Maybe a detour to the punch bowl would be a good idea, instead. Making a sharp right turn wouldn't seem weird to anyone. Na, I assured myself. Perfectly normal. So I went for it—the punch bowl that is.
Out of the corner of my eye, a movement. Holden was following me. The boulder in my stomach bounced up into my lungs. Suddenly, the punch bowl wasn't a good idea. Escaping to the girls' room seemed a much better option. He couldn't follow me in there and no confrontation of my insecurities would be necessary.
I made it into the hall just outside the gym before Holden caught up with me.
"Eve." His deep voice called from behind me. "Why are you running away?"
A hesitation hitched my step then I spun around to face him.
"You know my name," I exclaimed.
"And you know mine is Holden."
He stepped closer. He had to be at least five foot ten to my five foot five. But it was his eyes that really got me. I'd taken enough art classes to know you couldn't find this color straight from the tube. A special mixture with cerulean and a bit of umber might achieve the color. But the mixture would probably need a topping of a lapis glaze.
"When did we meet?" I asked.
A smile quirked the right edge of his lips. "A long time ago," he answered, edging even closer so there was barely a foot between us.
"Why can't I remember?"
"You will," he said. "But that doesn't matter as much as our dance."
"What dance?" I forced out the question past that persistent boulder.
His smile widened, showing a beautiful row of white teeth. "The one you were going to ask me for before you chickened out."
"Oh," I whispered into his chest, unable to meet his eyes any longer. "That one."
Holden took my right hand in his and lifted it. Turning it palm up, he traced the lifeline with his thumb. "Won't you dance with me, Eve?"
"Here?" I glanced around me.
"Why not?"
Yes. Why not? We were alone in the darkened hall. The music poured through the open doors of the gym and was almost as loud as it was inside its confines.
I'd barely nodded before Holden tugged my hand and brought me against him. Our eyes locked. My right palm molded against his left with our fingers intertwined. With his arm around my waist, mine around his shoulders, we swayed in time to the slow beat. Neither of us spoke. I couldn't know exactly what he was feeling, but he looked at me as if I were the most important person in his world.
That pesky boulder exploded and the fragments transformed to fizzy soda pop in my stomach. I never wanted to go back to the ordinary me. I wanted to bask in the specialness forever. Luckily, the next song was also a slow one and one dance became two. I think a third one came and went also. That might have been a J-Lo upbeat disco mix but we treated it like a ballad.
In the midst of the third dance, I saw something in his eyes. He stopped swaying and we stood chest-to-chest, stomach-to-stomach.
The fizzy soda pop in my stomach intensified into Alka Seltzer and exploded outward, filling my entire body.
He was going to kiss me. My very first kiss...ever.
I would have licked my lips, but I was afraid he'd feel the slobber and get repulsed. What should I do? Open my lips? Keep them shut? Pucker?
Damn I hadn't had a breath mint since I got in the car with Quinn an hour ago. What if my breath was bad? What if—
His head lowered toward mine, his lids drifting shut. I leaned upward going on tiptoes, my own eyes closing.
We were going to kiss. Nothing could break us apart.
Nothing that is except Quinn, Ronny and Lashonda.
"Where is Eve?" Quinn's voice came from just inside the gym. "I saw her coming this way."
"I thought you said she was a crazy bitch," Ronny observed. "Why do you want to find her?"
"She shoulda been back with the proper attitude by now." Quinn huffed.
"Why don't you just leave Eve alone," Lashonda piped in.
"Why don't you leave Chase alone?" A petulant demand came out of left field.
"Petra Pie," a male voice—Chase—said. "It was just one dance. What are you getting so mental about?"
Make that Quinn, Lashonda, Ronny, Petra and Chase breaking us apart.
"C'mon." Holden stepped back and pulled me with him a few steps down the hall where we could take cover behind a bank of lockers.
