Reckoning (3 page)

“Wow. Sorry, Steph. Um, good luck with that,” I add, smiling sweetly. I look doubtfully at the piles of paper crammed in her locker. She sneers again and goes back to flipping through papers. Stepping around her, I make my over to Rachel. “I think she’s gonna be there awhile,” I murmur, suppressing a smile.

Rachel glances at Steph and agrees, adding, “I think a little Organization 101 and Personality Upgrade 3.0 would help her more than finding a chemistry test.”

I laugh silently, my attention drawn to the pale shadow flitting past the end of the hallway. There is a slight buzzing in my ears. Ignoring it, I bring my gaze back to Rachel. “And by the way,” I say, returning to my earlier concern. “Lose the braids.”

Rachel closes her locker and turns to me, pushing out her lower lip in a fake pout. Tilting her head to the side, she widens her eyes in mock surprise. “You don’t like them?”

“No,” I say firmly. “We had a pact, you know.”

Reaching out, she twirls a lock of my hair around her finger, her blue nail polish sparkling under the overhead fluorescent lights. “You should braid yours. It would be
so
cute.”

Pushing her hand away, I grimace. “Yeah, I’m thinking not.”

Rachel sticks out her tongue and reaching into the pocket of her skirt, extracts a tube of clear gloss, giving her lips a quick application. “I don’t know why you don’t like your hair. I think it’s beautiful. And, you know, there are people who pay their stylists big bucks trying to get that color. And yours comes naturally.”

“Trust me, if they had this color naturally, they’d be paying big bucks to get rid of it. Now, if I had your hair…” I start to say, before catching sight of Mrs. Oglethorpe’s stern expression, her arms folded across her chest as she stands like a sentinel in front of the door to the chemistry lab. Edina Oglethorpe, or Ogle the Ogre, as everyone calls her, is five feet one, one hundred and ninety pounds, with tightly curled bottle-black hair and beady black eyes that glimmer behind red-framed, square eyeglasses. As the self-appointed hall monitor, she ensures no one lingers in the hallway after the bell rings.

“Sorry, Mrs. O,” Rachel says, flashing one of her brilliant Pepsodent smiles and wiggling her fingers in a friendly wave, before continuing down the hall to her French class. I muster an apologetic, rather lame smile in comparison and step past her into the lab. I sigh, mentally crossing off one more day on my internal days-to-the-end-of-school calendar.

_________

We’ve completed most of the curriculum for the year, and with the exception of upcoming finals in English and American History, most of the classes consist of year-end reviews and boring videos.

After Oglethorpe quizzes the class for forty-five minutes on balancing chemical equations and Hess’s Law, I head to world geography, taking a seat by the window. While our teacher, Mr. Dawson, pulls down an oversized map of Asia from one of the rolls attached to the walls, I pull out my notebook, and flip to a blank page, doodling along the margin while trying to keep my gaze from straying outside.

It started two weeks ago – the girl who shouldn’t be there, but is. Dancing across the athletic fields in a pink prom dress. Endlessly spiraling in a dance no one but me can see. Although this kind of thing has been happening for as long as I can remember, it’s the first time it’s happened at school.

And that bothers me.

It should be easy. I’ve had years of practice in learning how to ignore these things: The visions. The images. The voices. Acknowledging their existence only makes it worse. I know that.

I try to focus on the blank page in front of me. But my eyes involuntarily move to the window. I can’t help it. It’s like some kind of magnetic pull impossible to avoid.

Nor can I ignore the odd indecipherable, whispering brushing against my eardrums.

I force my eyes back down to my notebook, making several dark, heavy lines on the page.

You can do this, Kat.

I rub my ear, trying to block out the low buzzing, adding more details to the series of flowery, interconnecting lines I’m drawing.

Don’t look.

But my gaze slides sideways and my head turns to the window, focusing on the girl. I watch as she dances and twirls, arms stretched wide, the skirt of her dress billowing out in pink waves. Reluctantly, I feel myself being pulled toward her, the whisper in my ear growing more insistent. Although I know it isn’t physically possible, the distance between the window and the athletic field begins to shrink, the deep pink of her dress growing more vibrant until it seems to glow with a luminous intensity. Like an oversized neon light in a dark room. The whisper grows louder, the sound rushing around my eardrums, drowning out the classroom around me.

