Tremble (10 page)

“Hi,” I say. It comes out weak. The strong scent of spaghetti sauce permeates the air, and I can hear a pot of boiling water whirring on the stove.

“I had no idea your mother ran the Paragon division of Al thorpe.” He lets the folder slip through his fingers and onto the counter.

“He tel s me he’s your new math teacher.” My mom sparkles at the thought. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear she’s taken by him.

“Sub,” I say making my way over to the fridge. “He’s just a substitute.”

“That’s right. My real passion is animals. I have a horse ranch not too far from here where I run an equestrian school.”

“Nice.” I pour myself some juice completely disinterested in the conversation.

“Skyla.” Mom slaps her hand against the counter. “Do you even realize how very, very rude you are?” She turns to him. “Please excuse my daughter. She’s been in dire need of an attitude adjustment since we set foot on Paragon.”

Normal y I would be mortified. Instead I head over and at glance at the computer monitor to see what exactly he has my mother doing.

Guardian Equestrian Academy.

“You like horses?” He asks as though I’m eight-years-old.

“No.” I don’t care either way. I know this is al a ploy to dig into me.

“Skyla.” My mother hisses.

“She’d be a perfect model,” he quips.

My mother takes a breath and examines me up and down.

“Yes. I think a model would be perfect for the ad. We can have her on a horse with the wind in her hair,” she says.

“We should put angel wings on her,” he offers. “She has a rather angelic look about her, don’t you think?” The sarcasm practical y sprays al over the room.

“She’s no angel.” My mother clicks away at the keyboard. “Trust me on that one. And, yes, she’l model for you.”

I see the price of rudeness these days is far too high.

I hang out on the couch until they wrap up their meeting, and she walks him out the door. I wait until my mom comes back into the room before making some lame excuse about an assignment in an effort to catch him on the driveway in private.

“What are you doing?” I pant from the mad dash over. The wind is picking up and thrashing my hair into my face.

“I’m enjoying myself. Aren’t you?” His entire person ignites with the afterglow of taunting.

He’s playing me. The curve of his smile, the way he undresses me with his eyes, he wants more than to protect me.

“Not real y,” I say.

“You wil , Saturday. I have the perfect horse for you. Would you like a job on the ranch?”

“Scooping horse shit? No thanks.”

“Hmm. Mouth like a gutter. I have other projects for you, should you reconsider.” He opens the passenger side of his metal ic blue sports car and throws in his briefcase before circling around to the other side. “Can’t wait to see you in angel wings.” He gives a smug look of satisfaction. His eyes sharpen in my direction. “I plucked them off the angel myself.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Back

Chloe sits opposite me with that same abashed smile on her face she had the first time I arrived. She’s clad in nothing but a sheet, stil giddy from her encounter with Logan. The whole situation is an invitation to stick my finger down my throat and vomit al over her bed.

“So are we getting your dad again?” She rumples the sheets, spreads them around her like the bottom of a very ful dress.

“You make it sound like we’re picking him up from the airport.” I pluck a loose thread from the floral comforter with repeating patterns of roses. I wonder if Logan wil remember the details of tonight. If he burned them into his memory to cherish forever like I would have.

“What’s the matter?” She pul s a curtain of hair away from my eyes. “I know you miss your dad.”

“It’s not just that. Actual y that’s gotten better, knowing I can go back and see him. And he remembers, like you.”

She gives a slight nod.

“It’s Logan and Gage and this new person—a teacher named Mr. Dudley.” I tel her about Marshal and al his freaky ways.

The expression bleeds from Chloe’s face. She fal s back on her elbows and searches an invisible horizon for answers.

“You need to let them know, and for sure don’t trust him. I’l poke around and see what I can find out. Horse ranch?” She shakes her head doubtful y. “So what’s going on with Logan and Gage?”

“It’s clear to everybody I’m with Gage. He wrote me a poem.”

“A poem?” She pushes into my knee with her foot. “Does Logan know?”

“Yes.”

“Fantastic.” She restrains a laugh while biting down on her finger.

“You’re loving this aren’t you?”

“Definitely.” Chloe eases into a string of giggles. “For al the misery they’ve given me, I like the thought of a little coming their way. You’re my best revenge.”

