Overtaken (12 page)

“Can we talk?” he asked. Dana studied his face, trying to decipher his intentions.

“Sure. Everything all right?”

“Everything's fine, just . . . Come with me.” It was the first time I wished I had total control over going invisible. I stayed in the alcove as he pulled her down the hall until they ended up on the back balcony of the lodge. I rushed to the edge of the balcony that faced the valley that Barrington nestled in and was high enough on the mountain to offer a pristine view over the town's twinkling lights. The stars hung bright overhead, like a reflection of our city in the sky. They were too wrapped up in their conversation to notice me. I guess I didn't have to go invisible to not get noticed.

“Secluded. Romantic. Jackson Winters, are you proposing?” Dana smiled, half joking.

Jackson laughed, but I didn't think it was funny. If he had a ring, I was one hundred percent ready to take a running leap right off the edge and into the void.

But it wasn't that. I could tell by the way his eyes wouldn't meet hers. It hit me that I read the situation wrong downstairs. This wasn't romantic. He'd taken her all the way up here in case she freaked out. Whatever this was, he'd been putting it off, I realized.

“When you were gone . . . well, you were gone for a long time, and . . . things, you know, things changed. No one knew where you were or if you were okay. I mean I know you've heard what I was like. I wasn't sure I how I felt then, and I'm not sure how I feel now.”

My heart leaped into my throat. Was Jackson going to break up with her?

“About what?” Dana asked, expression darkening, slowly picking up on the same hint I already had.

“You know . . .” Jackson drifted off into a pause big enough to fill the nearby valley. “Us.”

Oh my God! I was suddenly concerned I would shout out loud.

Dana stayed totally cool, her surface unrippled. She took a deep breath and squeezed Jackson's hand. Finally, her eyes found his and the unthinkable happened. As she gazed into his beautiful eyes, his face started to go blank. What started as a look of pained concern devolved into an emotionless mask.

And if that wasn't strange enough, she started to speak. Slowly. Deliberately. “Don't be silly. We're head over heels in love, Jackson. We always will be. There's no one else.”

Jackson didn't blink. Didn't smile. Just took in her words and then leaned in for a kiss.

“Sorry. Don't know what I was thinking,” he whispered. “You're perfect for me.”

“I know,” replied Dana, as her mouth parted to take his lips.

I wanted to wretch, but I knew the sound would give me away. Instead, I hurried off, leaving them behind. My mind raced, trying to process what I'd just witnessed.

It was impossible.

Jackson was a guy, sure, and their whims and wants changed quickly, but that was unreal. Dana had taken the conversation and not just shaped it, but fired the iron and literally bent it to her will. I guess it was possible she had Jackson wrapped so tightly around her manipulative little fingers that all she had to do was snap to get him to fall in line. The idea that she could so easily seduce him made me sick, but it didn't shake me to my core the way the alternative did. If Jackson wasn't on a wire-tight lovelorn leash, there was no easy explanation for the total one-eighty I'd just seen.

Was it possible that Dana had a power of her own?

First seat on the left, directly behind the bus driver. I'd claimed the seat of intentional isolation, the seat that even your friends wouldn't ask to share with you. I'd even surrounded my impenetrable fortress with a moat: earbuds firmly secured and tunes already cranked. I didn't want to freeze out Oliver, but I didn't have a choice. If we shared a seat for even the half hour it would take to get back to the school parking lot, I knew I wouldn't be able to keep what I saw to myself. He wouldn't have any answers. As insane as it seemed, I couldn't stop the idea from turning over and over in my head. Was Dana one of us? Did she have a power? Was it even possible?

I knew the idea was crazy. Telepathy? Mind control? Wielding the Force at top Jedi levels? What I knew for a fact, though, was how Oliver would react if I told him. Even if I prefaced every word with an acknowledgment that I thought I might've gone off the deep end, it wouldn't be enough. He already knew I was jealous. I didn't like how Dana had disrupted our band of outsiders. Seeing Jackson happy without me was painful. I wished I could prove to him that all these feelings and suspicions could be mutually exclusive. Wasn't there a slim possibility that while my judgment was clouded, it could also be right? Of course. But that didn't mean I was ready to mount this house-of-cards argument to my best friend.

It still hurt when Oliver climbed onto the bus and walked right by me. He was right in the middle of a story, charming Noah and a few kids from the back-of-the-bus crowd with a wild tale about Steve Jobs. It was like Topher's story about the avalanche—one of those stories people loved to tell because they knew it would enrapture an audience every time. It also told me that Oliver was trying. He liked these people and was reaching out in an effort to become friends.

