Broken (15 page)

"Is the light always blue? Is it ever a
whitish-gold color?"

Mrs. Alexander looked slightly startled, like
she'd never thought of such an idea, or maybe just that she hadn't
been expecting a question from anyone other than Sammy.

"Not that I'm aware of. The water will
actually emit quite a bit of ultraviolet light, but for whatever
reasons, the electrons don't ever seem to release any
electromagnetic radiation down in the lower energy levels like
infrared, or even the visible red. You'd need red and all of the
other colors to generate a true white light."

It was obvious we were on the wrong track
here. "What about some other mechanism? One that wouldn't just make
water glow with a dancing gold light, but plants too. Do you know
of anything like that?"

I heard something snap off to my right, but I
was too busy blushing from the chorus of giggles coming from the
front of the classroom. Even Mrs. Alexander had an amused smile on
her kind face. "While there are certain types of vegetation that do
indeed glow, I'm afraid I don't know of any natural phenomenon that
would create the kind of effect you're referring too. Such a thing
is still the provenance of science fiction writers."

I knew I'd gotten a little carried away. The
prime rule of high school survival involved avoiding situations
people could use to ridicule you later, but I'd really wanted a
rational explanation for my dreams. They seemed so real. I needed a
friendly face to get me through the rest of class.

Remembering Alec's smile from earlier, I
looked over at him, hoping he'd return my sheepish grin. It was
almost like he was a different person. The smile was gone. It'd
been replaced with a steely mask that almost completely hid his
emotions. Only the look in his eyes, and the mechanical pencil in
his hand, neatly snapped into two pieces, told me he was mad, that
something very much like hatred was washing through him.

I felt like I'd been punched
in the stomach. It shouldn't have mattered. I'd known he hated me
pretty much ever since I'd met him. Somehow
it 
did
 matter though. To have his friendship dangled out in
front of me only to be yanked away a heartbeat later was somehow
crueler than I'd ever guessed it would be.

It all fit together though. Jasmin had told
him I'd overheard her death threats, and he'd decided to use his
good looks to convince me to keep quiet. Only he hadn't been able
to keep the act up for more than just a few seconds. I must really
repulse him.

Physics was my own little personal hell for
the next forty minutes. I absorbed absolutely nothing from the rest
of the discussion about calculating mechanical advantage, and when
we were finally released into our groups Alec and I didn't even
look each other in the eyes. I gutted out the last five minutes by
pretending I was completely absorbed by a reference book while Alec
started running preliminary calculations.

He was out of his seat and halfway to the
door by the time I'd even realized the bell had rung to dismiss us.
Spanish was both better and worse. Better because without Alec
sitting six feet away from me I was able to kind of think about
something other than him, worse because we had a pop quiz and I
barely placed in the A- range despite having spent a fair amount of
time on my vocabulary. Math was plain and simply burning up too
much time. Something needed to change because my only hope of going
to college was to get a scholarship, or load up on student loans,
and I had no desire to graduate sixty-thousand dollars in debt and
spend the next fifteen years trying to pay it all off.

By the time I met up with Britney in the hall
I was emotionally exhausted and could feel an attack hovering in
the wings. Much as I'd have liked to, I couldn't continue to blow
her off. She was my only friend, and I definitely didn't want her
spreading the kind of rumors about me that she routinely spread
about nearly everyone else.

"Wow, you look like crap. Are you going to
collapse like you did last night?"

"Thanks, Brit. You look ravishing too, and
no, I'm not going to collapse. I just haven't been sleeping very
well lately. I'm probably coming down with something."

Britney shrugged with the supreme
indifference of someone whose world expanded only a few feet beyond
their immediate person. "Just don't get me sick if you do. Ashure
Day isn't that far away."

