Infernal Revelation : Collected Episodes 1-4 (9781311980007) (3 page)

"I know," Lily took his hand in hers. "He
was probably right."

"You're just lucky it happened over break.
You didn't miss anything too much."

Lily drew her hand away. "I don't feel
lucky."

Derek turned his pickup into the school's
parking lot. "You know what I mean. You're alive. No broken bones.
No brain damage."

She nodded and unclipped her seat-belt. "I
just want to get back to a normal schedule. Classes. Track.
You."

Her boyfriend pulled into a parking spot
and, finding her hand again, squeezed it gently. "I can help you
with that last part."

Derek climbed out of the truck. Lily had a
brief moment of vertigo as he passed in front of the hood, a sort
of queasy deja vu that lasted a moment but almost took her senses
away.

He opened the door. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, just... yeah."

He helped her step down to the curb and
slipped an arm around her waist.

What was that? Derek in front of the car was
so familiar in such a strange way. Was that part of the dream? A
part she couldn't remember?

"Don't forget your bag," he said.

"Right."

They walked together towards Laton High
School's brick facade.

***

"They're
staring."

"You're the most beautiful girl in school."
Derek smiled. "I got used to guys staring at you a long time
ago."

"It's not like that," Lily said. "It's
like... do you remember kindergarten?"

"Barely."

"Do you remember when I started?"

"Of course."

"Yeah, I got a lot of attention then,
too."

"You were a cute kid. And funny. And
smart."

"And black."

"Lily."

"It's true, Derek. Don't pretend it's not.
I'm the only black girl... the only black person in town. First one
most of you ever met. Still the only one most of you know."

"Nobody thinks of you that way," Derek said.
"You're not 'the black girl.' You're Lily Baker, track star and
valedictorian."

Lily wrinkled her nose. "Salutatorian. Lucas
is valedictorian."

Derek slammed a fist into his palm. "Year's
not over yet, Lil."

She laughed and hugged him, nestling into
his side as they entered the building. Derek was right, it wasn't
the same thing, not really. She might not have the luxury of ever
really forgetting she was the only African-American in Laton, but
the rest of the town seemed to have gotten used to it. They still
made a big deal about it in small ways -- it was really
uncomfortable how often gazes turned towards her in civics class
every February -- but Laton was a good town, with a progressive
church, and tolerant people.

This attention was different, though. She
could feel the stares, stares at her, stares at the girl who had
survived unharmed while one of her friends had ended up dead, and
the other seriously injured. She could almost hear the whispers,
the rumors spreading like a cancer, eating away at her
reputation.

"Do you know what happened?" she asked.

He didn't need to ask her what she was
talking about. "I was in Boston."

"Have you heard anything?"

"Nobody's said much." He stopped and turned
towards her. "Nobody's blaming you for anything, Lily."

"Maybe they should. Maybe it was my
fault."

"It was an accident."

A spark of anxiety welled up inside her.
"You don't know that. Nobody knows that. Nobody knows what
happened, and I don't remember."

"Lily..."

She shook her head, clenching her eyes shut.
"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"How was Boston?"

Derek paused, leaning against the bank of
lockers to their side. "Boston was... okay, I guess. I was worried
about you. Came home as soon as I could."

"Are you going to go?"

"I don't know," Derek said. "It's on my
list. We talked about this."

"I remember." She stepped
away and turned towards him. "We need to
really
talk about it. About
us."

Derek nodded. "Yeah. But that can wait."

"Derek--"

He raised his hands. "Until you're feeling
better. I don't want to add more stress to what you're feeling,
okay? So... let's just let it be."

Lily bit her lip. "Just for now."

"Just for now."

"Okay." She gave him a quick hug. "I should
get to class."

Derek checked his phone. "We have a few
minutes."

"Yeah, but I need to get the notes and
assignments I missed." She cringed inwardly as the lame excuse
slipped from her lips.

"Okay. I love you."

"Love you," Lily said, squeezing him
again.

She walked with swift steps down the hall,
not turning her head to look at the classmates watching her. Lily
held her head high, but it was all she could do to keep from
breaking into a run before reaching the corner, to force herself to
slow her brisk pace. She felt hot, flushed, her arms and legs
tingling, the panic threatening to rise up from her quivering
stomach. It was too much on her plate, too fast. Her father had
told her to pace herself her first day back. Why hadn't she
listened?

She hadn't meant to bring up Boston. Again.
That was one of the last things she remembered talking about before
the accident. A conversation with her boyfriend over the phone, or
rather an anti-conversation, where both parties touched on but
didn't discuss the prospect that one of them was going to go, go to
school thousands of miles away, almost literally as far as one
could travel from the other without leaving the country.

What was there to discuss? Derek was a
football star. He had options beyond Dallas, beyond anywhere Lily
was willing to go.

Not like she didn't have options. Not like
she didn't have her own pick of a half-dozen schools. It just so
happened that Boston College wasn't one of them.

The way they hadn't been talking about it,
the way that they'd argued around it, the harsh tones, him hanging
up on her for the first time ever... why had she brought it up? Was
it that less painful than the way she felt about Ashley and
Lauren?

Maybe she'd hoped it'd distract her from
what had happened to her friends. The way she'd left them behind.
The way she was fine, almost without a scratch. It hadn't.

Instead, the ickiness she felt about her
fight with Derek blended together with her survivor's guilt into a
frothy cocktail of self-loathing. Was this any different, causing
him pain to deflect her own?

She could feel the pity of those she passed
in the hall, and turned into Mrs. Criske's class with a sense of
relief, only to see that pity nakedly mirrored on her teacher's
face.

Great.

CHAPTER THREE

It wasn't as bad as
Lily had feared. Not really. Not until lunch, anyway.

