Shadows (7 page)

‘It snapped right off!’ Eve burst out, her eyes flying open. ‘I couldn’t get those shoes repaired! They were ruined for ever. And my mom said I couldn’t get another pair because they were way too expensive for someone who didn’t have the sense not to go tramping across fields in them. Even though I kept telling her the concert wasn’t in a field, it was in a park.’

‘How did you feel?’ Jess asked eagerly.

‘I felt mad at my mom again. And I still miss those shoes!’ Eve flexed her fingers. ‘But no sparks. I guess your hypothesis was wrong.’

Jess dropped down into the chair next to Eve’s. ‘Or maybe you used up all your juice melting the lipstick. You might need to recharge.’

Eve nodded. ‘I might only be able to put on one extravaganza a day.’
Or maybe I am psychologically disturbed
, she thought.
Maybe I imagined the whole
thing
. But would it be any better to be crazy than to go around melting stuff? And what about the melted remains of the lipstick? That was proof of her ‘powers’ – wasn’t it?

She sighed. ‘Can we talk about something else for a while? My brain hurts from trying to figure out if it’s crazy.’

‘Sure. Absolutely. Hmm.’ Jess pursed her lips. ‘Gossip. We need gossip. Did you hear about Luke?’

Did he manage to cure cancer with his special talents?
Eve wondered. He probably did – just to make her feel bad about the number of handbags she had.

Jess rolled her eyes. ‘Supposedly, he and Elisha Lurie were making out at the movies yesterday. Even during the really good parts.’

‘Wow. How many girls is that now?’ Eve asked. She didn’t wait for Jess to reply. ‘Soon he’s going to have to move on to another school to find some new makeout buddies.’

‘It’s just so clichéd,’ Jess said. ‘His father’s the pastor, so he has to rebel.
Bor-ing
.’ She gave a pout. ‘Why is it taking him so long to get to us?’

‘You’d still want to go out with him after that parade of girls?’ Eve asked, surprised.
She
wouldn’t.

‘For fun, yes,’ Jess answered. ‘It’s like there’s a new
flavour of ice cream that everyone’s talking about. I want to at least have a little lick.’

‘Oh, yuck.’ Now Eve rolled her eyes. ‘Next topic. Anything new on Mal?’

Mal was much more interesting, anyway. He was so mysterious he made her want to scream. Every day she noticed him staring at her, but he never said a thing. She didn’t know any more about him than she had on Day One. She knew he was hot. She knew exactly how his half-smile spread across his face whenever she caught him looking. Oh, and she knew how good he smelled. And that he was handy with tweezers. But that was it.

‘Mal continues to be a mystery man,’ Jess replied.

‘So he’s the opposite of Luke,’ Eve commented. ‘No mystery there – everyone knows who Luke’s kissing.’

‘Well, nobody knows if Mal is kissing anyone,’ Jess said. ‘A lot of girls want sightings, but he practically disappears after school. I wonder if he’s even going to the fall dance.’

Eve tried to imagine him there. She could almost see it, Mal leaning against the wall, watching everyone as if they were faintly amusing to him. And staring at her. He’d have to be staring at her at some point. He did sometimes. She’d caught him. And this was her fantasy, so he’d definitely be staring.

She wouldn’t be with a date. She and Jess had decided to fly solo, so they wouldn’t have to neglect any of the guys. So maybe at a dance, Mal would actually speak a few sentences to her. Or silently take her hand and lead her out onto the dance floor. It would be a slow dance, definitely. And they’d be so close that she’d be taking in that wood-smoke scent of him with every breath. Maybe he’d rest—

‘Hey, you’re smiling!’ Jess smiled too. ‘The gossip is working.’

‘I guess it is.’ Eve laughed. ‘You’re a genius. Give me more.’

‘OK, um, I also heard something about Shanna Poplin’s mother. Supposedly she’s in the hospital. The same one as Megan.’ Everyone at school had already been talking about how Megan had been admitted to Ridgewood, an extremely upscale psychiatric hospital about an hour away from Deepdene.

‘Shanna was saying something about her mom in English,’ Eve said, suddenly feeling guilty for not having paid more attention. ‘But my mind kind of wandered. Her mom is really in a psych hospital? Is it because of the divorce?’ The Poplins’ divorce had been finalized over the summer. ‘Shanna’s mom was supposed to be completely in love with her dad – Mr
TV Anchor. At least that’s what I heard my mom saying on the phone once. He’s the one who wanted the divorce, not her.’

