Hunted (22 page)

"No,
no ambulance. I'll be fine. They were just getting started, I'm
mostly just bruised up."

She
accepted the hand I offered her and pulled herself to her feet.

"I'm
glad you're okay. Do you know those girls, I mean like names and
stuff? You're going to have to file a police report and names would
help."

It
was like a switch flipped inside of her. She went from normal to
aggressive so quickly that I didn't realize what had happened until
her hands clamped down on my arms with a grip stronger than I'd ever
felt out of any girl before.

We
were about the same size but she'd crouched down slightly such that
she was looking up at me with her lips pulled back slightly, less of
a smile and more of a snarl like what you'd see out of a feral dog.
That would have been plenty unnerving all by itself, but her eyes
were molten yellow pools of rage.

I
told myself that it was just a trick of the overhead lights scattered
around the parking lot. That was the only logical explanation, but
I'd been dealing with a whole host of things lately that weren't
rational, that didn't follow any of the rules I'd grown up believing
were absolute. Even more than that was the fact that I'd never seen
eyes like that anywhere before, not under any kind of light.

"You
don't tell me what I have to do."

The
words came out as a barely audible hiss that I almost couldn't make
out over Tristan's question.

"Adri,
are you okay?"

She'd
used my body to mostly screen her from the guys, but Tristan must
have caught my involuntary wince of pain when she'd clamped down on
my arms.

"Keep
them back."

The
order was accompanied with an increase in the pressure she was
exerting on my arms, but I managed to keep from gasping at the pain.

"I'm
fine! Stay back there, she's just scared." I dropped my voice to
a whisper. "You're right, you don't have to do anything. I just
thought that you'd want to make sure that they didn't come after you
again later."

"I'll
be gone before morning arrives. It was a mistake to stay here for so
long, a mistake to try and build a normal life for myself."

She
released my arms and seemed to shed the fury that had been so close
to consuming her.

"We
all want normal lives, no harm in that."

She
gave me an odd look. "Not all of us deserve normal lives."

"That
doesn't stop us from wanting them."

Her
nod was a short, choppy motion. "Thank you for your help."

"You're
welcome. Do you want help getting somewhere? Do you need to call
anyone?"

"I
don't know anyone who could help me."

With
that cryptic remark she turned to go, but she stumbled and only the
fact that I was there to grab onto saved her from a nasty fall.

"You're
hurt, let me help."

She
shook her head and left without another word, walking with only a
slight limp.

It
was silly, but as soon as the Hispanic girl disappeared from sight my
thoughts went back to what had just happened with the other girls
from my squad. Once that happened, I knew I had a very limited time
in which to lose Jackson and Tristan unless I was willing to let them
see me lose my composure.

They
of course didn't want to go. Honestly I would have liked for Jackson
to stay, but I couldn't think of a way to send just Tristan away.
Tristan was a self-centered jerk—he'd backed me up against the
cheerleaders, which counted for something, but not enough for me to
let him see me cry.

Jackson
had pointed out that it probably wasn't safe for me to hang around
unprotected after having pissed off the devil girls, so we came to a
compromise. We continued on around the school so that I could sit on
the bleachers at the football field and he and Tristan would give me
some privacy while staying where they could keep an eye on me in case
the cheerleaders from the other team showed back up.

Once
I was by myself, I did cry, but only a little. I was still pissed at
the other girls enough to take the edge off of the worst of my
sadness, but there was no getting around the fact that I was sad.
Hair seemed like such a stupid thing to cry over, especially
considering the fact that I wasn't sure that I'd survive to graduate,
but in a very real sense, Missy and the rest of the squad had won.
I'd had to cut my hair and they were going to get off with nothing
more than a slap on the wrist.

I
didn't want my eyes to get all red and puffy so I forced myself to
stop crying after only a minute or so, but it didn't change how I
felt, didn't change the fact that the world seemed to be closing in
on me.

Sheree
found me a couple of minutes after I got control over myself again.
"Adri, I just had the oddest conversation with someone."

"What
do you mean?"

She
handed me a phone which I realized after a second was mine.

"This
girl walked up to me and asked if I knew an Adri. I told her yes and
she gave me this phone. It's yours, isn't it?"

I
unlocked it and confirmed that it was displaying my background and
that the contacts were mine.

"Yeah,
I guess it is."

"How
did she get ahold of it?"

I'd
been busy asking myself that same question.

"A
dark-haired girl, Hispanic-looking and who maybe looked like she'd
been in a fight recently? She would have been wearing a peasant top?"

"Yeah,
that was her, do you know her?"

I
shook my head. "Not really. I…ran into her earlier on the
other side of the school. She must have stolen my phone when she
stumbled and grabbed ahold of me for balance."

"That's
really odd, why would someone steal a phone and then give it back?"

"I
really wish I knew. It was kind of an odd conversation. Is everyone
ready to go?"

Sheree
looked uncomfortable, like maybe she didn't like talking bad about
the other girls on the squad, even though she knew that they deserved
it.

"No,
Miss Winters only just barely let them go in and change. The football
team was in there first, but it was the fact that she was yelling at
everyone that kept them from changing earlier. The guys have been
done for a little while."

I
nodded. That made sense seeing as how Tristan and Jackson had been
back in street clothes when they'd found me.

"She's
really mad. Nobody admitted to having done it, but she said that you
saw two girls and that they were wearing our uniform. She said that
the fact they were all there waiting for you to come out of the
locker room means that they are all complicit, everyone but Cindi and
I, so between them they all need to come up with four hundred dollars
to replace your clothes that they ruined or she'll kick
all
of
them off of the squad and hold a new set of tryouts."

My
eyes went wide in shock. "Wow, I didn't expect that."

