Evolution (8 page)

I was pretty sure Chrissy was throwing a ton of horrible thoughts my way.

“You don’t want to know,” Aiden said with a laugh.

He was right; I didn’t want to know. What I really needed to be thinking about was Chelsea. I should have been trying to figure out where the hell she was.

I put a smile on my face and turned to Chrissy. I wanted to see if the queen of gossip knew anything about Chelsea’s whereabouts.

I waited until I saw a break in the conversation she was having with Megan before I butted in. “So, Chrissy, have you seen Chels today?” I asked, as casually as I could. I was hoping that I hadn’t drawn Ben’s attention to my conversation; I really felt sorry for the poor bugger. Thankfully, Aiden had him engulfed in a discussion about a debatable try from that morning’s P.E. class, so I knew it was safe to continue.

“Nope, she didn’t turn up to class this morning,” Chrissy said through a mouthful of food, then turned back to Megan to finish their conversation. They were trying to decide what we should all do this weekend, which to her was a lot more important than Chelsea not being at school.

At times like this I wondered why I still put up with her. But I had known her since we were in primary school, and I guess I had grown used to her selfish ways. She hadn’t always been so bad. Ditsy, yes, but always wanting to be the centre of attention only really started when Aiden moved to the Gold Coast. She’d been trying to divert his attention away from me to her, and even though she had not been successful, she still kept with the attitude.

I took my phone out of my pocket and called Chelsea’s mobile, but it was switched off. I quickly dialled her home number, hoping that she would answer so I could put my mind at ease, but there was no answer. “Damn,” I said under my breath, and nobody noticed.

I was contemplating what my next course of action would be when my phone started ringing—it was Chelsea’s mobile. Thank God, she must be okay.

“Hey, Chels, where the hell are you?” She didn’t respond. “Chelsea, can you hear me?”

“Jade,” the voice sounded shaky.

It was not Chelsea. It was Marie, her mother. My heart started thumping. Why would Marie be calling me, and why on Chelsea’s phone?

“Jade, have you seen Chelsea? She wasn’t in her room when I went in to wake her up. She left her phone on her bed, and I don’t know where she is.”

My heart stopped as my mind started replaying the scene of her abduction. This couldn’t be happening. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I was supposed to stop it from happening.

“Jade?”

I gulped, unsure of what I was supposed to say. It wasn’t like I was about to tell her that I’d had a vision of her daughter being taken by some psycho. So I told a half truth. “No… I don’t know where she is,” I replied, my voice a little shaky.

“Oh.” She paused. I could tell that she was disappointed. “Well, can you please call me if you see or hear from her?”

“Will do,” I promised before hanging up.

I had crushed whatever hope she had that her daughter had uncharacteristically gotten up early, made her bed, and headed to school; most mornings Marie had to almost forcibly drag Chelsea out of bed so that she could just make it to school before the bell rang. But at that moment, I think it was better for her to have a little hope than for me to smash her heart into a million pieces by telling her that her daughter had possibly been kidnapped.

“What’s wrong?” Chrissy asked. She actually seemed concerned.

I looked up, realising that all eyes were on me. “Chelsea… she’s gone,” I said softly, not wanting to believe the words coming out of my mouth. “Her mum went in to wake her this morning, but she wasn’t there. And the police won’t do anything until she has been missing for forty-eight hours.”
My vision came true and there wasn’t a damn thing I did to protect her
, I added mentally for Aiden.

I badly wanted to be alone so I could let out all the emotions I was holding in. Aiden pulled me closer to him, letting his feel-good vibes enter my body. At least I knew that I would soon be feeling better; I just had to hold myself together until then.

“Stop worrying, she is probably just off with her cute mystery man,” Chrissy said.

“What mystery man?” Ben asked before I could. He looked wounded, like he was waiting to be crushed by what she was about to reveal.

“I don’t know his name. She wouldn’t tell me when I asked her a couple of days ago. I saw her getting into some hottie’s car. She looked pretty friendly with him. Didn’t she tell you?” She directed the question at me. When I didn’t respond, she said, “I thought you guys told each other everything.” Chrissy seemed to be relishing the idea that she knew something about Chelsea that I didn’t.

“Yeah, I did too.” I was surprised that Chelsea had kept this from me. But I was also hurt, as was Ben who looked like he had just had his heart ripped out and stomped into a million pieces.

I looked over at Megan, wondering if she knew anything about the guy Chrissy said she saw Chelsea with, but she just shrugged her shoulders.

Once Chrissy was satisfied that her shock revelation had done what she’d hoped for, she went back to her conversation with Megan about their plans for the weekend.

Aiden leant over and pretended to kiss me on my neck. “She’s lying,” he whispered in my ear. “She only said it to get to Ben. She saw the two of them together yesterday after we left and, to put it nicely, she is not happy.”

My mouth dropped open. How could she do that? For all we knew, Chelsea could be missing, and all Chrissy cared about was trying to manipulate the situation for personal gain. I couldn’t take it anymore. This time she had stepped over the line. Without thinking things through, I turned around, raised my fist, and slammed it into her face. I moved so fast that she never saw it coming.

The cafeteria went silent. Everyone turned, mouths wide open, staring at where she lay. She had flown back with such force that she had broken the table behind us when she landed on it.

“Oh my God,” I said, bringing my hands up to cover my mouth. I couldn’t believe what I had just done. She looked like she was unconscious—or dead!

Megan scrambled over to where Chrissy lay. “Someone get help,” she yelled, shaking Chrissy’s body in an attempt to wake her.

She wasn’t waking up. Fear rocked my soul at the thought that I may have actually killed her.

My eyes darted to Aiden. I was met by a reassuring look in his eyes, then a voice in my head said,
“Don’t worry, you didn’t kill her. She’s just unconscious.”
But it was not my subconscious speaking to me—it was Aiden.

