Alien Me (3 page)

“You’re here! I’ve been so worried,” I said. Stepping back, I grabbed his hands and looked at him with as much adoration as I could muster. “Mom took away my phone and computer and if your mom hadn’t called to tell me you were okay, I would have gone crazy.”

He had stiffened, but the surprise was quickly wearing off. “Ah, baby, I didn’t—”

“Mom told me how your blood sugar dropped. At least it wasn’t your heart,” I said, giving him another quick hug before stepping back.

I looked deeply into his eyes, hiding my terror that he would beat me down with scorn and I would die under the blows of his friends’ derisive laughter. Many emotions flitted over his face, and for a moment I thought Riley had been wrong, or tricked me into this, and that Martin would use this opportunity to tear me up and ruin me forever at Duncan. He seemed to be weighing his options. He opened his mouth and closed it a couple of times. I hoped he was the politician that Riley thought he was. Finally he looked at the faces of his friends, all of whom were watching with bright, expectant eyes.

“Yeah, baby, I’m fine,” Martin finally said. “Mom made me stay in the house all day and used my grandpa’s test kit to check my blood sugar four times yesterday. I feel like a pin cushion.”

“It’s over now,” I said softly, and this time my relief was genuine.

“Not completely.” His eyes narrowed as he pulled me into his chest and held me tightly. “Don’t think I can’t see what you’re doing here,” he whispered in my ear as he leaned over me. “If I’m going to cover you for what you did to me last Saturday, I expect payment.”

“I didn’t do anything to you,” I said in a murmur.

“Oh, baby, somehow you sucked the life right out of me. I could feel you drawing it in, and it wasn’t free.”

Then he released me for a one-armed hug and planted a loud kiss on my temple. He started to say more, but the first of the daily bells sounded a familiar cry that echoed around the courtyard. Many of the students groaned and a few even swore. Suddenly my three friends flowed into Martin’s circle and surrounded me. Probably no other group of girls on this campus would have had the moxie to do that, but today my friends were fearless.

“Time for Honors English,” Cosette said with a warning look at Martin as she pulled me away.

Martin held Cosette’s glance, but he didn’t say anything. He had met Cosette last spring, and I had always thought he had a thing for her, not that I could blame him. She spent every summer in France with her grandparents and her voice carried an accent that boys found buttery-soft sexy. Every word she uttered sounded pretty. As we walked away, I was trembling in reaction and grateful to Riley for her advice, and doubly grateful that it seemed to be working.

Inside the building, everyone seemed to be talking at once and I dared to hope that every conversation wasn’t about me. My knees still quivered from the strain of acting as if nothing was wrong as I followed my three friends though the crush of students. This would be our third year of Honors English with Miss Ridgeway, a teacher that Gail liked to say was so dry and stiff that she was a fire hazard. Students pushed their way through the door in pairs, and by the time I managed to get through the classroom door, there were only two empty seats.

Miss Ridgeway stood in the front of the room by the whiteboard. Her short upper lip gave her face a perpetual sneer, and her limp hair rested in clumped strands on her bony shoulders. Her earrings, tiny apples dangling on short chains, didn’t move she surveyed her class. Miss Ridgeway walked to the door to close it when a young man rushed in and slid into the last empty seat next to me.

And I screamed. My black onyx earrings and jade necklace suddenly burned like glowing embers on my skin. I jumped to my feet, clawing at the jewelry, trying to tear the earrings from my ears and the beads from my neck, all the while shrieking in pain. Students seated near me leapt to their feet and jumped back as I fought to get the jewelry off of me, but the jade beads seemed to have been strung on steel. The earrings singed my fingers, and I couldn’t get them unclasped.

Then the pain stopped as suddenly as it began. I froze, panting, unable to understand what was happening to me. Then I realized that the boy who had come in behind me had laid his cool hand on my arm.

“There. That should be better,” the young man said. When he looked into my eyes, I saw gold diamonds in the black pupils.

I had seen those same gold diamonds before when they had appeared in my own eyes at the start of summer. Only one other person had been able to see them, my neighbor Jonathan, a friend from childhood, right before he had lost his mind and was taken away raving in a police car. Three months later I attended his funeral.

Terrified, I screamed once more and shoved this boy hard. A sound like a crack of thunder filled the room and the young man flew backwards as if fired from a canon. He crashed into the bulletin board next to the door, tipped over his desk, and almost fell down. The smell of ozone sharpened the air. A moment passed in stunned silence. Then a few students snickered. Several more got to their feet and moved toward the back of the room.

