Pawn (Nightmares Trilogy #1) (18 page)

“Any luck?” I asked, not bothering to
say hello.

Devon sighed. “Nah. All of this
research is about Greek mythology. Unless your father is in Athens,
and living thousands of years in the past, it’s useless.
You?”

“Nada.” Pause. “I called Kannon,” I
added to change the subject.

“And?” she prompted.

“Didn’t answer. I figured you were
right, though. I should at least try and explain why I jumped down
his throat.”

“Good. Meeting him was the best thing
that has happened to you in a while. I fully support the two of you
getting to know each other.”

“Really?” I asked doubtfully.
“Why?”

“A, he is hot. B, he is weird - but,
as it turns out, weird in the same way you are, which gives you
something in common. C, the look on Jamieson Wentworth’s face when
she finds out will be worth every mean thing she has ever said
about you. Revenge is sweet,” Devon crowed.

“I like to think I’m a better person
than that,” I said dryly.

“You might be. I’m not.”

“Whatever. He probably won’t even call
me back,” I mused.

“You know what you need?” Devon asked
and I could imagine her eyes lighting up with some brilliant
idea.

“What?” I replied
suspiciously. When Devon asked,
“
You know what you need?”
I
typically ended up
with streaky highlights, getting thrown into a pool fully clothed,
or eating an entire blueberry pie in one sitting.

“A shopping trip!” she
exclaimed.

Well, that was unexpected. However,
the mall held little risk, except to my wallet.

“We’ve kinda hit a dead end in the dad
search department. I say we wait a couple of days to see if we hear
back from any of the people on the list. If not, we can go talk to
the old guy at the Moonlight. In the meantime, though, we do have
prom to think about. That means we need to go dress
shopping.

Prom, the quintessential rite of
passage for every high school senior. For Devon and Elizabeth, ours
wouldn’t be the first they’d attend. Both had accompanied one boy
or another over the past four years, but our senior prom would be a
first for me. I won’t lie and say I wasn’t looking forward to it.
Although, with the sudden influx of uncertainties in my life, the
allure of wearing a beautiful dress and having my hair done had
worn off slightly

“Okay,” I slowly agreed. “Why
not?”

“I’ll be there in an hour.” With that,
Devon clicked off.

An hour and a half later, Devon’s
Chevy idled in the driveway, the latest overplayed song blasting
from the radio. Elizabeth sat in the back, singing at the top of
her lungs. My mother had been less than thrilled when I told her
about the shopping trip, but my promise to bring dinner home so we
wouldn’t have to go out propitiated her.

“Took you long enough,” Devon chided
over the blaring music.

Without thinking, I turned the dial
until the words were barely audible. “Sorry, Mom wanted a rundown
of all the stores we planned on going to,” I replied, only
exaggerating slightly. She had asked who I was going with, what
time we’d be home, which mall, and what I planned on buying. “Hey,
Liz,” I called, waving at her in the review mirror.

Elizabeth had her compact out and was
reapplying a thick layer of the Dr. Pepper lip gloss she loved so
much. “Missed you last night,” she said, her words garbled slightly
as she attempted to speak without moving her lips.

“What was last night?” I
asked.

“Party in the Vines,” she replied,
snapping the compact shut. “I texted you.” The Vines was one of the
many cookie cutter developments in Westwood. Since the houses were
so close together, the cops usually broke up parties before they
became interesting.

I checked my phone. No texts from
Elizabeth. “Sorry, must not have gone through.”

“You didn’t miss much,” Elizabeth
said.

Devon floored the accelerator, peeling
out of the drive. I grabbed for the door handle to steady
myself.

“Where’s Mandy?” I asked
Devon.

“Who cares?” Devon mumbled.

“I called her,” Elizabeth chimed in,
scooting to the edge of the back seat to be part of the
conversation. “She’s all mopey because Kevin didn’t talk to her
last night.”

I made a mental note to call Mandy
when I returned home. She had sent me several messages earlier that
morning, but I’d ignored them in light of everything else going on.
I really needed to be a better friend to her.

“Poor Mandy,” I said.

“Don’t feel too badly for her. I think
she had a pretty good time with some hottie from St. Paul’s,”
Elizabeth replied.

At the mention of Kannon’s school, my
stomach tightened. “Were a lot of St. Paul’s boys there?” I asked,
failing to sound nonchalant. Considering the hour travel time, it
always amazed me how often they crashed parties in
Westwood.

“Not yours,” Elizabeth responded,
reading between the lines.

Before I could make up some other
reason for the inquiry, Devon changed the subject. “So, I figured
we should start looking for prom dresses.”

I shot her a grateful
smile.

“Oh, Eel, who are you going to go
with?” Elizabeth cooed.

Great, my father was missing, my
dreams were coming true – but not in the way everyone hoped for –
and now I needed to worry about finding a prom date.

“I don’t know. Maybe we could just go
together,” I said. “The four of us are all single now.” I turned to
face Devon. “We are all still single, right?”

To my dismay, guilt filled Devon’s
features. Either she’d already forgiven Rick, or was about
to.

“Dev, really? Come on. There are a
million guys who would love to date you. Why do you keep taking
that loser back? For such a smart girl, you are really stupid
sometimes,” I said.

“I haven’t taken him back,” she
protested. “We are having dinner this week. Just to talk,
though.”

An uncomfortable silence settled over
the car then. I rarely spoke up about my feelings regarding Rick,
save our requisite bashing sessions after one of his many
screw-ups. There wasn’t a point. Trying to talk Devon out of dating
Rick was about as productive as telling a two-year-old that the
Easter Bunny wasn’t real; neither one was willing to give up the
illusion.

I think my outburst surprised all
three of us. Devon managed to look even guiltier, like she’d
disappointed me. And Elizabeth scooted back in her seat, suddenly
finding her cuticles incredibly interesting.

