by C. J. Anaya
“Look, Tie is Victor’s cousin, he’s kind of unpleasant, and I’d rather not run into him if I can help it. That’s all.” I was lying through my teeth, and Angie knew it.
She raised an eyebrow and smirked at me in disbelief. “I saw the way you and Tie looked at each other. You were very affected by his presence. It was refreshing to watch, now that I think about it.” Her smirk was becoming more pronounced. “If lying to yourself is going to help you avoid these feelings you so obviously have, then I will allow it, for now.” She leaned over the bathroom sink and studied her flawless reflection in the mirror. “But for the record, I’m officially handing over the steering wheel to you. Those boys are off limits for me, and I will not make one single move toward either one of them.”
“Angie,” I started in a warning tone.
She held up her finger, effectively cutting me off.
“I’ll let you avoid them for now, but we are going to talk this out, Hope. I won’t let you ruin a great chance for some real happiness just because you’re not willing to talk about what happened to your mother or why you spend so much of your time at the hospital.”
My jaw nearly hit the floor in surprise. Angie and I were never this direct with one another when it came to issues we avoided like the plague. It was understood that my mother and her dark periods were two subjects we never talked about. And for her to call me out on the way I buried myself at the hospital was especially disconcerting. She seemed so lost in her own world most of the time, it surprised me that she had noticed.
As if reading my thoughts, Angie smiled and said, “I see more than you think I do. That’s why I’m your best friend.” She turned around and walked toward the bathroom door. “Man, I’m so hungry the prospect of cafeteria food actually sounds appealing to me. You coming?”
Chapter Six
“I thought you were going to get Victor’s schedule for me,” I whined as we walked into the cafeteria.
“I need protein before embarking on such a dangerous assignment. Besides, real women eat real food,” my best friend replied.
“I’m not so sure the cafeteria food actually qualifies.” My nose wrinkled of its own accord as we stepped into the lunch line. “Would you at least keep your eyes peeled, please? I don’t want to run into either one of our targets.”
“Targets? You do realize I was joking about that secret agent thing, right?”
Angie held out her tray and accepted a very unappetizing assortment of cantaloupe and honey dew. I accepted my own dried out fruit and looked over my shoulder, hoping to spot an available table against the ugly, green cafeteria wall. I felt something hit my tray and looked down to see that the lunch lady had been especially considerate by giving me a generous portion of what appeared to be lasagna.
“I had lasagna last night,” I said feeling disappointed. I followed Angie to a small table in the back corner.
“Is that what this is? I thought it was either fat ravioli or a pitiful attempt at spaghetti and meatballs, and I was so hoping for pigs in a blanket.”
We took our seats with our backs against the wall. From our viewpoint I was sure I’d be able to spot either Victor or Tie if they decided to eat with those of us who couldn’t afford fast food.
“See anything?” I asked. I tried to stick my plastic fork into a piece of honey dew. It bent under the force of my stab and the fruit went careening off my plate.
“I see my ex getting all cuddly with that Tanya chick.”
I looked over at a table directly across from us on the other side of the cafeteria. Nathan’s bulky arm was wrapped possessively around Tanya’s shoulder.
“Tanya Sedgwick? Really? Nathan is so predictable,” Angie griped.
“Your comments are dripping with jealousy, and that gives me cause for concern.”
Angie’s serial dating was another subject I rarely touched. She just bounced from one guy to the next, breaking hearts as she went. I did think it strange that one of the guys she dated approached me and asked why Angie pretended to be interested in him one moment and then avoided him the next. Okay, that wasn’t the strange part. He mentioned that she refused to kiss him during the week they spent together, but it felt as if she was watching out for him until some unknown threat had passed. I had no idea what to tell him, and bringing it up with Angie elicited a flippant comment about the trials of dating high school guys.
Message received. I never asked her about it again after that. I couldn’t begrudge her her secrets. It’s not as if I’d been very forthcoming about my own earth-shattering secrets. Angie reached her hand under the table and grabbed my knee.
“Looks like one of the targets has been here for a while, and he’s made friends quickly.” She nodded toward a table in the center of the room.
I looked up to see Tie sitting in the middle of a table surrounded by a host of swooning females. I couldn’t believe the crowd he’d managed to gather for himself. I couldn’t believe I’d missed him.
“Angie, he not only has the entire cheerleading squad watching his every move, but it looks like some of the girls from the debate team are throwing themselves at him.”
“I thought those chicks were supposed to be smart,” she said in disgust.
“Who? The cheerleaders?”
Angie snorted. “I was most definitely not talking about the cheerleaders. I’m fairly certain their IQ’s combined would still be less than my current age.”
I smiled a bit distractedly and looked back at the pack of heavily mascaraed females.
“Why are they staring at Tie with those strange, vacant expressions on their faces?” I wondered.
“There’s nothing strange about it. That’s just generally how they look.”
I pushed Angie’s shoulder playfully.
“Give them some credit. After all, they did manage to dress themselves and make it to school today.”
“Clothes do seem to be their one redeeming quality.”
I let out a laugh.
