Of Starlight (12 page)

So I darted between morning classes like a scared little bunny rabbit, my fist tight around the keychain pepper spray Megan had given me in the pocket of my hoodie. When the morning chill melted away, I was forced to strip down to my tank top and carry the keychain out in the open, brazenly swinging it around at freshmen who bumped me in the hall.

No one stopped me.

Between classes, I buried myself in the center of the thickest crowds, fighting my instincts to steer clear of them. I was safest in crowds. But even then, every blonde head made my insides go cold.

By the time English rolled around, I was a nervous wreck. I slid into my seat and watched the gaps between the incoming students in sheer terror.
She could be there . . . or there . . .

The crowd parted, leaving an open path from the door straight to my desk. I flinched, expecting an attack.

None came.

Andrew gave me a weird look and caught the attention of Tina Wilkes—who sat directly behind me—with a knowing eye roll. I heard her whisper, “I know . . .
seriously
.”

My face flushed. I remembered what she said about me at the party last weekend.
Girls kind of judge you if they see you with her.

Was that true? I peered around the classroom, and saw other eyeballs instantly flick away from me. Suddenly, I felt horribly self-conscious. They
knew
. They knew I’d killed Ashley and now they were talking about it behind my back. I turned forward and felt a rising knot in my throat. What if everybody knew and they just weren’t telling me?

You’re being paranoid, Leona.

More kids filed in, leaving more gaps—gaps that would fit a charging rhinoceros. With room to spare. I was so dead.

At last the door swung shut, and I let out my anxious breath.

But then, five minutes into class—“Are you guys hot?” Mrs. Holbrooke, our English teacher, fanned herself with a packet of paper. “You want me to open the door?”

Heads nodded vigorously.

I gaped at them, horrified. Were they
crazy?

Mrs. Holbrooke ambled to the door and reached for the handle.

“Wait!” I called.

“No?” She turned back to us, hand on the handle. “You guys want it open or not?”

“Yes!” said Andrew, exasperated. “We want it open.”

Murmurs of agreement circled the classroom, fake gestures of wiping sweat off foreheads. 

“Wait, can we just . . . can we keep it closed?” I said.

“Everyone else wants it open, Leona,” said Tina, her voice biting behind me.

“I’m cold,” I said, rubbing my arms for effect.

“Oh my God, just put on your sweatshirt if you’re cold,” said Tina.

“Why don’t we take a vote?” said the teacher. “Who wants it open?”

Every hand but mine shot up.

“Closed?” she asked next.

I didn’t bother raising my hand. She reached for the handle again.

“No!” I shouted. “I think we should keep it closed.” My comment earned angry mutters, and I pressed on, hot in the face. “I think it’s dangerous. We have an open campus, and that means anybody with a gun could just walk in here. What about school shootings?”

“Are you
serious?
” Tina said.

“Yes, I’m serious.”

“We’ll be fine.” Mrs. Holbrooke opened the door and propped it open.

Instant panic seized me. A cool draft of air blew into the classroom, raising goosebumps on my skin. I stared at the pathway outside the door, the grass gleaming in the sunlight, the little bird screeching and taking flight away from something invisible.

Mrs. Holbrooke resumed her lesson.

I couldn’t do this.

I stood up, pushed my desk aside with a loud scrape, and marched to the door. I kicked up the door stopper and tugged the handle until the door slammed shut, plunging the classroom into silence.

I returned to my desk, ignoring the stares.

“Leona, we decided we were going to have the door open,” Mrs. Holbrooke said slowly, her tone ominously calm.

“Then I have to go,” I said sharply. “If you leave the door open, I have to go.”

“I can write you a detention if you’d like?” She opened the door again and propped it open. “Are you ready to behave yourself?”

I stared with tunnel vision at the rectangle of blue sky.

Ashley would come now. While I was in English class.

I would slump forward out of the blue, and people would try to shake me awake . . . until they saw the blood pooling in my lap and dripping to the floor.

“I’m . . . I’m not feeling well,” I mumbled, climbing to my feet again. “I have to go.”

“Leona, if you walk out of my class one more time, I’m going to need to see a doctor’s note.”

