Dangerous Destiny: A Night Sky novella (5 page)

The sound of all those booted feet crunching across the broken window glass seemed as loud and grating as fingernails on a chalkboard.

“Are you okay?” Calvin asked me as a team of body armor–clad police officers carried both of us and his wheelchair into the safety of the deserted school.

“I’m good,” I managed to say. There were sparkling beads of glass in my hair, but they were rounded, not sharp. “Are you?”

“Oh, yeah. I’m
great
.” He let out a sound that was part laugh and part howl—the sound of a person who had just avoided getting shot by a crazy girl in his high school quad.

Kill
me, Skylar. Kill me now! Please!

Unlike April, we were both very glad we’d survived.

Chapter Six

There is an inevitable and awkward silence that follows a near-death experience and the immediate high emotions that follow. And I’m pretty sure that the awkward-ometer gets cranked up even higher when you’ve shared that near-death experience with an almost complete stranger you’d only just met earlier that very same day.

I mean, it’s kind of tough to return to small talk about the weather, for example, after being held at gunpoint.

Would
you
rather
be
shot
and
killed
by
a
crazy
girl, or by the police who are attempting to save you from the crazy girl—or who might even have mistaken you for the crazy girl, considering for several moments there you held one of her guns in your hand?

Not as fun a question as the one about flatulence and basketball players with the runs.

Twenty minutes after the police herded away a suddenly spooky-calm and vacant April and plopped her into the back of a squad car—and after both Calvin and I were briefly questioned by the police and inspected by the school nurse who determined we weren’t suffering from any life-threatening injuries,
and
after we both texted our moms with a preemptive
I’m OK
—the chaos began to die down.

Many of the students who’d been lunching inside the cafeteria before April went berserk were already long gone, having driven themselves as far away from the madness as quickly as possible. Other students’ parents were coming to pick them up.

My own mother was in Orlando on some sort of business trip. Cell service was down so we exchanged a flurry of frantic texts where she ordered me to
Shelter in place!!!
(
Shooter
contained, I’m safe
) and
Stay @ school, I’m coming to get U!!!
(
From
Orlando? In, like, 2 hours…?
)
GPS says 105 mins!!!

The school was running the buses for the remaining students, and I texted that info to Mom, telling her I’d take the bus home, lock the door, and have a healthy snack instead of being “forced” to nosh on the free junk food they were handing out in the cafeteria. I knew I had her at “free junk food,” and sure enough, she texted me a quick
OK!!!
then added,
B safe!!! I’ll B home soon!!!

I had a feeling I was going to get the three-exclamation-point treatment from her for quite some time.

Calvin and I exited the quad together, heading out toward the school parking lot, where the remaining kids hovered. Everyone was whispering excitedly about what they’d seen, what they’d heard, and how well they knew or didn’t know April, and whether or not the cops were lying when they said they hadn’t fired any guns and weren’t responsible for blowing out the cafeteria windows.

Was
that
you…It might’ve been me…

April thought she’d broken those windows, but how, exactly? By blasting them with the mighty power of her rage, or maybe from the sheer force of her crazy thoughts? And yes,
crazy
was the key word there.

When Calvin and I appeared outside, the whispers turned into an awkward silence that followed us, as encompassing and uncomfortable as April’s trench coat.

It was a miracle. We were both unharmed. I’d walked away without so much as a single bruise or cut. Calvin had suffered a minor injury when he’d skinned his elbow on the bricks, while helping to save my life.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” I asked him for the seven trillionth time, mainly because I had no idea what else to say. I didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that my hands were shaking like tissue paper in a hurricane. Paying attention to Calvin rather than the details of what had just gone down made things marginally easier, at least for now.

“Totally. No big. I’ll clean this up at home.”

I followed him to the one and only wheelchair ramp on the far side of the little hill next to the quad. He put his chair into a low gear and slowly descended the slope. I kept pace alongside him.

For a moment there was silence again.

