Hemlock (4 page)

Jason reached over and grabbed my hand again, tugging me back down, a serious, thoughtful expression on his face. I crouched so we were at eye level. “Do you think everything wil be al right?” he asked, leaning forward until our faces were inches apart. His eyes were ful of shadows and storms.

I suppressed a shiver. Jason had this uncanny way of looking at a girl—an intensity that could leave you disorientated and a little lost. He did it without even trying. After three years, I stil wasn’t completely immune to it.

“Do you?” he repeated, softer this time.

How was I supposed to know?

I stared into Jason’s eyes, and for a split second I had that feeling you get when an elevator drops too quickly. You know there’s a floor underneath your feet, but it feels like you’re faling. I nodded and my hair fel over my face. Without missing a beat, Jason brushed it back, his fingers lingering on my cheek just a second longer than necessary.

“Everything wil be al right,” I lied, and then I headed for the bathroom before the confusion could show on my face.

For an instant, I’d had the impossible feeling that Jason had been about to kiss me.

I wiped the steam from the mirror and stared at the person looking back at me. Plain and pale with dishwater blond hair and guilty back at me. Plain and pale with dishwater blond hair and guilty brown eyes. Nothing special. Nothing like Amy had been. I leaned forward, gripping the edge of the sink. I couldn’t stay in the bathroom al night.

“It’s okay,” I whispered to my reflection. “She would understand. You didn’t mean to think it.”

Sometimes, thoughts just popped into my head—like the ones I occasionaly had about Kyle. None of those thoughts ever meant anything, and neither had this particular thought.

It was nothing. Less than nothing.

Thinking that Jason had been about to kiss me didn’t mean I wanted him to or that he had actualy been contemplating it. It was exhaustion and stress and the smel of alcohol on someone else’s breath. It wasn’t want or reality.

Amy wouldn’t need to forgive me, because there was nothing to forgive.

I shut off the bathroom light and opened the door.

Jason was snoring softly on the couch. He was stil wearing his jeans, but he’d tossed his shirt onto the coffee table, knocking over one of Tess’s pilar candles in the process. CNN flickered on the TV. So much for a movie.

With a sigh, I turned off the television just as a story about Senator Walsh came on. Lately, it seemed like Amy’s grandfather was always on the news.

Jason roled onto his side. I cringed a little as I noticed the dark smudges on his skin. Trey realy had done a number on him.

I watched him for a minute, holding my breath and waiting to see if he’d wake up. Asleep, he looked younger. His face lost the hard if he’d wake up. Asleep, he looked younger. His face lost the hard edges it had developed over the past five months and he didn’t look as haunted.

Dozens of girls at Kennedy High would have kiled to have a shirtless Jason Sheffield stretched out in their living room. I could probably have taken pictures and auctioned them off. I couldn’t realy blame them. Kyle was lean and athletic through years of playing soccer, but Jason had the kind of body that came with personal chefs and trainers. The kind of body that cost money.

Practicaly every girl at school had, at one point or another, spent a boring Spanish class fantasizing about kissing Jason.

Including me. Before I knew Amy—before I knew Jason was
with
Amy—I had daydreamed about him, too.

It wasn’t like Amy and I had been friends from the moment I stepped into town. I knew who she was—everyone knew who she was—but we’d never spoken. Not until we colided outside of Starbucks and both ended up wearing her mocha latte.

Considering her shirt cost about three times the value of everything in my closet—including sneakers—she’d been remarkably cool about it. I bought her a replacement drink, and despite the fact that wearing frothy beverages wasn’t exactly fashionable, we ended up walking down to Riverside Square, sitting on the ledge of the fountain, and talking for hours. Amy had griled me about every city I’d ever lived in and told me how she couldn’t wait to get out of Hemlock.

The next morning, she was waiting for me by my locker. For reasons I never quite understood—especialy given al the reasons I never quite understood—especialy given al the advantages she had—Amy seemed to have just as much trouble making friends as I did.

The next time I saw Jason, the daydreams were history. They had to be. Amy was the first friend I’d had in years, and that was important to me.

