Wicked Sense Page 9

  Chapter 22: Skye

  I’ve been dreading school, but so far it hasn’t been so bad. I guess the news about my mother’s heart attack might have softened their luscious desire for mocking me. Maybe it got me a reprieve. Or maybe they weren’t so mean in the first place.

  Five minutes after I arrive, I spot Drake. Here we go.

  When Drake sees me, he freezes up. He stands by his car, a couple of books in his left hand, his car keys crushed in his right fist. I wave to him, looking pathetic even to myself.

  He just stands there. He’s not making a statement: he is lost.

  Well, welcome to the club.

  Those two friends of his are walking in his direction. The bulky one glances at me. His eyes bulge. He halts and puts a hand on the Sean’s chest, stopping him too. They mumble something to each other and walk away. I turn to Drake. He’s still paralyzed, oblivious to his friends’ double-take.

  I’d better make a move. When I start toward Drake, he comes out of his haze. After a few tentative steps, he meets me in the middle, at the lot curbside.

  “Hey,” I say, using our old greeting.

  He doesn’t answer with our trademark “Hey, you.” Instead, he says, “Are you back?”

  I nod.

  “Why?” He winces. “I mean, how’s your mother? Is she with you?”

  So many things to ask, and he is concerned with Mum? Is he sweet or what?

  “She’s much better. It was just a scare.”

  His expression shows doubt.

  “Her sister is with her,” I add, reassuring him. It’s just a half-lie.

  “Good. And why are you here?”

  Oh, Goddess. Maybe he thinks I came back for him! His face is inscrutable. I can’t let him down, but I can’t tell him the truth. He’s right. To most people, my return won’t make a sliver of sense, unless you know I’m a Sister on a mission. I need a way out.

  The muffler sound hits me even before I sense her magical energy. One does not need True Sight to realize Jane is arriving.

  I turn to the parking lot entrance and see her red machine slashing through the traffic, safety be damned. Drake follows my gaze.

  After Jane parks, her head jerks up, and she stares straight at us. She doesn’t look pleased. Like, at all.

  And Drake is visibly upset.

  It gives me an idea for a way out. It’s not pretty, but it’s the best I can do right now. Please don’t hate me, Drake.

  “Why do you care?” I say, borrowing some acting talent from Mum. “And why are you so worried, Drake?”

  His voice is unsure. “Nothing. Just some crap I have to deal with.”

  I nod in Jane’s direction. “Is she the crap you have to deal with?”

  He looks at me startled. His expression is a mash-up of surprise and regret. I so wish I could read his aura. Why can’t I?

  I’m sorry, Drake. I’m sorry.

  “Priscilla,” he mumbles.

  “Yeah,” I say, my faked bitchy-ness reaching record heights. Maybe I am mad he made out with Jane. “Priscilla is a good friend.”

  “Yeah, she’s your good friend,” he says. His tone is so… dark. Oh, what have I done?

  He walks past me, not saying another word.

  It’s like a punch to the gut. I want to say I’m sorry again. I want to scream it’s just an act. But I don’t. I just let him go.

  I look at him and see his fake-proud march toward the school. I broke his heart. Twice.

  While I think on how mean I’ve become, I don’t realize someone’s approaching. The high school Hulk. Appropriately, his aura is green. What’s his name again? Oh, yeah. Boulder.

  He stands by, staring at me.

  I try to preempt an awkward moment. “Dude, it’s not a good time to ask me out.” I’m still in diva-mode. And I shouldn’t use the word ‘dude’ anymore.

  “I’m not here to ask you out.” He pauses, then admits, “Don’t get me wrong, I would, but my bro beat me to it.” He shouldn’t use the word ‘bro’ anymore. “Here’s the deal. Don’t hurt him. You let him down nicely, or there’s going to be some Boulder reckoning.”

  Way to charm a girl. “You don’t think much of him, do you? Are you his babysitter?”

  He cocks his head, maybe thinking whether he should snap my neck.

  “More of a big brother. Hence the ‘bro.’ I’m looking out for him. And don’t mention it to him, or—”

  “A reckoning. Got it.” I try to sound blasé, but I’m impressed Drake can command that kind of loyalty. “You’re something else, Boulder, you know?”

