“Someone screamed inside an enormous home on the other side of a cornfield from you and it woke you?” Allison shook her head. She was fearless and proud of it.
I was basically afraid of my shadow and had no problem admitting it.
“Maybe.” When she put it that way, my imagination seemed the more likely explanation.
“Are you saying you think he’s dangerous?” She looked me up and down. “Because you could use a bad boy in your life right now.”
“I had a bad boy in my life. Look where it got me. Humiliated, for starters.” I gave Allison my most pointed look. She knew the hell Kirk had dragged me through emotionally before and after our breakup.
“Kirk isn’t a bad boy, Callie. He’s an asshole.” All humor left her. “I hate him.”
“Me too. The good news is Kirk got what he deserved: Hannah.”
This seemed to change Allison’s mood. “I heard Liam shot Hannah down. In the bathroom, I overheard half the cheer squad analyzing how that was possible. You know, since she’s perfect.”
“He did. I saw it. She introduced herself to him and he looked right past her.” My smile weakened. “He told her his name, though.”
“Not the warm reception she’s used to. I like him.” Allison opened her door. “I have class in half an hour. Do you want to hang out this afternoon? I can pick you up after school.” She turned her eyes down, tapping the screen of her phone.
“No. I—”
Liam approached his car ten feet away and my heart seized. How much of our conversation had he heard? I’d heard every word of the two girls’ conversation before Allison arrived. My tummy coiled. He beeped open the doors and folded himself sideways onto the driver’s seat, door open, legs sticking out. His feet planted against the ground.
I pulled my attention back to Allison, still tapping away at her screen. “I want to swim a few laps before I go home.”
“Ugh. Why can’t you run like everyone else? Text me later.” She slid behind the steering wheel and started her engine. I held my breath as she drove away, wondering if she’d notice Liam’s legs sprouting from his car. She didn’t.
I released a sigh. I didn’t run because I’d grown up swimming at the country club pool. One of the perks of living on the golf course was unlimited access to the clubhouse. Until the divorce, I’d had a big, fancy country club pool all to myself every afternoon. The outdoor pool was busy all summer, but for some reason, most people didn’t swim otherwise. I swam out my frustrations. I swam to think. I swam for fun. By fourth grade, I’d joined the swim team and I hadn’t stopped swimming since. In the water, I was weightless, fast, and strong. Thanks to dad’s infidelity, I didn’t want his money for college, so I had to put my sport to work for me and earn a swim scholarship. Team practices didn’t start until November first, but Coach let me swim any time I wanted as long as he was there working, which he almost always was, and I took full advantage.
Liam shut his car door and stared at me. I stood alone in the space where Allison’s car had sat all morning. My mouth opened. A hundred words circled in my head. I wasn’t stalking him. I was in the lot when he got there. My cheeks burned with humiliation. I wasn’t the freak who dropped things and knocked into people and stood alone in parking lots staring. I wasn’t that girl.
Until he showed up.
I turned on my heel, unable to find my voice, and strode away. I didn’t stop walking until I threw my apple core away, went through the lunch line, bought a fruit salad and collapsed into a chair at my usual table. Justin watched me sort through my bag and retrieve the bottle of water Mom gave me for breakfast. I took my time unscrewing the lid and sipping. The thickness in my throat eased with each swallow.
“Feeling okay?” Justin’s elbows spread wide on the table around a tray of sandwich wrappers and napkins. I’d missed more than half of my lunch period. The twinkle in his eye suggested my behavior amused him. As usual.
“Mmm hmm.” I popped the lid off my fruit container and unwrapped a plastic fork. Lunchroom sounds pounded through my head. Chairs scraped against ancient marble floors. Banging lockers doors reverberated in my skull. Voices meshed in the air, creating a cacophony of ugly noise. I rubbed one temple with the heel of my hand.
“You ran through the lunch line like the devil was chasing you.” He inspected my meal. “Or was that the last fruit salad on earth?”