We were halfway to the
tutoring lab, and the halls were nearly empty. Everyone was always
in such a hurry to get out, to go home, or to a party. Anywhere but
here. "Oh, speaking of boys, I saw Brandon between fifth and sixth
period. I made sure he knew I'd get you home after tutoring.
He's 
so
 gorgeous. I don't know how you're doing it, but whatever
it is, don't stop. He's the surest ticket ever to the
A-list."

I wanted to throw up a little, but I managed
to smile and hold the door open for her. If I made it through the
next two hours without having an attack it would be a miniature
miracle.

Halfway through the walk to my normal table I
looked up and saw Rachel smiling at me with almost the exact same
innocent, convincing smile her brother had used on me just a couple
of hours before. My insides simultaneously tensed up with hurt and
relaxed in happiness. The best I could really have expected out of
the experience would have been to stay on an even keel, but instead
it was almost as if part of my frustration evaporated. I still
wasn't ready to get up and sing any songs, but it was starting to
at least look like I might manage to finish out the day.

Especially surprising considering my current
mental state, it only took me half an hour to finish up the two
Algebra sections I'd assigned myself. Mrs. Campbell stopped by my
desk a few seconds after I finished up. "We don't really need the
extra help until later. Is it ok if you just start at the same time
you did last night?"

She accepted my nod at face value, but then
paused in the act of turning away. "Is there anything wrong? You
seemed awfully distracted in class today."

My head shake wasn't very convincing. I'd
known it wouldn't be, but couldn't manage anything more. It was a
relief when she chose not to press for more information.

By the time people started trickling out and
my shift started, I'd spent plenty of time watching Britney pout,
and very little time actually working on my homework. I think it
was really starting to sink in that she wasn't going to be able to
get out of continuing to spend most of her afternoons here.

Albert, Mrs. Campbell, and the other tutor
all waved goodbye as they left. One of the cheerleaders, a
particularly whiny specimen named Jackie, wanted help, which I was
happy to offer, even in my current state. Unfortunately she thought
that meant I'd just hand over all the answers. We spent a good ten
minutes with her trying to offer a variety of covert bribes ranging
from the insignificant to things she couldn't possibly deliver. I
kept telling her I wasn't interested and that she'd just have to do
the work.

Surprisingly enough, once she accepted that,
she actually buckled down. It only took another ten minutes to
explain the Pythagorean theory to her.

By the time I stood up from Jackie's desk,
there were only four of us left. Britney was staring sullenly at
her book. I thought about going over and seeing if she needed any
help, but after helping Jackie I was feeling pretty good.

I turned and headed back to my desk, smiling
at Rachel as I passed. "Adri, do you have a sec?"

The deadly nickname. Apparently I'd only
thought I was doing better. The good feeling I'd gotten from
helping Jackie had just been the deceptive crust of ice hiding the
sub-zero deathtrap below. My desk was too far away. I wanted to try
and gut it out, but the emotional extremes from the day had been
too draining.

I slumped into the empty chair next to Rachel
and tried to concentrate on my breathing. Maybe I could lessen its
impact, somehow have a mini attack that made my mind blank out, but
left me enough control over my body to remain seated in the chair.
Rachel grabbed my arm, disrupting my concentration. "Are you ok?
What's going on?"

She had a cell phone out, partially hidden by
her desk. Part of me wondered why I'd never seen her with a phone
before. Most girls walked around looking like they'd had some
experimental surgery that created a two-way graft between their
phone, their hand, and their ear. It didn't really matter though.
Cell phone or not, the biggest part of me was already floating away
to somewhere safe.

"I'll call Alec; he'll know what to do." She
was still whispering, but the words sheared through the darkness,
arresting my fall. I didn't want him here, didn't want to give him
another reason to despise me. What if Jasmin came with him? The
thought of lying helpless with her in the same room sent shivers of
cold sliding down me.

I couldn't see, so I reached out, blindly
trying to find the phone before Rachel could dial Alec. My questing
hand finally found the tiny, hard-plastic package, and I grabbed on
with all of my fading strength.

