Jay had no answer. And for a super-human machine who always knew what was happening inside her, right down to the most infinitesimal process, that was paradoxical.
She kept her gait loose-hipped and relaxed, moving at a steady pace while she considered Tyler and his reaction to what he’d described as her “stunt”. He had looked at her differently, speculatively, like she was an unknown quantity. It’d been foolish for her to toss Shawn in the Dumpster and display her capabilities in such a fashion. And it had been completely outside the parameters of her core programming for her to act without first considering the risks.
She could only trust she would not have cause to regret her actions in the future. And that Shawn would react as she predicted, and be too concerned with licking his wounded pride to bother her further.
Pause current thought-thread.
Licking wounded pride. She pondered the metaphor. Her own saliva contained enzymes that enhanced the inbuilt healing abilities of her outer dermal layer. If her physical body was injured, she often licked her wounds. Did that constitute irony?
She decided it did.
Resume.
Despite her error of judgment, Tyler appeared to want to be her friend. Caro, too, had made overtures of friendship. Even Matt had chosen not to aid Shawn, and had displayed concern for her physical state.
For now—on the surface at least—Jay was one of them. She belonged. And belonging was excellent camouflage.
She consulted her internal clock and continued on her way. If she maintained her current speed, she would arrive exactly at the time Caro had specified. Excellent.
She reran her encounters with Caro’s brother and chose a pleasing image of Tyler which she then fixed in her memory banks. Strangely, the chorus of the song she’d heard him playing resounded again in her head. And it consumed her.
Thoughts of you glowing in my heart,
Thoughts of you shining in my soul,
Thoughts of you blazing in my mind,
Thoughts of you, burning.
Thoughts of you,
Burn.
Six minutes twenty-three seconds passed before she emerged from what humans would term a daydream to find that she’d halted in the middle of the pavement. Unless she ran the rest of the way, she would now arrive later that she had planned. But for some inexplicable reason she did not increase her speed to compensate for the delay.
She turned the corner and strolled up the path toward Caro and Tyler’s house. At precisely 1839 hours she stood before the Davidson’s front door.
It felt good—cool—to have chosen to arrive late. And as she rang the door bell and listened for footsteps, her thoughts were so centered upon Tyler, it didn’t occur to her to be alarmed that she felt anything at all.
Chapter Six
Jay watched the figure inside the house approaching the front door. Viewed through the patterned frosted-glass panes, Tyler’s features appeared so grossly distorted that he resembled a cartoon caricature. Once her vision compensated for the distortion, she could see him chewing his lower lip, hands fluttering nervously at his sides as he tugged his shirt straight and finger-combed his hair.
If she cared to, she could eavesdrop and hear what he was muttering beneath his breath. Out of courtesy she tuned out, respecting his privacy. Father had taught her to do that. The old man had habitually muttered to himself and hadn’t appreciated having his words repeated back to him verbatim.
Courtesy aside, some part of Jay dearly wanted to hear Tyler’s words. Because some part of her—an alien part, still in its infancy—hoped his mutterings might somehow relate to her.
An ancient station wagon demanded her attention when it jumped the curb before rattling to a screeching halt in the driveway. Its driver was a woman with the same rich auburn tones to her hair as Caro’s.
The woman left the engine idling while she fumbled about in her handbag. “Dammit!” Jay heard her say. “Where the heck did I put the darn remote?”
The car’s engine hiccoughed and spluttered, and she revved it to prevent it from stalling. Finally locating the remote, she aimed it at the garage door… which refused to do what it was supposed to do. Namely, open.
She closed her eyes, groaned and rested her forehead on the steering wheel for a few moments before jabbing the remote—again with no success.
Tyler jerked open the front door and Jay switched her focus back to him.
“Jay,” he said, sounding breathless. “C’mon in.”
“Hello, Tyler. Your mother’s home.”
He stood on tiptoes and craned his neck to look over her shoulder. “Ah crap,” he muttered. “Garage door opener’s on the blink again. Can you tell her I’ll open it manually?” He raced off down the hall.
“There’s a pot boiling over on the stove,” she called after him.
“The pasta!” she heard him say before another expletive floated to her ears.
Jay walked over to the car. The driver’s name was Marissa Carolyn Davidson. Jay knew this because once she’d decided to make Snapperton her home, she’d accessed public records for every Snapperton resident.
Marissa was forty-three and mother of twins—Tyler, and Carolyn, who preferred the diminutive “Caro”. Five years ago, Marissa’s husband had packed a suitcase, walked out of the house, and for all intents and purposes, vanished. Town gossip insisted he’d run off with some unidentified floozy.
Marissa was currently employed as a secretary with the Snapperton Legal Office. Prior to embracing full-time motherhood she’d been a registered paralegal, doing everything for her employer barring presenting actual cases in court and giving legal advice. Her skills were both underutilized and unappreciated by her current employer. She was barely managing to cover her family’s living expenses.
Right now she was taking out her frustrations on the garage door remote.
