“Seriously, this is our last year. Whatever you do, don’t screw it up for yourself.”
FOURTEEN
It took some cajoling, but I finally convinced Caleb to meet me alone after school. When Adrian suggested we hang out that afternoon, just the two of us, I had to tell him I had too much homework. I would have rather bit off my own tongue than lie, and I sincerely hoped I wouldn’t have to do it often just to spend time with Caleb.
“So why haven’t you told Adrian about what you can do?” I asked. Things would be so much simpler if he was in on the secret, too.
Caleb tossed a stick underhand into the creek where the current quickly picked it up and carried it downstream. He had his shoes off and pant legs rolled up to wade in the water, but he was obviously cold. I could see goosebumps freckling the exposed skin of his arms even from where I was sitting. I pulled my knees to my chest and watched him as I waited for his answer.
“Adrian and I have been best friends for as long as I can remember,” he said. “I don’t want him to look at me any differently.”
“And yet you told me.”
“Your point?”
I rolled my eyes to the sky for patience. “My point is that it doesn’t make sense, Caleb.”
He broke another stick in half and sent each piece flying. “We’re the same, you and I. I had to tell you.”
He turned around then, a grin on his face. He thrust his hands in his pockets and began pacing through the water, just deep enough to soak the rolled hems of his jeans.
“Adrian is jealous, you know.”
I put my chin on my knees and tapped the toes of my sneakers on the ground. “He shouldn’t be. He knows how much I love him.”
Caleb laughed. “Yeah, well. He’s always been an insecure dude. Shyla has more balls than he does.”
“And you obviously like messing with him,” I said, not very kindly.
Caleb shrugged. “If he opened his eyes he’d see I’m not interested in you. At least not that way.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’m not interested in you that way, either.”
“Fine. Now that we have that settled, let’s get to the point of this little meeting. You brought me here for a reason. Why?”
My heart thundered in my chest. I got to my feet then and brushed off the back of my jeans. A gust of wind ruffled the hair off my neck, and I shivered and pulled my jacket tighter around me. I leveled my gaze at him.
“Okay, have you ever had a feeling that something is about to happen?”
Caleb shook his head. “What kind of something?”
I hesitated, my mouth working soundlessly. “I don’t know. But something . . . big. Something important. Something that you have to be ready for.”
The side of his mouth turned up. “Well, there was that time with Holly Lightfoot when I was sixteen, and we almost—”
I held up my hand. “Stop. I don’t need to hear the rest.”
“Needless to say, her mom called my mom and I was—”
“I said I don’t need to hear it!” I clapped my hands over my ears and waited until he stopped laughing.
“Ever since Victor . . .” I said, shaking my head. “I’m constantly looking over my shoulder, you know? When he took off, I knew that wasn’t the end. I knew he would be back. And now he’s calling Adrian and telling him he wants to meet and talk.”
“So what’s that got to do with me?”
I squared my shoulders as I cleared my throat. “For whatever reason, you and I are more alike than not. Don’t you think we should work together to, I don’t know, combine our powers?”
“Combine our powers?” He laughed under his breath, obviously not taking me as seriously as I hoped he would.
“Well . . . yeah.”
“Why?”
“Victor, for one. What if there’s trouble . . . or something?” I ended lamely. There was more to it than that, though, but I didn’t quite know how to explain what I was feeling.
Caleb studied me, one corner of his mouth finally lifting. “Combine our powers?”
I smiled back. “Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about it.”
He shrugged. “I haven’t. All I wanted was a friend. Someone who understood what I was going through.”
Caleb turned and paced through the water for a few moments before lifting his head to me once again. “Let me tell you how this is going to play out. Victor will eventually show his cowardly face and we’ll nab him.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”
I shook my head, unconvinced at the simplicity of this scenario. “I don’t know. It’s not just Victor. I’ve been thinking about my dad a lot lately and—”
“Your dad?” he said in surprise. “Do you think he’s coming after you?”
