Brimstone (49 page)

“Stop that.” Jenna slapped my hand as I tugged down the skirt. “It covers everything. Do you think we don’t know the difference between hot and tacky?”

I had no doubt they did. My eye was less trained, and had widened at the amount of leg showing in the mirror.

“Here.” She handed me a Maryland driver’s license. “Tonight you’re Mavis Bucknell. At least long enough to get in the door.”

“I don’t need this. It’s an eighteen-and-up club, right?”

She wouldn’t take the card back. “Just in case you want to have a drink.”

Mavis and I looked nothing alike. At least I hoped we didn’t. “This is never going to pass for me.”

“Just trust me.”

The music grew louder as we neared the club. When we reached the door, I could feel the bass beat against my sternum like an extra heart. An enormous guy, his bald head as shiny as an egg, sat on a stool outside. Elbowed by Jenna, I handed him Mavis’s license. He stared at it, stared at me, then handed it back, along with a wristband that identified me as legal.

“It worked!” I shouted this at Jenna once we were inside,
where the lights throbbed against my retinas the way the music did against my ears.

“Of course it did!” She winked at me. “Like a charm.”

Lisa and I had come here this summer, shortly after my birthday. We’d danced, guys had flirted with me to get introduced to my friend, and I’d had a good time—not everyone could dance with Lisa at the same time, so I had plenty of partners. But techno-pop wasn’t my thing.

The dance floor was writhing with college kids. I didn’t see anyone who looked even close to thirty—though with the strobes and dim light, it was hard to tell.

I looked around, but didn’t see Jenna until she appeared in front of me and pushed a drink into my hand. “Here.”

“What is this?” I took a wary sip. The drink was sweet and fruity and didn’t taste like alcohol at all. The club was hot with pulsating music and sweaty bodies, and I took a deeper gulp.

“Sex on the beach.” Jenna laughed at my grimace. “You’re such a prude.”

“It’s not that.” It was because even I knew it was a total sorority-girl drink. I was standing in a club, dressed in a trendy hot outfit, and drinking a sex on the beach. I had become what I most feared: a cliché.

“Hey!” someone yelled in my ear, the only way to get sufficient decibels over the music. I looked up and saw Will from history class. “You decided to come.”

“Yeah!” He bent down so that he could hear me. “Jenna talked me into it.”

“Excellent!” He pointed to the dance floor, his lips moving, but no sound reaching me through the din.

“Sure!” I looked around for Jenna, to get her to hold my drink, but she had disappeared again. I finished the last sip and stuck it on a passing waiter’s tray.

Will grabbed my hand and we threaded through the gyrating bodies until a space opened up. The pulse of the music filled my head, drove out spare thoughts, criticism, and commentary. In the small pocket of air, we danced close together, and I didn’t worry about looking like a dork, or if my legs were so pale they glowed in the blacklight. No talking, just motion and instinct.

The beat was primal, spoke to parts of me that weren’t used to being included in the conversation. One song bled into another. I glimpsed the other SAXis on the dance floor. In groups and pairs, we came together for one song, then back into the mix and out the other side for the next.

I lost track of partners, until suddenly I was facing Will again. He grinned down, and I smiled up in answer. My skin was damp and hot, and when Will put his hands on my waist the temperature spiked again. Add friction and stir. His jeans brushed my bare legs, my chest brushed his shirt. He smelled of a subtle, spicy cologne and sweat; this was good. But it wasn’t right.

I stepped back, bumped into the girl behind me. “I need some air.”

“Sure.” He blinked, seemed disoriented by the abrupt shift in mood, but let one hand fall from my waist. The other stayed there and steered me through the overheated crowd. The bouncer didn’t give us a second glance as we emerged into the cold night and relative quiet.

The clean air swept through my brain and I felt immediately better. Leaning against the wall, I could feel the music
pounding, muted, through my back and hips, and I closed my eyes.

“You okay?” asked Will. “You’re not going to hurl or anything, are you?”

