FATE

by Barnes, Jennifer Lynn

  “Bailey?”

  Carefully, I took the Band-Aid with my left hand, keeping my right under the desk and out of his view.

  But when I looked down at my thumb again, my blood was red, making me wonder if there was such a thing as college-stress-induced hallucination. Fumbling clumsily with the wrapper, I finally managed to secure the bandage into place, and as I moved to throw the bloodied tissue away, I caught the barest glimpse of it in the mirror around my neck.

  Blue-green.

  Red in reality, blue-green in the mirror.

  Okay, I thought, relieved, so that's a no go on the hallucination front.

  “So, Bailey. About all-girls schools.” Mr. McMann cleared his throat. “Was that a no?”

  Thankfully, that question brought an end to our meeting, and I was excused to go back to class. As I walked down the hallway, taking my time and feeling sorry for my throbbing thumb, I thought back over the past few hours.

  A cryptic geek had accurately translated my tattoo.

  Adea and Valgius had put in a rare daytime appearance to tell me that tonight was the beginning of my Reckoning.

  Morgan had appeared out of nowhere to give me necklaces that she insisted my friends and I would need.

  I'd cut myself on one of the aforementioned necklaces and discovered that my blood turned blue-green in the pendant's mirror.

  And last, but certainly not least, my meeting with Mr. McMann had just confirmed what I'd long suspected: everybody except me had plans for next year, or plans for making plans, or at least an idea of what they'd like those plans to be, whereas all I knew was that I didn't particularly want to go to an all-girls school.

  Probably.

  How was it that I could go two years without anything freaky happening (except fateing, which wasn't freaky so much as it just was), and then all of a sudden, boom—everything went completely nutters at the exact same time?

  I made it back to class without an answer to my question, and as I slipped into my seat, all I could hope was that there weren't any more surprises out there, waiting to spring themselves on me at the last minute.

  “Miss Morgan?”

  The teacher said my name, and for one terrifying instant, I couldn't even remember what class I was in.

  “Yes?” I said, my voice very small.

  “Could you explain to us the definition of friction?”

  Well, that solved one mystery. Clearly, I was in physics class, and clearly, whatever Sidhe beings fancied themselves the gods of irony were messing with me, because that was the exact piece of information I'd tried to study in study hall that morning.

  Operative word: tried.

  “Friction is … ummmm …”

  “Friction is the force generated when one object moves along another, generally defined by the equation f equals µmg, where µ is a friction coefficient, m is mass, andáis the force of gravity.”

  I couldn't believe it! Somebody had actually come to my rescue, and Annabelle wasn't even in this class. Though if she'd been here, she wouldn't have spoken out of turn anyway. At most, she would have metaphorically looked the other way while I probed her mind for a silent hint.

  “Thank you, Mr. Talbot-Olsen, but I was asking Bailey.”

  I could feel “Mr. Talbot-Olsen” (whose name did not seem to fit his voice at all) shrugging beside me, but I didn't look at him until the teacher turned her attention elsewhere.

  “How is the equation for friction modified if you have an object moving along an incline?”

  Nobody volunteered the answer, and the teacher focused in on another of my unsuspecting and borderline-unconscious classmates. As the chosen pupil sputtered out an answer that made mine look somewhat articulate, I tuned out again. Class went on, and after a few minutes, I finally dared a peek at my knight in shining physics armor.

  Mussy hair.

  Too pale to be classically good-looking.

  A little on the skinny side.

  Dark brown eyes that might have been soulful.

  It was the boy from study hall. When Delia said that geeks were an untapped subset of the male population, she wasn't kidding. They were, apparently, as close to invisible as you could possibly get without being actually transparent, because even though I lived in the middle of the social stratosphere and nowhere near the top, I couldn't remember ever seeing him before today.

  I don't know if it was because Delia's “enlightenment” was contagious, if it was because he'd risked physics-teacher wrath to come to my rescue, or even if it all went back to the fact that there was something distinctly mysterious about the way he'd read my symbol, but no matter the reason, I couldn't look away from this boy.