Peeking around the cool metal gave us a view of the bickering group. We could have just joined them, but it made me giddy that Holden didn't want to. Hiding away with him was like the two of us against the world. Besides, we were so new I didn't feel up to sharing him with Lashonda just yet.
"Why the freak are you following me, Petra?" Lashonda demanded.
"I'm following you to warn you and your weave about trespassing on my guy."
"I'll have you know this is all my own hair and you better not be touchin' it again or you'll be wearin' your left nostril as a toe ring."
Petra turned on Ronny. "Why don't you keep your girl in line? Don't you care that she's running after my boyfriend?"
Ronny's gaze darted to Quinn before going back to Petra. In that split second his face spoke volumes about what was in his heart. Ronny loved Quinn. He was here for Quinn, not Lashonda. If I hadn't been here, apart from the rest, I probably wouldn't have noticed it. The needy expression was there and gone in a flash. Poor Ronny. Quinn wouldn't be an easy object of unrequited affection.
"Lashonda's a free agent," Ronny said. "I'm not threatened if she wants to dance with another guy."
"Yeah," Quinn added. "Ronny's on the football team. He can get any girl he wants. He doesn't have to settle for the friends of crazy whacked out bitches."
I almost laughed. Holden held a finger to his lips, shushing me. He pulled me further down the hall with him to a metal fire exit door, which I knew led to a staircase.
Once we'd escaped through, we were up half of the first flight before I asked, "Where are we going?"
"The roof," Holden said, continuing up.
"The door to the roof is probably locked." Stopping, I pulled at his hand.
He turned to smile down at me from one step above. "I can get us through any locked door."
"What are you a lock-picking criminal?" I joked.
"Something like that."
When we reached the top, he fiddled briefly with the door before it swung wide. He turned back to me, beaming.
"Success." Holding the door open with one hand, he bowed and made a sweeping, ushering-in gesture, with his other arm. "Your rooftop awaits, my lady."
"Thank you, kind sir," I said, hoping the giggle at the end of my statement didn't sound too ridiculous.
Fortunately, even though it was fall, the South was so temperate that the night wasn't cold. In fact, the cool breeze felt good against my overheated skin. A perpetual blush had covered me since I first spoke to Holden.
I passed through the open doorway and Holden followed. The metal door clanged shut. When I turned towards him, he held out a beckoning hand. Going to him with my own hand outstretched seemed the most natural thing I'd ever done.
Hand-in-hand we walked to the center of the roof. Holden removed his gray sport coat, revealing a navy blue, open-collared shirt he wore over his jeans. Like a knight of old, he spread the coat on the flat, tar roof and invited me to sit.
When I had settled on it with arms wrapped around my knees, he sat beside me. We must have stared at the sky together for at least five minutes before the tension of being alone with a cute guy really got to me and I had to break the silence.
"So what is that star constellation up there?" I asked pointing to a clump of bright lights in the sky.
"I don't know," Holden answered with a smirk. "I never really learned anything about astronomy."
Neither had I. My knowledge was limited to how to activate the stargazing app on my cell phone and the phone was downstairs in the gym at the bottom of my purse.
Arching an eyebrow, I adopted the same teas
ing tone he had. "So you don't know whether that really bright one over there is a planet or a star."
"Well...." His compressed lips told me he was suppressing a smile. "I do know enough to recognize the lights on a passenger jet."
"Oh yeah. Right," I said, trying to hold back a snicker.
My effort didn't work and when the laugh broke from me, he joined in.
"So why are we up here if you didn't want to show me the stars?"
The smile slipped off his face and his gaze became serious and intent. "I'm here for you." Holden took my hand from where it rested against the roof, lifted it and touched his lips to the back. "I'm always here for you."
I didn't understand exactly what he meant but the kiss had sent more soda fizzing through my veins and somehow I couldn't really care to analyze every word.
"I brought you up here to talk to you," he said.
"What about?" The question came automatically, but my real attention was on the curve of his lips. I just wanted him to speak some more so that I could watch them move.
