The Dark Light (6 page)

Hey, Sol, can you take your shirt off?
The thought made me want to puke.

When the bell rang and the first galloping steps sounded on the floor above, I decided there was only one way to go. Wing it.

Doors opened along the hall and soon the flow of students meant that at least anything I said to Sol wouldn’t be overheard. I pushed my way to Mr. Benbow’s door, tried to ignore the butterflies fluttering in my gut, and hoped to hell I could avoid Kieran.

Sol was second out of the lab.

He entered the tide of bodies. Head and shoulders over most of the other students, he was an easy track. I hurried after him, several paces behind as he swung toward the gym and the parking lot at the rear of the school. A couple of shoves and a few wayward elbows and I’d almost caught up to him, just as he stepped outside.

“Sol?” I said. It didn’t come out as decisively as I’d planned.

Though barely ahead of me, Sol didn’t stop. He headed on toward the lot.

I shouted louder: “Sol!”

He turned around.

Andy aside, I’d never been one to fall at a guy’s feet. They were just guys, right? But up close and personal, I suddenly understood the reason for all the fuss surrounding Sol. He was
hot
. Not just tall, hunky, handsome hot, which he was, but intense-looking,
gorgeous
. And not Monaghan gorgeous where everyone was after him and he knew it, but gorgeous like he knew it, and just didn’t care.

All the things I’d noticed about Sol from the Ridge took on new clarity up close.

His hair was a shade lighter than his eyes; his jawline was straight and strong; his arms long, his feet huge. But again, he wasn’t like the jocks—pumped-up boys parading as men. It was something more than that. It was the way he looked at me. I mean,
looked
at me. No embarrassment, no awkwardness like with other guys. He hadn’t even glanced at my chest!

And then it struck me: There was no way this guy was seventeen.

Sol tilted his head and opened his hands as if to say,
“What?”

Okay. So obviously not the friendliest guy. There was nothing to do but speak. I gripped my bag strap and took a few steps.

“I’m Mia,” I said, cursing myself for thinking this a good idea. “Mia Stone. I know Kieran in your chemistry class.”

Great introduction, Mia.

Sol didn’t reply, but neither did he turn away. His expression was impossible to read. Bored, disgusted, mad? All I knew was that his gaze penetrated as deeply as the eyes of the bird he wore on his back. He waited patiently for me to continue.

But what to say? Under the pressure of his poised, self-assured air, all I came up with was this: “How do you like Crownsville? You live out by the river, right?”

He nodded. It was something. All I had to do now was forge a route from the river to the tattoo. Easy.

“Some of us were out that way over the weekend. You might have seen us? We were on the Ridge. You passed by.”

The expression on his face never changed. I again tried to decode what it meant.
Who are you? What do you want? What the hell am I doing here?

Rapidly getting nowhere, I sighed. This was ridiculous. “I was interested in your tattoo.”

The voices of passing students punctuated the silence that followed. The gym door banged. Engines revved. Radios blared in the parking lot. And all the time, he stared at me. I started to wonder if I had ink daubed on my lips or huge boils on my face. Approaching Sol had been a huge mistake. He was clearly uninterested in everything and everyone around him. The chances of him opening up about the tattoo? Zero.

“What about it?” he finally asked.

So he
could
speak. His voice had a soft tone and a soothing depth, not ultra-deep, but in no way boyish. It was a bonus.

“I’ve seen something like it before,” I said. Seizing the opening, I stepped toward him. “I wondered what it meant.”

Though he was making this far from easy, I caught a glint of a smile on his lips. Up close, I saw shades of a whole different person. He was open and interested. What I’d judged to be arrogance appeared as curiosity. He was a mysterious bundle of contradictions. I wished him luck making friends at Crownsville High.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” he said.

“But it’s
huge
. Where’d you get something like that?”

Again, that look, half guarded, half questioning. “No place around here.”

“Then you got it in the town where you used to live?”

Sol’s eyes narrowed. “I got it a long time ago,” he said. And then he left, before I could say anything else.

Completely bemused, I watched him from the steps. He was one of hundreds heading through the lot, but he was the only one I saw. The new guy. So out of place. So
different
from everyone I knew.

He climbed into a blue truck and drove away.

