Sacred (7 page)

“Wow” was all I could say.

“I know, huh?”

And then we were on campus. Our school wasn’t large. Because our island was so small, kids ages six through eighteen found themselves spending most of their time at the Avalon School.

The kindergarten and elementary kids were in their own section of the campus, the middle schoolers had their own buildings, and then there was what served as the high school—a couple of older Mission-style buildings, a gym that was ours when the littler kids weren’t using it, the fields where our teams practiced after school.

I’d bet twenty bucks that no one—teachers included—had ever seen a suit like the one Lily was wearing, but no one seemed surprised to see her dressed in it. If she’d shown up with a live ferret wrapped around her neck, everyone would just think it was the latest in fashion. One good thing about Lily was that I was free to be as invisible as I wanted to be when she was around.

At least, that had been the case last year, Before Ronny Died. Now I noticed that even Lily’s amazing leather ensemble wasn’t enough to send all the attention her way; I saw a few girls whispering behind their hands to one another while looking me up and down, and more than a couple of teachers gave me sympathetic smiles as they walked by. Mr. Brown, last year’s math teacher, even patted me on the shoulder.

My mother’s “let the steamroller get you” philosophy was beginning to seem more and more practical, and the first bell hadn’t even rung.

“Who is
that
?” Lily murmured. “Scarlett, you’ve been holding out on me.”

Even before I turned to see who she was talking about, I knew Will Cohen was watching me. I looked up, and there he was—tall and angular in jeans and a thin green T-shirt, holding a spiral notebook and a couple of texts, leaning against the wall of the school’s main building.

His eyes froze me again, and though Lily was making appreciative sounds next to me, I didn’t respond.

His hair was a bit tidier today, though still nothing like Andy’s neatly coifed cut. Dark brown waves swept away from his face, and his hair brushed the neckline of his shirt. His jaw looked tense, as if he was holding himself very, very still, and his eyes did not waver from mine. I felt my heart flutter, and for one bitter moment I wished I’d put a bit more effort into getting dressed this morning … at least, I could have left the jeans at home.

“He’s staring at you,” Lily said in amused stage whisper. “Why is that, do you think?”

“We met last week,” I murmured. “Out on the trail.”

“He rides too?”

“No. He was just … standing there.”

Will lifted his hand, as if to wave at me.

“Hey there, beautiful.” Andy pulled on my hair and peeked his head around my shoulder. I think he must have seen Will looking at me, because when he leaned down to kiss me, his embrace felt … territorial. Like a dog marking his property.

I pushed him away and craned my neck around his wide shoulders, but Will was gone.

“Must you do that in public?” I glared at Andy.

“Public, private, anywhere you want me to,” he said with a grin. “Hey, there, Lily. Nice threads.”

“Thanks,” Lily said, but her voice was cool. “Good timing, bozo. You scared away the new kid.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Andy said.

Sure he didn’t. But I didn’t feel like a fight. So instead I said, “Hey, save some seats for me and Lily at lunch, okay?” Then I ducked out from under his arm and headed toward my locker with Lily in tow, tottering on her impossible heels.

“Wow!” she said when we were out of earshot from Andy. “The sexual tension is sizzling. Do tell.”

Luckily, the first bell rang; Lily would have to wait.

The morning classes were a blur. Lily and I shared European History first thing and French right before lunch, but when she tried to pass me a note in French it was intercepted by Monsieur Antoine. An actual Frenchman, Monsieur Antoine boasted one of those amazing mustaches that practically hypnotized you; it was groomed into two tight points with some sort of wax or pomade, and when he spoke, it jumped up and down like a fish on a hook.

“Mademoiselle Adams,” he chastised, taking the note in his manicured hands and tucking it into the pocket of his vest. “
S’il vous plaît, restez après la classe.
”

“He wants you to stay after class,” I murmured to Lily. Her French was terrible.

“
Merde
,” she grumbled.

