Forbidden (9 page)

As Claire watched him go, she felt another tug on her ponytail, causing her to jump.

“Isn’t there a law,” Erica said, “against tutors fraternizing with their students?”

Claire gave her friend a faux shocked look. “We were hardly fraternizing.”

Erica just smiled. “If you say so.”

Over the next couple of days, Neil showed vast improvement during their after-school tutoring sessions. Claire grew more and more comfortable around him and wasn’t tongue-tied anymore in his presence. She loved Concert Singers. Her year of piano lessons helped her to sight-read the music with ease, and she fit right in with the more experienced students, as if she’d been doing this for years. She found herself singing in the shower and while doing the dishes. If only she’d had the nerve to try her voice years earlier, instead of being so shy about it!

To Claire’s disappointment, however, Alec was quiet and standoffish. He didn’t sit at their table at lunch, and when she saw him in class, he didn’t speak to her. She didn’t run into him again with his guitar, and he was never at their locker at the same time she was. Was he just the loner type, or was he angry and purposely avoiding her? When she’d apologized that day at lunch, she’d thought—
hoped
—she’d smoothed things over with him. His behavior hurt more than she cared to admit.

Alec wasn’t the only one acting peculiar that week. Twice, while Claire was doing homework in her room, her mom stopped in the doorway to silently stare at her, then walked off without a word.

On Thursday night, her mom finally spoke. “So! Claire … how was your day?”

Claire glanced up from the calculus problems she was working on. “Fine.”

“How’s choir going?”

“Good.”

Silence ensued. Why was her mom looking at her like that? Claire wondered self-consciously. She felt like a piece of produce her mom was inspecting for possible defects before purchase.

“You’ve seemed a little … preoccupied the past few days,” her mom said at last. “Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”

“No.”

“Has anything … unusual been going on lately?” Her mom was clearly fishing.

Claire sighed. It wasn’t like she could tell her mom, of all people, about the weird visions she’d been having. “Mom, I’ve got a lot of homework.”

“Okay! Just … keep studying. I’ll call you when dinner’s ready.”

Friday was a shorter day at Emerson. Although Claire had been dreading the week culminating in another one of Mr. Patterson’s belittling lectures, there was no way she could’ve anticipated what would happen at the end of the period.

In her hands, she now held her history paper—the paper she’d stayed up most of Monday and Tuesday nights writing—which Patterson had already graded and returned with lightning efficiency. It was littered with red marks, and at the top of the paper was a thick, rosy D, accompanied by a note: “Eschew prolixity.”

D
. Claire felt the hot threat of tears behind her eyes. She’d never gotten anything below a B in her life. Patterson couldn’t find fault with her grammar, she knew, or her historical accuracy—but clearly he thought she’d been too wordy. Entire paragraphs had been red-lined, and the pages were full of comments like: “Awkward,” “Why?” “Unsubstantiated,” “Get to the point.”

“I figured,” Mr. Patterson drawled as he finished handing out the papers, “since I gave you only two days to write these, it was only fair to return them two days later. You’re welcome.”

The bell rang, signaling the end of the school day. Claire stuffed her book and paper into her backpack, her lips trembling. How would this grade affect her scholarship? She felt Alec’s eyes on her but was too mortified to look in his direction. She hurried up to the front of the room. “Excuse me, Mr. Patterson. Can I talk to you for a second?”

Mr. Patterson didn’t even turn to face her. “No time. Week’s over. See you Monday.” Abruptly, he left the room.

Shocked by his coldness, Claire trudged out the door. To her surprise, Alec was waiting for her.

“I saw your grade. I’m sorry,” he said gently.

It was the first time he’d spoken to her in days. The sympathy in his voice and the kind look in his eyes—which she hoped implied that he wasn’t angry with her anymore, if he ever had been—unleashed the tears that Claire had been holding back. “I worked really hard on that paper,” she said brokenly as she and Alec moved down the path. “It wasn’t Shakespeare, but it didn’t deserve a D.”

“A lot of kids got Ds. The guy behind me got an F.”

“Really? What did you get?”

Alec looked self-conscious. He silently formed an “A” with his fingers.

His admission cheered her somehow. “You must be the only human being alive who’s embarrassed about getting an A.”

“I just feel bad.” He shrugged. “Mr. Patterson seems to think he has to humiliate students to get results.”

“Ds are so confusing. It’s like you didn’t pass, but you didn’t fail, either.” Claire wiped tears from her cheeks and took a deep breath. “Please don’t think I’m crying because I’m some übernerd who needs to get As on everything to feel validated. It’s because of my scholarship. It requires a 3.8 GPA.”

“3.8? Wow. That must be difficult to maintain.”

“You have no idea. I have to work my ass off. I’m not a genius like you.”

“I’m not a genius,” he protested.

“It’s not open for debate. I’ve heard you in class. Calculus, English, history, whatever. You always know the answers to everything. You speak Spanish better than Señora Guiterez.”

He blushed. “Maybe I … should’ve taken a different language.”

