Night Sky (23 page)

You were right. 2 sprained ankles and a mild concussion. G'll be back in school 2morrow. Dang.

I got the text from Cal later that evening around eight o'clock, while I was sitting at my desk zipping through another math assignment.

I set the phone down and ran my hand through my hair. I was on edge. Okay, I was beyond on edge. I was frazzled. After school, Calvin and I had tried to conjure Dana by wishing she would appear, but that didn't work. We even tried homing in on her, but my mental magnet weirdly pulled me to I-75 south, and after a few miles, Cal turned around.

What was even more rattling tonight was the fact that, even though I never knew
when
it was going to happen, Dana had managed to meet with me daily since that first night at the cineplex.

But Wednesday was almost over. I sighed again and picked up my phone and typed:
Still no word from D.

I redirected my attention for a moment to my homework until the phone beeped again.

M just stopped by.

Okay, so I'd be lying if my stomach didn't do a mini-somersault. Which I completely ignored. Mom was at some PTA meeting so I wrote back:
Great! Let's do that HOMEWORK. Be there in five.

Before I even had a chance to stand, though, my phone rang. I answered it.

“Girl, if you seriously think I would let you waltz around in the dark alone right now, then you really are stupid.” Service was bad, and Cal sounded like he was calling from the moon, all distorted and echoey.

“Fine. Come get me,” I replied, “but do it fast. I don't know how much time I have before Momzilla gets back.”

“Bow chicka woww-woww!” Calvin mocked porn music into the phone.

“You suck,” I said.

“Um, I am definitely not the one sucking,” Calvin started.

“Argh! Stop! Earmuffs! Lalalalala, not listening!”

Calvin giggled. “I'll see you in a sec.”

I hopped away from my desk and raced to my closet. Sifting through my clothes, I found a pink V-neck T-shirt. I rummaged through my drawer and pulled out my favorite comfy white cotton bra. Then, reconsidering, I threw it back and opted for a black lacey push-up I'd bought back in Connecticut. Not that I had much to push. I had never worn it. In fact, Nicole had bought it for me. According to my former best friend, every woman, at some point in her life, needed the help provided by a good piece of lingerie.

My skinny jeans were dirty, so I grabbed khaki capris—the ones that made my butt look curvier than it actually was—and shut the closet door. Glancing again at the ridiculous lace bra, I wondered if, with the help of good lingerie or not, I would ever be sexy.

As I dressed, I looked in the mirror. My hair was especially unruly today, red curls springing defiantly around my face. I attempted to smooth them down, but they popped back up. Frowning, I pulled my shirt over my head, and then took a banana clip and pulled all of my hair back. The flyaways were still there.

Plus, the bra was horrible and lumpy underneath the shirt.

Sexy. My ass.

Calvin texted his arrival with another porn-themed message:
Good evening, miss. Did you order a pizza? Chicka-bow-bow!

Sighing, I concluded that the outfit would have to suffice.

I ran downstairs, refusing to acknowledge the fact that my heart had picked up some serious speed. I took a deep, calming breath, draped my oversized bag over my shoulder, and then flung the front door open.

And immediately collided with Milo's very broad chest.

“Oh!” I heard myself exclaim as I hit him hard enough to make him lose his balance, and he grabbed on to me for a second. As we teetered there on the landing, I should have been thinking with dismay about the way my bag had exploded off my arm, its contents spilling all over the front steps.

Instead, oddly, an image popped into my mind—big and clear, like a high-def, 3-D movie. I was in it, but it took me a second to recognize myself.

I was in a room I'd never seen before, a room that was filled with flickering candlelight and flowers—gorgeous roses. My hair was down and it looked really great. And when I smiled, I seemed to glow. I'd never thought of myself as pretty, but suddenly I was.

But the weirdest thing was that I was naked, and I wasn't at all self-conscious about my body, even though—holy moly—I turned to see Milo standing right there beside me. He was wearing jeans, but the top button and part of the zipper were unfastened. He didn't have a shirt on, and as he smiled and pulled me into his arms, his skin felt so smooth and cool against mine.