"It's—" He hesitated, staring down at our still clasped hands, he then continued. "I'm not sure how to begin."
"Why don't you tell me a little about you? Did you just start coming to school here? Where did you go to school before?"
"I went to school in Miami until...two days ago, almost three."
"You're family moved so soon after the start of the school year? That had to be hard."
His eyes went back to our joined hands. "Yeah."
"So you probably don't know much about Savannah."
"Nothing," he said.
"I wasn't that thrilled about moving here either so my dad forced me to take a walking tour. It was actually pretty interesting.
He smiled. "Tell me something."
"Okay." I cleared my throat and made my tone as professorial and pompous as I could. "Founded in 1733, Savannah was the thirteenth colony. General James Oglethorpe and about a hundred and twenty settlers arrived on a ship called the 'Anne'. He laid out the city with twenty-four park-like squares at the center of each ward. Most of the architecture dates back to the eighteen hundreds since Savannah was one of the few cities not burned by Sherman in his march to the sea during the war of Northern aggression."
When I glanced at Holden I could see his smile had widened to a grin.
"Are you sure you want to hear this?"
"Maybe not."
We fell silent as we gazed up at the sky again.
Soon, my mind was turning over the question of how Holden could be so familiar.
"I've never been to Miami," I said, breaking the silence. "Where did we meet before?"
"Don't you remember anything?" he asked.
"No," I said. But even as the "o" hung in the air, sudden prickling tingles radiated from the contact point of our hands. The tingles reminded of the pain of a limb awakening after I'd slept on it all night. Nice but painful at the same time.
Memory flashed, ricocheting against the interior walls of my brain. I saw and felt myself being kissed by Holden. His lips on mine, gently moving. His arms wrapping me in an embrace I never wanted to leave. At the same time, the pain of the moment took my breath away. As I recognized the sorrow in my heart, the memory changed and I saw myself gazing down at a grave with eyes so full of tears I couldn't see the name on the headstone. I was gulping down so many sobs I could taste the morning fog.
Jerking my hand out of his as if scalded, I shouted, "What was that?" Before he could answer I scrambled up and stepped away from him.
Holden rose and took a step towards me with hand outstretched. "Eve, please don't be afraid."
My mind racing with wonderings, I stepped back again like an automaton.
"No, Eve," Holden warned. "You're getting too close to the edge."
Over my shoulder, I saw that the back of my foot was barely six inches from a drop of at least fifty feet. My eyes flew to meet Holden's. He must have realized I was frozen because he rushed to my side and pulled me to a safe distance from the edge.
Wrapped in his hug, I felt his hands caressing my back and I pressed myself to him. For a moment I rested my cheek against his chest. The familiarity of the moment both pleased and stunned me at the same time. Why?
But while I didn't know the answer to that question, I knew what I wanted to do next. Raising my head, I stared into his beloved eyes before lifting myself on tiptoes to press my open mouth to his.
Our lips touched.
In an instant, the touch became more insistent as our mouths pressed together in a seemingly seamless blending. Our arms wrapped around each other, the embrace was a wordless reunion. A first kiss and yet not a first kiss. Mouths moving together as if we'd kissed dozens of times before.
Too soon, the kiss ended, as Holden lifted his head.
His arms remained loosely around me. Gazing down into my eyes, he lifted one hand and brushed my hair back with a caress across my face.
"What's happening?" I asked.
"It's hard to explain." His smile was half frown.
"Try," I said, shaking him a little.
"I will but give me a little more time."
Nodding, I stepped back and out of his arms even though all my instincts said to never leave their shelter. The enormity of feeling had overwhelmed me and I had to put a distance between us.
This time I didn't get too close to the edge of the roof but just close enough to see the school lawn below where a familiar figure stood.
"Isn't that Mrs. Gazardi?" I muttered.
"Where?" Holden asked.
She seemed to be staring into the sky, not in our direction but off into the distance.