‘Nobody was saying anything about the divorce today,’ Jess answered. ‘What I heard was that Shanna’s mother has been waking up screaming. Plus, she’s talking about demons all the time. You know that bookstore that James Frankel’s family owns? Well, James works there after school sometimes, and he says she came in last week and bought a huge stack of books about the occult. He said she kept looking around the place like she thought somebody was after her.’

‘Oh my God.’ Eve sat up straight in her chair. ‘Jess, it’s like Rose. Rose was talking about demons, remember? She said there was always a demon in her dreams that was trying to get her soul.’

‘You’re right!’ Jess put her hand to her forehead again, to stop it from wrinkling. ‘That’s not fun gossip. What is going on in this town?’

Eve checked her watch for the third time. Where was Luke? He was supposed to meet her in front of the school library right after school so they could work on their history paper. It was five minutes past ‘right after school’. Luke might be concerned with all the big,
important
world issues, but he clearly wasn’t very concerned with basic manners. Like being on time.

Eve glanced at her watch again. Waited while the second hand made another rotation. And sighed. She rummaged around in her bag, looking for her brush. Her hair felt flat, and she might as well do something productive while she was stuck here.

‘Waiting for someone?’

Eve jerked her head up and saw Luke standing right in front of her. ‘You’re late,’ she informed him. ‘We should already be working on our report.’

Luke checked his own watch. ‘The last bell only rang about five minutes ago.’

‘Six,’ Eve said.

Luke’s eyes went to the brush in her hand, and Eve felt her cheeks grow warm.

‘Are you going to hit me with that or what?’ Luke asked, raising his eyebrows.

‘No.’ Eve leaned forward, letting her dark hair hang over her face, gave it a quick run-through, then tossed her head back. It wasn’t something she’d usually do in front of a boy, but standing there with a brush in her hand for no reason would’ve been even worse. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Right. All your beauty concerns are taken care of, so now you can do some serious thinking.’ Luke shook his head, smiling.

Smirking was more like it. But smirking shouldn’t come with silky blond hair and green eyes. That was just wrong.

Eve felt lava rising up inside her. Why did he always have to act so superior? ‘You should talk!’ she snapped. ‘You obviously get your hair cut at least once a month. You wouldn’t be able to see past your trendy long hair if you didn’t. You’re not exactly low-maintenance.’

‘But the state of my hair doesn’t seem to affect my
brain the way yours does,’ Luke countered. ‘Maybe some of it has grown the wrong way. Like into your grey matter.’

‘My brain is fine! I simply happen to like looking nice,’ Eve shot back. The lava was churning around now. It shot down her legs, up through her throat … and into her fingers.

No!
Eve thought, horrified.
Not now! Not here!

But there was nothing she could do. With a hissing sound, sparks flicked out of all ten fingers. Only for a second. But for that second, the silvery sparks were impossibly bright. Dazzling, actually. Instinctively, Eve curled her fingers towards her palms – even though the sparks had gone out as quickly as they’d flared – and crossed her arms in front of her.

For a tiny second there was silence.

‘So, let’s go,’ she said again, deciding to pretend nothing had happened. Maybe Luke hadn’t noticed. His hair
was
long.

‘Huh. I didn’t know you had superpowers.’ Luke’s tone was teasing, but his eyes were wide with shock.

‘It’s just static electricity,’ Eve told him, trying to sound casual. ‘From brushing my hair.’

She knew Luke was way too smart to buy that, but she met his eyes and willed him to think it was true.

‘That is one powerful hairbrush,’ he said. ‘It shot the static all the way down to your fingers!’

‘OK, fine. I knew you wouldn’t believe me,’ Eve groaned. ‘Look, I don’t know what it is. I don’t want it. It’s just started happening. It’s not like I meant it to. Would you please stop looking at me?’

She turned away, breathing fast. Her words had come out in such a rush that she didn’t even know if Luke had been able to understand them.

He put his hands on her shoulder and gently turned her towards him. ‘So that’s … it’s happened before?’

‘Go ahead and call me a freak! I’m sure you want to!’ Eve felt tears prickle in her eyes. She blinked rapidly to get rid of them. She was
not
crying in front of Luke. She just wasn’t!

‘Let’s go inside,’ Luke said, lowering his hands. ‘We can grab one of the meeting rooms.’

