“We want your opinion on yesterday’s lit assignment,” Lydia said.
Jack rested his chin in his hand and glared at Lydia. She must be driving him crazy.
“Okay,” I said.
“Why do you think the minister wore the veil?” Lydia asked.
“The who?” I couldn’t remember there being a minister or veil in what I’d read yesterday. “Sorry, I’m not sure I’m much help.” Maybe I couldn’t remember because I hadn’t put much thought into the questions going along with our in-class reading assignment. I’d been too distracted about Asher’s absence and his declaration of guilt over the accident.
“The veil is a symbol,” Jack said. “He wears it to make his whole life a sermon.”
“But what does it mean?” Lydia asked.
“He wants everyone to think he did something bad,” Jack said.
“But he did,” Lydia said.
“We don’t know that,” Jack said. “For all we know, he wore it to make everyone think he had done something evil. So we judge him and ask the same questions everyone else asks. We’re horrified like the villagers.”
Had Jack actually looked that deep into a story? Impressive.
“Don’t compare me to the villagers,” Lydia said, “I’m nothing like them.”
“The truth is harsh when it condemns us, isn’t it?” Jack asked.
Lydia clicked the roof of her mouth, stood, and headed back to her flock.
I rubbed my chin. “You really know how to wedge it hard into her, don’t you?”
“I’ve got to.” Jack looked at me with such a frown, his eyes seemed hopeless. “I’ll hit the floor again if I don’t.”
My chest tightened. Jack’s heart was still caught up in Lydia. Why act like they hated each other? But the school cafeteria was not the place to ask him about their break up.
I took my chocolate chip cookie out of my lunch bag and broke it in half, tucking away some positive source into it for Jack.
“Thank you,” he said.
“No math today?”
“I forgot.” He took a bite of the cookie. “What does your stepfather put in these? They’re delicious.”
“Chocolate?” I smiled.
He grinned. “There it is. Finally.”
“What are you talking about?”
He demolished the rest of the cookie, then leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially. “If you smile at Asher like that, you’ll never get rid of him.”
My cheeks warmed.
“I feel significantly better. Thank you.” Jack rose to his feet.
His impending departure felt like someone had taken my coat from me. I didn’t want to be alone anymore. “Please, stay,” I said.
Jack paused, glancing briefly at his table of friends. “All right.” He pulled a deck of cards from one of his pockets. “But you have to play Egyptian Rats with me.” Without waiting for my response, he climbed back onto the bench and dealt like a pro.
“Someone spends too much time with cards.”
He laughed. “Geoffrey and I work as aides for the band teacher, Mr. Sanchez, which tends to mean we’re playing cards the whole time.”
“I think that sounds like a good time to get your math homework done.”
“Shh. And pick up your cards, Miss Tara. The second half of your cookie is on the line.”
I laughed and picked up my cards. “You’re going to have to remind me how to play.”
We’d gone through a couple of rounds when I noticed Asher rise and take his tray back toward the kitchen.
I was dealing the cards when he returned, heading toward my table by way of the wall taking an obvious detour away from Sam’s table.
I suppressed a smile. “Asher’s coming,” I warned Jack, whose back was to him.
Jack looked up as Asher’s footsteps drew closer. “Want to play?”
He slipped onto the bench by Jack.
Sam’s whole table of jocks stared at us, and I immediately felt a wall of tension come over me.
“Sure. What are you playing?” Asher drummed his fingers.
“Egyptian Rats.” I gathered the cards, reshuffled, and dealt, glancing between him and Sam without making eye contact.
During the following round, I was so distracted by the burning feeling of being watched that I played horribly.
Under the table, Jack prodded my ankle, and I met his eyes. What’s wrong? he seemed to silently ask, and I shrugged.
Asher gathered the cards. “Could I show you a card trick?”
I rubbed my neck, chancing to raise my gaze to his, and nodded.
