Paranormal Realities Box Set (3 page)

He’s so fine he’s divine. The familiar
thought bounced around all sides of my brain like an echo in the mountains.

Exactly where had I seen him before? I
couldn't place him and this freaked me out. Usually the holes in my memory had something
to do with “the bridge.” I deliberately relaxed my tightly clamped jaw and
forced the thought away.

The guy fixed me with a dark-eyed stare
that reflected not a hint of friendliness. Just as I would have walked away and
into the Admin entrance, he strode toward me. He was so tall it took only three
long steps.

“Do I know you?” I asked.

The grim line of his lips tilted up at
one end and he snorted a half a laugh. “My identity is not required,” he said.

His words, spoken in a husky baritone and
an odd accent, sent shivers rippling through me. Why was I so affected?

Leaning in, he grabbed my upper arm. A
tingling radiated from where he gripped me just below the bullet wound, now
just a scar. Not a tingling like a thrill but from some memory of a time when
this guy had touched me before. Why couldn't I bring the memory to the surface?

“The Dorchans. Direct me to their
location,” he demanded.

“The Dork-who? Are you calling me a
dork?” Who did he think he was?

“You have but to answer honest inquiry
and you would be troubled no further,” he added.

“You’re cracked.” I jerked my arm against
his pinching grip but I failed to get loose.

“They are not on this side of the
portal?” he asked. Something I couldn’t interpret passed over his face. “Their
coming may yet be prevented?”

“Let go of me or I’ll make you eat your
tongue for breakfast,” I said between gritted teeth.

Seeming to notice for the first time how
hard he was holding my arm, his eyes softened and he relaxed his hand, allowing
me to pull away.

“Apologies,” he said with sincerity. His
navy blue eyes met mine.

As I stared into those eyes, another wave
of déjà vu punched me in the stomach, taking my breath away. After a few
seconds, I could finally drag in a gasp of air and speak.

“I do know you…don’t I?”

He didn't answer. Instead, his head
lowered and he stared at the ground as if he found my feet fascinating.

Turning on one heel I walked with wobbly
legs into the counselor’s office.

* * * * *

Naturally, I had to stay
after science class to get the extra homework for the two weeks I’d missed. Mr.
Hutson had been nice but I didn’t want any extra tutoring from him. He
remembered the old me, the one who cared about flunking a class.

Since it had taken at least ten minutes
for Mr. Hutson to do his pity routine, I hoped I would avoid seeing Petra.
She’d tried to make eye contact with me throughout class from her seat three
rows away. She’d even passed me a note, which of course I didn’t read. But as I
left the classroom there she was: Petra Walker all five feet two, eyes of blue,
with porcelain white skin and black hair. She resembled the Betty Boop doll I’d
seen in my great-grandmother’s chest of memorabilia.

“I might as well be living in North
Korea,” Petra said.

“Why?” I asked, helpless to stop myself.

Linking her arm through mine, she began
walking with me down the corridor.

“Because my life sucks. Like big time,”
she said. “I might as well be living in a dictatorship ruled by a funny looking,
crazy, old guy. What am I saying? My dad is Kim Jong Il. The tyrant refuses to
buy me an iPod. I guess I’ll have to ‘inherit’ it from Sarah just like
everything else.”

Petra was notorious for the hand-me-downs
she got from her sister. The uniform she wore today was a little too big and a
little too worn to be new. Her only luxury was the silver charm bracelet she
proudly wore stuffed almost full with cute symbols of every trip and mile
marker in her young life.

“So there’s no middle ground?" I
laughed. "No iPod equals living in a communist hellhole.”

“Well, my life sucks in other ways too,”
she said. “For example, my best friend hasn’t been talking to me.”

The smile slipped off my face and I
tugged my arm from hers. “Back off, Petra and just leave me alone.”

“Jeeze, what’s up your butt?” she asked.
“Did you take a bitch enema today?”

This made me laugh again. Petra made it
impossible to be teenage angsty for long.

“You’re just gonna have to learn that you
can’t get rid of me, Kizzy. You might as well stop trying,” Petra said.

We reached my locker and Petra stopped.
Who knows who her sources were, but someone plugged Petra into all the
information in the school. She knew everything about everyone.

“I suppose you know the combination too.”
I nodded toward my locker.

“I suppose I do, but I’ll let you do the
honors.”

Shaking my head, I slid the dial of the
lock through the required numbers and opened the metal door. Tossing the
science text inside, along with the file folder of homework, I rummaged for the
English text I’d need for my next class. Then swinging the metal door of the
locker shut with a clang, I turned and saw that odd boy—the one who’d
freaked me out—walking in our direction.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

He passed us, but made no indication he
recognized me.

“Isn’t he magnificent?” Petra gushed.
“His name is Rom Calixo. He’s some kind of foreign exchange student.”

As if he’d heard her, Rom turned and
glanced back at us, black brows arching, before he turned and continued away.

“He has the most dreamy accent,” Petra
said.

“It sounds strange. Kind of Italian but
kind of not,” I commented.

“Maybe he has foreign accent syndrome. I
saw that on the news,” Petra said. “There were these two women. One sounded
like a cross between German and French and the other sorta Pakistani.”

“I doubt it. That must be rare,” I said.
“Don’t you think his lips are too hard?” Petra had always had a thing about
lips.

“But I bet they’d look really good all
over me.” Petra pouted and made a kissy noise.

Yeah, those cruel lips would look really
good on me too. The thought startled me with guilt. Funny. Normally, I could
salivate over a guy as much as anyone. Well, maybe not as much as Petra.

“Not that I would let that Rom guy
actually touch me," Petra said. "I’m true to my Chase.”

