Shadow Hills (13 page)

As soon as I got to my room, I changed into my pj’s, turned off my light, and slid into bed. The safest thing, I figured, was to pretend I was asleep if Adriana or Toy came by to see how I was feeling. But there was no way I could actually
go
to sleep; I’d probably be up all night going over the things I had found at the library and worrying about whether Graham’s roommate would describe me and my bizarre visit.

But, in fact, I fell asleep almost as soon as I closed my eyes and slept straight through the night. The next morning I jotted a few dream fragments down in the green journal, but they were just remnants of old dreams. I read over the entry to see if any of it seemed important, but after deciding it wasn’t, I closed the journal and started my morning routine. I was dreading going to breakfast. I couldn’t imagine Graham’s roommate not telling him about the insane girl who crashed into his room, spouting a wild story, and exited through the window. I certainly would have.

But apparently his roommate was less of a gossip than I was—or perhaps Graham was so cute that the guy just assumed teenage girls invading his dorm room was a regular occurrence—because at breakfast, Graham was the same as always. He asked only if I was feeling better. Though my sickness had been imaginary, my guilt over stealing from and lying to a friend set my stomach churning.

I found it hard to concentrate in my classes. They were different than Monday’s classes, and I soon learned that in French they were way ahead of where I was in my old school. Math was more boring than usual, and I couldn’t keep myself from daydreaming as the teacher droned on. My thoughts kept returning to the library and what I had and hadn’t found out there. I wasn’t sure I was any better off now. I couldn’t see how the information I had found related to Athena or why she had wanted to come to Devenish.

Later that afternoon, I walked over to the Athletics Center for my first day of swim club. I used to swim almost every day in L.A., and I was looking forward to getting back to it, but I was a little bummed because we didn’t have photography on Tuesdays. Which meant I hadn’t seen Zach at all.

My swim club teacher turned out to be Mr. Carr, the SAC director whom the headmaster had introduced at orientation—and one of the men I’d overheard in the hospital. I barely suppressed a groan. He definitely had a “rules” guy vibe and was probably the kind of hard-ass coach who would push us to be competitive swimmers whether we wanted to or not. But, as it turned out, Mr. Carr was nothing like that. He was helpful
but didn’t seem obsessed with improving our swim times or anything.

It felt good to be in the water again—even if it was a pool and not the ocean. The more I swam, the more everything melted away, and soon the muscles in my neck and shoulders started to unknot themselves.

When class was over, Mr. Carr stopped me as I headed toward the locker room. “I’m impressed, Miss Archer. Excellent technique.” He smiled, and his friendly brown eyes crinkled up at the corners. “And you swim like you enjoy it. That’s important.”

“Well, I’m from southern California; I’ve been swimming all my life.”

“Don’t suppose you’d consider moving to the swim team,” he suggested, the little twinkle in his eyes telling me that he had already figured out how I would probably respond.

“Sorry. I’m not really a ‘team person.’” He was so amiable I kind of hated to turn him down.

“Yeah. Well, had to ask. See you next class.” He walked off, and I went on to the showers.

As I massaged shampoo into my scalp I watched the soapy water run down my hair, dripping onto my hip. The three red half moons there had interlocked with a new pinkish outline.

It’s just a birthmark
, I tried to tell myself.
Yeah. Right
. An intricate red pattern that grew daily and looked like an ancient symbol was some kind of late-onset strawberry birthmark? There was something happening to me. I was changing—physically
changing
. I didn’t know why. And I couldn’t stop it.

All the other girls were gone by the time I got out of my longer-than-necessary shower. It was freezing in the locker room, so I dressed quickly, fastening Athena’s bracelet back on my wrist as I walked out to the pool area.

Some of the other swimmers were logging individual practice time, but they must have been on teams because I didn’t recognize anyone from swim club. I glanced across to the diving pool and stopped, my eyes on the figure climbing the ladder to the diving board.

It was Zach Redford.

I stood for a moment, watching, as he reached the top of the ladder and walked the length of the board. His lean, toned body was slick with water, his dark hair wet. He paused at the end of the board, positioning his toes, before drawing a slow breath as he raised his arms. With a powerful bunching of his muscles, he jumped, jackknifing into a perfect dive. He broke the water with barely a ripple, and in a few strokes he was at the side of the pool, climbing out, the water sluicing over him.

I realized that I was staring. I cast a quick glance around. Hopefully my mouth hadn’t been hanging open. Turning, I walked out of the Athletics Center.

As I left the building, a cold breeze wound its way through my wet hair. Shivering, I picked up my pace. I needed to get back to the dorm. While I didn’t have firm plans, as I had told Trent I did, Toy had said that she would drop by this afternoon to set up my Devenish computer network—that was provided, of course, that the laptop my dad had promised me had arrived.

When I got back to the dorm, I found a note taped to my door:

I gave my dad a quick call to say thank you, but as usual he was in court helping some rich person get richer. Mom said she would relay my thanks, but she sounded so spaced out that I kind of doubted that Dad would get my message.

I shook off the gloom that came with trying to talk to my parents and went down the hall to Ms. Moore’s. I ripped the UPS box open before I even made it back to my room. A new MacBook. I set the laptop on my desk before pulling open the desk drawer that held my iPod.

I took care of the most important thing first: installing my music onto the computer. Firewalls and Office programs could wait. I turned the Pixies up as loud as I dared with Ms. Moore down the hall.
Doolittle
vibrated through the computer’s speakers as I pulled my things out of the moving boxes. It took me a minute to hear the knocking over my music.

I pulled open the door to find Toy standing there.

“Did you get your laptop in yet?” She adjusted the black messenger bag slung over her shoulder.