“From one drink? God, no.” At least, I hoped not. My main exposure to alcohol up to this point was wine with Christmas dinner and a mostly-soda-and-not-much-whiskey Dad had let me try from his birthday bottle of Glenlivet.

“Tell me something about yourself,” he said, leaning a shoulder against the wall.

I turned my head, brows knitting in confusion. “Like what?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged a shoulder, looked at me with that charming smile. “Anything.”

“I think the second
Aliens
movie, the James Cameron one, may be my favorite movie ever. Definite top five.” Not sure why
that
was the “anything” that popped out. Maybe it was a test.

“Is that the one with the space marines?” I nodded, and he grinned. “You’re a geek, but at least you like kick-ass movies.”

I’m not sure if that qualified as a pass or not. While I was thinking about it, he bent his head and kissed me.

Deflector shields! I put up my mental defenses as quickly as I could. I didn’t want any
Dead Zone
flashes now, while my head was fuzzy from drinking and dancing. And I didn’t want him to know that, as nice a kiss as it was … I really, really wished he was someone else.

W
hen I dragged myself home after the game on Saturday, Mom and Dad were on the couch watching a movie. “Look, dear,” said my mother, elbowing Dad in the ribs and pointing at me. “Doesn’t that girl look like our daughter?”

“I couldn’t say, Laura. It’s been so long since I’ve seen her.”

“Very funny.” I slumped in the recliner, too tired to even put up the leg rest. “And untrue. I saw you on Thursday in class.”

“Was that you? I didn’t recognize you, sitting in the group of Greeks.”

I groaned. “Not you, too. Justin gave me grief about that already, so no need to add to it.”

“Is that what you two were arguing about?” Dad asked.

“We weren’t arguing. Just sort of … discussing in really intense voices. Why don’t you guys realize, I’m just doing it for the paper.”

“Ah.” He used his
Father Knows Best
voice. “And it has nothing to do with Mr. Alphabet sitting behind you?”

“Wait.” Mom grabbed the remote and paused the movie. “I thought you and Justin were just friends now. And what’s this about a cute guy? Why don’t I know about this?”

“Possibly because you have more important things to think about than my quasi-social life?”

“I’m feeling great.” She laid a hand on her belly, where the bump seemed to have grown substantially all of a sudden. Just how long had it been since we’d done more than pass each other in the kitchen?

“When am I going to find out if I’m getting a brother or a sister?” I asked.

“Maybe you can read my palm and tell me.”

I looked at her sharply. For Mom to even refer to my ability was huge. I guess she figured that if she didn’t acknowledge it, the weirdness would somehow just go back to being science fiction. So this was Mount Rushmore big.

“Do you really want to know?” I spoke cautiously, afraid to break the fragile moment.

She seemed tentative, but intrigued. Dad, too, had picked up on the change, and he glanced between us. “You’ve always said you couldn’t see the future.”

“It’s not the future. XX or XY—it’s already set.” Mom and
Dad exchanged a look, and I picked up the DVD rental box, pretending I didn’t care what they decided. “I probably couldn’t tell anything anyway.”

“What the heck.” Mom gave an embarrassed laugh. “Give it a try.”

Grinning, I moved to the couch, nervous and excited—like a kind of stage fright. This was the first time I’d used my new superpower on purpose, but I’d been studying Gran’s meditation book diligently. Mostly I’d been concerned with keeping up my defenses, but there were other chapters, too. Breathing deeply, I visualized my deflector shields powering down. After weeks of putting them up, it felt weird and naked.

Mom gave an anxious laugh, almost a giggle, and I shushed her sternly. “You are blocking the flow of positive energy.”

“Really?”

“No, not really. You’re just making me nervous.”

I placed my hand on Mom’s gently rounded stomach. A flutter, not under my fingers, but in my heart.

What a strange feeling—alone in the dark, but surrounded, buoyed, and loved. Our pulses meshed—Mom’s slow, the rhythm of the universe; mine, the steady pulse of a star; the baby’s quick, the turn of a day. A perfect ratio, divinely in proportion—infinitely big, and infinitely small.