“No, of course not. It’s just that when your mom started talking about the others . . .” I waved my hand, irritated that I couldn’t articulate exactly what I wanted to say. “It doesn’t hurt to be prepared. That’s all I’m saying.”
Caleb bent and scooped up a handful of small stones that he began hurling into the creek. “So you want to combine our powers to combat the forces of Evil. Okay,” he said, slowly nodding his head as he contemplated it. “Let’s start now.”
“Oh! Okay,” I said, surprised he’d agreed so easily. I rubbed my hands together in anticipation and then stopped. I had no clue where or how to start. “Any ideas?”
“You’re asking me? I thought you had all of this planned out.”
I grinned sheepishly. “Not really. I’m sort of winging it here.”
“All right,” Caleb said. He turned and swept his hand out in front of him, sending a foot-high wave of creek water swelling into the opposite bank. “Can you do that?”
My stomach hit the ground. He made it seem so effortless. He was definitely a lot better than I was. “Uh, not exactly.”
“Then what can you do, because everyone seems to think you’re pretty damn special. Prove it to me, hot shot.”
I turned to the creek, gritting my teeth in a sudden fit of defiance, and cast out my hand the same way Caleb had. Nothing happened, though; not even a flicker of a wave.
Caleb laughed under his breath. “Now that’s what I call talent,” he said.
I shook out my hands. “You’re just making me nervous.”
One of his dark brows rose. “I’m making you nervous? Maybe that’s just an excuse to cover up the real problem.”
“Which is?”
“That you don’t know what the hell you’re doing.”
I had walked right into that one. “I do so.” Turning, I cast my hand out again, hoping as hard as I could that something would happen. But nothing did.
Caleb ran a finger under his nose, trying to hide his amusement. “Impressive.”
I fisted my hands at my sides. “A little encouragement, please?”
“Come on, Sarah. Show me what you’ve got. Do something to wow me or I’m leaving. I don’t have time for this.”
“That’s not exactly encouraging.”
“What do you want me to do, hold your hand?”
My fingers tingled. “I’m trying.”
“You’re obviously not trying hard enough or you would have done something by now. Maybe you’re not all that great. Maybe the Great and Wonderful Katori got it wrong when She decided a seventeen-year-old nobody should be the tribe’s next Spirit Keeper. Maybe—”
“Shut up!” I yelled with a fury that surprised even me. “Or, I’ll—”
“Or you’ll what? You’re just a weakling. A nobody. A little girl who doesn’t fit in anywhere she—”
Flinging my hands out in front of me, I sent Caleb soaring backwards. He landed with a thud ten feet from where he’d previously been standing, the air from his lungs rushing out of his body as he hit the ground with an audible thud.
“Now that’s more like it,” he said with a grimace.
I rushed over to him and knelt by his side. “Omigod! Are you okay?”<
br />
Caleb lay there for a moment, unmoving. “I’m fine. I think.” He held out his arm and sucked in his breath through his teeth. A long gash ran from elbow to wrist.
I wrapped my hands around his arm without thinking. Closing my eyes, I concentrated on sending a ribbon of warmth into his flesh. When I opened my eyes again, the gash on his arm had completely healed.
“Thanks,” said Caleb. He gave me a funny look. “That’s weird.”
I sat down next to him and drew my knees to my chest. “What’s weird?”
He shook his head. “I’ve seen you control Fire and Spirit with very little effort at all, and yet you say you can barely control Water, Wind, and Earth.”
“So?”
“It’s the opposite for me.”
“Really? Prove it.”
He held out his hand to a pile of twigs, which struggled to catch fire. I held out my own hand in demonstration and, doing little more than simply thinking the word fire, it immediately burst into flames.
“Hang on,” Caleb said. He turned to the creek and waved his arm, and a wave of water washed over the bank and doused the flames before they could spread.
“What do you think it means?” I said.
