Forsaken (8 page)

I
took another deep breath, trying to keep myself under control, but it
was getting harder and harder.

"That's
not the only reason. What aren't you telling me, Shawn?"

Shawn
paused for several seconds and then sighed. "Truth be told,
Alec, nobody is going to be willing to go help you, even if my dad
was willing to take the risks. Your family has always enjoyed a lot
of support among the rank and file, but after Agony's last visit
people are wondering if you sacrificed a third of your pack just so
you could keep your own skin intact. People are already doing a
compare and contrast between what you did and what your dad did.
You're not coming off very good."

My
phone creaked as my grip tightened to dangerous levels, and I had to
consciously force myself to relax at least the hand that was holding
my phone.

"So
you're not going to do a damn thing for me?"

"There
might be one thing, but I don't even know if it will work. That girl
I heard talk of a while back, is she still in the picture?"

It
was more than I could take. I retained just enough presence of mind
to cover the mic on my phone before I put my hand through another
section of the wall. I forced my hand back to normal, shrinking it
down and losing the claws, and then put my phone back up to my ear.

"No,
she left just after Agony came by."

"I'm
sorry to hear that, man. That's rough."

"It's
okay, I'll get over it."

I
could almost hear the exhaustion creeping into Shawn's voice. It made
no sense, but I could tell that he was suddenly all but dead on his
feet.

"Like
I said, I'm sorry. That might give me something to work with. I'll
see what I can do."

I
tried one last time. Even as I opened my mouth I knew it was the
wrong thing to do. Shawn wasn't going to change his mind now, but I
couldn't stop myself.

"Shawn,
I need tangible help, not some nebulous promise. I'll go to your
father directly if I have to."

"That
won't get you what you want, Alec, and it will just back Dad into a
corner. He doesn't do very well with changing his position once he's
made up his mind. Look, I've got to go. Hopefully I'll get a chance
to talk to you again."

He
hung up on me before I could get anything out, and the sound of dead
air ripped away the last of my control. My transformation shredded my
clothes and then I cut through a large chunk of the wall with my
claws before Adri's scent hit me. I'd somehow become accustomed to it
even during just the few minutes I'd been there, but my hybrid form
had sharper senses than my human body.

I
collapsed onto the floor, surrounded by the smell of Adri and the
destruction I'd just wreaked on the one link I still had to her.

Adriana Paige
Brathingford High School
Manhattan, New York

Things
with Mom were still strained, but it hardly mattered because I still
only saw her a couple of times a week. If that had been the only
problem in my life, things actually would have been pretty good.

Isaac
had made even more of a ripple at Brathingford than I'd expected him
to. He was undeniably good-looking and the definite scent of Alec's
money had to help, but at least part of his
appeal was the way that he'd kept himself so aloof from the girls who
were slowly lining up to throw themselves at him.

It
would have been humorous if not for the fact that I knew some of the
girls really were interested in him. Isaac was unfailingly polite,
but he never initiated a conversation with anyone but me, and he
generally made an excuse about needing to study a few minutes after
any girl approached him.

Isaac
spent way more time with his nose in one of his books than he did
talking to me, but the grapevine seemed convinced that the two of us
were dating. Rather than making the rest of the girls just throw
their hands up, that information actually seemed to anger some of
them.
I
knew that Isaac was shooting them down because of Jess, but there
didn't seem to be any way to get Lexus and her friends to believe
that it wasn't me that was stopping them from completing their latest
conquest.

Honestly,
I was starting to get tired of it all. These girls had everything:
money, looks, popularity, you name it. I knew I wasn't in their
league, but that didn't mean I particularly liked being reminded of
how much they outclassed me. Mom was making more money in a month
than Dad had made in a year, but we still couldn't compete
financially with Lexus and her friends. I knew that trying to compete
was stupid, but I'd recognized one of the sweaters that Rachel had
sent in her care package. It was the kind of thing I'd never have
worn six months ago, designer and decadent in a way that almost
defied reason. I'd done a quick check online and confirmed my
suspicion. Rachel had bought me a two-thousand-dollar article of
clothing.

When
we'd had our school pictures a few days ago I hadn't been able to
resist wearing
the
sweater. I told myself I was wearing it because I wanted to look
really, really nice for my picture, but a small part of me had known
that Lexus would probably recognize my little piece of near haute
couture, and I'd taken just the tiniest bit of satisfaction over the
fact that it would bother her.

Today
I was wearing my own boring, old clothes, which had never impressed
anyone, but they'd never occasioned amused glances like I was getting
right now. It took me a couple of hours before I noticed the hot pink
flyer making its way from one girl to another. I wouldn't have
thought anything of it, but the giggling and nasty looks seemed to
follow the flyer.

I
finally got up and moved away from my usual study spot. Isaac
faithfully followed along behind me as I headed towards the stairs.
We were nearly there when I suddenly realized that there wasn't any
reason for me to guess at what was being said. I had my own personal
super spy.

"Isaac,
what were those girls saying?"

"I'm
not sure you really want to know. Maybe you should just ignore them
and let it all blow over."

If
he'd actually wanted to keep me from knowing he should have told me
they weren't saying anything.

"Please,
just tell me."

Isaac
sighed and then pointed down the hall. "Maybe I should just show
you."

There
was a large bulletin board hanging between the elevators. Normally I
just ignored it, but Isaac walked straight to it, pulled down a hot
pink flyer, and handed it to me. It was a picture of me, but not just
any picture. Somehow someone had gotten ahold of the picture I'd had
taken just a couple of days ago, the one with the ridiculously
expensive sweater that Rachel had bought me. Below the picture was
the caption, 'Will Slut for Sweaters.'

