Raven: The Young Adult World of Genetically Modified Teens and the Elite (Swann Book 6)

by Ryan Schow

  After lunch, when we go our separate ways, Jen will ask the boys to kick Tavares out of the group. She’ll say he’s new anyway. That it doesn’t matter. The truth is, Jen can’t want him that badly and watch him be with me at the same time. Her wounded, itty-bitty heart can’t beat to that drum. And the boys? They’ll go right along with it and try to get with Jen. That’s just how they are. Not wanting love as much as they’re wanting regular sex with a real girl.

  Across the cafeteria, Brayden is kissing Julie and looking at me. I flip him the bird and he winks. Butthole. Later, when I’m thinking about this, I will probably laugh. Say what you want about Brayden, he really is a freaking riot. And I am a little jealous. At least I’ve made a pathway to our friendship again.

  Silver linings.

  The Abigail Debacle

  1

  The cafeteria at lunchtime was a hall of white noise and activity. Cameron glowered in disgust as Julie kissed Brayden. She couldn’t look. Not at that traitorous bitch. She dragged her eyes off her ex-bestie and found Raven (where had she disappeared to, and when did she get back?) talking up the exceptionally attractive Tavares Baldridge. That shitty actress’s hot brother.

  Her heart rate soared.

  OMG, really?

  Looking down, she stared at her half-eaten lunch trying desperately not to dry heave. She pushed her meatloaf around, couldn’t stomach the idea of finishing it. Her eyes looked back up, roamed the cafeteria, then landed with a clunk on Abby Swann.

  Heat roared into her cheeks. Abby was laughing so easily with Caden Reynolds it made Cameron’s diet pills boil acidic in her gut. She and Caden were friends once. But friends can’t just be friends without having a destination and Cameron’s destination was Caden being hers. Everyone needed someone to give your popularity staying power. It was always Damien, until he dumped her. After that, she set her sights on Caden.

  Then Caden chose Abby. That fat headed poser. Cameron did her best to shrug it off as Caden wanting someone to give his limited intelligence perspective, but truly, inside, this was a devastating blow she was trying (yet failing) to ignore.

  Why Abby?

  She wasn’t even right in the head anymore. Not after this phantom accident she’d heard rumors about. The Abby Swann of this semester was a C- student at best, embarrassingly loud and flirtatious, and now more than ever, it seemed she was eying all the available boys. Next up, she thought, Tavares Baldridge. Unless Raven gets him first.

  In her sour little mind, Cameron’s animosity for Abby festered, polluting pockets of her brain to the point where she felt spasmodic. Possessed by demons. Cameron didn’t know what else to do about her animosity but retaliate. She fought her urges, though. After what happened in the past—those two girls killing themselves—she couldn’t give in to every little whim that infected her. Still, she had to do something. And whatever it was, her retaliation had to have teeth.

  She ate lunch slowly, chewing more purposefully than necessary. Her ulcer (or whatever the hell was devouring her insides) was searing holes into her stomach lining worse than ever. And the small talk going on between Blake and Theresa was making it worse. Cameron would not engage them. Not with their twice-told stories and their flavorless grievances about school or their parents or reality TV, or whatever. Her mind was elsewhere. Stuck reflecting upon the two stupid girls she tormented to death. The ones who suicided themselves on account of her more ruthless proclivities.

  After their deaths were linked to her, entire daytime talk shows were dedicated to the subject of bullying. Her father, the country music sensation, took a beating in the press. They tracked him everywhere, hinted of his bi-sexual and gay activities, then tried to tear him limb from limb on account of what she had done. His fall from fame was steep, but he didn’t flame out. He was just a tool to get to her. To show her how bullying could hit home fast. And it worked. Forced to curb her more sadistic tendencies, she finally agreed to the TV interviews where she talked about remorse and regret and repentance. She wore white.

  Freaking white!

  What she felt inside, however, was grim satisfaction. There are so many pillars of power to be held, but to be powerful enough to use words to make a person kill themselves, that was the kind of power people like her only dreamt of. She had it. Time to use it again, she thought, half crazed by the rush of what could be.

