“Why?” She was touched, but couldn’t imagine why he would want her to have his mother’s old necklace anymore.
He leaned close and whispered a single word in her ear, and then he was gone. Fingering the Moon of Fallen Leaves just under the base of her throat, she watched him walk away into the thickening snow and tried hard to stop the tears. Her mother put so much faith in that word, and right now Jennifer struggled to feel the same way.
Hope.
She was still wiping away the tears when she entered the hospital. The first person she saw in the lobby was Bob Jarkmand, the largest sophomore in the history of Winoka High. He saw her and his huge features immediately turned very serious.
“Oh, crap,” she muttered. Come on, then. Make my day perfect, you freaking behemoth.
“Jennifer.” He was suddenly right there, his chest right in front of her runny nose. Ugh, what did he grow since Halloween, six inches?
“What?” she muttered at his letter jacket.
“You remember last year, when you punched me?”
“My goodness, was that you?” She tried an innocent tone, but then gave up and slouched again, resigned to her fate. “Yeah. I remember that.”
He was cracking his enormous knuckles; they made sounds like small cannons. His face was getting red, and his jacket smelled like raging sweat. “And the way you threatened all of us at the Halloween dance?”
“Well, threatened is a strong word…” Jennifer braced herself for the assault. At least we’re already in a hospital.
“Yeah, well. Um. That was really hot. I mean, I think you’re really hot.”
“Huh?” Jennifer tried to translate the words. Hot?
Then she looked up into his face and saw Bob was sweating. In addition, he kept cracking his knuckles nervously, even though they couldn’t possibly make any more sounds. His thick lips struggled around the next words. “Do, um, do you wanna go out for burgers later tonight? Maybe see a, er, movie?”
“Oh…” She examined his face for signs of jocularity, then spun around to check the room for giggling football buddies. There were none of either. She looked desperately for help from the only other person in the room—a nurse throwing a tan cardigan over her pink scrubs—but the woman was plainly hurrying off shift, possibly under the impression that this personal hell of Jennifer’s would soon spread and then freeze over. “Geez, Bob, I…”
“I know you probably like that guy Skip.” The word “Skip” came out like a command. “I mean, I’ve been passing you notes in Mr. Slider’s geea—gom—geometry class, but you don’t answer them, and you hang around with Wilson a lot…”
“Oh!” So Bob was the note writer? But why didn’t he sign his name? Jennifer carefully examined the boy’s Neanderthal jaw that had worked so hard around the word “geometry.” Perhaps a cursive signature was asking too much.
“…but I was just talking to Eddie upstairs, ’cause he knows you, and he said he figured you and Skip might be having problems, so maybe I should ask you out. So I’m askin’.”
“Yes, you certainly are.” Eddie! She stifled a chuckle of admiration as she thought of the fun he must have had siccing Bob on her, in revenge for his humiliation in the parking lot. Kid fights better from a hospital bed than on his own two feet.
“So, um…you wanna?”
This broke her train of thought. “Do I wanna…oh! Go out! Um…”
It occurred to her that this boy was a young beaststalker—one who knew she was a dragon, and who admired her anyway. She was the Ancient Furnace, Ambassador to the Beaststalkers, pledged to bring together her two peoples. He was reaching out to her. Could she accept the offer? For world peace?
And he was a football player. Football players were cute, weren’t they? They were in all the magazines she read. If she looked at him—really looked at him, mind you—she could see the softness of those blue eyes instead of their dullness, and the firmness of his jaw instead of the warped shape. Couldn’t she?
Ugh. “No, I can’t. Bob, I’m sorry. I gotta go with my gut here—it wouldn’t work out between us. You’re too…you’re too…” She searched for the right word, scanning the enormous spread of letter jacket. “You’re just too much for me.”
Rejected, his eyes narrowed, entertaining a specter of the hostility she had seen at the Halloween dance. “Too much, huh? Yeah, I guess you can’t handle me, after all.”
“That’s it exactly,” she agreed as she patted his chest and deftly maneuvered around him, aiming for the stairs.
World peace could wait for a more appealing guy.
