Pawn (Nightmares Trilogy #1) (20 page)

“Easy for you to say;
everyone loves you,”
Mandy’s voice rang in
my head, accompanied by an image of her face scrunched with an
uncharacteristic anger.

“Easy for you to say; everyone loves
you.” This time her voice wasn’t in my head. And when my vision
cleared, I saw the same spiteful expression on her face. Mandy
shrugged my hand off of her shoulder and stalked off through the
throng of students.

“What’s up her butt?” Cooper Byrd
asked, coming over and slinging an arm across my
shoulders.

“She had a bad weekend,” I
said, quick to defend Mandy. I knew she hadn’t meant anything by
her
comment; she was really hurt over the
way
Kevin was treating her.

Letting Cooper guide me
away from our friends, I caught Devon’s eye and
she
waved goodbye. Cooper was in my
homeroom, and he kept his arm around me
as
we made our way to the classroom
. Under
normal circumstances I wouldn’t have minded his touch, but today I
was particularly grateful for it. I was still a little unsteady and
leaned on him like a crutch.

The morning was uneventful. I attended
all of my classes, ate lunch with Devon and our other friends, and
managed to only think about Kannon and our planned meeting every
other minute.

****

“Are you going to talk to the old guy
while you’re at the diner?” Devon whispered, taking a seat next to
me at our usual lunch table.

I glanced around the table,
but no one was paying attention to us. Everyone else seemed
engrossed in their own conversations and the
questionable
pizza the cafeteria was
serving.

“I’ll try,” I said. “But I don’t want
to talk to him in front of Kannon.”

We had spent calculus passing notes
back and forth. During our exchanges, I filled her in on my
conversation with Kannon and our plans to have dinner together that
night. She was almost as anxious as I was to hear what he had to
say.

“I totally wish I could be a fly on
the Moonlight’s wall,” she said wistfully. “You have to call me as
soon as you are done.”

I shushed her. “I don’t want to talk
about this here. Someone might hear you.”

“So?”

“I don’t want to advertise my dating
life on a billboard.”

“So it’s a date?” Devon asked, with a
grin rivaling a jack-o-lantern’s.

“Who has a date?” Elizabeth chimed in,
instantly breaking off from the conversation she was having with
Cynthia Zeleski.

“No one,” I said at the same time
Devon said, “Eel.”

“Kannon?” Elizabeth
guessed.

“The same,” Devon answered for
me.

“I knew it,” Elizabeth
squealed.

“Is he in college?” Cynthia asked, her
dark eyes gleaming with excitement. Cynthia was a notorious gossip.
By the time lunch was over, the electronic ticker in the lobby that
usually ran the latest school sports news would probably read
something like, “Endora Lee Andrews finally gets a
date!!!!!!!”

“He goes to St. Paul’s,” Elizabeth
supplied.

“Who goes to St. Paul’s?” Cooper
asked, joining in the conversation.

I groaned. Why couldn’t I have
envisioned this conversation and found a way to prevent it from
happening?

“I am going to kill you,” I
muttered to Devon as I stood to dump the half-eaten piece of pizza
in the garbage. Then I left the cafeteria and headed
to my sixth period Spanish class
before anyone could ask any more questions about
Kannon.

Despite my concerns about
Cynthia spilling the news about my sort-of date, I made it through
Spanish and Advanced Lit without anyone congratulating me. My last
class of the day was
Greek
mythology,
and I had failed to do the
reading. The teacher, Mrs. Randolf, had an annoying habit of
cold-calling on people for answers, so I sank low in my chair and
tried not to call attention to myself. Somewhere between talk of
Hades and the
underworld
and ferrymen, my mind started to wander to Kannon
and my father.

A paper ball landed on the
desk in front of me,
startling me out of
my
musings. I unfolded the sheet and
smoothed the creases.
No sleeping in
class, Eel,
it read. I recognized Cooper’s
handwriting immediately. Turning around full in my chair, I glared
at him.

“Ms. Andrews, perhaps you could
enlighten us. Who is Hermes?”

My muscles tensed as I slowly rotated
to face forward. Mrs. Randolf’s laser pointer was directed at an
image projected against a white screen. I opened my mouth to
apologize for neglecting the homework assignment and therefore
having no idea who Hermes was, but when I saw the black and white
slide of the Greek god, I recognized him. Only in my mind, he was
flesh and bone. I saw a young man, naked to the waist with a full
head of curly blonde hair. His facial features were sharp and
angular, his skin a deep bronze.

An odd feeling settled over me. It was
like the one I’d come to associate with the déjà vu or whatever,
except not quite. I knew him. I’d met him. I just didn’t know when
or where or why.

“Ms. Andrews?” Mrs. Randolf said
pointedly.

“He’s the god of
transitions and boundaries. He’s a messenger
and he conducts
souls into the
afterlife.” I didn’t know how I knew that was correct, but there
wasn’t a doubt in my mind
that it
was.

“Very good,” Mrs. Randolf
said. “And how does Hermes deliver messages from the
gods
to
mortals?”

“In their dreams,” I said
automatically.

“Right again, Ms. Andrews.” Mrs.
Randolf beamed, but I felt no pleasure at her praise. My pulse was
off the charts. The hands gripping the edges of Cooper’s note were
shaking, and the paper tore clean in two within seconds. I dropped
the pieces onto the desk, jumping to my feet in the
process.

“Ms. Andrews, is there something else
that you would like to add?” Mrs. Randolf asked me.

Frantically, I searched the other
students’ faces, as if I would find an excuse there for my erratic
behavior. I was met with blank stares.

“Bathroom,” I choked out. “I don’t
feel well.”

