A Beautiful Dark (9 page)

I wasn’t sure if I was disgusted—or disappointed.

Devin sat at the far end of the same table. A few of the girls tried talking to him, but he avoided eye contact and appeared vaguely uncomfortable the whole time. I smiled a little to myself and felt mildly better.

Asher looked up, caught my eye, and winked. As though, even while he was sitting in the middle of that huge group of girls, I was the only one that mattered.

I looked away, my blood boiling. It’s not that I was jealous—because I wasn’t, not at all—but it drove me crazy that he thought he could wink at me and I’d suddenly swoon like all the other girls at school. How could he put me in the same category as them? No way would I fall to pieces over someone so easily. I shot him a dark glare, and he just smiled, resting both arms on the table, his eyes challenging.

“Not interested,” I said, turning back to my friends.

Dan frowned. “Now what does that guy have that I don’t?”

“You can ask him yourself,” Cassie said, perking up. “He’s on his way.”

“Hey.” Asher smiled at us. “Can I sit here?”

“What? No!” I cried, just as Cassie squealed, “Sure!”

Asher sat down next to me and threw an infuriatingly cocky grin my way. I shot Cassie a death glare.

“What’s going on, guys?” he asked, nipping a French fry from Dan’s plate and popping it into his mouth. Dan looked pissed. Cassie looked delighted. I wasn’t sure how I looked. “Not much,” Cassie trilled. “How are you adjusting to Northwood?”

“It’s not bad.” Asher jerked his chin at the table of sophomores he’d left behind, all of whom were now watching us like hawks. “I actually stopped by to see what Skye was doing after school today.”

“Why?” I asked suspiciously.

“Because I wanted to see if you were free to hang out tonight.”

Cassie whipped around to face me, her eyes just daring me to say no
.
Her vicarious interest in my love life suddenly made me anxious.

I swallowed. They were all staring at me. The side of my arm was brushing up against Asher’s, and my mind raced at the possibility of more than just our arms touching.

“I can’t tonight,” I lied. “Tomorrow’s the ski trip, and I take my skiing very seriously.”

“Oh, so do I,” he said in mock seriousness. “How right you are.” He stood up and stretched, and when his sweater rode up, I caught a peek of his flat lower abdomen, tan, even though it was winter. I looked away. Ellie sauntered by, and Asher winked at us. “Gotta go,” he said, and he was off.

“Ugh.” I turned back to Cassie. “Gross. Can’t he stay focused for like two minutes?”

“Skye!” she cried, and threw a fry at me. “What is wrong with you? He is clearly
so
into you!”

“No, he isn’t!” I could hear my voice creeping up the octaves. “He just thinks I’m like the other girls who fawn all over him the minute he winks at them.”

“Do girls like winking?” Dan asked no one in particular.

“Fine,” Cassie continued. “But it’s obvious you want him bad, so don’t get all moody and upset when he starts dating someone else.”

“I won’t get moody and upset,” I insisted, but Cassie was too busy snorting to come up with a witty reply.

I glanced over to where Devin was sitting. He was watching us, the corners of his mouth tilted up in a strange smile. It wasn’t a sweet smile, or a shy one like that day on the trail. It was almost smug.

Chapter 9

T
he sky was still black and the house was silent when I woke up the next morning. I had packed for the trip the night before, sticking carefully to the list that Ms. Manning had sent home with us on the first day of the semester.

I spent a few minutes rechecking the list to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. Wool socks, check. Long underwear, gross, but check. Parka, ski pants, goggles, check, check, check. The list had recommended Gore-Tex gloves, but when I had dug mine out of my ski team gym bag, I realized that I’d ripped one during an intense moment in my last race and a long gash now ran down the thumb, rendering them totally useless. I’d thrown them into my overnight bag, along with an extra pair of fleece gloves, just in case. The fleece wouldn’t keep my hands dry, but since this was my weekend
off
from racing, I’d just do an easy run or two and then hang out in the lodge by the fire with my friends.

I put on a pot of coffee. While I waited for it to brew, I stared out the picture windows into the backyard as the rich, earthy smell bloomed into the kitchen. The sky faded from velvety black to inky navy to the color of my favorite jeans and, finally, what those jeans would look like if I rubbed them down with sandpaper, stretching out frayed and raw above the mountains.

