Paranormal Realities Box Set (2 page)

“Why do we not just execute her,” the
divine one said. He turned his head to look at me and I snapped my eyes shut.
If they knew I was awake they might decide to execute me right now.

“No,” said the woman. “The Gods have not
revealed what consequences might beset this world if her death was upon us.”

“I do not see the situation could yet
worsen,” said the young man. “The boy’s death is already here.”

The boy?

”Adam,” I screamed, struggling to sit up.

“Sedate her again,” I heard the female
voice shout. “With quickness,” she ordered as I struggled.

My eyes darted around me but I was blind
to anything but the angry navy blue eyes of the young man holding me down.

I felt a pinch in my arm.

My lids drifted shut but I fought to stay
conscious aided by the continuing burning of the gun shot wounds. That pain was
nothing compared to the soul-destroying agony attached to my thoughts of Adam.
These strangers
had better hope I did die
, I thought. Because if they’d killed Adam I
wouldn’t stop until I killed them.

September 25th

The family Volvo inched forward in the
line of cars. The only storm cloud in the vivid blue sky hung over the school
building, a rectangular gray-brick structure that resembled a prison.

Twisting the chain around my neck, my
fingers slid down to the metal disc at the end and traced its surface. From the
driver’s seat Mom glanced my way. My hand fell to my lap on top of my
thirty-pound boulder of a backpack.

A kid who seemed sort of familiar walked
past my passenger window. My eyes met his through the glass. A derisive curl
appeared in his lip. Great. Recovering from my injuries had taken some time so
my entry into the sophomore class had been delayed by two weeks. Getting a late
start on the school year would have been difficult enough without everyone seeing
my mommy drop me off.

Another beautiful day at Double Dick
High.

“Kathleen Elizabeth Taylor!” Mom darted a
glare at me. Her lips compressed into a Barbie pink line.

Oops. I’d said that out loud.

“What?“ I asked pretending to be
unaffected by her disapproval. "Everyone calls it Double Dick even the
teachers.”

“I doubt that.”

“All right. Richard Johnson Academy.”

“That’s better.” Mom pulled the car to a
stop. She reached into her purse and pulled out an item. “Here,” she said
thrusting out an iPhone wrapped in a cherry red rubber jacket.

“What’s this?” All of a sudden she was
getting all gifty?

“I know it’s got to be difficult starting
school a couple of weeks late this year. I thought this would help.” A slight
tremor shook Mom’s smile and she barely held back tears. “I want you to be able
to text your friends.”

Translation: “I want you to be a normal
teen again.”

Normal teen? What "normal" teen
had a father sitting in jail awaiting trial? Normal teenhood didn't exactly
result from having a father try to kill you.

Before "the bridge", maybe I’d
been a normal teen. Mom had always said I should have been born on the Fourth
of July because I was like a firecracker, always going off. I'd had a habit of
darting in one direction or another, with this activity or that project. Even
my hair, a garish red, exploded out of my head in a riot of curls if I didn’t
studiously flatten it with the strongest flat iron money could buy.

When my parent's fights had started
sounding like the worst of Dr. Phil, I’d begun, not only to iron out my hair,
but also to iron out my personality. I'd made myself the best teen anyone could
hope for. But it was too late. The “d” word—divorce—happened
anyway.

Now I let my hair explode again. What did
I have to lose?

Mom was still talking, saying things I
didn’t hear. She finished with, “Just don’t text in class, honey.”

“Okay,” I said taking the phone out of
her hand. I pushed it into the pocket of the backpack. Not texting would be an
easy promise to keep since none of the losers I used to call friends had kept
in touch ... except Petra. But I wouldn’t text even her. Better to keep a
distance.

“Thanks Mom. I wondered how I was going
to text naked photos of myself to all the boys.”

“Kizzy!” Mom’s eyebrows rose almost to
her scalp line.

“What? Sexting is all the rage,” I said
in a monotone. “Gotta fit in somehow.”

