Gypsy (The Cavy Files Book 1) (20 page)

Even though Asian languages have no commonality with Romance or Germanic languages, human beings speak in similar manners. It’s obvious that Dane’s conversation is winding down, and I’m backing up so it won’t look as though we’re eavesdropping when I hear the word
Cavies.

It freezes me in place. Mole tenses beside me, but even so, if Dane didn’t say it again thirty seconds later, I would have thought I’d imagined it the first time. But I didn’t.

Dane Kim knows about us.

Mole and I scoot away from the door when Dane’s conversation ends abruptly, fleeing into separate bathrooms. The hallway is clear when we emerge five minutes later.

“Who is that guy?” Mole hisses.

“He’s new, too, and he’s been showing Reaper and me around and stuff. We’re friends.” It twists my heart to think we’re not. “At least, I thought we were friends. But the first day of school he touched me and nothing happened. I didn’t see anything.”

Mole makes a face at the part of the story about me touching yet another person, but doesn’t comment. “What do you mean, you didn’t see anything? No number? No details?”

“That’s what nothing means, Mole.”

We’re silent for a few seconds. Dane knows about us. My ability doesn’t work on him. Those are facts, but there’s a missing connection.

Mole shakes his head, looking as lost as I feel, then closes his eyes. “Do you think he could be with the people who injected us?”

“I have no idea. I had no idea he was anything but another new kid until five minutes ago.”

Thinking Dane could be part of the attacks makes me want to barf, but the idea that more than one group of people knows about the Cavies seems like a big leap, too.

Mole and I make our way back into the atrium—because acting casual is paramount now—and find Savannah and Maya waiting next to the glass trophy cases. The entrance to the locker rooms is to our right, next to a short flight of stairs that leads out into the evening.

“So, Shiloh, tell us
everything
about Norah.” Savannah nudges him with her elbow, a little harder than necessary, as we stop and complete their circle.

I’m starting to realize she does most things a little harder than necessary, but the distraction works wonders for the pale sheen of sweat on Mole’s forehead.

“What do you want to know?” Mole looks torn, as though he wants to ingratiate himself with my friends but doesn’t want to piss me off in the process.

“The embarrassing things, of course,” Maya explains. “We can trade in kind. I know some toe-curling horror stories about the things Savannah used to do in the pool.”

“Maya, jeez! Manners!” The tips of Savannah’s ears turn red. “No one wants to hear about that.”

“No one wants to hear about what?” Jude’s voice rubs the spot between my shoulder blades, soft but insistent.

I turn, and my breath catches at the sight of his shower-damp hair, the scent of soap and boy, never mind the way his maple-syrup eyes seek me out.

“We were just getting ready to discuss Savannah’s—”

“No, we were
not,
” Savannah insists through clenched teeth, cutting off Maya.

Jude’s gaze hangs onto mine. Nervous energy spreads through me, leaps off, and swirls in the air. It feels as though everyone else is staring at us staring at each other. Our conversation in the common area today altered the hesitant relationship we’ve formed—knocked it down, tightened it up, then laid a fresh foundation beneath it.

He’s not just a cute guy who makes me nervous anymore. He’s someone with troubles of his own, a sweet devotion to his family, and what seems like an endless capacity to care.

Someone with a father who turned my world upside down once and seems intent on doing it again.

“Good game,” I tell him, feeling lame.

He breaks into a grin. “Thank you. I’m glad you came.”

“I swear, Norah, your manners are abominable.” Mole shifts, sticking his hand in the direction of Jude’s voice and breaking the spell that was keeping everyone else silent. “I’m Shiloh.”

“Jude.” He cuts a glance at me. “You’re a friend of Norah’s? From Darley?”

“Guilty. From what I heard, it sounded like a bang-up performance.”

“Not bad.”

There’s a new kind of tension, a sizing up of sorts, which is odd considering neither Jude nor Mole is a confrontational, puffing-chest kind of guy. At least, I don’t think they are.

I see Mole through Jude’s eyes, through Savannah’s, and realize he’s good-looking. He’s funny, too, and quick to laugh at himself, and a lot of other qualities I’ve taken for granted.

“It was better than
not bad,
Jude. Come on,” Maya chimes in, giving him a side-hug.

