Darkest Day (7 page)

I flopped onto her bed. “No. Yes. No. Yes. No. I don’t know. Sorta.”

“Since when?”

“When he came home.”

“He was sick, Mac. He probably wanted to … you know … put on his Spiderman PJ’s and crawl into bed. I’m sure you did the same thing when they let you out.”

“Uh … yeah. Sure. Right.”
Wrong.
“So, anyway … you’re going to college in the fall, right?”

“Yeah.”

“What if you and Pete—”

“Whoa, there. Pete and I are not a ‘what if’ scenario.”

She could have fooled me. “So … back to me. What if you and … Maddie were going to different colleges and you knew you’d never see each other again. Would you stay in touch?” Maddie and Caroline had been friends since their first Kindergarten year. I figured that would be a relationship important enough to want to keep.

“Well … I would if she weren’t acting all weird these days.”

On that I could agree. “Right. What if she wasn’t? Would you … like break off your … friendship now or say goodbye later?”

“Later, of course. No reason to be sad now. Not that we’d do that. We might drift apart just because of being away, but no one has to break it off just because they’re separating. Wouldn’t even do that to Pete,
if
we were a thing.”

Dammit. Should have known.

“So … is that what’s up with Winn? You guys freaked because you’re going to different schools?”

“Uh … yeah. Sorta. We … I—we decided we shouldn’t see each other anymore because … of that.”

“Oh, come on, Mac.” She reached out to me, but didn’t touch. “Winn’s totally into you. I’m sure if you just talk to him—”

“That’s the problem. I’m not … exactly everything he is. I’m not … he’s just
so
much better than me. So … we’re done, or said we were, but … I kinda don’t want to be anymore.”

“Gads, girls. You’re totally in love with him, aren’t you?”

I waved her comment away. “No. You can’t fall in love for real before you’re like thirty, or something.” Or at least older and wiser and smarter and not about to live a life he could know nothing about.

She laughed. “You totally are. So, just tell him. Don’t do what Maddie’s doing.”

“What’s that?”

Caroline pointed a finger at me. “Did you know that Mark and Jolene saw her with Ridge the other night?”

“No. Where?” Should have asked Caroline for details, not Suze.

“At Dulces of all places.”

I fell back to the soft surface of the bed. “That’s a restaurant, Caroline. They gotta eat, and they are partners in their project.”

“Yeah, but
Dulces
? I mean, Mac … that’s a
date
, and you know as well as I do that Maddie wants nothing to do with Ridge.”

Staring up at the ceiling, I said, “Maybe that’s changed?”
Like Winn and I? Stranger things …

“Do you
really,
really, really, believe that?”

Given Maddie’s actions the other day when I caught her with Winn, I didn’t. “No. Enough about her. How do I make Winn … want … me again?”

“I dunno. D’you say anything bad? Do any yelling or use words you can’t take back?”

I sat up. “No. Nothing like that. It was … mutual.”

“And you want to back out of this …
mutual
decision?”

“Yes.”

She crossed her hands over her heart. “And you came to me for this?”

“Yes! You have to know how to fix this.”

She shook her head. “Uh … I’m not all there with the boy-stuff.”

“But you have Pete.”

Caroline gave me the one-eye-squished-closed expression. “Again! Pete and I are
not
a thing!”

“No, no, liar, liar!” I had to laugh. “You and Pete are more than ‘just friends’. You hang out all the time. You managed to snag each other for partners. You like the same stuff.”

“But we haven’t officially been on a date, or anything.”

“Date, my ass.”

“That’ll cost you.” Caroline held out her jar in which she’d stuffed dollars and dropped loads of coins. Her swearing hiatus had extended to Maddie and I, but mostly just me, months before, and while I managed to use her alternative wordage every once in a while, I often slipped.

From my pocket, I pulled a bill and crammed it in with the rest—again, most of which I’d put in the jar.

“Give me
something
, Caroline. I mean you’re hum—you’re better at the boy thing than I am. And, in this, I need guidance of the girl-sort. I cannot be left on my own.”

Her laugh bounced through the room in a big, burst of sound. “Have you looked at the differences in you and me, Mac? Have you?” She rose and walked to the mirror.