“Omigod.” Mom chuckled. “Give it back.”

Mom pulled to a stop behind another car
at the outer perimeter of the school grounds, close enough to make an escape. Pulling
the handle on the car door, it swung open and I hopped out onto the sidewalk.

The passenger side window lowered with an
electronic whir. “If all else fails, you’re not alone," Mom said.
"Remember, Juliette is here too.”

“Yeah,” I said with false brightness. My
stepsister, Juliette, the Stepford sibling. We didn’t exactly run in the same
circles at this point.

“Just stay away from Petra," Mom
said. "That girl is always getting you into trouble.”

It was probably the other way around, but
Mom didn’t need to know that. Did I see a spot of reverse psychology in my
mother’s eyes? Nevertheless, it worked. A few minutes ago I had zero interest
in hanging with Petra. Now the idea didn’t seem like total dung.

Turning, I walked away and Mom shouted,
“I’ll pick you up after school.”

Wonderful. Just call me social pariah.

Now for the harder part. I had to walk
into the building. Appropriately clad in the Johnson Academy uniform,
consisting of green and blue plaid skirt paired with white blouse, I sported
inappropriate streaks of purple through my wildly short red curls. The streaks
weren’t regulation but would probably pass.

I tied a blue sweater around my waist and
hoisted the backpack over an arm before squaring shoulders to move forward.

I’m a badass. Don’t mess with me. I’m a
bad ass. Don’t mess with me.
Walking with the chant repeating in my head, I hoped the interior monologue
would give me the proper air as I made my way to the building through a throng
of unrecognizable faces.

The names of the minors involved in
"the bridge" incident had been kept out of our local paper and the
national news as well. So I clutched at the tiny, glimmering possibility that
the entire school didn’t know what happened to me. Didn’t know about how I’d
gotten my brother killed.

Just outside the entrance, a group of
gigglers congregated. With their freshly pressed shirts and shiny shoes, they
were probably freshmen. Finally, someone recognizable appeared: Franky Abbot.

He hadn’t grown since I’d seen him last.
Still wraithlike, Franky looked a lot like me with his spiky red hair, light
blue eyes and pale skin. At least I wasn’t spotted all over with freckles like
he was. Franky beamed like a neon sign proclaiming, “I’m a geek. Please beat me
up.” Of course, at this moment someone was taking up the offer.

Quinn O’Neil was one of the bullies at
this fine academy. Quinn the jarhead. Usually you didn’t see him without Billy
Broadrick, but this morning Billy was nowhere in sight. Instead a pack of
newbies surrounded Quinn. Hmmm. Maybe he was branching out on his own this year
to become the Capo of his own mafia family of bullying punks.

Quinn and his henchmen stood blocking
Franky as they laughed. The bullies had a high old time while Franky’s face
contorted with obvious misery. One of the newbies gave Franky a shove and the
kid flew back into a wall of other newbies. This brought another chorus of
roaring laughter. Why did these dopes always think their behavior was so
amusing?

Closing in on the tableau, I just wanted
to avoid them and the unwanted attention. With the bullies’ focus centered on
their prey, my skirting the edges of the group to enter the building would be
easy. Head down. Get past them, I told myself. But a small figure with chestnut
hair and ordinary brown eyes filled my memory. Unlike Franky, Adam had had only
a few freckles spattered across the bridge of his upturned nose.

Passing the group, I estimated only three
more strides to the building entrance.

My hand reached for the door's handle.

Adam had been so much smaller than Franky
, I thought. Adam, with his baby-toothed
grin and silly chuckle that sounded more like a sheep bleating…and Adam lying
crumpled on the banks of the river. That last memory was a lie, however. Adam’s
body had never been found. The river swept him away, they'd said.

“Hey.” Almost involuntarily, I turned
instead of walking through the open door. “Quinn, are you still stalking
Franky?” My words seemed to come from some distant universe, far from myself.