Mrs. Randolf scrutinized me, agitation
quickly giving way to concern. “Take the pass.” She nodded to the
giant carved rooster she used as a bathroom pass.

I wound through the desks, knocking
Nelly Grant’s notebook to the floor in my haste. I didn’t stop to
apologize. Then I grabbed the rooster and practically ran from the
room.

The first floor girls’
room
was, mercifully, empty.
I bent to check for feet under
each stall door
just to
be safe. I turned on the water in the sink and cupped my hands
under the faucet. The cold liquid felt like a slap of
reality.

I stared at my reflection in the
cracked mirror over the sink basin. “Get it together,” I ordered
myself. “You have never met a Greek god, in your dreams or
otherwise. He isn’t even real. He is a myth. A myth,” I repeated it
over and over again. Hermes is a myth. No matter how many times I
told myself that, I couldn’t rid my mind of the persistent feeling
that we knew each other. And while I couldn’t recall when or why, I
now knew the how. I’d met Hermes in my dreams.

****

That afternoon, I sat on the bench in
the girls’ locker room before practice, debating whether to call
Kannon. What would I say? Have you met any gods in your sleep
lately? Kannon claimed we’d first met in his dreams, so maybe the
idea wasn’t so farfetched. I was real, though, and Hermes wasn’t. I
wasn’t sure if that made the notion more or less absurd.

In the end, I decided to
wait until I saw him later to spring this new development
on him. I hated to admit it even to myself, but
at least that way I’d get to see Kannon in the flesh one more time
before he’d have the chance to declare me legally nuts.

The cell buzzed in my hand before I
had the chance to put it away. I glanced down, half expecting it to
be Kannon. It was Jamieson’s home number, again. I moved to send
her to voice mail again, but decided against it. I wanted to answer
the phone and get this conversation over with, or at least round
one in the prize fight for a boy I barely knew.

“What do you want, Jamieson?” I
demanded. “In case you weren’t aware, all these phone calls are
verging on harassment and my mother is a State’s
Attorney.”

A deep voice chuckled in my
ear. “I always knew you were your mother’s daughter and your
go-with-the-flow
attitude was just a façade.”

I froze. All the blood drained from my
head, making it spin and causing me to fall against the lockers.
“Mr. Wentworth?” I asked in a small voice.

I was such an idiot. Why had it never
occurred to me that if Jamieson were harassing me she would have
used her cell phone instead of calling from her house phone? And,
of course, Jamieson wouldn’t be calling me from home at 2:55 p.m.
on a school day. She was at lacrosse practice, exactly where I
needed to be in five minutes.

“How are you, Endora?” Jamieson’s
father asked.

“Doing well, sir,” I
replied.

“Not too well if my Jamie is giving
you a hard time,” he said pointedly. “Want me to talk to
her?”

I blanched at the reminder of how I
had answered the phone with the harassment accusation.

“No, sir. It’s nothing,
just high school girl drama,” I told him, feeling
more stupid
by the
second.

“If there is anything I can do to help
you girls patch up your friendship, let me know and I will. Jamie
could use a friend like you.”

Jamieson could use a broom and pointy
hat and maybe a house to land on top of her, I thought, but kept my
sentiments to myself.

“Anyhow, have not been
harassing you with phone calls in the
hope
of discussing my daughter’s
social life,” Mr. Wentworth continued. “You turned eighteen last
week.” It wasn’t a question. “Have you spoken with your
father?”

I was too surprised to
respond right away. Mr. Wentworth and my father used to be good
friends, but I sort of assumed they’d lost touch after the
divorce.
Until
recently, I’d also thought my father had moved to another
state.

“I did,” I said slowly, unsure where
the conversation was headed.

“Oh, good.” Mr. Wentworth sounded
relieved.

“We were supposed to meet last
Wednesday, but Dad never showed up,” I continued.

Jamieson’s father sighed heavily, and
the worry that something more serious than a flat tire had kept my
father from our meeting intensified.

“Then I have something for you,” Mr.
Wentworth told me, and he didn’t seem happy about the
admission.

“What is it?” I asked
suspiciously.

“A birthday present of sorts. From
Mark. Do you think you would be able to meet me this evening? I
would prefer we meet somewhere besides your house.” I could read
between the lines. Whatever Mr. Wentworth had to give me wasn’t for
my mother’s eyes.

“I have plans tonight. How about
tomorrow?” I prayed my mother would be busy to the point of
distraction all week, since my clandestine meetings were racking
up.

“Tomorrow should be fine. Do you know
the Moonlight Diner?” Mr. Wentworth asked.

The Moonlight Diner? I was starting to
think Mr. Haverty should rename the place The Shady Dealings
Diner.

“I know it,” I confirmed, swallowing
the million questions fighting their way to my mouth.

“I will meet you there. Say eight
o’clock?”

“Sure,” I agreed.

“And Endora?”

“Yeah?”

“Promise me you will keep your eyes
open and stay away from strangers.”

Stay away from strangers? As if my
mother’s constant paranoia wasn’t enough, now both Mr. Wentworth
and my father had issued warnings. I was eighteen, not five. I knew
better than to get in a white windowless van because some man
sporting too much facial hair offered me a lollipop.

“I promise, Mr. Wentworth,” I said
awkwardly.

“Good. See you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” I echoed.

Chapter Twelve

After a practice where I
dropped every pass, failed to
mark an
opponent
, and succeeded in staining my
knees green with grass, I did something I never do. I took a shower
in the girls’ locker room. Something about bathing in a space that
requires you to wear shoes wasn’t right, so I usually avoided it
like the plague. Unfortunately, there wasn’t time to swing by my
house, shower, change, and get to the Moonlight. There was also the
off chance my mother would be home, and I had no desire for a
face-to-face conversation.