When Jay tapped on the driver’s side window, Marissa jerked in her seat, eyes wide as they raked Jay’s face, one hand fluttering at her throat. Her breathing was rapid and her pulse had quickened.
Jay had scared her, and that had not been her intention. She ventured an “I’m harmless” smile.
Marissa rolled down the window of the vehicle.
“Hello, Mrs. Davidson. Tyler’s just opening the garage door for you. Would you like me to take a look at that remote? I’m Jay, by the way.”
Marissa checked her over. “Well, hi there, Jay. You one of Caro’s friends?”
“I hope so. I’m also a friend of Tyler’s.”
“Really.” Marissa cocked her head to one side and eyed Jay thoughtfully. “Tyler’s friend too, huh?”
Jay nodded. Since Marissa obviously found it strange that Jay would be friends with her son, she chose to volunteer just enough information to settle any qualms the woman might have. “I just transferred in. Tyler and I are Bio partners and we have English together, too.” That last fact Tyler had yet to discover because he’d skipped English.
She ducked her head and scuffed her sneaker on the driveway, acting as though she was embarrassed about admitting something. “He’s very sweet. He helped me get through my first day.”
Marissa’s expression smoothed, doubts sliding away. “First day at a new school isn’t much fun for anyone.”
Jay nodded. “Yes. It was rough. Would you like me to look at that for you?” She held out her hand for the garage door remote.
“You fancy yourself a bit of an expert with electronics, huh?”
“I don’t fancy myself an expert, I am one.” It was the truth, and she saw no reason to make light of her abilities in this instance.
Shrugging, Marissa relinquished the remote. “What the hey. It’s not like it’s working properly anyway.”
Jay pulled a tiny toolkit from her jeans’ pocket, selected a screwdriver, and began to disassemble the remote. She noted Marissa’s theatrical wince. “It’s quite a simple device,” she assured her. “It will be easy to find out what’s wrong with it.”
“Sorry to come acros
s so anti,” Marissa said. “Mike—that’s Caro and Tyler’s dad—fancied himself a bit of a handyman. He was a whiz with computers, but anything else? Let’s just say it never ended well.”
The garage door creaked open to reveal Tyler leaning on a button by the internal door. “Hi, Mom. Sorry I took so long.”
His mother parked the vehicle and cut the engine. It died with a cough which didn’t bode well for it starting up again without a struggle. She got out of the car and slammed the door shut. “Bloody car,” she muttered. “Last thing I need right now is for it to give up the ghost.”
Tyler beckoned Jay inside. “Caro invited Jay for dinner,” he said to his mother. Hope that’s okay? he mouthed.
His mother hesitated, then gave a quick nod.
Jay pretended not to have seen the silent communication and ducked her head as though intent on the inner workings of the remote.
“And speaking of dinner—” Marissa sniffed the air. “Something smells good. What’re we having?”
“Spaghetti bolognaise,” Jay said, handing over the remote and pocketing her screwdriver.
“How did you—?” Tyler began.
Too late, she realized she’d done something out of the ordinary. A distraction was necessary. “It’s my favorite. Everyone knows what their favorite meal smells like. Try the remote now, Mrs. Davidson.”
Tyler’s mother jabbed viciously at the button and watched the garage door smoothly close without the usual jerking false starts. She blinked, pressed it again and watched it open back up in the same efficient manner. She turned to Jay with a delighted grin. “Gosh, thanks! I take it all back, you are an expert!”
“You’re welcome,” Jay said.
Tyler pried the remote from his mother’s hands and used it to close the garage door again before shoving it in her handbag. “C’mon you two. You can play with the remote and do the mutual admiration thing later. Inside and wash up! Pasta will be all gluggy if you don’t get a move on.”
“Hey, Tyler,” Caro screamed from the lounge. “Sounds like something’s boiling over!”
“Ah, crap! Not again.”
“Tyler!”
“Sorry, Mom,” he yelled over his shoulder as he raced off.
“Caro!” Jay heard him howl from the vicinity of the kitchen. “Couldn’t you have got off your sorry butt and turned the pasta down?”
“Not my turn to cook,” his sister yelled back. “Doing important stuff here.”
“Yeah. Sure. I know you’re watching music vids instead of doing your homework. Oooooh!” He wailed an impression of a popular singer. “Can you handle it? I don’t think you can handle it!”
Jay caught Marissa’s gaze. “Beyoncé Knowles.”
Marissa gave a full-body shudder. “I apologize in advance for my kids. Siblings. You know what it’s like.” Her gaze lingered on Jay’s shirt.
“I’m an only child,” Jay told her. “So this is…. This is a refreshing change.” She watched as Marissa seemed to shrug off her fascination with the borrowed shirt.
As a cop from a movie Jay had watched liked to say, “Dodged that bullet.” It could prove embarrassing for Tyler if his mother recognized the shirt and asked why Jay was wearing it. Jay didn’t believe Tyler would appreciate his mother knowing he’d vomited while watching a frog being dissected. She followed Marissa and the aroma of slightly overcooked spaghetti to the kitchen.