“Listen,” I said finally. “I just…want to thank you. For, you know, saving my life and stuff? That was really…well, let’s just say that most people would’ve run away when they had the chance.”

Calvin waved a dismissive hand in the air. I noticed that he was trembling a little bit, too—like the adrenaline from his previous fight or flight response hadn’t yet worn off.

Correction: Fight or
fight
. Calvin had rejected the flight option—even after I’d said all those mean things to him.

“It’s bad enough being the new girl, New Girl,” he said, shrugging with such exaggerated nonchalance, I knew he was still shaking in his sneakers. “Throw a bullet wound into the mix, and you’re looking at a seriously shitty Monday.”

I snort-laughed, and covered my face quickly.

“Nice,” Calvin added. “You get spooked and turn into a farm animal.”

That made me laugh even harder. Part of me felt like a weirdo about cracking up after what had just happened. But another part knew that if I didn’t keep laughing, I might start to cry. And I really didn’t want to do that right now.

Calvin’s face held a quiet kind of satisfaction—like he lived to make people smile.

“
Stupid
wheelchair
boy
,” he said, quoting me. “I think that was my favorite part.”

“Mine was when you did the ‘Itsy Bitsy Spider,’” I told him.

“What?” he said, his voice going up a full octave. But then we both cracked up as I explained and mocked him for his ridiculous walking-finger-man signal.

In reality, our favorite part was not dying.

Finally, I cleared my throat. “Better catch my bus before it leaves,” I said, pointing to the line of dirty orange vehicles. Five or six teachers stood nearby, herding students through the bus doors with frenzied urgency as if April were somehow scheduled to reappear with her guns and ammo.

Although we’d heard the strangest rumor—that her weapons weren’t loaded. Not a single bullet was in either handgun
or
in her possession. The theory was that she was going for “suicide by cop.” Wave an unloaded gun around, scare people but don’t hurt anyone, and get shot and killed.

What I couldn’t figure out was why she’d handed one of her guns to me. Had she done it so the police SWAT team would see me holding it and kill me, too?

But why? Why me?

You’re one of us…

I tried not to think too hard about what kind of twisted logic ruled a crazy girl’s crazy world.

It was entirely possible that because I’d bumped into her that morning, she’d singled me out.

Yeah. So why didn’t I believe that?

“Mayhem,” Calvin mumbled distractedly before turning his attention back to me. “Catch your
bus?
” he asked.

I sighed. “Yes. I’m a bus-riding loser, remember?”

Calvin shrugged. “Loser no more,” he replied, and waved me down the sidewalk toward the student parking. “Today you ride in style.”

I paused. “Wait. What?”

“Well, I mean, my ride isn’t exactly a Lambo, but I’m pretty sure it beats the alternative.” Calvin pointed to a beige-colored SUV parked a few rows down. It was nice. It was very nice.

But I was confused. “You…can…”

“Drive?” Calvin finished my thought for me.

I nodded.

“Yup,” he said with delight. “Thank you, modern technology.” He paused. “And thank you, settlement money,” he added in a slightly darker tone.

Calvin got out his fob and unlocked the doors to the car with a beep. I watched with amazement as he pressed a series of buttons that allowed a wheelchair ramp to descend from the driver’s side of the vehicle.

“Girl, you look like you’re watching a miracle occur,” he said as he rolled up the ramp. “It’s not
that
great.”

But it was. I climbed into the passenger side and watched Calvin get himself situated in the car—a car that had hand controls and buttons that reminded me more of the inside of a plane than an SUV.

“If I suddenly hit the floor,” I warned him as Calvin pressed a button by the steering wheel, and the car came to life. “If I just slide out of the seat and curl up down on the floor mat—nice floor mats by the way”—the entire car was freshly detailed and pristine—“please don’t take it personally. It’s not that I don’t want to be seen with you.”

Calvin pressed some more buttons and put the car into reverse. “It’s not,” he said in a tone that implied he didn’t believe me at all.

