The Healing Power of Sugar: The Ghost Bird Series: #9 (The Academy Ghost Bird Series) (24 page)

He sent hearts back.

I couldn’t tell him about what Mr. Blackbourne told me to do. Not during school.

We did, however, go over names for the new skunk. Luke sent me pictures. He’d moved the dog house and the makeshift pen into his bedroom. There was a short video of Luke tossing the sunk a tennis ball, and the skunk would scoop it up, and waddle backwards toward the dog house, dragging it inside like he wanted to keep it.

After a debate that lasted a good portion of the first day and well into the second, we finally settled on Sprinkles. He’d told me why in a message.

Luke: The back of his tail reminds me of the black and white sprinkles on my favorite kind of cupcake at that one bakery I like.

I was amused he could associate cupcake sprinkles with a skunk, but every other name after that point didn’t seem as interesting. Sprinkles kept the name.

After each day, though, I did get to be with Luke at the diner but when we were together, we were also watched by Uncle, who was directing us to make pies and chop vegetables.

“Thursday will be a big day,” Uncle told us. “It’s Thanksgiving.”

By the time that night came, I was so tired from chopping and being very careful about pie making that I slipped into bed way before anyone else.

♥♥♥

The sound of water spraying against tile had become familiar to me since Nathan’s bathroom had been completed. On most mornings, I didn’t pay attention.

But now, on Thursday morning, the shower sounds were hard to ignore, for some reason. When I closed my eyes, I kept picturing being in Nathan’s bathroom with the shower running—with me actually in the shower.

I shivered, and covered my head with one of the pillows. It usually didn’t affect me just to listen to the shower, today it felt amplified and raw.

A lump formed in my throat. I swallowed to push it back, telling myself it wasn’t a big deal. Trying to convince myself that perhaps it was just a heavy rain. Or maybe the television was on loud and there was a waterfall scene in a movie. Was the sprinkler running and hitting the window pane? I closed my eyes tight to avoid looking at the window to keep my imagination going.

The opportunity to tell the others about being unable to shower had slipped away since Nathan’s new bathroom had been completed. Guilt seeped in whenever I went in that bathroom and realized I should have said something. I often bathed when Nathan was away, or just told him I felt like a bath. As far as he knew, things were normal.

I knew I’d have to tell them eventually. If life ever settled down, I would.

I held the pillow over my head, willing myself to forget about showers and wait until he was done.

“Sang.”

Through the thickness of the pillow, the voice calling for me was muffled. I ignored it for a moment, mostly out of sheer laziness, not wanting to get up.

“Sang…”

I groaned and peeked out from under the pillow. No one at the door. The shower was still running.

I sat up quickly, suddenly terrified. What if he had fallen in the shower and hurt himself? Was he in there all broken and calling for help?

I scrambled to get out of bed, quickly padding down the hallway. The door to the bathroom was closed so I touched the handle. Finding it unlocked, I twisted and opened the door a crack so I could peek in.

The bathroom was steamy but I could still see. The shower was big and took up half the room. The bottom was covered in stone tile, and the top half was a big glass pane. It had an opening wide enough to walk into and no door. Very modern.

Nathan was in under the spray, his head tilted back. He was rubbing his hands through his reddish brown hair. His back was to me, and with his arms flexed, his shoulders bunched, big and muscular. His biceps were large and defined: perfection.

He didn’t seem hurt. “What?” I called out so he could hear me over the water.

He jerked around, his blue eyes bulged out in surprise. He dropped his hands in front of himself even though the stone wall covered him from the waist down. “Sang! What are you doing?”

I blinked hard, trying to understand his surprise. Maybe it was because I had just woken up and had been thinking he had called me, but I was in such a panic that it took a minute for it to click. “Oh!” I said, blushing. My eyes darted to the stone wall, the one he was naked behind, but then I turned away, averting my eyes. “Sorry,” I said. “I thought you were calling for me.”

“Huh?” he asked in a strained voice. “What are you talking about?”

“Sang?” Kota’s voice drifted to us and he materialized in the hallway. “You’re finally up?”