She passed Wendy Blacktooth’s room on the second floor. The door was slightly open, and she could make out the woman’s shape in bed. A few feet away, the doctors had thoughtfully placed Eddie’s bed. The boy looked bruised from Skip’s beating, but he was sitting up and smiling at his mother, who was smiling back at him.
He looked up first and caught her eye. His grin faltered for a moment, but returned when Jennifer waved and winked.
Hey there, he mouthed.
Jennifer stiffened a bit as Wendy Blacktooth followed her son’s gaze. The woman’s smile disappeared—but there was no frown, no look of cold hatred. In fact, was that a nod of greeting?
Heaven help her, it was. Smile frozen in place, she wiggled her fingers at Wendy Blacktooth in response, terrified to do much more.
“What are you doing here?!”
She jumped at the horribly familiar voice behind her, and lost the smile immediately.
“Nothing, Mr. Blacktooth,” she hissed, starting down the corridor without bothering to look at him. A corner of her mouth twitched up as she felt his glare on the back of her head. “Shame about your sword.”
All she heard in response was a door slam.
She turned a corner and ran into Edmund Slider’s wheelchair.
An impolite word escaped her as she held her shin. Then she added, slightly more politely, “And who are you visiting today, Mr. Slider?”
“No one,” her geometry teacher replied with ironic amusement, rearranging the blond strands of his hair. “I simply enjoy rolling around the hallways, ramming my students’ shins when I get the opportunity. Makes the chair work better or so my doctors say.”
“Very funny. So you’re here by yourself? Are you okay?”
Two different emotions passed over his face so quickly, Jennifer wasn’t certain of them both: frustration and gratitude were her best guesses. “I’m fine, Ms. Scales. Thanks for asking. I have physical therapy sessions here; sometimes I need a full weekend, as is the case this time. I checked in a couple of days ago, after…well, after seeing you at the mall. Before running into you just now, I was rolling around for some exercise. My room is right here.” He motioned to a door, just slightly ajar, next to Jennifer. The lights were off inside.
“Oh. Um, Mr. Slider, about that night at the mall…”
“No need to apologize, Ms. Scales. You and Skip had my safety in mind, as well as that of the others. It was…most kind.” He said this last with a mysterious smile. “Perhaps I can return the favor in the future.”
“Do you, um, need help getting back? I mean, into bed? I could—”
“Thank you, Ms. Scales, but I have help.” He rolled over to the door and opened it quickly enough that Jennifer could spot a large, bulbous shape scuttling out of the light and into a dark corner.
“Edmund, you’re back already! Was your exercise rewarding?” The voice from within was unmistakable. Jennifer didn’t need to see the source to recall the maniacally wide smile and spindly frame of Tavia Saltin.
Mr. Slider nodded to the unseen woman with a small sigh. “Yes, dear. I’m back.” From the doorway, he turned to Jennifer with a dry smile. “Since I am sure rumors will now swirl around the hallways of Winoka High within minutes of your return to school, let me inform them appropriately: Yes, I am dating your boyfriend’s aunt.”
Any impulse to correct Mr. Slider’s outdated view of her relationship with Skip
was overwhelmed by a wave of embarrassment. “Oh, sir, that’s really none of my—”
“I find her,” he continued, oblivious to Jennifer’s intense desire to hear no more, “exhilarating.”
My ears! I think they’re bleeding! “Listen, Mr. Slider. I, um, okay. Here it is. I really need to change the subject. Besides, you should know I was talking to Mayor Seabright earlier, and—”
“Yes, I know. She has her eyes on me.” Mr. Slider suddenly adopted a much more ominous expression than Jennifer had ever seen grace his sallow features. “Her creepy, all-seeing, totalitarian eyes.”
The hairs on the back of Jennifer’s neck wouldn’t stay down. “Mr. Slider?”
“The woman plagues me,” he spat out. “And someday, she will regret it.”
And with a quick whrrr, his wheelchair went through the doorway and into the darkness beyond.
After carefully checking a few more corners before walking around them, Jennifer finally found her mother in an examination room, fully dressed. She was thanking a colleague and picking up her jacket and pocketbook.
