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Brandon had parked on the opposite end of the
parking lot from where he normally did. Presumably it was because
all of the good spots in his normal area had been snatched up by
people who weren't running quite as late as us. I was halfway to
the closest door before I remembered that it was still closed as a
result of the mysterious 'potato gun rampage' as everyone had
started calling it.

A normal person, one who was really as
self-confident as I pretended to be, would have just turned and
headed towards the eastern set of doors. Not wanting to look like a
ditzy blond who couldn't even remember that someone had run a SUV
into the flagpole and temporarily rendered one of the four main
exits inoperable, I kept walking.

The school was narrower than it was long. I
could walk around the west end, and use the closest doors on the
north side, and still have plenty of time to get to my locker
before Biology started.

I was busy replaying my conversation with
Brandon as I walked around the corner of the building. The air was
already hot enough to suck the moisture out of rocks, but that
wasn't the cause of the sudden rush of heat to my face. I didn't
think I'd ever seen the boy before, but Jasmin was easily
recognizable, even half-hidden amid all the
intermittently-functioning cooling units that lived on this end of
the building.

I couldn't see much beyond the boy's wild red
hair, but even that was enough to tell he wasn't completely
comfortable. I wanted to turn around and go back the other way, but
there was a chance that Jasmin had already seen me, and if so I
couldn't afford to look like I was scared of her.

The fact I really was terrified she was going
to snap and start trying to kill people was pretty much irrelevant.
If I could convince her I wasn't scared, I was less likely to get
hurt.

I kept walking, not necessarily steering
closer to the three-quarter wall the boy was leaning against, but
also being very careful not to go out of my way to stay further
away from them either. As I got close to the pair, a little more of
the boy became visible, reaffirming my impression that he wasn't
happy to be talking to her. His shoulders looked unnaturally tight
and he was shaking his head slowly from side to side.

Locked as I was into my course, I couldn't
help but hear them both as I got closer. "I can't do this Jasmin.
I've been meaning to tell you for a while, but I was afraid of how
you'd react."

I half stumbled at the raw pain in his voice.
While I was still trying to recover my balance, Jasmin looked up at
me, and the force of her glare almost made me fall over my feet
again. I'd seen plenty of girls try and warn off potential
competition, but I'd never seen an expression that intense.

Despite my earlier resolve, I couldn't help
myself. I veered further away from the pair as some primitive,
survival-minded part of my subconscious sought to create a buffer
between me and the girl who looked ready to rip out my throat.

I'd gone far enough I couldn't see either of
them, but it honestly felt like Jasmin watched me all the way until
I managed to make it safely out of sight. I'd read stories where
people claimed to have felt someone's gaze trying to bore a hole in
their back, but this was the first time I'd ever really experienced
it for myself. I hadn't even really believed it was possible, but
the pins and needles I'd felt starting the second she'd looked up
from the boy, hadn't disappeared until I managed to put a brick
wall in between the two of us.

Biology would've been unpleasant even without
everything else that was going on. The air conditioning was out to
part of the building, and Mrs. Sorenson's classroom was one of the
ones that apparently were going to go without until they got the
regulator or switcher, or whatever it was, fixed.

I bowed out of our little competition even
earlier than usual. I probably should have stayed in the game
longer, should have kept answering questions until she came up with
a real stumper, but I wasn't in the mood. Once I was safely free to
let my mind wander, I couldn't think of anything other than the
look on Jasmin's face. Even the steadily rising temperatures
achieved by packing more than thirty bodies into a tiny classroom
with only one door wasn't sufficient to really distract me. I was
going to suffer once again for having stumbled into somewhere I
didn't want to be.

By the time I made it into English and sat
down next to Britney, my heart felt like it was going to seize up.
Mr. Whethers walked into class a few seconds after the bell rang,
took one look at his already-perspiring students, and told us all
to go ahead and spend the time reading rather than worrying about
trying to focus on a lecture. It was a nice gesture, and normally I
would have appreciated it, but I'd just finished Wuthering Heights,
and knew that flipping the book back open wasn't going to help
distract me. Unwilling to spend another hour in worry, I let my
thoughts drift over to another, dangerous area.

