Tempest Rising (5 page)

“What? Like that’s so hard to believe?”

“Yes.” My dad and I answered in tandem, but then I remembered the cute blonde Rio had been sitting with when I’d picked him up from school the day before. Her arms had been loaded with books—maybe he was trying to impress one of the smart girls. It would be a nice change of pace.

“Whatever.” With a shrug, Rio slid his bad attitude back into place.

“How about you, Tempest?”

“Not until next week.”

“How’s the college search going?”

“It’s not.” My voice was flat, angry, but I couldn’t help it. At the rate things were going, I’d never get the chance to go to art school. Never get to paint in Paris …

I slammed the door shut on the self-pity before I made myself sick. Seriously, nobody likes a whiner.

“All right, then.” My dad backed off.

In the hallway my mother’s grandfather clock—the one she’d insisted on having and the one my father kept just in case she ever came back—chimed seven times, prodding us all into action.

“Tempest, I’ll drop Mo at school today if you can take Rio. I have an early meeting set up.”

“Hear that, shrimp?” I deliberately used the nickname Rio hated. “I’ll be ready in ten minutes, so get your butt in gear.” On my way out of the kitchen, I slipped Moku’s lunch into his backpack, then ruffled his hair affectionately. “I’ll pick you up after school.”

“For pancakes?” he asked eagerly.

I laughed. “For pancakes.”

But once I was on the stairs, heading toward my room, my smile slipped. I was frightened—frightened for myself and frightened for my family. What would happen to them if I couldn’t resist the change?

Sure, my mind chose humanity—like it always had. But my soul, my treacherous soul,
yearned
for the absolute freedom of the Pacific.

For a girl who had always prided herself on her mortality, the betrayal cut like the sharpest of knives.

And my painting? If I went too long without putting brush to canvas, I felt like a part of me was missing. The idea of disappearing under the waves, of never again creating something, had me twisted into knots.

Because I couldn’t change the past—or, I was afraid, the future—I tried to put it all out of my mind and concentrate on the present instead.

If I didn’t hustle, I would be late for school. Yet even as I yanked on my favorite pair of perfectly faded jeans, I couldn’t help looking at the storm-tossed Pacific one more time. And wondering where I’d be next year.

Next month.

Next week.

The fact that I didn’t know—for the first time in my sixteen years of existence—scared me to death.

By the time I got to school, after dropping Rio at junior high, I had only enough time to find a parking spot—about a million miles away, of course—and then book it to class before the second bell rang. First period was AP Chem with Mr. Hein and he was even more of a stickler when it came to the tardy policy than the other teachers.

One second late and he started filling out a detention slip and he didn’t really care what excuse you had. Unexpected female emergencies went about as far with him as stories of flat tires did. I should know: Brianne had tried them both this year, along with a whole host of more inventive excuses that had also been shot down as the school year progressed.

Which was why I was completely out of breath—not to mention soaked to the skin from the untimely winter storm that had hit just as I’d pulled into the parking lot—by the time I slammed through the open door of Mr. Hein’s chem lab one second before the tardy bell rang. I was glad I hadn’t bothered with more than lip gloss and a ponytail—any other efforts would have been completely washed away.

“Good morning, Tempest. So nice of you to join us today.”

“Sorry,” I gasped as I squished my way to my desk in the center of the second row, right in front of Bri and next to our other friend, Mickey (yes, like the mouse—long story short, her mother went into labor at Disneyland). “Traffic was—”

“Mmm-hmmm,” he interrupted, letting me know without words that my excuse—no matter how true—was no more believable, or important, than Bri’s fictitious ones were.

“This week we’re going to talk about the structure of matter,” he droned. “I want to start with the different types of atomic bonding …”

“Good waves?” Bri whispered as I took my seat in front of her.

“Bad traffic.” I pulled out a notebook and started to take notes on ionic and covalent bonding, even as I tried to ignore the chill working its way through me. I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it until my clothes dried—right now I was so cold that it felt like my very bones would shake apart. Add to that the fact that my neck felt like it was on fire—heat and pain licking their way from behind my ear to the top of my shoulder—and it promised to be one hell of a day.

“Here.” Mickey slipped off her leather jacket and handed it to me. “Your teeth are chattering. Again.”

I wanted to refuse—it looked expensive and I was so wet I was afraid I’d ruin it—but she was right. My teeth
were
chattering, my hands trembling so badly I could barely take notes. “Thanks,” I whispered as I slipped into it. Immediately her body heat started to dispel some of the chill. It didn’t warm me—nothing could do that these days—but at least the cold was almost bearable.

Chem dragged, like it always did on non-lab days, and by the time the bell rang I was sure I’d have nightmares about the chemical bonding of atoms. I could see the whole thing now—me running screaming through a dark hallway while elemental compounds with huge teeth and sharp claws chased me down.

What did it say about me that the prospect was a lot less daunting than what I actually had to face in the next few weeks?

Shoving the thought away—there wasn’t anything I could do about it, anyway—I started to shrug out of Mickey’s jacket. I was almost dry and only reasonably cold, so I was pretty sure I could make it through the rest of the day without it.