“Chase the cheater?” I asked. “You’re
still going out with him?” We began walking toward my English class. I had
about two minutes to get there, on the other side of the building.

“Yes, I’m still going out with him,
except that he doesn’t know it yet. I’m torturing him a little longer before I
forgive him for the Lashonda episode.”

I personally didn’t know what Petra saw
in that tall, lanky stalk of corn. Plus, cheating would have been the end for
me.

“Chase is not so smart,” she said. “ But
he’s pretty.”

“If you say so.”

We reached the center hub of the school
and Petra pointed. “Omigod, look at that."

The object of her exclamation lounged
against vending machines. Billy Broadrick, in all his oily quarterback glory. With
light mocha skin and bluish hazel eyes, Billy would have been in the hot column
of my book if it weren’t for his horrid personality. Totally killed his
hotness. But it wasn’t Billy alone that had caused Petra’s shock. Juliette, my
stepsister, was plastered against Billy with her lips in an open mouth kiss
against his. Sick. And not in the cool sick way but in the “I’m gonna vomit”
way.

“For never was a story of more gag than
this of Juliette and her douchebag,” I said, intentionally mangling Shakespeare.

“When did they start dating?” Petra
asked.

Wow. I finally knew something before she
did.

“Never mind.” Petra waved her hand. “I
don’t want to think about them together. Eww.”

“What’s this about a spelunk tonight?” We
turned down the second hall. I might just make English on time.

“It’s gonna be excellent. Ghosts galore
they say. Are you coming?”

“I don’t know. Maybe,” I hedged. “Who’ll
be there?”

“The usual mc² suspects: Senji,
Franky, me—”

Our friend Senji had dubbed our
spelunking group after the Einstein theory of relativity equation. Personally,
I thought the name sucked.

“And Chase. I’m sure Chase will be
there,” I teased.

“Of course my big, handsome surfer dude
will be there. He—Oh no she didn’t.”

Swiveling my head in the direction of
Petra’s glare, I spotted the source of her outrage: Chase heading our way with
one arm wrapped around some African American cheerleader. Last year, Chase
hadn’t been popular enough to bag a cheerleader. But since then he seemed to
have filled out some. He wasn’t the lanky nerd anymore but the sun kissed
surfer dude Petra had dubbed him.

“Excuse me Kizzy,” Petra said. “I’m gonna
have to go now and snatch the weave off the head of that girl with her hands on
my guy.”

“Okay,” I called before sprinting the
remaining fifty yards to the English classroom. As I moved, I heard an outraged
scream erupt behind me, followed by scuffling.

Just when my hand reached to grasp the
door handle, another hand with elegantly long fingers snaked around and got
there before me.

“Service offered,” Rom's said before he
pulled the door wide for me to pass inside. Shit. Of course, that foreign
exchange student guy just had to be in my English class.

Escaping from home that night proved far
from easy. I had tried the “you let Juliette go out on a school night” gambit.
Hadn’t worked. Mom responded with the “you have homework young lady” block.
Storming up to my room, I complained as loudly and obnoxiously as I could
manage so as to avoid Mom coming to my room while I “studied”.

After locking the door, I changed clothes
into black jeans, t-shirt and windbreaker. Red sneakers were my only concession
to color. I climbed out of the window, careful not to slip on the slate tiles
of the roof that served as an overhang for the front door of our Victorian.
From this position I made the short leap to a branch on the nearby Japanese
maple and then shimmied down the trunk before landing at street level.

Without much conscious thought, I ran
toward the Old Candler Hospital bordering Forsyth Park, about five blocks away.
The slight sulfur smell from the paper plant across the river permeated the
city air. Overhead the Spanish moss hung like tinsel from the live oak trees
arched in a canopy over our street. Fog meant no visible stars and or moon and
so the night was unusually dark. It must have been completely overcast. The
street lamps cast only pockets of light onto the surface of my path.

Excitement coursed through me as I
rounding the block’s corner and the west side of the hospital appeared. The spelunking
group consisting of Petra, Chase, Franky and Senji loitered near the gate to
the hospital along with one more person…Rom.

“What’s he doing here?” I demanded, a
little out of breath as I reached them.

“Our first meeting was not fortuitous.”
Rom’s mouth curled in that half-smile half-snarl thing that he did so
gorgeously.

An understatement. The guy lacked
boundaries. Asking about some—What were the names again? Dor-something.

“What’s the big deal? He wants to join us.”
Senji tossed his head. Skinny and on the shortish side, Senji Matsuki wore
glasses with thick neon green frames. His hair was ultra straight and black
courtesy of his Japanese dad, with a big swath of bang that had a tendency to
hang in his almond shaped eyes most of the time. “Besides, you two could be
twins.”

Of course Senji referred to the fact that
Rom had dressed in an outfit almost identical to mine. Only on Rom it seemed
cool and dashing. My look? I’m not sure what you’d call it.

“Whatever.” Turning to the wrought iron
gate with an exaggerated huff, I pulled canvas gloves from the pockets of my
windbreaker and slipped them on.

The gate was only about five feet in
height and intended to be more decorative than protective. Wedging my foot
between the vertical bars of the gate, I grasped the top, took a hop and began
to pull myself up. Without warning, I felt hands on my hips, lifting me.

“WTF?” I said, startled into falling back
against a tall form of iron muscle. Powerful arms enfolded me. Over my shoulder
there was Rom. What teen had the build of a trained soldier?

“Hey whacko.” I jerked away from him. “I
don’t need your help.”

“Apologies,” he answered, but his smirk
belied his words.

Free of his interference, I hopped into a
sitting position on top of the gate and then swung my legs to the other side
before jumping down. Running head long toward the building, my adrenaline
surged. Now I knew why I’d come.