by Dean Murray
Chapter 7
My alarm clock jerked me out of a thankfully dream-free slumber. Actually, as I pulled myself out of bed I realized I'd had a virtual torrent of dreams, but none of them had been possessed of the strange vividness that'd begun haunting my waking moments. I hadn't had one of the special dreams, ergo I hadn't had any dreams last night.
I really needed to get out of this town before whatever was in the water drove me completely crazy. Actually, I probably didn't have much time in which to affect my escape. When it came to craziness I was already halfway there. After all, I'd already been diagnosed with the kind of clinical condition nobody with less than eight years of school could even pronounce.
As amusing as my internal monologue was, I didn't let it slow my normal morning preparations. Almost before I knew it, I was downstairs and once again facing the dreaded decision of whether or not to eat breakfast. I already knew I wasn't hungry; the only real decision was how much of Mom's wrath I was willing to face later on.
It wasn't until I had my hand on the doorknob that I remembered Brandon's promise to pick me up. I was so tired I actually considered for a second that he might have been serious. Sitting in his car, fighting not to look at his smiling gray eyes, it'd all seemed so reasonable. I'd lost my ride and he was grateful I'd saved him from having to interfere with Cassie, so he was going to become my personal chauffeur for the rest of the year.
Looking at my empty lane, the school bus only minutes away, it seemed more likely Brandon wouldn't even remember talking to me. Just like every hot boy with every loser since the dawn of time.
The thought hurt a little, but I'd had plenty of years to come to understand boys like that didn't go after girls like me. Instead of dwelling on it, greenhouse gases or anything else I couldn't change, I simply shrugged my backpack a little higher and started down the lane.
Some kind of bird was merrily announcing to the world that he was ridiculously happy the sun was just rising, and that it was already pushing eighty degrees with the promise of something much, much worse before lunch.
I hadn't been waiting for more than a minute when a pair of headlights rounded the bend in the road coming from town. I was so busy worrying how I'd deal with Cassie when I saw her that it took me a minute to realize the car had slowed as it approached.
"Wow, I drive all this way, and then you deprive me of the pleasure of the last hundred feet."
The deep, smooth voice was unmistakable even if the light was still too poor to make out anything else. I slipped inside the Mustang with a grin playing at the edge of my lips despite my best efforts to remain cool and collected.
"Well, I didn't want to start your day off too well, or everything else would be anticlimactic."
"Really? You weren't just worried I wasn't going to show up? Because you understand how someone could've been thinking you'd walked down your lane so you could catch the bus if I'd forgotten about you?"
I'd been giving Brandon my crinkled-nose glare for a solid three seconds before his easy laugh made me realize what I was doing. I hadn't done that to anyone in months, it'd been my trademark expression for when a family member had made me mad.
"Okay, you're right. I didn't think you'd show."
"I should be very hurt by your lack of faith, but seeing as how you've been through so much lately, I'll forgive you."
My heart was suddenly trying to hammer its way out of my throat, which had constricted so tightly I couldn't seem to get any air down to my starving lungs.
"How did you...nobody knows..."
Brandon's hand was on my shoulder despite my inability to remember how it had gotten there. "Are you okay? I was just kidding, you know, about the near fight and then telling Alec off and having Britney decide she was moving on to greener pastures. I didn't mean anything by it."
The attack was still trying to overwhelm me, but Brandon not knowing the full extent of my weakness robbed it of some of the momentum necessary to roll me all the way under.
I managed some kind of reply, one that might've even been witty, but which apparently didn't manage to cover up the fact I wasn't really okay. We drove in silence the rest of the way into town, and by the time we turned into the school parking lot I'd come back to myself enough to be desperately looking for something else to say. I needed something cool enough Brandon wouldn't write me off as a lost cause.
Wish-granting fairies somewhere were working overtime, because as Brandon turned off the engine, I saw a mob of people over by one of the smaller entrances to the school.
"Wow, I wonder what's going on over there."
