Lost in Thought (8 page)

“Sorry, not available. My thoughts are far more valuable than a penny,” I replied with a smile.

He turned from the fire and gave me that measured look again, for the second time in one visit, before saying, “I’m sure they are.” He sat down on my sofa, perhaps a little closer to me than was absolutely necessary, I noted with internal delight.

I stuck my finger in my own book and rested it in my lap. “Who was the original Cartwright anyway?”

“A grandfather many greats removed,” he replied. “He was famous, you know; invented the power loom. Quite a namesake to live up to, but I’m trying. Who was Elaine, Elaine?”

“My mother’s great-grandmother, or so Aunt Tessa tells me. She wasn’t famous though. My middle name is Rachel,” I added, “but I don’t know who she was, if anyone.”

Surprising me exceedingly, he said, “In the Bible, Rachel was a thief. What have you stolen lately, Lainey Rachel Young?”

Surprising
myself
even more, I said,
“This,”
and leaned over and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

To my relief, he looked surprised but not horrified, and thoughtfully touched the spot where my lips had touched him. Once more I got
the
look. “No, that was given freely. But it won’t stop me from asking you to return it someday, at a time of my choosing,” he added playfully, along with one of his dangerous smiles for good measure.

Very quietly, from the area of the windows, I heard the most delicate of derisive coughs. I’d completely forgotten about Jill’s presence, and that she was kind-of-maybe Carter’s girlfriend. But Carter was sitting with
me
. Confused, I leaned over and in a low voice started to say, “Carter, can I ask…” when he chuckled.

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“No,” he said.

“I’m sorry. Forget it.”

“No,” he repeated, and continued softly, “that’s not what I meant.

I meant, ‘No, Jillian’s not my girlfriend,’ despite what you might have heard. And I’m not gay, either,” he added, “in case you heard that one too.”

I blushed. “I…hadn’t heard that second one. But Jill, yeah, there’s, um, some healthy debate about your relationship, I guess you could say.”

He laughed. “Well,
I’ve
heard some not so subtle speculation about the second one since I haven’t accepted a few, ah, slightly more than friendly advances from some of your classmates. But it’s not that I’m not flattered, by the advances, I mean, not that I care if anyone thinks I’m gay either. Well most anyone anyway. It’s just that I try to resist dating Academy girls, since I kind of went there and I’ve always worked here. Most of the time I think they see me as a…trophy, or a contest prize, you know?”

I thought he underestimated his level of appeal, but instead of telling him
that
, I said, “So, c’mon, you expect me to believe you don’t date anyone, even Jill?”

“Jill and I really are just friends,” he said seriously. “Actually, she’s like my cousin. We have…common interests. And she
definitely
encourages me to stay away from Academy girls. Some of your classmates are not very nice, you might have noticed.”

I snorted. “You’re not kidding.” I spared a fleeting thought to wonder how
Jill
felt about being considered like a cousin, and then added, “And you’re also not answering my question.”

He laughed again. “You’re really
not
shy, are you, Lainey? First time I met you, I was sure you were just going to be a pretty, quiet girl who loved books. But to answer your question: you forget—unlike all but a few of the Academy students, I grew up here. All my previous girl-56 | C A R A B E R T R A N D

friends have been from town. There isn’t one right now though, a local girl, I mean. In case that was your next question.”

I wasn’t shy, that was true—if I had been, my transient life would’ve been pretty difficult—but hoped he didn’t think I was like those other Academy girls, looking to toy with the local boy. I was trying to figure out how to say that without embarrassing myself completely, but Carter saved me from it.

“That’s what I like about you, Lainey,” he said. “You’re not quite what I expected, and you’re not like the typical Academy girls. You’re not like anyone,” he added quietly, almost as if he didn’t realize he’d said it out loud.

I opened my mouth to respond but didn’t get the chance. The front door jingled and a loud group of my classmates laughed their way inside, heading for the lounge that had filled in around us. I’d been so absorbed, I hadn’t realized. Carter stood, grabbing his entirely untouched book off the table.