Revenge.

I give her a blank stare before fal ing back on the bed and staring up at the ceiling. A heavy feeling presses against my chest. I want to push aside this endless heartbreak, run away and hide. There has to be somewhere I can go to forget al of this madness, forget who I am. I’d go anywhere not to be me for a minute.

“It’s too much.” She puts an arm around my shoulder. The sweet romantic scent of her perfume rises in the air like an aria.

It is too much. It’s funny how drowning in my emotions often leads to twin feelings in me—to simultaneously want to cry and kick someone’s ass.

“You need to be strong, Skyla. You’re forgetting the most important part.”

“What’s that?” I turn towards her in anticipation of the revelation.

“There’s nobody like you Skyla, except me.” She blinks a smile. “And I’m dead.”

***

My bedroom is unchanged. I marvel at the precision in which we’re able to transport ourselves. How amazingly close we are to the exact moment we were here last, and I wonder if eventual y we’l run into ourselves.

“Have you done this alone yet?” Chloe asks hopping onto the bed.

“No. I prefer the buddy system.” I pluck the book of poems off my desk and toss them in her direction. “Entertain yourself.”

It’s quiet in the hal . The house smel s sweet, and now I’m pretty sure I’l never be able to eat a cookie again without thinking of my father.

I dash downstairs and scan the dish on top of the smal table in the entry—keys are stil gone. I slide open a drawer in the kitchen, and the keys that had adorned the bottom have vanished.

“Pumpkin, is that you?” My dad cal s from the dining room.

I round the corner and offer him a tight, long hug. His scent fil s me. I try to memorize how soft he is in his t-shirt, how his cheek bristles against mine.

“Don’t go to work. Stay home, we can hang out.”

“What?” He plucks off his glasses. “A minute ago you were suffering.” He looks at me suspect.

“I am, I mean I was, but I took some pain pil s and I feel better. Come on, when was the last time we went out to a movie—just you and me? It can be Skyla and Daddy ditch day.”

“It could be, but it won’t. Now get back upstairs and get to bed, curl up with a good book. Your mom wil kil me if I took you to the movies on a school day.”

I consider the irony.

“OK, then let’s watch a movie here.” I shrug. Bril iant.

He folds over the top of the newspaper and mul s it over.

“OK.”

Watching a crappy B rated movie with my dad, turns out to be the single most greatest experience of my entire life. I don’t pay attention to the characters or the plot instead, I nestle in his warmth like a baby chick. I pul his arm over my shoulder and touch my cheek against his bare flesh

—press my lips into the soft underbel y of his arm and close my eyes. God, I miss my father.

I must have fal en asleep on the couch. A colorful patchwork quilt my grandmother made covers me. I look out the family room window and see that the sun has come up over the backyard, which is usual y where it was by the time I came home from school. Shit!

I bolt up and search the dining room—no sign of dad.

“Sweetie?” I hear his voice in the kitchen.

“There you are,” I say relieved. He’s making a sandwich, stil in his sweats and t-shirt. He didn’t go to work today. I changed things.

I give him a ful rocking hug.

“I’m going to bed now. I feel delirious. I might not remember any of this later.”

He turns to look at me.

“Why? Are you losing your mind?”

“Something like that.”

I head upstairs and find Chloe hunched over my computer.

“Just friended you on Facebook,” she says casual y.

“I should total y friend Logan and Gage!”

“No,” she snarls. “Let’s get out of here. I have a biology test in the morning.”

I take Chloe’s hands, and we sit on the hardwood floor in front of my closet.

“You’re wearing my shirt,” I say recognizing the zebra stripped t-shirt. I hated it even then.

“Yeah, you’ve got bad taste.” She plucks at her chest.

I lock fingers with her and give her a yank.

“You’re like a sister to me, you know that?” I tel her before crossing my legs.

“And you’re like a sister to me.” There’s something sinister in her eyes when she says it, but I believe her.

The room fades to a palpable darkness, everything vanishes, and we’re sitting in a vat of nothing. Before I can say anything, or panic properly, we’re gone.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Caught

My father died that evening doing an ice cream run for my mother. That would explain my sudden disdain for the frozen confection and the fact I have no recal of my mother purchasing it since.