  It’s time to one-up myself.

  Fifty Shades of Never

  1

  After an all-around awkward lunch I’m kicking myself for ever having gone to, I head over to the office to finally face Holland. That jerk. Halfway there, I stop and realize I’d rather set my tits on fire than see him. He sees me as emotionally unstable—a threat to his way of his life, his very existence. To say he doesn’t want me around is the freaking understatement of the year. And truthfully, I can’t stand who he is either. Rather, I can’t stand all the monstrous things he has been.

  Josef Mengele, The Angel of Death. Was there a worse creature in history? Perhaps one or two, but not more than three.

  This is the ruthless animal who solved a small lice problem in Auschwitz by gassing the seven hundred and fifty women closest to the infection. An entire block. The same dick eater who injected chemicals into children’s eyes hoping to change their eye color.

  My feet stop walking. They turn me around and get me headed back to the dorms, to my room. I crawl into bed thinking only of Tavares, of this upcoming evening, of this strange and sudden attraction to him. He’s a grade younger than me, which concerns me, but it doesn’t. He is the same age as me, just held back for celebrity purposes. Oh hell, I don’t know. Parts of me feel giddy, happy. Which is totally unlike me. I’m not happy.

  And I’ve never been giddy.

  But it’s okay to feel these ways, I remind myself. It’s okay to enjoy life. To not rail so hard against everything. To not fight for something greater than me every stinking day. To not have to feel like I’ve got to defend myself or stand up for those who can’t. It’s okay to relax, I tell myself. It’s okay to simply be a girl.

  But you’re not a girl, the voice inside me argues. “The hell I’m not!” I argue back. “The hell I’m not.”

  As I’m lying there trying to understand the nature of my attraction to Tavares, and why it is so very, very different from every other attraction I’ve had, sleep overtakes me. The dream is there to greet me. It sits on the fringes of my psyche, wanting its due, wanting center stage.

  This injected dream, it plays in my head automatic.

  2

  I’m in the room again. Same air. Same music. Same sexy boy. Or is this a man? I don’t think I’ve figured out the actual answer to this question yet. I haven’t even seen his face. I trace my hands up his arms. They feel powerful. Man made. Not boy strong. This realization steals my breath, sends my body into a torrent of heat.

  In the dream, the room we’re in is my room. This isn’t my man, though. He is, but he isn’t. I feel like he belongs to someone else. Or maybe that just makes things so much more sensual. I’m not one of those girls who wants to steal other girls’ boys, but there is a salacious high and a wrongness to the notion that makes me dip into the darker recesses of my mind. It’s this same naughty inspiration that has my hands wandering all along the sumptuous surfaces of him.

  I want to see him. I need to see him.

  He reaches his arm out and my fingers brush it like spiders’ legs dancing over muscle and warm flesh. I feel him reaching for something. I’m tilting my chin up to see him, to kiss him, to taste the essence of him.

  His finger flicks the light switch. Darkness descends. The song changes. My clothes are off; his clothes are off. I can’t see him, but I can damn sure taste him. He’s luscious, so yummy. His breath is candy sweet, spearmint fresh to the kiss. The way you feel so in-tuned to a person and their body that you literally feel like one, that’s me.

  But not all the way. Not after what the doctor from Dulce said. The details of this dream differ from the
dream I’ve been having. The tone, however, is the same. I’m desperate to let go, to surrender. But with the doubt now stuck in my head, I’m having a hard time letting go.

  Moonlight now cuts through the window shades, illuminating us in dozens of horizontal lines. On his right shoulder, inked on its outer edge, is an elaborate tattoo. I catch a glimpse of the body art in the light. It’s a gorgeous woman with wings, an angel. Half an angel. The other half of the woman is bathed in shadow. Half angel, half demon. Interesting.

  And a little scary.

  Our bodies are soon writhing around each other, skin slicked with sweat, appetites ripe with an unquenchable thirst. I pull up, wanting to see his face. He pulls me back down into a kiss.

  “No,” he whispers, his mouth on mine, our lips held together against the word.