Looking back, it had probably been strange. Amy was the rich granddaughter of a US senator, and I was a foundling who lived with a cousin who waited tables.

I knew people couldn’t figure out how poor, parentless Mackenzie Dobson had ended up as part of a group that included kids from the two most powerful families in town, but Amy, Jason, Kyle, and I just seemed to click. It was like we had known one another our whole lives.

I turned my back on Jason long enough to grab a faded patchwork quilt from the hal closet. He didn’t stir as I tucked it around him.

“You’re such a disaster,” I whispered, gently touching the bruise on his cheek. “I wish I knew how to help you.”

Half the girls in school wanted Jason, but they didn’t know him.

Not realy. He was spoiled and could be arrogant. He was often careless and had become disaster personified. Hel, he practicaly needed his own federal response team.

But he could be realy thoughtful and kind. And he hadn’t always been a mess. He’d started getting into trouble last year, and then Amy’s death had just made him spiral further out of control.

The girls in town thought Jason was tortured and broken, and that made him sexier in their eyes. I didn’t care about that. Al I that made him sexier in their eyes. I didn’t care about that. Al I wanted was to figure out how to fix him.

Before he completely self-destructed.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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“YOU KNOW, HE’S ACTUALLY A PRETTY GOOD KISSER.” Amy perched on the edge of my bed, her pale, heart-shaped face turned away so that I could see only her profile, half-hidden behind a curtain of black hair. “I don’t blame you for thinking about it.”

I struggled against the bedclothes, trying to sit up. “I wasn’t.

Thinking about it.” Amy didn’t say anything, and the silence was heavy and oppressive. “Okay,” I admitted. “I thought about it for a second, but it was an accident. It didn’t mean anything.”

She grunted and stared at her lap. “I thought it would take you longer.”

My heart thudded in my chest. “Amy, I swear. Nothing happened.”

happened.”

“Maybe not yet. But it wil. You’l forget about me.” She paused and then added, “You both wil.”

I reached for her hand. It was cold, like ice. “Never,” I promised.

“Liar.” Her voice was suddenly sharp and frigid, like a burst of arctic air. She squeezed my hand so hard that I heard something crack.

“Amy,” I whimpered.

“You did this,” she said and turned toward me. The other half of her face was a ruined mask, like red candle wax that had melted.

The left side of her body was covered in gashes and blood. “You did this,” she repeated, squeezing my hand until my bones shattered and I screamed.

“Shhhh.”

I lashed out and shoved the figure kneeling by my bed. Strong hands caught my arms, holding them so I couldn’t do any real damage.

“Mac, shhhh. It’s al right.”

It took me a moment to recognize Jason’s voice, his familiar shape, and the way his eyes glinted in the faint light from the street lamp outside. I stopped struggling and tried to catch my breath.

“You were having a nightmare.”

I swalowed. I felt like I had just run a marathon. “Thanks,” I mumbled. “Figured that out.”

Jason sat on the floor next to my bed. He’d puled his shirt on at some point during the night, and I was oddly grateful. “What were you dreaming about?” he asked.

you dreaming about?” he asked.

What could I tel him? Not that Amy had shown up with her skin hanging off her face and blood soaking her clothes. Not when that was probably how he had seen her.

Jason had been there, in the aley. He’d been looking for Amy and had arrived moments after the police. There was a rumor it had taken two officers to drag him away from her. I didn’t know if it was true; I’d never worked up the courage to ask.

That was why he had become so much more self-destructive.

He felt guilty for not finding her sooner, for not saving her.

What if the attacks were starting al over again?

I shivered and tried to convince myself that the attack last night was an isolated incident, the unrelated work of another wolf. There were tons of infected people hiding al over the country. There could easily be another werewolf in Hemlock. Maybe even another white one.

The color of a wolf’s coat was a trait passed on with infection—

a constant, visual reminder of the animal that had bitten or scratched you. The attack could have been the work of someone who had been infected in the spring and hadn’t turned themselves in. There were twelve attacks that the police knew about, but that didn’t mean there couldn’t have been more.

“Mac?” Jason was waiting for an answer.

I didn’t want to talk about the dream, so I lied. “There was a fire and stuff. Burning.”

