Dangerous Destiny: A Night Sky novella (3 page)

Chapter Four

It’s time.

I
know
that
it’s time, because she appeared. Sky walked out into the quad, like a gift.

My
heart
is
pounding. Pounding. Pounding, the blood inside of it moving so fast through tiny, intricate tunnels belonging only to me.

Soon, that blood will leave my body. And then, only then, the pounding will stop.

I
don’t want to…but I need to.

DO
THIS.

So
scared. And so sorry. Skylar, I’m so, so sorry.

DO
THIS. I NEED to DO THIS.

Need
trumps
want.

I
watch
her
as
she
laughs. She’s sitting there, her bloodred hair so pretty in the breeze.

I
don’t want to kill her.

But
I
need
to. I’m saving her from the horror of her death in that barn. She’d thank me if she knew.

Such
torture
is
in
store
for
red-haired
Skylar. It waits there, in the future, for her. It waits there for me, too.

It’s our destiny.

Unless
I
do
this.

And
I
must.

Need
trumps
want.

And
it’s time.

Chapter Five

It was right as I was finishing up that first bite of Calvin’s ridiculously awesome sandwich that the aforementioned crap began to hit a couple fan blades.

I was making yummy sounds and rolling my eyes in ecstasy—I seriously couldn’t help myself—when I glanced over and caught Hobo Girl’s death glare. Except as our gazes met and locked, I realized that her eyes were flooded with unshed tears. I also realized that her mouth was moving, as if she were talking to an invisible friend, or maybe her invisible hobo dog, Patches. But as I watched, I realized she was saying, over and over, “I’m so sorry, Sky. I’m so sorry, Sky.”

Taking another bite of hot-sauce laden meatloaf, I leaned in and whispered to Calvin. “Do you know that girl?”

He was noshing away at his own section of sandwich, but he glanced over his shoulder, and even smiled and waved a little at her. “That’s April,” he said dismissively with his mouth full. “She’s harmless. Just kinda, you know, emo hipster to the nth degree. We were really good friends back in middle school, but then…She outgrew me, I guess.” Calvin shrugged like it was no big deal. I caught something in his eyes that looked pained, for just a second. But it disappeared fast, and he smiled at me.

I smiled back, but I was definitely distracted by April, who was still staring at me—grilling me, it seemed. And even though her eyes were still swimming in tears, they’d somehow hardened, as if she were summoning a death ray that would incinerate me on the spot. They were also oddly red—and I don’t mean gonna-cry-red, but bloodshot red. Like, since she couldn’t get the death ray to shoot out of her eyes, she was now trying to bear down extra-hard, so as to
poop
out a ray gun, so she could shoot me
that
way. Seriously, it was as if the little veins in her eyes were working so hard to pump blood that some of them burst.

As I gazed back at April, I wondered if she was on some kind of really bad drug. But anyone I’d ever seen who had been
on
something always seemed vacant. This April girl? She was focused. No. Actually, she was
beyond
focused.

It was like she was able to see things that I couldn’t see. Terrifying things. Mixed in with her angry glare, she looked terrified, too.

Her mouth was still moving, but I couldn’t make out the words. I’m pretty sure my name was still in there, though.

I’ll admit it, she was freaking me out.

And the look on my face in turn freaked out Calvin. “New Girl. What’s up? Do I have a spider on me or some kind of giant killer bee…?”

“
Shh
,” I instinctively said, although I had no idea why I thought it was necessary to stay quiet. It’s possible that April was muttering, “It’s time. Sky, it’s time.” But that was just too weird. Too creepy. Too ominous.

Calvin turned around to see that I was still looking at his former childhood friend, who was now rocking in her seat. He didn’t seem perturbed—in fact, he called out to her, “You okay, there, Ape?”