Glancing up, I noticed a movement. If it had been water I would have said it was a whirlpool. A whirlpool with bolts of lightning illuminating it. The swirling and turning of the clouds mesmerized me almost so much that I almost didn't notice the figure—a bird? If so, it must be a heck of a big one —flying toward its center. The turning and whirling increased.
"What is that? A tornado?" The night had been so clear and there'd been no warning siren. Even so, maybe we should take cover.
"It's just a strange cloud formation," Holden assured me, but there was something guarded in his expression and tone as he said it.
Maybe Mrs. Gazardi would know what the peculiar whirlpool was. I searched the lawn with my eyes and found her. Would she run back into the school screaming in fear? No. She remained still but the inner illumination was back. Mrs. Gazardi's skeleton glowed. This time there was no lighting I could blame for an optical illusion. An involuntary shiver ran through me.
The whirlpool in the sky closed up and faded away. The cloud separated into wisps that drifted apart until the night was completely clear again.
Mrs. Gazardi's inner light faded as the sky returned to normal.
"Something's weird about her tonight." Or else about me, I thought.
As if she heard me, Mrs. Gazardi's head whipped around. Her eyes blazed up at me, burning with their red glow until a sudden faintness overwhelmed me. I swayed, hovering on the brink of falling over into nothingness.
Chapter Three
Holden grabbed my shoulders from behind and pulled me from the edge for the second time that night.
"Let's get inside," he said.
We were off the roof and back down the stairs before I could make any sense of my thoughts. Mumbling something about being right back, I escaped into the girls' restroom.
The fluorescent light fixture buzzed audibly, winking twice, as I stumbled over to the bank of sinks under the mirror. No one else was in there, giving it a surreal atmosphere. I twisted the faucet handles and the water burst out in a sputter before slowing to a trickle as it ran over my hands.
My reflection didn't seem like my own, as I stared into the mirror. Talk about deer-in-the-headlights expression.
What the heck was happening tonight? There'd never been any insanity in my family, but I was starting to suspect something was wrong w
ith me. Strange psychic connection with a guy I just met? A tornado that's there and gone in less than a minute? My guidance counselor lighting up like a glow stick?
Tendrils of hair had escaped my ponytail, and not in an attractive, casual way but in a "I've been through a storm" way. But while I could redo the ponytail and trap all the pesky escapee hairs again, I couldn't do much else about my looks.
I was desperate to splash water on my face, but had to be satisfied with just wetting a paper towel and placing it on my neck. Anything else would wipe out what little semblance of make-up I had left and my face was enough of a disaster without that. Unfortunately, I hadn't thought to retrieve my purse and so had no access to even a lipstick.
Perhaps I could slip out of the restroom, get past Holden, pop into the gym, get my purse, evade Holden again, and escape back here to fix my face. It must be close to my curfew—which Dad would be furious if I missed particularly because of the SATs tomorrow—but I wanted to look half decent to say goodnight to the cute Viking.
Pushing the swinging restroom door to crack it open, I peeked around the edge. No Holden in sight. In fact, no one was in sight. The music from the dance still played, echoing faintly in the empty hall as I slipped out and tiptoed toward it, all the while keeping watch for my Viking. But though I'd taken a couple of turns, I didn't see him. He must have gone back to the gym. My purse—and my make-up—were almost within reach.
Up ahead was the intersection with the main corridor, which would take me the final dozen feet to my destination. At the intersection, a right turn would take me to the gym, but to the left I heard Holden's voice, his words indistinct. Then a female voice murmured.
Since I didn't see them, I concluded Holden must be talking to someone just beyond the elbow of the next corridor. But who? I wondered. Some other girl? Was he giving her the same line about how they'd known each other before?
My curiosity got the better of me and I turned left, sneaked my way to the next hall intersection. Peering around the corner, I positioned myself to eavesdrop. Just beyond, I saw Holden, his back to me, talking to Mrs. Gazardi. The way they stood with heads together struck me as conspiratorial.
Paranormal Realities Box Set Page 33