Was Oliver moving on, too? Maybe he was a little bit tired of my teenage-girl pining, but the idea of being replaced as Oliver's best friend was even worse. I had to brush it off. I might've been a flavor of the month for Jackson, but friendships like the one I had with Oliver didn't work that way. But who was I to know? My Thai friend Lai and I were down to an e-mail maybe twice a month.

Peering over the back of my seat, I surveyed the other kids. Oliver wasn't the only one who seemed to have branched out socially. On the way up the mountain, the forty-some-odd kids had been segregated by social group. Dana and Jackson had been the popular kids, mostly football players and cheerleaders with a few groupies to pad them out. Then there had been a handful of academic overachievers, a few theater kids, and so on down the line, each carving out their own bus territory. Now, however, on the ride back, it looked like social anarchy. One would think they'd just survived the events of a Saw movie together, not spent an afternoon skiing.

It was so weird. Had these new friendships all been formed when I'd taken a bathroom break? There did seem to be one more outlier. Topher was only a couple seats back from me and across the aisle, sitting alone and vacantly staring out the window. That was a development I understood least of all. He and Noah had looked so happy together only hours earlier—what had changed? Was he that upset that no one stuck around after his story? I couldn't know for sure, but teenagers were notoriously fickle. It was exactly why I had to keep any and all suspicions about Dana close to the chest, at least until I had something a little more concrete. If the evidence never came, I could just laugh it off as a crazy hunch that never came through. Staring off out of my own window, I cranked the volume on my phone and didn't look back again.

•  •  •

The next day I entered English excited to catch up with Oliver. I'd had enough time to put a little space between what I'd seen with Dana and Jackson at Ski Club and my high-riding emotions. It was also another day that had gone by without Oliver and me discussing Richard Cochran.

My disappointment was palpable when I found Oliver's chair—the one next to mine—empty. He was seated across the room instead, chatting it up with Noah and a couple other kids I recognized from the prior day's excursion. This was still going on? Oliver noticed me looking in his direction and waved me over, pointing to another vacant chair next to one of his new pals. I felt the pull to join him—maybe I'd like these other kids too—but it was waging a battle against my insecurity that was completely shocked Oliver would just abandon me like that. Before I could change my mind, the bell rang and Ms. Hansen sprang into action.

Ms. Hansen was a unique blend of classic California hippie breeziness and Rachel Maddow precision. Even her wardrobe blended the two, with her dark, thick-rimmed glasses offset by a diaphanous, dip-dyed scarf that almost swallowed her whole. A lot of kids liked her because she'd take any excuse to bring a snack. I liked her because she was smart. I guess the miniature Hershey's Special Dark didn't hurt either.

Her introduction to our new unit was interrupted by a shrill scratch on the loudspeakers. It was one of the office assistants calling down a list of a dozen or so students to the office. This was not terribly unusual in itself, but this was the third time it had happened that day. I didn't know all of the kids who had been named, but I knew enough of them to know they weren't all being called for more usual disciplinary reasons. In fact, the two previous lists had seemed particularly absent of the troublemakers who so frequently found themselves before the administration.

This one continued to follow suit. I winced, hoping my name wouldn't be included and sighing a breath of relief when it wasn't. Could it be Bar Tech up to something at the school again? My dad hadn't been asked to come to the school to perform blood tests, but he'd been obscuring his results as much as possible. If Bar Tech had grown tired with the inefficiency of their first attempt to track us down, had they doubled down their efforts on something more sinister? Of course, I was purely speculating, but you had to be careful when your top-secret superpower was on the line.

And I wasn't the only one who was curious. I heard a bit of chatter among my classmates, asking the same questions but with different possible answers. Was there a school prank no one had heard about yet? A bust on a large-scale exchange of Ritalin? An outbreak of lice? Those explanations sounded much more likely than a search for superpowered teenagers, but as one of those very kids hiding in plain sight in Bar Tech's company town, I knew better.

Ms. Hansen quieted our gossip, annoyed by the interruption to her meticulously planned class. What happened next wasn't exactly Ms. Hansen's fault per se, but I knew things were about to get ugly as soon as I heard one of high school's most dreaded pairings of words: “group project.”

I instinctively turned to Oliver across the room. Thank God he was here. I couldn't imagine having to suffer through this with a stranger . . . until he dodged my eye contact and chose Noah instead. I had assumed working together would just be a formality, but I guess the time it took for me to make such a misguided assumption was more than enough for Oliver to change his mind. Great. I was so happy to know that a few hours at Ski Club had cemented them in a blood oath. I looked around the room, and everyone else seemed to have already fallen into partnerships as well. Suddenly, partnering with a stranger felt like a real possibility. I started to count my classmates. Was there an odd number? Nope, twenty-six even. I was pissed at Oliver for throwing me to wolves, but I'd still rather be his and Noah's third wheel than randomly paired up.

