Earth (10 page)

"Tuesdays are the worst day of the week."
Jodi said matter-of-factly. "Think about it, people think Monday's
suck because it’s the new week, but you still have the high and
energy from the weekend. Wednesdays let you know you're half way
through the week, Thursdays mean it’s almost over, and Fridays it
is over. But Tuesdays," she drew out the word, "Tuesdays mean the
week just started and you've still got a ways to go."

"Yeah, you've got a point," I muttered into
my pillow.

"So seriously, he didn't talk to you all day
even though Steven and I were gone but he followed you to the
bookstore?"

"I don't know if he actually followed me
there, but yeah he was there."

"Dude, he followed you there." Jodi's voice
sounded bright yellow again. She was very possessive of her
friends. It was a very difficult balancing act for her to have both
me and Steven be as close to each other as we were to her, but when
an outsider came near us, she was a tigress protecting her
territory.

"Yeah... he did. Isn't that strange though?"
I rolled over onto my side; taking care to be sure the covers
didn't slip from my head. "Who talks like that? And what the hell
does he want?"

“I don't know...” she said distractedly. “And
he didn't mention yesterday afternoon and the whole parking lot
thing?”

“Not once.”

"Did you give him a chance?" Jodi asked, a
faint accusation in the back of her question.

"Oh yeah. I asked him what the big deal us
meeting was and he said he didn't know. He even said it was funny
that he couldn't think of why it was important that we meet or what
I thought of him."

"Hmmm..." She considered that for a minute, I
didn't press her for her thoughts. "I think maybe Steven and I
ought to be on stalker watch."

"Oh I doubt that's necessary," I
protested.

"Honey, please.” Jodi listed off the
evidence. “He spends the better part of three classes staring at
you. He showed up at the bookstore when no one knew you were gonna
be there. He felt the need to make a better impression on you but
was a total creep when doing it and then tried to follow you out to
your car."

"Ok, well when you say it like that, in a
tone like that, any guy would sound like a maniac."

"Ok, then how else would you say it?"

“Yeah.” I sighed heavily, suddenly
wanting out of this conversation and off the phone. “Gah! Whatever,
it doesn’t really matter, does it? I can’t even imagine a stalker
trying again after that.”

“We'll see,” she said darkly.

“Probably just some lame warlock,” I
muttered.

“That’s harsh.”

“I don’t think so. I mean I can’t read him
empathically, he knows when I’m trying to, and if he didn’t have
anything to hide, why not just let me read him?”

“True,” Jodi said slowly.

“Hey, I'm gonna be blessing Steven's cousin's
room this weekend, wanna help?” One change of subject, coming right
up!

“Sure. Think he got the rain water?”

“He better've. But if he didn’t, I did put a
bowl outside,” I admitted.

"The control freak took precautions?
Shocker," she teased.

"Shut up," I sat up, pulling the covers from
my head. "See you at 7:40?"

"Yep!"

"Night." We hung up and I knew Jodi would be
calling Steven immediately to inform him of her version of the
story about the bookstore. It would come across much worse than it
was and by the end Jensen would've been foaming at the mouth
and refusing to let me leave.

I looked at the clock and saw that it was
only ten o'clock. I knew sleep was just a wishful thought at this
point so I grabbed my two journals off my bedside table and placed
them on the bed in front of me. I set to copying down the blessing
I hadn’t had a chance to do earlier.

I finished the last few words and sealed the
cover with a pentagram I
drew
on with my right forefinger
and closed both books. I set them aside and pulled out a novel I
had been trying to get through and settled into my pillows.

I was running again, not understanding how I
got to this damn forest. I was afraid to look down, knowing my
chest must be drenched in blood because it just wasn’t possible
that my lungs hadn’t torn open by now. I could hear my labored
breathing in my ears, pulsing harder and faster than the beat of my
heart. I screamed at myself that I was asleep and just needed to
wake up to get out of this, but I could not stop to wake myself up.
Instinctively I dodged to the right, knowing that root I had
tripped over before was just ahead.

