Envy (Fury) (21 page)

Em’s eyes got big. She looked to the left and the right; the hallway was still deserted. Her heart leaping, she took the book—the book Sasha had wanted badly enough to steal—from the locker and closed the door silently. She gripped the leather tightly and then walked deliberately, proudly, even, out of the building.

•  •  •

Drea wasn’t at her house. Next stop: the Dungeon. By now school was over, and the parking lot was starting to fill up with cars. The Dungeon’s windows were steamed up from the heat and the warm bodies inside. Walking through the double doors, Em scanned the low chairs and couches. No sign of Drea’s purple
locks, her half-shaved head, her raspy laugh. Em turned on her heel and headed back to her car, using a newspaper to cover her head (in her excitement over the book, she’d left her raincoat at school). She would have to go home and regroup, look at the library book, come up with a plan.

But when she reached her locked car and dug in her purse for her keys, she couldn’t find them.
You have got to be kidding me,
she thought, peering into the driver’s-side window. There they were, lying on the seat. Great. Now, thanks to her distraction, she was stranded at the Dungeon in the freezing rain.

Shaking her head in embarrassment, she dialed AAA. Then she ducked back into the shop to wait.

Once inside, she wished she’d denied the craving for caffeine. Because while she waited in line, someone tapped her on the shoulder.

She turned around. Crow was towering over her in a heavy green sweatshirt. He clearly hadn’t shaved in a few days—his jawline was scruffy. He looked good. And kind of scary. Her stomach fluttered a little, and she had the urge to dodge him.

“I was just leaving,” he said in that voice that sounded like honey on apples—sticky-sweet and smooth, with a bite underneath. “But if you’re here, I could be convinced to stay. . . .”

“I’m actually waiting for someone,” Em said.

“Ah, intriguing!” Crow said, grin never leaving his face. “Who’s the lucky fella?”

Em allowed herself a self-deprecating smile. “The guy from Triple-A,” she said. “Hot date.”

“Bummer,” he replied. “Want to come wait in my truck?”

“It would probably be more comfortable to wait in here,” she replied haughtily.

“But there’s something I want to show you in my car,” he said, raising his eyebrows suggestively. “It’s right there,” he said, pointing to his truck just a few cars down from the Dungeon’s front door.

She hesitated, watching the rain fall in sheets outside the coffee shop windows.

“I won’t kidnap you. . . .” Then he added with a smile, “Even though I’d like to.” Rolling her eyes, she nodded her consent.

The rain was coming down so hard that by the time they climbed into the cab of Crow’s truck, she was soaked through.

The pickup smelled of wool and wood. Crow ran a hand through his wet black hair, then hooked his iPod up to the car speakers. The song that began to play was beautiful and mournful, one that seemed to perfectly match the gray day. She looked out the passenger-side window, watching the drops dance in the puddles and stream down the glass.

“Good thing I like purple,” Crow said, and she turned to look at him quizzically. Then, the blush spreading from her ears to her cheeks to her neck, she realized what he was talking about—her bra. It was purple, and also completely visible through her
wet shirt. The bra she’d purchased this Christmas, while obsessing over Zach. Em moved to cover herself, Drea’s words rushing back:
He has a crush on you
.

“Relax,” Crow said with a smirk. “I understand that members of the female species wear bras.” He craned his neck to see what was stuffed behind the front seats and rifled through his messenger bag. He clearly couldn’t find whatever it was he was looking for. Instead, with a sigh, he struggled out of his sweatshirt and started easing off his own shirt, a gray long-sleeved polo, which had stayed dry underneath.

Em watched with fascinated horror, unable to miss the fact that as he derobed the music seemed to swell. “Oh, no, you don’t have to—I’m fine.”

“While you do appear to be cold-blooded,” he said, making her think of Gabby’s recent observations, “I am not going to permit the Ice Princess of Ascension High to get pneumonia on my watch. I’ll be stoned to death! Just take it.” He thrust the shirt at her, and she caught a whiff of its boyness, like cloves and soap and fire.

“You really don’t have to—” He put up his hand to cut her off, and she saw that underneath his right arm Crow had a snake tattoo along the side of his body. He was skinny, but his muscles were well defined. He threw his sweatshirt back on over his bare chest.

