If I Die (8 page)

“I thought we weren’t that kind of friends.” My locker clicked open and I shoved my French text inside, then pulled out my algebra book.

“We’re not. I just…”

When she hesitated, I glanced up to find her avoiding my gaze. Sabine wouldn’t lie to me—that would violate whatever kind of screwed-up moral standard she subscribed to—but that didn’t mean she necessarily liked the truth.

I sighed and slammed my locker. “We didn’t do it. Happy now?”

The hallway seemed to get a little brighter, and her black eyes actually shined. “More like satisfied. For the moment, anyway. But honestly, I’ll be a lot closer to happy on Friday. Not because you’ll be dead, but because Nash won’t be tied to you anymore.”

I rolled my eyes and resisted the urge to smack her. I’d done it once, and that fact seemed to make subsequent urges harder to resist. But giving in would break our truce and probably affect her willingness to help me with Mr.

Beck. Also, she’d hit back, and I was less than confident in the local undertaker’s ability to hide a broken nose with pancake makeup.

“Why did you even give me advice, if you don’t want me to sleep with him?”

Sabine frowned, like I made no sense. “It’s like we were born on different planets. Is your world really that black-and-white?”

“What does that even mean? And I don’t have time for one of your speeches right now.”

“It means that even though I’m willing to go through you to get Nash back, I like you, too. That’s a little bit of a conflict for me.”

I slammed my locker shut and faced her directly. “Why do you like me, Sabine?” I couldn’t figure that one out. I would have been perfectly fine with her hating me, so long as that didn’t put me in the direct line of fire from the creepy-vibes she leaked whenever she got mad. Or from her killer right hook.

“I’m not sure.” Sabine tossed long, dark hair over her shoulder and the cartilage piercing in her left ear shined in the overhead lights. “You don’t have any outstanding qualities, other than a gritty determination I can’t help but relate to.”

“Meaning…?”

“Meaning, you tend to grow on people. Like some kind of persistent fungus.”

It was very clear, however, why I didn’t like her.

“So, you give me vaguely girlfriendly advice about sex, then cross your fingers and hope I don’t have it with Nash. Is that how this plays out in that warped, shriveled little cerebrum of yours?”

She shrugged. “More or less.”

I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was actually “less,” and I knew that if I pressed for details she’d give them to me—along with significant TMI about her former relationship with Nash. But life—especially mine—was too short to waste time picturing her making out with my boyfriend. So I changed the subject.

“You’re still going to talk to Mr. Beck today, right? When do you have him?”

“Sixth period. And yeah, I’m actually looking forward to your cheesy little spy mission.” She glanced around the hall like a bored housewife tired of her own décor. “This place has been dull as shit since we got rid of the hellions.”

“Okay, first of all, ‘we’ didn’t get rid of the hellions.” I zipped my backpack and slung it over my shoulder. “You tried to sell me and Em to them.”

Sabine rolled her eyes. “I said I was sorry about that….”

“And second of all, they’re not gone—they’re just stuck in the Netherworld. Which is why you are not supposed to make people cross over in their sleep.”

She actually grinned. “Damn, how long can you hold a grudge?”

“Four days more. Then you’re in the clear. Bonus points if you figure out what Mr. Beck is today. I’m kinda short on time.”

“I’m al set to feel him out.”

“Feel who out?” Nash asked, sliding one arm around me from behind.

“Beck.” Sabine’s grin widened. “Kaylee wants to know what he is, so I’m going undercover. Maybe literally.”

“She’s kidding about that last part,” I insisted, setting my bag on the floor so I could slide closer to Nash.

He huffed. “No she’s not.”

I glanced at Sabine, and the mara shrugged. “I’m gonna play that part by ear. I figured I’d start with a little dyslexia, then move on to a basic incomprehension of functions. It’ll soon become obvious that I need more help than he can provide during class, so he’ll ask me to drop by after school. He’l explain patiently, I’ll stare adoringly into his eyes and take every possible chance to touch him, letting him know in no uncertain terms that I am—

tragically—available.”

Nash exhaled, long and low. Like he was grasping for patience, and it was too slippery to hold. “Sabine, you can’t hit on a teacher.” He sounded frustrated, but not really surprised.

She frowned. “Yes I can. The taboo you’re thinking of is the reverse of that. Which’ll probably also happen, if I do this right.”

“That’s not just a taboo, it’s il egal,” I said. She was already planning to go further than I’d intended.