“Kota,” Nathan said in a mock whine. He moved, until I could tell he had his hands on his hips. He wasn’t even bothering to cover himself, even if there was a wall between us. “Sang’s trying to look at my dick,” he teased.

My eyes flared and I gasped. “I am not!” I cried out. “I thought... I heard...I thought…Kota...” Not what I meant, but I was feeling too awkward to formulate an actual sentence as my brain reeled with embarrassment.

“Kota! She’s trying to look at your dick.”

“Ugh!” I groaned, throwing my hands up in the air. I stomped out into the hallway, slamming the bathroom door behind me. Nathan’s laughing echoed as he continued his shower.

Kota chuckled and then cleared his throat. The crests of his cheeks were pink. “So. You were looking for me?”

My face was still hot. I paced the floor a bit, tempted to head back to bed, but instead I spun toward Kota. “I heard my name being called,” I said.

“I was trying to wake you up,” he said, walking around me into the kitchen. I followed him, the smell of breakfast making me realize I was hungry. There were three plates sitting on the table, each filled with eggs and toast. “Do you want coffee or juice?”

I sighed, glad
he
wasn’t going to tease me too much about what just happened. “Do we have coffee?” I asked and went to the table, standing by and looking at the plates. It occurred to me that it was Thanksgiving. It dawned on me that most of them would be at home with families getting ready for dinner. “Shouldn’t you be at your house?”

“Huh?” he asked, pulling a bottle of Starbucks Frappuccino from the fridge. “Should I be?”

“Don’t you go visit relatives or something? My dad usually just made a turkey on Thanksgiving, and that was pretty much it. My sister and I watched the parades. But I know other families make a bigger deal about it.”

“Do you like the parade?” he asked with a small smile, bringing the drink to the table, and then getting himself a cup of hot coffee.

I was about to shrug again when Nathan appeared from the hallway. He was wearing a red tank shirt, along with a clean pair of new jeans. He looked over the kitchen counter at the table, and the plates. “Kota, you made Sang-size food portions for both of us?”

Kota shrugged and added a bit of sugar to his coffee and mixed it in. “Lunch will be in a few hours. I thought you’d be hungry.”

“I will be,” Nathan said. “It’s good to eat a little bit, right? So you don’t overeat all day? It’s probably better for your metabolism.” He went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of Frappuccino. He looked at it and tilted his head. “Is this sugar-free?” he asked.

Kota looked up from his mug at the bottle Nathan held. I looked at my own, now noticing the blue band around the top when it was usually brown.

“North went to the store,” Kota said. He came around with his cup of coffee and picked up my bottle, examining it. “It’s not sugar-free, really. Just fake sugar and skim milk. Fewer calories.”

“Does he think I need fewer calories?” Nathan asked. He lifted the front of his shirt, revealing his stomach. He bent slightly forward to look at it, poking at his abs, and then tugging at the skin, pinching it between his thumb and finger. “He thinks I’m fat, doesn’t he?”

I smothered my giggling, only because he sounded serious. Nathan fat? Even the bit he pinched seemed to be more skin than anything else. His stomach was a ripple of muscle. His chest and arms flexed as he pinched.

“Don’t read so much into it,” Kota said, putting his coffee down next to my plate. He sat, giving his coffee another stir. “He probably thought it was healthier than the extra sugar kind. You know him.”

Nathan pouted a bit, giving him a funny face with his serious eyes as he considered his stomach and pinched in different places. He looked up at me questioningly.

I hesitated, shaking my head slightly, unsure what to say to him. He was being silly to me.

Nathan huffed. “Sang thinks I’m fat.”

Kota blew out an exasperated groan. “Nate, she didn’t even say anything.”

“She didn’t have to. She’s staring at all the fat.”

Kota took off his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose close to his eyes and sighing. “Nathan, what’s your body fat percentage?”

“Five hundred.”

“It’s probably closer to six—not six-
hundred
—just six,” he said, looking up at me and smiling while he put his glasses back on. “The same it was last time you measured. Which is still really low. Unless you’re in training, it should be fourteen percent, like mine.”

“If it was that low, why did North get the low calorie coffee?”