Asher gave me a subtle smile. He shuffled once, then fanned them out for me. “Pick one card and don’t show me.”
I pulled out the Queen of Diamonds.
“Study it. Remember it.”
“Okay.” This didn’t seem like an original trick.
Asher split the deck of cards. “Now, return it. Remember your card.”
I placed the queen into the deck, and he cut it once.
“Now, I’m going to find your card.” He grinned.
I lifted one eyebrow at him. He’s up to something.
Asher flipped over the cards one at a time. First, he moved quickly through them, but slowed as he neared the middle. He would pause and look at me. The king of clubs. The jack of hearts. The two of spades.
Finally, he flipped my queen of diamonds and held his hand on top of the next card, but paused. “The next one I flip over is going to be yours.”
He had just turned mine. I felt disappointed by his trick.
“Okay.”
To top it off, the bell rang.
“All right, let’s see.” Jack rose.
“But first, let’s put a little wager on whether I get it right,” Asher said. “If I am, then Tara goes on a date with me Friday afternoon.”
My cheeks burned hot. “I thought you were going to a haunted house with a group.”
“Not until late. Now, if I’m wrong, I’ll wash Jack’s car once a month for the rest of the year.”
“Not sure I want you anywhere near my car,” Jack said, although he looked intrigued by the idea.
“What do you say, Tara?” Asher asked.
That he’d already flipped my card over, and Jack would get the benefit of his failure. I took a deep breath. Saying yes, though, would tell him I was interested without the commitment of having to go out with him—yet.
I shrugged. “Sure.”
Asher flipped over my queen of diamonds, then rose with a huge grin, leaving me slightly flabbergasted. “Five o’clock?”
Jack whistled. “Dang, girl.”
As Jack gathered his cards, I grabbed the queen of diamonds. “I’m going to keep this one.”
As I sat next to Asher in lit, the first thing out of my mouth was, “How’d you do that?”
“Can’t tell you. Magician’s secret and all.” He grinned cheekily.
I rolled my eyes.
“Don’t feel obligated to go out with me if you don’t want to.”
I shrugged, giving him a closed-lip smile, as I put my binder down on the corner of the table, before pulling the questionnaire closer to me. “Describe your elementary school years.” I looked at him.
“So you’re all right with Friday?”
“I’ll have to ask my parents first,” I said. “But they don’t usually care what I do.”
He frowned a little.
I set a hand on his wrist, smiled, and released into him a little of the positive source I felt about going on a date with him. “So describe your elementary school years?”
He relaxed. “They weren’t nice. I was bullied a lot because I liked to draw and read books, rather than play sports at recess.”
This knowledge probably shouldn’t have hit me as strangely as it did.
“It wasn’t that I couldn’t play,” Asher continued, speaking easily, like someone enjoying unloading a story they’d held in. “I played sports a lot with my older brothers, wh
o drilled me with every sport imaginable since I could walk. They all played something different and wanted me to be their prodigy. It didn’t take much either. I was cursed to be a natural at everything.” He winced as though that last comment was painful to admit.
“Cursed? Usually, people love being the best at everything,” I said.
“Yeah, but they left me little time to do anything else.” He leaned closer. “And remember what I said, I liked reading and drawing. Plus, I hated how everyone always fought over whose team I was on, until finally I wouldn’t play at recess any more, and would instead bring out a book or my sketchpad. Can you imagine, the big, tall, athletic kid, sitting under the slide, reading The Hobbit. Who does that? Seriously?”
“The Hobbit?” In elementary school?
“Yeah.” Asher chuckled. “My seventeen-year-old self wants to make fun of my eight-year-old self.”
“You still like drawing,” I reminded him.
“My brother Arthur always says athletic prowess was wasted on me because it’s been my dream for years to write and illustrate graphic novels.”
A strange feeling stole over me. I’d always wanted to write and illustrate children’s books.
