Blood Like Poison

by M. Leighton

  I kept to myself through all my classes, but I made sure that, when I walked the halls, my chin was held high and my face as pleasantly blank as possible. I’d die before I let her or anyone else see that she’d rattled me.

  Thankfully, I didn’t see Trinity until lunch. When I walked out the cafeteria door, I saw that she had assumed my position between Drew and Summer. The door shut behind me with a loud click and all eyes turned toward me.

  At my former table, several people shifted, scooting their chairs this way and that to make sure that there was not enough room for one more person to squeeze in between them. That person, of course, was me. Wordlessly, I was being put in my place, exiled.

  I scanned each face one by one, challenging them. Many either dropped their eyes or glanced away when I looked their way. Only a few held my gaze, eyeing me defiantly.

  When my eyes met Trinity’s from across the patio, she glared at me in silent triumph. I hadn’t really expected much more from such a group of blind followers, but the betrayal hurt nonetheless.

  Having long since lost my appetite, I took my Coke to a huge maple tree and sat down in the shade at its base. I leaned back against it, facing away from Trinity and the others, trying to pretend that the rest of the world had disappeared.

  I jumped when Bo spoke.

  “Want some company?”

  “Not really,” I said without looking up. Even as the words left my lips, I craved his nearness like I craved fresh air.

  “Too bad,” he announced, sitting down beside me and leaning his back against the tree, too.

  My plan was to ignore him, but that only lasted for about three minutes. My jealousy couldn’t be contained any longer than that.

  “Where’s Savannah?”

  “Enjoying the fruits of your labor.”

  Puzzled, I looked over at Bo. His head was turned and he was looking back at the picnic table he’d been sharing with Savannah. There was no mistaking her dark red hair glistening in the bright sunshine, but she wasn’t alone. Devon sat across from her, laughing at something she was saying.

  “How is that the fruit of my labor?”

  “You stood up to Trinity,” he said with a shrug, as if that explained it all.

  “That has nothing to do with Devon, though.”

  “Maybe not directly,” Bo answered meaningfully. “You’re like an unsung hero around here.”

  “Yeah,” I said, looking around at my own little spot in purgatory. “It sure looks like it.”

  “You can’t see it now, but you will.”

  We spent the few remaining minutes of lunch in companionable silence. Afterwards, out of habit, I went to my locker. It wasn’t until I was almost there that I remembered what Trinity had done to it. I nearly turned around, but I stopped myself. Going back the other way would take me longer to get to class than to just go the way I usually went, so I headed on.

  My mouth dropped open when I rounded the corner and got a good look at my locker. It was perfectly clean. Well, mostly clean. Some of the words were still visible, but the pictures were gone and it had been scrubbed clean of poop, which was the biggest thing anyway.

  I looked around, searching the faces for some idea of who’d cleaned it up. My eyes stopped on sparkling chocolate ones staring at me from the end of the hall. It was Savannah. She held my gaze for a few seconds and then winked at me and walked away.

  I didn’t need for her to tell me that this was her thanking me for standing up for her, and for the first time since it happened, I was actually glad that I did it.

  Turning back to my locker, I reached for the lock, but it was gone. I could only assume that it had been too soiled to save.

  “Looking for this?”

  I jumped again at Bo’s voice. He was standing behind me holding a shiny new combination lock.

  “She had the janitor come and cut it off right after lunch so nothing would get stolen until you got here,” Bo explained.

  I felt more than a little ashamed at how jealous I’d been of Savannah. She was obviously a decent person, and Bo really seemed to like her. Devon, too.

  “She didn’t have to do this,” I stated quietly, finding the painted toes peeking out of my shoes very interesting all of a sudden.

  “She wanted to,” he replied.

  “When did she have time to clean it up?”

  “She has third period study hall.”

  I felt near tears again and it didn’t help when Bo tilted my face up to his. His eyes made me feel so amazing it almost hurt.

  He’d been smiling, but slowly, his smile died as he stared into my eyes. For a moment, I saw exactly what I was feeling reflected in their lush depths—an attraction, a need, so great it was overpowering.

  “Why can’t I stay away from you?” With his whisper, he rubbed his thumb back and forth across my chin.

  All I could think of was that I didn’t want him to stay away, that I couldn’t survive it if he did, and though some part of my brain registered that such a sentiment was utterly ridiculous, I knew it was true nonetheless.

