Mystify (9 page)

“Who was he?” my father demanded to know.

I could have lied, but figured since they obviously already knew so much, why bother. “His name’s Antoine Watson.”

“Where does he live?”

I shifted from one foot to the other, not really wanting to say, but knowing I’d have to. “Bolten Street, I think,” I said softly.

My mother instantly clutched her heart and stumbled back. It’s almost funny that nobody moved to catch or assist her. My father actually cut her a weary look. I just stood, still praying this interrogation would hurry up so I could go to bed.

“That is not acceptable, Sasha. We are the Carringtons. We have an image to uphold. What would my backers in the club think if they knew you were running around with such, such…”

“Such what?” I prompted because I wanted to hear my father say it. I wanted to hear his prejudiced lips spit out some ridiculous typecast word that he believed described a boy he’d never met.

His lips closed tightly, and he took a step towards me. It took all the anger I was feeling at that moment to hold myself still. Because actually, on any other day, at any other time, the deadly look in my father’s eyes would have had me running up the steps or out of the house, whichever would have kept me out of his reach.

“You. Will. Not. Be. Seen. With. Him. Again.”

Each word was spoken like its own newspaper headline. Either he thought I was too stupid to comprehend regular speech, or he was trying to make a point.

My mother was wringing her hands and babbling something in Spanish. I didn’t even try to translate because I just didn’t care that much.

Just like they obviously didn’t care about me.

“Whatever,” I said and moved quickly past both of them.

“And you’re grounded,” my father shouted as I took the first couple of stairs.

Grounded? After what I’d seen today, that’s the least of my worries.

“The
first written literary work of ancient Greece is the
Iliad
. It was written by Homer around a thousand years before Christ.”

“So this Homer’s like really old, huh?”

My thoughts shift back from my crappy weekend to the topic Mrs. Powell just introduced and Jaeden March’s smart-ass remark. Jaeden is super smart, so much so that he really doesn’t need to sit in these classes to pass. He just, like, knows everything. That means he’s bored most of the time and figures we all need his comic relief to get us through.

This time, even though some of the other kids in the class chuckle, I’m actually interested in what Mrs. Powell has to say.

“Yes, he would be by today’s count,” Mrs. Powell concedes. She’s a tall woman, with a butter yellow complexion. Her hair is like this funny red color, and she always wears it in one thick braid down her back. “But more importantly, what I want us to look at in this study of Homer’s work is how old the earth is, how long mankind has been around and some of the issues they faced back then that we’re still facing today.”

“We don’t have to walk around being afraid of pissing Zeus off and him shoving a lightning bolt up our—”

Mrs. Powell holds up a hand at the precise moment Jaeden
is about to take his joking to another level entirely. The class giggles. I just shake my head.

“As usual, you’re jumping ahead of me, Jaeden. Let’s start at the beginning,” Mrs. Powell says and passes out a packet of stapled papers. The title is “
The Iliad
of Homer.”

It’s not too thick, maybe about thirty pages. Surely this isn’t the whole book. We’ve never read anything this small in this class.

“Now, before we start reading, I want to give you a little background.” She moves to her podium and flips a few pages, slipping on stylish gold wire frames and looking down for a minute. Then she peers up over the rim of her glasses. “I know I don’t have to tell you to take notes.”

But yeah, she had to, because right after she says that, I flip open my notebook to a clean sheet of paper and grab a pen from my purse. The shuffling of papers behind me says that the other kids are taking her hint as well.

“Now, has anyone ever heard of the ‘Greek miracle’?”

The question goes unanswered.

Mrs. Powell just keeps right on talking. “This phrase can be translated to ‘Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.’”

“Not very good English, Mrs. Powell.” Again with Jaeden’s remarks.

“Not a very good idea for you to continue interrupting me, Mr. March.”

At that I do laugh.

“As I said, the plan for this assignment is to make comparisons of how the ‘old things passed away,’ namely the timeless tales of gods and heroes, manifested into the ‘all things become new.’ To do that we’re going to read Homer’s
Iliad
and learn all about the ancient Greeks’ ideas about the battle between good and evil, light and dark.”

My fingers still at her last words, my pen suspended just over the paper. I can’t write because what she’s just said strikes something in me. I hurry up and flip to the first page of my packet and start reading, not really knowing what I’m searching for but believing instinctively that some of the answers I’ve been searching for might be in Homer’s words.