“Probably for Sang? She drinks them all the time.”

“Sang’s not fat! She’s six percent.”

I had no idea what to say to any of this. I ignored the coffee for now and just picked at my eggs.

Kota looked at me, his eyes sweeping down my body, making my face heat up. “If she were four percent, she’d be dead. She looks like she’s just over twenty percent, which is healthy because she’s a girl. Girls have a different health requirement than we do. She might actually be a bit under. North wouldn’t have gotten it for her to lose weight. It’s probably because, like I said, the normal stuff is filled with sugar and he was trying to cut it a little. He’d tell her to eat another piece of bacon with it.”

Nathan frowned and sat in the chair next to me. He picked up the bottle and looked at the ingredients. “Maybe I shouldn’t drink it at all. There’s still some carbs in there.” Still, he held onto it like he wanted it. “Do you think if I skipped the pumpkin pie, it’d be okay?”

Kota rolled his eyes. He leaned in to me and whispered in my ear. “Every year, he worries about overeating at Thanksgiving and losing all the progress he’s made in one night, so he complains about body fat and calories for the week. He still overstuffs himself at Thanksgiving and on leftovers, and then tries to diet for a day and then he’s back to normal. He’ll be fine.”

I chuckled a little at the revelation, looking at Nathan.

“I don’t suppose you want to go for a jog after breakfast?” he asked.

“Not sure if we have time,” Kota said. “The good news is, we don’t have to go to the homeless shelter across town this year, since it’s covered, but we do have to go to the diner.”

“Huh?” I asked, blinking at him.

Kota smiled and put a warm hand on my thigh. “Just eat your breakfast. If you don’t like the low-calorie coffee, I’ll go get you a new one.” He leaned over, kissed me on the top of the head and then released me to start on his own breakfast.

The movement was quick but the sudden surprise of him doing this in front of Nathan had me in a panic. Had he found out the plan? Was he aware of it at all?

I locked eyes with Nathan, who looked at me with a different expression now, something much more serious. He changed the direction of his gaze to his food, and then quietly pushed the unopened coffee away from his plate. He ate the eggs without a word, and then had just one of the slices of his toast.

Did Nathan know the plan? And how much? I couldn’t remember if anyone had said, but I thought I recalled he was, but didn’t want to say anything to be sure. I was suddenly anxious to say something, anything to get this out in the open. At the same time, I couldn’t risk talking about the plan and not knowing if either of them were okay with it and wouldn’t dare try. I needed to wait until they said something to me, unless North could confirm with me that they know.

Kota’s small token of affection seemed to bother Nathan. It was different now. This wasn’t like before where I could sit in someone’s lap and no one flinched or gave such conflicted stares.

I focused on my eggs and drank the coffee, finishing quickly so I would have an excuse to go get dressed. I needed the reprieve from the sudden tension in the kitchen.

♥♥♥

I skipped trying to fake a shower entirely, hoping no one noticed. I’d had a bath the day before and hadn’t done much since except sleep.

I took a little time getting dressed. I’d put on another gray skirt—a little darker in color—with a pink T-shirt and a nice light jacket. Gabriel had left me more knee-length socks to wear with closed-toe shoes for the cold weather.

When I emerged, Kota was already ready, wearing tan slacks and a button up white shirt with a green tie. Nathan kept on his jeans, but wore a long-sleeved blue shirt with a red tie. Everything looked freshly pressed. I wondered if Kota had ironed their clothes.

“Will we need to bother with uniforms on Monday?” Nathan said as he looked over our clothes. “We skipped them while in suspension. Can’t we just wear normal clothes?”

Kota patted his pockets to make sure he had his keys and his wallet in place. “We’re going to go over the plan this weekend. Today, let’s try to forget about school.” He looked over my outfit. “Are you going to be warm in that?”

I hesitated. I did have on a jacket. We were just going to walk over, right?

Before I could say anything, Nathan stepped up beside me and put his arm around my neck. It was a casual move, something they did all the time. This time, though, it felt different. He held me closer, and his eyes were completely on Kota.

There was confusion in Kota’s eyes as he looked at Nathan and then at me.