The Seventh Sister, A Paranormal Romance (2 page)

“Okay, well whatever Riley thinks she is to you, she’s taking it out on me because she knows you like me.”

He chuckles at that. “Who said that I like you?”

I take a step forward to get more up in his face. “Listen, I have no time for games. You know you like me. But here’s the deal—I don’t like you,” I say with a nonchalant shrug.

Now he laughs even harder and I frown at him, strangely irritated by this response.

“You know what I noticed about you?” he asks.

“See now that’s what I mean—why are you noticing things about me?”

He sighs. “Because you’re interesting, Zillael, or can I call you Zill?”

I grunt. “Is Zill my name?”

“No.”

“Then there goes your answer.”

He points at me real quick to say, “That’s what I mean. You’ve taken the word bitch, and I’m not calling you that, but you’ve taken that noun to a whole other level.”

I’m staring at him confused. It’s almost like I’m having a conversation with Mrs. Lowenstein and she’s managed to call me a bitch without actually calling me a bitch even through one of her irritating tight-lipped grins. I’m not buying his reasoning.

“You just called me a bitch,” I staunchly conclude.

“But that’s not a bad thing. See, what I meant was you’re an unapologetic hard ass.”

I throw a hand up. “Okay—stop while you’re ahead,” I say and walk off.

I glance at him with a frown because he’s easily keeping up with me. “Come on, you know how you are. All I’m saying is I like it.”

I pick up the pace and he still keeps up. “What do you want from me, Firth?” My tone is harsh.

“I heard you have to go to the Sadie Hawkins dance, and I was wondering if you asked anyone.”

I come to an abrupt stop and grab him by the collar of his dark grey pea coat.
His eyes are dark green—strange
. “What are you and your little girlfriend trying to pull? A Carrie?”

“Carrie who?” He looks confused.

“You know the movie
Carrie
? Because I’m telling you, I’ll hurt both of you.”

“I told you, Riley’s not my girlfriend.”

“Then why does everyone think she is?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because she kissed me in the cafeteria once.”

I shake my head at him. That is the most asinine reason I ever heard someone conjure. “See what I mean? You’re lying to me.” I take off walking again.

“No, I’m not,” he says in his own defense.

“Listen, I don’t have a date. Don’t want a date.” I increase my pace even more, but he still manages to keep up.

“So you’re going alone.”

“Didn’t the
gossipers
tell you that I’m being punished? I’m working off my time.”

“Okay, well, I’ll work off time with you.”

I shake my head. “Leave me alone, kid,” I say in my attempt to make a clear distinction in maturity between him and me. Although I’m in high school, and man I hate high school, because I’m taller than just about everyone, more filled out in the body and I look like I’m twenty-one for sure. Physically, I’ve outgrown this place and the schoolwork is monotonous.

“You’re calling me a kid?” He’s grinning at me and is pretty amused by me at the moment, but I don’t care.

“Yes, now go away!”

That’s when he stops and I keep walking. “See you tonight,” I hear him shout in the distance.

I shake my head and continue making my way home through the fog. It’s thick but not panic worthy. This is Moonridge, Maine, a tiny port town along the Atlantic coastline. We’re used to fog this time of year. Although it’s afternoon, the mist normally rolls in early in the morning or at night and never this dense.

I know I’m passing The Tackle Barn fish bait shop, Krispy’s Café and the only McDonald’s in town. I enter our shallow downtown, where the structures are barely visible from the sidewalk. Right now, I know I’m passing the mayor’s symbols of progress, which are two glass buildings designed by Rodale Washington. The only reason I can remember what this guy’s name is that for about a year prior to the grandiose ground breaking ceremony, posters were plastered on every light post and in every shop window in town. Not only that, but there was this cheesy billboard featuring the architect, smiling like the guy who just sold you muddy swampland for a few million bucks, erected at the site of construction.
Rodale Washington—Architect of the Century—Building Moonridge into the 21
^st
Century
, the poster read. I thought it sounded awkward; I mean it said Century twice. Maybe it should’ve said
Architect of the Decade
.