I ignored her and staggered out into sunlight, into the vast high school campus, completely empty. Trash and dust blew in the wind, forming eddies in the long, abandoned wings. No crowds to hide me.
Everywhere
for her to hide. She was invisible.

I started toward the parking lot, panic nipping at my heels. I had to leave, had to run. Megan’s car—maybe she’d left it unlocked. 

Footsteps clomped behind me. I glanced back, saw no one.

My pepper spray. I patted my pockets, but I’d left my keys on my backpack in English. I couldn’t go back there. I hurried my pace.

The footsteps came closer, louder. I looked back again. No one there. The long concrete corridors amplified noises. Sounds ricocheted and seemed to come from all directions at once. I tripped over my heels, stumbled, and all at once took off running, gasping for breath. The patter of footsteps reacted instantly and bounded after me, closer and closer and closer—

I swung around a corridor at full speed and slammed into a guy walking the other direction.

I screamed.

My scream echoed.

“Leona, Leona,
Leona
,” Emory shouted, brushing my hair out of my eyes. His face hovered in front of me, blurry through tears. “It’s me . . . it’s just me.”

“She’s here,” I hissed, craning to look behind me. “She’s right behind me.” I moved forward again, bumping into him.

He took me by the shoulders. “Leona, stop, there’s no one else here. It’s just us.
Listen
.”

I listened. The campus was silent. Just the rustle of a chip bag sliding in the breeze.

“But . . . but I heard footsteps,” I stammered. “She was right behind me.”

“No, she wasn’t.”

“But I
heard
her.” I let out a shiver.

“You heard your own echo. I heard that too. You sounded like the whole marching band.”

I looked up at him. “My echo?”

“Come here,” he said huskily, gathering me into a tight hug. The heat of his breath on my scalp only intensified my shiver. In his arms I felt hopelessly safe.

“Don’t ever leave me,” I moaned into his chest, squeezing his T-shirt in my fist. His spicy cologne filled my lungs and spread out in a warm pool deep in my stomach. I savored it. Why was I fighting this?

He chuckled darkly. “That’s not what you said last time.”

Then I did remember, and my body went rigid in his arms.
His arms.

“No, I can’t . . .” I pulled away roughly, feeling dirty for letting him touch me, dirty for all the blown chances I’d had to confess, where I’d let him in closer instead.

“Hot and cold,” he said, his expression grim. “Tough to beat that. You want me crawling on hands and knees, is that it?”

“Stop, that’s not what I’m trying to do. I . . . I got to go.” I backed away, begging for permission to leave with my eyes. His icy stare held me captive. I was his prisoner.

And the tiny arch in his eyebrow meant he’d figured that out.

I tore my gaze off him before I gave away anything else and fled in the opposite direction.

“Let’s have a
look, shall we?” said the young doctor, wheeling his chair over to the exam table, where Megan sat on crinkly paper. I fidgeted in the corner, feeling sick over Emory. My thudding heart pulled in two different directions, sinking me deeper and deeper into despair. It would be so much easier to confess if I hated him. But like an idiot, I was beginning to fall for him.

The doctor took Megan’s arm by the elbow and wrist and tilted it forward. “Hmm . . . did you have ink done recently?”

“No,” said Megan softly. “They just showed up.”

He brushed her arm. “Yeah, it’s under the skin alright . . . in the dermis, it looks like.”

“Some of them are moving,” she said. “Like it’s alive.”

Their conversation pulled me back to the present, and I leaned forward to get a look.

“Mm-hmm.” The doctor continued to rotate her arm and prod the changing symbols. “That’s a neat effect. Could be electronic ink. I’m not feeling a subdermal display or anything like that. I’d suggest laser tattoo removal. I can refer you to a specialist, if you’d like.”

My eyes flicked to the door. Still closed, to my relief.

Megan nodded. “Do my parents have to know?”

“Well, they will have to sign the consent forms.” He rolled back to the desk and clicked open a pen. “Since you don’t . . . ah . . .
remember
getting the ink, you could try that same story with them.”

Megan’s mouth fell open. “You think I’m
lying?
I have no idea how these got here, I swear to God.”

Oh, Megan. We
were
lying.