“As much as I’d rather not be,” he said, “I am still at work and need to get back to it.” As he turned toward the register, he added, “You know, you should go say hi to Jillian while you wait for your roommate’s trail of clues to lead her here. She’s a little quiet sometimes, I know, but I think she’d like you.”

“Uh, sure,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound too hesitant. Jill
was
quiet, and hadn’t really taken to my attempts to befriend her yet. But I’d follow his suggestion and give talking to her one more shot. I left my book and my bag on the couch to save my spot and headed over toward her table.

I didn’t make it.

I was about four steps from Jill when it hit, a familiar wave of dizziness. I reached out to steady myself, my fingers brushing the hair of the student sitting in the chair nearest to me. She was a pretty freshman girl with light brown hair and a friendly smile. I didn’t know her

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name, but in that moment I
did
know she was going skiing over Thanksgiving break and would not be coming back.

In a swift vision, I witnessed the girl catch the edge of her ski on some ice and frantically spiral her arms before tumbling over sideways and sliding head-first into a towering light pole.

She did not move again.

I blinked and, instead of the dead girl, saw Jill. Her pale blue eyes, already enormous, appeared a strange, deep shade of indigo as they widened even more in surprise. Blackness invaded my own eyes then and I dropped toward the floor.

hen everything came back into focus, I found myself lying on an unfamiliar bed in a dark room. The door was open a sliver; a slice of light sneaking in from the hallway offered W the only source of illumination. I remembered the freshman girl, and the vision, and Jill’s surprisingly strong hand around my wrist right before I collapsed. What I didn’t remember was how I got wherever I was. What I could see gave me no clues to my whereabouts except that I was in a small, generic bedroom. I was contemplating letting myself go back to sleep when I heard soft voices outside the door. It was a jumble of frantic whispering, from which I caught only snatches.

“…do with her?…”

“…can’t carry her over to the infirmary, Cartwright…”

“…think she doesn’t know…”

“…definitely no idea…”

“…Legacy, she had to be…”

“…Brooke Barros said…”

“…Jill and I…watching…hadn’t seen her do it before…”

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Tired of being discussed just out of earshot, I cleared my throat and called out, “Hello?” The conversation abruptly ceased, and after a second, Melinda pushed open the door. I could see Carter lurking behind her along with his Uncle Jeff, Melinda’s husband. No Jill, at least not within my line of sight. The cast of characters in the hallway answered where I was anyway. I must have been brought up to the Revells’ and Carter’s apartment above the bookstore.

“Oh, Lainey! Sorry honey, we didn’t mean to wake you,” Melinda gushed from the doorway. “Are you okay? Do you need anything?

Water? Do you want me to shut the door? You rest here as long as you need, don’t worry.”

“No, no, it’s okay,” I said, sitting up a little. “I…” didn’t know how to finish that. What was I? Confused, definitely. Curious about their whispered conversation, absolutely. I decided to start small though. I switched on the lamp next to me so I could see them better and asked, “How long was I out?”

They tentatively made their way into the room, Melinda coming to sit on the edge of the bed.

“Not long,” she answered. “Just a few minutes, really. I had Carter bring you up here to get you away from the bedlam. Your classmates are a little hysterical, I’m sure you can imagine.”

Great. Now they all knew my problem, in the most sensational way possible. At least I would make a good story. I was pretty sure by the time I got back to campus, half the students would believe me dead, and the other half would think I’d accosted Jill and she knocked me down. “Great,” I said out loud this time. “Who’s watching the store?”

“Jillian’s taking care of it for us. She helps out all the time.”

Melinda was apparently the designated talker here. “Not that I think she has to do much more than babysit right now,” she added with a frown.

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“It’s okay,” I told her. “This isn’t the first time this has happened, though it’s the first time since I got here, and definitely the first time I’ve had the chance to become an object of gossip for an entire school, but I’ll recover. Sorry about the disruption to your evening though.”