The darkness was still beckoning, but
alternating images of Jasmin and Alec flashed before my eyes. I was
so confused that I couldn't make sense of the flood of emotions
that accompanied the pictures, other than the fact that terror came
to the forefront as they sped up.

Faster and faster the two figures changed
places, and then they disappeared. It was like my mind was a
computer that'd overheated and had to reboot. I opened my eyes and
met Rachel's worried gaze. My pulse was still elevated, and I was
breathing too hard. It seemed impossible for Britney and Jackie not
to hear and realize something was up, but a quick look verified
that they were still lost in their respective inner worlds.

"You just had another fainting spell didn't
you?"

I felt my eyes go wide. Nobody here was
supposed to know about that. The more people that knew, the more
pity I'd see in everyone's eyes. All that pity would then make it
hard to want to continue fighting, hard to want to do anything
other than just curl up in my room so I could avoid them all.

Rachel shook me gently; apparently not
convinced I was mentally where I was supposed to be. "Britney's
been telling people you collapsed yesterday after school. This
makes twice in two days, and I know that yesterday wasn't the first
time."

The tired, dreamy remnants of my attack were
suddenly burned away as I registered the meaning of what Rachel had
just said. Vague suspicions that people had known about Jasmin's
threats, vanished, driven away by the truth that Britney had been
gossiping about me just the way she gossiped about everyone
else.

Rachel grabbed my arm as I tensed up. "I
don't know what you're going to do, but maybe you shouldn't get up
yet."

I looked over at Rachel's concerned face and
opened my mouth to thank her for whispering, for keeping my secret,
only the words didn't come out. Instead the image of Alec, the one
that had burned itself onto my retinas a few seconds previously
just as it had done in physics when I'd looked over to see his
broken pencil, flared back into life before my eyes.

"You knew there was another time. Alec told
you about Physics."

Rachel opened her mouth, probably to deny it,
but the look in her eyes told me it was true. She couldn't possibly
be that scared about me putting two and two together if he'd been
saying nice things about me. He hated me, and she was scared of
him, scared of what he'd do if he found out she let his secret
slip.

"It's not like that, Adri. It's..."

I didn't even have to cut her off, she
couldn't finish her own thought, couldn't come up with a lie that
was believable. I shook my head and went back to my desk before my
invulnerability wore off and she brought on another attack.

I missed them both so badly. Dad had always
been there to listen when I got into problems like this. He'd known
how to deal with the world, how to work with circumstances so that
what resulted was beneficial, or at least something I could live
with. And Cindi. If she were still here this would all be a moot
point. I hadn't ever needed any other friends while she was alive,
hadn't ever had to really put myself out there where I could get
dragged into the kind of stupid infighting I'd read about for so
many years growing up.

Chapter 9

I couldn't bring myself to speak to Britney
the entire way home. It didn't really matter; she spent the whole
time complaining about a dozen different ways in which everyone
around her was making her life miserable. She didn't need any kind
of response from me.

I had the house to myself again, so I worked
on homework until I was too exhausted to continue.

It wasn't until I was almost
asleep that I realized I was hoping I 
wouldn't
 have one of the
incredible, vivid dreams tonight. Alec's cameo role in my last two
had somehow been sufficient to tie him inseparably to all of the
special dreams, and as silly as it was, I didn't want to see Alec
right now. Not even just in my dreams.

Maybe there really wasn't any kind of link
between him and the dreams. Maybe I'd have one of them tonight
without him making any kind of appearance. I sincerely hoped not,
but I'd rather not have them right now, than see the disdain he'd
displayed earlier in the day.

**

The next morning played out essentially the
same as the day before. I awoke to an empty house, and then hurried
to get ready and down to the bus stop so I wouldn't be stranded if
nobody else showed up to give me a ride into school.

Brandon smiled as he pulled up and found me
patiently waiting for the school bus. "One of these days you're
going to go ahead and wait for me at your house, and then I'll know
you finally trust me."