“Yep. Come in.” I turned down my music so we wouldn’t have to shout over it. Toy settled herself at the desk.

“It’ll only take me a minute. I’m the fastest tech they have.” Toy smiled. “If they counted the number of computers set up
instead of the hours worked, I would be golden. Well, except for the fact that I don’t get paid.”

“Isn’t that some kind of child labor law violation?” I joked, lying down on my bed.

“Not when you’re part of an after-school computer club that volunteers to do it. We’re all geek-tastic,” she laughed. “Though I have to say, I think I’ve even managed to freak out some tech-connect guys with the breadth of my knowledge. My mind borders on the morbid.”

Maybe Toy would know some stuff that could help me. I sat up. “Hey, I wanted to talk to you about something….”

“Yeah?”

“I stumbled onto that old cemetery behind the hospital when I was exploring. Graham said you had checked into it.”

Toy eyes lit up. “Yeah. It’s what got me interested in that strange epidemic they had here in the 1700s.”

“What was so strange about it?” I prodded.

Toy pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. “Well, only the original settlers recovered from the disease; all the people who weren’t from Derbyshire, England, died.”

“How’d you figure that out?”

“I went to the museum in town—”

“There’s a museum in Shadow Hills?”
Wow, I could rule out a career as a detective
.

“Just a little one right off the square. They have the list of original settlers, and then later tax rolls. All I had to do was compare the names.”

“Are a lot of those names still here?” I asked. “I mean, are
the townies descended from those people who survived the epidemic?”

“I’m not sure. Well, the Redfords are; I remember noticing their name. And the Blackwells … and the Westfields.” Toy frowned. “Yeah …” She shrugged. “I guess a lot of the students from town
do
have the same last names as the original settlers. I hadn’t thought about that, but it’s kind of unusual, isn’t it?”

“It would be where I come from, but in L.A. everybody is from somewhere else.” I paused. “Did you find out anything about what caused the epidemic?”

Toy turned back to the computer. “No. I’m assuming it was influenza or something like that. If it had been smallpox or the bubonic plague, they would have recognized it.”

“I wonder why the people from Derbyshire survived and the others didn’t.”

“Superior immune systems, maybe?” Toy offered.

“Do you think it might have been genetic?” I thought of the charts I’d seen in the archives room. “Like they had a mutation that made them able to fight off the disease?”

“I know there are mutations that make people more prone to a certain disease—like the breast cancer gene—I guess it’s possible one could make you able to withstand a disease.”

“So if they stayed here and had kids with other survivors, the gene would probably become more dominant,” I theorized. “And their immune systems, or whatever, would get even stronger.”

“Seems likely.” After a minute, Toy sat back in the chair. “Okay. I’m all done here.”

“Thanks.” I followed Toy toward the door.

At the doorway, she turned back to me, frowning. “But you know … the thing is, if the Derbyshire people had a gene mutation, I don’t think that it made them healthier than other people. When I was looking up info on the epidemic, I went to the cemetery in town, the newer one. And what was really weird about it was that all the death dates weren’t that long after the birth dates. Even the recent graves. Hardly anybody in Shadow Hills lives past the age of forty.”

As I closed the door behind Toy all I could picture was Zach lying cold and waxen in a wooden box. Dead long before he should be.

I sat down at the computer. Brevis Vita Alliance—the organization I’d found mentioned in the archives room—had been on my mind all day. It looked like Latin to me, and though I hadn’t taken Latin, I’d absorbed enough of it through vocabulary lessons that I was pretty sure that the word “vita” meant life. “Brevis” I wasn’t so sure of, but based on the sound of it, I had an icy suspicion about what it meant, too.

I clicked on a translations site and typed in “brevis vita,” changing it from Latin to English. I had been hoping I was wrong, but there it was right in front of me. The meaning of “brevis vita.” Short life.

I sat back in my chair, losing interest in looking up anything else. If I was right, then the Derbyshire settlers and their descendants survived the epidemic because of a gene mutation and that gene mutation produced some extraordinary talents in the people of Shadow Hills. But it was looking as though the descendants were paying a high price for it.

I spent most of Wednesday afternoon dreading my impending meeting with Trent. In psych class he watched me with a fascination that severely creeped me out. As annoying as it had become to see the townies read their textbooks at the speed of light, I wished Trent would join in with them. At least then he couldn’t stare at me. After I finally escaped psychology, the rest of the school day seemed to fly by instead of dragging on like it had for the first two days. Swimming let out far too soon, and since the diving team didn’t practice on Wednesdays, I couldn’t postpone my fate by hanging around to gaze at Zach.

I decided not to change before heading over to the SAC. While I didn’t want to be the über-dork who wore her school uniform outside of class, I also didn’t want to make my meeting with Trent look any more like a date than it already did.

When I wandered into the SAC about five minutes late, Trent was already at the coffee counter waiting for his drink.
Ordering without your date, that’s gentlemanly
.

“Hey, Goldilocks, sorry I didn’t wait for you, but it’s not something I’m accustomed to doing.” His mouth curved into a smile, but his eyes were flat.

“Don’t worry about it.”

I ordered a nonfat latte and a bran muffin from the girl behind the counter. She had curly blonde hair and was dressed in way too much pink, including a pink watch with pink rhinestones around the dial. She was gazing at Trent with a dreamy expression that made me want to gag.

“Do you want to sit outside?” I asked. I didn’t think I would
be able to eat with this girl making googly eyes at Trent.
Didn’t she see the sleaze that practically dripped from him?

“Okay,” Trent agreed, casting a glance at the girl. “I hate it when they do that,” he added as the door closed behind us. “Just stare like I’m royalty.”