I couldn’t blame Heather. People liked to gossip. At least she was trying to make me feel less alone. I didn’t want her to feel bad or uncomfortable, so I indicated someone else at random.
“What’s his story?” I said, pointing to a guy with blond hair who was cute in a retro kind of way.
Her eyes lit up behind those big frames of hers. “Davie Rochester. He’s got the biggest crush on Sarah. All the guys in school do, but not like him. She can be kind of cruel to him, but it’s like he doesn’t even notice!”
“You’re…really excited about that,” I said. “He doesn’t seem so bad. I don’t understand why this Sarah person wouldn’t be interested in him.”
Heather bit into her sandwich again and chewed in a way that I would call thoughtful. After she swallowed, she nodded. “I think it’s a strategy. Like chess. You know, ’cause he’s the QB on our varsity football team, so if she’s too good for him, she’s the best thing ever.”
“She sounds like a piece of work.”
“They all are.” Heather tipped her chin to another table in the middle of the cafeteria. All the other tables had a foot of space between them, but this table seemed to be surrounded by ten feet on each side. “The It Girls. I think you met two of them yesterday.”
Yep. The two who threatened me to stay away from Noah. “The blonde and the redhead.”
Heather nodded, putting her sandwich on her plastic bag and tucking her hair behind her ears. She leaned forward. “The blonde girl is Sarah Williams, the curly redhead is Kate Walcott, and the twins are Jessica and Abigail Booth. You can tell them apart because Jessica keeps her hair short. I guess you could say Sarah is their leader.”
So Blondie’s name was Sarah, and Sarah was the absolute worst person at this school to piss off. Great.
I assessed the queen bee and her clique a moment longer. Heather didn’t mention how they all styled their makeup the same way – black eyeliner drawn on cat-eye style with red-rouged lips. They also all wore the same black lace choker. It kind of creeped me out, though I couldn’t pinpoint why. At least they weren’t all dressed the same.
They laughed at whatever the guys over at their table were saying. Sarah did that pseudo shoulder shove move popular girls do, pushing one of the guys with a toss of her long hair over her shoulder.
“So what’s their deal?” I asked, breaking my stare.
Heather grinned mischievously. “Everyone says they have all the boys bewitched. Noah especially! He won’t even talk to anyone else. That’s where you come in. I saw you two yesterday after school, and it’s obvious he’s been trying to get your attention all day today. That’s got to make Sarah’s blood boil.”
“He needed the assignment for trig,” I lied. “I think he wanted some help with it.”
“You do realize he’s leading for class valedictorian? He could do trigonometry in his sleep. I doubt he’s ever needed help with an assignment. Like, ever in his life. If he forgot what it was, he could have downloaded it from the school website. Teachers update their pages at the end of the day so students who are out sick or lose their homework folder don’t miss anything.”
My gaze drifted over to where Noah sat. He was staring back. Crap. I looked away, but what I saw there was even worse: Sarah was giving me the evil eye.
“Well,” I said, “I think I’m gonna grab some food after all. I better head out. I’m not a fan of cafeteria food.”
“Geez,” Heather said, touching my arm, her voice more gentle than excited now. “Don’t let them get to you.”
I pulled away. “I’m not. I’m just hungry.”
For someone who lied all the time, I was awful at it.
“Okay.” She slid her hand away from me. “Did you want to meet up after school? I could catch you up on the rest of the cliques.”
I pushed out a smile. “That sounds nice. Catch you later.”
Ididn’t just walk out of lunch. I walked out of the building altogether. I’d had enough “learning” for one day. Sitting in my car, I turned the key to the ignition, but it didn’t start. I rested my head against the steering wheel.
This couldn’t be happening.
I spent the next thirty seconds watching my breath greet the frigid air in little white puffs. The noon sun took off the bite of winter, but it was still too cold to sit in a car without heat. I could go back inside, but I didn’t want to deal with Sarah and her posse today. Not while my brain tumbled like a mental washing machine through everything Heather had said.
Noah’s trouble wasn’t with school. If he didn’t need my help with homework, then what was it? Why did Dad have to move us to this miserable place?
A knock on my windshield jolted me from my wallowing.
Noah.
I’d offered more fake smiles today than I could count, but I tried again for one more. It didn’t work. Noah wasn’t smiling, either.
I rolled down my window. “Hi, listen, about yesterday –”
“Forget it. You need a ride.”
It wasn’t a question. “My car won’t start.”
“I know. I’ll take you wherever you want to go in my truck.”
He opened my car door, pulled me out by the hand, and shut the door behind me. His hand was so warm I had the urge turn my whole body into his, but his actions were so cold I wanted to pull away at the same time. It didn’t matter – I was too stunned to react.
He glanced over his shoulder, back toward the school. Sarah glowered from behind the front doors.
“Please don’t fight me on this,” he said, leading me over to his blue Chevy truck. It looked old – probably a few decades older than me. He opened the passenger door and practically pushed me in. “I’ll explain.”
A moment later, he was in the driver’s seat, and we were turning onto the main road. The inside of the car smelled of warm coconut. Or he did, and I hadn’t noticed before.