  His hair was definitely the “adorably tousled” kind of mussy.

  No, I told myself. Bad Bailey. His hair wasn't the point. The point was that something weird was going on here. And besides which, I wasn't looking for a boy. Been there, tried that, had the broken heart to prove it. All I wanted was to spend as much time with my friends as I could before they left for good.

  For once, I was glad that physics was one class I didn't have with any of the others. For the next fifteen minutes, I could mope as much as I wanted, and nobody could tickle me out of it.

  I stole another glance at the mussy hair, and the boy smiled at me. It is a testament to the fact that I might be pathetic (and that even I wasn't immune to the power of Delia's trendsetting C cup) that holding the memory of that smile in my mind, I couldn't even muster up a good mope.

  After the final bell rang, I avoided stopping by my locker on the way to my car. Delia's locker was right next to mine, and when it came to crushes, pseudo-crushes, and not-quite crushes, she was pretty much as psychic as I was. She'd take one look at me, go “You have crush-face!” and insist on hearing every last detail, even if it made her late for cheerleading practice. I loved her to death, but this time I wanted to figure out what I was feeling, or what I wasn't, before she did.

  To be fair, Delia had a lot more experience recognizing the symptoms of crushdom than I did. It had been so long since I'd been in a maybe-yes-maybe-no state of mind that I wasn't any surer of Cryptic Boy than I was of what was in store for me with the other Sidhe tonight. In my entire life, I'd had exactly two crushes, one of whom became, somewhat briefly, the only legitimate boyfriend I'd ever come close to having.

  Kane and I had dated on and off my sophomore year. We hung out (and made out) just enough that I was sure that something was going on, but not enough that I knew whether or not he actually considered me his girlfriend. I was too afraid that the answer would be no to ask. Junior year, he'd started “hanging out” with other girls at the same time, and when I'd told him (okay, when Zo had told him) in no uncertain terms that he couldn't just play with me when it suited him, he'd stopped seeing the other girls, and we'd been together, really together, for four months.

  Looking back, I wondered if Kane had ever actually wanted to be with me, or if I'd wanted it enough for the both of us. Maybe he'd just liked being wanted, or maybe, as I secretly feared, his being with me had more to do with my subconscious mind-control powers than anything else. Over time, I'd learned to control them, and over time, he'd gotten less and less interested in me. Coincidence?

  No such thing.

  “No moping.” Zo walked up and flicked the side of my neck with her finger, and I jumped. “Seriously, Bay, for someone who's got mind-boggling superpowers, you spend a lot of time as Depresso Girl.”

  “You love me anyway,” I grumbled.

  “Course I do,” Zo answered, and then she thumped me again. “It's called tough love.”

  “Very funny,” I said, but my mouth, proving itself a traitor to the rest of my body, smiled at her manner. Zo and I were both only children, and some days, she was as much a sister to me as a friend. On those days, I spent a significant amount of time in headlocks and getting thumped, and she spent more time than was humane listening to me whine. Since she had apparently decided that today was one of th
ose days, I obliged by whining.

  “I cut my thumb.” I held the offending appendage up and let my bottom lip poke out in classic puppy dog fashion. “It hurts.”

  “Awwww … poor Baiwey.” Zo put on a baby voice. I stuck my tongue out at her.

  “Brat,” she said.

  “Brat,” I returned.

  “Wanna be brats together?”

  “Is that your way of asking for a ride home?”

  Zo hooked an arm through mine as we began walking toward my car. “Do I even have to ask?”

  Since A-belle took classes at the local university two days a week and Delia had cheerleading practice on those same days, Tuesdays and Thursdays, it was just Zo and me after school. I always gave her a ride home, because Annabelle had their car, and most of the time, our “car pool” turned into the two of us cruising around for hours, talking and goofing off and conducting highly important experiments, like driving to every gas station within a five-mile radius of the high school so that we could compare the quality of their slushees. The two of us usually ended up at my house, where my mom always and without fail invited Zo to stay for dinner. Since Zo's dad's one and only culinary specialty was pancakes so fluffy they should have been illegal, Zo had a long history of getting most of her home-cooked meals at my house, while I got all of my fluffy pancakes at hers.