What’s really funny is my mom, Deanna Decker, couldn’t recall seeing even one of those posters or the humongous billboard, ever. She only took notice this spring after seeing the actual buildings established while driving up Main Street in that red, convertible Corvette of hers after returning from an extended business trip to California, then to New York, then back west to Denver, to Seattle and then finally here. The place, as far as I’m concerned, she hasn’t suffered in long enough to call home.

Yet even with the glass towers, which look completely forced into existence, the town’s true pride and joy and lucrative tourist traps are the quaint cottage-styled shops that make up the Main Street Towne Square that’s built next to the towers.

Once I pass downtown, I continue up Main Street for about five more miles until I’m relieved to see our mailbox. The fog was starting to wear on me. It’s not the regular wet kind that flows off the ocean. The haze is dry and extra cold, making the air chillier than what the snow has already made it. Not only that, but it’s seriously unsettling.

It’s toasty inside of the house. The iciness outside has kicked the central heating system on, and it’s been blowing all day long. I drop my full book bag down on the armchair near the front door and call for no one. Deanna is on another long business trip. She does check in every day to make sure I’ve done the shopping, cooked dinner and gotten to bed on time. This must make her feel more like a mother.

I turn on the television, and there’s no news on reporting what the fog may be so I turn it off. I’m not a big TV watcher. I go into the kitchen and put together a spring salad for dinner. I’m still debating on whether to show up for duty tonight or not. It’s foggy outside for goodness sake. Surely that’s enough to cancel the silly dance.

After chopping up the tomatoes and cucumbers, I shuffle over to the telephone to make a call to the school’s office, but it rings before I can lift the receiver.

It’s five-thirty so I know who’s calling.

“Hi, mom,” I say right away.

“You’re home,” Deanna says through a hard sigh of relief.

“Of course, where else can I go? This place sucks.”

“Yes, yes…” She’s being dismissive and it makes me mad.

“Plus, this creepy thick fog rolled in and…”

“What fog?” she cuts me off. Her tone is completely different, like she’s about to miraculously take whatever I say serious.

I hesitate, debating whether to take this opportunity to voice how much I hate Moonridge and how unfair it is for her to go traipsing off to the exciting parts of the world without me. “Fog—fog,” I decide to answer instead.

“Isn’t it kind of early for fog?”

“Yeah,” I mutter. I think I’m pouting a little because we’re not discussing ways of getting me out of Moonridge forever.

After a long pause she asks, “How does it feel?”

“What do you mean
feel
?”

“When you’re in it, how does it feel on your skin?”

I frown at her strange question. “I don’t know—like fog. Although, it
is
colder and sort of dry.”

She takes another long pause. It’s strange. I can feel the heaviness in the silence.

“Mom, are you there?” I ask.

“Yes,” she barely says.

“Are you okay?” Now I’m worried about her.

“Listen, Z-cup, stay inside. Don’t go out for anything, not even if the yard is on fire. Understand?”

She called me
Z-cup
, which she only does when she wants me to feel comforted.

“Sure, mom,” I haphazardly agree.

I mean, I do have the issue of the dance. All I need is for Lowenstein to call Deanna and tell her that I missed homeroom three times last week. When Mr. Pratt, our principal, asked me why I chose to miss class, all I could come up with was the truth:
homeroom is a gross waste of time.
I think my answer and the nonchalant way I said it really worried him. He sent me over to see Lowenstein right away. After asking me a multitude of questions about friends, which I have none, and activities that I’m involved in, which again added up to zero, she imparted the punishment of me having to work every school event for the next three months.

“That’s almost the rest of the school year,” I cried.

“I know,” she said, and then stretched her lips into that smile I hate.

Of course, I could blow tonight off and fight this sentence. I could use my grades as evidence that I’m doing all right in school and missing homeroom doesn’t affect that. My grade point average is well above three point zero, but words like “missing class” and “punishment” are hot-button words to my mother. She goes way overboard and before I know it, Aunt Jill, a long-time nanny who really isn’t my aunt, will come knocking on the door to announce she’s come to, exact words, “babysit” me. And that’s a whole other experience.