Caro made an appearance just as her brother was dishing up. “Oh, hi!” she said to Jay. “No one told me you’d arrived.”
“Here.” Tyler dumped a large serving bowl full of drained spaghetti into his sister’s arms. “Make yourself useful and take this out to the table. And,” he said to Jay, “would you mind taking the salad out, please?”
“Why does she get a ‘would you mind, please’ and I get a ‘make yourself useful’?” Caro whined.
“Because Jay’s a guest,” her mother said. “And besides, you weren’t exactly being useful, were you?” She assisted her daughter through into the dining room with a firm hand on the small of her back.
Jay followed Caro. “I’m sure you’re very useful when you want to be,” she ventured, in an attempt to build rapport.
“Typical.” Caro plunked her burden on the table. “Ever since Dad left, she always sides with Tyler and—” She broke off, fiddling with the serving spoons. “Anyway. Thanks for coming at such short notice.”
“Thank you for asking me.”
Caro pulled out a chair and indicated Jay do the same. Jay observed Caro carefully and mimicked her relaxed posture. She slumped forward with her elbows on the table, chin resting on her hands, and legs hooked around the chair’s front legs. “May I ask your advice?”
“Sure.” Caro assumed what she probably imagined was a worldly-wise expression.
“It’s about the behavior of one of the employees in the electronics store. He gave me his cell phone number.”
Caro smirked and waggled her eyebrows. “Ohhh! Best not mention that in Tyler’s hearing. He’ll pitch a fit if—”
“He’ll pitch a fit if what?” Tyler was juggling a serving dish brimful of bolognaise and a ceramic tray designed to hold three small bowls, each with its own tiny stainless steel ladle.
“Ooh, fancy!” Caro teased, shooting a conspiratorial glance at Jay. “How come you don’t just bring out the dressing bottles?”
“We have a guest,” he said, placing everything on the table and fiddling with their artful placement.
Caro rolled her eyes. “Sheesh. Next thing, we’ll be using the good linen napkins instead of—”
“Sorry about that, love.” Her mother walked into the dining room brandishing four linen napkins that obviously matched the tablecloth at Tyler. “We use them so infrequently I’d forgotten where I stashed them.”
Caro shut her mouth with an audible snap as Tyler carefully folded the napkins and placed one beside each place setting.
“Well, this is nice,” Marissa said, beaming first at Jay and then Caro. When her gaze got to Tyler, her smile faltered and became strained. “Thanks for going to so much effort, love.”
“No problem, Mom.” Tyler didn’t seem to notice his mother’s tension. He smiled sweetly at her, and then ruined the effect by casting an evil glare at his sister. “It all turned out pretty well, considering Caro only told me she’d invited a guest over for dinner like, an hour ago.”
Caro shrugged when her mother queried her with raised eyebrows. “I couldn’t help it if practice ran over time could I? Now, if I had a cell phone, I could’ve—”
Marissa buried her face in her hands and pressed her eyelids with her fingertips. When she’d regained her equilibrium she said, “Please, Caro, not now. We’ve already had this conversation. And no mentioning it to Grandma Davidson, either. I refuse to take any handouts from that old cow after what she said to me when your father—” She flushed when she noted Caro and Tyler’s poorly hidden misery. “Well. Anyway, same goes for her giving expensive gifts to you, too, Caro. You are not to so much as hint to her that you need a cell phone.”
Her daughter’s gaze dropped to the tablecloth. She pleated the edge with her fingers. “Sorry.”
Tyler let out the breath he’d been holding and passed the pasta bowl to Jay.
“This smells wonderful,” she said, because she’d been told by Father it was polite to compliment the cook. In truth, although she could separate out the aromas of every ingredient that had gone into the dish, she neither liked nor disliked the smell. It was fuel. She’d eaten far better meals—and far worse—to maintain her body’s optimum muscle tone and keep it functioning at its full capacity. Regardless of what she ate, her system would extract the nutrients required and expel the rest. She could eat things humans would not be able to stomach, things that would make them violently ill—such as the old takeout she’d mentioned to Tyler.
She helped herself to a large portion of his bolognaise.
The tips of Tyler’s ears turned pink.
&nbs
p; Interesting. She wound spaghetti round her fork and took her first bite. As she chewed, she was hyper-aware of his eyes glued to her face, awaiting her reaction to the meal he’d cooked. For her.
She swallowed her mouthful and smiled at him. “This tastes fantastic.”
His blush deepened, creeping down his neckline “Th-thanks,” he managed.
“Amazing what you can do with a jar of pasta sauce and a bag of salad greens,” Caro said. Her tone was a beautiful example of what the kids termed snark.
Tyler’s eyes narrowed to slits. His mouth opened.
“I agree,” Jay said, before he could utter a word. “It is amazing. And I really appreciate the effort you’ve made, Tyler. It’s lovely to have someone cook for me, for a change.”
Freaks of Greenfield High Page 9
