking gorgeous as usual in a jean miniskirt and rose-colored shirt. Esther just had to tell her exactly what I had asked. Hearing the question retold made me squirm with embarrassment. Hennie looked at me with her usual deep, gentle gaze, and I had the feeling she already knew exactly why I had asked it.
But she didn’t say anything about Jack or Cam. Instead she said, “I don’t have nearly as much experience as Esther with boys. But last year at camp, Walter Maitland and I made out, and I’d had a crush on him forever.”
“Walt Maitland?” Esther interrupted. “Are you kidding?”
“He’s a lot cuter than when you knew him,” Hennie said. “He plays football now. Anyway, I was going to say that Walt turned out to be a complete jerk. But he was so cute, I didn’t even care. All I knew at the time was that I was finally kissing the guy I’d liked forever.”
“And…?” I prompted.
“Yeah, and…?” Esther said. “I can’t believe you’ve never told me this story before.”
“And he was a great kisser,” she pronounced with a grin. “I loved it.”
Esther and I both groaned.
“So you’re telling me exactly the opposite of what Esther said?” I asked.
“Not necessarily. I’m just saying he definitely wasn’t the guy for me, but I still wanted to be with him for a little while.”
“Basically there’s nothing either of you can tell me,” I said.
“Pretty much,” Esther said.
“Thanks for clearing that up.”
“Any time.” Esther giggled.
A familiar black car with a dent in the side squealed into the parking lot. At the same time, the Silver Bullet arrived at the far side of the iron fence. Jack got out of the car, sunglasses shading his eyes, even though the sun had barely come up. He looked tougher than usual, with a leather jacket open at the neck and a pair of black jeans hanging low around his hips.
“How does a freshman get to drive, anyway?” Esther asked, nibbling her lip shrewdly as she watched him amble across the lot.
“He’s got a fake license,” I said without thinking, and then gave myself an inward kick. He probably hadn’t meant for me to pass that information along.
“Oh.” Esther’s eyes widened.
Hennie’s eyes narrowed, and she glanced back and forth between us. You could practically see the wheels turning in her brain, and I wondered if she was hearing that second voice she’d told us about in the library. Luckily for me, though, she was kind enough to not to say anything then and there.
Esther and Hennie weren’t the only ones who’d spotted Jack. I noticed at least a dozen other heads turning, Allie’s among them. This inspired a jolt of something—jealousy? Pride? I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that part of me wanted everyone to know he had kissed me, that I had attracted the attention of someone good-looking and dangerous. But the bigger part felt a sense of regret. Watching him now with slightly more clinical eyes than I had before, I felt more certain than ever that I’d made the right decision.
The heavy iron gate retracted, and the metallic voice blared loud enough to be heard across the parking lot. “Caution, the gates are opening! Caution, the gates are opening!”
The Silver Bullet pulled through slowly and ground to a stop. Allie ran over to walk with Jack the rest of the way to the bus. Just before they passed out of view, he pushed up his sunglasses and swept his gaze around the lot. He could have been looking for anything, but I knew he was looking for me. He stopped a second later, his eyes locked on mine.
I jerked my gaze away.
“Jeez, Dancia, he looks pissed,” Esther said in a hushed voice. “What did you do?”
I shivered, unable to keep from looking back at him. His silvery glare lasted only a minute before he dropped the glasses back down onto his nose. Then he turned to Allie, and they moved out of sight.
“It’s hard to explain,” I said, defeated. Jack had been my only chance for a friend who understood what it was like to have psychic powers. I should never have kissed him. I should have pushed him away from the start. Then maybe he wouldn’t have gotten so angry at me, so hurt.
“You had to turn him down, didn’t you?” Hennie said quietly.
I nodded. Hennie patted my arm, and Esther clucked sympathetically in the background.
“Whatever,” I said, breaking the spell. “It’s over. We should get on the bus.”
We had gotten about halfway across the parking lot before Hennie realized she had left her backpack on the ground where we had been standing. We watched as she ran back to get it.
“Isn’t that Yashir?” Esther said as a familiar dreadlocked form got out of a car across the lot.
“Yeah.” I waved.
Yashir started toward us, on a path directly in line with Hennie. I could tell the moment she noticed him, because she slowed down and her back got really straight. She looked at her feet and then seemed to deliberately pick up her head.
“She’s going to talk to him,” I whispered to Esther. “She’s really going to do it.”
Yashir noticed Hennie at the same time. He said something to her, but they were too far away for me to hear what it was. From his smile a moment later, I assume Hennie answered him.
They were having an actual conversation.
Esther squeezed my arm. “This is huge,” she said. We watched as they exchanged words, still walking toward each other. That was when Esther gasped in horror. “Dancia, look at Hennie’s backpack. She’s headed right for it!”