We were both out of the car now, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to grab Brandon's arm and tug him over to the crowd. It wasn't until I felt the iron-hard muscles under my now-tingling hand that I realized what I'd done.
I felt a surge of heat wash over my face and neck. Brandon for once didn't have an easy comeback to defuse the awkwardness. If anything he looked slightly uncomfortable himself.
"I'm sure it's nothing important..."
He trailed off as my traitorous hand found his arm of its own accord and started pulling again. I wasn't sure why I was so anxious; usually I avoided crowds like the plague. Maybe I was just trying to prolong our time together.
I let go as soon as we reached the fringe of the crowd, and prayed it was only my imagination that made me think Brandon was just the slightest bit relieved. Luckily there was plenty to distract me.
It looked like there'd been some kind of war behind the school. The flagpole had a massive dent in its base, and actually looked like it was leaning slightly to one side. The straggly grass, kept just barely alive by the nearly non-existent rain and infrequent watering by some anonymous grounds keeper, had been torn up. Large patches of reddish dirt had been exposed and the ground was scarred by gouges that looked like they'd been made by some kind of farm machinery except for being so irregular.
My eyes were momentarily pulled back to the ground. Something about the gouges was tickling the back of my mind. Had I seen something like that before? Hiking maybe? Only I could count the number of hikes I'd actually participated in on one hand. Surely something like that would've stayed with me.
Someone gasped as the crowd shifted around, distracting me from my half-formed suspicions. I looked over at the exterior wall of the school and felt my jaw drop. Maybe Mom had read the story about the three little pigs a few too many times to me when I was growing up, but I'd always thought of brick as the strongest possible building material. I didn't have any idea if it really was, but it seemed incredible that anything could've wreaked such damage.
The bricks on the wall next to the door were cracked and set back in the wall, almost like they'd been hit with some kind of wrecking ball, and the concrete of the sidewalk had gouges crisscrossing its surface like some kind of abstract painting.
"There's nothing to see here, kids. I want you to all disperse and go to your home rooms."
The short, mostly bald man who'd ordered us all to leave was just visible through a gap in the crowd. He walked like an administrator, but I hadn't ever seen him before.
"Who's that?"
Brandon started just a little, like he'd been thinking of something else. "Mr. Rindell, the assistant principal."
Now that my complete attention wasn't on the various destroyed bits of school property, I noticed how much whispering was going on. Most of it was too quiet to catch more than bits and pieces, but I heard more than one 'completely jacked up', and a few people wondering what could have caused that kind of destruction. Mr. Rindell apparently heard much of the same snippets of conversation.
"You would think by now you'd all be old enough to figure some of this out on your own. The flag pole was obviously hit by some kind of vehicle, probably one of those big 4x4's that you kids seem to love so much down here. The damage to the brickwork was no doubt the work of those stupid potato guns. Now get out of here before I start handing out detention assignments."
I hissed in discomfort and he released me, but not before I noticed that his other hand was white-knuckled and his jaw was clenched.
"Sorry, I just don't like to see that kind of needless destruction. It makes everyone look bad and costs the town a lot of money."
Brandon's smile was back, but it didn't have his trademark easy carelessness.
"Now you sound like my mom."
We rounded a corner before Brandon could say anything else and nearly ran into Britney.
"Guys! Did you see the back door?"
I could almost see the wheels turning in Britney's head. First she went red as she remembered she'd stranded me at school, then her eyes got a little wider as she realized it was still about five minutes too early for me to have arrived on the bus.
Brandon's normal smile was back. "Yeah, Adriana noticed it almost as soon as we pulled up to the school."
Her suspicions that Brandon had given me a ride into school satisfied, Britney managed a sickly smile and mumbled something about seeing us later as she disappeared around the corner.
I managed to make it another twenty feet before I couldn't restrain my laughter anymore. Brandon joined in with a chuckle that was more restrained, but no less heartfelt. We both wound down about the same time, and I wiped a tear off of the corner of each eye.
"I should feel bad for laughing at her, but she's so transparent. It's nice to see her served with a little justice."