For a moment Miss Ridgeway was too shocked to speak, but she recovered quickly and her eyebrows came together in annoyance. “Darcy Hinson! What was that?”

“Her hair was caught in her necklace,” the new boy explained.

“Unless your name is Darcy Hinson, I wasn’t talking to you.” Miss Ridgeway regarded me with irritation. “Darcy, what was that? Explain yourself.”

“My necklace was burning me!” I cried and pointed at the new boy. “He did it when he came in here.”

“Right. He made your necklace burn you and so you had to slam him against the wall?”

“Actually some strands of hair were caught in the clasp of her necklace,” the boy said. “That’s what she felt.”

I spun around on him. “It was not! You did it!”

The new boy didn’t acknowledge me. He kept his attention firmly on the teacher. “Miss Ridgeway, it was her hair caught in the necklace. She’s confused.”

“I’m not confused. Shut up! Who asked you?” I cried.

Miss Ridgeway puffed up in fury. “Do you expect me to believe that this young man made a string of plastic beads burn your skin just by walking into the room?”

“They’re genuine jade,” I said, stung by the implication.

“Genuine jade. Right.” An angry, red flush rose in Miss Ridgeway’s thin cheeks. “Young man, what’s your name?”

“I’m Sean Banks, and somehow the necklace was pulling her hair. She’s confused.”

“I’m not confused! You made it burn me,” I shouted, turning on Sean. “It was you! You’re a friend of Martin Leonard’s, aren’t you? This is some kind of scheme you’re in on with Martin.”

“That’s enough,” Miss Ridgeway said in a low, cold voice that was heavy with warning. “I see what’s going on here. One of you makes a scene and the other supplies an excuse. Maybe I should call the Oscar committee and have the two of you nominated. The vice principal can decide. Darcy, you can take your burning hot genuine jade necklace and your new friend, Sean Banks, to the vice principal’s office. March. Both of you. Now.”

I had never been sent to the vice principal’s office in my entire life. “But this isn’t fair. He burned me!”

“And I can see that by the charred, smoking skin of your neck,” Miss Ridgeway said sarcastically. “The vice principal will be happy to hear all about it. Go tell him. Now!”

Miss Ridgeway strode over to the phone on her desk and dialed the vice principal’s office. By now much of the class was grinning in delight. Some whispered how this was the most interesting honors class ever and how one of the four Vestal Virgins had finally stepped off her pedestal. In the meantime, Miss Ridgeway didn’t bother to lower her voice when she told the vice principal about a rude outburst from Darcy Hinson and Sean Banks and how they would be in his office momentarily.

Outraged by the injustice, I turned to Sean Banks to cuss him out, but the words died in my mouth. His eye diamonds looked three feet tall.

“I can see yours and you can see mine,” he said softly to me.

“What did you just say to her?” Miss Ridgeway cried at Sean.

“I told Darcy that we need to leave.”

Sean knew my secret and could lay it bare. In the distance I could heard the teacher talking, her voice a background hum like so many bumblebees. I thought of how Jonathan lost his mind and his life and how it seemed I might be next. Martin Leonard had found a diabolical way of getting me back for what happened at the movies and he was using Sean Banks to do it.

“Darcy! Darcy Hinson. Are you alive in there?” Miss Ridgeway was barking, her voice sharp with annoyance. “Get out and take your new friend, Sean Banks, with you.”

“I’m not going anywhere with him,” I shouted. Clearly Sean Banks was setting me up. But how had Martin known about the diamonds in my eyes? And had I really just raised my voice to a teacher?

“Darcy,” Sean cried. “You heard her. Let’s go.”

Miss Ridgeway’s face turned an alarming shade of red as she stared me down. “You don’t know when to quit, do you?”

“He’s not normal!” I shouted as I pointed at Sean.

“Look who’s talking,” another student said in a stage whisper, causing a good part of the class to snicker.

The laughter only infuriated Miss Ridgeway more. She picked up the phone again and clutched it like a weapon. “Do I have to call security and have you removed?”

I looked across the faces of the students. Most wore smiles so wide they threatened to split their faces. Others looked embarrassed, and a few seemed scared. Gail and Parisa stared in open-mouthed shock. Cosette’s chin was quivering as if she were about to cry. One boy had slipped his cell phone from his backpack and was preparing to record us.