“I had a vision last night,” Krystal says when we all meet up in the hallway after school. I didn’t go to lunch today so I hadn’t sat with them, nor had I had the opportunity to tell them about what I saw Friday night at the mall.

“Really? What was it like?” This was Lindsey who wore leggings and a long rainbow tie-dyed shirt with a huge peace sign on its back.

Lindsey is still trying to learn as much about our powers as she can. She’s like a really inquisitive three-year-old asking question after question. But it’s cool. I so understand the need for answers.

Krystal shifts her books from one arm to the other and is reaching into her purse as she answers, “Like a dream but I’m completely awake. Sometimes it takes my breath away, depending what I see. This time, though, I was stunned for a couple seconds.”

Krystal answers her cell phone, but there doesn’t seem to be anybody on the line.

Lindsey nods, adding what Krystal said to her mental data base. Jake walks a couple steps behind us. I hear him sigh. He really doesn’t have any patience these days. I hope that doesn’t trigger his powers to go all funky again. The last time he was feeling edgy and the opportunity presented itself, he busted Mateo Hunter and Pace Livingston’s kneecaps with a two by-four piece of wood, then psyched both the jocks out by
playing with the locks on their doors. We don’t want everyone to know about our powers, so keeping Jake’s emotions—and therefore his powers—in check is a high priority.

“So what did you see?” he asks.

“It was weird. I mean they were weird. All these creatures walking around as if they belonged here, on earth.”

I stop walking. “Creatures?”

They all stop. “Yeah,” Krystal answers.

“Like girls with horns in their heads or snakes for hair? Boys with grotesque faces?”

Krystal nods. “You saw them, too?”

I nod.

“Where?” Jake inquires.

“How?” Lindsey chimes in.

“I don’t know how. But I was at the mall and everywhere I turned they were there. These creatures.”

Jake frowns. “Did anybody else see them?”

I shake my head. “No. I’m pretty sure I was the only one who could see their differences. One girl came right up to the table to talk to Antoine and he talked back to her as if she looked regular. But when I looked at her, I could see the differences.”

“Wow,” Lindsey sighs. “I wonder why you can see them and nobody else can.”

“I think it has something to do with my astral projection. I mean with the other plane I can go to.”

“You’re saying there’s another plane besides earth?” Jake asks.

“I think so.”

“A plane where creatures exist,” Krystal says slowly.

“Maybe a plane where the Darkness originated.”

Jake is shaking his head. “Doesn’t explain how or why we got our powers.”

“No,” I interject. “But it does get us one step closer. Plus, we all know that the Darkness is trying to tell us something. And that witch, Fatima, is trying to warn us about something. I think it’s time we found out what.”

“I agree, but I’ve got to go straight home today. My dad wants to talk to me about something. Says it’s important.” Jake hunches his shoulders like he doesn’t care either way what his father has to say. Jake and his dad aren’t close. Then again, what teenager is close to their parents? I know I’m certainly not. Krystal might be with her mom, but I know for a fact she still keeps her stepfather at arm’s length. And Lindsey, well, we haven’t found out that much about her yet.

“Okay, then just the ladies will work on it today,” I say as we come to the break in the front hallway of the school where either you’re going out the front doors to where the buses are or the side door to the parking lot.

“Actually,” Lindsey says, looking at Jake then back at us. “I have to go right home, too. I’ll take the bus with Jake.”

To my surprise, Jake doesn’t say anything against her suggestion. Maybe he’s getting used to Lindsey, finally. Krystal’s cell phone rings again.

“So are you cool to do some investigating this afternoon?” I ask her as she’s staring at the screen on her phone with a confused look on her face.

She’s nodding her head positively even as she puts the phone to her ear.

“God, doesn’t he have anything better to do than keep calling her?” Jake says and stalks off towards the front doors.

Lindsey shrugs. “I’ll try to talk to him,” she says and I nod my head in agreement.

Both Jake and Lindsey are gone and it’s just me and Krystal
standing in the hall. Krystal’s yelling, “Hello? Hello?” into her phone again. I remember the strange calls she was getting a few weeks ago from Pervert Lyle and get concerned.

“Who was it?” I say when she clicks off and starts heading for the side door with me.