“Wow. Tie doesn’t waste any time. He’s probably the first guy I’ve ever known who’s managed to start a fan club made up of the brightest and the most brain dead girls at this school,” she continued.
“Well, that’s good news for me. Maybe those girls will keep him busy, and I’ll make it out of here without him being the wiser.” I tried and failed to spear another piece of fruit onto my fork. The lasagna noodles were so crunchy it was impossible to cut them with my knife.
Eating with my hands was becoming inevitable. Angie squeezed my knee harder.
“Think again, girlfriend.”
I finally moved my attention to Tie’s face and felt my mouth go dry. He may have been surrounded by the most popular girls at my school, but he was looking directly at me.
The minute our eyes met I felt the same pull I had before. My body went warm all over. Embarrassed at my response to him, I willed myself, to look away and miserably failed in my efforts. He just sat there staring at me like no one else was in the room. It looked as if the girl next to him was asking him a question while simultaneously giving him a neck massage, but he seemed totally oblivious to her attentions. His eyes gave me that same look of longing coupled with a sad touch of resignation as if it pained him to be near me, but forces out of his control demanded he be here…in this very place…close to me. Some dark thought must have taken hold of him because his look of longing was erased with a sardonic smile. His features hardened and became a blank mask of indifference so convincing I believed my original reading of him was an error.
Angie was completely off base in her assumptions. There was no way this guy liked me. Sure, he seemed to be paying a lot of attention to me, someone whom he viewed as nothing more than a science experiment, but I was clearly the lab rat he’d been sent for so what else was he supposed to focus on?
She’d been right about one thing, though. I was responding to Tie in a way I never had with anyone else. I think that worried me more than the thought of him knowing my secrets.
It bugged me that she wasn’t taking any of this seriously, but my attention was soon drawn to my immediate right. Victor had just walked through the back double doors of the cafeteria.
“How did you know he was Victor? You said you hadn’t seen him yet,” I whispered.
“I hadn’t seen him yet, but when a hot, new guy whom I’ve never seen before walks into the cafeteria it stands to reason he just might be Victor.” She gave him a measuring look. “Hmm, eye candy. I beg you to reconsider your current game plan.”
I couldn’t respond. Victor stood there scanning the room with an air of determination, and somehow I knew he was looking for me. I just hoped he wouldn’t look to his left because he was literally three feet away from me.
It was obvious when Victor’s eyes landed on his cousin. I saw his body tense and his jaw tighten.
My eyes swiveled toward Tie. Had he noticed Victor enter the room?
Yep.
Tie was now in a standing position with his fists clenched and glued to his sides. The muscles in his face morphed his expression into one ugly, venomous glare. Pure hatred was clearly on his agenda. He was no longer looking at me, and I was grateful. The look he’d been giving me was bad enough, but the look he was giving Victor would’ve made small children cry.
“I thought you said they were cousins,” Angie whispered to me.
“That’s what Victor said.”
“Then why does it look like they’re getting ready to throw down?”
I watched in fascination while Tie and Victor walked toward each other like they were stalking their own prey. I was sure a fight was about to erupt between the two of them, but instead of throwing punches they merely stood about a foot apart facing one another and started talking to each other. They were just talking, and I couldn’t hear a word they were saying.
Frustration!
“Well, that was anticlimactic,” Angie muttered.
“We should leave.” I felt certain the subject of their conversation centered solely on me. My suspicions were confirmed in the next instant when Tie nodded in my direction. Victor’s head turned sharply, and I lowered my gaze in order to avoid both of theirs.
“So, they’re both staring at you.” Angie nonchalantly reached for her fork.
“Well don’t stare back at them,” I hissed. “There’s no reason to encourage a possible encounter with either one of them.”
“You can stop hiding now. They seem to be having a very heated discussion.”
I looked up carefully. They were definitely arguing, and then they were glaring at each other. Victor nodded his head over his shoulder like he was sending Tie some kind of agreed upon signal.
At first, I thought Tie was going to head in my direction, but to my surprise he turned and sauntered lazily over to the table that Nathan and Tanya were seated at. My curiosity piqued, I let my eyes follow his athletic frame as he stopped directly in front of Tanya who seemed overjoyed to have someone like him giving her any kind of attention. “What’s he doing?” Angie asked.
“I have no idea. You’d think Nathan would have chased him off by now.”
“Nah. Nathan is focused on stuffing his face with food. He won’t notice anything until his plate is clean. He’s freaking lucky I was present when he choked on some chicken last week.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, nothing. Just Nathan being Nathan.”
An uncomfortable tension underscored her comment. Under normal circumstances I might have considered pursuing the topic, but I couldn’t focus on anything other than Tie.
I kept my eyes locked on him and wondered at his sudden focus on Tanya. In the next instant he pulled Tanya to her feet, grabbed her by the shoulders, and kissed her right on the lips.
Watching Tie kiss someone like Tanya Sedgwick made my heart feel like it’d been placed in a vice, and I was unreasonably crushed by his actions. I took several quick breaths to try and alleviate the strange pressure building in my chest, and continued to watch, disbelievingly, while Tie delivered a kiss—the kind of kiss I’d generally watch on a movie screen—to someone other than me.