  I hang onto the sound of his voice, feel myself falling into it, into him. The tenor isn’t clear enough for me to know who he is, and dammit, I want to know!

  I have to know!

  The background music changes (sexy lounge music giving way to the psychedelic sounds of former dreams) as the moon slips behind clouds, blotting out the light. The man in my dream, he swallows me into him, devouring me fully, leaving me boneless and weak and clinging to one single, unanswered question: who is this person I’m with?

  3

  Sitting up in bed into darkness, I realize it’s past eight o’clock. Shit! Bleary eyed, I jump to my feet and just stand on the cold hardwood floor, eyes fluttering but mostly shut, my mind locating and then digging into Tavares’s brain. It’s Fifty Shades night. Our big date!

  Did I screw us up already?

  My psychic feelers locate him, his mind; I open the connection. Disappointment blooms like blacks and purples in his head, tinting his every thought, making his ability to concentrate on the TV show he’s watching impossible. He shuts off the TV, sits in the dark. He feels stood-up.

  God, I didn’t even hear him knock!

  To the feeling of being played swirling in his brain, I frantically pump the word “no” into his head. He startles me by sitting up fast. He flicks the lights on; he’s looking around, knowing he’s alone but feeling like someone is there. He heard me?! Curiosity has him crawling his own brain looking specifically for me.

  “Who are you?” he says, tentative, his voice shaky.

  OMG, is this for real?

  Whatever’s happening between us, this telepathic connection we’re making, it thrills me. And it scares me. I close the doorways between us, and squirm my way out of his head. By the time I’m out, I’m slamming back into my body, which has me stepping backwards on unsteady legs.

  “Call him,” the voice in my head says. “You can still salvage the night.” Can I? Maybe.

  No.

  “He’s a peculiar boy,” another voice says, softer.

  “Of course he is,” I say aloud.

  The thought of being inside his head, being inside of him, it’s filling me with a swimming sensation of sexual warmth. Like hot caramel spinning through my abdomen. My hand reaches below at the thought of him, pressed to my privates at the memory of the dream. I loved being in Tavares Baldridge’s head, but more than that, I want Tavares Baldridge inside me.

  But Tavares isn’t the dream man. Tavares is a boy. My dream man, he has a tattoo. It’s not Tavares, I tell myself. Tavares is too young to have that kind of ink.

  But it’s someone. Jake? I wonder.

  I’ve had him naked, but I don’t remember any tattoo. He could have gotten one over the summer as well, while I’ve been gone. The tattoo…that could be me, the girl he adored, the one he came to despise, couldn’t it?

  “You know it’s him,” the voice in my head says. “You know it’s Jake.” The sensual reams of power lose reach. Whatever it was that drew the currents of need to life within me is rapidly cooling.

  I thrust my tentacles elsewhere, searching for the man I lost my virginity to mile by mile. The way I finally land into him has me stumbling sideways and backwards into the bed. I all but hit the bed and tumble to the floor. Hands grab for something—the nightstand. Anything.

  The room spins all around me while I stand woozy in its center. It swirls and laps at my feet; it tilts this way and that, testing me, my ability to balance myself.

  What the hell? I feel drunk.

  Because Jake’s drunk. It’s evening outside, not yet nine, but already he’s smashed. My mind sucks free of his, breaking loose of him and his wasted equilibrium. But not before I learn exactly where he is. I’ve got to see him. There’s no way I’m going to talk to him, but I have to see him. He just can’t know it’s me. Which shouldn’t be a problem since he knows me, but he doesn’t know Raven.

  4

  Only crazy people hear voices. That’s why I’m hearing them now. I’ve officially gone batshit loopy. The voice in my head says, “Clear things up with Tavares, salvage this thing growing between you two.” I almost listen. But I don’t. Instead, I jump inside the RS5 and speed a few minutes up the road to this dump of a Newcastle city bar just off the beaten path.

  This is low mountain terrain, I tell myself, which means there’re most likely country folk inside. Maybe a few city strays or wanderers. If I stand out, so be it.