Thinking about Brandon wasn't safe anymore.
He'd started out making my stomach knot up simply because he was so
gorgeous, but lately my insides had started jumping around for
other reasons.

I wiped away the light sheen of perspiration
on the back of my neck, and wished the world was simpler. If only I
was still in Minnesota, or anywhere other than this crazy,
secretive town with its ridiculous share of gorgeous boys. Boys who
didn't behave much at all like any other popular kids I'd ever
known. Alec hated me, Brandon stopped by to give me a ride to
school every day, and neither of them should have even realized I
was alive.

If I couldn't be at home, couldn't the
universe have at least arranged for me to get involved with a nice,
normal, uncomplicated, plain looking boy, or barring that to remain
safely uninterested in boys altogether? At the very least, someone
out there should have managed to keep the air conditioning
working.

By the time English ended, I felt worse,
albeit for different reasons than earlier in Biology. Luckily,
Algebra was starting to become a real sanctuary. The fact that we
had a test made everyone even more focused than normal. Considering
how on-task and busy Mrs. Campbell normally kept the class that was
a feat in and of itself. I scanned through the first problem, and
then picked up my pencil and got started.

Having successfully finished my test with ten
minutes to spare, I expected lunch to bring more of the same kind
of anxiety that I'd just managed to push out of my mind. It was
headed that way. Despite Britney's best efforts to distract me with
a point by point analysis of what was going on with someone named
Sandra, and the two boys that she'd been leading on for the last
month.

I followed Britney through the lunch line,
gripping my meal replacement drink with both hands. We sat down at
our usual table, only to be surrounded a few seconds later by an
energetic mob of familiar looking people. It wasn't until Brandon
slid into the seat next to me that I realized who everyone was.

"We thought maybe we'd come join the two of
you today. That shabby little corner where we always sit was
getting a little old."

Brandon's voice was smooth and flawless as
always, but even that couldn't distract me enough to miss the flash
of dislike in Cassie's eyes as she sat down next to Britney.

Nobody talked about anything important, which
was good since I couldn't focus on anything other than the fact I'd
just been given one more sign, a really big one, that Brandon was
interested in me.

A couple of minutes before the warning bell
rang, I looked up from the group and saw another familiar face
leaving the lunchroom. Everything suddenly dropped into place, and
I grabbed Brandon's arm.

"Who's that?"

Brandon tensed up for a second, and then his
massive arm relaxed under my hand as he followed my gaze.

"That's Ben." His voice dropped to a rumbling
whisper. "The one I told you about the other day."

It was incredibly obvious, all the while
making absolutely no sense. He was obviously uncomfortable this
morning, just like you'd expect from someone who was in the
unenviable position of telling off a borderline psychopath.
Everything I'd seen substantiated Brandon's explanation, but why
would Jasmin become so enamored of someone so average looking? Not
only that, what were the odds Ben was one of the eight males in
America who would decide they weren't interested in dating the most
gorgeous girl on the planet, even if she was a nut case?

I was still trying to sort out all the pieces
when Brandon fished his cell phone out of a pocket and checked the
time. In an amazing display of herd behavior, thirty seconds later
his friends had all disappeared, and he was standing to leave.

"We should do this more often. I'll see you
tomorrow."

The words were innocent enough, but there was
something in his eyes that made a rush of warmth shoot through me.
Britney was so excited she could hardly speak, but I was too
excited myself to feel very superior.

I floated through my next class, and would've
gone through the rest of the day the same way, if I hadn't had to
share a class with Alec. Still, I was so happy that even Alec's
giving me the cold shoulder didn't completely sour my day. Rachel
had turned my illness into something really cool, and Brandon
really did like me. Life couldn't get much better than this.