Butterflies whipped around in my stomach. It wasn’t that I was scared of Noah – though maybe I should have been – but I was definitely frightened by his odd behavior. Sarah unnerved me more, though, and Noah was getting me farther away from her, so I kept my mouth shut.
He blew a slow breath between his lips. “I feel like I ought to apologize. For being so short-tempered.”
“You mean rude?” I asked, thinking of the way he demanded I get into his truck.
He gritted his teeth. “Yes. Or that.” Now he wasn’t looking at me. “But one day I hope you’ll understand why and forgive me.”
“I already forgive you.” Why not? He was rude, and I was a liar. Nobody’s perfect, right? “But why not tell me the reason today? Get it over with.”
His mouth pressed into a tight line as he shook his head. “Not today.”
“I thought you said you’d explain?”
“I will,” he said. “But not today.”
I turned toward him, crossing my arms. “You know, I can be short-tempered, too. Just saying.”
This broke his frown into a smirk. Outside the car window behind him, the world blurred past. “Is that so?”
Not really, but whatever. “You didn’t order me into your car to apologize, right?”
“Right,” he said, and just like that, the moment was broken. “I shouldn’t have said anything yesterday,” he mumbled. “I caused a lot of drama for you.”
I bit my lip. “I’ve dealt with worse.”
His gaze met mine. The intensity I’d seen in his eyes the moment we met was back. “No, Emily, you haven’t. Look, I can take you home, but then Sarah will find out where you live, and believe me, that’s a bad idea. You should give her some time to cool off and return to your car when she’s not watching. Do you want me to drop you off up the road from your house?”
Did he think she would follow us? She was still inside when we’d left. I doubted she could get in her car and c
atch up that fast. She sounded a bit psychotic if she was that mad at me for nothing.
“At this point, I kind of just want some answers.” My stomach growled. “And a sandwich.”
He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. The truck accelerated. “You could have called.”
“But I didn’t,” I countered.
“I can take you to a place nearby if you want to talk. Do you trust me?”
“Not really,” I said. After so many lies told to so many people, it felt strangely refreshing to be this honest with someone. Especially when that someone was Noah. “I don’t know you. But we can go wherever. If you wanted to hurt me, you could have done so already.”
“Your logic frightens me,” he said in a serious tone despite one side of his mouth curling up playfully. “All right, brat, but you have to close your eyes.”
I lifted one of my eyebrows. “Top secret?”
“I could blindfold you,” he offered, slowing to make a turn, “or I could take you back to your car.”
There was something about him. Something unknown and disarming. Something that made my palms sweat and started an uneasy tingle in my gut. It made me want to know more. So I shut my eyes and kept them closed until he told me I could open them again.
We had arrived, and one thought replaced all others.
What was this place?
3
IT’S COMPLICATED
Before I had a chance to speak, Noah stood at the passenger’s side, holding the truck door open. He offered his hand to help me step down, and in that moment, I felt comfortable.
We were parked under an arching canopy of trees capped in white, icicles dipping down from their branches. Before us, a frozen lake, the embankment curving in a wide semicircle. The mid-day sun glistened on the crisp snow blanketing the ground. But the strangest and most breathtaking part of it all was the rose-gold haze blurring the air all around us. What would cause that?
I glanced behind us to a path flanked on either side by heavy woods. Then I asked my question aloud: “What is this place?”
One of the few places Sarah can’t find me,” he said. Apparently, this Sarah chick took intimidation to a whole new level if people created secret hideaways to get away from her. “But it’ll only stay that way so long as I’m the only one who knows the way here. You understand?”
I nod slowly. Then say, “That’s why you made me close my eyes on the way here, isn’t it?” I looked over and noticed I was still holding his hand. Yikes. Letting go, I fumbled with my coat sleeves. “I could have peeked, though.”
Noah tossed his head a little to the side, moving his hair from his eyes. “But you didn’t.”
“But I could have.”
His lips turned up in a crooked grin. “I trust you.”
“Well, you shouldn’t. I lie all the time.” I clamped my hand over my mouth. What had come over me?
We sat in silence for a few minutes. When he leaned back against the hood of his car, I did the same.
Noah lifted a branch from the snow and picked at the bark. “I need your help, Emily.”
I half-wondered if I’d been demoted from “brat” or if his use of my name was a good thing. He sounded more ominous when he said it.
“Yeah?” I asked, unable to keep the skepticism from my voice. “Heather said you’re a whiz at school, so I should probably be asking you for help.”
I wasn’t ready for this. I thought I was, but now that the moment had arrived, I was terrified to find out what help he needed. Terrified he would confirm my biggest fear – that my drawings were correct and his life was in jeopardy.
Noah leveled a silencing glare my way. He crossed his arms at his chest and his feet at his ankles, and as he did so, his weight shifted closer to me until our elbows nearly brushed. A hot shiver swept through my body, and I lost my train of thought.