  “Of course I do.” He turns and struts to school.

  Oh, Drake. Maybe I made a bigger mistake than I thought.

  Chapter 23: Drake

  Today I want to follow Mona’s lead and ditch school.

  Skye leaves without a word, dumps me by text, and then calls me out on a drunken mistake? What happened? This is so not her.

  Stop making excuses for her, Drake. You did everything right. Well, except for the part where you made out with her… rival?

  Not for the first time, I wonder why Jane and Skye hate each other. Maybe it’s because Jane hooked up with Skye’s ex. The two girls seemed to know each other on Skye’s first day.

  So, it’s not about me. All this is about Skye’s ex-boyfriend. British jerk. I’m just a pawn in their fight for Mr. Darcy.

  I know Skye saved me in the woods. But I’m bitter. What else could she do? Let me die? She did that weird New Age thing, though. Now I don’t know if it means she cared so much she would try anything, or that she cared so little she thought she had time to joke around.

  ***

  I want to be alone. Besides my daydreaming during classes, I hide in the library during the breaks. Sean and Boulder would never venture there. I wait until most of the students leave to make my way to the parking lot. Just a few vehicles there, including my sorry Volvo and Jane’s bike.

  Today is a good day for swimming. If being alone is my goal, I can’t think of a better activity. Nobody is there after school. My gym bag is in the car’s trunk, but before I take a step, I see Jane slithering from behind the cafeteria building. She walks deliberately past her bike.

  It’s like seeing a cowboy without his horse. Jane never leaves her bike behind.

  Something compels me to see what she’s up to. Since we locked lips, she isn’t as scary as she once was. And if I’m being manipulated by those two hotties, I need to know what’s going on. So I, as suspiciously as Jane did, slither too.

  I’m not the stalking type, and it takes me a while to even understand what I’m supposed to do. Jane helps me by not looking back, not even once.

  She crosses the street and looks around. I hide behind the bushes near the parking lot entrance. From the back of the pool building, Skye shows up and greets her.

  What?

  They stand a few feet from each other. I can’t hear them, but I see Jane making a rounding gesture with her pointer finger up. Skye points to the pool building, and Jane nods. The two of them walk inside the red brick building.

  What’s going on? I thought they were enemies. Maybe they’re the Let’s-Screw-With-Drake’s-Head Club. I imagine them having a glass of wine by the pool, having a laugh about me, comparing notes: “I kissed him and left the country;” “Well, I made out with him and left him asleep alone in the car;” “Can you believe he actually thought he had a chance with us?”

  I shake my head. Man, I am paranoid.

  Well, girls have this irrational compulsion to talk about stuff. Maybe Skye and Jane are talking about Mr. Darcy. Skye said she didn’t have a boyfriend. She may just let Jane know it’s okay. Except… girls are territorial, right? They could be fighting about him. Hell, they could be fighting about me.

  Right.

  I don’t know how long I spend running these bizarre scenarios in my head. But it’s enough time for my thoughts to swing from them mocking me to them fighting for me.

  Fighting. Jane punche
s guys who ask her out. What would Jane do if she got a rival alone?

  I forget my stealth attempts and jump from behind the bushes. I cross the street, running, and reach the side door of the pool building. The tiny lobby is empty, as always. I have an idea. I enter the men’s locker room (no way they’re in there). The walls in the cheap building are thin enough that I can hear them if they are in the women’s locker room. And each locker room has a direct passage to the pool area, so I can sneak a peek if they’re meeting by the stands or the pool.

  I pass the closed lockers and empty benches. The stench of years of sweat and bleach makes me wrinkle my nose. No sound comes from the women’s side. They must be poolside. I approach the door, open it slowly, and look across the narrow gap.

  From where I hide, I can see the pool, but not all the stands that go up about ten steps to my left. I hear a low humming. They’re somewhere around. I dare to open the door wider. Then I notice it. A ripple on the water. Like someone jumped in.

  And bubbles.