Brandon nodded with a smile. "It's a little ironic. She threw you overboard because she was worried you'd limit her upward mobility, and then the next day you arrive with the guy she's had a crush on since the day she moved into Sanctuary."
I punched him on the shoulder. "You knew all this time?"
Another laugh, and a smile at the way I was trying to conceal how much the punch had hurt my hand. "Of course I knew. It isn't like I could do anything about that. I've never led her on, but I've always been aware she liked me."
There didn't seem to be much else to be said, so I thanked Brandon again for the ride into school, and headed off to my home room.
Everyone had pretty much just pretended like I didn't exist before. Now, with Brandon having taken an interest in me, I got everything from simple acknowledgment of my presence to obvious dislike, and even a couple of people who looked like they wanted to take Britney's place.
I suppose some people would have been thrilled by the chance to join the top of the social food chain, but it mostly just disgusted me. I politely rebuffed the scavengers, ignored the haters, and carefully acknowledged the rest without giving them anything else to go on.
It was a rather depressing exercise. By the time Mrs. Sorenson had fired a couple of ridiculously obscure questions at me, I found the good feelings I'd managed to carry away from the mayor's visit the night before had pretty much evaporated.
English should have been better. Wuthering Heights wasn't ever going to be my favorite book, but Mr. Whethers had made the characters more real in the last few days and I was actually excited to see what he had in store next.
Unfortunately, Mr. Whethers wasn't there. The substitute teacher sitting at his desk didn't even take roll; he just shut the door, told us to keep it down, and flipped open a magazine. While I was sitting at my desk wondering what to do with the next hour of my life, something I'd read in the physics book suddenly clicked.
In a perfect world I would've been left in peace to finish reasoning out the answer. Instead, Britney leaned over and smiled.
"So I was really surprised to see you with Brandon. I thought for sure he'd be pissed after you made Cassie back down like that."
"Surprise, surprise, maybe he isn't as shallow and vindictive as you thought." The words were mean, but they felt good. There were a lot of other, even worse things on the tip of my tongue, things I really wanted to say. For a moment, my anger warred with the fear of being completely friendless.
I'd always thought I didn't need any friends, that I was fine making my own way. I was starting to realize I'd never really been alone before now. I'd always had the best friend a girl could've wanted. I'd just never recognized how much I'd depended on her.
Even that oblique thought was almost too much. I felt my pulse quicken a little as the air seemed to vibrate.
"Look, I'm sorry about how I reacted yesterday. I shouldn't have left you here like that."
Britney's voice was coated with sincerity, but it was the thinnest of layers, one which poorly disguised all kinds of nasty little feelings. On the other hand, it distracted my mind from the string of thoughts I'd otherwise have followed all the way down to a full-blown panic attack. It was a small thing in the grand scheme of the universe, but it was just enough to tilt the balance in her favor.
I still didn't like her any more than she really liked me, but I was willing to tolerate her. To pretend we were friends so that neither of us had to face the scary world entirely on our own.
"Okay, apology accepted. It wasn't very nice, but I suppose everyone makes mistakes."
Britney's eyes grew bright, even after such a short acquaintance, I knew she was about to launch into a blow-by-blow account of the last twelve or so hours.
"Listen, I don't mean to be rude, but I've got to finish up my physics homework. Can we catch up during lunch?"
Britney looked a little crestfallen, but her eyes quickly lit back up, and before I could get my notebook out and start writing, she'd already switched seats to one closer to a gaggle of cheerleaders.
It was amazing that I hadn't made the connection between light, the fact that light acted like a wave, and the rainbows on the parking lot puddles, but it was all making sense now. By the time the bell finally rang to release the circus back into the halls, I'd finished up a reasonable outline, and was feeling pretty smart.
Alec probably expected me to have been totally stumped, but I'd figured out the exact answer to the assignment, and I was so going to show him. The glow of satisfaction more than made up for the fact that Britney chattered non-stop on our way to Algebra. I felt like I should feel guilty for not liking her, but I was starting to notice how much of her conversation revolved around nasty gossip that made everyone else in the school sound like rejects or sluts.