Chapter 12

I'd all but run through the house, looking
for my mom, excited to tell her about my day. Instead I'd been
greeted by nothing but half-filled boxes and silence.

I didn't really want to unpack. It was long
past needing done, but I knew if I left it to mom that we'd never
really get moved in. If I'd had anything even remotely better to do
with my Friday night, I would have done it. I didn't, so I started
with the stuff that we'd piled in the living room because it was
marginally cooler downstairs.

I got into a decent rhythm, opening boxes,
pulling out the stuff that I could easily put away, and then
consolidating what was left into fewer boxes. I was on my fourth
box when it happened. Mom's jewelry box had somehow got packed into
a box labeled 'old photography gear'. As I pulled it out to set it
to one side, it slipped from my hands.

The glittering deluge of chains and bracelets
that went sliding across the floor would have made me feel bad
enough all by themselves, but there was a proverbial scorpion
nestled in the midst of all that shininess. I'd thrown mine out
shortly after the accident. Part of me hadn't wanted to. It had
felt like I was abandoning Cindi by doing so, but just seeing
Cindi's half of the twin pendants we'd received two years before
had been enough to send me into a tailspin.

A detached part of me noted that it was just
like mom to have lied about having lost Cindi's. She'd known I
couldn't handle the reminder of what we'd lost, but she'd been
unwilling to give up that link to the past.

The thought slipped away like sunlight
skipping across water a split second before the storm arrived. The
attack was a bad one. I lost more time. I must have slept at some
point, but the next time I remembered surfacing it was Saturday
morning and I was sitting in front of an empty bowl with an
unopened box of cereal and a gallon of milk waiting in the wings.
At some point I realized I wasn't hungry. I put everything back
away and went upstairs for a shower.

It didn't help. By the time I was done, I was
clean but just as emotionally numb as before. At least I'd turned
the water all the way to cold there at the end. I came out
shivering, but it was a welcome change from the oppressive heat.
Even that didn't last; it felt like I was sweating again before I
even finished dressing.

I finally pulled out my Biology book. A
coldly rational part of me knew that however this ended up playing
out, I'd still have a test on Monday, and I'd still want to
pass.

Sometimes I really hated that part. It'd be
nice sometimes to make the kind of dramatic gesture that you see on
movies, or read about in books. Instead, I was sitting here with a
stupid textbook while everything else inside of me hurt in a funny,
cold kind of way. Like it hurt so much I could only feel the edges
of the pain.

Spanish followed Biology; then other subjects
came and went until I felt like I'd made enough progress, or
possibly wasted enough time. I collapsed into bed hours early and
slept poorly.

Sunday was about the same, only my insides
felt even rawer under the calm surface. Like maybe they'd had
something caustic poured on them. I woodenly went through the
motions of studying, and then finally pushed all of my books to the
side and opened up Les Misérables. I tried to lose myself in the
book, but the same worries that'd pestered me while I was trying to
study continued to grate against the back of my mind.

I hadn't wanted to come here, but I'd tried
to make it work. Mom keeping the pendant felt like a complete
betrayal. She'd known how it would impact me, but hadn't cared. I
finally gave up on trying to immerse myself in eighteenth century
France, and cried myself to sleep.

**

It was all I could do to drag myself out of
bed Monday morning. A part of me knew this was all stupid, but I
couldn't seem to shake the depression. I was just aware enough to
register Brandon's concerned glances as he drove me into
school.

Mrs. Sorenson shot me a nasty look as I
stumbled into class. "Well isn't it nice of you to come to class
today. And here we all thought you were doing so well you didn't
need to bother with the test."

I took the proffered test and made my
unsteady way back to my desk. The class seemed to pass in a blur as
I made a half-hearted attempt to focus on the questions and
remember all kinds of facts about photosynthesis that I'd known
just a few days before. It was useless. The separate pieces of
information skittered about on the edge of my memory without ever
becoming tangible enough to relate to the answer I needed.