“Ape?” I whispered, eyes wide. Way to insult the crazy girl, and really, why would anyone be wearing a long, heavy coat in this heat? She wouldn’t, unless she was hiding something crazy beneath it. I found myself hoping against hope that April had shed her cargo pants in the girls’ room and was now bikini-clad under there, with a brand-new full-body tattoo of the cast from
I
Love
Lucy
, or some other iconic TV classic, inked across her torso.
The
Flying
Nun
in full habit astride the horse from
Mr. Ed
perhaps, sharing the saddle with
My
Favorite
Martian.

She’d open the coat, and everyone—or at least those of us who’d been scarred for life after spending a rainy afternoon watching ancient, ridiculous TV comedies from back before our parents were born—would gasp at her daring and permanent social commentary. But then we’d applaud, and all laugh…
Friendship, friendship…The black kid, the hobo, and meeeeee…

“Ape is short for April,” Calvin told me. “That’s what everyone calls her.”

“She must
love
that,” I countered, watching as the girl extracted herself from the table’s attached bench, clutching her trench coat more closely around her slender frame.

To my dismay, she didn’t head into the cafeteria to get another side order of cheese fries. No, she came toward us.

Correction: toward
me
. She was still locked in on me, her gaze never leaving my face as she approached. She was moving with purpose, and I could see that my
Flying-Nun
-tattoo guess was dead wrong. Her cargo pants stacked over grubby and fraying cross-trainers. I could also see that she was sweating. She had spotted beads of moisture on her temples and forehead. Wisps of stringy hair clung damply to her face. Her eyes were so red—definitely bloodshot—and so intense. But still so
sad
, too.

For some reason the sadness, lingering around her like a stale odor, frightened me more than the weird redness of her eyes.

“Skylar,” April whispered. It was almost imperceptible, although again I saw her lips move and knew I hadn’t imagined it before. “I’m so sorry.”

Calvin tilted his chin up to watch as April passed his chair without the slightest acknowledgment. In fact, she planted herself directly between Calvin and me, her back to him, almost as if he didn’t exist. Something about her posture made me leap up from my own seat. In fact, I was so spooked that I abandoned my remaining piece of Calvin’s sandwich in order to take a few instinctive steps back. But I was literally cornered—my back hit the heat of the brick wall. With April on my right and the windows on my left, I had nowhere to go. Apparently this conversation was going to happen, whether I liked it or not.

Claustrophobia set in, and suddenly I was sweating too.

I caught a nasty whiff of fish, and I had to fight not to cover my nose. This girl needed a shower, STAT. It was weird, because she was standing closer to Calvin, and he didn’t seem to notice. Maybe massive amounts of hot sauce had stunned his olfactory nerves.

“Can I…help you?” I started.

She was close enough to me now so that I could see a thick vein in her neck, throbbing as her heart pumped blood through her system. That sudden odd thought of blood with that fish smell made me feel sick, and I swallowed hard.

“I’m so sorry,” April said again, choking on the words. And then, with a quick movement, like she was ripping off a Band-Aid she knew would hurt her more if she took her time, she pulled open her heavy trench coat.

And that’s when shit got heavy.

Because I was definitely getting flashed, but it wasn’t funny or silly or even just plain old stranger-danger creepy. Because underneath that trench coat, attached to April’s slight but fully-clad frame, were two thick, leathery Wild-West gunslinger holsters, holding two very huge and
very
deadly-looking handguns.

“Whoa,” I said instinctively, extremely aware of those bricks against my back.

“This is it for us, Skylar,” April’s voice grew a little louder—loud enough so that I was sure my new friend in the wheelchair could hear her, even if he couldn’t see what I could see. “It’s better this way. It won’t hurt. At least not as much. I know this—I do.”

Calvin definitely couldn’t see those guns. No one could but me—not even the kids on the other side of the windows in the lunch room. April’s weapons were hidden by her coat and by the way she was standing.

I didn’t know what to do. If I shouted—“
Guns! Run!
”—then everyone could scatter, but the chaos might make April draw and start shooting. Might? Try
would
.

Should I charge her, put her in a bear hug and knock her down? Could I reach her before she pulled one of those guns free and started shooting?

