Shadow Hills (10 page)

I hoped this wasn’t true—because I was more than a little curious.

“I promise.” Zach continued with an air of finality. “Come on, we have to get the archives key from the librarian, while no one else is around.”

That’s not ominous or anything
, I thought.
I wish I knew what the hell that was all about
. A sudden wave of mental feedback hit me like a wall. I stumbled backward, feeling the hard wooden shelves dig into my spine. My ears were ringing, and my vision went black like I’d stood up too fast.
The ornate gold key from my dream
. I could see it perfectly, as if someone had pasted a picture on the inside of my eyelids. Then, as quickly as the feeling hit me, it was gone. I allowed myself to sink to the ground and leaned my head back against the bookshelf.

“Hey, Phe.” A voice above my head startled me, and I looked up. “It’s Toy. From the dorm?” The girl I had practically mowed down in the hallway earlier was staring at my crouched form.

“Yeah. Sorry. I guess I was spacing out again.” I shook my head, trying to clear it of the lingering haze.

“You seem to do that a lot.” Toy smiled. “I saw you over here, and I wasn’t sure if you knew we had to be at class in five minutes.”

I glanced around me; the library had almost completely cleared out.

“Oh, crap.” I jumped to my feet. “I have advanced composition now.”

“I can walk you if you want. I’m going to the Languages Building myself.”

I nodded and followed Toy, happy to put aside all the weirdness for a while and just go to class.

After composition let out I shoved my class syllabus in my bag and went to find Graham and Adriana in the cafeteria.

“Wow. Hungry much?” Adriana raised an eyebrow at my tray as I plunked it down.

“Starving.” Though I felt a little gluttonous next to Adriana with her fruit and light yogurt.

“Hey, Graham.” A now-familiar voice came from behind me.

“Toy!” Graham broke into a wide smile. “Come sit with us.” He motioned to the spot next to him, and Toy slid in across from me.

“So how was South Korea?” Graham asked.

“Great.” Toy pulled on a short strand of hair that curled up in front of her ear. “I got to see my grandparents for the first time in almost ten years, and my big brother came with me, so that was nice.”

“How is—Hey!” Graham cut himself off to yell at someone walking by our table. The guy was tall and scrawny—his narrow chest all but disappearing under his oversize T-shirt. His arms were like a scarecrow’s stick limbs, all points and angles. With
his scruffy light brown hair and sort of zoned-out expression, he reminded me of Shaggy from
Scooby Doo
.

“This is Brody Kincaid,” Graham introduced the Shaggy look-alike. “You, of course, remember Toy, and these lovely ladies are Adriana and Phe.”

“Hey.” Brody gave a small half wave as he sat down. His clothes had the definite musty smell of cigarettes, but I also detected the faint hint of pot emanating from his person. Brody looked at me for a second, then screwed up his face as if he was trying to figure something out. “Are you Persephone?”

Okay. This was getting
beyond
strange
.

“Yes.” I eyed him warily.

“I thought so. Zach was telling me about you.” Brody took a sip of the soda in his hand. “Said you were cool.” The mystery of my identity solved, Brody turned back to Graham. “So, you going to the SAC tonight for that movie slash pizza party shit?”

“Yeah.” Graham answered him. “It’s better than dorm study.”

“Well, if it’s either one or the other, I guess I’m going, too,” Adriana added.

“It should be fun.” Toy smiled at her. “They’re showing two Tim Burton films.”

“Are you making an appearance?” Adriana cocked an eyebrow at me.

The picture of the gold key flashed across my mind again. They had said the library would be closed tonight; it might be the perfect time to figure out what was up with this secret archives room.

“I don’t know.” The faint outline of a plan was forming in my brain. “I have some homework I have to do.”

By the end of the day it was glaringly obvious that I was going to have to do a
lot
of homework unless I wanted to flunk all my courses. I was practically the only one taking notes during the lectures, and what made it doubly embarrassing was that half of the students hardly paid attention. I’d also seen people in various classes scan through their books, glancing at each page then quickly moving on to the next, as if they were taking a snapshot of each one.

Finally, I was driven to ask Graham about it as we left the only class we shared, computer science. He just shrugged and said, “Townies.”