When the coffee was ready, Aunt Jo joined me for breakfast. I poured a bowl of cereal and topped it with sliced bananas.

“For once, our schedules are in sync,” she said. “You have this ski weekend, and I’ll be taking a group trekking through the Presidential Peaks.”

“Still no luck finding a temporary replacement for Jenn?” I asked between bites.

“None at all. I’m not even sure it’s worth the trouble of looking now. She’ll be back on her feet in a few more weeks, and life will return to normal.” I didn’t want to admit how happy that made me.

When the sky was light and I was fully caffeinated, I gave her a huge hug good-bye, loaded my bag into my car, flicked on the radio, and drove to school. As I pulled my car into the lot, Cassie, Dan, and Ian were huddled together by the front steps. Cassie waved.

“Hey!” she said gleefully as I flung my duffel onto the pile of students’ bags waiting to be loaded into the bus. Cassie’s excitement was so obvious that she was literally vibrating when I hugged her. She was wearing an outfit I could describe only as Ski-Bunny-Chic-meets-Elmer-Fudd: a huge fake-fur hunting hat with earflaps, black thermal leggings, and huge snow boots. Dan wore his Chilean knit hat from the hippie store in town, and Ian had on a beanie with some kind of skater logo on it, like a Martian or devil clown or something.

“Exactly how much coffee have you had this morning?” I asked, eyeing Cassie suspiciously.

“Oh, shut up, you know I don’t touch that crap,” she said.

“But you did have two Mountain Dews on the way over here,” Dan said, grinning.

Cassie pulled the knit strings dangling from his earflaps.

Ian smiled at me, which was a relief. I hadn’t really talked to him alone since he and Asher had been trying to mark their territory at the coffee shop Friday night.

I smiled back. “Ready for a weekend of fun in the snow?”

“You bet. I’ve been looking forward to this for years.”

I eased a little closer to him. I felt like I owed him an apology or something. “We missed you at lunch this week.”

“Yeah, I had a project in Woodshop I needed to get done.”

“Oh,” I said. “I thought maybe you were mad at me or something.”

“No,” he said, his face softening into a smile. “Come on, Skye. Never.”

“Okay. Just wanted to make sure we’re good. You’ve been my friend forever.”

“Yeah,” he said softly. “Your friend.”

Dan punched Ian’s shoulder to get his attention, and they started talking.

I did a quick scan of the parking lot, waving at a few girls who were standing near us. I couldn’t help bristling a little at the sight of Ellie, remembering how Asher had jetted off after her the day before. Then I chastised myself for the pettiness. I’d turned him down, after all. Had I expected him to mope around with a broken heart?

Just about our entire class was there, standing in small groups like ours, waiting for the driver to put us out of our misery and open the doors of the bus.

I actually couldn’t find Asher—or Devin for that matter—among the sea of hats and scarves, and for a brief moment, I felt my stomach sink in disappointment.

The bus doors finally opened. “Come on,” Cassie urged. “Let’s grab some seats together before everyone else gets on.”

It was the same temperature on the bus as it was outside. Cassie and I slid into a seat toward the back, near Cassie’s bandmates Trey and Evan—cute boys with scruffy hair and plaid shirts. She immediately turned in her seat to talk to them about a new song she’d been working on. “I have it on my iPod,” I heard her say. “I recorded it on my computer the other day.”

Dan and Ian were two rows in front of us.

“Turn the heat on!” Josh Brooks called from the back row.

“It’s not magic, it takes time!” The bus driver shouted back. I could hear the clink of the yellow school bus’s old heating system lurch into gear. I was shivering, trying to generate my own body heat.

“Crap,” Cassie muttered, swinging back around and rummaging through her backpack. “I left it in my overnight bag. Hold on, I’m going to see if they’ve loaded our bags on yet.” She popped up and I watched her red waves bouncing down the aisle as she hurried off the bus. Absently I waved my hand across the heater duct along the base of the wall, near my boots. Nothing. Great. It was going to be a long, cold ride.

The heater clanked again, and all of a sudden, a blast of hot steam shot out at my hand. “Ow!” I cried out, pulling it away.

“Are you all right?”

I jumped, startled to find Devin standing in the aisle by my seat.