“Fruit is no laughing matter. I didn’t sleep well. I have a headache, and I’m starving.” I stabbed a hunk of melon and shoved it in my mouth.
“I waited for you at your locker before lunch. Allison was looking for you, too. Where’d you go?”
“I was at her car. I needed Tylenol.” I shoveled fruit between my lips before more lies fell out.
Concern lined his forehead. “You want to go home? I can take you if you need a ride.”
“I’m okay.”
I scanned the scene around me for Oliver. Whoever he was, he looked like Liam, according to the gossip. He must be worth looking at because Allison would never consider dating a junior. In fact, the minute she started taking courses at the community college, she’d sworn off high school boys forever, including those in our senior class. A good decision on her part. The pickings were slim. We’d grown up together. It sounded sweet when couples said those things later in life, but in truth it was awful. Everyone always knew who and what everyone else had been up to, which made it hard to take guys seriously.
Small towns were complicated. Half the time news and gossip spread instantly, the other half of the time secrets were fiercely protected. An equation that had never worked out in my favor. Like when I’d had a boyfriend with a sex life on the side and I’d been clueless, like Mom, until I saw it. Sometimes, I thought if Hannah had told me she’d dropped her earring and went looking for it in Kirk’s lap mouth-first, I might’ve preferred the lie. Surely people knew Kirk was cheating, but no one said a word. Realizing another guy I’d cared about would hurt me over sex had been devastating. It was hard to think of my dad as the exception after Kirk’s betrayal. Dad had ripped my life in half because he’d needed to sleep with some pharmaceutical sales rep named Ginger from Poughkeepsie and Kirk had gleefully stomped on my heart because he couldn’t wait another couple hours to have sex with me. The whole thing baffled me. What was so all consuming powerful about sex anyway?
“Here comes the new guy.” Justin tilted his head in the direction of the cafeteria door.
Liam walked past a table of whispering girls and stopped at the juice machine. He stared at the selections as if they didn’t have juice in his mother country. After a few beats, he fished money from the pocket of his new-looking jeans. I was on the edge of my seat, as if his choice of beverage might reveal his secrets. Liam deposited coins in exchange for an apple juice. I relaxed. Apple juice was very normal and non-sinister, as juices went.
“You stopped chewing,” Justin’s voice startled me.
“What?” I chewed again, slow and deliberate.
“Do you recognize his shirt? He’s the guy you ran into this morning. Liam Hale.”
Liam’s eyes met mine across the sea of bustling tables. Did he hear us over all the racket? I looked at Justin, cheeks scalding at being caught staring. Again. I concentrated on chewing my food before I choked to death in the school cafeteria. My brain was glitchy today. Not enough sleep. Headache. Excuses. Excuses. Excuses.
“Have you met him?” I bit my lip the minute the words escaped. I didn’t want to seem too eager.
I took a long drink of water and forced my gaze back to Justin.
“Not really. That guy’s weird, Callie. I’d give him plenty of room if I were you.”
“I am.” I spoke too quickly, giving myself away. Justin shifted in his seat, examining me until I looked away. I wasn’t sure how Justin thought of me these days. My thoughts of him changed by the minute. Did he wonder if we could be more than friends one day, the way I sometimes did? Didn’t matter. I’d
never ask. True love was for fairy tales and, last time I checked, I wasn’t animated.
Besides, romance wasn’t worth losing a best friend. Romance was Satan’s creation, designed to break hearts, elicit despair, and ruin lives. My theory was based on the real life experiences of my mom and myself. Romance, like any unhealthy addiction and/or mental illness situation, left you craving more.
Infuriatingly, my gaze darted straight to Liam, who looked up a split second later and saw me looking. He leaned against the cafeteria wall, ear buds in, deflecting people who approached with his signature frown. Long fingers curled around the apple juice bottle. Justin turned, following the path of my attention to Liam, who looked up again.
Gah! I dropped my head to the table. “Owie.”
“Do you need a ride home tonight?” Justin asked over the ringing of the bell and my ears.