So I entered the cafeteria by myself, and I felt my feet
drag as I joined Andy at his table. I tried to keep my eyes from scanning the small gathering of students, but I couldn’t help myself. Will Cohen was nowhere to be seen.

Connell was there, though, and he flopped loudly into the seat I was saving for Lily. “Hey there, Red Vine,” he said, and plopped down his tray, loaded heavily with pizza. I counted four pieces. He had two cans of soda as well.

“Gotta bulk up,” he said, a little defensively. “Where’s
your
lunch?”

“I had a big breakfast.” There was no way I was eating around all these people.

Andy, seated across from me, looked at me quizzically, but I guess he decided not to push the issue. Instead, he asked Connell, “Hey, what’s the 411 on the new guy?”

Connell prided himself on knowing everything about everybody. Once, in eighth grade, Kathy O’Malley had gotten mono from French-kissing her cousin Gabe, who lived over on the mainland. She might have kept the whole thing on the down-low, but somehow Connell found out about it, and the next thing you know, the entire town knew Kathy’s secret. She hasn’t been on a date since.

“Name’s Will Cohen,” Connell said, getting right down to business. “He’s a Jew.”

I felt myself bristling. “Really, Connell? We have to talk about his religion?”

He shrugged, unabashed. “I’m just a conduit for information, Big Red. Information just flows on through me.” He turned back to Andy. “He lives over in Two Harbors. His dad is a professor of something or other … religious studies,
maybe? Anyway, he’s some intellectual bigwig from the East Coast, but for some reason he dragged his kid out here right before the beginning of his senior year. His dad is on … sabusteron?”

“Sabbatical,” I guessed.

“Yeah, that’s it.” Connell picked up one of his pieces of pizza and took a large bite. A string of cheese swung from his chin as he continued. “Anyway, it’s just him and his kid—Will. His wife died a few years ago.”

A wave of loaded silence descended over the table. Everyone tried really hard not to look at me.

Finally, Jane Maple, a girl I sort of liked, piped up, “Well, if anyone tried to move me right before senior year, I’d freak the hell out. That’s lame.”

The consensus at the table was that it was indeed lame, perhaps even bogus, to move someone right before senior year. I guessed it would be even worse to take someone out of a big-city school and bring them to a little tourist trap of an island. But I kept my opinion to myself.

“Anyway, that’s all I know about Will Cohen,” Connell concluded.

“Well, you left out that he’s perfectly
gorgeous
,” Lily gushed, making a late entrance and shoving Connell aside to make room for another chair next to me. “And that he seems to have quite the thing for Scarlett.”

I felt my face flush red, and I kicked Lily under the table.

She laughed. “What?” she asked. “Is it so bad that the cutest guy in school is crushing on you?”

Andy’s face was murderous, and Connell looked personally hurt. “You think he’s cuter than me?” he asked.

“Way,” Lily said seriously. She uncapped a bottle of water and took a sip. “He’s got that whole ethnic thing going on. You’re just an island boy.”

The conversation turned to ranking the appeal of the boys clustered at our table, an activity that seemed to thrill the girls and made all the guys squirm in their seats.

“What do
you
think, Scarlett?” asked Kaitlyn. For the first day of school, she’d gone with a “schoolgirl”-inspired outfit: a white button-down topped with a fitted vest, a red plaid skirt, and white knee-highs.
A little too obvious to be ironic
, I thought. “Do you vote Will or Andy?”

“I think I need to go to the bathroom,” I answered. “I’ll see you all later, okay?”

What I really needed was some air. I pushed my way through the cafeteria doors onto the lawn and took a deep, cleansing breath. Over the last couple of months, I’d spent almost all my time alone or in the company of a rather taciturn mare. The conversation of the last twenty minutes had been so loaded with subtext, so potentially rife with misunderstandings and double entendres, that I felt a little sick. High school seemed to be a world for the healthy, most definitely. It was no place for me, not anymore.