“Y-yeah,” I faltered. “It was just the heat. It came on really quickly.” I held up my hand to show that it had burned me, but there was no mark, no redness anywhere on it. Devin just stared at it. Then he shook his head slightly. His eyes found mine.

“Is someone sitting . . . ?” He gestured toward the empty space next to me. “I got here late.” He looked around. Barely any empty seats were left.

“Yeah,” I said. “I mean—”

“She means yes, there is,” Asher said, sliding into the seat from out of nowhere. He didn’t look at me; he just kept staring at Devin. Like he was sitting there more to piss him off than to be near me.

Devin’s face clouded over.

“Ooh, it’s warm, too.” Asher rubbed his gloved hands together. “Feel how warm it is, Dev? Too bad you’ll have to find another seat.”

Devin frowned. “Fluke,” I barely heard him utter, and Asher shot him a triumphant look.

“It’s just a seat,” I said, growing tired of their game.

“Oh, it’s more than that,” Asher said, his voice low but gleeful.

“Hey, boys,” Cassie trilled as she made her way back down the aisle, her cheeks pink and her eyes shining playfully as they caught mine. “You’re in my seat, Asher. Scram.” Asher glanced from me to Devin, whose expression was now turning smug. He got up slowly, nodding his head politely and allowing Cassie to pass.

“See you on the mountain,” he promised me before walking away. Like we’d agreed to meet up there and he had something special planned.

Devin gave me a pointed look, as though trying to remind me about his warning. I smiled back at him reassuringly, hoping he’d interpret it correctly: I would be okay.

“Found it!” Cassie held up her iPod as she slid in next to me. “Ooh, it’s toasty here; it’s freezing everywhere else on the bus.”

“You mean the heat’s still not on?” I asked, a chill creeping up my spine.

“Nope,” she said brightly. “How did you get our vent to work so quickly?”

I thought of short-circuiting the thermostat in our house and how quickly the hot air had blasted out of the bus’s air duct when I’d run my hand across it. How
had
I gotten it to work?

All I could do in response was shrug.

“So that was interesting.” She jutted her chin to where Devin and Asher had just been standing.

“It’s weird.” I groaned, falling so that my forehead rested against the cushioned seat back in front of us. “I don’t understand either of them. One minute I think Devin really likes me, is going out of his way to talk with me, but then it’s like he changes his mind or something because he’ll keep his distance. And Asher gets this kick out of pushing my buttons, but then he flirts with every girl in school. It’s not like they’re really interested in me. It’s more like what they’re really trying to do is force me to choose between them or something.”

Cassie’s mischievous grin widened. “Let me put this in simple terms. They want what every guy in this school has always wanted. You’re usually just too wrapped up in other things to notice. I’ve never seen you respond to any of them this way.” She paused thoughtfully. “Actually this is the first time I’ve seen you respond at all. Since Jordan, I mean.” She looked away guiltily at the mention of my first and only boyfriend.

“I don’t think that’s it, though,” I said quietly, making sure they couldn’t hear us. “I don’t know
what
they want.”

“Okay,” Cassie said, patting my knee with her mittened hand. “But what do
you
want?”

I leaned back in my seat and stared out the window at the icy parking lot as the bus engine groaned to life.

What did
I
want?

That was a much harder question to answer.

Chapter 10

I
slept for most of the trip, leaning on Cassie’s shoulder as she scribbled away in her notebook. At some point, the heat was working for the entire bus, and when I woke up, it was starting to verge on uncomfortably warm.

By the time we got to the resort, checked in, and got our room assignments, dinner was being served. The sun was already beginning to fade into dusk, and a sharp wind was picking up. The dining room had wide windows that looked out over the mountain, where tiny lights were just beginning to blink on, illuminating the trails. Nothing was more beautiful than the sun setting over the peaks and painting the slopes in shadows. I ate quickly; I hadn’t realized how ravenous I was.

As the servers were clearing away our plates, Ian suggested night skiing—but our faculty advisers, Ms. Manning and Mr. DeNardo, the head of the English department, quickly nixed that idea. Instead they announced free time before bed, then went off to a deserted corner of the dining room to go over the schedule for the following day.

We all congregated by the huge fireplace in the main room of the lodge, where the fire was crackling and we could order hot chocolate from the bar at the far end of the room. As a group of us settled into a long banquette, Cassie nudged me and covertly opened her fleece; a hint of silver flask flashed up at me.