  Briefly looking up, I see Jane on the top of the stands, sitting cross-legged. Her hands are resting on her knees, dripping blood. She is humming something, her eyes closed.

  Without thinking, I run from the door and dive in the direction of the bubbles. Cold water envelops me. While I try to reorient myself underwater, I kick my sneakers out. I see a figure slowly drifting to the bottom, leaving a faint red stream behind.

  Skye. She’s not struggling. I reach for her and catch her lifeless arm.

  My summer lifeguard stint comes back to me. I wrap my arm around her. I swim up quickly, and we reach the surface. After a deep breath, I swim to the side, dragging her inert body with me. I get out and pull her out of the water. As if by instinct, my eyes look up.

  Jane is climbing down the stairs in a hurry, a knife of some kind in one of her bloody hands, rage in her eyes. She hesitates after she reaches the last step, then she darts to the door.

  With Jane out of the equation, I turn to Skye, still in my arms. I lay her down on the ceramic floor with care. When I shake her slowly to get a reaction, a wound to her temple catches my eye. She’s bleeding. She’s not responding. And her chest is not moving.

  The CPR training kicks in. First, call 911. I reach for my cell. It’s drenched in water and dead. I search for hers, and I find it tucked in a back pocket. Also wet and useless.

  I put my face next to hers. No sound, no breath. She’s not breathing.

  Oh, God. Oh, God.

  I force her mouth open and see nothing blocks her throat. I unzip her jacket. I hesitate for a nanosecond before ripping her t-shirt off. After finding the center spot of her chest, I begin applying pressure. Pump, pump, pump. Thirty pumps. No response.

  I tilt her head back a little bit and glance worriedly at the blood pouring from her temple. One step at a time. I pinch her nose, cover her mouth with mine, and blow twice. Nothing.

  Back to pumping. Pump, pump—

  A gurgling sound! Water comes out of her mouth, the gagging reflex making her whole body spasm. She takes a deep breath, a long gasp, as if she had just come into this world.

  Her eyes are wide open. She’s coughing, reaching for me, and trying to look around us. I’ve never seen someone so terrified.

  “She’s gone,” I say.

  Her chest heaves as she sucks air with desperation. She looks into my eyes, into my soul, for a moment. Then she grabs me, and we embrace.

  Slowly, I push her away. She looks at me in bewilderment.

  “You’re bleeding,” I say, motioning to her right temple.

  Her hand follows mine, and it dawns on her.

  “Jane hit me,” she says, still breathing hard.

  Her voice is hoarse, throaty, but I’m glad she’s conscious, talking, and remembering.

  “She hit me with the butt of the knife,” she adds. Then she has a brief coughing fit.

  I say, “Stay here. I need to call an ambulance.”

  She grabs my arm. “No!”

  “No? Can you walk then? There’s a phone in the lobby.”

  She squeezes my arm. “No. Don’t call anyone.”

  “What about the police? She attacked you!”

  “No,” she pleads.

  She’s confused. I try to reassure her. “It’s okay. We have to.”

  “Don’t do it.” Her penetrating look convinces me.

  ***

  At Skye’s request, I search for her glasses. I find them by the side of the pool, smashed. Someone stepped on them. Jane, probably. I collect the pieces and the twisted frame, and hand them to Skye.

  She sighs. “Another pair gone.”

  “We’ll get you another,” I say. I’m more worried about her head.

  “No, we can’t. They’re special prescription. Made in London. It’ll take weeks.”

  We reach an agreement: I won’t call 911, but I’ll drive her to the ER. I tell her she needs to have x-rays, and she agrees with reluctance (after all, I’m experienced in head injuries).

  “How are you feeling?” I ask.

  She coughs more before answering. “Half-dead.”

  “Will you tell me what happened?” My eyes are on the road. I go as fast as the law allows. No sense crashing the car on our way to the hospital.

  She says in a low voice, “I was so stupid. I actually believed Jane wanted to talk. But she asked me—as a Sister.”

  “Sister?”

  “Later,” she says, her voice tired and raspy.

  She uses her ripped t-shirt to stop the bleeding. She’s wearing my spare shirt I keep in the gym bag. I sneak a peek and smile.