“No way,” Angie hissed. “Does this kid have a death wish?”
Nathan stood up as soon as he realized what was going on. Unfortunately for me, it took him five agonizingly long seconds to notice anything at all. A record for him, all things considered.
Nathan roughly pulled Tanya back and away from Tie. “Dude, are you freaking kidding me? What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
The cafeteria had gone dead quiet. I could see my classmate’s bored looks transform into varying degrees of interest, trepidation, and outright glee. Clearly, nothing was more entertaining than a fight in the middle of lunch hour.
“I was just giving your girlfriend here the best kiss she’s ever had. Something you’re clearly incapable of doing,” Tie responded in a lazy voice.
Nathan’s eyes bulged from their sockets, and his face turned a spectacular shade of crimson. “Here it comes,” I choked out. I anxiously waited for Tie to get into some kind of defensive stance.
Instead, he turned his head to the side and stared in my direction. His eyes locked with mine. What in the world was he thinking? He was about to receive the beating of his life. Look back. For heaven’s sake look back.
Nathan’s large, meaty fist seemed to rise up and draw back in slow motion. Tie kept his gaze resolutely on my face, and a hint of a smile began to lift the corners of his lips. In that moment I knew exactly what Tie was doing. He had absolutely no intention of defending himself. He wanted to get hurt! Where in the world were all of the teachers? Wasn’t someone going to intervene here?
He gave me one last look, a look I can only describe as challenging, before he turned his head around just in time for his face to meet Nathan’s fist.
The crunching sound it made was so disturbing it literally brought me to my feet. My hands gripped the table before me. The complete and total silence that followed was almost oppressive. Pressure began building inside my head as I watched Tie crumple to the floor. I felt another strange sense of déjà vu and had to shake myself to throw off the dizziness that threatened to drop me to the floor.
I’d seen this before. Where had I seen this before? The pressure continued to build until I thought my head would explode, and then suddenly it did.
Light erupted all around me. I no longer stood in the cafeteria surrounded by its depressing green walls. The beautiful grassy green I could now see rolled out before me in all directions. The sky was a stormy grey, and large droplets of water pelted fiercely down upon the deep green below. I couldn’t feel it, though. I couldn’t even feel the wind pounding the rain down in a sharp diagonal direction. I lifted my arms out, thinking I’d be able to feel the droplets easier, but to my surprise my arms were already raised up before me.
A strange cry to the right of me caught my attention, and I flashed my eyes in that direction. I was in another place and time watching Tie crumple to the floor as his assailant—someone who looked vaguely familiar—stood over him ready to attack. My need to save Tie became overwhelming, but I couldn’t move toward him no matter how hard I tried. I screamed in frustration, but my screams didn’t make a single sound. I watched helplessly with my arms outstretched while Tie’s assailant continued his attack.
There was a loud popping noise that rang in my ears as white light engulfed me again. I was almost relieved to see it, as it signaled my return to a place and time to which I knew I actually belonged. I found myself standing in the cafeteria, my hands clutching the edge of the table, watching as Nathan began to lift his fist again. A loud, nearly hysterical voice rose up from the silence and screamed out, “Stop!”
Nathan’s fist dropped abruptly. His attention turned from Tie and landed squarely on me. Everyone’s eyes were o
n me. I had been the one screaming at Nathan to stop? Without considering the possible consequences of my actions, I rushed around the table and sprinted toward Tie’s prone figure. I dropped to my knees once I reached him and put my hands on either side of his bloody face. I thought I might immediately connect with his life force, but nothing happened. I’d been connecting with people all day, but not with him.
And not with Victor either.
It didn’t take any kind of connection to know that Tie’s nose had been pulverized. It looked like it had been relocated to the left side of his face. The sight of it made me want to cry. His eyes were closed, and I panicked, thinking he might have a concussion or worse.
“Tie, can you hear me?”
My inability to connect with his life force in the same way I had with every other student that day saved me from slipping up in a very big way. As I adjusted my hands on either side of his head that strange little hint of a smile he’d given me just before he let Nathan hit him appeared on his now bloodied lips. His eyes opened and closed quickly, and in that instant I realized that Tie knew what was coming. He knew I was getting ready to heal him. He was waiting for it.
My first instinct was to get up and bolt for the cafeteria doors. Fortunately, I managed to stay in a kneeling position next to him while I pretended to be helpless and pitiful in an effort to get someone to help me. I searched behind me for Victor, knowing he’d be watching for my reaction.
“Victor,” I yelled as my eyes met his. “You’ve got to help me get Tie to the nurse’s station.”
His eyes narrowed, and then he glared at Tie with something close to reproach. From the look on his face it was obvious I wasn’t reacting the way he’d expected.
I felt a hand grab me roughly on my shoulder.
“Stay outta this Fairmont,” Nathan said practically growling at me. “I’m not finished schooling the new guy.”
Victor’s powerful fist pummeling into Nathan’s jaw was more than a little unexpected. Nathan hit the ground hard.