Wraithsong (4 page)

He’s making me upset. “No
I’m not. I never burn,” I say dryly.

He grabs my arm, startling
me again, and examines it. “Ouch, you’re hurting me!”

“
You’re as pale as an
albino,” he sneers.

“
I adapt well to the…sun.”
I pull my arm back forcefully. Who does this guy think he is? He
seems like a gardener from hell.

Anthony opens the squeaky
glass door. “If you’d like, you can start tomorrow when you have
the appropriate attire.” He walks out and the door slams shut
behind him.

I’m ticked off that he
doesn’t even show me the decency of holding the door open for me.
Flinging the door open, I follow after him. “No.” I march up behind
him. “I’ll be fine and I want to start today.” So I can get it over
with as quickly as possible.

Anthony picks up a few
rusty gardening tools. “Suit yourself.” He continues across the
large grass field behind the school, and then skirts around to the
building’s northern brick wall.

It’s difficult keeping up
with his fast pace. “Do you always run to your destinations?” I
breathe heavily.

“
I’m not running. I’m just
in a hurry to get this done so I can catch my soccer
game.”

“
Soccer?”

“
Yeah, you know where they
kick the ball with their feet and—”

I interrupt him. “I know
what soccer is.” Why is he acting so condescending toward me? I
just met him and I’ve been nothing but nice. I can’t see his face,
but I get the feeling he’s rolling his eyes at me.

“
Many
girls your type don’t, and I doubt you
really
know anything about the
sport,” he says, still moving at an unusually fast pace.

“
You never walk alone!” I
shout.

Anthony stops dead in his
tracks, swivels around and glares at me with a frown. “What did you
say?”

“
You never walk alone,” I
repeat, my hands hitting my hips, smiling because I know that will
get his attention. ‘You never walk alone’ is Liverpool Football
Club’s slogan.

“
How did you know that?”
Although shocked, a shadow of a smile emerges on his
lips.

I’m proud that I actually
know something about soccer, and that judging from the shirt he’s
wearing, Liverpool is probably about Anthony’s favorite team. “My
dad’s favorite soccer team was Liverpool.”

He narrows his eyes and
steps in my direction. His presence is daunting, leaving me
suddenly breathless, so I lean back a little.

“
Doesn’t he support them
anymore?” he asks.

“
Why would you think that?”
My defenses are at their peak. He can mess with me, but not my
dad.

“
You said ‘was,’
right?”

“
Oh.” I don’t really want
to share with Anthony the details of my life, especially since he’s
been acting like an idiot, but I decide to answer anyway. “No, my
dad passed away about a year and a half ago.” I try not to get
emotional. That would be the most awkward thing to have happen, and
I don’t want to give Anthony any more reasons to think less of
me.

His firm expression melts
into a compassionate one. “I’m sorry to hear that.” His brow
wrinkles and he starts walking again at a slower pace.

“
It’s okay, I’m almost used
to it now,” I say in an attempt to snap him out of his melancholic
mood. His mood swings are exhausting to keep up with, and I have
barely even spent fifteen minutes with him.

“
That’s what you think you
ought to say, isn’t it? That’s what I used to say for a long time
too,” Anthony says.

“
Did your dad die, too?” I
regret that I judged him so harshly.

“
No,” Anthony
says.

Now I’m thoroughly
confused. First Anthony seems kind, then rude, then he’s a complete
jerk, and now he’s relating to me without having something to even
relate to? No wonder I’ve never met him before—Principal Jenkins
probably keeps Anthony locked up in the greenhouse so he can keep
him away from good students and use him to punish students who have
strayed from the straight and narrow.

As we come around the
corner to the western side of the building, the sun blinds us. “My
father abandoned my mother when I was young.” Anthony’s voice
softens considerably.

Fluctuating between
defensiveness and guilt, I feel like I’m on a rollercoaster ride.
“I’m sorry, I guess it’s kind of the same as my dad.” I hold my arm
up to block the sun.

He cracks a sideways smile.
“Kind of.” He looks so much more approachable with a smile on his
face, and something draws me to him when he smiles.

“
So, are you a senior?” I
ask.

“
Yes.”

“
I thought I knew all the
seniors at Sarasota High.” I scratch my head.

“
Apparently not,” he
says.

I don’t like how vague he’s
being especially since there’s so much vagueness in my life
already. That’s one of the reasons I like Ashley so much. She
always speaks her mind so I know where I am with her, but with
Anthony, it’s as if he’s trying to dodge every question I ask, and
vagueness coupled with the few rude remarks he’s been throwing at
me, makes me not want to be around him.

We stop in front of the
school. “This is where all the weeds are.” He gestures to the
entire front side of the red brick building. Four royal palm trees
stand on either side of the oak front doors, and plants that looks
like weeds blanket the beds below them.

“
The weeds go on for
miles!” I say—exaggerating—but only slightly. “It’s going to take
way more than ten hours to get rid of them all.” I hadn’t noticed
how overgrown the front of the school actually looks, as I always
park and enter in the back.

“
Well, you’re more than
welcome to work for more than ten hours. Do you know which ones are
the weeds and which ones aren’t?” he asks.

I make an apologetic face.
“Not really, they all look like weeds to me.”

Anthony laughs, shaking his
head, his blond hair catching the afternoon sunlight. “So I guess
I’ll need to teach you the difference between weeds and
flowers.”

“
Yes, definitely, or you
can just tell Principal Jenkins that I’m a complete waste of time
and that it would be best if I didn’t weed with you.”

“
Ha, ha, ha,” he says
sarcastically. “Nice try, but we need these weeds out by the end of
the year, and it’s your duty now, too.”