Sheree
nodded. "Yeah, she's pretty unhappy. She sounded like she was
trying to come up with something else to punish them with too when
the guys came out of the locker room and she told Cindi and me that
we could go in and change."

In
the grand scheme of things making the girls pay thirty or forty
dollars each to replace my clothes wasn't that big of a punishment,
but it was actually far and away more than I was going to need, which
meant that if I wanted to I could buy something really nice just to
rub their noses in the fact that they'd had to pay for it.

As
far as revenge went, it was a pretty good option and I was pretty
sure that Miss Winters had known that when she'd stipulated the
amount. Visions of designer purses and jeans flashed through my head
for a second until I remembered that the jeans I was currently
wearing had been the cause of things boiling over between my parents.
No article of clothing was worth that.

I
pushed away thoughts of the money and focused on Sheree again.

"I'm
really sorry that the girls have been so mean to you, Adri. I hope
you don't feel like I've been mean too. I'm sorry if I haven't been
as friendly as I should have, I've just been really, really tired for
the last few days."

I
shook my head at her. "Sheree, you're a darling. You have
nothing to be sorry about. Nobody else on the team has been as nice
to me as you have."

Even
as I said it I realized it was truer than I'd realized. Sheree hadn't
just been nicer than the other girls on the team, she'd been nicer
than Cindi too. Cindi was my own sister and she'd been released to go
into the locker room at the same time as Sheree. Why wasn't
she
out here telling me how sorry she was that I'd been pranked in such a
mean way?

In
fact, the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if she'd
actually known what they were going to do to me. She'd been in the
back of the bus with Missy and the others. Had they really not said
anything to her?

It
was a nasty thought, but Cindi had been pretty nasty to me lately. It
was a concern for another time though. I reached out and gently
squeezed Sheree's arm.

"I
really do appreciate how nice and thoughtful you've been to me."

Sheree
blushed, but it was just a little darkening of her cheekbones. "You
would have done the same for me."

My
phone picked that second to start ringing. I held it up to Sheree and
asked, "Do you mind?"

"Oh,
no, go ahead."

It
wasn't a number I recognized, but I got so few calls that it went
against my nature to let a call ring through to voicemail.

"Hello."

"Are
you by yourself?"

I
recognized the voice—it was the girl who'd stolen my phone, the
one who'd never actually told me her name.

"No."

"Then
get alone and hurry. I don't have much time."

I
frowned, but I covered my phone with one hand and pointed out into
the field.

"I'm
sorry, Sheree, I really need to take this. Do you mind if I just walk
over there? I'd love to sit with you on the ride back home, if that's
okay with you."

"That
would be nice, thanks, Adri."

I
waved goodbye to Sheree and then started across the tired green grass
towards the center of the field at a fast walk.

"Okay,
I'm by myself."

"How
by yourself? Where is the closest person?"

"I'm
in the middle of the football field and my friend is back behind the
bleachers already and headed the other direction."

"That
will have to do." She sounded tired, like maybe the beating from
earlier had taken more out of her than she'd let show at the time.
"You're in a lot of danger. Someone close to you, probably one
of the two guys you were just with is extremely dangerous."

"What
do you mean?"

I
could almost hear her debating what to tell me through the silence on
the other end of the phone.

"It's
not safe for me to tell you more than that. You need to stay away
from the dangerous one no matter the cost. I tried to get close
enough to figure out which one was the threat, but there are too many
humans around. You're just going to have to trust me on this. You're
better off staying away from both of them than risking that you'll
pick the wrong one and get hurt down the road at some point."

"You
said that like you aren't human."

There
was more silence on the other end of the line, more debating as to
how much to tell me.

"If
I said I wasn't, would that make you more or less likely to believe
me?"

My
voice caught for a second. I swallowed a couple of times and then
managed a response.

"I'm
not sure."

"Yeah,
that's what I thought."

"What
if I told you that I wasn't entirely…normal myself?"

She
sighed. "Are you faster and stronger than a normal person?"

"No."

"I
am, but I wouldn't go up against him by myself, so I guess I'd say it
doesn't make any difference."

I
was starting to shake. Everything I'd ever learned growing up, every
physical law I'd ever had explained to me told me that this girl was
crazy. Intellectually I knew that she might be nothing more than some
loony escape from the insane asylum, but something told me that
wasn't the case. She had some of the answers I needed. Maybe not
about how to survive in the dream, but about what I was going to have
to do to survive in a world where things I didn't even know existed
were going to try to kill me. I was so close, and out of all of the
people I'd met so far she seemed the most trustworthy, but even
before I asked my next question I knew that she wasn't going to tell
me what I needed to know.

"That's
not what I meant. Would you tell me more about what kind of trouble
I'm in if I told you I was different than other people somehow?"

"No,
I'm sorry, but I'm already taking too much of a risk as it is. There
are people who would kill me for what I've told you already. Just
because we're both different than other people doesn't mean that my
kind doesn't want our true natures to remain a secret. Good luck. I
suspect you're going to need it."

She
hung up on me. I called her number again, but it went straight to
voicemail. I was pretty sure that she'd turned her phone off already.
I knew I was going to try to call her again over the next few days,
but I would have bet money that she would toss the phone as soon as
she had another one.

After
everything else that had happened over the last few hours this was
almost too much, but I didn't scream or throw things. Instead I just
turned back towards the school and got a profound shock when I saw
that Jackson was standing next to the bleachers.

The
girl had said that I'd probably be safe out in the center of the
field with nobody closer than the bleachers, but the key word seemed
to be
probably
. Just how good was this
thing's
hearing?
I was pretty sure that Jackson wasn't the threat, but there wasn't
any way to be sure. I took a deep breath and put the best smile I
could on my face as I walked back to them.