“I might have enjoyed sports more, except at the same time, my parents were having problems with my brother William, who had anger management problems. He used to beat me up like every day.”
I widened my eyes. “Whoa.” This must be what he’d alluded to in his narrative.
“I used to come to school with bruises all over me, and my teacher thought I was getting abused.”
“Sounds like you were.”
“Not by my parents. I ended up in foster care while the state investigated them.”
“How long?” I asked.
“The better part of a year.”
“I thought my past was complicated,” I muttered, resting my cheek in my hand.
Asher shrugged. “It was fine. They were a lot better off than my parents were, and we’ve kept in touch. Could have been worse.”
“Yeah. What happened to William?” I asked. “You said in your narrative that he changed.”
“The father of a former friend of mine stepped in and mentored him.” Asher grew tense, and I quickly caught on that the friend was not someone he wanted to talk about.
Montrose stepped to the front of the classroom, promptly ending our get-to-know-you time.
“Sorry,” Asher said. “I didn’t mean to take up—”
“Don’t worry about it.” I teasingly smiled. “I would have made you jealous talking about all the fun I had growing up with Jack.”
15. Fragile Family
After school, Nathaniel, Oops, and I sat at the kitchen island eating ramen as an afternoon snack.
I had successfully made it all by myself.
“This is too soggy,” Nathaniel whined.
It was mostly a jab.
My chest tightened as Daniel came out from his room into the kitchen and showed me two collared shirts. One was green while the other was gray. “Which one?” he asked.
Since Mom was supposed to be off by five today with no planned surgeries, she’d promised Daniel a date. It was the third time this year that Daniel had tried to plan one. The first two hadn’t panned out.
I had a feeling tonight wouldn’t either. Last time had been at the end of spring, and the outcome had been disastrous. It surprised me Daniel even tried again.
“The green one for sure,” I said.
“I like the gray one,” Nathaniel said.
“Sorry, bud. I’m going to stick with Tara’s suggestion.”
Daniel’s cell phone rang on the island next to me, and Mom’s picture popped up on the screen.
A tense feeling stole over me. This was the moment of truth.
Daniel picked up his phone but hesitated a second longer, letting his phone ring.
It was something I would have done, too. “Are you going to answer?” I asked.
Tensing up, Daniel headed toward his room. “Hello?” Daniel came to a stop, listening to whatever Mom said. He ended the call, jabbing his phone into his back pocket, and slammed his door behind him.
She’d cancelled. Not at all surprising, but it drove the dagger of my angst against her a little deeper. It caught me off guard that I was starting to come to Daniel’s defense.
“Why is Daddy mad?” Oops asked.
Daniel emerged from his room lifting his cell back up to his ear. “Hello, Spencer?” He headed through the mud room toward the garage.
Spencer was Daniel’s high school buddy. The one he went drinking with when he was mad about something. He’d promised Mom never to hang out with him because Daniel wasn’t pleasant when he was both angry and drunk.
Nathaniel’s eyes widened. The look on his face was all I needed to get me to my feet and down the hall.
With dark source stirring in my gut, I raced out the front door and straight in the way of his backing car. “Daniel!”
Stupid. Yeah, I know.
He hit me, and I fell backward. As my head hit the cement, I had a flashback from last spring when I got hit by a kid riding a bike. Then and now, stars swam against a black sky in my mind.
I slammed my fists down on the drive, throwing dark source into it. Two tiny craters formed.
“Tara.” Daniel’s voice sounded frantic. His car door slammed, and a second later, he knelt by me.
“I’m okay,” I said. “Just a bump…” My body trembled as his strong hands gripped my underarms and pulled me backward. I pushed myself up and squinted at the license plate number. Only it wasn’t a number. BE HAPPY. I couldn’t help but smile. I’d never noticed it said that.
Daniel held me up. “Tara, what were you thinking?”