  “You want me to drive?” Zo asked, her voice almost comically hopeful.

  “Let me think about that for a second …” I tapped my chin thoughtfully. “What was Annabelle saying this morning? Something about being terrified with you behind the wheel?”

  “What was I saying this morning? Something about A-belle biting me?”

  “I'm drawing a blank on what you said to Annabelle,” I said. “Also, I'm pretty sure you told Delia to bite you.”

  Zo shrugged and made her way to the passenger side of the car. “Any chance on you drawing a blank the next time Dee asks whether or not I've done my share of scouting for geeks?”

  The two of them really were the least compatible people ever.

  “I'll see what I can do,” I said, thankful that Zo didn't have Delia's sixth sense about crushes, because the second the word geek left her mouth, I started thinking about Cryptic Boy, my physics savior with the mussy hair. Half afraid that Zo would pick up on it anyway, I climbed into the car. She settled herself into the passenger seat as I started the engine.

  “Where to?” I asked.

  “Is today Cookie Day?”

  My mom was always good for an afternoon snack, and she baked at least once a week. Truthfully, if it hadn't been for Zo, I think Cookie Day would have stopped when I was about eight, but my mom never got tired of Zo telling her how good her cookies were, and Zo never got tired of eating them. The two of them had a wonderfully symbiotic relationship. My mom was an überparent. She would have mothered a rock if the rock had let her, and even though Zo wouldn't have admitted it under threat of torture, my tough-as-nails friend kind of liked being mothered.

  “Rumor has it that it's double-chocolate-chunk day,” I said, knowing I was sealing both of our fates with the mere mention of chocolate.

  Zo's eyes rolled back in her head a little at the thought of cookies.

  “Okay,” I said. “My house it is.” I put the car in reverse and backed out of the parking place.

  “So what's the deal?”

  It took me a second to realize what Zo was asking.

  “With the moping. Twice in one day. What's the deal?”

  Because I knew she wouldn't have asked if she didn't actually want to know, and because I was out of thumping range should she decide that my explanation qualified as moping again, I answered her. Once I started talking, it all poured out at warp speed: worrying about the four of us splitting up, the Reckoning being all ominous, my torturous college counseling session, the green blood, and the fact that the boy from study hall was also in my physics class. Toward the end of my explanation, I didn't even bother to mask my distinctly crushlike descriptions of Cryptic Boy's mussy hair.

  I'd always sucked at hiding things from Zo.

  “Okay,” Zo said, when my explanation finally ended.

  “Okay?” I wasn't sure whether I was asking her to elaborate, or just trying to get her to tell me again that everything would be okay. Since kindergarten, Delia had been my stylist, and Zo had been my bodyguard. Delia made things fabulous; Zo chased the monsters and/or bullies away. I expected her to somehow make this better, even though a large part of the problem was worrying about what would happen when she wasn't there to do the chasing anymore.

  “Okay,” Zo confirmed. “The senior year thing you'll just have to deal with. You're a big girl, Bay, and you couldn't get rid of the rest of us if you tried. Do you really think that's going to change?”

  Did I?

  “The blood thing is freaky”—Zo didn't give me time to process my thoughts before plowing on to the next issue—”but since the necklace came from the Accessory Stand of Great Power and Responsibility, I'm not really surprised. We just need to figure out why it turned your blood green, so we'll know what else it does.”

  Huh. I'd been so distracted by real-world drama that I hadn't spent much time wondering about the implication of my blood turning colors in the mirror. Note to self, I thought: work on that.

  “But what about the fact that Morgan is here at all?” I asked. Since we'd gone from sister mode to friend mode, I made an effort not to sound like I was whining. Considering that I was letting the whole “deal with it” thing slide, I thought I was doing pretty well.