“You think?” Claire teased. They’d reached their locker now. As Alec dialed the combination, she continued, “Anyway, all the hard work is worth it. I love it here. I’d do anything to stay at Emerson. That’s why I basically have no life. Well, that and the fact that my mom is an overprotective worrywart who watches over my every move.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“What? That my mom never lets me go anywhere?”

He opened his mouth to reply, but just then Brian and Erica descended on them.

“Whassup, peoplez?” Brian crowed. “Anybody hungry?”

“You’d better be,” Erica chimed in. “It’s Friday! I’m taking us all to Venice Beach for empanadas,
maintenant
. That’s French for
now
, in case you were wondering.”

“Neil’s coming with us,” Brian added. “He’s waiting down by the circle.”

Claire saw Alec’s smile fade at the mention of Neil’s name, but he didn’t comment.

“Have you ever had an empanada?” Claire asked Alec, as they finished retrieving their books and headed toward the library stairwell.

“Are we always going to play the ‘Has Alec Eaten This?’ game?” he asked quietly.

Claire worried that she’d offended him, until she saw a good-natured smile tug at his lips. “I’m just curious. I mean, after the pizza thing—I’ve never met anyone before who hadn’t—”

“Let’s put it this way,” Alec interjected. “If it’s fried, fattening, caffeinated, alcoholic, or high in sugar content, it’s safe to assume that I rarely eat it—or have never tried it.”

Claire stared at him. “Why?”

“Are your parents fitness freaks, or do they just hate you?” Erica said.

Alec stiffened visibly. “They just followed a healthy lifestyle, which I continue to embrace. But they … died when I was young.”

Erica went red in the face. A silence fell.

“Way to go, Erica,” Brian said, clapping. “That was awkward.”

“I’m sorry.” Claire felt terrible.

“Me too.” Erica looked at her feet.

“Thanks, but … don’t worry about it. It’s okay.”

Now Claire understood Alec’s earlier comment about her mom.
No wonder he’s often so quiet and moody
, she thought, her heart going out to him. It was bad enough to grow up without a father. But to have no parents at all? That was too awful to contemplate. She’d assumed Alec had moved here with his parents because of a job transfer or something.
Who does he live with?
she wondered.
A grandparent? An aunt or uncle?
She wasn’t sure this was the right moment to ask.

They neared the bottom of the stairs, where the construction crew was still working atop a three-tiered scaffolding tower. Claire spied Neil standing just beyond it by the drop-off circle. He waved at them and shouted something Claire couldn’t hear over the annoying beeping noise of a truck backing up.

The four of them passed underneath the scaffolding, heading toward the circle. They were halfway through the makeshift corridor when Claire heard the sudden, loud roar of an engine. To her horror, the truck was speeding backward toward them. Before she could think or move, the vehicle collided with the base of the scaffolding with a devastating crash.

The screech of tearing metal ripped through the air as the entire structure overhead began to collapse.

A huge wooden platform barreled down directly at them.

Claire screamed and ducked, a single thought popping into her mind:
I’m going to die
.

eight

F
rozen in terror, Claire fixed her gaze on the heavy wooden platform hurtling toward their heads, which was a split second away from crushing them all.

But it never did.

Somehow, impossibly, the platform seemed to hover for a fraction of a second in midair. Alec stood tall above her, one arm extended, fingers splayed, as if magically holding up the platform by sheer willpower. She heard screams and shouts from above as suddenly the whole board tilted to one side. In her peripheral vision she caught sight of three men landing safely on the pavement nearby.

Before Claire could blink, Alec’s arms were wrapped around her and their friends and then they were airborne. They landed heavily and painfully on the concrete, out of harm’s way, as the entire scaffolding tower smashed to the ground beside them in an explosion of dust, screeching metal, and splintering wood.

The thundering clatter echoed in Claire’s ears as they all lay in a heap. Dust stung her eyes, but as she blinked it away her gaze briefly locked with Alec’s. Then, just as suddenly as he’d tackled them, Alec was up on his feet and gone. Claire struggled to regain her senses, her ears ringing. Erica and Brian moaned beside her.

“Oh my God.” Claire’s voice sounded strange and muffled, as if she were underwater. “Are you guys all right?”

Her friends sat up, choking. “What the hell just happened?” Brian shouted, grimacing in pain as he rubbed his left arm. The dust coating his spiky black hair made it look almost gray.

“We almost died!” Erica cried just as loudly. Then she burst into tears.

Numbly, Claire wrapped her arms around Erica and held her. Everything sounded so muted, making her feel detached from the world around her.

“Where’s Alec?” Brian said.

“I don’t know.” Claire craned her neck, trying to see over Erica’s shoulder, but the truck that had caused it all was buried in the debris, blocking her view—and no doubt blocking everyone else’s view of them.

“What happened?” Brian said again. “Did Alec just save our lives?”

“I think he did.” Claire pulled herself dizzily to her feet, as the sounds around her slowly returned to normal volume. “I’ll be back in a sec.”