“I’ll carry your backpack,” Dad said.
“It’s okay, Dad. I got it.” I locked my door. Echo still hovered.
Dad touched the bottom of my backpack. “What are you carrying? It looks heavy.”
I rolled my eyes. “They’re just books, Dad. And please, stop treating me like I’m sick. If I can drive myself to school, I can carry my own backpack.”
“And if you engage your runes, you can carry him without breaking a sweat, too,” Echo added.
I didn’t look his way, but I put that information away for later. Not that I had any runes or intention of engaging them. Whatever that meant. Dad still studied me with a frown.
“You’ve lost quite a bit of weight,” he said.
“I agree,” Echo said. “I felt it yesterday when I lifted you. I think you were pining for me and refused to eat.”
Ignoring him was becoming harder.
“They don’t exactly serve large potions at the crazy house,” I said.
Dad winced, and I wished I hadn’t brought up the mental hospital. He’d looked uneasy whenever they visited me at PMI. It was probably hard for him to accept that his only child had been institutionalized.
“Told you those were false memories from the Norns,” Echo interjected.
I wish I could tell him to shut up. I reached up and kissed Dad’s cheek. “Love you, Dad.”
“How come he gets a kiss and I don’t?” Echo asked.
“What was that for?” Dad asked at the same time.
“For being the greatest dad.” I started across the street, and he fell in step beside me. Echo flanked me on the other side. He was saying something, but I tuned him out. He talked too much. More cars screeched to a stop behind us. I glanced back, recognizing a few. Soon the front entrance would be packed with students wondering where I’d been. Staring. Pointing. My worst nightmare.
“School,” Echo said and shuddered. “Why Valkyries insist on mingling with Mortals in this cesspool boggles the mind. You swore you wouldn’t come back here either, but since the Norns screwed with your memories, I suppose you don’t remember that.”
I let my hair fall forward, so Dad wouldn’t see my face, and I glared at Echo. “Just go away,” I mouthed. “Please?”
His eyes narrowed. Then he sighed. “Okay, but you owe me.”
“For what?” I wanted to ask, but I didn’t want to know the answer. His crazy stories were adding to my nightmare. I didn’t check to see him disappear, but I knew the moment he was gone. The air was less charged. It was as though he emitted some pulse and I was tuned in to it, which was crazy because every time he appeared, frigid air followed.
We entered the double doors leading to the front office. The secretary waved us into the principal’s office. I didn’t really want to see Mr. Elliot. A phone call explaining my return would have been enough, but Dad had insisted on talking to him.
“Mr. Jemison,” the principal said, standing up. He shook Dad’s hand, nodded in my direction, and indicated the chairs across from his.
“So what I can do for you?” he asked, sitting.
“My daughter,” Dad glanced at me and smiled, “has missed quite a bit of school, and I’d like to help her catch up. I do not want her to repeat a class or for her grades to suffer.”
Mr. Elliot smiled and leaned forward. “That’s very admirable, Mr. Jemison. But like I told you in the e-mail, Cora is a great student and will have no problem catching up.”
Yeah, right. I was going to have no social life for the rest of the year.
Dad frowned. “You don’t think she needs help? She’s been gone a while.”
Mr. Elliot smiled. “The teachers will give her packets of missed work, and she can take any quizzes and tests she missed. But I don’t think she’s missed enough for us to worry about. Her grades are good. I checked. If she has problems grasping concepts, the teachers will work with her.”
I tuned them out and slouched in my seat. Most students who’d missed weeks of school often struggled to catch up. Raine could help me. No, I wasn’t running to her for help. I’d plod through the packets alone. When Dad and the principal stood, I realized they were done talking.
Outside the office, students hurried past, but no one stared or pointed. Dad glanced left and right before turning to peer at me. He looked worried.
“Go,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”
He hesitated. “You sure?”
“CORA!”
I turned and was almost knocked over by a dark-haired girl from my swim team. Hanna Jenkins, swim nickname Kicker. We weren’t buddies or even remotely close, so the exuberance was surprising.
“Where have you been?” she asked. She glanced at Dad and grinned. “Hi, Mr. Jemison.”
Dad wore a confused expression. Even though he’d attended my swim meets, I doubted he remembered Kicker. We didn’t hang out outside team activities.
“I’ll see you at home later, muffin,” Dad said.
“Okay, Dad. Bye.”
I gave him a brief wave, happy to be at school and, at the same time, worried.
Kicker bumped me with her shoulder. “Seriously, what happened to you? You didn’t answer my texts or calls. It’s like you just disappeared after the game.”
“Game?” The last event I’d attended with her was the tragic swim meet.
“You know, the home game. You kissed Drew.” She fanned her face. “It was smoking hot. Torin and Raine definitely have competition with you two. I’m amazed you didn’t call him. The poor guy kept calling and texting me, asking where you were. He was worried about you. He looked terrible when I saw him at Keith’s funeral. I mean, he and Keith were close, so of course he was bummed by his death, but I think he was also worried about your sudden disappearance.”
“Keith Paulson died?”
Kicker nodded. “Deidre Fuller and Casey Riverside, too. It was a crazy night.”