‘You’re only supposed to use those if you have a study group of more than four people,’ Eve told him. She didn’t really care about the rule. It just felt good to have something normal to talk about.

Luke shrugged. ‘You asked me once if I was an extra, extra good boy or an extra, extra bad boy,’ he reminded her. ‘Well, I’m bad enough to use a meeting room with only two of us. Come on.’

He headed into the library, not checking to see if she was following him. She followed him. A couple of minutes later they were in the little meeting room furthest away from the main desk. There were windows from the reading room, but no one was around to look in.

Eve took her time arranging her laptop and opening a new document to take notes, but after that she had nothing to do but sit there. It was awkward being there alone with Luke. He hadn’t bothered to bring a notebook or anything, and he hadn’t said a word since they came inside. He was just watching her, and he was quiet. Too quiet. Was he thinking she must be a freak?

‘First, I don’t think you’re a freak,’ Luke said, almost as if he could read her mind. ‘Some people think we all have the capacity for psychic talent. So that would mean we’re all freaks. And second, I think it’s cool. Who wouldn’t love to have superpowers?’

Eve raised her hand. ‘Me.’

‘Have you been able to … do stuff all your life?’ Luke asked.

‘No. This is new,’ Eve replied.

Luke nodded thoughtfully. Then he pulled a bottle of water out of his backpack and took a swig.

‘Look at you disrespecting the no-food-or-drink-in-the-library
rule. You really are completely evil. Maybe I shouldn’t even be in here alone with you,’ Eve teased.

‘It’s true. I can’t even help myself sometimes.’ Luke made a big show of chugging the water like he couldn’t stop. When it was gone, he sighed. ‘The worst part is, I don’t even care who else I hurt. I mean, think of my dad! If I got thrown out of the library for drinking water, he … he might lose his job.’

It was so ridiculous that Eve laughed. She clapped her hand over her mouth, surprised. Luke had actually managed to make her laugh, even though she felt like something disastrous could happen at any second – more sparks, frying every computer in the place – who knew?

Luke was still smiling, but his eyes were serious. ‘So do you have any control over what you can do?’ he asked. ‘It looked pretty spontaneous.’

‘Spontaneous. That’s a nice way to describe it,’ Eve told him. ‘I can’t even walk down the halls without being afraid I might blow up the school.’

Luke raised his eyebrows. ‘Are your abilities that strong?’

‘No,’ Eve reassured him. ‘At least, not yet. But they seem to get stronger every day. The thing with the
sparks? That started up yesterday. I was hoping I’d imagined it.’

‘Well, this time you had a witness. It happened,’ Luke said. ‘So there could be a bunch of other things you can do that you don’t even know about.’

Eve waved her hands in front of her face. ‘I don’t want to think about that!’

‘Why? You might be able to do some awesome stuff.’ He ripped a piece of paper out of his binder and put it on the table between them. ‘See if you can move that.’

Eve met his eyes. Then she slowly, slowly reached out for the paper, put one finger on it, and slid it across the table. ‘Wow! I did it!’ she exclaimed.

Luke rolled his eyes. ‘You know what I mean.’ He put the sheet of paper back in place, then, complete rebel that he was, pulled another bottle of water out of his backpack.

‘All right. But if I do, I get some of that,’ Eve said.

‘I brought it for you,’ he replied. ‘I like to corrupt others into being bad with me.’

Maybe Luke was right. Maybe having powers wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially if she could learn to control them. Didn’t she have to try? Eve took a deep breath. ‘OK. Here I go.’

She ground her fists into her forehead for a moment,
then blew out all her breath and stared at the paper.
Move!
she silently ordered it. Nothing. She felt her face squinch up, making who knew what weird wrinkles, and tried again.
Come on, move!

‘Giddy up,
vite vite
, um, go, go, go!’ she cried. Nothing.

‘
Andale
,’ Luke added. Big nothing. ‘Keep trying,’ he urged.

She felt her face get all squinchy again as she concentrated. Nothing. She closed her eyes and visualized the paper sliding smoothly across the polished table. She opened her eyes. Nothing. She pointed her fingers at the paper and shook them. Nothing.

‘I can’t!’ she burst out in frustration. ‘It would be way too helpful if I could control it. But it controls
me
! Whether I want it to or not, it just flies out. I hate it!’

And in that moment of fury, sparks jumped from her fingers onto the paper, and in a blink, the paper was on fire. As in ON FIRE!