I raised my head up. She was standing on the other side of the table, a pink purse draped across her shoulder, her forehead creased over with concern.
“She has a headache,” Alex answered for me.
“I’m fine,” I told her. “Really. It’s not a big deal.”
“Hold on, I think I have something.” She dug around her purse and retrieved a bottle of Tylenol. “Here you go.”
I took the bottle gratefully, poured two in my hand, and gave it back to her. “Thanks.”
She smiled and tossed the bottle back in her bag. “No problem.”
I tipped my head back, plopped them into my mouth, and forced them down my throat with my spit. Hopefully they’d kick in quick. If I was lucky, maybe they’d also numb out the electricity along with the headache.
Hey, a girl can hope, right?
Aislin sat down. “Okay, so does anyone have any ideas on what we should do for our project?”
“Whatever’s easiest,” Alex said. Then he glanced at me and added, “And takes the least amount of time.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Alex,” Aislin said, like it was the most absurd thing she’d ever heard. “We need to do a good job. I for one would really like to get an A. And I’m sure you would too. Right, Gemma?”
Typically sure, but right now…hmm…not so much. In fact, all I wanted right now was leave.
“I don’t mind if we do something easy.” I flicked a glance in Alex’s direction. “And short.”
“Good, then its settled.” He leaned back in his chair and rested his hands behind his head. “We’ll pick whatever’s easiest.”
Aislin scowled at him.
“So, what I was thinking,” he continued on, ignoring Aislin’s scowl, “is that we could just make a galaxy map and type up a report to go with it. That way we wouldn’t have to spend very much time working on it together.”
Okay, that’s it. I’d had enough of his snide comments and jabs at me. “Great. Sounds good.” I got up, my chair tipping backward on two legs, then falling forward on all fours again. I snatched by bag off of the table and turned to leave.
“Gemma wait.” Aislin leapt up from her chair. She put her hands on her hips and pinned Alex with an angrily look. “Don’t you think that project is a little too easy?”
He waved his hand in the air, brushing her off. “It’ll be fine.”
I did a mental count to ten while I waited to see if they’d say anything further. When they didn’t, I left.
Outside, a ghostlike fog blanketed the parking lot. I made my way in the direction of where I hoped my car was, but it was hard to tell in the low visibility. I was still all riled up over how Alex had made it clear that he wanted to see as little of me as possible. I was also kind of mad at myself for not telling him off.
I was in the middle of figuring out whether or not I was walking around in circles, when I was hit with the feeling that someone was watching me. And suddenly, I became hyperaware that there wasn’t a single sole in sight.
I picked up my pace, my black DC sneakers thudding against the ice. It was the only sound that filled the air until a crackle rose over it. I glanced down at the ground. The ice looked like it was moving. Yes, moving, right along with the pace of my footsteps. My heart stuttered as my nightmare flashed through my mind. Me running. The monsters chasing me. Ice moving after me.
I ran, but not very fast since the ground was one big accident waiting to happen. I kept telling myself that nightmares don’t come true. Glowing-eyed monsters that kill people with their death chill aren’t real. But as I felt the air abruptly descend to a bone chilling temperature, I full-on freaked out.
I searched franticly for car, slipping all over the ice like I was trying to be part of the Ice Capades. But I couldn’t spot my car anywhere. I desperately strained my eyes against the thick fog, and that’s when I saw it; not my car, but a flicker of yellow.
My heart stopped.
Everything stopped.
I gasped as the prickle traced the back of my neck. I’d felt fear before, but this was a whole new level of fear. A run-for-your-life-or-you’re-going-to-die kind of fear. Which was exactly what I was going to do. I spun around, preparing to make a mad sprint back to the school and wait there until the fog lifted. Except, before I could work up a run, I slammed into something hard and warm and static charged. I stumbled backwards, frenetically scrambling to get my footing.
“What the heck is wrong with you?” Alex asked, his voice a mix of irritation and concern.
I regained my balance and stood up straight. “Nothing. I wasn’t doing anything.”
His dark brown hair was damp from the fog, and tucked underneath his arm was a book. “It doesn’t look like nothing. You look scared.”
My heart drummed violently in my chest. Scared. I was scared. I glanced back over my shoulder. Nothing but fog.
“Gemma.”
I turned back to Alex. “Huh?”
“Are you okay? You look a little…lost?”
I was lost. And confused. And terrified. And a million other different things.
The air was starting to warm back up. It was still freezing and everything, but a normal freezing instead of a deathly freezing. ”I um…” I swallowed hard, choking on the image of the yellow lights lurking not too far away from where I stood. Had it really been there? I hadn’t actually seen the cloaked figure, just two little lights shaped as eyes. Or at least they looked like eyes. Without the overload of adrenaline pounding though me anymore, I wasn’t so sure.
Alex’s gaze wandered over my shoulder. “What were you looking at over there?”
“Um…nothing.” There was no way I was going to tell him what I thought I’d seen. “I just thought I saw…a dog.” I did a mental eye roll at myself. A dog? Really Gemma? You can’t come up with anything better than that?