When we finally made it to Mrs. Campbell's class, I slid into my seat with a sigh of relief. This was the one class all day where I could virtually guarantee I wouldn't be talking to anyone. Mrs. Campbell wasn't ever really mean, but she gave off an air that made you absolutely sure she wouldn't put up with any crap.
We were still working on statistics, which was nice in that I could follow what was being said and wasn't falling any further behind, but kind of a bummer because it meant I couldn't do a bunch of makeup work during class. It was a relief when Mrs. Campbell finally capped her marker and turned us loose to work on the homework assignment.
I was midway through the first assignment when one of the aides slipped into the room and whispered into Mrs. Campbell's ear. There was a kind of muted, collective gasp that made me look up just in time to see the color drain out of her face. Before the aide had even finished whispering, Mrs. Campbell was out of her chair and headed towards the door. Thirty seconds later we were all still looking around and wondering what had happened.
It was a testament to our respect for, or in some cases fear of, Mrs. Campbell that nobody spoke in anything above a whisper for an entire five minutes. Every terrible thing that could possibly happen to a person flowed through my mind, and all I could do was hope I was overreacting. Mrs. Campbell had scared me a little that first day, but she'd been pretty nice since, and she'd always been fair.
"So what do you think happened?"
"Britney, what are you doing?"
"What? You finished up you
r homework already and she left. We can totally talk right now. What do you think happened? I'll bet she just got some really, really bad news."
I felt a dull ache starting behind my eyes. "Just because I finished my Physics doesn't mean I don't have other stuff I need to do, and I don't even want to guess at what would make her go that white. I just hope whatever it was turns out not to be as bad as she thought it was."
Britney rolled her eyes. "Please, like you don't have just as much reason to hate her as me. Besides, what other homework could you possibly have? You're like the most anal person I know when it comes to doing your homework. Therefore you finished it all last night, and have nothing that could possibly be more important than talking to me."
Her logic sucked, but that didn't bother me even half as bad as how sure of herself she was. I held up my math book with a look that I hoped conveyed how ridiculous she was being.
"Oh, that's perfect. I don't understand any of this junk, so you can explain it to me now and then we won't have to spend as much time in that stupid tutoring lab."
The old me would have told Britney she was a self-centered wench, but the new me, the one that was all too aware of how much it would suck to go through the next two years of school without a single friend, just forced my face into something approximating a smile and tried to explain why drawing something at random from a bag with replacement was different than drawing something from a bag without replacement.
It was a fairly straightforward concept that we'd seen twice now. I was pretty sure Britney was capable of understanding, she just didn't care, which was the one thing virtually guaranteed to make me mad. Stupidity was bad enough; laziness would be a hundred times worse.
Still, by the second time through I'd clarified a couple of points I'd been a little fuzzy on, and was almost ready to believe Britney might actually apply herself to listening. I was so caught up in what I was doing, and the ever-so-slowly growing light of interest in Britney's eyes, that the rest of the class had fallen silent for a full twenty seconds before the drop in noise registered for me.
"I want everyone back to their regular desks and hard at work on their assignments."
Mrs. Campbell wasn't as pale as she'd been when she'd left, but she still looked unsettled and more than a little unhappy, presumably with both whatever had caused her to leave so quickly, and the fact that she'd come back to a class where almost nobody had been doing anything productive.
I had a couple of heartbeats to hope she'd realized I'd been trying to help Britney with her homework, and therefore not deserving of any punishment. "Britney, Adriana, I'll need to speak with you both after the bell."
Apparently the whole justice thing was on the fritz right now. It would probably start working again just in time to punish me for whatever bad thing I did next. I tried to work on my homework some more, but my heart wasn't in it, so I just sat at my desk and tried not to look like I was pouting.
All too soon class was over, and I found myself trailing Britney up to Mrs. Campbell's desk. She still didn't look very happy, but there was a trace more self-control to her face than a few minutes before.