“Hey, honey!” Elizabeth’s face shone through the new wrinkles she had inherited from Evangelina. “Clean bill of health. You ready to go?”
“Am I.”
“How did it go with the mayor?”
“My chat with Mayor Seabright,” said Jennifer pointedly, “was the least disturbing of those I’ve had since you dropped me off.”
That night, lying in bed, Jennifer thought of Bob Jarkmand and the forgone burgers and movie date. Maybe I can hook him up with Susan, she thought with a wicked smile on her face.
The waxing crescent moon shone just outside her window. She stared at it for a long time, delving deep into its shape. As she scanned the craters and mountains on its surface, she felt a small snap inside. Though she couldn’t see it, she knew the crescent phase was over, and another change had come. In this world at least, she thought to herself.
Without knowing why, she rolled over and began to cry for the sister she had barely gotten to know.
Even though it was a Saturday, Jennifer woke up and got dressed early so that she would be ready for Catherine. Today the two of them would just drive around Winoka, she decided over breakfast. Maybe visit Eddie in the hospital, if his father wasn’t around and his mother didn’t mind. Or was that too fast? The memory of Ms. Blacktooth in her hospital bed, solemnly nodding, intrigued her.
“Mom?”
Her mother was at the new kitchen table, serenely chewing oatmeal while sitting in the midst of buckets of plaster, cans of paint, and rolls of plastic. Right there, Jennifer thought briefly. That’s where she drove her sword into the floor. She took a quick step forward as she realized she was standing on the spot where she had found her mother’s unconscious body.
“Yes, honey?”
“Do you ever think things might be right again, between you and Mrs. Blacktooth?”
Elizabeth chomped her oatmeal thoughtfully—her mother’s cooked oats were frightfully chewy—before answering, “If I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t keep living next door.”
“Huh. Do you think maybe she feels the same way?”
Her mother could only shrug.
Maybe we can start there, Jennifer told herself. It seemed strange to begin with the woman who had nearly sliced her apart last spring. But such was life in Winoka, it seemed.
Lost in ambassadorial thought, she jumped at the sound of the doorbell, five minutes before Catherine was due to arrive.
It wasn’t Catherine. It was Susan. The nose bandages were gone, the black eye was brownish yellow, and the perky smile was back in those flushed cheeks.
“Good, you’re up. Let’s go do something!” The brunette curls bounced as her friend leapt through the doorway. Jennifer could barely keep up with her as she glided past the construction work in the hallway and picked an orange out of the bowl on the kitchen counter. “Only problem is, my dad’s back, and of course the car’s wrecked, so I’m in trouble. Though I think the bandages and black eye were good for a little sympathy.”
“So suffering severe injury is your new way of avoiding trouble? Brilliant.”
Susan gave her a sour look and stuck out her tongue. “Anyway, he says I can’t use any car for a month now; and I have to clean the basement, which is the spookiest pocket of cement you’ve ever seen. I’m certain zombies live there. Ugh, it’ll be so cool when I just have a real license! Hey, the little dragon guy!” She pointed at the spot on the windowsill where Jennifer’s birthday present kept silent vigil. “It looks good there! So anyway, what do you want to do? We could—”
The doorbell rang again.
They opened the door to what appeared at first glance to be a young Egyptian queen. Definitely older than Jennifer or Susan, the young woman had a mahogany complexion, jet-black hair pulled back in a bun, and the highest cheekbones either of them had ever seen.
It wasn’t until Jennifer spotted the blue Mustang convertible in the driveway that she gasped in recognition. Of course, she had never seen this girl or her family as anything but a trampler dragon before.
“Funny,” she chuckled while tossing her own platinum hair. “I had you pegged for a blonde.”
Catherine stepped up and gave Jennifer a hug. “I’m glad I made it! I was so freaked out when I reached the city limits. Grammie Winona told me not to stop, not even for the police, until I had you with me in the car.”
“Winoka’s not that bad!” Jennifer protested. “You’ve just got to get to know it.”
“Which we can all do together,” Susan interrupted quite seriously without breaking eye contact with the driveway, “in this wonderful, wonderful girl’s beautiful, beautiful car. Whoever the heck she is.”