“For him, not for me,” Sabine insisted, and when neither of us conceded her point, she propped both hands on her hips, where a ring of bare flesh showed above the low waist of her khakis. “Look, if he’s a good guy, he won’t take the bait. If he’s not, regardless of species, he deserves whatever he gets.

But you’ll never know for sure unless we give him a chance to actual y take the bait. Right? Fortunately for you—” her gaze narrowed on me and her grin grew

“—I’m wil ing to take one for the team. But only because he’s hot. If we were talking about Coach Rundell, you’d have to find yourself another underage carrot to dangle.”

Nash groaned, and I twisted in his grip to find him frowning at me. “I just wanted her to find out what he is, I swear,” I said. “She’s improvising.”

“I know.” He pulled me closer and refocused on the mara. “This is a bad idea, Sabine. What if he’s something dangerous? He obviously doesn’t wanna be outed….”

“I’m something dangerous.” She shrugged. “Besides, if he sticks to math and stays away from my anatomy, he won’t be outed. He’ll never even have to know what I know.”

Nash’s frown deepened, and I recognized the concern swirling slowly in his eyes. He was worried about her. “You have an amazing ability to gloss right over the point.” The mara tugged her backpack strap higher on one shoulder.

“It’s a gift.”

“How did Kaylee talk you into this, anyway?”

She lifted one brow at me, like we shared some special secret. “Advance payment for the favor she’ll be doing me on Thursday.”

The blood drained from Nash’s face, and I wanted to melt into the floor.

“That’s messed up, even for you, Bina,” he snapped. “This is hard enough for me to handle without the two of you joking about it.”

Sabine frowned, clearly confused by his reaction. “We’re not joking. She dies, I inherit you. We’ve got it all worked out.”

Nash glanced back and forth between us, obviously at a loss for words.

“It’s okay, Nash.” I swallowed the lump in my throat, and it hurt going down. “Look, I don’t want to die, and I don’t want you to wind up with someone else. But I’m not going to ask you to spend your whole life mourning me. I saw what that did to my dad.” It took another deep breath to prepare me for the rest of what I had to say. “Besides, I know I’m the only thing keeping the two of you apart, and I know you’ll eventually wind up together again with me gone. I’m making peace with it. Just promise you won’t go over to the dark side until after the funeral.”

“Kaylee, what the hell is wrong with you?” Nash demanded. “This isn’t funny. This is your life!”

“No, this is my death,” I whispered, well aware that people were glancing at us now, on their way to class. “And I’m dealing with it the only way I know how. I’m providing support for the people I’m leaving behind. I’m crossing things off my very last to-do list. And I’m desperately trying to distract myself from everything else by focusing on other people’s problems.”

Nash stared at me like he’d never seen me before. “I don’t want to think about what life’s going to be like on Friday, and I don’t understand how you can be so calm about this!”

Fighting fresh tears, I pulled him into the alcove by the restrooms, and Sabine fol owed at an almost respectful distance. “How am I supposed to react?” I dropped my bag on the floor again and stared up at him, silently challenging him not to look away. “You want me to pull out my hair and start wailing for myself? I’m trying to accept this with dignity and good humor.

You’re only making that harder.”

“That’s because this is hard,” Nash insisted. “It’s supposed to be. We were supposed to have hundreds of years together, and now we don’t even have hundreds of hours. I’m not okay with that, and I’m not going to pretend I am.”

The first hot tear rolled down my cheek, in spite of my determination not to cry. “Fine. I understand. But I have to deal with this my way, and you can either be a part of that or you can walk away.”

Please, please don’t walk away… The only thing more terrifying than knowing I was going to die was knowing I’d be alone when it happened.

“I’m not going to turn my back on you, Kaylee.”

“Thank you.” I stood on my toes to kiss him and blinked away more tears. “Because this is real y scary for me, and no matter what else I fil my head up with, it’s always there, in the back of my mind, just waiting for a chance to shove everything else over and take center stage.” As Thane had shown me less than six hours earlier.

Nash’s arms wound around me again and he held me close enough to whisper in my ear. “Well, maybe I can take your mind off it for a little while tonight, if your dad’s going to be out again.”

“He won’t be home till dinner,” I said, and my pulse jumped a little at just the thought of finishing what we’d started.