“I don’t know. But there’s one other thing.”
“What?”
“I think your powers to control the elements, at least some of them, might be hardwired to your emotions. You can’t seem to control them unless you’re pissed off.”
I laughed. “That’s so not true.”
“Whatever. When you healed my arm just now,” he said, “it was like second-nature to you. You didn’t have to think about it at all. You just did it.”
I gathered a few fallen twigs and dried leaves and then flicked my wrist, setting the small pile on fire. Insubstantial as it was, the heat coming from the flames was a relief to my frozen fingers.
Caleb’s expression softened as he looked at me. “For the record, I really do think Katori knew what She was doing when She made you Spirit Keeper.”
I eyed him with suspicion. “You were trying to provoke me all along, weren’t you?”
Caleb grinned. “Maybe.”
“You’re rotten.” But I smiled, too.
“Anyway,” he said, letting his long arms dangle over his knees. “I think you’re right about practicing. If Victor, or anyone else, comes around, you need to be prepared. We need to be prepared.”
“It’s not just Victor or the others I’m worried about.”
“What do you mean?”
I looked into Caleb’s questioning gaze, knowing I should have kept my mouth closed. How could I tell him that I didn’t trust his own mother?
“It’s like I told you before,” I said. “I just have a feeling.”
And it wasn’t a lie. I could feel something on the horizon—whether it was a threat or not—but I didn’t know from what direction it was coming.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I’m just being paranoid.”
Caleb continued staring at me. I could tell he didn’t completely believe me.
“Come on,” I said, getting up again. I stomped on the small fire to smother the flames. “I’m starving. Wanna get something to eat?”
Caleb stood also. “You don’t think your boyfriend will mind?”
I smiled, still playing with fire. “What my boyfriend doesn’t know won’t hurt him, right?”
FIFTEEN
“Did you finish your homework?” Adrian asked as I got in the car the next morning.
“Hmm?” I shoved my bag into to the backseat, a sudden flicker of unease in the pit of my stomach. Why did he want to know?
“You said you had a lot of homework last night. What were you working on?”
I racked my brain. The thing was I hadn’t really had a lot of homework. I’d finished most of it during study hall. And I was a horrible liar when put on the spot. “Oh, you know. The usual.”
“The usual?”
“Math. Science. History,” I said as he backed out of the driveway, knowing that I was perilously close to overdoing it.
“We didn’t have history,” Adrian said pointedly.
“Oh. Well. It never hurts to be ahead, right?” I gave him an uneasy and totally incriminating laugh.
“Sarah, I called to see if you wanted to go out to dinner with me—I figured you’d have to eat, right?—and Meg said you were down by the creek. And I thought that was strange, seeing as how you made such an issue about having too much homework to do anything else.”
“I took my books with me. Sometimes I like to study outside. What’s the big deal?”
“It was fifty-five degrees.”
“So? That’s not cold. You were wearing shorts yesterday. Lots of people were.”
“And you wear flannel pajamas in the middle of summer.”
I turned on him. “I do not! And so what if I did? What’s that got to do with anything?”
Adrian came to a stop at the end of the street, and I had to keep from pushing open the door and throwing myself out onto the road. Breaking a few bones seemed a lot more preferable to him finding out I’d lied. And he was on the verge of doing just that.
“Seriously, what are you getting at?” I bit my bottom lip to keep quiet. Why couldn’t I just quit while I was ahead?
Adrian hit the gas so hard I was sure he’d have to peel me from the seat once we got to school. “The thing is, Caleb told Jasmine he was going to meet you, and—”
My stomach sank. “And let me guess. Jasmine was all too willing to tell you.”
I stared out the window, shaking my head. Darn Caleb. And darn Jasmine! When I got hold of that little brat I’d . . .
My fingers began to tingle and I sucked in a deep breath, trying to reign in my temper. Caleb was right. Some of my powers were hardwired to my emotions.
“What were the two of you doing?” he said.