"Britney, despite spending at least an hour at the tutor lab each afternoon, the quality of your homework hasn't come up in the slightest, so I took the liberty of talking to your father yesterday."
Britney's gasp had all the dramatic effect you'd expect out of someone who'd spent the last decade of her life getting away with pretty much whatever she wanted. She was obviously pretending to be sorry, all the while figuring her current trouble would blow over quickly enough if she just played her cards right.
"Your father agrees with me that your studies should be your highest priority, so you'll be staying an extra hour starting today, and ending once your performance improves. Of course you can always continue to just waste your study time, but if you choose to do that I've been assured that additional penalties will follow quite rapidly starting with the loss of your car."
The next gasp was less impressive, but tangibly more genuine. Even my being next couldn't stop a flash of satisfaction at the way Britney was finally having to face some of the consequences of her actions. Mrs. Campbell dismissed her with a wave, waiting until she'd left, shutting the door with a tad more force than strictly necessary.
"While I can't for a moment understand why you've chosen to befriend Britney, I can't fault you on your willingness to help her despite her flaws."
I should have been overjoyed I wasn't in trouble. Instead I felt guilty for being given far more credit than I deserved. I opened my mouth to object, but was waved back into silence.
"Obviously I don't want you to make disrupting my class a habit, but that isn't why I wanted to talk to you. Your studies are coming along nicely, and I've heard quite a few good things about you from other sources, so I'd like to offer you a job."
Now that I had a chance to talk, I wasn't sure what to say. Nobody had ever wanted to hire me. Mrs. Campbell gave me a tired smile. "The tutor lab is still understaffed. Obviously you couldn't spend your whole afternoon tutoring, as that would negatively affect your efforts to catch up. I'm thinking just an hour or so per night. It would just be minimum wage, but I think you'll find you quite enjoy teaching."
Still at a loss for words, I just nodded. I started towards the door as soon as I was dismissed, but stopped at the threshold. "Is everything okay Mrs. Campbell? I mean it seemed like you were really worried when you left."
I trailed off, worried by the measuring look that she gave me. "I don't suppose you're one of the gossipers, and I guess it wouldn't really matter if you were. I got a call that my daughter had been in a car accident. By the time I made it out to my car she'd called to tell me she wasn't hurt, just shaken up. So, in answer to your question, yes, everything's all right. I'm just a little unsettled."
Lunch was an awkward affair. Britney was still upset. I, on the other hand, was extremely happy I'd made a good enough impression to get a job. I didn't like sitting there while Britney badmouthed Mrs. Campbell.
I looked up during one of Britney's infrequent pauses for air, and caught Alec staring at me. Staring wasn't quite the right word though. Strangely enough, it didn't seem like he was necessarily mad, but he didn't seem happy either. I only caught his eyes for a few seconds before he looked away, but even his normally riveting blue eyes couldn't distract me from my inability to identify the look.
I was used to people disliking me, ignoring me, or even occasionally liking me, but this was the first time I'd met someone who seemed to be still trying to decide what camp to join long past the time when most kids our age would have either made a decision or just decided I was weird and started ignoring me.
Britney seemed to be getting suspicious that I wasn't really listening, so I had to make a lot of eye contact over the next few minutes. When I finally got a chance to look back up, Alec and his friends weren't at their table.
Cassie caught my eye before I looked down, but she was definitely glaring. Not the typical I-hate-you-and-I'm-going-to-do-everything-I-can-to-smear-your-reputation-and-get-you-in-trouble-because-we're-in-high-school-and-that's-all-I can-really-do type glaring. Instead her eyes seemed to warn me never to go out alone at night because if she ever found me somewhere without any witnesses, they were going to have to hospitalize me.
I felt a chill run through me, and dropped my eyes out of involuntary reflex. I probably would've started shaking if someone hadn't grabbed my shoulder and startled some kind of twisted cross between a shriek and a gasp out of me.