“Don’t go drinking,” I said. Pain throbbed in my head, stronger, then weaker like an ambulance siren. I looked at the dents in the drive. Daniel wasn’t even paying attention to them.
He lifted an eyebrow.
It probably seemed an odd request. After all, I’d been royally opposed to him—to them. But last time, when Mom had failed to even call and cancel with Daniel, he’d gone out with Spencer and returned home wasted. His and Mom’s argument in the middle of the night had woken all of us, and the result had been that Mom walked out and didn’t return for a month.
It wasn’t just Daniel or Oops she’d abandoned. She’d left me behind, never trying to call. The next week was when Sam and Jerrick pulled their stunt.
I didn’t want Mom to walk out again. Deep down inside, I still wanted her, even with all my built up bitterness.
She was my mom, but I was really beginning to not want to lose Daniel either.
Daniel stood and helped me to my feet. “Let’s get some ice on that bump.”
Five minutes later, Daniel handed me a towel-wrapped ice pack. Nathaniel, and I were inside sitting on the stools.
“I’m not going to the hospital.”
Oops had run upstairs crying when she found out Mommy and Daddy weren’t going out together. She’d been so excited for their date.
“I can’t believe you hit Tara,” Nathaniel said. “She was right there. You should have seen her.”
“Luckily, I did. Just late.” Daniel washed his hands. “You could have a concussion.”
“I had a concussion in April,” I said. “This is different.”
As he dried off his hands with a white rag, Daniel sighed. “I’ll make some homemade pizza for dinner. But you have to sit down here and eat with us.”
That was the meal I always requested for my birthday — homemade pizza. His dough tasted better than any store or restaurant bought pizza. “That’s fine.”
As he gathered the ingredients, he kept looking at me in an agitated manner. Something was on his mind, but he kept it to himself.
Which was fine. It meant I didn’t have to explain why I’d gotten behind him. It hadn’t been smart. He could have hurt me worse. But whether I liked it or not, he was the glue that kept our fragil
e family together.
If Mom and Daniel ever split, I didn’t know where that would put me. Oops and Nathaniel would go with Daniel, but I had no permanent connection to him, so I wouldn’t be with them, though more and more, I felt I’d rather be. But, I cringed thinking of Mom alone.
“I should go check on Oops,” I said.
Hours later, thoughts of how horrible I’d treated Daniel over the last six years stole my ability to sleep. From the beginning, he’d treated me as his own. Never differentiating, never treating me like the stepchild. More than willing to take care of me when Mom walked out.
And I’d treated him like a doormat—something always there to wipe my feet on.
Why hasn’t he given up on me yet? My chest throbbed with guilt until what he said to Mom the other night streamed into my thoughts. It’s not too late.
Not too late to make things right.
It would only be two years when I graduated and left home.
My heart pumped with a burning sensation as both positive and negative source swirled inside me, adding fuel to my warring thoughts and feelings.
My head told me to make amends, but my heart still screamed for Mom’s affection. For Dad to be alive.
With those thoughts, the negative overpowered the good, filling me with despair. Daniel wasn’t my father. So what was he? I didn’t want a replacement dad. I wanted mine. Daniel couldn’t take his place.
Sitting up in bed, I placed my hands over my ears. Stop.
Directing the swirl of negative source into my hands, I focused the positive in my chest and head, letting it flow through my heart and mind.
I sat there momentarily stunned. My heart and mind felt good.
I stared at my hands, which throbbed with the negative.
Changeling’s source, when it became too much, radiated off me—an unseen energy.
Curious, I held my hands over each other and willed the dark energy to create a ball and held it there.
My eyes widened. I was almost certain this wasn’t something a changeling was supposed to do.
Quickly, I absorbed it back up.
Did Mom and Daniel know a changeling could do that? I found myself, for the first time in my life, really wanting to share something with Daniel. Getting up, I ventured into the hall to the top of the stairs.
The Changeling's Source (Evedon Legacy Book 1) Page 16