Thankfully, I made it past that tree without
any other trouble, but then I felt the earth tremble beneath me and
my feet slipped on the loose rocks. I scrambled, my hands clawing
at the ground, kicking leaves and dirt behind me, desperately
trying to regain my footing before I fell on the dirt floor. I
heard it behind me, gaining speed and suddenly felt a wave of
extreme joy pass over me that had nothing to do with my panicked
mind. It had caused me to stumble; it knew this earth like I didn’t
and it was reaching for me again. I felt the searing cold claws
touch my back and tried to scream out, only to have my voice
silenced in my throat. My mouth opened, but I couldn’t scream and
now I couldn’t run. I reached out again, trying to grab hold of
anything to pull myself away and my fingers closed around someone’s
hand, whose fingers were like iron bars around my hand. I looked up
into the face of a man with fathomless blue eyes.

“Hurry,” Jensen’s voice echoed through my
head and he pulled me to my feet, wrenching me forward and away
from the raking claws tearing at my back.

I woke with a start, once again sweat soaked
and out of breath. I had been crying again. I could feel the tears
welled inside my ears having rolled off the sides of my face, not
quite making it to the pillow. My fingers were deformed into angry
claws; I had torn the cover of my battered novel in my sleep. I lay
there for a long time, trying to catch my breath and remind myself
I was still in bed. I had the uncontrollable urge to pull the
covers over my head and hide there for the rest of the year, but I
could feel the burns on my back and knew I needed to change shirts
before the wet fabric irritated the wounds. I pushed myself into a
sitting position and for a second time winced at the effort. Now
the question was: to shower or not to shower?

Chapter 6

I was able to spend most of the morning
fending off Jodi and Steven's questions about yesterday because I
was having such a hard time concentrating on anything and kept
asking them to repeat their questions. They assumed it was the
insomnia and eventually gave up on me and discussed the event
between themselves, coming to their own conclusions without my
input. I hardly even thought about the bookstore, which seemed days
away rather than hours. All I could think about was my dream and
the fading scars I kept waking up with.

Because both Jodi and Steven had missed
French yesterday, they had to make up the pop-quiz at lunch and
promised to meet me under our tree, so I headed out by myself after
switching out books in my locker. I was looking forward to a few
moments of peace and quiet to meditate over last night’s dream and
try to make sense of what was going on. I could have confided in
Jodi and Steven, but I knew all that would have happened would be
that I would suddenly be an object of more concern. They would be
checking up on me constantly and I just didn’t think I could handle
the extra attention.

As I neared our usual resting place for
lunch, I felt a cold clammy feeling grip my stomach. It took me a
second to realize it had nothing to do with hunger and I stopped,
staring ahead and not seeing the source of the feeling. I
reached out
trying to locate the source, only to feel
nothing. A very solid nothing.
Damn him.
Jensen was at our
spot; this couldn’t be a random coincidence.

I had half a mind to just turn around and go
wait for Jodi and Steven outside of the French room, but I couldn't
stand the thought of being run out of my place in school. I had
been here nearly three years and that was where we spent lunch, who
was this guy to think he could just scare me off?
Arrogant
bastard!
My anger was feeding my resolve and pushing the memory
of the Jensen in my dream out of my head. I found myself storming
the rest of the way to our spot and, ultimately, to Jensen.

"What do you want?" I demanded without
preamble. His back was to me and he was looking past the chain link
fence out to the parking lot. I had hoped that I had taken him off
guard this time, but when he didn’t jump or spin around I knew I
hadn't.

"To work out that better impression I
promised you," he said smoothly as he turned to face me, his hands
in his pockets, looking for all the world like a very self-assured
male model. I glowered at him. "Oh, not here, no. I thought we
could go out?"

"Thanks, but I'm all set," I said coldly.

"I see, so your dance card is so full you
just can’t fit in one date?" He was trying to tease me, but it was
just coming across as sarcastic and that's not my definition of
charming.

"Yep, pretty much," I said, both eyebrows
raised. "You may go now." I stepped around him and dropped my bag
at the roots of the tree, turning again to face him, my arms
crossed protectively over my chest.