My head started spinning. This was all too much. How was I supposed to function at school with all that was happening? Chelsea’s disappearance, me turning into Supergirl. Oh, and I had just knocked out my former best friend, even though she became a bitch from hell and deserved it. It was all too much. Everyone was staring at me, trying to work out what had happened. Maybe they had seen me do it, and I was going to have to add assault to the list of things I had to deal with. I needed to get away from all those prying eyes and the scene of what I had just done.

Suddenly, everyone in the cafeteria came to life.

“Come on,”
Aiden spoke in my head again.
“Let’s get out of here.”
He pulled me to my feet.

We made our way out of the cafeteria as students and teachers rushed over to Chrissy, who was still completely out of it.

Once we were in Aiden’s car and away from any prying ears, I turned to him, trying to make sense of what I had just done. “I…I…” I could not finish my sentence—I could barely even start it.

“You don’t have to say it,” Aiden said. He laced his fingers through mine and brought them to his lips, sending those feel-good endorphins of his pulsating through my body. “Remember, that’s one of the benefits of my abilities.”

I looked into his eyes; they were so intense, yet so caring. Just being in his presence seemed to make all my worries go away. I wondered what I would do if I didn’t have him in my life, how would I get through all of this?

Once again his voice was in my head.
“Don’t worry, you will never have to go through this alone.”

“How is this possible?” I asked, not understanding how I could hear him in my head. I knew Aiden and his mum had been doing the whole having-a-conversation-without-saying-a-single-word-out-loud thing. But when it was actually happening to me, it kind of freaked the shit out of me.

“You’ve obviously worked out that we can communicate telepathically.”

I nodded.

“Well, all I do is think what I want to say to you, but rather than speak the words from my mouth, I am able to project them mentally to you.” When I gave him a confused look, he added, “How about for now, we’ll just stick to speaking the old fashioned way.”

I gave him an appreciative smile. Any other day, I would have thought that being able to talk with my boyfriend without anyone hearing would have been the best thing ever. But with everything else that was going on, it just seemed a little too much to deal with.

Aiden started the car. “Where to?”

Ignoring his question, I fished out my mobile phone from my pocket. “Damn,” I muttered. The battery was dead. I had wanted to call my mum to see if she knew anything. I knew the police would have told Chelsea’s mum she couldn’t file a missing persons report until she had been missing for forty-eight hours, but maybe a cop with a heart was looking into it unofficially. And if that was the case, maybe Mum knew something. I thought that she must have an inside source, considering the kind of info she was privy to.

“The charger is in the glove box,” Aiden said as he reversed out of his parking spot.

Finding a charger was so much easier because almost everyone had an iPhone. Thanks, Apple. I pulled out the charger, connected it to the outlet, and plugged in my iPhone.

As soon as my phone showed the slightest bit of battery life, I turned it back on and called my mother. The phone rang twice before she picked up. “Hi, honey, is everything okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I was just calling to see if—”

“Sorry, honey, I gotta go. The boss is calling. We’ll talk more tonight. I love you.” She disconnected the call.

I sat there looking at my phone in disbelief, although I wasn’t sure why, as she had done the same thing a million other times. It was always promises of talking later that never seemed to happen.

An alert came through telling me that I had new voicemail. For some reason, my heart started beating faster and my stomach churned while I listened to the recording say I had one new message, received that morning. Before hearing anyone’s voice, my sixth sense told me it was from Chelsea.

Chapter 7

I sat on Aiden’s sofa and stared at my phone, which was sitting on the coffee table. I couldn’t believe she had called me only moments before the time that I thought she was taken. And if that was true, then maybe if I hadn’t been so caught up getting my rocks off with Aiden, I would have been able to save her, instead of just having that stupid vision where I couldn’t do a bloody thing to help her.

“Aww, honey, don’t think like that,” Anna said, walking down the stairs with Dave in tow. Even though I had been led to believe that Dave was Aiden’s brother-in-law, looking at him now, it was a wonder I hadn’t seen the similarities between them sooner. They both had the same bone structure and the same dark brown hair, but Dave’s blue eyes threw me. He didn’t share the same hypnotic green eyes that both Anna and Aiden had.

“She’s right. You can’t live your life with ‘what ifs’,” Dave said, before disappearing from sight. “Otherwise, you’ll have a bloody long and depressing life,” he said, ruffling my hair from behind the sofa. I wondered if my eyes would ever be able to follow the speed at which Aiden and his family moved.

“Well, that depends on
how
we move. You see, if I move really fast, then yes, your eyes will eventually be able to track our movement. But if I teleport, you won’t,” Dave explained as he teleported (I think) so that he was sitting, on the opposite side of the sofa.

“Yes, he just teleported.” Anna sat down beside Dave. “But we can talk about that later. Right now, I think there is something a little more important,” she said, looking at my phone.

My stomach started churning at the thought of having to listen to Chelsea’s message again.

“I would tell you to go wait outside while we listen to it, but I know you’ll want to torture yourself some more,” Aiden half-joked as he put his arm around me.

He was right. There was no way that I was going to sit out of this one. Even if it did mean that I was probably going to puke.

With all eyes on me, waiting for me to play the message, I leant forward, dialled through to my voicemail account, and pressed speaker. The voicemail lady said that I had one saved message from today at five thirty a.m.

Moments later, Chelsea’s voice filled the room. “Hey, Jade, I’m guessing you’re a little tied up with that hunk of yours wrapped around you… Oops.” She laughed. “I probably shouldn’t be talking like that anymore, you know, seeing as I have my own man now and all. Or can I still do that? Do you think Ben would get all jealous if he heard me talking like that?” She stopped, probably to ponder the answer to her question.