“Give me that phone,” Miss Ridgeway shouted at him.

“Darcy, let’s go,” Sean said, his voice low like a growl. “Don’t embarrass us anymore.”

Sean picked up my backpack and his own. I yanked mine from his hands. My throat was so full of words I wanted to scream that they threatened to cut off my air. Sean opened the classroom door and waited for me, his eyes hard with warning. Not moving, I stared at him. Slender and tall, Sean seemed to take up a lot of room in the doorway. His hair was dark, thick, and wavy. His hot summer sky blue eyes framed the gold diamonds. He wore jeans, lovingly faded, and a rock band tee shirt. A square black diamond stud twinkled in one ear. He was tall, almost a foot taller than I. I squared my shoulders, pulled the tatters of my dignity around me, and walked past him into the hallway.

“Could you have been more obvious?” Sean asked once the classroom door shut behind us. “What’s the matter with you?”

“That would depend upon who you asked,” I cried, insulted by this stranger asking a question that was one of Riley’s favorites.

Sean pointed to his black diamond stud. “My earring was burning me too, but you didn’t hear me screeching like I had shut my finger in a door.” Sean’s eyes ran up and down my body. “Which House are you from?”

“Which house?”

“Yes, your House. What did your shaman tell you?”

“My shaman?”

“Really? So you’re going to play stupid like I don’t know what you are? I can see the diamonds in your eyes as plainly as you can see mine.” Sean looked both ways up and down the hallway. “Right now I’m praying that you’re not the one I’ve been warned about.”

“Warned?” I snapped, my temper flaring. At this moment Sean couldn’t have picked a worse word to use. “As if I don’t know that you’re one of Martin’s minions trying to make a fool out of me? That was a pretty cute trick getting my jewelry to burn me.”

“Martin? Martin Leonard? You’re the girl who drugged him?”

“I didn’t drug anybody, you idiot,” I said in a low growl. “I can see that you’re trying to get me expelled and you’re not going to get away with it.”

“I’m not trying to get you expelled. I’m trying to save your life. And mine.”

“From what? Do you think your little campaign of rumors and innuendo will kill me?” I snorted. “Think again.”

“Are you still talking about Martin Leonard?”

“What conversation are you having?” I shot back.

Sean gave me cold stare. “Shut up about Martin and tell me where you got that jewelry.”

“What do you care?”

“Just tell me.”

I hesitated, wondering what he would do with that information. “My mother bought it at a garage sale last spring. What does that have to do with anything?”

“A lot. Did the person holding the garage sale happen to be someone you’ve known your entire life?”

“She was,” I said, wondering what Sean was getting at.

“And would that be about the time you started seeing gold diamonds in your eyes?”

I hadn’t made the connection before. The jade necklace lay heavily on my shoulders, but I still thought this might be Martin Leonard setting me up for another fall. “What are you getting at? Are you saying that the jewelry is possessed or enchanted or something?”

“Possessed no, more like programmed. I think our shamans gave this jewelry to us so that they would provide us with a warning. My earrings were getting warm as I came up this hallway. Weren’t yours?”

“I didn’t really notice.”

“How could you not notice?”

“Maybe I had something else on my mind,” I said as I fought to keep my voice from cracking.

“Do you really not know what’s going on?” Sean paused and gave me a searching look. “Are you crying?”

“No! My eyeballs are sweating.” I took a deep breath. “I don’t know why I have diamonds in my eyes or why Martin collapsed on our date or why my jewelry burned me just now. And I don’t have a clue about what you’re talking about.”

“What did you think the diamonds in your eyes were?”

“I thought that mirrors could lie.”

Sean’s voice became tight with strain. “Let’s just hope you’re not the Sworn Asset from the House of Beck. Our jewelry was supposed to help keep us apart. It makes sense.”

Not to me it didn’t. I didn’t know anything about any assets or houses or enchanted jewelry and I didn’t really care. The fact that Sean could see my eye diamonds was bad enough. But the humiliation of what had happened in the classroom coming on the heels of my disastrous date with Martin and the rumors about attempting to kill him—it was too much. And now all my efforts at hiding the hallucinations had come to naught. If Sean knew, he was sure to tell Martin, and it would be all over for me at Duncan High School. Even if the police didn’t come to take me away like they had Jonathan, how could I show my face around school ever again?