“Just put it on. This back-and-forth is boring,” he said, and leaned forward to fiddle with his iPod.

Em realized that he was pretending to be busy so that she could change without feeling embarrassed. It was . . . gentlemanly. Still, she swiveled around and faced the rain-streaked window as she wriggled out of her wet shirt and into Crow’s dry one, praying no one from school happened to pass by their corner of the lot.

“I came here in the first place looking for Drea,” she decided to tell him. “She wasn’t in school yesterday or today, and she won’t pick up my calls. She’s kind of MIA.”

“Classic Feiffer,” Crow said. “She’s pretty hard to track. She’ll come back, and she’ll be fine. Then you can go back to watching Buffy marathons or whatever you girls do.” For just a second Crow dropped the smile and looked serious. “Her mom died when she was young. I think that’s why she has her dark days.”

Em shivered, even in the warm, dry shirt.

“Em,” he said, and his voice was different now, without the sarcastic lilt. “There’s something I want to tell you.”

Em’s heart started beating faster.

He hesitated, but no words came.

“Yeah?”

“Oh, um, you look good in gray.”

She was sure that wasn’t what he’d wanted to say, but she didn’t want to pry further. In the quiet, their breath began to fog up the car windows.

Then the music ended abruptly. He leaned forward and
began scrolling through the iPod again. The moment had passed. Em felt strangely disappointed. Crow turned on a new song, and the music changed, to something even more lovely—a lone guitar, picking a strange melody against droning background chords.

“This music is amazing,” Em said, balling up her white shirt and putting it on the dashboard. “Who is it?” She pulled her damp hair into a low, wet bun.

Crow coughed. “It’s . . . it’s me. It’s not finished yet. I’m still working on it. I can’t quite see where it should go yet.”

Em was momentarily speechless. “Wow. That’s awesome, Crow. You’re really talented.”

“Don’t sound so surprised, princess,” he said shortly. “Just because I’m a high school dropout doesn’t mean I’m an idiot.”

“That’s not . . .” But she didn’t bother defending herself. She could see he was just playing with her. His eyes were smiling.

Em leaned back against the headrest and let out a big breath. It felt good to be in this truck, where nothing was expected of her.

Still, she couldn’t help but continue to pry. “So, how long have you known Drea?”

Crow looked up, trying to remember. “Well, we started hanging out in middle school. You know, when things started to shake out. Cliques.” He looked at her then, as though it was her fault that junior high school was a social nightmare. “We both hated that shit. And a crew kind of just . . . came together. A clique for people who hated cliques.”

“I remember you then,” Em said. “You used to skateboard at the edge of the teachers’ parking lot.”

Crow let out a laugh. “And got in trouble for it, like, once a week.”

“I thought you were such rebels,” Em said. “If I had gotten in trouble in middle school, it would have been the complete end of the world.” She thought back to those days, when she and Gabby used to sit on the benches by the soccer field and make friendship bracelets and dream about dating boys in high school. She felt a quick spasm in her chest. Things were so simple then.

“We both were outcasts—she’s practically an orphan,” Crow continued. Em watched him, hearing the steady beat of the rain against the roof of the car. “And later, when I decided to drop out, she didn’t harass me. Neither of us ever, like, pressured the other one. To talk, or to feel a certain way. We just both understood what it was like, I guess. To have things be . . . confusing.”

Em thought about what Crow had said before—that Drea sometimes just needed to get away. “So you get it,” she said. “When Drea wants to be alone.” She wondered if Drea had ever talked to Crow about the Furies, but she didn’t know how to ask.

“Not many people know how to be by themselves,” Crow said. She thought about how alone she’d felt over the last few weeks. How she was getting used to dealing with stuff by herself.

All of a sudden she felt Crow’s fingers against her jawline, tracing the curve from her neck to her chin. His fingers rested
for a moment there, and then he turned her face toward his. He was leaning over the truck’s bench seat, pulling her face gently to his. First he kissed her bottom lip, then her top, and then both together. She felt herself kissing him back, running her tongue along the soft skin of his lower lip, feeling him open his mouth slightly. They both shifted infinitesimally closer to one another, and an aching pressure filled Em’s belly. She was taken aback and swept away at the same time; she could feel her hands trembling as they reached to circle Crow’s neck. She couldn’t help getting caught up in the urgency and rawness of it all: of being in his pickup truck, of their breath steaming up the glass while the rain continued to fall outside.