I remember Deidre, a cheerleader who’d acted like she was above everyone else. Casey had been her opposite. Sweet and nice. She’d dated Blaine Chapman, the former quarterback.
“That’s too bad,” I said.
“It’s like our sports teams are being stalked by death or something. Drew said you were kissing, and then you just disappeared.”
There was no way I’d kiss Drew Cavanaugh. He was handsome, popular, and loaded, but he wasn’t my type. I didn’t date preppy guys.
“Cora?”
I glanced up and realized we’d reached our lockers. Thankfully, Raine wasn’t there. Her locker was next to mine. “I’m sorry. I got hurt that night, too, and had to go away for a while.”
“Oh, why didn’t you tell me?” She peered at me, her voice funny. “No one knew where you were, except Raine.”
I frowned. “Raine?”
“I asked her on Monday if she’d heard from you and she acted kind of weird. Then yesterday, she said you were away and would be back soon. When I pressed her for more information, she blew me off.”
Raine had lied. Why?
“My parents decided I should stay with my aunt in Portland for a while,” I fibbed, putting my books away and selecting what I needed for my morning classes. Kicker kept staring at me. “I hit my head pretty hard and had a severe concussion, so my memories have been a bit off.”
She closed her locker and moved closer. Other students were entering the hallway, but they weren’t staring at us. Still, Kicker lowered her voice. “You mean you don’t remember stuff?”
I nodded.
“Like what?”
“I can’t seem to remember the last month or so, including the home game or kissing Drew.”
Kicker’s eyes widened. “Whoa.”
“The doctors said I’ll recover the lost memories, but it’s going to take a while.”
“Dang! That sucks.”
“That’s why I didn’t call you or Drew.” We started toward the English wing. Raine and her boyfriend were coming toward us. I saw them first. They were wrapped up in their own world. B
ehind them were the blonde and the guy with silver hair she’d come with to my house.
Raine looked up and saw me. She smiled and waved. I ignored her and followed Kicker into the hallway to our left, not slowing down when Raine called my name. She and I were so over.
“When was the home game?” I asked.
“Uh, two Fridays ago,” Kicker said.
“So I was here at school, except last week?” I asked.
Kicker laughed. “You are really serious. I mean, you’re not bullshitting me to spare my feelings or anything like that.”
“I’m serious. I, uh, don’t remember much.”
“The dinners at my place?”
I shook my head.
“The Halloween Invitational when we had a humiliating loss to the Cougars and later ended up at Sondra’s, eating cold pizza and watching Psycho?”
Me eating cold pizza? Ew. My astral projection or the other me was either a total loser or a nymphomaniac, if Echo was to be believed. “No, I don’t remember any of that.”
Kicker sighed. “You were here at school, until after the game. We started hanging out weeks ago. You, me, Naya, and Sondra.”
“Raine?”
“She’s not swimming anymore and is always with her boyfriend. I assumed you two had a fight or something. You, kind of, stopped hanging out with her, and you never wanted us to invite her.”
Maybe I just hadn’t wanted to be a third wheel, or Raine had realized I wasn’t myself. That didn’t explain how I’d been in two places at the same time, because my stay at PMI wasn’t a figment of my imagination. I wasn’t too sure about the astral projection theory, and my gut instinct told me not to trust anything Echo said. Destiny deities erased my memories—how convenient for him.
“You flirted with Drew a lot, and Eirik too,” Kicker added. “He’s gone now.”
My stomach dropped. “Eirik?”
Kicker nodded. “Of course, you don’t remember. His family moved.”
I was actually relieved to hear that. I thought she’d meant he’d died. “To where?”
Kicker shrugged. “I don’t know. Doc just told the team he was gone. Maybe Raine knows.”
I wasn’t sure what was more painful: Eirik not visiting me or leaving without even saying goodbye. I must have meant nothing to him all these years.
***
“We missed you last week, Ms. Jemison,” Mr. Pepperidge, my English teacher, said, handing me a paper. “Good job on that essay. See me after class.”
I glanced down at the paper. A+. The paper was typed, had my name at the top, and was submitted two weeks ago. More proof I’d been in two places at the same time. Maybe taking psych meds had been good for me because I hadn’t received an A in English since I started high school.
The class was finishing Scarlet Letter, so I was lost and bored. I waited for the students to leave the room then approached the teacher. My heart pounding, I was sure he was going to say I was a fraud. He handed me a copy of the book.
“Read it and choose two characters or events in the story and demonstrate how Hawthorne describes them from different points of view and how this affects your impression of them. It’s nothing big, just a short essay.”
“Thanks, Mr. P.” I put the book on top of my folder.
He smiled. “I think you should seriously consider taking AP English literature and composition next year. Your writing has improved tremendously in the last month.”
“Okay, I will,” I fibbed and hurried out of the classroom.
Every class after that was the same. I’d become an exemplary student. A genius. Even math, my most hated subject. I had aced every quiz, test, and homework assignment. The handwriting on handwritten tests was mine down to the way I wrote uppercase L so it looked like the English pound sign minus the short horizontal line.