Sabine cleared her throat to get our attention, but it was too late. Coach Tucker, the girls’ softball coach, was marching across the hall toward us, pink detention pad in hand. “I saw that, Mr. Hudson,” she called, already scribbling on the pad with a red pen. She stopped two feet away, ripping the first slip off the pad, and handed it to Nash. “And you, Ms. Cavanaugh. Kylee…” she thought out loud, already writing on the next sheet.

“It’s Kaylee,” I corrected.

“My mistake.” She scribbled through whatever she’d already written and started over. “And your mistake was the public display on school grounds.

That’ll get you a detention apiece.”

I glanced at Nash to find him grinning at me, the browns and greens in his eyes swirling with mischief. I shrugged and went up on my toes again, speaking to Coach Tucker even as my lips met Nash’s. “Better make it two.”

It’s not like I’d be there to serve them.

Chapter Eight

“What are they for?” Emma whispered, staring at the detention slips I was now using to mark chapter fifteen in my algebra book.

“Public display.”

“Both of them?”

I’d made Nash and Sabine promise not to tell Emma that I was days from death, in spite of our new “full disclosure” policy, because it seemed cruel to make her anticipate what was coming for days in advance. That was hard enough for me and Nash—Sabine didn’t seem to be suffering—and I wouldn’t put my best friend through it, if I could possibly spare her. And I have to admit, it felt good to talk to someone who didn’t get sad and overprotective the minute I walked into the room. So she didn’t understand my new cavalier approach to the school’s code of conduct.

I shrugged, grinning from ear to ear. “I guess we didn’t look sorry enough after the first one.”

Emma gaped at me, and I almost laughed out loud. Knowing I was going to die changed everything. Consequences no longer mattered, so long as they didn’t hurt anyone else—and Nash’s detentions didn’t count. There was no way they’d make him serve them while he was mourning the death of his girlfriend.

I could do whatever I wanted. And that incredible liberty—the only thing even approaching a bright side to the terrifying reality of my own death—left me feeling light-headed. And maybe a bit reckless.

I could stay up till four in the morning and eat pizza and ice cream for every meal. I could stay out all night. I could get drunk. I could have sex. I could get a piercing or a tattoo. I could stand up in the middle of sixth period and tell Mrs. Brown that the past perfect conjugation of irregular French verbs would never come in handy for me at all, and yes I did know that for a fact!

Next week, no one would care whether I’d gained weight or fallen asleep in class, or skipped school entirely. What did it matter if I failed French, or my piercing got infected, or I got pregnant?

But thinking of pregnancy killed my rebellion buzz with a single, gruesome mental image of Danica Sussman bleeding on the floor. Which reminded me of Mr. Beck, and when I looked up, he was walking down the aisle toward me and Emma, a stack of graded quizzes in hand.

For a moment, I couldn’t breathe, afraid that he’d take one look at me and know exactly what I was thinking. That was entirely possible; we still didn’t know what he was. So when he put a quiz facedown on my desk, then moved on to the next student, I exhaled with relief.

Okay, I guess some consequences stil matter…

I flipped the paper over. Eighty-two. Normally, that would bother me. I was pulling a high B in algebra II and I’d hoped to push that into the low A range by the end of the term, mostly because Nash’s grades—at least, pre-frost addiction—made me look bad. But now, a low B was the last thing on my mind.

Mr. Beck came back up the next row and put a paper facedown on Emma’s desk, but instead of moving on, he leaned over and whispered something to her. Something I couldn’t hear. Emma nodded. And when he walked away, she was grinning from ear to ear.

“What’d he say?” I asked, leaning across the aisle as he headed toward the whiteboard at the front of the room. Something had gone wrong on a cosmic level if Em had aced a quiz I’d barely pulled a B on.

She turned up one corner of her paper so I could see her grade. Fifty-four.

“Since when is an F a good thing?”

“He wants to talk to me after class,” she explained, eyes bright with excitement that gave me chil s. Em had failed the quiz.

And caught Mr. Beck’s attention.

“What’d he say?” I fell into step with Emma as she left Mr.

Beck’s room several minutes after class, acutely aware that though she had a late pass, I did not. Then I remembered that didn’t matter. Next week, instead of serving detention, I’d be taking the great dirt nap.

“The usual. I’m a smart girl, but I’m not applying myself. Math is relevant to my future….”

She kept talking, but her answer faded into the ambient hallway chatter when a familiar set of dark eyes caught my attention, and goose bumps popped up all over my body. Thane stood across the hall, leaning against a bank of lockers in black jeans and a plain black T-shirt, still and silent against the rush of traffic and noise. He watched me, smiling intimately about the secret we shared. The future I would not have. The last moments of my life, which he would no doubt savor.