Then, without warning, he pulled away. Em looked at him, unconsciously bringing her hand to her mouth, not knowing what to say or do next.

“We shouldn’t—We shouldn’t be doing this,” Crow stammered. “I’m not—you know I’m no good for you, Em.”

“What?” Em took a deep breath, confused, attempting to quell the pulsing in her body as she tried to figure out what the hell was going on.

“It’s just . . . I don’t want you to get hurt.” He looked at her imploringly as she cut him off.

“You don’t have to say any more,” Em said, grabbing for her things and noting, with great relief, that the AAA van was pulling into the lot. Even though her pride was wounded, she ached to
kiss him again.
Jesus
. Now the Grim Creeper had rejected her. What was going on? “I have to go.” She fumbled with the door handle and leaped from his truck, ignoring his single call after her and racing to her car, dizzy with mixed emotions. She barely felt the rain.

As the technician fiddled with her lock, she watched Crow’s headlights swerve from the parking lot. What was she thinking? She was in love with JD, but here she was, letting another guy—Crow, of all people—kiss her in his pickup truck in public. JD’s accusations, and his lack of trust, suddenly made a lot more sense.
Could you forgive me, if I’d done what you did? . . . You ditched me to go make out with some other guy
. That’s what he’d said about following her to the Behemoth that night, about thinking that she was with another guy. It seemed now like less of a false memory and more of a prediction. Maybe JD was right—maybe she did, however unwittingly, toy with people’s emotions.

She squeezed her hands against the steering wheel.
Get it together, Em.
The kiss with Crow was a fluke—a one-off. It had no bearing on her feelings for JD.

As she started to drive home she repeated it like a mantra:
It was a one-time thing. One-time thing.
But his words kept jutting into her consciousness. What had Crow meant when he’d said he didn’t want her to get hurt? Was that his ego talking, or was he referring to something more?

Em turned onto Route 204, on the other side of the
Haunted Woods. A flash of purple caught her eye. Deep purple, reflected in her headlights against the falling dusk, bouncing ever so slightly. Like someone walking. As she got closer she saw that it
was
someone walking. And there was only one person in Ascension with purple hair.

“Drea?” Em pulled over and lowered her passenger-side window. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I thought I needed some exercise,” Drea said dryly.

“Get in,” Em ordered. “I’ve been looking for you for days.”

Drea obeyed, getting into the front seat of the car along with a gust of cold air. The rain had caused her black eyeliner to smear into half-moons under her lower lashes, making her look both scared and tired. “I went to look at that house,” she blurted out. “The one you mentioned in your voice mail.”

“
Alone?
Why didn’t you wait for me?” Em threw the car in park and turned her body to face Drea’s. “Why didn’t you call me back?”

“Nice shirt,” Drea said, giving Em a once-over. Em knew that Drea recognized it as Crow’s.

“Thanks.” Em shrugged, avoiding the topic. “Now tell me what you did. Why didn’t you call me first?” Em wanted to shake Drea for being so reckless.

“I needed to be alone,” Drea said, avoiding Em’s eyes.

Em exhaled slowly. Okay. If Drea needed to do things her way, Em would let her. It was better than losing her altogether.

“Listen, Drea, I’m sorry,” Em tried to make her voice as level as possible. She tugged at the sleeves of Crow’s long-sleeved shirt and was surprised to find that, like some of her own, this one had little thumbholes poked into the cuffs. “I’m sorry about the other night, at JD’s. I’m just . . . I have some feelings for him—about him—that I’m not very used to. And I’m sorry if you think I’m a flake when I’m with my other friends. You’re important to me. I’ve been really worried about you. . . .”

Drea waved her hand to cut Em off. “Okay, okay. Enough. I accept your apology. That’s not important right now.” She sucked in a deep breath. “The house, Em, the house you talked about?”

Em’s heart sped up. “Did you find it?”

“Nowhere,” Drea said quietly, and Em felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. “I made a huge loop. I’ve been out here for hours. No house.”

Em felt like all the oxygen had been sucked out of the car. Her vision started to tunnel, the way it had at the bonfire. How could Drea not have seen the house? It was there. It was real.