“Nope,” I said as he backed out of the parking space. I watched as he used his hands rather than his feet to accelerate. The SUV’s driving system was similar to the way his wheelchair operated. The only difference was that the vehicle was about twenty times the size of the chair.

“You just really, really like my new floor mats?” Calvin switched out of reverse as he twisted the wheel to turn us onto the long road that led out of the school parking lot. He drove with confidence, both hands on the wheel. It was interesting. As he sat there, I’d almost completely forgotten about the fact that he was in a wheelchair. He just looked like a normal kid driving a car.

“Well, I do,” I said, “but that’s not…” Truth be told, this was the first time I’d accepted a ride from someone my age since the accident…

But I didn’t want to think about that right now.

I took a deep breath and told him the truth. “My mom will kill me if one of the neighbors sees me in this car with you and then tells her about it. It has nothing to do with your wheelchair status or the fact that you’re…Swedish royalty. She’s ridiculously overprotective. I’m not allowed to ride with anyone who hasn’t been driving for years.” I sighed disgustedly. “I’m pretty sure she ran a background check on my school bus driver, just to be certain he’s safe. Yeah. She’s
that
bat-shit crazy.”

Calvin shook his head fast, like he was trying to process the so very cray-cray. “Wow,” he said. “That’s, like, the-shit-of-a-bat-who-took-a-laxative crazy.”

I laughed, relieved that he believed me. “Yup.”

“Can’t
wait
to meet her,” Calvin added in a tone that was anything but genuine. “And FYI, I’m thinking more and more that the whole saving-your-life thing really
was
a good idea. You actually seem pretty cool. For a Yankee.”

“You’re not too bad either, for a non-Yankee,” I replied. And smiled back.

We reached the end of the school driveway and waited at the red light. As we sat there, two news vans passed us, heading for the school. “Check it out! We’re famous,” Calvin said with sarcastic enthusiasm as the light turned green.

I frowned. “I’m glad we got out of there before the interviews started. Last thing I need is Mom watching the news and hearing that
I
was one of the key players in this crap show.”

“She’ll find out eventually.”

“I know,” I said. “But the longer I can hold off on having her find out the details, the better, on account of…”

Calvin finished my sentence for me again. “The whole bat-shit-crazy thing.” He took the right-hand turn onto the side street that led into our neighborhood. “Bat shit is called
guano
,” he told me. “It’s actually mined from caves and sold to organic farmers as fertilizer.”

I looked at him.

“It’s high in nitrogen,” he said almost apologetically. “Okay. Would you rather be forced to eat a handful of guano, or experience uncontrollable, explosive diarrhea in the middle of a math test?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Do all of your
would
you
rather
scenarios deal with some form of diarrhea?”

Calvin looked sufficiently pleased with himself. “Not all. But many.”

I shook my head. “My answer is
no
. I would like neither, thanks.”

“You have to decide. It’s either-or.”

I scrunched up my nose. “Can you give me more to work with here?
Why
would I be forced to eat guano?”

Calvin shrugged expansively as he took another turn that brought us to my street. I sank down in my seat as I spotted Sasha, an adorable little brown-haired girl, out for a walk with her mother. They were the only neighbors who’d brought over a welcome basket on the day we’d moved in. I stayed low until we were safely past them.

“Figure it’s just one of those unfortunate circumstances,” Calvin was saying. “Maybe you’re stranded on a deserted island, with nothing but guano to sustain you.”

“If I’m stuck on a deserted island, I’ve got bigger fish to fry,” I replied.

“Incorrect! You have nothing to fry
but
guano!”

I rolled my eyes, but couldn’t hide my smile. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll take the math-test diarrhea. Provided that I could then move to that deserted island afterward, where no one would ever see my face again.”

Calvin snort-laughed.

“Hey!
I’m
the farm animal! Remember?”

Calvin’s laugh was contagious, though, and pretty soon I was doubled over in the passenger seat.

As he turned into my driveway, I quickly scanned to make sure none of our elderly neighbors were out gardening in their yards. But the coast was clear.