“Kaylee?” Emma elbowed me in the ribs. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I made myself turn away from the reaper, confident no one else could see him. And absolutely certain that he was still watching me. “What were you saying?”

“Mr. Beck said that maybe I just need a little extra help to get al caught up.”

“That’s it?” If that was it, why was Em practically glowing, like she did at parties, when every head in the room turned to watch her dance?

Emma pushed open the door to the bathroom and I followed her inside as the second period late bell rang. “Yeah. He thinks I could bump my average up to a B with a little tutoring.”

“Who’s the tutor?” Please, please say it’s a senior with mad math skills…

“That’s the best part. He’s gonna tutor me himself. After school.” She grinned at me in the mirror, pulling a tube of lip gloss from her purse. “And I suspect it just might take me a while to pick up on the more complicated concepts.” Her eyes glittered with excitement, and my stomach churned.

Something was wrong.

I leaned against the wall, clutching my books. Sabine was supposed to draw a foul, not Emma. Sabine could take care of herself, but Emma had no defensive abilities whatsoever, beyond a blinding distraction of cleavage, and she had no concept of how dangerous the world really was, even knowing that humans weren’t alone in it.

“Em, this is a bad idea,” I said, squatting to peek beneath the row of stal s to make sure we were alone. Al good, unless someone at Eastlake had developed powers of invisibility. “Why don’t you just go hit on someone in honors calculus?”

“Because there’s no one hot in honors calculus,” she said without moving her lips, as she dabbed clear gloss on over her lipstick. Then she eyed me in the mirror, screwing the lid back on the tube. “What’s the big deal, Kay?

It’s an hour after school, twice a week. In a classroom. If I have to learn function notation, shouldn’t I at least have something pretty to look at until my brain self-destructs?”

I dropped my backpack and leaned with both hands on the edge of the sink, staring at her reflection in disbelief. “Em, he could be dangerous. He’s not human!”

“Neither are you!”

“Yeah, and I’m dangerous! How many times have you almost died because of me?”

She dropped her gloss into her purse, then set her purse on the stack of books balanced on the edge of the next sink. “Why do you have to be the storm cloud, always raining on my parade? Why can’t you let me pretend—just this once—that someone smart, and hot, and thoroughly post-pubescent could possibly be interested in me?”

“Because you don’t need to pretend. He could total y be interested in you, and that’s the problem.”

“It’s just tutoring, Kaylee.”

“The last girl he tutored nearly bled out on the classroom floor,” I said, and Emma blinked, like she wanted to say something, but couldn’t quite put it into words. “Sabine’s going to figure out what he is and I’m going to find out whether or not he knocked up Danica Sussman.” And Emma was going to stay away from him, whether she liked it or not.

“Okay, don’t take this the wrong way, Kay, but how is it any of your business who Danica sleeps with?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “What are you now, the monogamy police?”

“Emma, he’s a teacher!”

“I know, and normally that’d be really creepy. But he’s twenty-two, and she’s eighteen. They’re only four years apart, and she’s a legal adult. If this were June and she was out of high school, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

“But it’s barely March, and she’s still in school. And he’s an authority figure,” I pointed out, frustrated and beyond bewildered by her argument. Was it really so hard to understand that a teacher sleeping with a student was bad, no matter how old either of them was? “At the very least, this could get him fired.”

“Assuming it’s true. And at this point, it’s just a theory, right?” she asked, and I nodded reluctantly. “So how ’bout this…” Emma turned from the mirror to face me directly. “I promise not to sleep with the hottest teacher on the face of the planet—math facts and harmless fantasies only—and you promise to tell me if he turns out to have horns or a forked penis. Deal?”

“No! No deal!” I snapped, gaping at her now. “You’ve seen the Netherworld. How can you not be freaked out by even the possibility that he could be some kind of monster? That forked penis thing could be true, you know.”

“Just because he’s not human doesn’t mean he’s a monster, Kaylee.

You, of all people, should know that.” She shrugged and continued before I could argue. “Besides, Avari and Invidia were scary as hell, but hellions can’t cross into the human world. And Mr. Beck isn’t scary. He’s just…hot.”

I knew that look. That was the look Emma got every time her mom told her to be home by midnight. Every time her sister forbade her from borrowing her clothes. Hell, every time our fifth grade teacher told her to stop charging the boys in our class a dollar apiece for a peek at her training bra.