Something splashed against my skin, and I opened my eyes. My parents stared at me as I wiped tears from my face, too enthralled to be embarrassed.

“Don’t paint her room pink, okay? It only reinforces gender stereotypes.”

Mom laughed, and pulled me into a hug. I blinked away a
strange dual vision, as if the connection between my sister and me still resonated. Dad wrapped us all up in his arms and right then, I couldn’t feel worried about anything—my professional good fortune, my sudden sex appeal, the Sigma Alpha Xis, or any of it. I felt just like my sister—surrounded, buoyed, and loved.

O
n Monday morning, the chill in the air caught me off guard. Flame-colored leaves chased each other across the ground. Fall had snuck up on me somehow. Midterms and Homecoming were closing in fast. September had slipped away, and October was hurrying on its heels.

Ordinarily, I love autumn, but the obvious passage of time disturbed me; it fueled a nagging unease, as if I’d forgotten something important. The more I tried to grasp it, the more quickly it floated away, elusive as a dream.

The thought brought me to an abrupt halt on the sidewalk between the communication building and the science
hall, forcing a clump of Kappa Phis to break apart and go around me.

The brisk air seemed to briefly blow a fog from my mind. How many times had I woken with the feeling that I
had
dreamed, but couldn’t recall any of it? I’d been dismissing this for—God, it must be weeks now.

I pressed my fingers to my forehead. When was the last dream I could remember? It had to be over a month ago, during Rush maybe. That had to be significant. Didn’t it?

A hand touched my shoulder and I whirled around with a shout. Cole stepped back, raising his hands in the universal sign for “Don’t beat my head in.”

“Sorry! I just wanted to see if you were okay.”

“Yeah.” I put a hand over my thudding heart, to make sure it wasn’t actually coming out of my chest. And then I looked at him again, to make sure he wasn’t wearing a Halloween costume. He looked like a zombie. The shadows under his eyes were greenish purple, as if he hadn’t slept in a week.

“Are
you
all right?” I didn’t mince words. “You look like crap.”

He laughed and shrugged. “What can I say. The muse is a real bitch sometimes.”

“Yeah, but …”

“Don’t worry about it, Maggie.” He started walking toward the communication building, and I fell in beside him. “Mike loved the pictures from the game on Saturday, by the way.”

“Great. Thanks for the assignment.”

“I had nothing to do with it.”

I glanced up at him; he’d said it honestly. “But I’m just a
freshman. I figured you were throwing me a bone because I don’t get a byline on the column.”

“A column that I loved, by the way.” I’d written about my suddenly elevated attraction, thanks to my Greek status. We climbed the steps to the building and Cole held the door for me. “But you shouldn’t sell yourself short, Maggie. I’m a GDI and I would totally go for you, if I were any less nuts about Devon.”

GDI was how non-Greeks proudly referred to themselves. I think it started as an insult, but the “God Damn Independents” had adopted it like a banner.

“Thanks,” I said, not mentioning that Devon was a Sigma, too, so he hadn’t exactly proven his point.

“Anyway,” Cole continued as we headed for the journalism floor, “Mike thinks you’re his early Christmas present. Said you always seem to have your camera pointed at the right place at exactly the right moment. That takes some serious talent. Or luck.”

With a grin, he waved and turned into his classroom. For the second time that morning, I was rooted to the spot by a thought hitting me like a slap across the face.

Was I lucky? Or was something else at work, making things fall into place? Sigmas are successful, Victoria had said. Things would go my way if I took what SAXi had to offer.

I’d been slacking. Nancy Drew would never lose track of time like this. And since I had to start somewhere, I’d start with the mystery of Devon and Cole.

Spying
was such an ugly word. But if you want to get technical, that was what I was doing outside Devon’s door. I’d brought my interview book to give me an excuse to talk to her, but she was not alone.