He glanced at me, then away. “You said her name.”

“Oh.”

“Oh.”

“I miss her,” he admitted, his voice almost a whisper. Always

“her” now. Never “Amy.”

“Me too.”

“I’m not ready to talk about it.”

“I know.” The way he shuttered everything inside wasn’t healthy, but I was scared of pushing him. Jason had been so unpredictable over the last few months that sometimes he seemed like a stranger. “I miss you, too,” I admitted, and let out a nervous breath.

Jason laughed—a low, bitter chuckle—and tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling. “Not much to miss. I was only ever good when I was with her.” He scrubbed a hand across his eyes. “The rest of the time, I was just another tool with a trust fund.”

It wasn’t true, and I hated that he thought it. I propped myself up on one elbow. “Do you remember the first time we met?”

He shook his head.

“I’d only been in Hemlock for a couple of weeks. There was no way Tess was going to turn me over to the state—she kept teling me that—but . . .” I trailed off and tried to swalow past the lump in my throat.

Other girls had moms who made them peanut butter sandwiches and dads who read bedtime stories and checked under the bed for monsters. I had a mother who skipped out on me sometime before my first birthday and a father who was wanted for everything from gunrunning to seling peyote out of the trunk of his car.

“Mac?” Jason reached out and touched my hand, just for a second.

second.

“Sorry,” I said. It was easy to get lost when thinking about the first fourteen years of my life. Hank and I had been in Hemlock for my grandmother’s funeral when he finaly ditched me. He went out for a pack of cigarettes and never came back. I’d hated him for it at the time; now, I looked back and realized his leaving me was the best thing that could have happened. “I just know how lucky I was Tess took me in. It’s not like having a teenager to look after was on her to-do list.”

Jason closed his eyes, but I could tel he was stil listening.

“Anyway, I was so far behind in school. Hank had us moving so fast and so often that half the time he didn’t even bother registering me for classes. We were in math and Mr. O’Leary asked me to do something simple—multiply, I think—and I couldn’t do it.”

“He was making you do a problem on the board.” Jason’s voice had a far-off quality. “I remember your clothes didn’t fit right. Your sleeves didn’t cover your wrists.”

“Thrift store fashion.” I smiled a little. “Something you’d know nothing about.”

“Touché.”

“Anyway, he made a big deal of the fact that I couldn’t make it past the first step. I just stood at the front of the class while everyone stared.” I blushed at the memory of dozens of kids watching me, al knowing they were smarter than the girl with the messy hair and threadbare clothes.

Jason opened his eyes and grinned. “And I rode to your rescue like a knight on a white horse.”

I nodded. “You caled him fat and bald and a buly. It was the I nodded. “You caled him fat and bald and a buly. It was the first time I’d ever seen anyone stand up to a teacher. You didn’t even know me.”

“He deserved it.” Jason watched as I settled back against my pilows. “The guy was a jerk.” He said it causaly, like it was no big deal.

I wished I could tel him how much it had meant to me without sounding like a Halmark card. Instead, I said, “You should get some sleep.”

“What if you have another nightmare?”

I shrugged, trying not to let on how much the thought unnerved me. “I’m a big girl.”

Jason frowned. “Would it be okay if I stayed until you fel asleep?”

Something about the thought of Jason watching me sleep made me uncomfortable in a way I couldn’t quite pin down. I opened my mouth to refuse, and a shadow of disappointment slid over his face. To my surprise, I found myself saying, “Al right.”

I tried not to think about how Tess would react if she found out.

She wouldn’t care about Jason staying over, but she’d definitely draw the line at him being in my room at three thirty in the morning

—despite her constant teasing that my love life needed some, wel, life in it.

“Thanks,” he said, a hint of relief in his voice.

I had the sudden suspicion that I wasn’t the only one who’d had a bad dream.

It took me a while to get comfortable. I wasn’t used to having It took me a while to get comfortable. I wasn’t used to having another person around while I tried to sleep. The faint sound of Jason breathing and the rustle of cloth as he shifted positions made it hard for me to completely relax. Eventualy, though, I started to drift off.