He eyed me over suspiciously, and then his eyebrow arched up. “You’re afraid of dogs?”
“No,” I responded automatically.
“You were scared, though,” he pointed out. “So scared you ran into me.”
“Well…” I wanted to smack myself for being such a terrible liar. I struggled to think of an excuse—any excuse I could give. “What does it even matter to you, anyway?” I snapped. “I mean, it’s not like you really care.”
“Yeah, good point.” He shoved the book he was holding at me. “You left this in the library by the way.”
I furrowed my eyebrows at the book, perplexed because I couldn’t remember taking my book out of my bag while I was in the library.
“This is the part where you say thanks,” he said arrogantly
I’d have loved to slap the arrogance right off of his pretty little face, but I didn’t. I snatched the book from his hand. “Thanks.”
He pressed his lips together and gave a quick glance behind me. “Well…drive carefully.”
I gave him a funny look. Drive carefully? What was that suppose to mean? Well, I know what it means in the literal sense but…I gaped at him as he sauntered away, feeling, once again, as lost ever.
And after he’d vanished through the fog, I ran like hell to find my car.
Chapter 6
The drive home was a blur of shapes and colors. I barely saw anything. I couldn’t pay attention. My mind was still back in the parking lot where I’d thought I’d seen the lights.
I’d locked my car doors. My hands were sweating disgustingly as I grasped the steering wheel tightly. I was edgy and jumpy and constantly checking in the rearview mirror for any trace of yellow lights in the shape of eyes.
I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d seen in the foggy parking lot, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. If my nightmares had crossed over into real-life, then I was going to have to keep myself on high alert.
I parked my car in the driveway, jumped out, and dashed inside the house, dead bolting the door behind me. I could hear the TV humming in the living room. Marco and Sophia were home, w
hich made me feel slightly better. I went up to my room and locked my door. Then I sank to the floor.
This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. It had to be a dream. How could it not be? To find out if I was dreaming or not, I did the only thing I could think. I pinched my arm hard. It stung badly, and a pink welt formed on my skin.
Well, that was a great idea.
I sighed, getting to my feet. I had two options here and neither one of them sounded appealing. The first, and my least favorite, wait it out. See what happens. The second option I wasn’t too fond of either. Tell Marco and Sophia. This meant risking looking like a total nut job if they didn’t believe. But getting killed seemed worse. So with a million knots tying their way into my stomach, I headed downstairs.
Okay, so you know that feeling you get when you walk into a room and the air feels thick and heavy and you know you were just being talked about? Well, that’s what happened when I found Marco and Sophia, huddled together at the kitchen table, talking quietly. I instantly got the impression they were talking about me. And by the horrified expressions on their faces when they saw me, I assumed my impression was right on.
Sophia leaned back in the chair and smoothed out her grey pencil skirt. “Do you need something?”
I eyed her over carefully. “I’m not sure.” I’d been so determined not to lose my nerve and tell them what was going on. But now, something felt off. My insides were screaming at me to keep my mouth shut.
Marco swiped a magazine up from the table and fumbled to open it, mumbling incoherently underneath his breath.
“Well, if you don’t need anything…” Sophia drifted out of her chair and roamed over to cupboards.
I stood in the doorway, watching her closely as she opened a drawer, pulled out a pan, and fill it with water. Then she moved over to the pantry, grabbed a can of tomato sauce, and fought to get the lid off.
I glanced at the clock: 4:30. A little too early to be making dinner, don’t you think? Yet there she was, making dinner. I turned my attention to Marco. He shook the magazine out like it was a newspaper, then turned his back to me.
What in the world had I been thinking when I’d decided to come down here? I should have known better than to believe I could talk to them. I didn’t even know them. Not really. I mean for all I knew, the real reason I’d been living with them for the last seventeen years was because they’d kidnapped me. Yeah, I really didn’t think that was true or anything, but until I could one-hundred percent prove it wasn’t true, I wasn’t going to disregard the theory.
The next day at school, I felt like a walking zombie. I’d slept like crap the night before, because of my nightmares, and I had to check under my bed just to make sure there weren’t any real-life cloaked monsters hiding out. Even though the coast was clear, I hadn’t been able to fall back asleep. Of course, I had no problem falling asleep during biology. When the bell rang, it woke me up, and scared the crap out of me, causing me to leap from my seat and bang my knee on the desk. Not to mention, I’d had my cheek resting on my arm, right where my studded bracelet was fastened, so now there was a sequence of dots indented into the side of my face. Which in no way made me look like a bigger dork, let me tell you. Add the humiliation factor with the giant bruise on my knee, and I felt awesome.
I know, I know. I sounded very whiny. But I was having a very bad day so cut me some slack, would you?
My next stop was astronomy. I arrived early and the classroom was empty. The emptiness immediately made me feel uneasy. Goose bumps sprouted all over my skin as I hung my messenger bag over the back of the chair and sat down. God, I was so tired. I needed a nap.
As soon as the first person entered, I rested my head on the table and let my eyelids slip shut. But moments later, a warm tingly sensation shot up my arms and reverberated down my back.
“Tired?” Alex remarked. I heard a chair slide out and then something landed on the table not too far from my head. His backpack, I assumed.