Sweet, clumsy Hennie was having her first conversation with the boy of her dreams, and she was on a collision course with her gigantic leather backpack. If she tripped now, she’d never recover from the embarrassment.
I thought quickly. “Esther, is that Chris? With a girl?” I pointed in the opposite direction at a boy in line to get on the bus. I hoped it wasn’t really Chris, the guy Esther liked, because he had his arm slung around the shoulders of a blonde named Liz, from the cross-country team.
“What?” Esther spun around.
The moment she looked away, I focused on the backpack and marshaled the familiar tingle of energy. I poked at the forces acting on it, like I had at the tree branch, but that only made it lurch up a few inches and then drop back into place. Desperately, knowing I had only a few seconds, I imagined pushing down on one side of it, like a tiddledywink, and amazingly enough, it worked. Clumsily, the sturdy bag jumped a few inches to the left, landing just out of Hennie’s path. Luckily, Yashir and Hennie were too focused on each other to notice the backpack’s odd behavior.
“That’s not Chris,” Esther proclaimed, turning back to see Hennie standing next to Yashir, still talking. She grinned. “Oh, t
hank goodness she didn’t trip. I thought she was a goner.”
A warm feeling spread through me. “Yeah, thank goodness.”
Jack didn’t say a word to me for the next few days, and I tried not to show how hurt I was. It seemed crazy, because we’d only known each other a couple of months, but I’d come to rely on him even more than I had known. Without Jack to talk to, my classes dragged on endlessly, my homework was impossible, I had no idea what music to listen to, and Catherine’s taunts and jabs were too much to bear.
By Thursday I was a wreck. Though I should have been thrilled that I’d found a way to use my power and not have it hurt someone, dealing with Jack’s anger took away all the joy. Meanwhile, I barely talked to Cam. On Monday he told me he would be busy all week with a couple of big projects. I still looked for him every day at lunch and was absurdly disappointed when he wasn’t there.
I suppose it was because of what had happened with Jack, I don’t know, but I was desperate to talk to Cam. It wasn’t like we were best friends, but I missed him and the little walks we used to take, and the time we climbed up that tree together in the woods. Sometimes when he passed me in the hall and waved, I felt like he was someone I had seen in a movie but didn’t really know.
That made me feel even worse, like I had hurt Jack for a dream that would never come true.
Finally, after an endless morning of Jack glaring at me and teachers complaining about homework assignments I hadn’t finished, I hurried down to the cafeteria. Standing at the entrance to the lunchroom, I tried to look like I was checking out the menu options instead of pathetically trying to locate Cam in the crowd.
My breath caught when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cam wave at me as he headed toward his usual table, Anna to his right. I tried to look surprised, as if I hadn’t noticed him. He motioned for me to follow them. Anna smiled and repeated Cam’s gesture, and then made a point of draping one arm over his, as if he was her property.
She was always like that. I’m not sure if she was jealous, precisely, but she certainly let me know that I was not going to get between her and Cam.
As I maneuvered my way around the masses, Catherine gave me her usual contemptuous sneer, from a table with a bunch of other Button-downs. Hennie waved at me as she collected her dessert. I didn’t see Jack, but that wasn’t unusual.
When I got to their table, Cam and Anna were sitting down, and he’d started to dig into a plateful of spaghetti and meatballs. He swallowed a mouthful in a hurry, and wiped his face clean.
“How’s it going?” he said. “Seems like I haven’t see you in forever.”
“Yeah. I guess you’ve been busy.” I regretted the words as soon as I said them. The last thing I wanted was to sound like I was whining about him not paying enough attention to me.
“I know. It’s totally my fault and I’m really sorry about it. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.” Cam sounded eager to talk to me. So eager, in fact, that it made me suspicious. He changed positions to face me more directly, which meant Anna had to move her arm. She shot me a private glare and then put her hands in her lap.
Jack’s words burned in my ears, and I had to force a friendly smile, even to Cam.
The sensation of someone watching crawled up my spine. I took a quick look around. Sure enough, Jack had appeared at the entrance to the lunchroom, and he was staring right at us.
“You should pull up a chair,” Cam commanded. “We can make room.”
“No, that’s okay.” It could have been the distaste directed my way from Anna, or perhaps Jack’s voice ringing in my ears, but either way, the thought of sitting next to Cam had lost a bit of its magic. I nodded toward Esther, who was in line for lunch. “I told my friends I’d sit with them.”
“We’re your friends too,” he protested.
Are you? I wanted to ask. Are you really? Instead I said, “I know, but I promised. We’re going to compare our World Civ homework.”
Anna sidled up closer to Cam and purred, “Dancia, do you still want to go for a run with me? Coach had to cancel practice today, so we could run together this afternoon.”
I’d been putting off running with Anna ever since Cam had suggested it. By this point I’d used up every excuse I could imagine. The idea of being alone with her was almost as nauseating as eating with her, but I managed a fake smile. “Gosh, Anna, that is so nice of you. Thanks. I’d love to.”
