Hunted (4 page)

The
words wouldn't have caused me to even bat an eye, but his fist
tightened around my throat to the point where his claws started to
dig into the back of my neck. The glee washed out of me, instantly
replaced with the terror that the situation called for.

"I
just wanted to know who he was."

It
came out barely more than a whisper, but he didn't seem to have any
problems hearing me.

"Trust
me, you'll be much better off if you never see Kaleb again in your
entire life."

The
crash of splintering glass as Kaleb climbed up the outside of the
building was getting closer. My captor closed his eyes for the
briefest of seconds and then sighed.

"I
wish we had more time to talk. If you're what I think you are, then
you need some guidance, but we simply don't have time. I'm going to
be hard-pressed to get out myself now. We've burned up too much time
talking while Kaleb has approached."

I
opened my mouth, not because I had a question to ask him, but because
it seemed like the situation called for a whole host of questions. He
shook his head at me.

"There's
no time. Just remember that this place isn't safe. You'd be far
better off if you simply stayed away. Think of home, of those you
love."

Before
I could even process what he'd just said he pivoted with a strength
that exceeded even what I would have expected out of such a massive
body and threw me towards a nearby wall.

I'd
been on rollercoasters that created less g-forces than what he
generated. Time slowed to a crawl as I flipped end over end towards a
pair of steel girders. I started to black out, my vision narrowed
down to a tiny tunnel, but his last words were echoing in my head. If
I was going to die then it was only right that my last thoughts be of
my dad, my mom, and Cindi.

I
hit the massive beams with enough force to shatter every bone in my
body. I felt them all break as my body wrapped itself around the one
on the right and then my head impacted with the one on the left.

I
woke up with my heart pounding, positive that I was about to die.
Some of the other dreams I'd had, dreams that had seemed more vivid
when I'd been asleep, were already fading away from my memory, but
the dream with the two wolf-men was still as strong as when it had
happened.

I
still couldn't explain it, but somehow I knew that what had happened
was in its own way as real as anything else I'd ever experienced. My
dreams were real, and despite the fact that trying to find Kaleb
might get me killed, I still had an almost unstoppable urge to go
back to the unfinished building and see if I could talk to him.

I'd
lost track of how many days it had been since my fight with Janessa,
but it seemed like it shouldn't still be such a big deal among the
rest of the student body. I'd spent so many years trying to stay
safely anonymous only to have it ruined in the course of five
minutes.

There
was probably a life lesson in there somewhere, but I was having a
hard time getting past the fact that everyone in the school seemed to
know me and they'd split themselves firmly into two camps. On the one
hand there were the rich and popular kids, all of whom seemed united
in their hatred of me. For the most part they didn't seem to like
Janessa any more than I did, but as nearly as I could tell they were
all weighing in on her side because I'd upset the natural order of
things. Nerds and loners like me were supposed to bow down to their
kind of people, not get into fights with them, especially not fights
in which the nerd came out more or less on top.

The
other camp consisted of all of the nerds, drama geeks, loners and
anyone else who didn't either fit in with the popular crowd or
regularly abase themselves in the hopes of being able to work their
way into the A-list kids.

I
wasn't particularly liked by most of these kids either, but they were
just super excited that somebody had finally stood up to Janessa.
Apparently she was a monster to just about everyone in the school who
wasn't at least as rich and cool as she was. I'd known she was bad,
but I hadn't realized she was
that
bad.

It
was all kind of dizzying, especially given that I'd never managed to
learn the names of most of the people who were now either shooting me
nasty looks or patting me on the back and giving me high-fives as I
walked through the hall.

I
kept hoping that it would all die down. I'd wanted to just serve out
my detention and then go back to being anonymous, but a day or two
after I got in trouble the administration finally got around to
investigating my accusation that Janessa had been cheating on her
history exam. From what I'd been able to gather secondhand, it
sounded like Richard Parsons pretty much cracked as soon as they got
him in a room by himself. He backed up everything I'd said, which had
caused the principal to check Janessa's locker.

She
probably would have gotten away with a mere slap on the wrist except
they found hundreds of dollars' worth of drugs in her locker. She'd
been suspended within hours of that little discovery and her parents
had shoved her into rehab so fast that nobody had even known what
happened to her until some of the cheerleaders had gone over to her
house to find out why she'd been missing practice.

News
that Janessa was out for at least the next six weeks had rushed
through the school like wildfire and had further sealed my infamy.
For all that I hadn't anticipated any of the events that had occurred
as a result of Janessa and I trying to rip each other's heads off,
the thing that really took me by surprise was how hard it all was on
Cindi.

Although
we'd never been rich, Cindi's looks and status as a cheerleader put
her firmly in the popular camp at school. Her friends were exactly
the people who'd once largely ignored me but who now hated me.

I
expected her to just go with the flow. She and I hadn't ever been
particularly close. It was hard to be friendly with someone who was
better than you in practically every way. The logical thing for her
to do would have been to at least give me a cold shoulder when we
were at school, but if anything she was going out of her way lately
to try and include me.

I'd
been suspicious at first that she was just trying to get me around
her friends so that they could make my life miserable, but the first
time that one of them had tried, she'd put them in their place so
fast that everyone's jaws had just kind of hit the floor and stayed
there until lunch ended.

Given
my druthers I would have just avoided the other cheerleaders and
waited for everything to blow over, but Cindi reaching out to me like
that meant that I had to at least make an effort to hang out with her
and her friends. Honestly I couldn't have cared less about the
friends, but I didn't want to let Cindi's peace offering go to waste.

