My Life From Hell (44 page)

I spun to find Anil and Cassie, waiting for me to notice them.

Cassie bounced with happiness, all her floaty clothing swirling around her. Beside Cassie, Anil wore his sweats. He probably had wrestling practice at lunch. They were such an oddball couple, but the sight of them made my heart swell.

I was so glad to see this welcoming party.

“I trust that you’ll escort Sophie back to her room. Directly back.”

“You bet,” Anil assured him.

Doucette nodded. “Then we’ll talk later. For now, go put your suitcase upstairs. Get yourself moved in today.” He patted me on the shoulder and headed into his office.

The second he left, Cassie and her mop of ginger curls rushed me with a crushing hug. “You did it.”

“Cass, she may be a goddess, but she still bruises.” Anil tugged her away gently.

I tossed him a grateful look. “Good to see you, Patel.”

“Back at you, Bloom.” He took the suitcase from my hand to carry it upstairs.

I smiled my thanks.

Cassie pulled me toward the stairs up to the girls’ dorm, peppering me with questions about what had happened. Anil kept us company, not talking, just looking entertained as Cassie did enough babbling for both of them.

“How bad did it get here?” Hope Park didn’t look damaged but I hadn’t walked the grounds. Yet.

“The skies opened up,“ Cassie said.

“More like ripped open,” said Anil.

We turned the corner, continuing up toward the second floor.

Cassie shook her head, remembering. “It poured. Like, this is rain city anyway. But I’d never seen anything like it. I thought we were going to have to start collecting two of every animal. And the wind.” She shivered.

My gut churned. “How long did it go on?” How much had been destroyed? How many lives had been lost?

Anil paused when we hit the third floor landing. “That was the weird part. The bad stuff? It didn’t last long at all. Then everything just kind of went away.”

“Which made everyone freak out worse,” Cassie said.

Anil nodded. “Some of us were watching online. Social media was going nuts.” He grinned. “You should have heard some of the conspiracy theories. Probably still going on. They’re calling it the March Miracle.”

I snorted. “It was a lot of work and pain for a miracle, let me tell you.”

Cassie put her hand on my arm. “But you’re okay?”

“I’m fine. How are you?” I peered at her, worried. “Last time I saw you. Yikes.”

She laughed. “That was a low point. It’s all good.” She took Anil’s free hand. “I had a lot of TLC to get me through.”

He went beet red.

They were awesome.

“Pretty brave of you to come back.” Bethany awaited me. Goody. As beautiful and haughty as ever, she leaned against her doorframe. Well, it wasn’t a welcome home party unless the evil neighbor showed up.

Cassie and Anil tensed but I shook my head and stepped forward. This was my situation to handle.

I looked at Bethany. Really looked at her, this girl who’d bullied me, tried to steal my boyfriend, stabbed me, and then attempted to take my place in my mother’s life. Bethany, who had been the source of so much pain.

And I felt nothing. No rage. No thirst for revenge.

This girl before me? She was going to waste her life on anger and a burning desire for things that were never going to fulfill her. Never going to make her happy.

I pitied her.

Bethany may have sensed that because she took a step back, looking confused.

I didn’t need to have a showdown with Bethany. It wasn’t worth it. She wasn’t worth it. “It’s over, Bethany.”

Her expression hardened and she opened her mouth. To threaten me, or to threaten to kill me—I had no idea.

It didn’t matter. She couldn’t touch me. “It’s really over.”

It was her turn to study me. “You’re more powerful. What did they give you?” I don’t think she meant to, but she sounded hopeful. Like, if I’d been given something, maybe she could get something, too. She could have what I had.

It was doubly sad because Bethany was the one who always spouted all the New Ageisms about inner peace. If she could only believe her own message, maybe she’d be okay.

I smiled, totally serene and moved on. I could tell that my utter failure to engage—my total dismissal of her existence burned her.

It. Felt. Fabulous.

Petty? Oh, well.

I heard Cassie exhale as we continued down the hall. “Tense,” she muttered.

“Cool,” added Anil.

I slowed as I reached Hannah’s room. Our room. Hopefully she’d still think that. If she was even inside. “She’s probably in class. I mean, it’s class time. I’ll just put my suitcase in. Or not. I could wait until I come back with everything else and—

My palms were clammy with sweat. My throat was dry and I couldn’t remember how to swallow, which was interesting considering I couldn’t stop babbling.

Cassie nodded encouragingly. “You’ll be fine.”

I took a deep breath. I’d faced Zeus and Hades. I’d saved humanity from destruction. I could do this.

I wiped my hands on my skirt. “See you, later?”

“Not if we see you first.”

Anil handed me my suitcase.

I took a deep breath and flung my shoulders back. Then I reached out, twisted the doorknob, and stepped into my room.

Twenty-six

M&Ms pelted me painfully. I jumped around, trying to dodge them, and flailing my arms to knock them away. I didn’t see Hannah because I was too busy protecting my face from candy coated missiles.

“You. Are. A. Giant. Bag.” Apparently, she had not yet reached warm fuzzy reconciliation mode.

“Ow! I’m sorry. Quit it.”

There was a momentary lapse in abuse. I thought she’d accepted my apology but I heard a crinkle, and candy once more flew. “Did you stock up just to attack me?!” I grabbed the corner of her comforter, held it up like a shield, and stretched out one hand, letting my palm glow. “I can hurt you.”