“So everyone not listening is from Shadow Hills?”

“Well, probably not
everyone
who isn’t listening,” he conceded. “But the ones who don’t pay attention and still manage to get good grades are townies. It’s pretty annoying, actually. While I’m in my room studying, they spend the afternoons in the SAC playing pool.”

“And they can pass these ridiculously hard classes? Are they super intelligent or what?”

“I guess.”

“Doesn’t that strike you as weird? A whole town of smart kids?”

“Yeah. But not everyone from Shadow Hills goes to school at Devenish. There’s a public school. We must get only the high-IQ
students. A lot of them are the children of doctors and researchers at the hospital, so I guess it makes sense. Plus, they must teach some kind of speed reading in elementary school.”

“So the flipping through books at the speed of light deal—that
is
the way they read?”

“I guess. I’m not friends with any of them except Brody. And he doesn’t do that.”

“Brody’s a townie?” I asked in surprise. “I thought he lived on campus.”

“He does. His parents are dead. I’ve never really talked to him about it; he’s not big on the sharing. Brody’s kind of strange.”

“He’s not the only one.”

I was glad that advanced photography was my final class. It was a combined course, covering 35 mm and digital photography, and I’d done both before. I sat down at one of the two-seater tables in the back, and at the last minute someone slid into the seat beside me. It was Zach.

“Okay, class. I am Professor Sherwood.” Mr. Sherwood stood. He was tall and husky, and the way he wore his tie tucked into the vest of his three-piece suit made his round belly more noticeable. His tie with the little turtles on it, together with his jovial expression, gave him a sweet look in spite of his size.

But that didn’t make it any easier to concentrate on what he was saying. I was painfully aware of Zach—the faint scent of his light sandalwood-based cologne, the heat from his body. It felt like there was an electric current running between his thigh and
mine. Zach shifted in his chair, and though his knee didn’t touch mine, it was almost as though his energy bumped into me.
Yeah, ’cause that’s not a crazy idea or anything
. I tried to turn my focus back to Mr. Sherwood’s explanation of the course.

“… then we’ll change gears and do some work in the ‘wet’ darkroom. You should already know the basics, so you’ll be allowed to develop pictures on your own.”

Sitting next to Zach was making me antsy, like I’d drunk too much caffeine. I wanted to jiggle my leg, but every time I did my chair rattled. I glanced over at Zach. He was staring straight ahead, the veil of his ebony hair obscuring his eyes from me. I thought about what I’d heard in the library earlier. Not the weird stuff, but the fact that he’d said he thought I was hot. Yet now he wouldn’t even look at me.

Mr. Sherwood set down his chalk and turned around to face us. “The person sitting at the table with you will be your partner for the rest of this semester.”

I stole another look at Zach. He happened to glance over at me at the same time, but he turned back to the front before I had a chance to smile at him.

“I’d like you and your partner to go out into the courtyard and shoot a digital portrait experimenting with depth of field. You have until the end of class.”

The awkwardness that had hung between us at our shared desk was still there when we got outside.

As everyone else started to spread out, I turned to Zach, trying for a nonchalant, matter-of-fact tone. “Why don’t we start here? You can stand in front of this tree.”

“Sure,” he agreed quickly, probably relieved that I wasn’t grilling him like yesterday.

I positioned him so that the shadows from the tree branches were falling where I wanted them. My hands tingled where they rested on Zach’s shoulders, and something tugged at my mind. I was dizzy and disoriented, like I’d just stepped off a tire swing.

It seemed as if vibrations from Zach’s body were intertwining with vibrations from mine. He gazed at me, his pupils huge.
He probably thinks you’re insane. And maybe he’s right
.

Now, concentrate on the assignment. His eye line is too low; it’s going to throw shadows on his face. The steeple on the chapel would be a good focus point
.

“You want me to look at the steeple on the chapel?” Zach asked before I could even open my mouth to suggest it.

“Yeah.” I narrowed my eyes. “How did you know that?”

“Umm …” Zach looked around like he might find the correct answer to my question written on the sidewalk. “I could just feel the shadows on my face. I figured it would be good to look up.”

