Gravity, a young adult paranormal romance (31 page)

"Thank you," I replied genuinely. "I'm really
sorry if I caused you any trouble..." 

"You should be," she continued. "The school
could have brought disciplinary action against me if anything
happened to you. It's very disappointing." She ran her hand through
her hair. "It just proves to me that I shouldn't try to be your
friend. I'm your teacher."

"Please don't think that way," I started, but
she just shook her head, and resumed handing out
sketchbooks.

"She'll move on," Theo said after Ms. Vore had
walked back up to her desk. "Give her time."

I felt really horrible, and the twisted thing
was, my thoughtless actions weren't even worth it. Nothing but bad
had come from them.

Hugh was reading the paper at the dining room
table when I arrived home.

"Why didn't you tell me about the fire at your
school?" he asked the minute I walked in. Claire had driven me home
since she had taken a vacation day, and dropped me off on her way
to the store. I wasn't ready for another ambush.

"I thought I did," I said, shutting the
sliding glass door. "It was on Friday, when I was sick. My head was
a little wonky. But I need to talk to you about it now."

He folded the paper back up in a messy lump
and tossed it on the table.

"I think there's a possibility I might get in
trouble," I started. "But I didn't really do anything
wrong."

He was starting to look angry, which was
exceedingly rare for Hugh. I stood on the opposing side of the
table, twisting the hem of my shirt in my hands. The familiar
surroundings of our house suddenly felt like a courtroom, with me
presenting my case.  

"What happened?" he demanded.

I explained, but left out the part about
Henry. Claire would ban him from the house if she thought he was
getting me in trouble. Not that I thought he would be back any time
soon.   

"That was incredibly foolish of you," he said
once I was done. "You get indignant that your mother and I are
worried about you, and then you put yourself in danger."

I had no reply for that.

"Jenna's disappearance is affecting your
judgment, whether you see it or not."

Yeah, and he didn't know the worst of it.
Sneaking out and having possible seizures in abandoned buildings.
Seeing dead little girls hanging out at school.

"There is still the matter of what happened
with the Ford girl," he said, getting up and going for more coffee.
"McPherson knows I will bring it up if he dares press anything with
this. So don't worry."

"Are you sure?" I asked. Ever since he had
caught up to us on Friday, I had been apprehensive McPherson would
kick me out of school, but I had been trying not to think about
it.

"I'm sure," he said. "But that doesn't by any
stretch mean that you're off the hook. Now go downstairs and work
on your homework."

Not only was I grounded, but I had to fork
over my phone for the week. I begged him not to tell Claire, but he
said he couldn't keep secrets from her, because they were in a
relationship, and relationships meant honesty. If only I had the
same courtesy with Henry.

Despite my hope that things would change, I
soon discovered that Henry wouldn't talk to me in school. In fact,
the person he had been disappeared, replaced by a specter that
shuffled down the halls and never smiled. Every time I saw him I
wanted to reach out, to talk to him, to shake him and ask him what
was going on. But I didn't know how. 

"What is up with your boy?" Theo asked one day
as November chugged on. She had finally gotten around to putting
together a set of sketches for my dad, and they were going up in
the gallery in a few weeks. It had seemed to fill her with a sense
of self-confidence I hadn't seen before.  

"He's not my boy," I said emphatically. "And
your guess is as good as mine."

Henry laid his head down on his desk. He was
wearing the sweatshirt with the blackbirds inside the hood, pulled
over his head. I clenched my fingers, ignoring the strong impulse
to go over and stroke the back of his head.  

"Maybe he got sick like us," Theo suggested,
but I knew it was more than that.

For the next week, he acted distant. He
brought his thick fantasy books to class, kept them open on his lap
under his desk, reading. He sent me a text on Tuesday to let me
know that he couldn't do tutoring anymore. It interfered with his
schedule, he claimed. Although it shouldn't have been a surprise,
it felt like the final blow.  

I got the picture. It was a bleak
one.

A loud banging noise woke me up. I began to
panic before I even opened my eyes.

"Not again," I whispered, sitting up on my bed
in the dark. My room had been peaceful for weeks, with no strange
occurrences or vanishing lights. But the sound wasn't coming from
my room, it was coming from out in the hall. Pulling my door open
gently, I stepped out into the hallway. It was pitch black and
chilly. The furnace groaned gently at my back.

The noise again came again. A fist on the
glass door was my best guess. I crouched and grabbed a weight from
Claire's still-untouched exercise room, sitting just inside the
door. I made my way through boxes and around the pool table with
its canvas cover, to where I could see outside.

The motion detector light was activated and
someone lurked just outside the door. A dark figure like in an
alarm company commercial. I stifled the urge to scream. As my eyes
focused, I recognized Henry's face, peering in and using his hands
as binoculars.

I sped over to the door, unlocked it, and
pushed it open.

"What in the hell are you doing here?" I
hissed, wrapping my arms around myself to keep out the frigid night
air.   

"Are you going to hit me with that?" Henry
asked, gesturing to the hand weight and leaning back.
 

I tossed the weight on a nearby chair. "I
needed to talk to you," he said urgently. His cheeks were flushed
from the cold.

"And you couldn't find a better time than
three in the morning?" I asked skeptically.

"Well, I knew you would be free," he said, in
a shadow of his old good humor. He rubbed his arms through his
sweatshirt and complained, "It's cold out here. Are you going to
invite me in or am I walking the long walk home?"