  My attire is ripped jean shorts, bejeweled sandals and a white button up blouse. It’s all I wear anymore and it’s doesn’t really match my look. Whatever. The point is, I am too sexy for this shithole. Breathe, I tell myself.

  I breathe.

  “Screw it,” I say sitting in the Audi, “let’s go.” The bar could be the inside of a homeless guy’s belly the way it stunk. All kinds of alcohol. Sweat. Polished wood. Heads turn and stare at me. “Look away,” my mind says to them all. They all return to their drinks, to their wooden bowls of peanuts, to their wide screen TV.

  Some sort of a mixed martial arts fight is going on. Half a dozen guys turn from me, the hot Goth chick, back to the TV to watch sweaty guys punch and kick each other. The bar is a thirty foot long slab of high shined wood. Opposite the UFC crowd sits Jake. The pretty boy. So good looking my freaking heart stops right in my chest. So gosh damn sexy I swear to God, I’m getting moist just thinking about the last time we were together. Not to mention the dream. OMFG.

  Keep it together!

  Memories of my last time with him creep inside my head. I was someone else entirely—Abby Swann—and I was telling him I was leaving for good. I was telling him the stand-in left behind wasn’t me. He hated me for that. He hated me for my deception, and he was enamored with me. He couldn’t decide the more dominant thought, so he kicked me out.

  There’s more, I realize.

  I’m dying to troll his mind, to see if he still wants me like that. I won’t do that, though. I refuse. Walking through the dim lights of the bar, passing a couple groups of people, including a loud college crowd, I fall into a booth of spongy black cushioned seats and wood so lustrous to a polished shine I could almost do my makeup in it.

  I only wanted to find him. Which I’ve done.

  So now what?

  There’s no way I’m going to treat his mind like an archeological dig, dissecting every last fossilized thought in an attempt to glean some clarity or understanding. There’s no way I want to see that deep inside him. It feels—I don’t know—wrong doing that to him, I guess.

  Besides, the way I felt Tavares reaching for me when I was in his head, it’s still freaking me out. I’m wondering if my power alone allows me to communicate with normal people. Can they hear me if I want them to hear me? Can they think an answer I can hear as plain as day? I already know this to be the case because I communicated like this with Sensei Naygel for a split second after our fight.

  “You old ‘nough?” an older waitress with nipple sized warts on her chin and upper cheek asks. She’s not a handsome woman. She’s barely even nice. Her dire apron sits over her ample figure, like a canvas wrapping an elephant. Fifty bucks says her knees are slopped over fat, and her bluish white legs are all v
aricose veins and hard knots.

  Responding to her question of my age, inside her head, I say, “She is.”

  “I am,” I say.

  “Whataya want then, sugar?” she says with all the warmth of a block of ice. I don’t even need to snake through her simple mind to know she detests the very sight of me.

  “What kind of drink do you prefer, Elise?” I ask. She takes a timid step back. She isn’t wearing a name tag, yet I know her name. It’s in her head. Elise’s beady blue eyes are not sure how to take me. Should she be scared? Moved? Am I an angel ready to whisk her away from this shitty, shitty life she lives? Or am I something…not right?

  “How’d you know my name?” she asks. Her teeth are stained from coffee, or liquor, and her breath is old whisky and smoked cigarettes. The combination smells like hot July ass.

  “My mother has a friend who looks just like you. Elise. Thought for a second there you were her.”

  She takes a cautious moment to glance around the bar, to see if she is being punked. She isn’t. When no one with a camera jumps out from behind…whatever…she says, “So you want it sweet, or you wanna drink ‘at’s gonna do the trick?”

  I smile an adorable, knowing smile, then say: “You want to know if I want to be a girl or if I want to get f*cked up like a man, right?”

  A toothy grin spreads across her mouth, filling the lower half of her face with the kind of hard wrinkles you find on someone ten years older than her. “That’s exactly what I’m askin’.”

  “I’m going to be a girl, Elise,” I tell her. Looking over her meaty, rounded shoulder, to the amply stacked bar and the Santa Clause-meets-Sons of Anarchy looking bartender, I say, “I don’t suppose Chuck over there makes anything frilly.”