But she gestured for me to keep it. “You can give it back at lunch. Your shirt is still pretty damp and it’s kind of …”

Her voice trailed off and I glanced down, shocked to realize she was right. My shirt was clinging to my chest like it had been painted on, and the fact that I was still too cold was … more than obvious. Mortified, I pulled the jacket closed again and cursed my mother—and the freaky metabolism she’d given me—for what had to be the millionth time.

Too bad it didn’t do me any more good this time than it had the other times.

“Thanks,” I said, gathering up my books and heading for the hallway with an awkward little wave.

I was in a bad mood and I didn’t want to see anyone. My underwear was wet, I looked awful, and to top things off, my neck still hurt like crazy. I ran my hand over the part that ached and it did feel a little warm. I nearly snarled at the thought—getting sick after everything else that had happened today would just be the icing on the crappy cake that was my life.

Not that I had time to dwell on it. It was still raining, so things were an absolute disaster. Because it’s sunny in San Diego something like three hundred days of the year, most of the high schools are built with outdoor hallways—and ours is no exception. The areas close to the buildings were covered, but trying to fit three thousand adult-size students under a series of narrow overhangs was impossible.

That didn’t stop most of us from trying to squeeze under, which led to major traffic jams, assorted pushing and shoving, and at least one or two fistfights on every rainy day.

A year ago, I would have preferred walking in the rain over trying to maneuver my way through the sardine-can passageways, but a lot had changed in a year. Now the idea of getting soaked to the skin—again—was almost as unappealing as the idea of giving up everything and jumping into the ocean like my mother had so many years before.

“Hey, watch it!” I heard Bri yelp from behind me, and I glanced back in time to see some freshman jerk cop a feel as he scooted past her. That was yet another hazard of rainy days: dorks with more hormones than sense. At least she’d gotten in a lick of her own, I noticed with satisfaction. The guy who’d grabbed her ass was now walking with a very pronounced limp.

That was just one of the many things I liked about Bri. Despite the fact that her perfectly styled blond hair, cute face, and bright blue eyes made her look like the quintessential cheerleader, she was more than able to kick a little ass when the occasion warranted. Unfortunately, the occasion warranted it quite a lot at our school—I kept telling her a well-placed piercing or a couple of tattoos would take care of the problem, but she just rolled her eyes and gave me her patented our-bodies-are-temples speech.

I might have agreed with her, if my temple hadn’t been on the verge of completely and totally wigging out.

“Ugh,” Bri said as she elbowed her way through the masses to walk next to me. “I can’t wait until we graduate. I am
so
over high school guys.”

“We’ve still got a year and a half until that glorious day. Don’t be letting the door hit you quite yet.”

She snorted. “Easy for you to say—you managed to snag one of the best guys in this place. So please, have some pity for the rest of us.”

I kept my mouth shut as we continued weaving our way across the campus to the liberal arts building and our American Lit class. It’s not like I could argue with her—Mark was definitely one of the coolest guys in school. He wasn’t part of the superpopular, clonelike in-crowd—that group was made up of La Jolla High’s football, basketball, and baseball stars and the cheerleaders who dated them—but he was definitely sought after.

He was too hot and too good of a surfer not to be. And, much more important, he cared about me and treated me right. Sure, he had a temper and sometimes he saw more than I was comfortable with, but he also had a really good brain under all that shaggy, sun-bleached hair. If only I could get him to stop pushing me to tell him everything, to stop being so possessive, things would be perfect.

“So, how’d the surfing go today?” Bri asked as we were swept along in the endless tangle of adolescent bodies.

“Like you care.” I rolled my eyes at her and winked so she’d know I was joking.

“Hey, I like to surf. I’m just not obsessed, like some people I know.”

“It’s only obsession if you can’t control it.”

“Spending every spare minute of your day on a surfboard seems obsessive to me.” She narrowed her eyes. “And you’re dodging the question. What happened out there?”

I gave in to the inevitable—the guys may not have said anything yet, but it was just a matter of time before everyone knew. “I totally grubbed, hit the water hard.”

“No way!” The look she shot me was pure astonishment, mixed with a lot of disbelief. “You
never
do that.”

“Well, I did it today—so hard that Mark had to fish me out of the chowder and tow me back to shore like a total frube.”

With her usual impeccable timing, Bri grabbed my arm just as we passed our classroom and yanked me out of the crush and into the door of Mr. Keppler’s American Lit class.

I swear, the girl was a general in a former life: when she has her mind set on something, she runs over whoever or whatever is in her path. I’d spent the first year of high school following along behind her, trying to figure out how to do what she did. Finally I just gave up and let her take the lead—it worked out much better for both of us.

“So, are you okay?” she asked as we found our seats on the right side of the circle.

Yes, Mr. Keppler arranged our desks in one big circle, so we could all stare at each other while we “ruminated” on the literature of the day. And most days, he even sat with us. If he wasn’t a complete and absolute Greek god, it would be totally nerdy. As it was, Bri and I reaped the benefits because she’d managed to snag us seats directly across from his desk on the second day of class. I couldn’t begin to add up how many class periods I’d spent staring at him instead of thinking about a bunch of dead guys who wrote stuff long before I was even born.

“Yeah, of course.” I slid into my seat—which had the added benefit of being right in front of the heater—and took my first easy breath since getting to school that day. Another big plus for Mr. Keppler was that he always kept the classroom warm, unlike Hein, who I swore was half Eskimo. “It was no big deal.”