I exhaled, long and slow. “You’re gonna do whatever you wanna do anyway…”

“How well you know me…” She smiled and slid her purse strap over one arm, then picked up her books. “Hey, have you noticed you’re ten minutes late to chemistry?”

“Yeah. I don’t care,” I said, pushing the door open.

Emma frowned and studied me closer. “Since when do you not care about being late to class?”

“My priorities have recently undergone realignment.”

Her frown deepened. “What does that mean?”

“I’m tired of playing by the rules.”

“So?” I said, as Sabine slid onto the bench seat across the table from me and next to Emma. School had been out for half an hour, so the food court across the street from our campus was packed. I would have been happier in the quad or the parking lot, but Sabine was hungry. And thirsty. And in possession of information I wanted.

“Is that mine?” She reached for the paper bowl of frozen yogurt in the middle of the table and scooped a spoonful of nuts and berries off the top.

“Extra large, double raspberries.” I scowled into my own kid-size helping. “I make minimum wage, you know. You’re gonna break the bank.”

“Can’t take it with you,” she pointed out, and my frown deepened at the reminder of my own impending death.

“Where’s Nash?” The mara glanced around like he’d simply materialize in front of her.

“Baseball.” Nash was the starting pitcher. He’d offered to skip practice, determined to spend al of what time I had left with me, but I’d told him to go on. Sabine and I—and now Emma—had work to do anyway. “What’cha got?”

“Well…no luck scoring private time with Beck.” Sabine shrugged.

“Evidently I’m not believable as a remedial math student.”

“That can’t be right,” I said, and the mara scowled while Em laughed, a spoonful of chocolate yogurt halfway to her mouth. “What’s your average?”

“Eighty-nine. I’m not stupid,” Sabine snapped, and Emma bristled, no doubt thinking about her own seventy-eight average. “My only problem with math is that the very concept of homework violates one of my most strongly held beliefs.”

“What belief?” Emma said. “That you’re too special to work like the rest of us?” Like she did homework.

“The belief that homework should be optional for those of us who already understand the concepts.”

“I like it,” Emma said. “You should run for student council.”

“No,” Sabine muttered, around another bite of yogurt. “I really shouldn’t.”

“Okay, so he won’t tutor you…” I said, redirecting the conversation. “We can work around that. You can still flirt with him, and try to read—”

“No way!” Emma slapped her palms flat on the tile-top table, and I flinched, hoping she hadn’t drawn attention from the crowd all around us.

“You’ll let her hit on Mr. Beck, but you don’t even want me to be tutored by him?”

“I’m not letting her do anything,” I insisted, but Sabine spoke over me.

“Kaylee’s not the boss of me. Hell, she’s not even her own boss most of the time.”

I rolled my eyes. “Thanks for yet another unsolicited amateur psychoanalysis.” Then I turned to my best friend. “I’m sorry, Em, but Sabine can hold her own against…well, pretty much whatever’s out there. And if I can’t stop her from throwing herself at Nash, how am I supposed to stop her from hitting on Mr. Beck?”

“You can’t, on either count,” Sabine said, and Emma shrugged in concession, still pouting. We both knew there was no taming this particular shrew. “Doesn’t matter anyway. I already tried and failed to flirt my way in. I don’t think he knows what I am, but he was definitely creeped out when I read his fears.” The dissimulatus bracelets we wore would disguise our psychic signatures, but if we used our abilities and they were recognized…we were screwed. And we couldn’t chance letting Beck stumble over our secrets before we’d uncovered his.

“You read him? In class?” I snapped. Was she trying to get caught?

“Yeah, and I probably won’t get another chance.” She shrugged, and a sly grin blossomed. “So I guess it’s a good thing I got what I needed on the first try, huh?”

Em stuck her spoon into her yogurt, where it stood straight up. “You know what he is?”

“Why didn’t you say that in the first place?” I demanded, crossing my arms over my chest.

Sabine huffed. “Because this is a favor, not a charity. Nothing’s ever real y free, Kaylee.”

“You’re a credit to capitalism. Now spil it.”

Sabine leaned over the table, and I scooted closer to hear her when she lowered her voice. “Okay, I’m about eighty-percent sure—”

“Eighty percent?” I bit back a groan.

“Reading fear isn’t an exact science, Kay,” Sabine snapped. Then she frowned and seemed to reconsider. “Okay, it kinda is, but it’s fear reading, not mind reading. The only things I know for sure are what he’s afraid of.”