Everyone was just
so
supportive
,
so
understanding
,
so
concerned
, and
that support manifested in someone in each of her morning classes
having taken plenty of notes for her. She was able to withstand the
token concern from her instructors in every class (she knew they
had to say something, but every class? Really?) and bury her face
in the notes given to her. Her classmates' neat penmanship -- three
out of four times Jessie Ross's, apparently -- provided her with an
avenue of escape into trigonometric functions, Spanish verb
conjugations, and 19th-century social movements. She sat in her
desk, up front in each class, pretending to ignore the hot stares
burrowing into the back of her skull as she carefully transcribed
notes from Jessie's notebook.

Carl Moser had taken her notes in Art
History, a class she did not share with Jessie, and his sparse
lines about Edgar Degas barely took ten minutes to copy. She was
forced for the rest of class to watch Mr. Jeffries lecture, forced
to acknowledge the concern in his eyes whenever he looked in her
direction, forced into awareness of Ashley's empty seat next to
her.

It was almost too much. Almost. But she made
it to lunch by fuming over what a poor academic Carl was, and how
awful his writing was.

Lily stopped at the entrance to the lunch
room, looking it over, seeing the cliques starting to form as
students grabbed their trays or sat down with their brown bags.
There were no notes here, no droning lecturing voices to shield
herself from the concern and care of her peers. She would have to
withstand their looks, their questions, their accusatory stares for
nearly a half-hour. Would they question why she had survived when
Lauren hadn't? Would she have an answer?

She fought down the urge to panic.

"Oh, excuse me, Lily," said a quiet voice
behind her.

Jessie Ross, a slight pale girl, daughter of
Laton's other deacon, was smiling at her. Their families were
friends, even if the girls' interests didn't intersect beyond the
church.It wasn't that Lily didn't like Jessie, but she found the
depth and intensity of the other girl's religious faith...
unsettling.

Lily searched the other girl's face for
accusation or suspicion, but found none.

She stepped aside to let Jessie pass, but
stopped her half-way. "Jessie, do you have the notes for chemistry
and civics?"

Jessie nodded slowly. "Yes, of course.
They're in my locker. Did you want them now?"

Lily stepped back into the hall, a light
touch on the elbow guiding the other girl to accompany her. "If we
could go get them, that'd be great."

"Sure, I guess." Jessie lead the way back
down the hall to her locker. "Though I could just give them to you
in class?"

"I'm not feeling well," Lily said, and it
wasn't really a lie. "I might go home early, so I thought I'd get
them from you now. Just in case."

Jessie blinked and nodded. Lily was grateful
she didn't press the issue, and saw nothing but simple goodwill in
the other girl's eyes.

She felt a sudden irrational spike of
resentment towards the other girl. It must be so nice to live life
so simply, without guilt, without boyfriends, without anything
beyond the church's guidance. It must be so nice to have such a
strong faith that there aren't any questions, to give yourself
completely over to a higher power. Lily loved the church and what
it did for people, but she didn't live it, like Jessie did. Like it
was her whole life.

Jessie didn't seem to notice as Lily almost
physically recoiled from the wave of vitriolic guilt washing
through her. Where had that come from? Jessie was a dear, and Lily
had never had such strong negative feelings toward anyone.

"Th-thank you," she managed.

"No problem," Jessie said. "I will pray for
you. And for Ashley."

"Thanks," Lily said, watching as the other
girl walked, unburdened, back up the hall towards the
cafeteria.

She shook her head, heading towards the
stairs. She couldn't handle this. Not right now. Where had that
negativity come from? Jessie had never been anything but kind,
never had anything but a good word for anyone. She didn't deserve
that sort of resentment. It wasn't her fault. It wasn't her fault
that Lily had lived while Lauren had died. It wasn't Derek's fault.
It wasn't any of their faults.

Her headache was getting worse, crackling at
the edges of her vision. She couldn't be around people right
now.

***

Lily had never skipped
a class in her life, but she knew where kids went to do
it.

Laton High's roof was accessible through a
door that was supposed to be kept locked, but nobody had fixed that
lock in the four years Lily had attended school there. She'd never
been up there, but a teen's instinct figured out the purpose of the
cinder block propping it open, for sure enough, there was no handle
on the other side. The sun above kept her warm, while the wind's
gentle caress fanned her hair out behind as she walked to the rail
overlooking the athletic field.

She'd seen kids up here sometimes, while out
at gym or running track. She rested her elbows over the wrought
iron and gaze out past the field, past the abandoned drive-in, out
to the barren desert beyond. A single strip of asphalt lead from
Laton to the horizon, a lifeline heading towards Odessa, towards
the rest of the world, towards the future and a life she'd never
known. This was it. This was her last year in school, her last
tether to everything she'd grown up with, to her family. There was
no university in town, and her parents would never let her squander
her "gifts" at some local community college. They'd pushed her too
hard, she'd pushed herself too hard for too long to settle for
anything less than the best she could do.

There was only one road leading out of town,
but she and Derek would be taking different paths down it.

And Lauren wouldn't be taking that road at
all.

"Want a smoke?"

Lily started, surprised to see the redheaded
boy sitting on the roof only a few feet away, surprised that she'd
overlooked him.

She knew Gideon, of
course. She knew everyone in Laton. It was a small town, but she
didn't, like,
know him
know him. She knew he was the sheriff's son, she knew he was
one of the stoners that hung out at the water tower or The Spot
skipping school, and she knew she didn't really want to talk to
him. Or anyone else.

She turned back towards the railing. "No,
thank you."

He nodded and lit his own cigarette.

It was a small relief to smell nothing more
illicit than tobacco.

"You okay?" Gideon asked.

"Yes, fine. Thank you." Her tone was a
practiced politeness, affected without thought or effort.