April’s shaking hands were lingering on either side of her, like a quick-draw gunslinger ready for the clock to strike high noon.

Time seemed to move in slow motion as I flashed hot and cold. I didn’t know what to do, and I realized that this had to be what it felt like to be on a bomb squad. One wrong move—one mistake, and
boom
.

Only my job wasn’t to figure out whether to cut the blue or the red wire. My job was to talk April off the ledge. If I failed, we’d all die.

Not just me, but funny, friendly Calvin, and countless others, too. I glanced at the glass windows separating the quad from the cafeteria. There were a lot of potential targets here.

Calvin was aware that something was up. He leaned his body to the side in his chair so that he could peer around April and lock eyes with me for a moment. He mouthed the words: “
What
the
what?
”

As I looked back at him, I blurted “Don’t,” meaning
Don’t move forward and get between the crazy girl’s guns and me.

April was so absolutely unaware of Calvin’s presence that she thought I was talking to her. She shook her head, and her chin wobbled a little. “But I
have
to, Skylar. You’re like me. You’re one of us.”

I shook my head back at her, my brain racing. What was she talking about?
I’m not at all like you!
—things
not
to shout when trying to calm down a potential school shooter. I may have been trapped in that corner, but I knew one thing for sure. I had to warn Calvin.

And suddenly I had a plan. While I kept April talking, I somehow had to get Calvin to back away and take the rest of the students in the quad with him, after which I’d take my chances and jump her. But how to get Calvin to leave…?

April blinked hard, and a few fat teardrops finally splattered down her face, mixing in with the sheen of her sweat. I watched the drops tremble as her chin continued to wobble. “I know you don’t believe that you’re like me, but you are, and it’s awful. It is.”

“It’s not
that
awful here,” I tried instead. “High school doesn’t last forever. It gets better, right? At least that’s what everyone says…?”

April shook her head in a quick, frantic move that made her entire body quiver. “They’re coming to get me, and they’ll get you, too. You can’t escape them! You don’t understand!”

Meanwhile, Calvin was still trying to get my attention from behind April. He had this weird look on his face—like he pegged the entire confrontation as an awkward and vaguely aggressive exchange. But he was imagining a normal, high school altercation, with no weapons, no flying bullets, no body bags needed for the cleanup.

Body bags, oh my god…I thought briefly of my mother, whose overprotectiveness could make me scream. I found myself regretting that I’d stomped out of the house that morning, grunting a noncommittal response to her shouted “I love you!”

“Okay, it’s okay.” I tried to keep my voice calm to counter April’s crazy-talk, even as she rested her trembling hands on her guns.
Don’t draw, don’t draw
…“There’re a lot of things I don’t understand. I know that. I think we should sit down and talk.” I turned to Calvin. “Will you give us some privacy, please?”

I glanced around the quad at the stoners who were lolling in the sun. One of the more reefered-looking boys tossed a hacky sack around between his feet. “Go inside,” I told Calvin. “And tell everyone to go with you. Please?”

My voice squeaked with desperation, because he was looking from me to April and back, and the puzzlement on his face was mixed with a growing realization that something very bad was definitely up.

“There’s nothing left to say,” April sobbed. “I’m so,
so
sorry!”

I tried to play into that. Anyone who looked at her could surely see from her shaking shoulders that she was crying. “April needs some privacy,” I said, widening my eyes at Calvin.

But now he was looking hard at me and I knew he hadn’t missed the fact that I was sweating bullets about as large as the ones that were inevitably stored in the magazines of April’s guns. And I had definitely become “one of us” if April’s “us” meant students whose hands were shaking. I was
that
scared.

“Go,” I told Calvin again, and in a burst, I knew how to make him leave. “Leave us alone, stupid wheelchair boy. Get lost!” As far as insults went, that was not my most creative, but as April continued to sob, a flash of inspiration made me add, “Guess what, loser, I’ve just outgrown you, too! So, scram!”