Zach’s tone was majorly lacking in conviction. Still, it was a better explanation than the alternative: that he had read my mind. That was even more impossible than all the other impossible stuff I’d thought he was doing. Well, except maybe for the dream thing. I itched to ask him what was going on, but there were people all around us. Instead, I held the camera’s view-finder up to my eye and concentrated on taking the pictures.

When it was my turn, Zach had me sit cross-legged on the ground, leaning up against the tree. As a cool breeze brushed my hair back, I closed my eyes. The light-headedness that had
gripped me earlier faded into a tranquil calm. Zach was quiet and worked quickly. Before I knew it, we were back in the classroom. Mr. Sherwood went around to each table with a laptop and USB-connection cord to inspect the students’ work. Since I’d picked the table in the back of the room, he got to Zach and me last.

“Very nice,” he complimented me as he scrolled through the pictures on his laptop. “You have a good sense of light, and your images are crisp and clear.” He handed my camera back and plugged in Zach’s.

I watched as Mr. Sherwood looked over the images. The pictures Zach had taken were amazing. In one, Zach had caught me brushing a lock of hair from my face, and you could see every detail of my hand—the faint trace of blue veins, the chipped nail polish. Mr. Sherwood paused on a photo of me with my eyes closed, hair blowing out behind me from the breeze.

“Now, this is exceptional,” Mr. Sherwood complimented Zach. “The way you have captured this moment, you can almost feel that wind on her face.”

“Thanks.” Zach said, avoiding looking in my direction.

Mr. Sherwood unplugged the camera and placed it in front of Zach and then went back up to the front of the class. As he finished his lecture, I kept thinking about Zach’s pictures. They were so strange to me. I’d never thought of myself as a photogenic person. My sister had always been the one who shone in our family portraits. But in Zach’s pictures, I had looked … beautiful.

“Phe?” Mr. Sherwood caught my eye as I was packing up my stuff to leave.

“Yeah?” I looked up.

“We have your advisor meeting on Friday, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Great.” He smiled. “Remarkable work today, by the way.”

My cheeks flushed.

“Thanks, Mr. Sherwood.”

As I stepped out of the building an involuntary shiver ran through me, and I whipped around to see if someone was behind me. There were several students walking by, but no one seemed to be watching me. I had almost convinced myself I was being paranoid when I heard a voice call out my name.

I turned back to find Zach’s cousin from the bookstore leaning up against a tree, staring at me. “It is Persephone, right?” he asked.

“Yeah.” I looked at him quizzically. He pushed himself off from the tree and strolled over to me. His movements were sinuous. “How do you know my name?”
He definitely didn’t hear it from Zach’s dad. There had been a distinct lack of introductions
.

“I’m in your psych class,” he answered smoothly. “But we haven’t formally met. I’m Trent Redford IV.”

He grasped my hand in a firm shake, and again I felt the dizziness I had experienced earlier when I put my hand on Zach’s shoulder. Except this time, it made my bones ache. It was like the shock I had received from Corinne, but stronger, deeper.

What we are
. Zach’s words floated back to me. Trent was related to them; maybe he was what they were. Maybe all the townies, with their high IQs and speed-reading skills, were “what they were.” Whatever that meant.

“I usually go by Phe.” I worked to keep my voice steady, but Trent was staring straight into me and gripping my hand even more tightly than before. The large ring he wore dug into my skin. This no longer felt like a handshake. He was holding me in a vise grip, one I knew I couldn’t break, even if I tried.

“Phe. That’s … cute.” Trent smirked, still not letting go of my hand. “I’d like to get to know you better, Phe. At the back-to-school dance. The Saturday after next? You can be my date.” It was more a command than a request.

Trent may have looked like a young Chris Pine, but he still made my insides lurch. There was something off about him, something wrong. My leg muscles were contracting, building pressure, preparing me to flee from him.

“Uh, I don’t know …” I thought about my beautiful new dress from Flirt. I wanted to go to the dance, but not with this sadistic-seeming person. Plus, I had this irrational hope that Zach would ask me, despite all these mysterious “reasons” why we shouldn’t be dating. Part of me wished he would break the rules—no matter the consequences. “I have to check with Adriana. We talked about going stag. But, you know. Together.”