I hesitated. This was so against the rules.
But the pleading look in his eyes and the thrill of having him here
for me won out.

I stepped aside and swept my arm out. I was
suddenly acutely aware of my cupcake pajama pants and frizzy bed
hair.

"Thanks," he breathed, the air expelled from
his lungs like vaporous ghosts. He stepped in and I pulled the door
shut as quietly as I could.

"You have to be really quiet," I whispered.
"If my parents knew..."

"Understood," he whispered back, holding his
hands up like stop signs.

I couldn't believe this was real. Maybe it
wasn't. Maybe it was just another dream. And that made me remember
my long ago dream that wound up in my room, and I blushed in the
shadows. We were right by the same couch.

"Follow me," I whispered, and led him down the
hall. Being out in the main basement felt too open, like we were
just waiting to get caught, but when I stepped into my room and
turned on the lamp, it felt too intimate.

"Have a seat," I said.

Henry sat down in my desk chair. I sat on the
bed, aware that the floor was my only other option, and that would
put me in an even more awkward position.

"What was so important that you needed to walk
to my house in the middle of the night?" I asked.

As he dropped his hood, I noticed that his
hair was disheveled, like he had been lying down, tossing and
turning while trying to sleep. He stared at the floor before
speaking. "Do you trust me?"

That was out of left field. "Should I?" I was
beginning to have reasons not to, but I didn't speak them
aloud.

He worried his full bottom lip with his
teeth.

"Do you trust me?" he repeated, more
emphatic.

"I don't know," I said automatically. "I used
to."

I remembered how soft his lips felt on mine
when we kissed for the briefest moment at the dance, his hands on
the small of my back. I looked away.

"I want to be able to prove to you that you
can," he said.

"Why? To start with, you haven't spoken a word
to me in weeks," I said, the hurt that I felt bubbling to the
surface. "You were the one going on about how we were friends, and
then you just ignored me like I was invisible."

"I know." He looked down again.

I quickly scanned my room to make sure I had
no embarrassing personal effects sitting out. He was twisting his
key ring around his thumb, the keys jingling softly. "I found out
some things and...there's a lot going on in my life right
now."

"Yeah, well, mine too." I was uncomfortable,
thinking that it was a mistake to let him in. Not just into my
room, but to let him in to my life at all. There was a moment of
loaded silence.

"I pulled the fire
alarm."  

"What?" I asked, my eyes widening. But I had
heard him fine.

He squeezed his eyes shut tightly. "I pulled
the fire alarm."

I opened my mouth to speak, and shut it again.
In my shock I had no words, no clever response.

"But I didn't start the fire," he said, and
now he was looking at me, his eyes begging me to believe
him.

"What are you talking about?" I asked. I stood
up, suddenly wide awake and alert. And very aware that I could be
in the room with an arsonist.

"It's such a long story, it's hard
to explain. I don't even know if I know enough
to
explain it." He was babbling,
unlike most of the time when he always seemed to know the right
words. "I was being blackmailed."

I stood silent, my look conveying that he
should continue.

"When we moved here, I started getting emails
from an address I didn't recognize. The person presented evidence
that he had something bad on my father, something that would
destroy him professionally and maybe even destroy his marriage to
my mother."

I sat back on my bed, legs crossed as I held
my ankles for support.

"The last email that I received told me to go
up to the top floor of the school, and pull the fire alarm. It
didn't say why, it just gave me a time and a location. I figured
they needed to clear the school for some reason, but now I'm
thinking I was being set up. And I think I know who's behind it.
McPherson."

"I just felt like I had to talk to someone,"
he continued. "And you're the closest person to me right now. I
avoided you before because I didn't want to pull you into this with
me. When I'm stressed out, I'm a bastard. I can't deal with
anything. I told you I care about you and I meant it. That's why I
had to come here tonight."

That admission made my heart swoop, at the
same time that my head was reeling.    

"I wasn't supposed to ask questions," he said,
rubbing his face with his hands and then looking up at me. "So I
tried not to."  

I could tell he was sure I didn't believe him.
"I swear, I'm telling you the truth. I have no reason to
lie."

"Do you have any idea what the blackmail
itself is?" I asked, pushing my hair back.

"I'm guessing it has something to do with his
work," he said thoughtfully. "In the profession he's in, there are
all kinds of situations he could get himself into. Lying for a
client, stealing..."

"Is your father capable of that?" It was a
hard question, but I felt that I had to ask it.

"Yes," he said without hesitation.
  

"What do you suggest we do about it?" I asked,
my shoulders slumping as I tried to process what he told me. The
surrealism of the night, having my real life crush sitting in my
bedroom, unloading all of his secrets to me. A month, even a few
weeks, ago I would have welcomed it. Now it felt like I was being
handed a slice of an incredible burden.

"I want to check out the security office,"
Henry said, his mind made up. "I figure we find some way to get
everyone out of the office, and then go in there and look through
the files.

"And you make fun of my strange trespassing
ideas," I scoffed, trying to bring a little levity to the
situation. He smiled weakly, a shadow of its former glory.
Everything about him seemed paler and muted, like the colors were
washing out and soon he would be completely gray.  

"Will you help me?" he asked, his dark eyes
pleading.

"Yes," I said.

After a moment, he put his hands on his knees,
and boosted himself up. "Okay," he said, getting up to leave the
room.

"Where are you going?" I asked, frantic.
 

He thought about it for a moment. "Home, I
suppose."