I turned to give whoever it was a piece of my mind, but Brandon's laughing gray eyes made the words tangle up before they made it down to my tongue.
"Hey there. You still going to that tutoring lab after school?"
I managed a nod that I thought nearly looked casual.
"Good, I need to start tracking your movements so you don't keep running me over."
The rest of lunch and all of history passed in a blur. My mind kept re
turning to Brandon, and the question of why he was taking such an interest in me.
It wasn't until I'd returned Mrs. Alexander's reference book to its shelf and sat down at my desk that I remembered I'd had to do the entire 'group' project by myself. Alec hadn't even bothered to come to Physics since the assignment had been given. My entire life I'd had people try and sponge off of my work, and I was way beyond sick and tired of it.
By the time Alec strode into class looking like the inspiration for every romance novel ever written, I was really mad. I hardly waited for him to sit down before I pulled my desk a little closer and hissed at him.
"So very nice of you to come to class on the day our stupid assignment is due."
Alec's expression was remarkable in that I'd never seen anyone look so full of life while simultaneously failing to betray even the slightest hint of emotion. He didn't even open his mouth as he reached into his bag and pulled out a bundle of densely-packed typewritten pages.
The arrogance of it all. He hadn't even bothered to consult with me before typing up an answer that was probably completely off base. I pulled out my shabbier, but correct, answer and mirrored his action, tossing my bundle on his desk before looking down at his report.
I skimmed through Alec's answer and felt my anger joined by surprise and just the slightest touch of admiration. He struck on exactly the same theory as I had, and done at least as good of job explaining it. Maybe even better considering that he took the time to review some of the underlying theory we'd been taught in class. I'd just jumped right into the answer.
"You're right. You never even came to class, and you got the right answer. Did you cheat? Is the answer to this problem out there somewhere on the Internet?"
Alec's face tightened with something I was willing to bet was anger. "No, I didn't cheat. I did the research to find the answer, presumably just like you did. Next time you feel like insulting me, please suppress the urge."
I had at least one nasty comeback on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it. I didn't like his tone, but he did have a right to be mad.
Luckily, I was saved by Mrs. Alexander's appearance at the door, a dry-erase marker behind one ear, a pencil behind the other.
The rest of the class period should have been enjoyable. My group had the right answer, which I'd come up with on my own, and we were now learning about leverage, mechanical advantage, and friction, all of which were actually pretty interesting.
I studiously ignored Alec, even though I could all but feel him glaring at me the entire time. When the bell finally rang, Mrs. Alexander looked up from her white board with a startled expression. "I suppose that's it then. Don't forget to turn in your assignments on your way out."
Anxious to make sure I got credit for all the work I'd done, I hurried up to the front of the class before Alec could get to his feet.
"Oh, Adriana. It looks like you've been busy."
She took my handwritten report, and then held out a hand as Alec approached. "Somehow I rather suspect you both have the same answer, Alec just used twice as many words to get there."
I shot Alec another dirty look, but it slid right off the armor of his arrogance. He nodded to Mrs. Alexander, and then slipped out of the classroom.
"Run along, young lady, we wouldn't want you to be late for your next class."
Spanish went about like I'd expected. There was a brief discussion on a new grammar concept, some vocabulary, and a whole lot of television. Britney caught up with me at my locker, still complaining that she was going to have to start doing her homework instead of trying to flirt with football players.
"It's completely unfair. Nobody else's parents get called. It's like I'm back in grade school and have to deal with parent-teacher conference every month. I thought the whole point of high school was to give us the chance to start making some of our own decisions."
I grunted something noncommittal as we turned the corner. It probably wouldn't have been good enough to save me from having to actually say something, but Brandon was leaning against a wall.
"I thought it much safer to stay in one place and wait for you rather than wander around and risk getting knocked down."
I felt my skin flush with embarrassment. It was fairly gentle as teasing went, but I hated how my skin looked when I was blushing which meant I blushed more than any two other people. Not only that, I couldn't ever come up with anything good to say when someone teased me.