“Where are you going to school now?” Jude directs the question to Mole, giving Maya a squeeze back but otherwise ignoring her attempt to distract him. “I’m not. They suggested I take an equivalency exam and I passed. The social worker insists I either get a job or apply to college, but I have until after the holidays to decide.”

This is news to me, and I gape at him. “How could you not tell me that?”

He shrugs. “Didn’t come up.”

It’s true that we’ve had a ton of things to discuss and the details of our new personal lives are relegated to the back burner, but it still feels as though he kept this a secret on purpose. My aversion to being the center of attention stops me from confronting him here and now, but we’re definitely going to talk about it later.

“Do you still have plans with your dad, Norah? Maybe we could all grab ice cream together?” The hopefulness on Jude’s fresh face makes it harder than ever to keep my distance.

I don’t know anything about relationships, or liking a boy, or whether the jumping-bean nerves in my stomach are normal. I just know that the idea of spending time with him makes me feel light.

Mole’s attention never leaves me, his sightless eyes strangely focused, as always. In fact, everyone’s watching me with varying levels of interest—Maya delighted, Savannah with steam coming out of her ears, and Mole 100 percent indecipherable.

“I do, actually. Have plans with my father.”

My rescue from the awkward situation comes, oddly enough, in the form of Dane Kim. He wanders up to our little group on his way to the exit, since once our eyes meet he doesn’t have much of a choice. If my nerves tickle over Jude’s presence, they’re throbbing now that I’m aware Dane knows more than he’s saying. Aching, like someone sawed them off and then brushed them with lemon juice.

I force a smile because we’re supposed to be friends, but while Jude’s betrayal stung, Dane’s
hurts.
I thought we had things in common, that we were friends. The quiet kind, the kind that didn’t have to explain every little feeling. Turns out I didn’t have to explain because he already knows.

“Dane, this is… everyone. Everyone, Dane Kim.” Every syllable scrapes my throat raw.

They introduce themselves one at a time. Dane’s eyes linger on Mole, whose shoulders and neck are wound so tight his muscles tremble and jerk. Their handshake looks stiff, and when they drop hands, Mole wipes his palm on his thigh.

The silence that follows tries to cow me, so I punch it in the face. “What are you doing here, Dane? I didn’t think you were coming.”

“Still think I’m spying on you, Norah?” The playful inside joke is a nod to our friendship, and thirty minutes ago would have delighted me.

At least it tells me he’s got no idea that Mole and I overheard him on the phone. That I’m the spy, spying on the spy.

It makes sense now, Dane always knowing the right thing to say. From the first day of school he’s acted as though we share a secret—silly me, thinking it was something innocent like being new at Charleston Academy.

Despite the betrayal, nothing can change. We need to know what he’s up to.

“No,” I say, trying for nonchalance. “I just didn’t know you liked basketball.”

“There’s still a lot we don’t know about each other, I suppose.”

The pause swells, grows uncomfortable, like a too-big meal once you leave the table. I clear my throat, edging toward Mole and pushing him sideways. “Well, it’s nice to see you, as ever. We’ve really got to get going. I promised my father we could watch
Star…
something. And I’m running late.”

“See you Monday, then? More tutoring?” Jude waits for my confirmation, then gives me a smile that’s confident—in himself, in what he and I have begun, maybe both—then turns to his friends. “You ladies ready for some coffee and dessert?”

The girls nod, and Savannah makes a point to hug Mole and tell him she loved meeting him. A spike of jealousy makes me want to yank out her curls, confusing me, to say the least.

It’s not all that weird, I suppose. The two of them clearly have a rapport born from their prickly senses of humor, but Mole is
my
friend. The thought of sharing him with her pisses me off.

Which isn’t fair, considering she’s sharing her friends with me.

Then they leave, headed to Kaminsky’s, a late-night coffee spot that attracts most CA kids after games and after school, and pretty much whenever they need caffeine. It’s just Mole, Dane, and me left in the atrium. Dane’s mention of
cavies
rushes back, tugs on my fear and worry, but before I can figure out the right way to ask about it, Mole whirls on him.

“Who are you?” Mole asks, staring right at Dane.

“What are you talking about? I just introduced myself.” Something flickers in Dane’s eyes. It’s not confusion. It’s apprehension.

“No, but I mean… maybe the question is,
what
are you?”

“You’re freaking me out, Stevie Wonder. I’m a human being. Like you, no?”