I rolled my head left and right in response. “I’m swimming after school.”
“Call me if you want a ride home after.”
“’Kay.”
A shadow fell over my head and I dared a peek at Justin. He had my bag on his shoulder and his palms braced over his hips. “Chin up, buttercup.”
Justin gathered our trash and tossed it in the bin while I got my head together.
“Thanks.”
“I don’t know what’s going on with you today, but maybe a swim will cure it.” Justin nudged me with his elbow. He understood. When his day sucked, he climbed on a bucking bronco to rattle his worries loose. Everyone needed someplace to sort their junk. What did people do in Iceland to clear their minds? Fish? Ski? Ice skate?
Two steps beyond the cafeteria door, Kirk had Hannah pressed against the wall in a full-out PG-13 show of PDA. It was the kind of display sure to get anyone but the star football player detention.
“Jealous?” Kirk’s wing nut friend, Lance, asked in a stupid jaunty voice. “Used to be you, Ingram. What can you do?” And he’d rhymed too, lucky me.
“Kill myself?” I passed the couple with a quick glance to keep from knocking into them in the crowd. I concentrated on their legs and feet to avoid retinal scarring from sight of their tongues.
“Did you hear that, Hannah?” Lance asked in the same singsong voice. “Ingram wants to kill herself because you took her place under Kirk.
I didn’t look back, but I hoped Hannah kneed them both in the groin for basically calling her a whore. Justin paused at my side and I tugged him along. “Don’t worry about it,” I whispered.
I took a deep settling breath and focused on the stairway ahead. With the day I was having, I’d probably trip up the steps and get trampled to death.
Liam Hale passed us in long strides, clearing the steps two at a time and breaking my heart. He’d heard Lance. He must have. First impression of me: I was a loud mouth and a klutz. Second impression: I was a stalker. Third impression: I was an insensitive whore who missed her place under Kirk the jerk and talked about suicide as if it was a joke, knowing his great-grandmother had hung herself. Three strikes.
Justin and I stopped outside the glass wall of the school library, my study hall, and watched the passing crowd.
“You know, I haven’t kicked his ass yet because you’ve asked me to stay out of it.”
“I know.” I locked eyes with him. Fury burned there.
“I listened because I care about you and it’s what you wanted. What went on between you and Kirk had nothing to do with me. I was here for you and nothing more.”
He’d used a lot of past tense in those sentences.
Justin dropped my bag between us on the carpeted hallway outside the library and took my hands in his.
I inhaled deeply from the warmth of his touch. The skin on his palms was rough and calloused and the sensation of our differences heated my belly.
His crystal blue eyes narrowed on mine and he pulled in a full breath.
“If this”—he lifted our joined hands in the air between us—“becomes something…more… I won’t allow Kirk or anyone else to speak to you or about you that way. What happens to my girl happens to me. Do you understand what I’m saying? I know you want me to stay out of it, but you need to know that’s how it’d have to be if things change between us.”
I nodded.
The bell rang before I could answer him properly, so I dropped his hands and forced a smile. Justin smiled in return, accepting my nod as enough for now. I lifted my bag and darted through the doorway where Liam, the librarian, and six other study hall students had watched me though the glass from their desks.
Stupid small town schools.
No one spoke for the full hour during study hall, and I managed to keep my eyes to myself. I sat motionless, counting book spines on over-filled shelves until the final bell rang. I dazed through the rest of the afternoon in a similar fashion, craving the quiet pool where I could untangle my thoughts and make sense of what Justin had said. He’d thought of being more than friends, too. He’d protect me from taunting and ridicule. Be my guardian. All roles I’d imagined him playing and enjoyed. All roles I suspected Justin excelled at naturally.
I, on the other hand, wasn’t a great damsel in distress. I didn’t want rescuing or sheltering. I didn’t want the perfect image I had of him ruined, carved through with the lies and deceit that came with love. Most of all, I didn’t want to lose him and I would if we complicated things with romance. As his friend, I knew he’d honor and protect me in any way I let him. As his girlfriend? My heart cringed when I thought of the possibilities.