“Weird,” she says. “It was definitely Franklin’s number. See, his name comes up and I have this ringtone especially for him.”

Yeah, I assumed that much since every time Franklin called, her phone began singing “Everything to Me” by Monica. But she shoves the phone in my line of view, and I see his name as clear as day on the screen. “Hmm, that is weird. Have you seen him today?”

“No, not at all. I went by his algebra class but he wasn’t there. And he wasn’t in lunch.”

“So you haven’t talked to him all day?” That is strange. Krystal and Franklin are usually together as much as they can be during the school day.

“No. And only once over the weekend. I wonder if he’s okay. His father said he was still feeling a little shaky after the accident at the lake on Friday. But that was yesterday morning when I called his house because I wasn’t getting an answer on his cell.”

We are maybe six feet from the side door, passing the main office and nearing the health suite. Krystal is walking closest to the wall, me only about a foot away from her. The door to the health suite swings open unexpectedly, crashing right into Krystal and just barely missing me.

Krystal drops everything in her arms and hands as she flails backward, hitting the floor with her backside with a loud thump. I’m at her side, immediately pulling the hand away she brought up to her face as she groans.

“Hey, you okay?” I’m asking at the exact moment Alyssa strolls out of the health suite.

“Oh, what happened, Krystal? Did you fall?” she asks in that sickening voice of hers.

I’m helping Krystal sit up, and we both glare at a smiling Alyssa.

“You did that on purpose,” Krystal accuses, rubbing her bruised but, thankfully not broken or bloodied, nose.

“Me?” Alyssa feigns innocent. She’s a sucky actress, so I’m sure Krystal, just like me, can see through her charade. “I was just coming out of the health suite, minding my own business. How was I supposed to know you were walking down the hall at this precise moment?”

That was a damned good question. Almost as if she were tracking Krystal’s movements…but how could she have done that? The cell phone.

“Not funny, Alyssa. And so not cool,” I say as I help Krystal with her books and then to stand.

“No, it wasn’t,” Krystal says taking her stuff back and moving a step closer to Alyssa. “And the next time you want to approach me, be bold enough to do it face-to-face, not using some cheap trick instead.”

“Get out of my face. You don’t deserve to be this close to our kind,” says Alyssa.

Alyssa is running her mouth, but I see the step she takes back when Krystal gets close up on her again.

“Cut it out, Alyssa. She’s right—if you have a problem with her, then just address it and get it over with. These games are for children.”

Alyssa lifts a brow as she stares at me. “
Underprivileged
children, Sasha. We don’t have time for games. We’ve got more important things to do.”

I know what she’s talking about and hate that she’s saying it in front of Krystal. Being involved with Alyssa in any way is not fun for me, but I know what my parents want from our connection.

“Just chill, Alyssa. We can discuss the other stuff later,” I say, then pull Krystal toward the door.

We walk in silence until we get to the car, and I can’t help but feel bad. “Sorry about that,” I say, like I’m the one who slammed the door into her face.

Krystal just waves a hand. “Alyssa’s a bitch, and one of these days I’m not going to be able to hold my temper with her.”

“Don’t get upset,” I say. “We don’t know what will happen with our powers if we do. I mean, they’re going all wonky now.”

“Not wonky, manifesting. I told you that before. I’m seeing even more ghosts, helping them with issues and listening to what they’re saying. Some of them lately have been really old, like from another time period. They’re warning me all the time. And now these visions.” She shakes her head as if trying to get a grasp on things. “We’re changing for a reason. We have a purpose.”

I nod my head. “I agree. I wonder if because you can see ghosts if you could possibly see on this other plane.”

She shrugs. “You think there’s an entrance to this plane that we could take without astrally traveling there?”

“There’s gotta be. Those creatures can’t all have astral projection powers.”

“Are you ready to go home?” a nearby voice says.

Both me and Krystal jump and let out little yelps at the sound of Mouse’s voice. We didn’t hear him approach, and then suddenly here he is. I hope he didn’t hear what we were talking about. Then again, I wonder if Mouse hears more than he lets on and what he thinks of it all.

We climb into the car and I don’t get to ask him because he turns on the radio and we’re forced to listen to Jay-Z. Mouse loves Jay-Z. I don’t, and it’s my car, but usually I just go ahead and listen to it. My thoughts are drifting beyond the music anyway.