Sol. Sol, with a man’s knowing eyes and a tattoo like my brother’s. Sol, who would think of me as that crazy girl with lots
of questions. Not that I planned on seeing him anytime soon. One dose of humiliation was enough for me.

I headed for Rusty, determined to forget the encounter and move on with my day. But the image of that curious look in Sol’s eyes lingered long after I’d left school behind.

N
ormally, I’d be desperate to confess to Willie that I’d spoken to Sol, but I kept silent for no other reason than I’d never told anyone about Jay’s tattoo. I didn’t plan on changing that now, especially with Pete promising he’d finally get rid of it. There were other issues I wanted to avoid too, like admitting that my fascination for Sol went beyond the tattoo. It was crazy, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how he’d looked at me. And there was no argument on earth that would satisfactorily convince Willie of why Andy’s schedule had taken me to Sol’s chemistry lab. So when we sat down to lunch on Wednesday and Willie announced that the cops had been at Old Man Crowley’s, I kept my ears open and my mouth shut.

“Got to be about Sol,” said Kieran. “The ‘never talks to anyone’ act. The ‘randomly shows up and no one knows where he came from’ story. There was never any trouble at Crowley’s until he came on the scene.”

Willie, who as usual was tying knots in her french fries, tossed one of her creations at Kieran. “I hate it when you ‘air punctuate,’” she said, mimicking Kieran’s finger speech marks. “So the kid’s new to town? Doesn’t make him an axe murderer.”

“Some ‘kid,’” said Kieran. He flicked back the clump of mangled potato. “I’d like to know what kind of a ‘school’ he got kicked out of before coming here.”

“Did he get kicked out?” asked Seth.

“Why else send him here? Did you see that tat? I bet it was a gang thing.”

I was determined not to get involved in the conversation. But, a gang? The idea had merit; it would explain why Sol had been so cagey when I’d asked about the tattoo. Obviously, Jay wasn’t in a gang, but maybe my dad had been?

“There are a million reasons for him to be here,” said Willie, refusing to give it up. “Maybe his parents died and Crowley’s his only living relative. Or maybe he’s a storm chaser. Or he heard what a great town Crownsville was. If all the students looked like him, I’d say ‘bring ’em on.’” She winked as she shot another air quotation.

“I bet your dad knows.”

“My dad might know his favorite candy bar and his shoe size, and I wouldn’t tell you.”

“Meaning he does know something.”

“Meaning, he wouldn’t tell me if he did!”

Kieran pushed aside his tray. He looked at us one by one, intrigue clear in his eyes. “Think about it. All these kids disappear, Sol turns up, and then Alex Dash goes missing too.”

Willie shook her head, then gestured like Kieran was crazy. “So that means Sol’s snatching kids? Get real, Kieran. Boys were disappearing long before he showed up.”

“But if we knew where he came from, then maybe we could find out if the same thing had happened there.”

I couldn’t help thinking that maybe Kieran had a point. Not his ridiculous theory that Sol was the Crownsville Kidnapper (that was just typical Kieran hysteria), but that Sol was far too mysterious. I’d asked about the tattoo and he’d given me nothing. Why be so secretive? Maybe it was a gang symbol, maybe it wasn’t. Whatever the truth, it all pointed in one direction: Sol was hiding something.

The bell saved us from more of Kieran’s conspiracies.

“Unbelievable,” muttered Willie, as soon as he and Seth had gone.

We grabbed our bags, then dumped our trays at the mess station.

“Time for study hall,” I said. “Any plans?”

Willie grinned. “Yeah. I’m gonna run circuits in the gym. Want to come?”

I really did. “I can’t. I haven’t finished Rifkin’s debate prep. He’s getting harsh with his grading.”

“You mean the ‘It’s about time you all grew up and faced the disappointments of adulthood’ speech that he gave last week?”

“Yeah. That. I’ll catch you later, Wills.”

Glad for a distraction from Sol, tattoos, and psychopathic kidnappers, I hurried to the library and bagged the largest table I could find to accommodate the mountains of books I’d need for Rifkin’s assignment. It was a monster—“Resolved: The clash of civilizations has no basis in reality.” Yikes. I grabbed the reading list, hit the shelves, and began taking notes.

Twenty minutes later I realized I’d only written three lines. Opulent blooms filled the margins of my page. A theme appeared between the doodles: Scrolling, curling
S
s.

Give me a break.