Jennifer introduced Catherine to Susan, and then to her mother.
“So,” Catherine asked as they sat down together at the kitchen table, “what do you want to do today? I think—”
The doorbell rang a third time.
“Eddie!” Jennifer took an astonished step back. “You’re out of the hospital!”
“Got clearance this morning.” The left side of his face was one big bruise, and he was favoring his right leg, but his sparrowlike frame stood tall in the doorway. “I, er, huh.” He shook his head and gave a rueful glance across the yard to his own house. “I’m kinda here to see your mom. And you, of course. Can I come in?”
“Sure.” She followed him down the hallway, smelling the faint odor of unshowered boy. Once they were in the kitchen, she answered her mother’s shocked expression with a confused shrug of her own.
“Hey, Dr. Georges-Scales.” Jennifer couldn’t help noticing her mother’s warm smile at the proper address. Eddie was one of the few people who had always gotten it right. He looked nervously at Susan, who gave him a halfhearted smile. “Hey, Susan. Um, hi…”
“Catherine.” They shook hands.
“Nice to meet you, Catherine. Um, Dr. Georges-Scales, there’s no easy way to ask this.”
Elizabeth stood, face lined with concern. “What do you need, Eddie?”
He took a deep breath. “I need a place to stay. For a while.”
“My goodness, Eddie. Sit down. Tell me what’s wrong.”
Catherine and Susan diplomatically gave up their seats and retreated to the living room as Eddie and the Scales women sat down. Within a few moments, Jennifer heard the stereo playing brass quintet music, which she knew Susan hated but no doubt afforded some sort of privacy to their kitchen conversation.
“It’s Dad,” Eddie explained tersely. “He’s thrown me out. Or maybe I left. It doesn’t really matter which.”
Jennifer reached out and gently took his hand. “Was it because I stopped by your room yesterday? Or because of the sword I broke? Or because of Evangelina? Because I could try to—” She stopped. What? Apologize? Unlikely.
He smiled grimly. “All of that and more, but this has been a long time coming. Ever since…” He choked on the words. “Ever since I betray
ed you last spring, we’ve had problems. It was just a matter of time before things got out of hand. Last night at the hospital, he and I finally engaged in open hostilities, right in front of my mom. I can’t believe I let that happen,” he added quietly, as if to himself. “She’s still pretty fragile, and it hurts her to move. She actually had to sit up and scream in pain to get me to stop. And even then, Dad wouldn’t quit. He went on and on about how I was a failure, and how I’d lost his precious sword, and how I had shamed the Blacktooth name. He told me if I had been worth anything, I would have helped my mother and she wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”
“But you saved her!” Jennifer felt the bile rise into her throat. “And he just stood there on the—”
Her mother’s hand on her elbow was signal enough. Everyone here knows this already, honey. Let him talk.
“He finally left, after my mother yelled at him to get out. But not before he forbade me from coming home. I told him I wouldn’t live under the same roof with him again if dragons burned down every other house in town—no offense, Jennifer.”
She waved the comment away. “So you stayed at the hospital last night?”
“Yeah, in a sleeper chair. I didn’t feel right leaving Mom after all that, anyway. This morning, she told me I should report here.” He looked up at Elizabeth. “She told me to stay at a friend’s house, and she said that’s what this was. She made sure to have me tell you that.
“So,” he finished nervously, scratching the back of his long neck with dirty fingernails. “What do you say?”
Elizabeth bit her lip and communicated silently with Jennifer: He can stay, right? For my friend?
Of course he can, Mom.
“We’re so glad you came here, Eddie.” Elizabeth stood up and gave Eddie a hug. “You stay as long as you like. I’ll make up the guest room, and you can call your mom and tell her not to worry.” She spared a glance at the kitchen clock. “Heck, I’ll tell her myself when I go on shift in an hour.”
“Thanks, Dr. Georges-Scales.”
Susan appeared in the kitchen, bouncing up and down on her toes. “I see people hugging! Can I play?”
Jennifer Scales and the Messenger of Light Page 26