Stop it
.
Stop it now.

But my eyes remain locked on the window, the droning growing in intensity. The hissing slowly begins to morph into a faint semblance of words, faint and not quite distinct, with an underlying sense of urgency.

The girl draws closer, turning and turning, like a crazed ballerina, locked in an endless pirouette. Her long, blonde hair swings across her face. My heart pounds in my chest. In another moment she will close the gap between us and I will see her clearly. Something close to dread spreads through me. I don’t want to look. Don’t want to know. But I am frozen in place.

I can hear my pulse pounding in my ears, nearly drowning out the whispering voice. I try to decipher the words, but any meaning eludes me.

I tense. She is directly in front of the glass now, her movements slowing, arms dropping to her sides. She stops and turns towards me, her hair falling slowly away from her face…

“
Ms. Matheson
,” a voice says sharply to my left, and I snap my head around to find Mr. Dawson standing with his arms crossed, gazing down at me with a look of barely concealed intolerance. I swallow and struggle to bring my attention back to the classroom. “Perhaps you would like to share with the rest of the class just what is so interesting outside?” He peers out the window, looking for the answer. Suppressed giggles rise from the back of the room.

“Maybe there’s a fairy outside the window,” Deena LaMonte pipes up from behind me, eyeing my notebook as she gazes over my shoulder.

Biting my tongue, I slap the notebook closed and mumble, “Sorry. There’s nothing.”

Mr. Dawson uncrosses his arms and walks back to the front of the room. “I realize it’s the end of the school year, but could we, just perhaps, make an effort to stay focused?”

My ears pick up more twittering, and I can feel everyone’s eyes turning in my direction. My face flushes bright red. I lower my head to my textbook, grateful for the fall of hair across my face. From the corner of my eye, I see David Sanchez and Eric Grunwald lean toward each other and whisper. Laughing silently, David turns and looks at me, twisting his lips into a zombie-like grimace. Anger, mixed with embarrassment, surges through me. Feeling suddenly defiant, I glare back with the full force of my green eyes, silently daring him to say something. He stares back, an odd expression crossing his face. Then he flinches, flashing me a menacing look. “Jeez, freak. Stop staring,” he murmurs before turning back to Eric and laughing.

Mr. Dawson gives him a warning look over his glasses. “Now, I’ll ask again. Can anyone tell me how industrialization has affected Southeast Asia’s water supplies?”

My eyes dart back to the window. The girl is gone. I exhale silently in relief. Shifting position in my chair, I look to the front of the room, focusing all my attention on the map.

That was a major slip I can’t let happen again.

I sigh with relief when the lunch bell finally rings, and shoulder my way to my locker. Grabbing my backpack, I head to the cafeteria. My eyes roam over the hundreds of students making their way to tables or through the hot lunch line, but I don’t see Rachel anywhere.

Tempted by the promise of fresh air and warm temperatures, I head for the double glass doors to the outdoor eating area. Not surprisingly, I’m not the only one with the same idea. All the round, cement tables and benches are full of students, the noise a dull roar as their voices bounce off the gray brick walls. Bypassing the tables, I make my way across the grass to a giant spruce tree near the teacher’s parking lot.

Taking a seat on the ground, I settle myself against the trunk. Feeling the rough bark pressing into my skin, a shudder runs through my body, last night’s dream still vivid in my memory. Ignoring the sensation, I grab my iPod from my backpack, along with the sandwich, chips and bottle of water my mom had thoughtfully tossed in before my mad rush out the door. Inserting the earpieces, I choose a song at random. Turning up the sound, I lean back against the tree, watching the other students talk and eat, trading food items across the tables. I watch as Deena picks the black olives from a slice of pizza, flicking them to the ground. Two boys across from her try to toss Fritos into another boys open mouth, without much success. At the far end, a leggy blonde who could be Steph’s cheerleading twin in a mini-skirt and varsity sweatshirt sits on her boyfriend’s lap, feeding him pieces of her Baby Ruth bar.

I watch it all with a sense of detachment, my thoughts centered elsewhere.