I blamed Kieran that I was so distracted. All that garbage about Sol and the cops at Old Man Crowley’s—as if Sol had anything to do with those kids. The real mystery was his tattoo. Find out where he got the tattoo, find a link to my dad. Find a link to my dad and . . . Then what? Track him down? Was that what I really wanted?

My brain was beginning to melt. Trying to refocus, I reached for a different book. I didn’t expect what I found. An open book lay on top of the stack. And there, on the page, was a drawing of Sol’s and Jay’s tattoo.

Stunned, I glanced around. Sol was nowhere in sight. Heart racing, I looked again at the book. The colors burst from the page. It was definitely the same bird, a strange, otherworldly eagle. Its steely eye watched me.

The caption read: “The Lunestral, or dream bird, which descends to earth in a column of light, signifies resilience, protection, and hope. The Lunestral is said to appear in dreams and offers protection from demons in the night.”

The book,
Symbols in Legend and Mythology
, didn’t look like it’d spent much time off the shelf. I turned it over and examined the spine. No Dewey number. No Crownsville High stamp. I skimmed through the pages before turning back to the bird.

Resilience. Protection. Hope.

That didn’t sound very gang-like to me.

But I felt like I was now privy to some great secret. After all these years, Jay’s tattoo had meaning.

Again, I scanned the library. And there he was, watching me from the door. Sol.

He couldn’t have been there for more than a couple of minutes, but the thought that he’d been watching me sent a shivery
thrill through my spine. He leaned against the wall, his long arms folded, his expression totally unreadable.

I looked down at the book and wondered whether I should chance a smile. But when I looked up again, Sol had gone.

* * *

The wasted study session saw me back in the library at the end of the day. I set to work, but time and again my gaze wandered to the door. There was no question Sol had sneaked the book onto my pile. But why didn’t he think he could hand it to me in person? I took the book from my bag and opened it to the dream bird.

“You know this place causes dandruff.”

I just about sprang out of my seat at the voice. I was doubly surprised to see Andy, a species usually found in locker rooms, not libraries. The thrill from when I’d caught Sol watching me during study hall returned. Only this time, it was different. With Sol, I felt drawn, like he was luring me toward him. With Andy, everything felt fresh and real and now. My stomach tightened with nervous anticipation.

“You scared me to death,” I said.

“Sorry.” He slid into the seat beside me, his hair wet like he’d recently showered. It was a regular look among the senior jocks. “Overtime?”

“Debate for Rifkin.” I quickly covered the dream bird with
my notebook. “He’s ranking our grades on this, and only giving five As.”

“And you want one?”

I shrugged. “Wouldn’t hurt.”

Andy’s eyes sparkled in the library’s fluorescent lights. It was clear he wanted to be here, unlike Sol whose gaze seemed to question everything about me. I had no idea why I was comparing the two of them; it was a bit like comparing gingerbread to prime rib. Both were delicious, but one was all warm and comforting, the other all flesh and blood. It didn’t take much to guess who was who.

“I had a great time last weekend,” I said, trying to rein in my excitement. “I haven’t been on the Ridge in ages.”

“Me neither,” said Andy. “We used to hang out there a lot.”

He shuffled, nodding as if the conversation continued in his head. I watched and waited, wondering why he seemed so restless.

“I never finished telling you about Jessica,” he finally said.

Jessica? My heart sank. This was the part when he’d tell me they’d gotten back together.

“Oh?” I asked.

“Yeah.” He fidgeted again. It was so un-Andy. He was usually so calm. But it was kind of adorable, too, with his damp hair flopping onto his forehead. Shame I was probably about to get bad news.

“Me and Jessica should never have gotten back together last time,” he said. “It’s definitely over now. I just wanted you to know that.”

Hope rekindled.
He just wanted me to know?
Me?

Andy looked me straight in the eye. He took a deep breath. “Mia, come to the prom with me,” he blurted. “I mean, would you like to come to the prom with me?”

I couldn’t speak.

Obviously, he misunderstood my silence. His face fell. “I only mentioned Jessica because I didn’t want you to think this is a rebound thing. It isn’t. I swear.” He slumped. “Look, Mia, you know I’ve always liked you. We get along really well. If it hadn’t been for Jessica and . . .” He shook his head. “You don’t have to answer right away. You probably already have a date, right?”