  “Why do you try?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

  “Do you always do the right thing?”

  His lips twisted up into a wry grin. “Almost never.”

  He made me want to smile, so I did. “Then why start now?”

  In a rich sound that seemed to steal all the air from the hallway, Bo laughed. But somewhere, behind the sparkle in his eyes, was a sadness that I was noticing more and more often.

  Before I could delve into the intrigue of it, the bell rang, rudely interrupting our moment. With a sigh, Bo said, “See you in Chemistry.”

  I watched him go as if he was carrying a piece of me away with him.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I watched the moonlit scenery fly by as the bus carried us home. For three days now, I’d managed to block out Trinity’s wicked digs and nasty comments. Luckily, though they’d abandoned me and chosen to take Trinity’s side, the others were a little less demonstrative in their shunning of me. Apart from the snickers behind my back, they more or less just ignored me.

  Despite the fact that I’d known for a long time that I was surrounded by sharks, it still hurt to see them turn their backs on me so quickly, so easily. And it was all for the sake of popularity no less. It was a sickness, really, and they were fatally infected. I guess I should’ve been feeling sorry for them, but it was very hard to feel pity for them when they were all piled up in the back of the bus, laughing and making fun of me.

  The fact that I was there at all was a monumental surprise to me. Not only was I still a member of the squad, I was also still its leader, at least for the time being anyway. Fortunately, my cheerleading fate had ceased to bother me anymore. It would be great to keep the status quo and get my scholarship to Stanford, but if I didn’t, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. My feelings for Bo had put that, along with many other things, in perspective.

  In the last few days, my focus had shifted. My usually Stanford-focused tunnel vision was now a wide angle lens that captured all things Bo. When I wasn’t with him, I thought of him. When I wasn’t awake, I dreamed of him. When he was near, I could feel it, and when he wasn’t, I ached for him to come back. It was like he’d invaded my entire being, right down to my red blood cells, which seemed to swell with a longing for him that I couldn’t describe.

  The closer we got to school, the more I could sense him. He’d be waiting for me when the bus pulled in. I was certain of it.

  With a loud groan, the bus rolled to a stop in front of the school at the bottom of the parking lot. Being seated at the front (essentially exile in bus seat pecking order), I was the first one out the folding doors.

  I wasted no time getting to my car at the top of the lot. I wanted to run, but somehow refrained from doing so. My pulse leapt when I saw Bo leaning up against the passenger side door of my car. It’s where I’d found him the last two nights after practice, too.

  “Hey,
” I said unimaginatively, wishing that my brain worked better when he was around. It went on hiatus and left my senses in control, which meant my vocabulary was roughly that of a toddler.

  “How was the game?” He straightened and took my duffel from my shoulder.

  “We won,” I replied, having no interest in talking about the game.

  “It was the cheering,” he teased.

  I rolled my eyes and laughed. “I’m sure that’s exactly what it was.”

  “Do you have to go straight home?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Just curious,” he said, enigmatically. “Can I drive?”

  “Sure.” I handed the keys to him and he unlocked the passenger side and held the door open for me.

  Once I was inside, he closed the door and rounded in front of the hood. My eyes followed him as he walked. I loved to watch him move. It was like watching water ballet or space acrobatics. It seemed as though gravity didn’t affect him like it did most people, like he was as light as the air through which he moved.

  After pitching my duffel behind the seat, Bo climbed in and started the car, speeding away in the direction of his house.

  Several minutes later, as I suspected, he pulled into his driveway and cut the engine. When he helped me out, he kept my hand tightly wrapped in his. Rather than leading me to the back door of the house, he surprised me by walking around the side to a set of concrete steps. He descended first, me following close behind.

  At the bottom of the steps was an old red door with a small window at the top. I could only assume that it was the exterior entrance to a basement or cellar.

  There was a padlock on the door that Bo unlocked using a small key on his keychain. When he pushed the door open, I expected to smell a gust of that musty odor that all basements seem to have, but I didn’t. It just got a whiff of Bo’s tangy scent.

  It was pitch black inside the room. Bo reached back to take my hand and pull me inside, but before I’d taken even one step, Bo stopped me.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Shh,” he whispered.