“I’m sorry, Devon,” I told her after a
couple long minutes. “I just hate how unhappy he makes
you.”

“Don’t apologize. You’re right.” She
wouldn’t look at me, though, making me regret my rant. No, I
decided. I don’t regret it. Devon needed to hear it from someone,
and if her best friend couldn’t tell her, then who
could?

My cell buzzed in my purse as we made
our way to the mall entrance. I figured it was my mother checking
to make sure we’d made it to the mall without encountering any
nefarious people. Honestly, I had no idea what she was so worried
about. It was the middle of the day and Westwood wasn’t exactly a
hotbed of criminal activity. I mentally prepared myself to launch
into the list of reasons Mom needed to back off and start trusting
me. When I saw the display, though, my blood froze in my veins. My
mother wasn’t the caller. Jamieson Wentworth was.

I swore under my breath.

“What’s wrong?” Elizabeth
asked.

“Nothing,” I muttered, sending
Jamieson to voice mail. “Jamieson is calling to warn me off her
boyfriend, again.”

“Boyfriend? That Kannon guy is her
boyfriend?” Elizabeth asked, confused.

“No, but apparently she hasn’t gotten
the memo. She thinks she has some claim to him,” I told her,
shoving the phone into the bottom of my purse.

“You should ask him to our prom,”
Elizabeth said decisively. “That would really ruffle Jamieson’s
panties.”

Devon snorted. “Now that is a good
idea.”

“I barely know him,” I
mumbled.
And I doubt he wants to go to the
prom with a whack job,
I added silently.
Elizabeth’s suggestion sent my imagination into overdrive, however.
Before I could stop myself, I was picturing Kannon in a tux with a
red rose boutonniere and me standing beside him in a gown that
perfectly matched the green of his irises.

I shook my head to clear the
ridiculous fantasy.
First things
first,
I reminded myself.
Get Kannon to call you back.

My friends and I traipsed from one
department store to the next. We tried on gowns that ranged from
too expensive to overly revealing. We took pictures with our camera
phones so we could analyze them later.

While Elizabeth was in the dressing
room at Nordstrom, Devon pulled me aside. “So, I did a little more
internet research before I came to get you. That’s why I was late,”
she began. I grinned in spite of myself. Of course she had. “On
NDEs and electromagnetic sensitivity,” she continued. “I didn’t
find any credible sources, but there are some people out there who
believe that dying and coming back can alter a person’s brain
functions.”

Great, I have brain
damage.

“One guy in Idaho, or some other
fly-over state, believes that certain people who have had an NDE
can predict the future. Like they see it in their
dreams.”

My palms immediately went
clammy. The dress hanger in my hands felt like butter, slippery and
hard to hold. Devon’s words struck a chord, vibrating in my
mind.
People who have had an NDE can
predict the future…they see it in their dreams.

Were all of my freakish quirks
related? Did Kannon really dream our meeting before it happened?
Ten days ago I would have said no way. Now, I clung to the hope
that Devon’s research was right, a concrete explanation for every
abnormal facet of my otherwise normal life.

“Maybe Kannon’s déjà vu thing isn’t so
farfetched.” Devon was still talking, oblivious to my inner
turmoil. “Have you had any dreams came true?”

The confirmation was on the tip of my
tongue. The truth that I had been withholding was ready to ride out
on a wave of relief.

“Is this dress amazing, or what?”
Elizabeth asked, startling both Devon and me. The dress hanger
slipped through my fingers, becoming a puddle of taffeta and lace
on the plush carpet.

Elizabeth twirled in front of a
tri-fold mirror, blonde hair spilling down her back like a shimmery
curtain, blood-red silk cascading from thin straps to pool around
her ankles.

“You look great,” I managed,
swallowing thickly.

Elizabeth focused on Devon and turned
her thumbs up, then down, seeking a unanimous vote. Devon gave the
gown a thumbs up.

“It’s settled. We have a winner,”
Elizabeth declared, clapping her hands excitedly. She headed into
the dressing room to change. She paused with one hand on the
doorknob. “What’s with the serious faces? We’re prom dress
shopping; it’s not life or death.”

If only you knew,
I thought.

Devon agreed to stop at Amy’s Thai on
the way home so I could pick up dinner for Mom and me. I hadn’t
checked my phone since Jamieson’s call, but assumed if Mom’s plans
for the evening had changed she would have called one of my friends
when I didn’t answer.

With an assortment of primary-colored
curry in hand, I unlocked my front door. Mom was still sitting at
the kitchen table, laptop open, yellow legal pads scattered. I set
up two TV trays in the living room and fixed us each a glass of
water, since that was the only unexpired beverage in the house. We
ate in companionable silence. My mother’s mind focused on the trial
she was working on and mine cycled through what Devon had told me
at Nordstrom.

“Oh, I almost forgot. Jamieson
Wentworth called,” Mom said as I rose to put our dishes in the
sink.

I froze, one empty plate perched in
each hand. “What did she want?” I asked, working hard to sound only
mildly interested. Calling my cell phone to bitch me out was one
thing; calling my house and talking to my mother was
another.

“Not sure. She called while I was in
the shower. I heard the phone ring and checked the answering
machine, but she didn’t leave a message. But it was the Wentworths’
number on caller ID,” Mom explained.

“Okay, thanks,” I told her, hurrying
to the kitchen so she wouldn’t hear my heart beating a frantic
rhythm in my chest.

“You aren’t friends with her again,
are you?” my mother called after me. “That girl is trouble, Endora
Lee.”

Tell me about
it.

“No, Mom,” I told her. “It’s
probably something to do with lacrosse.”
Or the fact we are obsessed with the same boy,
I added silently.