  “What?” she asks.

  “Not many girls can pull off wearing a ‘Yes, I’m handsome’ t-shirt,” I say.

  She looks down at her chest and sees the wet circles of her bra. She deliberately wraps her arms around herself.

  “You didn’t waste any time undressing me,” she says.

  I smile, not because of the joke, but because she seems to be doing well. I say, “I’m a trained lifeguard. It was all very professional.”

  “Did you sneak a peek?”

  “No comment,” I say, grinning.

  “You saved me,” she says. “Thanks.”

  “I guess we’re even now.”

  Chapter 24: Skye

  Drake fills out the ER paperwork for me. He’s a little surprised when he learns I want to pay for it and not use insurance, but he doesn’t ask any questions.

  They insist on calling Aunt Gemma. I’m only seventeen, after all.

  A young doctor arrives and says, “Hey, it’s you guys again.”

  I recognize her. She attended to Drake when he had a concussion. When we tell her I hit my head and almost drowned, her eyebrows go up.

  “How did that happen?” she asks, sounding skeptical.

  Drake opens his mouth, but I cut him off.

  “Drake was in the locker room, and I was by the pool. I was monkeying around while I waited for him. I slipped on the wet floor, hit my head, and fell into the water.”

  “Uh-huh,” she says, not entirely convinced. “Let me take a look.” She examines me for a while and adds, “You bumped your head on what, exactly?”

  “I… I’m not sure,” I say.

  Drake says, “I guess it was on the ladder’s handrail. She was close to the steps when I found her.”

  I shoot him a thankful look. The doctor glares at him.

  “How long did it take to resuscitate her?”

  Drake narrows his eyes. “From the time I heard the splash to the time she was breathing again… about two minutes?”

  She nods. “I’m ordering a CAT scan.” She asks Drake, “Would you mind going to the nurse’s station and asking one of the nurses to come here, please?”

  Drake is eager to comply. After he leaves, she turns to me, “Are you sure that’s what happened?”

  She’s onto my lie. Oh, Goddess. I stall. “What do you mean?” I ask, trembling a bit.

  “Did he hit
you?”

  I exhale. I smile to her. “Drake? Are you kidding? He’s the sweetest guy I know.”

  “Are you sure?” She is looking into my eyes.

  “Yeah!”

  “And he saved you? Performed CPR and everything?”

  I nod. She doesn’t say anything for a while. We’re having a staring contest. Finally, she leans forward.

  “In that case,” she whispers, “you hold on to this guy.” She winks.

  I’m stunned. Before I can say anything, Drake is back.

  “The nurse will be right here,” he says.

  The doctor checks my injury again. She asks to see Drake’s scar, and he shows it to her.

  Shaking her head, she says, “Now you have matching scars. Almost in the same spot. You could have just sprung for matching tattoos instead.”

  ***

  Aunt Gemma is freaking out when she arrives. I told her to not call my mother, but she is taking none of it.

  “And what is that boy doing here?” Gemma whispers to me.

  I’m glad Drake is at the cafeteria getting coffee. It’s his turn to walk around the hospital in drenched clothes. And it’s my turn to spend the night in the building.

  “He saved me and brought me here. I guess he earned the right to stay.”

  “Did you slip and hit your head?” she asks, as suspicious as the young doctor.

  I recite the same story I told the doctor. Gemma swallows it, but gets back to Drake.

  “What about this boy? Connor should be here. I’ll call him,” she says, reaching for her purse.

  “No!” No way I want to see Connor, especially in this situation. He would meet Drake, and I’m not ready to handle this right now. Yes, it’s not as important as the search, but it’s still a big deal. To me.

  Gemma eyes me. I say, “Connor has nothing to do with it.” She has the phone in her hand now. I add, “Besides, he must be busy with the search. No need to distract him with a trivial matter.”

  This placates her. “What about Katherine?” she asks.

  “If she knew, she’d call me back to London.” I lower my voice and whisper, “And you know the Mothers need me here.”

  Gemma nods, deep in thought, and leaves the phone alone. Thank Goddess the Knowings are so gullible.