Either Echo had been right all along and I never really left until last week, or my astral projection had attended classes while I was trapped behind PMI walls. I was going with the latter because there was no way that annoying reaper could have been my lover.
After what Kicker had told me, I was feeling a little charitable toward Raine, but I wasn’t ready to be pals yet. Twice, between classes, I saw her, and each time she smiled. I ignored her, or tried to. It wasn’t easy. We’d been friends since junior high and had shared so much.
I was putting my books away before heading to lunch when she and her boyfriend cornered me. He was more striking in person than in the pictures online and had amazing blue eyes, yet something in them reminded me of Echo. Maybe it was the alertness or the edginess pulsing from him.
“Hey,” Raine said.
I wanted to ignore her again and even tried to leave, but her boyfriend blocked my path. I glared at him. Sighing, I turned and faced Raine. There was no point showing her how much she’d hurt me, and her whipped puppy look was getting tired. She’d never been good at hiding her emotions.
“Hi,” I said. “I like your hair.”
She blinked as though surprised. “Thanks. I know what you’ll say about this. I use a curling iron.”
I wasn’t ready to be that chummy with her. If she wanted to ruin her hair, I didn’t care.
“Uh, this is Torin St. James,” she said when she realized I wasn’t going to say anything else. “Torin, Cora Jemison, my best friend.”
Yeah, right. Some best friend.
Torin smiled and nodded, but he continued to watch me as though he expected me to, I don’t know, say something mean to Raine. What would he do?
I gave him a challenging glance and said, “I saw your pictures online.”
“It’s ridiculous how he always ends up on some girl’s page,” Raine said. “Alone. Shirtless.”
“Actually, the ones I saw were of the two of you,” I corrected.
“Oh.” She glanced at him and elbowed him when he grinned. She leaned against him and focused on me. “Uh, it’s nice to have you back, Cora.”
I shrugged. “It’s weird.”
She exchanged a look with Torin and frowned. “What do you mean?”
“It’s like I never left.” I waited for her to say something about my psych ward stay, or give me a clue about what she knew. I wasn’t sure what she’d told my mother a week ago or what Mom had told her. I hadn’t cared enough to ask.
An awkward silence followed.
“We stopped by your place on Friday after school,” Raine said. “I don’t know if your father told you.”
“He did. I meant to call you.” I didn’t explain why I hadn’t.
“Do you want to have lunch with us?” Raine asked tentatively.
I shrugged. “I promised Kicker I’d sit with her and the others.”
Raine made a face, not hiding her disappointment. “Actually we were thinking of heading downtown.” She glanced at Torin and a silent communication passed between them. “But I’ll join you guys. Torin hates school food.”
“I don’t mind eating it once in a while,” he said in a British accent, his voice deep and smooth. No wonder the comments online had raved about his accent. It was subtle, beautiful.
“No, you are going downtown,” she whispered to him.
“Trying to get rid of me, Freckles?” he teased, caressing her cheek.
“Yeah. So play nice and go.”
“I don’t play nice, luv.” He glanced at me and smiled. “See you around, Cora. As for you,” he touched Raine’s nose, “you can’t get rid of me that easily.” He dropped a lingering kiss on her lips and sauntered away. She watched him. As though he knew she was watching, he turned and winked.
“Show off,” Raine muttered.
“Wow, hard to believe you are dating the quarterback,” I said sarcastically as we started for the cafeteria. “You hate football.”
Raine smiled. “I know.”
“Do you watch him practice?”
“Yeah.” Her cheeks grew pink. “He likes it.”
I laughed. “What have you done with the Raine I knew? You know, the
one who laughed at girls who did things for their guys and never, ever dressed up for school.”
“Don’t start. So how is your first day back going?”
I shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”
“Do you remember the meet we had over a month ago? You know, when lightning hit the pool and killed some of our teammates?”
Yeah, the day my nightmares started. It was etched in my brain. She’d warned people to leave the pool. Then there was chaos as bolts of lightning rained on the pool. Whoever said lightning didn’t hit a place twice had lied. I couldn’t remember what had happened to Raine, but I’d seen the glowing beings lead the souls of the dead into a tunnel filled with colors. Three of the beings had tried to lure Raine away.
Not sure why she was asking, I decided to play it safe. “Vaguely.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t remember anything, except you warning people to leave the pool just before lightning hit.”
Raine frowned. “You don’t remember the last six weeks?”
I shook my head, though I was dying to ask her about my behavior during those weeks. “It’s all blank. It’s like I was never here. How did you know something bad was about to happen at that meet? What happened afterwards?”
She went pale. “I can’t explain how I knew. I just did. I was gone for two weeks after that, and when I came back, it was really hard to adjust. People treated me like I had cooties.”
“That’s awful. Why?”
“Everyone in school was talking about the meet. They labeled me a witch. If it weren’t for Torin and Eirik, I don’t know if I would have made it through those weeks.”
Was that why she hadn’t visited me? No, she hadn’t visited because I was here, too. Someone shoot me. This was so freaking confusing.
“No one seems to care now,” I mumbled.
Runes #03 - Grimnirs Page 5