He leaned down to kiss me, but before our lips touched, I returned to sanity, probably because I'd hit the concrete landing with my butt.

Milo had definitely softened the blow, hanging on to me so that I landed in slow motion, but now he'd let go as he attempted to gather up the miscellaneous mixture of junk that had exploded from my bag.

“I'm so sorry,” I stammered as I scrambled to help. “I didn't see you…”

“My fault,” Milo said, even as we both moved to grab my hairbrush, and my elbow made contact with his nose.

“Ow?” Milo said, wincing a little bit. Even his exclamations were polite.

“Oh, no! I'm so sorry!” I said again, both of us crouched down and facing each other. Gum wrappers, lip balm, and old receipts lay scattered around us.

Milo gathered up three tampons and quickly handed them to me. Fan-freaking-tastic. The only thing that would be more embarrassing was if I were to blurt out the fact that, apparently, just seeing him again evoked pornographic fantasies. Although maybe that was Calvin's fault with his
bow-chicka-bow-bows
.

“Thanks,” I said, stuffing the tampons back into my bag. We were silent then, both working on retrieving what proved to be mostly a whole lot of crap that I didn't need.

When I finally stood, he did the same. We were still facing each other. I had never noticed how much taller he was until now…and being taller than me was no easy feat, considering that I measured a
statuesque
five foot eleven. My perfectly petite mother had, of course, come up with the description. It was supposed to be a positive word, but everyone knew it was a synonym for gargantuan. Gigantic. Ginormous. Godzilla-esque.

But next to Milo, I felt normal.

“Thank you,” I said again, and I knew that my face was the hue of a beet.

Milo's smile was concerned.

“I hope I didn't hurt you,” I said, remembering the elbow to the face that I'd given him.

“No! No, you didn't.” Milo frowned. “I thought maybe when you slammed into me, I'd hurt
you
. I was thinking about…something else when I came to the door and…I shouldn't let myself get distracted.” He tapped on his nose and then grinned. “I'm fine, though. See? Still intact.”

I forced a smile and then gave up, instead confessing, “It's been a weird couple of days, and…I'm kinda exhausted.”

He nodded. “Calvin told me about Garrett. What you did. That was pretty amazing, for you to be able to tap into that kind of power.”

But I shook my head, no, even as I said, “Yeah, it was pretty great, but…I'm not sure I want…this. Any of this.”

“I know.” Milo's eyes locked onto mine. As I gazed back at him, there was a moment of silence.

Which was cut short by the honk of Calvin's car horn. “Guys!” he yelled out of his open window. “What the heck are y'all doing?”

Milo was
Dana's
boyfriend. What the heck
was
I doing?

“Sorry!” I said. I flew past Milo and jogged toward the car, opting for the backseat instead of shotgun. I didn't give Milo a chance to open or close the car door for me.

He paused for a moment as if he was considering offering to switch places with me, but then he climbed into the front passenger seat and rolled down his window. I noticed that his T-shirt—green—was snug today, revealing those muscles I'd admired in the police station parking lot as we'd sunbathed beside Lake Puke.

I'd also admired those muscles with both hands in my little fantasy—which was still freaking me out. It was then that I realized—more oddness—that Milo was wearing his hair pulled back in a ponytail, which was exactly how he'd worn it in my imagination or vision or whatever it was. No, it couldn't be a vision because it most definitely wasn't happening at the moment I was seeing it, nor had it ever happened in the past.

I would have remembered that.

Yeah.

I focused on getting my seat belt buckled, unable to keep myself from glancing into the front of the car.

Where Milo reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of smoking-cessation gum. And then he looked back at me as he reached into another pocket and handed me a stick of MintyMintyChew. “Here. I got you the kind that doesn't taste like crap.”

I took the piece, and emotion clogged my throat. Oh my God, was I really going to start to cry because Dana's boyfriend had just given me a piece of gum? I managed to squeeze out a tearless “Thanks” as I quickly stared out the side window.