After school, I took my time at my locker, sorting and gathering things, as students poured out into the sun. Satisfied the bulk of my classmates were gone, I ducked down the long narrow hallway to the school natatorium. Coach’s only condition was I couldn’t tell anyone about our arrangement or he’d end up playing lifeguard to two dozen kids, so I’d only told Justin and Allison, neither of whom had any interest in swimming. I assumed the rest of the school felt the same way.
Swim season ran from November first until mid-March. We practiced four days a week as a team. I practiced seven days a week, unless work interrupted my routine. The faint scent of chlorine filtered down the hallway to meet me. I slowed to check my phone as I walked. Footfalls echoed behind me and I turned, hoping to see a janitor and not a nosy student wondering where I was headed. Liam stopped thirty feet behind me and stared.
I turned back toward the pool, unsure what to do. If he followed me to the pool, I’d have to pretend I needed something from Coach and go home without my swim. I detested the idea. I’d never needed a swim this bad. On the other hand, I could pretend something had occurred to me, turn on my toes, and head back the way I came. Unfortunately, I couldn’t force myself to pass Liam in the long, empty hallway, so I kept moving forward, willing to miss my swim if it came to that.
I checked over my shoulder. He was new to the school. Maybe he was lost. I picked up the pace and checked again. Liam moved at a snail’s pace, still far away.
My phone buzzed in my palm. A text from Justin. Sure you don’t want a ride home?
I wasn’t. I wasn’t sure of anything except maybe I needed medication or yoga or something.
I took another look behind me and stopped short. Liam was gone. I’m fine. I texted Justin back, ducking into the girls’ locker room where I could hyperventilate in private for no good reason.
Chapter 4
I sat on a bench inside the locker room, examining the familiar pink tiled walls and acknowledging my asinine reaction to some guy in a hallway. My toes pressed against the cool concrete floor, anchoring me, soothing my nerves. Cumulatively, I’d spent days in this locker room. The sights, scents, and sounds around me were safe, comforting, home. Liam Hale had followed me down the natatorium hallway. So what? I shouldn’t care. It didn’t matter. I hustled into my suit and swim cap.
My mind bounced back into forbidden territory before I donned flip-flops. Where had he gone and why? The only escape was a broom
closet, the pool ahead of me, and locker room doors. He hadn’t run past me to the pool and I doubted he’d needed anything from the janitor’s supply closet. In a true show of paranoia, I stilled and listened keenly for someone hidden among the lockers.
“Get a grip, Callie,” I murmured.
Coach’s whistle blew. Thick block walls muffled the sound, but I’d recognize the sharp warning anywhere. Curious and thankful for the motivation, I closed my locker, spun the lock, and tossed a towel over one shoulder. Electricity zinged through my limbs, carrying me to the pool with haste, anticipating the nearness of a long swim. My heart leapt as I rounded the corner from locker room to pool. The water called to me. Chlorine clung in the humid air of the back hallway linking locker rooms to the pool entrance. I tugged the steamy glass door open and inhaled, enjoying the twitch of my muscles, eager to dive in and swim a mile before contemplating the day’s nonsense.
I threw my towel against the wall and left my flip-flops beside it. Coach stood at the far end of the pool holding a clipboard and nodding at someone in the water. A tendril of frustration drifted up my spine. This was my secret swim time. I liked the solitude. Coach nodded at me as I moved in his direction. I supposed if this other swimmer was any good, I might benefit from a lap partner to push me when I grew lazy or unfocused. Silver linings weren’t my specialty, but a partner had potential.
Long arms cut steady strokes through rippling water as I traversed the pool’s edge to meet Coach halfway.
Coach never took his eyes off the swimmer. “Looks good, yeah?”
“Sure.” We moved to the short end of the pool, watching as the half-human, half-torpedo swam, flipped, and returned again and again.
Prophecy Page 4