I didn’t say anything. Nor did I look at him. I just wasn’t in the mood to deal with him.
He didn’t say anything else to me, and I didn’t raise my head up until class had started. That’s when I realized Aislin’s chair was vacant.
“She’s not here today,” he said, noticing the direction of my gaze. He was wearing a black shirt, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. He looked good. He always looked good. Too bad he was such a jerk. “She has the flu.”
“Oh.” I frowned. So it was just him and me? Well, today ought to be fun. About as fun as watching a two hour special on fungi growth (And yeah, I’ve actually had to do that before). Aislin acted as our mediator. With her gone, I could only imagine how well the next forty-five minutes was going to go. I take that back. I actually could since we’d been forced to work together once before. And need I remind you how well that went—with me and Alex getting lectured by Mr. Sterling.
“You don’t need to look so upset about it.” A smirk threatened at his lips. “I’m not that bad to be around, am I?”
Afraid of what might come out of my mouth, I kept it shut.
Ten minutes into class, Mr. Sterling received a phone call. After he hung up, he made an announcement that there was something urgent that needed his attention, and he was going to drop off the class at the library to get a head start on our projects.
I considered ditching. Going home and taking a nap. But I couldn’t muster up enough courage to go through with it. Mark Scholy and Dean Edwards did. They ducked out as soon as Mrs. Bakerly stepped away from her desk. But they very rarely showed up for class as it was. And they didn’t have to worry about a group of freaky yellow-eyed monsters showing up to kill them.
“So what do you want to work on first?” Alex asked me after we’d picked out a table to drop off our things at.
I hung my messenger bag on the back of a chair. “Doesn’t matter to me.”
He took his cell phone out of his pocket and glanced at the screen. “Well, it doesn’t matter to me either.”
We both stood there, mulling over what to do next, and I caught him staring at my eyes. Not into my eyes—at my eyes. Typically when people stared at them, they were awestruck by the shocking color of violet, which bugged me. I knew the color was strange and everything, but staring is rude. However, the way Alex was looking at them erased my normal ping of annoyance, and made my insides melt like hot butter.
Then, of course, he had to open his mouth and ruin everything. “Maybe you should go home and get some sleep. You look tired.”
He might as well have told me I looked like hell.
I shot him a scowl, turned my back on him, and marched off toward the bookshelves. Not necessarily to look for a book, but to get away from him.
He followed after me. “I didn’t mean that in a bad way. I was just suggesting that maybe you should get some more sleep.”
“That would be nice if it were possible.” I couldn’t, though, seeing is how I was afraid to go to sleep. I stopped in front of a shelf, skimming the titles of the books. Realizing I was in the romance section—the last place I wanted to be—I rounded the corner to the fiction section, with Alex trailing at my heels.
“Are you having nightmares or something?” His eyes met mine, and I momentarily spaced out.
“Yes.” I blinked and shook my head. “I mean no.”
His smile was mocking. “Which one is it? Yes or no?”
“Yes, I had a nightmare,” I snapped. “But what does it matter to you, anyway?”
He shrugged. “It doesn’t.”
I bit down on my tongue to stop myself from sticking it out like a three-year-old. Don’t let him get to you. Don’t let him get to you. “You know, I could just write the report for us,” I said. “And then you and Aislin could put the galaxy map together. That way you and I wouldn’t have to work together.”
“What are you trying to do, get rid of me or something?” he teased.
“No,” I answered mechanically. Wait. Where did tha
t come from?
He grinned haughtily.
“Oh, would you just go away?” I yanked a random book from the shelf and fixed my attention on reading the back cover.
Before he could say another snide remark—because I’m almost positive he had one ready—his phone rang from inside his pocket. Instead of answering it, he reached in and silenced it. “Actually, I was thinking about cutting out early.”
I should have been relieved, but for some reason, I developed a nauseated feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Okay, go ahead. I won’t say anything.”
“Oh, I know you won’t.” He slid his hands into his pockets. “I was just telling you in case you wanted to come along.”
I gaped at him. “You have got to be kidding?”
“Nope,” he said. “You really look like you could use a break.”
I had no idea what to say. Although I knew what my heart was telling me to do—go with him. But why would I? He hated me. I knew that. He had to be teasing me. Playing his little Alex mind games.
He ambled over the end of the aisle and glanced over his shoulder, flashing me a taunting smile. “That is unless you are too scared.”
I should have been—after what he’d just said. But for a split second—a very crucial, decision making second—I conveniently forgot about everything. How he’d repeatedly treated me like crap. And I magically shoved the electric feeling right out of my mind, along with the conversation I’d overheard between him and Aislin.
Alex disappeared around the corner of the shelf and headed back to our table. I followed after him, Kelsey Merritt and her clones throwing me a dirty looks as I passed by them.
“So where exactly are you going?” I asked him.
“It’s a surprise,” he said, shoving his books into his bag.
Don’t go, my inner conscious screamed at me. “Okay, I’m in.”
He swung his bag over his shoulder, and I could hear the smile in his voice when he said, “Let’s go, then.”
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