“So, what's the deal?” Cal said as he backed out of my driveway. “Where's Dana tonight? Are we playing freaky hide-and-seek with her again?” A fly had somehow gotten into the car, and Calvin swatted at it impatiently.

“No,” Milo replied. “Dana's not going to be with us tonight.”

“Is it her day off?” Calvin asked smartly. He backed out of my driveway.

Milo laughed a little, quietly. He spotted the fly and waved it away from his face. “I guess you could say that.”

“What exactly are we doing tonight? Isn't Dana in charge of our little army?”

Milo nodded. “She is.” He scratched at the nape of his neck, where his hair was gathered loosely. I'd never liked the whole dude-in-a-ponytail look, but somehow he made it look good. “But we have an errand to run that doesn't require her presence.”

Calvin drove purposely slowly down the street. “So what are we doing? And where are we going?” He glanced at me in his rearview mirror. “Or are we going to rely on Skylar's instincts again to determine that? And I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that the girl is tired after her Captain America impersonation today.”

“We will not be tapping into Sky's unconscious this evening,” Milo told us both. But then he dropped a bomb. “We're going back to Harrisburg.”

“Oh,
hay
-ell no!” Cal immediately exclaimed.

“Why do we have to go there?” I said at the same time, leaning forward between the two front seats. The last thing I wanted to do right now was spend another hour or two with creepy drug addicts—
especially
if Dana wasn't around to protect us. I spotted the fly on the back of Milo's T-shirt, and I brushed my hand quickly against his shoulder.

The fly lifted off Milo and flew out of the open window as I heard Milo say from the front seat,
I
won't let anything happen to you
.

I looked at him. “How can you know that?”

Milo turned around, surprised. “Sorry?”

“You said you wouldn't let anything happen to us. But without prescient powers, how can you be so absolute? I mean, I know you'll certainly try to keep us safe, but…”

It was Calvin's turn to look surprised. “Sky, he didn't say that. He didn't say anything.”

I shook my head. “Yeah, he did. You did,” I said to Milo, “just now. I heard you, clear as day.”

Milo stared at me, his eyes solemn. I didn't pull away when he placed a fingertip on my knee and told me, “I didn't open my mouth.”
Is
she
really
able
to
do
that?

“Do what?” I said, and then my mouth dropped. “Whoa.
Whoa
.”

You
can
hear
me?
And Milo pursed his lips a little bit, as if to prove that the words weren't escaping from his mouth.

“Yes…?” I breathed.

Milo let out a triumphant sound, similar to a laugh but louder, and I looked at him with my eyebrows furrowed.

You're reading my mind
, he told me, again without speaking the words aloud.

“Oh my God!” I looked down at his finger, still lingering on my knee, and then I looked back up into Milo's eyes, and then back at my knee, his finger, his eyes—over and over again. And I made the connection. Literally.
I
can
hear
your
thoughts
when
we
touch
, I realized.
Can
you
hear
me
?
I added silently, and Milo whooped and pulled his hand away to dance a bit in his seat.

“I can hear you, Skylar!” he yelled. “I most certainly can!”

“All right, seriously? I'm beyond lost,” Calvin warned. “Like, maybe I should be skipping the trip to Harrisburg and just bring y'all to the hospital with the padded room instead.”

I laughed. That was
incredible
. And it was obvious that Milo thought so too. If he'd tried to smile any wider, his jawbone probably would have broken.

“Wait,” I said. “Let's try it again.” I held my hand up, and Milo did the same. Our palms touched, and I laughed at how the ends of my fingertips barely made it to his bottom knuckles. I was that much smaller.
Like
baseball
mitts
.

Milo laughed. “I'm not really a big sports guy,” he said aloud, “but it's a good metaphor.”

I pulled my hand away and squealed. “Holy mackerel!”

Calvin looked positively fed up. “Whatever it is y'all are smoking, please don't offer me any, 'cause it's making you both ape-shit crazy.”