Paragon is enveloped in a storm—might as wel be a monsoon.

Gage has gotten in the habit of picking me up and dropping me off. Drake and Briel e usual y take her Jeep. I miss spending time with Bree.

Here I thought we’d be getting closer, and yet we’ve drifted into our own hormone-ruled worlds.

“What’s going on?” Gage asks leaning over his desk. “You haven’t said a thing al morning.”

The bel rang minutes ago, and Marshal is late for class. He’s already quite the sensation around campus. The girls have renamed him Studley Dudley, so there’s a buzz in the air in anticipation of his arrival.

“I went back and tried to save my dad.” I look down at the floor and get lost in the black and white checkered pattern for a moment. The windows rattle in concert with the baritone thunder.

“Same results?”

“Always.”

“So who’d you go with?” He tries to hide the look of disappointment, or maybe it’s jealousy. I’m too worn out to analyze.

“Chloe,” I say, as Mr. Studley strides into class as though the world rides on his timeline. For his sake, I hope it’s his first class of the day, or maybe not. I don’t real y care if they fire him.

“Morning class.” Skyla.

I turn ful y around to face Gage, not bothering to acknowledge Marshal ’s private greeting.

“Logan doesn’t approve of my light driving, as Chloe cal s it, so I don’t let him in on my inter-dimensional jaunts.”

“I’l take a drive with you again.” His face relaxes at the thought.

“OK. I need a plan though. Can you help me come up with something that might actual y work to save my dad?”

“Sorry, no promises.” His dimples ignite, but no smile.

The heavy scent of cologne wafts over me, then the thick feeling of a person—not quite human, lingering behind my shoulder.

I turn so fast I bump into Marshal with my knee. An intense glorious feeling runs up and down my bones like a tuning fork. I have to catch my breath from the pleasure of it al . I clasp my hands over the rim of my desk to keep from latching onto him.

“Excuse me.” He steps over my shoes passing out papers as he goes along.

I have a surprise for you in my room at four-thirty.

I have cheer until four-thirty.

He walks passed my desk again.

“Looks like I forgot to give you one.” He places the back of his knuckles over the top of my hand, covering us neatly with the outline of the new syl abus.

Such an intense rush.

I open my mouth, and a choking sound emits.

Four-thirty.

***

Wal s of water come down from the sky, sweeping rain, sideways rain. Rain that makes you believe you’re standing on the bottom of the ocean inundates West Paragon.

It’s dark as evening, the lights in the gym flicker in a cyclical pattern, and it feels like we’re doing our routines by candlelight. The footbal team is adjacent to us running dril s, shouting in unison like an army, which makes it impossible to focus, at least for me. Logan and his half shirt—

he’s been pumping iron like a prisoner and it shows in so many excel ent ways.

“I can’t do this.” Michel e grips her midsection. “I’m cutting out early.”

“Morning sickness?” Briel e whispers over to me with a laugh.

The bitch squad disbands in unison leaving us to watch Nat and Kate jump and kick like a pair of Energizer bunnies.

“Oh, guess what?” Briel e squeals.

She probably scored a C on her lit paper. It doesn’t take much to rile her up with excitement.

“I’m spending the night, Friday,” she coos.

“Awesome.” I could real y use some girl time, real y clear my head without…

“Not with you. Wel , technical y with you.”

“Oh, I get it.” She’s going to get busy with my step bother. What is it with her and her fascination with nitwits anyway?

“Oh and I total y want to hear al about your angel thing. I mean do you actual y have wings and stuff? I’ve sort of been waiting for you to bring it up, but since you so rudely didn’t, I’m inviting myself into the conversation.”

“Wings? No, but I wil Saturday. Come with me to Dudley’s horse ranch. I’m supposed to do some modeling for him.”

She sucks in a sharp breath.

“He is so going to try to sleep with you! Modeling…” She chokes on her words. “It’s practical y code for sex.”

If only she knew how right she was.

“It’s legit. My mom’s running the ad for him and everything.” Speaking of which, I check my watch.

Four-thirty.

I jump to my feet.

“I gotta run an errand.”

***

Rain fal s like axes, flattening my hair, fil ing my shoes with an inch of water as I slosh into the English building, sopping wet.