Rebel Belle

by Rachel Hawkins

Page 14

 

  But it was only a hug. And if I maybe spent a second or two thinking that he actually smelled really nice, or that he was much more solid than he appeared, so what? I was traumatized by all the car chasing/nearly dying.

  Luckily, it didn’t last long, but when I pulled back, I noticed that my heart was pounding and there was this weird fluttering sensation.

  Butterflies.

  No, I thought to myself. Near-death flutters of anxiety. That’s all.

  Then I noticed that David was staring out the shattered wind

  shield, looking as weirded out as I felt.

  Oh my God, what was wrong with me? I could barely muster up the enthusiasm to make out with my own super hot boy

  friend, and I was . . . oh dear God, was I blushing? Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh.

  Yup, the car chase had clearly addled my brain.

  I was about to say something mean to David, you know, to

  restore equilibrium, when his eyes got big and he blurted out,

  “Bad guys in the pool!”

  Huh? Was that like thinking of baseball when—OH! Right! I pushed open my door and leapt out into my yard, taking

  deep breaths, hoping the cool air and sight of people drowning

  in my pool might get my hormones or whatever back under

  control.

  I had knocked over Mom’s birdbath. It lay in three big pieces

  right under David’s bumper. And then, of course, there was the

  giant hole in our fence. But those were really the least of my

  problems. This biggest issue was the black Cadillac currently

  sinking into my pool.

  No sound came from the car, and there didn’t appear to be

  any activity inside, so I guessed the impact had knocked out the

  driver and any passengers he or she might have had. David was standing next to me, watching the car as the aqua

  water bubbled and churned around it. “So are we, um, are we

  gonna let them drown?”

  I was glad he said that. We.

  I had killed Dr. DuPont, and I didn’t feel bad about that. I

  couldn’t. He had been seconds from killing me when I jammed

  that shoe into his neck. But whoever was in that black car . . .

  well, I didn’t know what they’d wanted. My gut told me they had been bad guys, but that still didn’t make me feel great about let

  ting them drown in my pool.

  I was also more than a little worried about explaining this

  whole thing. All evidence of my fight with Dr. DuPont had mysteriously vanished, but I wasn’t sure how whoever had worked

  that particular mojo could cover this up. I expected our neighbors

  to start congregating in the street any minute now, like they did

  when the power went out.

  David gave a huge sigh and ran his hands over his hair. “Well,

  this is weird. And awful. ”

  “Yup. ” My skirt had gotten twisted around my hips somewhere in all of this, and I started straightening it. Anything to

  avoid looking at the pool.

  “Who are you?” David asked me for the second time that day.

  “International assassin? Ninja? Vampire slayer, maybe?” I lifted my head. “No, I’m a—”

  There was a slight popping sound from the pool, and David

  and I both turned our attention back to the water.

  Which was now empty.

  And with one loud crack, the hole in my fence was suddenly

  gone. I didn’t even have to look behind me to know that the

  screech of metal was David’s car repairing itself. In just a few

  seconds, all evidence of the insane car chase, the crash, all of it,

  was gone. Then the only sound in my backyard was the singing

  of birds and the rustling of the leaves.

  “That really happened,” David said softly. “All that shit, it . . .

  disappeared, right? I didn’t hallucinate that?”

  My adrenaline seemed to vanish as completely as the Cadillac, and it was all I could do not to collapse in a heap on the grass. It was one thing to see the after-effects of stuff disappearing. It was another to see an entire car—with people inside—poof out of

  existence.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “That happened. ”

  “Do you know why?”

  When I turned to him, David was still staring at the pool, the

  fingers of his right hand pressed against his temple again. “No. But . . . David, something seriously weird is going on. ” The hand at his temple moved up to tug on his hair as David

  made a sound that was part sob, part laugh. “You think? Jesus,

  Harper. You . . . you flipped Ryan Bradshaw like a pancake. You

  drove a car like Jason Bourne. And then this . . . ” He waved his

  hand at the water. “I don’t . . . I mean . . . ” His words trailed off

  and he sank down into a crouch, eyes still fixed on the pool. Walking over to him, I pulled at the shoulder of his jacket.

  “Okay, I get that it’s weird, and while I totally respect the need

  for a PTSD moment, we really need to talk. ”

  He eyes moved up to my face, still kind of unfocused. “About

  what? Why bad guys are chasing you, and why freaking magic is

  apparently real?”