The derogatory tone ruffles my feathers, but the question tagged on the end stands every hair on my body on end. There’s nothing in Dane’s face that proves he’s suggesting what it
sounds
as though he’s suggesting—except the fact that it’s blank. Innocent. His face is never like that.

“Right. Like me.” Mole’s face goes whiter than it had outside the classroom earlier.

I wonder if something else happened. Maybe when they shook hands, because Mole had his shock under control until Dane walked up. I’m losing my grip on my patience, and every neuron in my brain fires at once, begging me to just
ask
Dane Kim what he knows about Cavies.

I can’t gauge whether I’d be giving knowledge away instead of reeling it in. Dane might know
something,
but we don’t know what.

Then again, Mole’s not exactly being cool.

“We heard you talking on your phone a little bit ago. In that empty classroom.” I skirt the edge of the confession, dipping a toe into the water.

That flicker again. Definitely apprehension, though he tucks it away fast. “Who’s spying now?”

“It was an accident. But you said something that made me curious.” Another couple of toes. The water feels hot, like I want to be very careful about going in all the way.

“You speak Korean?”

“No. Stop deflecting.” I try a smile, mostly failing but taking him by surprise. In that moment his guard drops, and he’s less intimidating. He’s Dane, the guy who sat with me in the graveyard, who has an uncanny knack of making me feel better about not having all the answers. “You said an English word that sounds familiar, but I looked it up on my phone and it’s not in the dictionary.
Cavies.
What does it mean?”

His reaction is subtle—a pause, a deliberate breath, out through his nose. Then he cocks his head, one eyebrow raised, doing his best to look confused.

I don’t know how, but I know he’s faking.

“That’s because it’s a plural.
Cavy,
the singular, is a proper noun,” he explains. “A South American guinea pig, to be exact.”

The definition, one I’ve never known, rips me open me with a hot poker.

The Philosopher told us they had to create a new word because no term existed that could do the ten of us justice, and the truth leaves a welt that’s hard to conceal. They’d been calling us
guinea pigs
the whole time. Like some sort of sick joke, given that their favorite pastime was experimenting on us, and it’s easy to see now that their tests had always been about their goals.

“Why were you talking about guinea pigs? That’s a little strange.” Mole recovers while I’m still reeling, but it’s hard to understand him through the haze of betrayal fogging up my brain.

I’m like a fish on the end of a pole, flopping, desperate to breathe but with no way to make it happen. Concern, the honest sort, touches Dane’s dark gaze and he reaches out, wrapping a hand around my bicep like he’s afraid I’m going to fall down.

No number.
There’s no number and he knows about the Cavies.

He ignores Mole, stepping closer to me. “Are you okay, Norah?”

The soft worry in his voice combines with his sturdy touch to give purchase to my scrabbling emotions, even though his touch is what’s freaking me out. Well, part of it. “Yes. Maybe if I can just sit down for a second?”

Dane guides me away from the glass case and Mole follows the sound of our footsteps. The way he cracks his knuckles gives away his own concern—for me, for this precarious situation—but he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. The silent comfort of his presence has always been enough.

Once I’m settled on a wooden bench, Dane turns back to Mole. “Cavies are part of a science project I’m thinking of doing. My dad wanted to know the best animals to experiment on so he could order them tonight. Cavies are great. They take whatever you give them and never protest. Like they think no one would ever hurt them. Or maybe they’re just dumb. Either way.”

Dane has never sounded more snide, and the tone leaves no doubt in my mind that it’s an insult—one we can’t defend without giving ourselves away.

I’m eye level with Mole’s hands, and they curl into fists.

“If you’re okay, Norah, I’d better be going. Shiloh here will get you home, I have no doubt.”

Dane leaves without waiting for a response, which is fine because it’s getting harder and harder to hold down the vomit. Ralphing in front of him would only prove that he’s gotten to me.

The glass doors at the front of the atrium close behind him, and the moment he hears the
snick
of their latch, Mole sinks down next to me. He fumbles for a moment to find my shoulders, then pulls my cheek to his chest. We’ve had years of practice. There’s no one’s touch I trust more. No one who can make the world better by just sitting next to me, letting me breathe him in, as odd as that sounds. The scents of mint and basil are fading beneath the fresher detergent smell, but linger enough to soothe me.