I frown, the burden of
responsibility descending on my narrow shoulders. I could always
get Savannah to take over for me, but something tells me that I
want to spend some one-on-one time with Anthony, at least until I
have him figured out a little more.

* * *

I get home at 6:56 p.m.,
nearly two and a half hours after school ended. As soon as I begin
a project, I can’t stop—I hate leaving any project unfinished—but
after Anthony left at 5:30 p.m., I lost my motivation to continue.
I figure it will take me at least ten more, three-and-a-half hour
days if I am to complete the project
with
Anthony’s help. Still, I don’t
know if it will be worth my time because Anthony doesn’t seem
interested in getting to know me at all. He weeded on the opposite
side of the school as me even, making conversation with him
impossible. The only communication between us after we started
weeding was to exchange phone numbers.

“
Just in case I need to
reach you in an emergency,” he said and then he ran off to soccer
practice.

My mom’s SUV stands in the
garage when I get home. I park my dad’s silver Jetta in the
driveway, unlock the stained glass front door and take a left into
my room. Anthony was right about a few things; my knees feel raw
from all the digging and crawling; and though my skin didn’t burn
from the sun—he was wrong about that—it would have been nice to
have a wide-brimmed hat to keep the scorching sun out of my
eyes.

“
Mom?” I yell as I head for
the kitchen.

“
I’m in here,” she yells
from her bedroom.

I adjust my course and walk
through the living room into the master bedroom. Sitting down on
the king-sized four-post bed, I sigh. “How was your
day?”

Heaps of neatly folded
clothes stand in piles on top of the ocean blue duvet. “Oh, just
fine.” She folds a towel. “What about you? You look
exhausted.”

I lean back, letting myself
fall into the soft bed. “I’m exhausted—and look at my knees.” I
lift one knee up and reveal the scratches and bruises on it and
after that show her my blistered hands.

“
Looks like you worked hard
today.” She moves on to matching the socks up. “If you keep this
pace up, you’ll be done with your commitment in no time.” She
smiles.

“
Well…I might just stick
with it until the job is finished,” I mumble.

“
Really? I thought you said
you had too much homework and that you have to study for your
finals.”

“
I do, but I’ll be careful
to manage my time so I can get it all done. Besides, it’s nice to
be able to contribute to my school, right?” I can tell that she
isn’t quite buying into my story.

“
Is there something you’re
not telling me?” One eyebrow arches way up to her
forehead.

“
No,” I say, because there
is truly nothing to tell—yet—at least not when it comes to Anthony.
For as long as I can remember, my parents have forbidden me from
having a boyfriend and warned me that if I brought a boy home they
would tell him about my special gifts. That’s the one thing they
have really been strict about—no boys, ever. I don’t want anyone to
know that I’m different, of course. I want to fit in at school and
not look like a freak among my peers. Thankfully, I haven’t liked
anyone enough to bring them to my house anyway.

“
The reason you’re not
allowed to kiss anyone before you turn eighteen,” my dad said once
I asked him about it, “is that you’ll never get rid of him and if
you’re not one hundred and ten percent sure about whether or not
you want the guy around for eternity, don’t kiss him. He’ll follow
you to the ends of the earth, and you’ll be sorry.” I believed him
then and I believe him now.

“
I promise, if there was
something to tell, I’d let you know right away,” I say. At least I
think I would.

Chapter 3

By Friday, I’ve worked
five days with Anthony, and I still haven’t been able to figure him
out. Most guys would have suggested that we hang out or
something
by now, but
Anthony seems to not be interested in me at all. In fact, he seems
to be repulsed by me, and this rejection is quite a strange
experience. The thought that he might be gay briefly crosses my
mind, but I quickly abandon that thought when he tells me that he
asked another senior—a female—to the prom.

“
Are you going to the
prom?” he asks.

“
No.” I pull on another
weed, but curse when the gnarly root remains embedded in the black
soil. A few boys have asked me, but my mom forbid me to go, so I
had to (not so) regretfully decline. It’s just as well anyway, for
if I go to the prom, most of my friends will probably steal away to
make out, or rent a hotel room, and I won’t be doing any of that. I
don’t like any of the guys at school enough to want to have them
eternally bound to me, especially not after seeing how Savannah
acted toward me when I used my flair on her.

“
What’s wrong?” Anthony
asks.

His deep voice brings me
back to the present. “Nothing, just these roots are being
so…difficult!” I plop down into the grass and huff.

“
Of course, it’s their job
to be.”

That’s a strange reply. “My
hands hurt, my knees hurt, and I’m getting behind on my
homework.”

“
No one’s forcing you to do
this, you know. And why don’t you wear gardening gloves? That would
save your hands a lot of pain,” Anthony says.

I frown. “I know no one’s
forcing me to do this. You don’t have to state the obvious all the
time. And my hands can’t grab these stupid roots when I wear
gloves.” Why does he care about my hands anyway? I walk over to my
water bottle and take a few sips. Glancing over at him, I see the
muscles in his back flex as he pulls out the weeds, and at that my
heart starts beating faster. If I’m truly honest with myself, what
I’m really upset about is that Anthony is pretty much just ignoring
me, and it’s driving me crazy.

“
So why are you doing this?
You’ve already put in the ten hours Principal Jenkins told you that
you have to.” Anthony wipes the dirt off his face with the front of
his shirt, revealing his six-pack. His abdomen is as tan as his
forearms so I conclude that he must play
soccer—shirtless.

I force myself not to let
my eyes linger. “I just hate leaving a job unfinished,” I say, but
again, that’s not the real reason. “Why are you here? You never
told me your story of how you got stuck in the greenhouse in the
first place.”