  “I actually think the bad guys might be chasing you, but yeah. ” David staggered backwards, and sat down heavily on the

  grass. As he did, he nearly overturned Mom’s statue of two little

  girls reading on a bench, but I was able to grab it before it fell. His sleeves, too short as usual, fell back from his thin wrists

  as he rested his elbows on his knees, hands tugging at his hair.

  “Hold up, what? You think those guys were after me? Why?” “I don’t know. Do you know why?” I towered over David, my

  shadow falling on his body.

  Dazed, David shook his head. “I can’t—”

  And then I saw it. Something flickered across his face and he

  flinched.

  “You do know,” I said, yanking him to his feet. “David, what

  is it?”

  He swallowed heavily. “Nothing. It’s nothing. ”

  At that moment, I really hated that my superpowers prevented

  me from shaking the crap out of him. I settled for balling my fist

  up in the front of his shirt and pulling him down to meet my

  eyes. “David, look around you. This? This is crazy-sauce. And if

  you know anything that could help me figure out why I’m suddenly Wonder Woman, I need to know it right. Effing. Now. ” I actually said the word that time, and David’s eyes went so

  wide I wondered if that had shocked him more than the disappearing Cadillac.

  But he never got a chance to answer me.

  “Yoo hoo!” a voice called out from the other side of my fence,

  and David and I both went still.

  “Is that?” I hissed.

  “My Aunt Saylor,” he gulped.

  The back gate swung open, and suddenly Saylor Stark was

  standing there, a pair of Chanel sunglasses pushed down her

  nose as she took in the sight of me, shaking and sweaty, clutching

  the front of her nephew’s T-shirt.

  “Oh my,” she said, and two syllables had never contained so

  much dismay. “What exactly is going on here?”

  David and I practically leapt apart as Saylor moved into the

  yard, her high heels sinking slightly. The late afternoon sunlight

  flashed on her silver hair as well as the silver and turquoise jewelry around her neck. Other than a slight grass stain on the hem

  of
her beige trousers, she looked as immaculate as ever. “I was over at Anne Beckwith’s, and I thought I saw your car

  tearing down the street, David James Stark,” she said, pushing

  her sunglasses back into place with one finger. “But I told myself,

  ‘Of course not, Saylor. David would never drive so irresponsibly.

  Besides, he’s meant to be in school right now. ’”

  She turned her head to me. “As are you, correct, Miss Price?” “Yes ma’am,” I said feebly. “I . . . I felt sick, and David offered

  to drive me home. ”

  I couldn’t see her eyes behind her dark glasses, but I had a feeling they were very cold. “Really?” she said. “How odd. Because

  right after I had the thought that David would never, ever drive

  his car in such a manner, I noticed that he was not the one behind

  the wheel. ”

  Oh, God. Of all the people to see me doing my Dale Earnhardt, Jr. , impression, it had to be Saylor Stark.

  “She asked to drive it,” David said, speaking up for the first

  time. He still seemed a little out of it, and his voice wasn’t as

  strong as normal, but he was still good at thinking on his feet.

  “She’d never driven one like it before, so she, uh, wanted to. ” As one, the three of us looked over at David’s pathetic Dodge.

  Even without its fender and back door mangled, it didn’t exactly

  scream, “DRIVE ME. ”

  Maybe David wasn’t that great at thinking on his feet. And why did he even own a car like that, anyway? Saylor surely could’ve afforded something nicer. It was probably a point of

  pride with him, like his weird thrift shop wardrobe.

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Saylor,” he continued. “I shouldn’t have

  ditched school, but Harper, uh, was sick. And you’re always

  going on about good citizenship. ”

  I tried not to let surprise show on my face. That was actually

  a pretty good save. Certainly better than “chicks really want to

  get behind the wheel of my Stratus. ” And the fact that he’d been

  able to do it after nearly getting killed and dealing with what appeared to be magic was impressive.

  “Good citizenship doesn’t have to come at the cost of your

  own morals, David,” Saylor snapped. “You know better than to

  skip class, and I am very disappointed in you. And of course, we

  haven’t even gotten into the completely reckless way you two

  were driving. I think you and I will be having a long talk when I