“Remember that picture from yesterday?” His question jolted me back to the conversation. “The one that looked like this.” With a smirk, he waved a hand in front of his face, then tucked his fingers back between his forearm and his bicep. “Can I see it again?”
My cheeks burned. Where was he going with this? I scratched at my chipping fingernail polish. “I think you’re confused. I didn’t draw a picture of you.”
“Huh.” His blue eyes lit up. “I didn’t say you did. I asked if you remembered it.”
“Well, I don’t,” I lied.
He reached into his back pocket, unfolded a sheet of paper, and held it up by his face. A near replica. My near replica. “Striking resemblance, isn’t it?”
I snatched the drawing out of his hand. “Where did you get this?”
He shrugged, making no effort to take the image back. “It fell out of your locker.”
My locker that always stuck closed? My hand started shaking. “You broke into my locker?”
He rubbed his hand against the side of his face. “Tell you what. Truth for truth.”
He turned away from me and walked back toward the driving path, then stopped at the foot of his truck and let down the tailgate. He sat on the end and waved me over. “You know you want to learn more. So do I. Get over here.”
Demanding much? I stomped over and climbed up, sitting as far from him as possible. “Fine. You go first.”
“Uh-uh. You’re the self-professed liar. You go first. Why did you draw that picture of me?”
I huffed a sigh. “I didn’t.” When he arched his eyebrows, I added, “I mean I did, but I didn’t. It’s complicated.”
“Try me.”
I picked a wet leaf off one of my boots, which beat the socks off of maintaining eye contact. “I drew it subconsciously.”
Noah didn’t miss a beat. “Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bull.”
“Okay, you don’t want to know.”
“I need to know,” he insisted.
I shook my head. “That was like three truths. My turn. Why did you steal the picture from my locker?”
“I wasn’t lying before. It fell out. You were walking away, and it dropped.”
“You could have given it back to me.”
“I could have,” he agreed. “But I didn’t.”
I nodded, considering him. Takes a liar to know a liar. Which was how I knew he wasn’t lying. “Why do you care about the picture so much?”
“I told you. I think you can help me.”
“That’s too vague.”
He pressed his fist against his mouth, shaking his head, then lowered his hand. “That’s all I can say.”
I tucked up one leg and rested my chin on my knee. “If you want my help, you need to give me more than that.”
When he didn’t respond, I shifted my gaze to peek at him from the corner of my eye. His lips pressed in a tight line, his eyes glazed over. A half-second later, his head nodded almost unperceivably.
“There is something about me I can’t tell you yet. And, more importantly, there is something about Sarah and her friends you need to figure out, for your sake and mine, before it’s too late.”
“So you’re not hiding out from her because she’s an insufferable…witch? I need to figure out her secret and yours to help us both, but you can’t tell me anything more than that. Right. Got it.”
Noah raked his hand though his dark curls. “I know it sounds bad.”
“Only a lot. Why me, though? Why can’t someone else solve your mystery?”
He shuffled closer. The warmth radiating off his body took the chill off the air. Even still, the winter breeze bit at my ears and cheeks.
“I saw you drawing. The trance you were in? And your last name – Bishop. I’ve been waiting for a Bishop. It’s how I’m able to talk to you. I know you can help me.”
His words slammed into me. The other day, Heather said Noah w
ouldn’t speak to anyone else. Was he now implying he wasn’t able to? My curiosity superseded the fact I should probably be a bit freaked out. But this was par for the course in my life, so it would be a lot weirder for me to react like a “normal” person. Instead, I simply confirmed my understanding.
“You can talk to me because my last name is Bishop, but you can’t talk to anyone else?”
He nodded, his expression as smooth as stone. “I can’t talk to anyone Sarah doesn’t want me to…except you. That’s all I can say right now without putting us both in danger.”
His confession confirmed it: Somehow, whatever Sarah was doing to Noah had something to do with my family. Before I solved the connection, I needed to find out what I was connecting myself to, which ruled out turning to Heather for answers. If knowing whatever Noah did was dangerous, she couldn’t be told. I would have to cover up my every move.
Noah sat still, taking me in with his lost eyes, biting his bottom lip as if trying to hold back the words that threatened to tumble out.
My defenses softened. I dropped my leg to dangle from the tailgate and ignored the sudden impulse to scoot closer to him. He was so…warm.
His words thudded through my mind. To anyone else, what he said probably would sound crazy. But I understood. There was a darkness in this world that went beyond logic, beyond reason, beyond sense. A brooding sort of magic. One I hadn’t uncovered in time to save my mother. And now it held Noah in its clutches; the least I could do was help him. Maybe whatever danger he was in was the same danger that had pursued Mom. Her “heart attack” wasn’t a heart attack; I just knew it.
I wasn’t sure how to help him, but I was sure gonna try.
We arrived back at school as classes were about to let out. Noah raised the hood to my Corolla and found the problem. A loose battery plug. Not hard to guess who was to blame for that. Maybe I should send Sarah a thank you card. Bet she hadn’t expected her prank to turn out with me spending some one-on-one time with Noah.
Seconds after we reattached the plug, my car started.
Something like Voodoo Page 3