I stood in the sunshine until the curious glances of Mr. Steiner, the vice principal, who was trolling the quad for potential misbehavior, turned more deliberate, and he began walking in my direction. Then I took refuge in the bathroom.

I turned the faucet on cold and splashed my face. It felt shockingly good, a reminder that I was really here. I liked that sensation; it wasn’t pleasant, exactly, but it was reassuring, like hunger pains. I am here. I am alive.

After a few moments, I shut off the water and turned around, reaching for a paper towel.

Damn. I’d made a miscalculation. I’d forgotten that the school bathroom featured a full-length mirror along the far wall, and suddenly I was confronted with my reflection.

The girl who stared back at me was thin—
Too thin
, I thought, with the part of my mind that was still able to analyze a situation rationally. Her hair was a pretty color, just as I remembered it, but longer than I’d thought it was. The last time I’d really seen my hair, it just reached the strap of my bra. It was longer than that now, and the ends looked as though they could use a trim.

The face of the mirror-girl was less easy to recognize. The basic features were about as I remembered them: there were still two eyes, a nose, a mouth. But this girl, the one who gazed at me, had eyes laced through with pain. Violet half-moons cradled her eyes; her cheekbones seemed too high, too sharp; her lips pale.

This was not a pretty girl. This was not a happy girl, or a popular girl, or even a fully functional girl. If others saw me that way, it was because their vision was muddled by their memory of the girl I had been. This girl didn’t have much going for her. I didn’t think I liked this girl—not very much at all.

Calmly, deliberately, I set the edge of my fingernail on the most tender flesh of my arm. Watching the reflection, I drew my nail down and watched with something akin to pleasure as a line appeared on the inside of the mirror-girl’s arm, first white, then blush-red. Somewhere, I registered pain.

The mirror-girl smiled.

When I came out of the bathroom minutes later, I must not have been watching where I was going. I was hurrying because I thought I must be late for my next class, Organic Chemistry.

I didn’t see him until too late—by the time I realized we’d collided, our books were intermingled at our feet.

“Sorry, sorry,” I said, stooping to collect my stuff. He bent down too, and our foreheads smashed into each other.

This sent me sprawling, and I was glad I’d worn the jeans. I squeezed my eyes closed and rubbed my head, trying to pull myself together.

“What happened to your arm?”

It was Will. I peeled open one eye and looked at him through my fingers. “My arm?”

“It’s all scratched.” He leaned forward and, without asking permission, grabbed hold of my arm. His grip was uncomfortably tight. One finger of his other hand traced the scratch that extended from the inside of my elbow to my wrist. “What did you do?”

I couldn’t speak. His touch was warm and soft, and the line his finger had traced felt lit by fire. I was acutely aware of how close we were; the dark curls of his hair bobbed just above me, and his eyes, looking up to my face from my arm, seared me as surely as a brand.

“I …” I felt the beginnings of anger in my chest, and I leaned on it like a crutch. Yanking away from him, I gathered my books and stood. “I don’t need to answer to you,” I spat. “What are you doing here, anyway, lurking outside of the girls’ bathroom? Are you some kind of a perv?”

“I was looking for you,” he said.

This made no sense to me. “I have to go to class,” I said. “I’m sorry I bumped into you.”

Organic Chemistry happened mostly without me, though I was in my seat. My mind was absent—I couldn’t stop replaying the scene in the hallway. Why on earth would Will be looking for
me
? And why had he looked so pained when he’d seen my arm? It was just a scratch, after all … no big deal.

He had to be some kind of a psycho, I finally determined, as class was coming to a close. And for some reason, he’d set his sights on me. It was a good thing he was a year ahead; at least chances were good we wouldn’t have any classes together.

I contented myself with this conclusion for exactly seven minutes, the time I had to gather my books and walk to my last class of the day, Drama. Then I opened the door to the classroom and saw him again, sitting in the seat I’d called my own for the last two years.