I bite my lip in anxiety. Why is it happening? The dreams. The nightmares. The incident in geography class. Am I starting to snap? Maybe I’ve spent so long denying the things I see, the pressure has become too much. Because the truth is, I’ve been dealing with this for as long as I can remember. And, normally, it wouldn’t be any big deal. Just another day in the life of Katriona Matheson. But, lately, it’s been different. A lot different.

More vivid.

More intense.

And what happened earlier – the strange pull, the inability to look away, the sensation of time and space condensing and shrinking – it’s bizarre.

I shake my head, knowing I should just stop thinking about it and eat my lunch. Yeah, it was weird. But when has it ever
not
been? You’re not supposed to see the things I see. Hear the things I do.

Ghosts.

Spirits.

The Undead.

Whatever you want to call them, it all amounts to the same thing: Images that shouldn’t be there, but are. Voices that shouldn’t exist, but do.

Like the girl in the pink dress. I know she’s dead. Just like all the others I’ve seen over the years. But why can I see them when no one else can? I have no idea. It’s just always been that way, from the time I was born. It’s something I can’t explain.

And it’s something I don’t talk about. Ever. Because how do you convince someone that you can see something they can’t? Something that shouldn’t be there to begin with. Try it. It’s impossible. I learned that the hard way. So I’ve become very good at ignoring them. I thought that if I ignored them long enough, they would go away. And for a while they had.

Until two weeks ago.

That’s when the girl appeared. Changing everything. Because for some reason I can’t ignore her like the others. Everything I’m seeing and hearing now is totally different than anything I’ve experienced before.

But
why?

I sigh and lean my head back against the tree, unable to come up with an answer.

I watch as David tosses an empty orange juice container into the trash. Remembering my reaction in class, I smile and laugh softly. I feel embarrassed, but proud for having stood up to him in my own small way. I usually try to stay under the school radar because the last thing I want is to be singled out for extra attention. The last time I had reacted that strongly to someone was in the second grade when rat-faced Luke Mulgrew had deliberately stuck his foot out while I was running to the swing set during recess. Falling down and skinning my knees, I had turned and glared at him, seething with anger and frustration. He had looked at me, immobile for a moment, before bursting into tears and running to the teacher. Unbelievably, it had been me who had gotten into trouble. Not that I had actually done anything. I’d only stared at him. But it’s my eyes. They freak people out.
They’re green and slightly slanted at the corners. Like cat’s eyes. But they’re not that soft, pretty green that’s always thought of as so attractive. They’re an odd, kind of mossy green, with strange flecks of gold and yellow. And when I’m really angry, it almost looks like they’re glowing. Probably just something to do with their odd color, or the way the light hits them, I don’t know. But
I was told it was wrong to frighten people.

I had wanted to ask if intentional tripping was OK, but I knew that would just get me into more trouble. So I’d kept my mouth shut.

The glass doors to the cafeteria open, the sun’s reflection in the glass momentarily blinding me. My vision refocuses and I immediately tense. Rick Laurent walks between the tables, lunch tray in one hand and a large bottle of red Powerade in the other. He pauses for a moment, his eyes scanning the crowd. Someone at one of the far tables waves. Lifting his head in acknowledgement, he heads in their direction.

I watch him, greedily drinking in every move and gesture. The lean muscles. The golden tan. The dark blonde hair that falls in messy waves around his face. The slightly rumpled look that somehow always looks stylish. The wide, slightly crooked nose and the full lips that are usually turned up in a smile. The deep brown eyes that make your knees quiver when he looks at you.

At least, I assume they would. But he’s never looked at me so I can’t attest to the fact of whether or not there is any actual quivering. I would have given anything to know him, but the thought of actually talking to him makes my stomach clench and roll so much I feel sick. What could I possibly say to someone like that, anyway? “Hi. I think you’re wonderful. Would you like to be my boyfriend?” Yeah. Perfect icebreaker.

Beneath the safety of the tree I continue to watch, like some kind of voyeur, imprinting every subtle movement onto the film reel in my head. I will replay it later, merging it with the other images stored in my mind. I bite the corner of my lip, the music playing in my ears providing the romantic soundtrack to my fantasy: Rick walking towards me, hands casually stuffed into his pockets, a small smile turning up the corners of his mouth. The smile grows wider, and he ducks beneath the branches of the tree, taking a seat beside me.