I
literally saw red for a few seconds. I closed my eyes, counted to
ten, and then turned to Isaac. "Who was it? I know you'll have
overheard enough to know which of those spoiled brats did this."

It
was obvious that Isaac didn't want to come clean.

"Adri,
this kind of thing never goes down like you think it will. If you let
her pull you into a mudslinging contest you're just going to regret
it in the end."

He
was right. It really, really pissed me off, but he was right. There
was absolutely nothing that I could do that would punish her like she
needed to be punished. I could start nasty counter-rumors or convince
Isaac to hack into her tablet, but that would just invite more
problems and another round of retaliations.

"Just
tell me who it was."

"It
was Lexus."

I
took a couple of deep, calming breaths, pulled the flyer out of
Isaac's hand, and hit the elevator call button.

"Can
I ask where we're going?"

"We're
going to tell the administration about these flyers and then we're
going to go from floor to floor and pull the rest of them down."

The
office secretary promised to quietly get the staff and faculty to
confiscate any flyers they saw, which I knew was probably still a
losing battle, but at least it would force Lexus and her friends to
be more circumspect.

I
thanked the secretary and then headed to the top floor of the school
and started working my way down. Isaac tromped along behind me,
obviously hoping that I wasn't going to try and push him into helping
with some kind of scheme to get even with Lexus and her friends.

The
second floor was the worst; the bulletin board there was completely
covered with the hateful hot pink abominations. By the time we got
down to the first floor, I had a stack a quarter of an inch thick,
and I was even angrier than I'd been when we left the office.

As
I pulled down the last flyer and threw the stack into the trash, I
saw a green poster off on one side of the front door. There was
something about it that caught my eye, but I couldn't place it until
I was standing right in front of the poster. It was for a band called
Fatal Angst and featured a list of show dates and locations, but that
wasn't what was tickling the back of my mind.

There
was a picture of the lead singer down one side and he looked
alarmingly familiar. I tugged on Isaac's arm, causing him to look up
from the book he'd opened up almost as soon as we'd stopped moving.

"Isaac,
does the guy on this poster look familiar to you?"

"Hmm?
Yeah, I guess he does. He looks kind of like Albert from back home."

I
was suddenly sure that it really was Albert. I'd almost forgotten
that he was in a band. He'd said they were starting to get some heat
down in Vegas, but I never would have guessed that they were going to
blow up like this.

"We're
going to this show, Isaac. I mean I'm going. You can come if you
want, but I'm definitely going."

"Okay.
I'll go online and check for tickets tonight. Alec may as well pay
for that, too."

It
wasn't until we were back in the elevator and headed upstairs that
Isaac looked up from his book and gave me a questioning glance.

"Does
this mean you're over Lexus and her friends?"

"No.
Right now I'd happily push all three of them off the top of a
building, but there's nothing I can do about them, not really. I'm
going to keep telling myself that this school is just a tiny little
pond and that once I graduate I'm never going to see any of these
people again. And then I'm going to go to a concert."

**

I
went to the rock show figuring I'd blow off some steam at the very
least, but secretly hoping I'd get a chance to see Albert. I had no
idea whether or not I'd even like the music that his band played, but
I was ready to brave the crowds in the hope that I'd get to spend a
little bit of time with him and get another taste of home.

The
venue wasn't huge, but it was bigger than I'd been expecting. There
were at least a thousand people there and Fatal Angst put on quite a
show. They ranged from lyrical, haunting stuff that leaned heavily on
Albert, to aggressive, high-energy, electronic sounds that got the
whole crowd jumping up and down. The band was good, but the thing
that kept blowing my mind was how different Albert looked.

The
geeky math tutor who had been working the tutor lab with me a few
months before had been replaced by a confident rock star, complete
with a tattoo and a couple of piercings. Albert had always had a
slender build, but sometime since I'd seen him last it had morphed
into the kind of too-skinny frame that some performing artists
seemed to get while on the road because they weren't taking good
enough care of themselves.

I
let Isaac convince me to stay in the back of the crowd where he could
keep an eye on me for the first hour or so in
return for him promising to get me right up to the stage by the end
of the show.

He
hadn't liked it, but he lived up to his part of the bargain and I was
center stage, almost close enough to reach out and touch Albert, as
he started into the last song, another of the aggressive numbers that
had people crowd surfing and generally rocking out.

Isaac
was obviously uncomfortable, but I let the music take me over and
joined in the fun with everyone else. I looked up at one point about
halfway through and saw Albert looking at me. I smiled and thought
that I got a bit of a smile in return, and then almost before I knew
it, the band was taking their bows and filing off the back of the
stage.

I
followed Isaac over to one of the walls as the lights came up and the
rest of the crowd started breaking up.

"Sorry,
Isaac. I know you've probably got a ton of other things you'd rather
be doing, but can we wait for a little while and see if Albert comes
back out?"

"Yeah,
no problem. I wouldn't mind seeing him myself. I noticed he wasn't in
school anymore a few weeks ago, but I didn't realize that this was
where he'd gone."

We
sat for several seconds in companionable silence, both playing on our
phones. About twenty minutes after the show had ended I heard someone
walking in our direction and looked up to find Albert standing in
front of us with a big smile on his face.

I
threw my arms around him so fast that I nearly knocked him over.

"You
have no idea how good it is to see you. New York sucks."

Albert
gave Isaac a nod as he wrapped an arm around me. "I thought
about you when we booked the tour dates out here, but I figured there
was zero chance we'd actually run into each other, and I had no way
to get ahold of you after you left."

I blushed. I'd never been real big into the social media
scene, but I'd cut even my limited interactions down to nothing after
I left Sanctuary. It hadn't seemed fair to Alec to leave but then
keep up contact with everyone else in Sanctuary other than him.