  I listened, but didn’t hear anything alarming. I don’t know what kinds of ambient noises he was used to hearing around his house, but nothing sounded out of the ordinary to me.

  With a note of seriousness in his tone that made chills race down my arms, Bo said, “Stay here. Don’t say a word and don’t make a sound.”

  He shifted back past me and through the door, taking the steps two at a time. Still, I listened. Still, I heard nothing.

  Bo disappeared from view. Contrary to what he might’ve thought, I was not going to stay in a dark, unfamiliar hole under his house when he was nowhere to be found.

  I crept to the top of the steps and poked my head up to look around. In the moonlight, I saw Bo standing a few feet away, facing a man. They were just staring at each other, neither making a sound, neither moving a muscle.

  Finally, the other man shifted, taking one slow step toward Bo.

  “I hear you’ve been looking for me.”

  “Don’t know where you heard that. I don’t even know you.”

  “But you knew John Gibbs,” the man said.

  Gibbs? Gibbs? Where had I heard that name?

  The thought was interrupted when I heard a low growling. At first, I thought maybe Bo had a dog I didn’t know about. I whipped my head around, half expecting a vicious Doberman to be right beside me. But there wasn’t. As it grew louder, I realized that it was coming from Bo.

  “That’s what I thought,” the man sneered. “I’m just here to tell you: you come after my friends, you come after me. And if you come after me,” he said, taking another step toward Bo. “Well, let’s just say you already lost your biggest advantage, because now I know who you are. Now, I’ll be coming after you.”

  A light breeze chose that very moment to blow through the back yard, ruffling my hair. I caught myself before I reached up to push my bangs out of my eyes. I didn’t want to move and risk exposure.

  It didn’t matter, though. Both Bo and the other man turned toward me and I quickly ducked out of sight. I don’t know how they’d known I was there. I hadn’t made a sound or moved an inch.

  “See, it just takes one visit to learn all about somebody’s weaknesses. You’d be wise not to forget that I know where to find you,” the man said warningly. “And your friends.”

  “You shouldn’t make threats you have no hope of living to carry out,” Bo said evenly.

  “Be careful, boy. You have no idea who you’re messing with.”

  “I don’t care who you are,” Bo growled. “And I’m only gonna tell you this one time. Don’t ever come near here again.”

  “I won’t have to. Everyone leaves eventually.”

  I felt the whip of a gust of wind just before a loud crack split the night air. It sounded like a clap of thunder. I started to peek up and look around again, but just before Bo came into sight, I felt a sharp blow to the top of my head and the world went blissfully black.

  ********

  Once again, I awoke to the scent of Bo in my nostrils. The tangy element—whatever delectable spice he smelled of—seemed stronger than usual and, despite the strange circumstances, it still made my insides melt.

  I inhaled deeply, relishing the aroma. I tried to open my eyelids, but they were stubbornly ignoring my commands.

  “Bo,” I called hoarsely.

  My tongue felt sticky with something sweetly salty. I licked my tingling lips. Even the delicious residue made my mouth water.

  “I’m here,” he said.

  The sound of his voice was like a purr, rasping along my nerve ends like the brush of velvet against my skin.

  “Be still.” The “s” made an odd hissing sound and I thought Bo’s voice sounded scratchy, like his throat was dry.

  I remembered that I’d been looking for Bo when something had hit me in the head. As if on cue, my skull throbbed painfully. I reached up to touch my scalp, not sure what to expect, but a hand grabbed mine to still it before it got very far.

  “Don’t try to move,” Bo advised in a low voice.

  “Bo,” I groaned, a sound born both of pain and of need.

  I ached, but not from a truly physical pain. It was with a strange yearning that I couldn’t describe, like I wanted to take Bo into my body, drink him in like a fine wine. It seemed that my blood was on fire, crying out for him and him alone.

  I felt his hand sweep my forehead and I thought I detected a slight tremor in his touch. I wondered vaguely if he felt it too, that desperate need.

  His movement caused the air to stir around my face. I felt an unusual wetness all over my skin, on my ears and my neck. I tried to open my eyes again and this time I succeeded, but I still couldn’t see anything. We were in the dark. I couldn’t even see where Bo was in relation to me; I could only feel that he was near.

  “Where are we?”

  “In the basement,” Bo ground out, it seemed through gritted teeth.