Brandon seemed to sense my unease, and flashed another gentle smile. "I just wanted to find out if you had a way home tonight after you finished up with your math stuff."
Britney was almost jumping up and down. "Oh, don't worry, Brandon, I'll give Adri a ride home. The poor thing lives all the way out in the Anderson home. I've been giving her a ride into school and home almost every day since she moved."
Brandon was still smiling, but I got the feeling that it was a little more forced.
"Perfect. I'm going to go take care of some stuff then, but I'll see you both tomorrow."
Mrs. Campbell looked up from the plant she was watering as we walked into the tutoring room. "Ah, there you two are. Britney, you'll be sitting over there from now on. Adriana, go ahead and get started on your homework. When you finish come find me and we'll get you situated."
As always, Rachel was sitting at her table in the middle of no-man's-land. She looked up at me and smiled as I took my usual spot and started on my homework.
For the first time all day I felt like I could relax. The few times I looked up, I saw Britney, who seemed determined not to give in and actually do her homework.
I finished my two assignments about the time I normally did, and walked over to where Mrs. Campbell was trying to explain a story problem. The sophomore she was helping looked like he wanted to be anywhere other than trying to figure out how long it would take Sally to mow the lawn given a certain width of lawn mower moving at a given rate of speed.
"Oh, Adriana. Go ahead and walk around looking for students who need help. Most everyone will leave in the next ten minutes or so, but we're actually open for another hour."
She was right. Nearly everyone left over the next little while as they either finished up their assignments, gave up, or finally filled whatever quota of study time they'd been given by their parents. I did get to answer a couple of questions, which was surprisingly fun.
When there was only half an hour left Mrs. Campbell walked over. "Good job so far. Albert, the other tutors, and I are all going to head out. Stay here until closing time, and then you're free to go. We'll see you tomorrow."
I watched as my new co-workers trickled out, and then looked around at the nearly empty room. Rachel was still sitting at her desk in the middle of the room, and Britney was still pouting from her new, assigned seat.
"Let's go."
I shook my head. "I told Mrs. Campbell I'd stay the whole time. I'm not lying for you or anyone else."
Rachel piped up unexpectedly. "It's okay, Britney. If you want to leave we'll give her a ride home."
I could see the wheels turning in her head. If I really did have a ride, she could leave without ruining things with Brandon; but if I wasn't going to lie, then there was a good chance that Mrs. Campbell would find out she'd left early.
Parents were relatively easy to fool. Leave the tutor lab early, go somewhere else and kill some time until you were supposed to come home, and they'd never know the difference. Teachers were a little harder, but if you didn't have the help of your 'friends', then they became an insurmountable obstacle.
The gears finally ground to a stop and Britney sighed as she put her head down on the table. I tried to stop from smiling at her theatrics, but happened to look over at Rachel just in time to see a matching smile on the younger girl's face.
Before I could look away, Rachel held up the red side of her card. "Do you have a minute?"
Happy to be able to do something, I hurried over and took a look at her open book. "Fractions, huh?"
"Ye
ah, I'm supposed to reduce them after I finish adding, but I can't seem to get to the same answer as the book on this one."
She'd transposed a couple of the numbers when working on one of the intermediate steps.
"Here it is, you've changed the numbers here, it should be fourteen sixty-fifths, not fourteen fifty-sixths."
Rachel's skin was several shades darker than mine, tan enough that it didn't show embarrassment as easily, but it still looked like she'd gone the slightest bit red. "Oh, I'm sorry to bug you with such a stupid mistake."
"Don't worry about it. I'm just glad it was that easy. I've been worried all day someone would stump me on something right out of the gate on my first day."
Rachel looked up at me through dark lashes as I stood. "I've wanted to say thanks for a while. I really appreciate you making Cassie back down yesterday. Nobody else has ever stood up for me like that. At least not people that I didn't already know."
Based on what I'd seen less than thirty hours ago, it didn't look like her friends stood up for her either.