“Okay, but you …” How could I say, ‘have more worldly experience as a human girl’, when I did, in fact, live as a human half my life? “You’re better at this guy thing than I am.”

Caroline wagged a finger at me. “I’m not better. I’m just more observant. Tell me what you said when you decided to go on this non-Winn roller coaster.”

“Um … not much, we were kinda making out.”

She jolted forward, toward me. “You broke it off when you were making out? How in Hades does that happen with a guy?”

I shrugged. “I’m talented that way.”

Caroline rolled her eyes. “Okay, skip that, and let’s move on. Maybe this is why Ridge and Maddie have found something in each other. Have you noticed that the more she says she wants nothing to do with him, the more he goes crawling to her?”

“Aside from him constantly asking me out, I hadn’t noticed.”

“Yeah, but you don’t count,” Caroline said. “You’re the girl he can’t have, so of course he’s going to do that. I figure Ridge’s on his way in with Maddie because Maddie’s spent long enough trying to push him away. Like … hot and geek don’t usually go together. You and Ridge are a much better fit … physically than you and Winn or Maddie and Ridge.”

“It’s not about that.”

She waved her hands at me. “I know. I know. What I’m saying is we’ve got ourselves a soap opera. Can’t say I’ve watched one all the way through myself, but my grandma watches ‘em all the time. Anytime she’s getting her treatments at the dialysis center, it’s on. Since I’ve been there a few times, I see it.”

“See
what
… exactly?”

“The whole girl-boy-charade necessary for officially winning someone’s love.” Her hands went across her chest, over her heart. “You could play the game.”

“What game, Caroline?” I put my palms together and pointed my fingertips her way. “Please just give me a logical, uncomplicated, not-full-of-lies answer. That’s what I count on your for.”

“That’s the problem, Mac. Life is full of lies because people don’t know the truths. If you want to win, you sometimes gotta play the game. If you want to win Winn—ha, ha—you gotta give him what he wants in you.”

“Now you’re sounding more like Maddie and not like the brilliant scientist I thought you were.”

Her eyes twinkled. “Maybe I’ve become a mad scientist instead.”

“So, how do I play this game?”

“You do exactly what everyone expects you not to do.”

“I already do that.”

“Then, do the opposite.”

• • •

“
Psst.”

I whirled as Zoe sauntered up to me at school. “You’re getting my attention with a ‘psst’ sound now? What gives?”

She bit her bottom lip. “I have a secret.” She spun, bouncing into the lockers with a clang.

With my bag in my hands, I said, “And you’re telling me you have a secret so that you can keep it, or are you telling me because you want me to know?”

She smiled up at me. “I want you to know, of course. You are my … big sister.” Her shoulder bumped mine.

I leaned back, next to her, my eyes on the passing river of people. “Okay, spill it.”

“Mom stopped by right before I fell asleep, last night.”

“She did? She have anything enlightening to say?”

Caroline passed with a grin on her face. Not two steps behind her, Maddie followed.

“In the mirror this time.”

“Huh?” I turned to Zoe, her bright eyes shining. Our mom could appear to Zoe, but not me. The mirror, though, that came as a first. “So, a little mirror-mirror, or something like that? Snow-White-like?” Usually, she showed as a ghostly apparition in the middle of Zoe’s room.

“Still a fadey ghost, but, yeah. I was brushing my teeth, looked up and there she was.”

“And you didn’t scream bloody murder?” It surprised me that Zoe reacted so well to so many of us; she had only just learned of her connection to the non-human race.

“She has a sound now that I can hear before she appears. It’s kinda cool.”

“So what did Mommy dearest want? Any messages for me?”

“She suggested I go to your next Council meeting with you.”

“Why?” My gaze tracked the flurry of feet, each racing its way toward homeroom. We had ten minutes, and my class would only take two steps to reach.

Zoe shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe to meet others like me? Get me more experience with my kind?”

I raised an eyebrow, staring down at my sister.
Sister.
The idea still struck me as odd and disproportionate to everything I knew about my life. Not only should she not exist, I shouldn’t know about her. Unfortunately for everyone else, I kinda liked her—not that I’d admit it to anyone outright.