We'd
had some absolutely spectacular fights in the past. Things got a
little better once we were both in high school, but I still felt a
lot of the time like there was something missing in our relationship.
Sisters should be closer than what we'd managed so far in our lives.

I'd
never talked to Cindi about that in so many words, but that was how I
felt, which helped explain how I ended up out at the football field
after school, sitting on the tired old metal bleachers at the
fifty-yard line, rather than back home cleaning the house.

The
cheerleaders were having tryouts tomorrow to fill Janessa's spot,
which meant that Cindi and three other girls were busy leading two
dozen hopefuls through the practice cheers that the tryouts would be
based on.

It
was actually pretty painful to watch, but not for the reasons that
I'd expected. I'd expected to be bored out of my mind watching a
group of girls perform the same few cheers over, and over, and over
again while I tried to work on my homework.

Instead
I found myself unable to study for other reasons. The girls trying
out were simply awful. They were obviously trying and Cindi and her
friend were doing their best, but none of the girls seemed to be able
to get the routines down, especially the last one that they were
supposed to be learning.

It
didn't make any sense. I've never been one of those people who are
able to remember a string of movements well enough to actually
perform anything, but this routine was super easy. I'd already
memorized it despite the fact that I was only halfway paying
attention.

As
the allotted time for the practice started to wind down I could tell
that a lot of the girls were getting frustrated by their inability to
master the routine. Alice Backman—at least I thought that was
her name—finally threw down her blue and white pompoms and
stalked over in my direction to get her books off of the bleachers.

Cindi
started in our direction too, obviously wanting to reassure Alice,
but she'd been on the other side of the group so it was going to take
her a minute to get here.

"I'm
never going to get this last one. It's just too hard. I thought maybe
that I could come and memorize all of them enough that I could
practice them on my own later, but this last one is just too complex.
I can't remember more than just the first five or six movements."

"I
could write it down for you if you wanted. I mean so that you could
have it to study later tonight."

Alice
gave me an incredulous look. "Is this your way of making me look
bad? Write down a bunch of random stuff so that I'll go practice the
wrong routine and look like an idiot? Is that why you came today?
Just so you could make someone else's life difficult?"

I'd
already turned to a blank piece of paper and had written down the
first three parts of the routine, but now my pen stuttered to a halt.
Apparently Alice didn't approve of me getting into it with Janessa.
It was actually a bit odd. Alice was trying out for a spot on the
team that never would have opened up if Janessa hadn't gotten kicked
off, but apparently that didn't matter enough for her to cut me any
slack.

"Actually
I'm only here because of my sister, Cindi. We usually walk home
together and I thought I'd just sit here and study while I waited for
her. I was just trying to help, but if you don't want any help it's
no skin off of my nose."

"She's
really your sister? I'd heard rumors, but it's kind of hard to
believe. You know, given how cool and pretty she is and how, well,
you know, ordinary you are."

I
wanted to say something spiteful, like maybe point out that she was
the girl out there least likely to make it on the squad because she
bungled every third piece of the routine, but I gritted my teeth and
finished writing down the first half of the routine.

"Yeah,
that's about what I thought. You're all big and bad when it comes to
picking on Janessa when she's vulnerable and strung out, but you
totally back down when somebody stands up to you."

That
did it. I ripped the sheet of paper I was writing on out of my
notebook and balled it up before throwing it at her feet.

"Here
you go, it's only the first half of the routine, but based on what I
saw out there you're probably not going to even make it through that.
Don't say I didn't try to help though. I've always tried to be nice
to anyone with special needs."

I'd
taken things too far and I knew it, but I was just so tired of people
picking on me. The fact that she was here trying out for the cheer
squad didn't make her better than me, it didn't give her license to
be mean.

Alice
stepped towards me like she was about to attack me too, but Cindi
arrived and cleared her throat.

"Hi,
girls. What's going on?"

Alice
bent down to pick up the paper at her feet and then turned towards
Cindi with a sugary-sweet smile on her face. "Your sister just
tried to sabotage my chances to get on the team by writing down the
wrong routine and giving it to me. I really think you should ask her
to leave so that she doesn't cause any more problems."

Right,
like me leaving three minutes early would make the slightest bit of
difference to Alice or any of the other girls.

Cindi
took the piece of paper without saying anything and smoothed it out
against her leg, running her hand along the paper and down the blue
material of her skirt. She read down through it and then stopped and
read it again, slower this time. Once she was done she handed it back
to me.

"Adri,
can you finish this?"

"So
I can help
her
? Not very likely."

I
got a head shake and a frown. "Please just do it for me?"

I
rolled my eyes and then jotted down the rest of the routine and
passed the piece of paper back to Cindi.

Cindi
scanned down through my additions and then turned to Alice. "I
think you owe Adri an apology. This is the exact routine we were just
trying to teach you."

"Really?
Are you in on it with her or something? Is this about that time I
forgot to invite you out to Crater Lake?"

Cindi
sighed and handed Alice the paper. "Go check it with one of the
other girls if you want. Or don't, it doesn't really matter to me,
but practice is over so I'm done here."

Alice
opened her mouth like she was going to argue with Cindi, but my
little sister just gave her the kind of look most of the cheerleaders
gave me and after a second or two Alice grabbed her backpack and
walked back to where the other cheerleaders were answering
last-minute questions from the other hopefuls.

Cindi
watched her leave and then turned back to me. "How did you do
that, Adri? I didn't think you were paying that much attention."

"I
wasn't. I don't know, I guess the routines just stuck with me. It's
not like they're difficult. Honestly I don't know why Alice and the
others were having such a hard time remembering the moves. Actually
doing the moves is probably tougher, but memorizing something like
this should be child's play, even for them."