"No worries, it just seemed like the thing to do at the time. Why did she want to hurt you anyways?"
Rachel looked down, but somehow it wasn't a gesture that conveyed guilt. "It's complicated."
I'd spent too much time with emotions and thoughts floating around in my own head that I didn't want examined too closely. I wasn't about to pry if there was something she didn't want to tell me.
"I guess that's fair. Let me know if you have any more questions."
Rachel nodded, and then turned back to her book, apparently having used up her store of courage for the afternoon.
I stopped by Britney's desk to ask if she needed any help, and had to avoid an attempt to suck me into another gripe session about Mrs. Campbell. Satisfied that there wasn't anything I needed to be doing to help either of the other girls, and that they'd let me know if that changed, I broke out my Spanish book and reviewed some more vocabulary.
Despite my growing hatred for Mrs. Tiggs, I managed to get deep enough into my Spanish homework to lose track of time. When I finally surfaced from abeja, camisa, and reloj it was just five minutes before I was supposed to close up for the afternoon.
Rachel pulled her things together and left while I was straightening up the chairs. It was petty, but I waited inside the room until the clock showed exactly the time the lab was supposed to finish, and then joined Britney outside in the oppressive heat.
The air was so dry I could nearly feel it pulling the moisture out of my body as we started around the school towards where Britney had parked her car. As we reached the west side of the building, the high-pitched growl of a performance engine tore a hole in the relative silence.
The edge of the student parking lot was just barely in view now, but it was enough to see the source of the noise. A tiny figure barely recognizable as Rachel, was walking towards a dark-blue bullet bike, which had just roared to life. We had to walk several more steps before I recognized the leather-clad, dark-haired figure on the bike as Alec.
My feet must have unconsciously slowed because Britney was now several steps ahead of me and looking back impatiently. I tried to catch up, but Alec chose that moment to look up and stare in our direction. He was quite a ways away, and his lovely eyes were covered by a pair of sunglasses, but I somehow knew he was looking at me. He handed Rachel a helmet but continued to look at us, at me, while she put it on.
I was moving again, but my pulse sped up as Rachel grabbed a hold of her brother and swung her leg over the pillion seat on the bike. She seemed to see us for the first time as a cold chill arced down my back and the horizon started to vibrate.
I managed to raise my hand in response to her wave, but it was an absent motion. My attention was still on Alec and his unwavering stare. Rachel leaned forward as if to say something to him, and he finally nodded and dropped the bike into gear. A few seconds later the pair was screaming out of the parking lot, and my breathing was too labored for it to be anything other than a full-blown panic attack.
I made it another couple steps, just far enough to grab Britney as I started to fall. I had a split second to be grateful I'd lost all of that weight so Britney wouldn't collapse under me, and then the darkness claimed me.
Even though I knew I wouldn't remember the void when I finally came to, I wanted nothing more than to just float in the darkness. It had been a hard day. I'd....actually I wasn't sure why it'd been a hard day, but something told me I'd unconsciously been at the end of my rope just before I'd collapsed. Unfortunately that same thing told me I couldn't dwell here in the comforting absence, there was a very important reason for me to regain my feet.
The void was reluctant to let me go, stripping me of memories and experiences as I fought my way free. By the time I was near surfacing I no longer remembered just how much I'd wanted to stay.
Britney was pacing back and forth when I opened my eyes. She had her cell phone out and was looking like she wanted to dial 911, but was worried about the possible fallout. I was on the ground, which for some reason made me more irritable than it should have. Didn't she realize how hard it was to make it over to someone before collapsing like that? It kind of defeated the whole point if they then put you on the ground where your clothes would take their normal, instantaneous-collapse beating.
"Oh my gosh, are you okay? I wasn't sure what to do."
"I'm okay, I just need a minute."
Since I was already on the ground, I really did just want to lie there for a moment, scorpions, dirt and all, but Britney didn't seem to understand that concept. Now that my eyes were open and the whole 911 question had been answered, she was determined to get me back on my feet.