“I know I’ve met a few of the Council members, like Cleo and Magwa and Josie, but seeing them all together—and the others. That’d be cool, right? I mean you’re going to be awesome as part of them, and since you’re my sister, I should know them better, or something. Right?”

She’d asked me loads of questions before, but with her newfound knowledge of her genetics, I’d been barraged. “What makes you think I’m going to be good at all this … stuff? You don’t even know what goes on or what happens.”

Her shoulder bumped up a little. “I don’t know. I just … do. I know what that means for you, by the way. About Winn.”

Pain lurched through my heart. “Fun while it lasted.”

Zoe swatted at me with the back of her hand. “Don’t say that. You don’t know it for sure-sure.”

“Yeah. I do.”

“But if you knew for sure-sure, then you’d still think I was nuts instead of able to talk to dead people like that kid in the movies … but for real.”

I nudged her arm with my fist. “Zoe?”

She blinked big eyes up at me.

“I still think you’re nuts.” With a smile, I pushed her toward her class and walked into mine.

I’d secretly hoped Mom had passed another message along. The last one still replayed through my mind.
Sometimes, finding your own way is better than being shown the way.
After everything I learned in the in-between, I’d come away with one decision: I wanted to make my mom proud of my ability to get answers and become the leader she thought I would be.

Yet, if I didn’t ask, they didn’t tell. My questions had, by that point, sucked. I had to get better.

I needed Winn.

I’d always needed him.

Winn

The fourteen steps to the entrance of the Rune Public Library took no time to climb after almost a week of practice, healing and routine. I pulled open the heavy, solid, mahogany door and breathed in the familiarity that came with the building and the books. Through the second set of double doors, I walked into the golden-lit room.

The library had once been a cathedral, donated to the city by a church that constructed a new, modern building for itself over fifty years before. Those who’d done the restoration and conversion on the library left the feel of the old with the ambiance, the wood and the incense smells.

I turned toward the counter but stopped.

Had I seen what I thought I’d seen?

Is Mac sitting at a table with Caroline?

That’s not possible. Mac hates the library.

Hates it.

My feet and legs refused to move, frozen in place like the gargoyle statues on the outside facade.

Mac did sit with Caroline at the table. Open books, closed books, papers, pencils, markers, highlighters. A bevy of office supplies littered the tabletop surface.

Their faces angled down or up to each other. Back to the papers. Back to each other.

I didn’t know how long I’d stood there before someone tapped me on the shoulder. “Winford?”

Shaken from my blatant staring, I spun toward the voice. “Hi, Ms. Adams. It’s nice to see you.”

She frequented the library like a book itself. In and out so much she had the creases and bent corners to prove it. “Are you feeling poorly again, dear?” She patted my arm.

I blinked a few times and cleared my throat with a cough. “No, no.” My confusion at seeing my girl—my frie—Mac at the library must have shown. “I’m feeling much better, thank you.”

As I moved toward the counter, I caught Mac’s head shifting up again, and her gaze met mine. Her lips parted for a breath until they curved upward.

“I’m so glad you’re back, young man. I missed you over the last couple weeks.”

A check back at Mac and I found her facing her work again.

“You take care now, dear.” Mrs. Adams tottered her way toward the exit with her latest bag of books.

Is Mac actually studying?
Even as I walked to the counter, I kept turning back, verifying that what my brain processed actually happened. Given so many of my past experiences with Mac, allusion seemed to fit her more than reality.

As I passed books through the scanner, Mac and Caroline continued, with Caroline waving her hand and gesturing over the pages on the table.

At seven, Pete walked in, headed to the table and sat with the two of them. He, too, pulled out pages of work and flipped through.

Mac never budged from her chair. She kept working, or faked it, throughout my shift, right up until nearly ten when the head librarian dimmed the lights in the closing signal.

I took a set of books to the stacks, and upon my return to the main counter, Mac stood there, her hair twisted up, pencils stuck through the tail.

“Need a ride home?” I asked.

She pursed her lips and shook her head once. “Nope. How are you feeling?”

“Better.” The books in my hand thudded on the counter. “What are you …” I almost didn’t want to ask.