He shrugged. “I’ll write you the referral. That’s the best I can do.”

I cleared my throat. “Doctor, uh—”

“Fletcher.”

“Yeah, Doctor Fletcher,” I said, sitting forward, “do you have any idea what the symbols might mean?”

He ignored me, his pen scraping as he scribbled out the referral form. I caught Megan’s eye, and she pointed at him and mouthed,
What’s his deal?

I don’t know,
I mouthed back.

“Uh, Doctor Fletcher?” I tried again.

He finished writing and rolled back to Megan, gesturing for her to hold up her arm, which he examined again.

“I’d say they look mathematical . . . some kind of code,” he said.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” I said.

He swiveled Megan’s arm to get a better look. “These two symbols here,” he pointed to her wrist and her elbow, “they’re identical. So are these two.” He pointed to two more.

“You think they’re letters?” I suggested.

“Or numbers,” he said.

“What if we told you it was an alien language?” I said.

He smirked, but said nothing. After a long moment, he announced, “It repeats.”

“It repeats?” said Megan.

“It’s the same seven symbols repeated over and over again.” As he studied it, his eyebrows pinched together. “This one’s changing so fast it’s almost a blur. Let me take a closer look—” He dragged over a magnifying light fixed to a hinged arm, clicked it on, and trained it on Megan’s skin. Peering through it, the furrows in his brow only deepened.

“What? What is it?” said Megan.

He held up a finger to shut her up, then tapped out time on his slacks. “It’s a regular interval. The second-to-last symbol changes every couple seconds . . . the one next to it changes much slower, once every thirty seconds or so—Oh, now that’s interesting.”

“What?” I rose to stand next to him.

“Three symbols just changed. Now the pattern’s repeating.” He rolled back to the desk and dug out a yellow pad. “Hang on, I think I can figure this out.”

He came back and started sketching out each of the symbols that flashed on Megan’s arm, then drew arrows between them. “This one changes to this one . . . which changes to this one . . .”

I caught on quick and tried to do the same thing in my head. There was a strange logic to the progression I hadn’t noticed before. Each alien symbol seemed to signify a smaller quantity than the one before. They
looked
like numbers. I soon lost track.

“Twelve different symbols,” said Dr. Fletcher. “Then the one next to it changes and it resets and goes through the exact same sequence again. It’s a numbering system, base twelve. I’d bet my life on it.”

“What? What is that?” said Megan, glancing between us. As if I knew.

“Base twelve,” said the doctor. “Twelve digits. We have ten digits—zero through nine. This system has twelve. This symbol here,” he pointed to a scribble on his pad, “that’s a zero. After that, it resets.”

“Why does it reset?” said Megan.

“Because it’s a timer,” he said. “You have a timer in your arm . . . it’s counting down.”

A chill went down my spine. I caught Megan’s eye again. Like me, she didn’t like the sound of that.

“A . . . a timer?” she stuttered. “Counting down to what?”

“Maybe you should ask whoever gave you this,” he said.

“I don’t know who gave it to me,” she protested.

“How much time is left?” I said. “On the timer?”

“I can figure it out. We’re saying that last digit cycles roughly every two point five seconds, so using base twelve . . .” He worked through a series of rough calculations.  A minute later, he had the answer. “It’s going to reach zero in a little under seven weeks.”

“So am I
going to blow up?” said Megan, driving us back to my house after the appointment. “Am I going to drop dead?”

“Maybe he was wrong,” I said. “He’s a dermatologist, not a mathematician.”

She took her eyes off the road to look at her arm, but said nothing.

Now it was obvious the symbols on her arm were counting down.

The question was, to
what?

She pulled in front of my house and put the car in park.

“No, pull into the driveway,” I said. “So we’re closer to the door.”

“Like it’s going to make a difference,” she muttered, putting it back in gear and turning up the driveway.

I leapt out of the car and sprinted to the front door. I fumbled with my keys—which I’d collected from Mrs. Holbrooke’s class between periods—while Megan came up behind me to watch.

The deadbolt retracted, and I ushered her inside and locked the door behind us. A spark of adrenaline lingered in my fingertips. “I think we’re good,” I panted, glancing around the empty foyer.