Before hanging up, Deanna assures me that she’ll be home as soon as possible. She’s in Sydney right now, but she’s taking the first flight out. When I asked, “Because of the fog,” she just hung up without a reply.

I move forward with my earlier plan to call the school. One of the ladies in the office tells me
indeed, there’s still a dance tonight
.

“Great,” I say and hang up.

There’s no way I’m going to be AWOL. After I eat the salad, I sit down to read the chapters Mr. Lux assigned and then finish up my trigonometry homework. It takes all of an hour and a half. More homework was assigned to me as well. Read
The Tempest
by Shakespeare and chapter sixteen of the world geology text on Third World industrial products, but this is stuff I’ve already read the first two weeks of the new school year. Back then, I figured why not get a jump on it all because, I felt if I could hurry up and get it done, then maybe it’ll speed up the process of finishing high school.
I guess it didn’t work.

At seven-thirty, I throw on an old pair of loose-fitting jeans and a white tee shirt under a navy blue cable knit sweater. The goal is to look like the help and not the partygoer. I don’t know what to do with all of my hair. Ponytails and tie-ups are out of the question; they’re too binding and I need to be free, always free. Even I must admit I look too much like a Calvin Klein ad with it down. The goal is to blend in, go unnoticed—I wonder when or if that day will ever come. Regardless of how I look, time is ticking away so I grab my green wool winter coat and hit the door.

When I get outside, I see the fog has lifted. The sky is congested with gloomy clouds. It’s extra dark tonight, which makes Moonridge look even more like one of those tiny deserted towns on the edge of nowhere important. I don’t want to walk tonight because it’s just too depressing.

Deanna bought me a black Jeep Wrangler with black tinted windows that I mostly only drive out to Whole Foods in Portland, Maine to shop for groceries. I’ll take it tonight because I want to feel like I’m driving far away from this town and not pulling double duty at the local high school.

Chapter 2

Fight Night

The parking lot is crowded tonight. Only in a place like this will an event like the Sadie Hawkins dance be over attended. I park in the faculty parking lot because there is way less cars here, and the plow did a better job clearing out the snow.

The students are filtering in to the auditorium all dressed up. Some of the girls, who have forgone their coats, are hugging themselves while stomping off into to the building as fast as they can. I shake my head at them wondering, why the sacrifice?

I check the time on my watch and it’s eight-thirty. Great, I’m late. After taking a deep breath, I shuffle across the icy asphalt. Once I get into the mix just about everyone stares at me. I think they’re shocked to see me, but I keep my face down and weave through the bystanders until I make it to the front door.

“Tickets,” a little pointy-faced girl asks. I see her bottom lip trembling. It’s cold out of course, and she’s not wearing a coat even while sitting at the table taking tickets.

“Don’t have one. But I got to go in,” I say, halfway hoping she’ll tell me sorry, no ticket, not entrance. That way, tomorrow I can tell Mrs. Lowenstein, hey I came but the commando you had manning the door wouldn’t let me in so take it up with her. Then I hear the heels of those little shoes go
tap, tap, tap
and look right through the opened doorway. Here she comes still wearing her tight suit from earlier today

The look on her face makes me sigh gravely. This encounter is not going to go well.

“Sorry,” I say before she’s able to get a word out. “Lots going on at home and I lost track of time.”

She sighs hard. “Well, you’re here now. Follow me.” She turns her back and saunters off, expecting me to keep up.

I give the girl manning the door one last glance before starting off behind Mrs. Lowenstein. Funny, I’ve never seen the girl before, or if I have I don’t remember her face—which is not odd for me. I can’t remember more than half the faces or names of the people in this school and we’ve been classmates for the better part of three years. That’s how long we’ve lived here—well,
I’ve
lived here.

Inside there’s crate paper and hay everywhere. It’s sort of ironic, a one-horse town and barnyard décor—so fitting. As I pass people, they watch me stride across the glossy wooden floor. It’s ridiculous actually. Shouldn’t they focus on those who want to be here, basically each other?

“You could’ve worn something a little dance worthy.” Mrs. Lowenstein turns to say
thi
to me over her shoulder.