The herd of bullies turned as one in my
direction and gaped in disbelief. The only one out of all of us who seemed
pleased was Franky. He gawked at me with a toothy grin.

“Huh?” Quinn replied. Never known for his
intellect, he just couldn’t keep up.

“Can’t you get that crush under control?”
I continued. “When will you understand Franky just doesn’t return your
affections?”

“Yeah. I don’t love you,” Franky
interjected.

A red blush crept up Quinn’s neck and
over his face. He glanced from side to side taking in the reaction of his gang.
Their expressions challenged him to respond.

“I thought you killed yourself during the
summer," Quinn said to me.

Good serve. I’d have been aced if I
hadn’t steeled myself for something like that.

“No, as you can see I didn’t—”

Quinn laughed heartily.

“I killed somebody else. Ripped out his
jugular.” I leaned toward him before chomping my teeth together in a bite
motion. That cut off his laugh.

“No you didn’t,” he said, but his tone
seemed to put a question mark on the end. “You’d be in jail.”

Quinn’s mind had progressed to
rudimentary reasoning. Impressive.

“They all said I just snapped, so I
wasn’t guilty because of temporary insanity.” I kept my face perfectly still
and serious, my voice in a monotone. The question was whether Quinn would be
stupid enough to buy it.

He laughed one last huff and turned to
his posse. “Come on guys. We gotta go to class.”

They ambled away. Game, set and match.

“Thanks, Kizzy.” Franky beamed at me.
“It’s great to have you back at school.”

“Yeah.” I turned and headed into the
building.

 
Franky nipped at my heels. “The summer wasn’t the same
without you.”

I walked on. Inside the building, the
metal clattering of the locker doors lining the corridor sang around me in a
staccato beat.

“Are you doing okay now?” Franky asked,
still keeping up with me. “I woulda called but I didn’t know...”

My pace increased.

“Are you coming to the spelunk tonight?”
Franky asked

Spelunking in abandoned buildings,
tunnels and other dangerous places, hadn’t been high on my agenda since I’d
entered the hair-ironing phase. That phase was over now. Maybe going back to
spelunking would be fun. But that would mean interacting with a bunch of my
former friends.

“Dunno,” I muttered.

“We’re going someplace really sick,"
he said.

Not wanting to invite more friendly-friendly
stuff, I didn’t respond.

“The old hospital downtown,” Franky
continued. “We’re going to try to find the morgue in the tunnel between the
building and the park.”

I remained silent while continuing to
move down the main hall, but Franky kept talking. “It’s supposed to be haunted
by yellow fever victims.”

Would this kid not take a silent hint?

“Hundreds of dead bodies were carried
through the tunnels to the park at night during the late 1800s. So they could
be buried in secret in mass graves and the population wouldn’t panic.”

Moving faster, I finally put some
distance between us.

“Okay. See ya later," Franky called
after me.

The main corridor gave way to five
off-shooting halls, like spokes off a wheel hub. I headed down the first one
toward the guidance counselor’s office to get my class schedule. The throng of
kids flitted around me like a video in fast forward. Only I moved in slow mo. I
was disoriented for a moment but then the musty sweaty sock smell permeating
the building comforted me a little.

The first bell of the morning rang.
Fantastic. My lateness perfected the crap start to this day.

 
On reaching the Administration offices at the end of the
hall, a guy leaning against the corner locker caught my eye. Maybe his
stillness drew my attention. Or perhaps his tall, black haired gorgeousness was
the magnet. He wore the typical school uniform consisting of dark blue jacket
with green trim over white dress shirt and khaki pants. But while his uniform
was exactly like all the other boys in the school, somehow the clothes didn’t
fit him. No, that wasn’t right. They fit his broad shoulders and the gorgeous
rest of him just fine but they didn’t seem “appropriate” on him. His features
might be too angular and sharp to be a traditional “hottie” but to me he was
divine.