I looked around at them. Melinda was frowning again. Carter was watching me with a blend of concern, surprise, and for some strange reason, smug satisfaction. Jeff was completely unreadable. “So,” I said.

“What is it that I don’t know?”

That caught them off guard. Sort of. Carter blinked, Jeff was, well, still completely unreadable, and Melinda froze before stepping up again. “I don’t know what you mean, honey,” she said. “You fainted.

Jillian said it looked like you got dizzy first. I thought Carter told me you had a history…”

“Oh, come on,” I interrupted. I hated being rude to her, but I couldn’t let them pretend there wasn’t something going on here. And they
knew
. I knew they did. “I know this isn’t just some migraine thing I’ve got. I’ve always known, just been too afraid to tell anyone. But I know you guys know what’s causing them. I heard you. So tell me.

What don’t I know?”

My question came out more forcefully than I’d meant it to, but I couldn’t help it. I sensed that finally,
finally
, I would get some answers to this sickness that had been plaguing me for three years. And I knew, suddenly, that this was why I’d come to Northbrook. If it hadn’t been for the visions, I never would have ended up here. I felt sure that, somehow, my father had known this would happen.

After a minute of no answer I demanded, “Well?!”

Carter coughed but only looked at his aunt. My champion came from an unexpected source.

“Just tell her, Melly,” Jeff Revell said softly before he turned and slipped out into the hall.

Melinda sighed and started, hesitantly, “It’s…complicated, Lainey.”

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“I’m not surprised it is,” I replied. “If it weren’t complicated, all of my many doctors would’ve figured it out by now. What I don’t understand is why you all seem to know exactly what’s wrong when years of testing couldn’t tell me.”

“It’s because they really couldn’t, Lainey,” came from Carter. He was still hovering a few feet from the bed. “What’s wrong with you…well, it’s not
wrong
, it just is, but not even the best doctors would be able to explain it, unless you find the very right one. We know you didn’t see any who could because they’d have told us.”

Okay. This conversation was getting stranger by the second. I thought I might throw up, but I wasn’t sure if it was because of my rapidly developing migraine or the battle between
freaked out
and
angry
raging in my stomach. “Okay, what the hell is going on?” I looked back and forth between Carter and Melinda. “One of you better explain, fast, before I get up and run out of here, headache or not.

You’re scaring me.”

Carter slipped from behind his aunt and knelt down on the floor next to me. He put his hand out toward me, but I flinched away and he let it drop to his knees. “You don’t need to be scared, Lainey, not of us, not ever. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want to be,” I said, and realized, as my voice cracked, that tears had started to slip down my cheeks. “But you’re not making that very easy right now. Please. What’s going on here?”

“Lainey,” Melinda started gently. She leaned over to place her hand on my arm and I let her. “You are different. Special. Along with many of the Academy students, and Carter, and me. You’re not ordinary, but
extra
ordinary. The simplest way to put it is that you, like us, have ESP.”

I stared at her stupidly for a minute. Had I really just heard that? I found my voice again, and found that my tears had been mopped dry

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by skepticism. “ESP. Extrasensory Perception. Come on!” I said.

“That’s not even funny.”

Except they weren’t laughing.

“ESP,” I tried again. “So you’re trying to tell me that what, I can predict the future? And you can too?” And then as my brain caught up to my words, I gasped and clapped my hands over my mouth.

“Brooke,”
I whispered between my fingers. “I…I swore she was really telling fortunes. I heard you mention her in the hallway. Jesus. You’re not kidding.”

“No, honey, we’re not,” Melinda said. Carter still knelt beside me, in what had to be an uncomfortable position, but he showed no evidence of it. He was watching me so intently I could almost feel him willing me to believe them.

“Oh God! I knew it!” I shouted. “I really
am
crazy!” And then I started to cry in earnest.