“Looking forward to it,” she replied sweetly.
I had the feeling that Anna and I understood each other, and that our workout would be anything but fun.
“I guess I’ll see you later, Cam.” I started to walk away. He jumped up and followed me a few feet from the table.
“Don’t let Anna intimidate you,” he said softly. “Truth is, she’s been a little weird since we broke up last summer. I should tell her to back off, but I don’t have the heart to hurt her feelings. Know what I mean?”
His eyes pleaded with me. He looked sincere, but I wasn’t convinced, and I guess I must have shown it.
He put a hand on my arm, and I jumped, struck as always by the way his touch made me want to melt onto the floor. “You have study hall sixth period, don’t you? I’ve got my ethics seminar fifth and sixth period. We’re starting independent study tomorrow, so I can go to the library if I want. I could tell Mrs. Langdon you’re helping with my project, and we could hang out together.”
I hesitated. Cam had the power to make my insides go squishy and my mind draw a blank, but that also meant he would have the power to turn me into a blubbering idiot if he turned out to be a fake. My heart warred with my head for a minute, but my heart prevailed. How could I turn down my dream?
“All right. I guess I could use a little time in the library.”
He flashed his million-dollar smile. “I’ll come get you.”
I swallowed hard and made my way on unsteady feet to where I had seen Esther, not even noticing when Jack sprang up and headed in my direction. He caught up with me a few tables later.
“So, did you tell Prince Charming what you were doing last Friday?” he asked.
I tried not to react to the enmity in his voice. “Don’t be like this, Jack.”
Can’t we just be friends, Jack? Please, please, please?
“I found something interesting this morning. Thought you might want to take a look.”
I sighed and turned to face him. “What is it?”
“A little something I came across in your boyfriend’s room. Something that might make you think twice before you keep letting him follow you around.” He held up a piece of white paper that looked like a form someone had started filling in.
“What were you doing in his room?” I gaped at him, astonished, though I suppose I shouldn’t have been. “Did you break in? That’s illegal.”
“I didn’t break anything, and I reassembled the door before I left. They’ll never suspect. But I thought you deserved to know the truth.”
“What makes you so sure you know what the truth is?”
“I have good instincts,” he said, his lips pressed together in a hard line. I was momentarily distracted by remembering what it felt like to have those lips on mine, but snapped back to attention when Jack pointed to the paper. “Take a look. It’s about you. That’s not illegal, is it? To steal something about yourself? Or someone you care about? Or thought cared about you?”
I snatched the paper out of his hand. Sure enough, at the top of the page it read, “Candidate: Dancia Lewis.” Below that it said, “Watcher: Cam Sanders.” There was a space for the date, and then the next line read, “Record any contact you had with the candidate today.” There was some space for a response, and someone had written in blue blocky letters, “Met candidate on the bus and at lunch.”
My hand started shaking.
“This isn’t funny, Jack,” I said, my voice quavering. “You made this up, didn’t you.”
“Why would I do that?”
“To make your point about Cam. To make m
e feel like crap.”
“Keep reading. You tell me if I would make this up.” He pointed halfway down the page to a new question that read, “Note any concerns you have about the candidate here, and your recommendations for addressing those concerns.” In the same neat handwriting it said in response, “Candidate appears to be spending a great deal of time with Candidate Landry. (Concern about this alternative candidate noted on previous reports.) Will try to encourage candidate to keep her distance from Landry. Will attempt to build stronger relationship with candidate to allow for better surveillance.”
The taste of acid filled my mouth.
“Don’t look now,” Jack whispered, leaning toward my ear, “but your Watcher is watching. I don’t think he likes seeing me so close to you. I wonder what he’ll put in his report tonight.”
I grabbed the paper out of his hand. “You are a horrible person. If this is for real, I don’t blame Cam for writing this about you.”
Unable to think clearly, I started for the lunchroom door, my only desire to get as far as possible from Jack and Cam and everyone at Delcroix. But then I saw Cam stand up and amble toward one doorway, and Trevor make his way to the other. They moved casually but purposefully. It was like watching a movie.
They were guarding the exits so they could follow me if I left the room.
I couldn’t be sure the paper was real, I reminded myself. Jack was not above making up something like this. Maybe it was coincidence, the way Cam and Trevor were now positioning themselves by the doors. Maybe there was a reasonable explanation for all of it. Like a science fair project or something.
I told myself to stay calm. I looked around and saw Esther and Hennie sitting at a table near the back of the room. I turned on my heels and headed in their direction.
I had no idea what was happening, or if Cam and Trevor were really watching. But if they were, I wasn’t going to let them see me cry.
I WADDED up the paper and shoved it into my back pocket. Then I pasted on a bright smile and joined Esther and Hennie at their table.
“What’s going on? You look really pale—are you sick?” Hennie said immediately.