"You know, most people give others more than
one chance."

"And most people don’t spend their first
chance trying to make others feel totally uncomfortable and acting
ridiculously creepy." Ha! Argue with that!

"Well, that really wasn’t what I was going
for, so I guess, if that's how I came across, I apologize."
Damn
him
.

"Apology accepted. See? I can be gracious. So
if that's everything?" I wanted to sit down and bury my face in a
book, but the only book that was left in my bag was my journal, and
he'd learned enough about me last night. I watched his face. He was
thinking about something again, maybe measuring his chances, I
didn’t know. And now that I had put the idea that he was a warlock
in my mind, all my primal instincts told me to keep him at arms
length.

"Ok," he nodded just like last night and
started to leave, “for now.”

"You say that a lot." I couldn’t help myself.
He just smiled at me. It was the first natural smile I had seen him
give and a thousand butterflies erupted in my stomach and a warm
flush passed over my face.
Damn him
. He left without another
word. I guess he liked leaving on a high note. As much as he cared
about that first impression, he really did leave quite an
impression every time.

Days passed and Jensen didn’t try to bother
me again. Occasionally he’d throw me a smile or even a wink when
he’d catch me looking his way, but he didn’t press for that date.
It was just as well because Mike seemed to hear about our meeting
in the bookstore and didn’t like it. As a matter of fact, quite a
few people knew about the bookstore. I knew just who to blame for
that.

“I swear! I didn’t say a word to anyone but
Steven,” Jodi said on the way to school Friday. I glared at Steven
through the rearview mirror.

“Neither did I!” he protested
defensively.

“Then explain to me how so many people know!”
I shifted hard, causing the engine to roar loudly. “I had Melissa
corner me the other day in the bathroom asking me what exact shade
of blue his eyes were and then Tracy asked me if I wanted to
discuss the differences between him and Ian and then Mike came
up--”

“Hey! That must be it!” Steven cut me
off.

“What?” Jodi and I asked together.

“Tracy.”

“Oh, I bet you’re right…” Jodi said
thoughtfully, turning to look at Steven.

“Mind filling me in?” I asked irritated.

“Tracy,” Steven repeated. “Jodi was telling
me about the bookstore when we were in Art and Tracy has that class
with us.”

“Ugh, and that’s the thanks I get for helping
her,” I said a little angrily.

“So, what about Mike?” Jodi asked teasingly,
but I could hear a slight edge to her voice.

“Oh, dude, you thought he looked like I
kicked a puppy last time? You should’ve seen him yesterday,” I
said, shaking my head. “He ran into me in the halls, when I was
running that file to the office for Madame Beaumont and he asked
when Jensen and I started dating.” They both broke out in laughter,
but I didn’t think it was all that funny. “Then he practically
demanded that I go to my locker right there and give him back his
away jersey.”

“Dude, when you break up with a guy you don’t
go easy, do you?” Steven razzed me.

“Oh, I’m not kidding. There I was trying to
explain to him that it was just a coincidence that we happened to
be in the same bookstore at the same time and I might as well have
been talking to a wall for how receptive he was,” I continued.

“What do you care what Mike thinks?” Jodi
asked.

“It’s not so much that I care what he thinks,
but I do care that he feels like I betrayed him, even though he
really has no right to feel that way,” I added, more for my benefit
than theirs. “But even still, I’m not a bitch.” Steven nearly
choked on his smoothie at that. “Ok, fine, I’m not that
much
of a bitch to make him feel like the reason why I don’t like him is
because of another guy,” I amended.

“Oh yeah, tell him you don’t like him because
he’s a stupid, boring jock, that’ll make him feel better,” Jodi
said sarcastically and I was horribly reminded of the fact that
Jodi had always had a crush on Mike and obviously hadn’t forgiven
me for him liking me over her.

“Obviously I wouldn’t do that,” I said a
little coldly as I parked the car, slamming the door a little too
roughly when I got out. “My point was that I didn’t want to hurt
his feelings at all, I wanted to just let him down.” Jodi didn’t
seem to be listening anymore so I just stopped.