“Rule number one.” A pillow whacked against my head. “No hurting humans!”

Tentatively I lowered the blanket, wincing as she smacked me full in the face. “Is this because of the apocalypse?”

Hannah lowered the pillow. She glowered at me.

I held very still. In case she was going to pounce and tear my throat out.

She breathed heavily. But she looked as fabulously Hannah as ever. I noted that, while her jeans were a cuter cut that she used to wear pre-Pierce, she had on one of her punny science T-shirts, instead of the stylish tops she’d started to wear. This one read “Zoologists do it with animal instinct.”

I tamped down a hopeful smile. I wanted to believe that she’d put the shirt on for me. A nod to our pre-boyfriend, pre-goddess days. “I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

Hannah scowled deeper. “I know that. Do you think I’m stupid? Because I’m not a high and mighty goddess?”

Right. Not mad about the apocalypse. “You’re worth a billion of any god.”

Her glare softened a bit, but her fingers tightened on the pillow.

I put every ounce of sincerity I had into my face. “Everything I said to you. It was horrible. I’m so so sorry. I’ll do anything to make it up to you.”

She gnawed on the corner of her top lip. At least she was thinking it over. Then she smacked me again. “You cut me out of your life. I was stuck here not knowing if my best friend was alive or dead.”

“You remembered me?”

She froze, the pillow held in mid air. “What? Of course I remembered you, idiot. We had a fight. I wasn’t lobotomized.”

I sank onto her bed, relieved beyond anything. “You don’t understand.”

I heard her clothes rustle as she sat back, waiting. “Then explain it to me.”

So I did. For the first time, I told her everything that had happened since the night Bethany stabbed me. Everything I had felt. All the way through my time in Hades. Into the rift and the burning garden.

I must have talked for hours. By the time I finished, we had moved to the cafeteria. Had eaten lunch and seen the room empty out. French fry remnants sat on the plates between us. I’d been fortified with caffeine and sugar.

Occasionally, a teacher wandered through. But they left Hannah and me alone. I guess she had some kind of free pass from classes today, since I was back.

It made me appreciate how supportive this school really was.
I’m really home.

I looked at Hannah. I’m not sure what I was expecting from her. Sympathy or horror or forgiveness. Whatever it was, I certainly didn’t think she’d be staring at me like I was stupidest person ever. “Nice look.”

“That’s how I look at morons,” she said. “And you’re the poster child.”

I kicked at her leg. “For what?”

She kicked me back. “Not believing in yourself. Not loving yourself. Gawd, Sophie, it took you almost getting killed to realize that?” She tossed her hair out of her face. “Pathetic.” But she said it with love.

A laugh bubbled out of me. Surprised. “Ingrate.”

“Annoying.” She tossed a fry at me. “And I get the last word because you were really really mean to me.”

I could live with that.

“Are you gonna move your stuff back in or what?” Hannah was back to glowering.

“Yeah. Give me five seconds. Jeez.”

Hannah pushed her chair back. “I want to hit biology class. But you’re here now, right? For good?”

“Yeah.”

She stood.

I did too. Then the two of us rushed each other in a mutual crushing hug. When she spoke, there was a waver in her voice. “Don’t ever do that again. Any of it.”

“Promise.”

I practically skipped up the stairs to our bedroom. I was giddy at the thought of unpacking. I flung open my door and skidded to a stop at the sight of Kai sitting on my mattress.

Man, he was in über poker-face mode. “I’ve been thinking about you and I,” he said.

“Okay.” Thinking about us was good.

“And how the two of us caused the apocalypse.”

My heart sank. That wasn’t the kind of thinking I wanted him to do. That was the kind of thinking that led to talks ending in, “I think we should just be friends.” Suddenly my skin felt like it was the wrong size.

I sat down across from him on Hannah’s bed, matching him perfectly in give-away-nothing blank expression, and waited.

He fidgeted, almost as if he were nervous.

That was sweet, but no way was he going to cute his way out of this.
He’d
come to
me
. And if he didn’t have anything genuine to say, then maybe there really was nothing left for us to say at all.

Under the sleeve of my sweater, I stroked a finger over my tattoo. My reminder that I’d be okay eventually, no matter what went down in the next few minutes. But also my hope for our love and happily-ever-after.

Kai watched me, but couldn’t see the tattoo. After a long, massively awkward silence, he spoke. “On a scale of one to ten, one being, ‘of course I could never hurt you, my beloved’, and ten being my imminent phospherocious destruction, where, exactly, do I stand?”

“Thirty seven.”

He nodded. “That’s pretty good. I thought you’d be angrier at me.”

I waited for something more. This time, I wasn’t giving him an inch.

Kai braced his hands on his lap. “Watching you, engulfed in the flames like that? It wasn’t just your death I saw. It was the death of this twisted thing that I’d been holding on to for so long.”

Whoa. I’d wanted genuine and this was as real as it had ever gotten with him. I kept still for fear of jolting him back into his usual mode of suck-ass communication and general disappearance.

He kept going. “I’ve spent so much of my life defining myself against my father that watching you, understanding what you were doing …” He looked directly into my eyes. “Yes, Sophie, I did understand the significance. I was furious. At you. I felt like you had wrested control away from me and were resolving the situation without any discussion about my place in it all.”