“Nothing.”
Adrian breathed out through his nose. “Come on, Sarah. I’m not dense.”
I turned on him then. “Nobody said you were.”
“Then don’t treat me like I am!”
“Then stop acting jealous when you have no reason to be!”
Adrian’s jaw clenched and unclenched repeatedly, and the vein in his neck bulged.
“Caleb might be my best friend, Sarah, but that doesn’t mean I trust him around you. He’s got a reputation, you know.”
“It sounds an awful lot like you don’t trust me.”
Adrian pulled hard into his spot in the parking lot and I had the door open before the car had even come to a complete stop. I reached in and yanked my bag from the back seat, knocking Adrian in the side of the head in the process. I opened my mouth to apologize but closed it again before the words came out. I was too angry at him to be truly sorry.
“Hey!” he called after me, but I didn’t look back.
I barreled through the lobby, practically knocking over some girl as I made a beeline for the stairs. I was so mad I wanted to throw my bag to the floor and stomp around and scream. What the heck was Adrian’s problem anyway? Why was he acting like such a jealous bonehead? I had told him plenty of times there was nothing going on between Caleb and me, so why couldn’t he believe me?
“Trouble in paradise?”
Wheeling around, I found Jasmine leaning against the locker opposite mine. She held her slender arms crossed, and her glossy black hair draped like silk over one shoulder, as though she’d meticulously arranged it that way.
“Mind your own business, Jasmine.”
Her eyes gleamed. “Someone’s in a mood today. Maybe I should go find Adrian and offer him my condol—”
Jasmine didn’t have time to finish her sentence. I flung my hands out in front of me, and the resulting blast of air sent Jasmine wheeling backward. But because she’d been leaning against the locker, it only looked like she lost her balance on those stupid wedge-heel boots she happened to be wearing. Still, it was the most hilarious thing I’d seen
in a long time, especially the way her eyes flew open and her arms pinwheeled. It didn’t stop her from falling on her butt, though, and I roared with laughter.
“Are you okay?” Katie, who seemed to have materialized out of thin air, bent next to Jasmine and helped her up. “Omigod. Did Sarah push you?”
Jasmine’s coffee-colored cheeks went ruddy with embarrassment. She stood and pulled at the hem of her shirt and then readjusted her hair. She cast her eyes around. “I’m fine.”
“Don’t mess with me,” I said, pointing a finger at Jasmine, and then at Katie. I turned on my heel and stalked away, pulling my phone out of my pocket as I did so.
Where R U? I texted to Priscilla.
Her reply came as I was settling into my desk in homeroom: Dentist. C U L8ER.
I stuffed my phone in my pocket. The one morning I needed to unload on my best friend during the few minutes I got to see her in between classes, and she wasn’t even at school.
I tapped my foot against the floor as I waited for the bell to ring. As soon as it did, I shot from my desk and out the door.
In the locker room, Jasmine and Katie kept their heads close together, shooting nasty glances my way every chance they got. I turned away from them and spun the combination on my locker.
Shyla came in and plopped down next to me as I was lacing up my sneakers. “Someone’s in a mood.”
“I am not in a mood!” I said a little too loudly. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”
Shyla’s brows rose to meet her hairline. “I wasn’t talking about you, for your information, but if the shoe fits . . .”
Taking a deep breath I said, “Sorry. I guess I am in a mood. Adrian and I had a fight this morning.”
“Ah, so that’s what his problem is.”
I peeked at Jasmine and Katie, who were now standing in front of the mirror messing with their hair and making pouty looks at themselves. Gross.
“You saw him?”
“Moping down the hallway. I waved, but he wouldn’t even look at me.”
“It’s my fault. He thinks something’s going on between Caleb and me.”
She gave me a sharp look. “Is there?”
“No!”
Shyla was very tight-lipped after that. I stared at her. “Is something going on between you and Caleb that I should know about?”
The Prophecy Page 11