I locked gazes with the only other person in class without a partner. Chase Cochran's eyes lit up as I tried not to scowl. He crossed the room and casually dropped into what had formerly been Oliver's seat.

“Hey, partner,” said Chase with a Cheshire-cat expression that almost suggested he was behind the whole thing.

I tried, but could muster only about half of a smile.

“Don't look so grim,” he added. “You're going to hurt my feelings.”

“Promise to work hard on this project?” I challenged him, throwing down the proverbial gauntlet.

“For you? Harder.” Chase sobered up his smile and extended his pinky along with a stern expression.

“That doesn't include just writing your name at the top either,” I added, in no mood to play cutesy with him. The temptation to see if he'd crossed his fingers behind his back was high.

“I promise,” Chase vowed.

I smiled in spite of myself as we shook on it. Was this the Chase Cochran who'd pulled me up out of the snow and offered to give me a ski lesson? Or was it the one who'd gotten distracted and decided to chase other girls? I admitted, at least to myself, that he was a challenge in his unpredictability.

Dana caught me in the hall after class. Her usual solicitous self, she saddled up next to me like we'd actually spent time together on the field trip she'd forced me to go on. I took a deep breath, sensing my claws were already out and diamond sharp. To be fair, I reminded myself that I'd also avoided interacting with Dana on the trip at every possible turn.

“Nica, hey!” She fell into step next to me. I half expected her to try to link arms.

“Hey.” She wasn't the least bit put off by my icy attitude.

She continued on with her usual small talk, which my ears were already buffering into a monotone droning. I snapped out of it when she pointed down the hall at Oliver and Noah.

She leaned in to my ear, keeping her voice out of earshot for anyone passing by.

“You think Ollie's into him? I think they'd be really cute together.”

Ollie? I was ready to strangle her until my brain caught up and processed the rest of Dana's words. Into Noah? What?

The revelation hit me in a series of waves. Oliver never really talked about girls. I guess I'd just never given it much thought. Sure, I was more than willing to ruminate ad nauseam about Jackson, but some people were more private.

As soon as I saw Dana's face, I knew my entire internal process had just played out for her across mine. I recovered quickly, but it was obviously too late.

“Oh, no. I'm so sorry,” she said with a look of mock concern. “I just assumed . . . I know you two are friends . . .”

Best friends,
I corrected her internally. She continued to backpedal as I put more pieces together. I glanced back toward Oliver, but he and Noah were gone, already departed for class. How could he have shared something so personal with Dana before telling me?

I returned my focus to the girl in front of me. It was impossible to tell if she was secretly enjoying this. Dana pivoted, either finally taking pity on me or in an attempt to escape the awkwardness.

“I'm glad you had such a fun time at Ski Club yesterday. I heard you might've had a little one-on-one time on the slopes with a certain blond football hottie . . .”

Her word choice launched a campaign of acid reflux. That said, though, I'd felt emotions at every stop on the spectrum for one Chase Cochran over the past few days. I couldn't admit it to Dana in a million years, but I enjoyed his seemingly relentless pursuit. It was usually charming just long enough for him to find a way to ruin it, often spectacularly.

“He did at least try.” It was as much as I could allow myself to give her. I reminded myself, though, that it wasn't the first time Dana had not-too-subtly inquired about my romantic interest in Chase. If she could manipulate people, was she trying to manipulate me? Could it be possible that the sudden onslaught of flutters for Chase was a result of her somehow pushing me toward them?

“Would you say yes if he asked you out?” Dana was trying to be casual, but the hint of excitement in her voice made her preferred answer crystal clear.

“I don't know.” I wasn't even sure myself, but making her happy was the last thing I wanted to do right now. “I should get to class.”

“Yeah, me too,” Dana agreed, but she was still glued to my side. “But I will say, I wouldn't be surprised to see the two of you a little more . . . friendly after another week or so.”

A pop of a laugh erupted out of me at the idea. There was not a chance in the world I'd ever go back to Ski Club. “Sorry . . .” My apology was a reflex. I wasn't actually sorry at all. “I'm glad I went”—another lie, I was really on a tear—“but I'm not sure Ski Club is for me.”

“Oh, no!” It was like she'd just discovered her favorite cute animal was on the endangered-species list. “You have to come back.” Her doe eyes were reaching anime levels.

I was actually surprised by how upset Dana looked. Had I misjudged her again?

“I know we didn't have a lot of time to hang out yesterday, but it will be different next time, Nica. One hundred percent more girl time. I promise.”

Dana's sincerity hit me square in the stomach. I immediately felt bad for making fun of her, even if just to myself. Maybe Ski Club would be better if I gave it another shot. Oliver had obviously made the most of it. Maybe I just needed a little more practice.