  “Morgan being here just means things are going to get interesting.” Zo looked down at the pendant on her chest, and when she looked up, the expression on her pixie face was absolutely unholy. “Admit it, last time, with the tattoos …”

  “It was kind of cool,” I said. “If you forget the part where Alecca almost killed us.”

  Us. Just saying the word made me feel like there was an us and like Zo was right and I was stupid for worrying, even for a second, that not too far in the future there might not be. We'd faced down the ultimate evil together, and here I was worrying about college.

  “Bay, Alecca never stood a chance.” Zo seemed very sure of this. Perfect confidence, aggressive to a fault. That was Zo to a tee. “As for the boy …,” she continued.

  “Yeah?” So far, Zo was doing a decent job of making me feel better (even if part of making me feel better entailed making me feel like an idiot for feeling bad in the first place). Listening to her talk about it, things seemed simple, so even though boys weren't exactly her forte, I was definitely open to her suggestions.

  “I say go for it. If he hurts you, leave 'im to me.”

  The expression on her face transitioned from unholy to deadly. When it came to my feelings, she was a bit overprotective.

  I mulled over Zo's boy advice. Could I really just go for it? I mean, when did that ever work out for people like me?

  “Don't tell Delia,” I said after a few minutes. “About the boy.”

  “And convince her that there's something to this Geek Theorem of hers?” Zo snorted. “Never.”

  By the time we made it to my house, I was feeling a whole lot better. Liking Cryptic Boy (if I did actually decide to like him) didn't have to be a bad thing. I was good at crushing on people. It was the whole being-a-girlfriend part I was questionable at. Ultimately, I decided that with each of my problems (except for the one that I was going to “deal with” by ignoring), I needed more information. And that meant …

  “Research,” Zo finished glumly.

  That was more A-belle's area than it was either of ours.

  “Cookies first,” I said as I opened the front door. “Research later.”

  “What are you girls researching?”

  My mom was probably a ninja in a former life. She's just that stealthy.

  “Ummmmm … boys.” I said the first thing that came to mind.

  My mom looked from Zo to me and then back a
gain. “Where's Delia?”

  Had I not been in the process of being extremely sketchy and lying quite badly, I would have started cracking up. My mom knew my friends way too well.

  “Cheerleading practice,” Zo said with a completely straight face. “Annabelle's at the university.”

  At first, I was grateful to Zo for covering for me, but then my mom's eyes lit up at the word university, and I was briefly overcome with an intense but short-lived desire to toss my friend out the window.

  “I'd forgotten she was taking classes there this year,” my mom said. “You girls should sit in on one of them sometime.”

  Zo seemed to have realized what she'd done. She should have known not to mention anything related to c-o-l-l-e-g-e around my mom.

  “And her mother works there, too, doesn't she? I bet Dr. Porter could arrange for a private tour of some kind. I wonder if she knows anyone at Wellesley …”

  I didn't need to be psychic to predict that Anna-belle's mom was going to be getting a call from mine very soon. With my luck, the four of us would end up spending fall break visiting colleges together, with special tours set up by whomever Dr. Porter knew at each one.

  I seriously needed to figure out how to control my fateing just enough to make sure that didn't happen. The moping penalties I would inevitably incur if it did would probably result in my hospitalization.

  “What is that wonderful smell?” Zo's words sidetracked my mother.

  “Cookies,” my mom said, and the two of them stood there for a second, grinning at each other. I could barely remember what their relationship had been like back when Zo's mom was around, but these days, Zo and my mom were both downright gleeful in their mutually beneficient relationship. In no time at all Zo had a cookie in each hand and I was nibbling around the edges of one of my own.

  “So,” my mom said, “anything interesting happen at school today?”

  Zo and I met eyes.

  A boy in one of my classes recognized the tattoo you don't know I have. I sent the thought in Zo's direction, and she sent another response we wouldn't be saying out loud back my way.

  Some lady at the mall gave us magical necklaces, Zo thought, but we don't know how they work yet.