The Gifting (14 page)

Mr. Lotsam’s classroom comes into view and my insides squeeze tight with a strange mixture of misery and anticipation. I don’t want to record last night in my dream journal, but I can’t fight the sinking sensation that I will be. That last night was truly a deranged figment of my imagination. I’ve never been more uncertain, or hopeful.

When I step into the classroom, Luka is already there. Summer sits on the table in front of him, her feet on the chair to his left, successfully gathering his attention as she laughs and talks. The seat to his right is taken by Jared. Disappointment crashes through me. Not that I’d be brave enough to sit by him if that were an option. Still, a small piece of me hoped he might save me a seat. I find myself staring at Summer’s cleavage. The view is no accident. She has flirting down to an art form and Jared is practically drooling. My shoulders droop to match Leela’s as I follow her toward two open chairs, unsure if I want Luka to look at me in light of the perfect, creature in front of him.

He doesn’t.

Not when the bell rings and not through the entire first period, even though I can do nothing but look at him. Summer catches me at one point and gives me a disgusted look that seems to say
in your dreams, honey
. By the time the bell rings, my heart hurts, I have no idea what we discussed in Current Events, and I’m convinced Summer’s right. Only in my dreams do Luka and I have anything in common.

It’s hard—as I walk with Leela to Ceramics—not to despair. I don’t have any proof that last night was real. This morning, my hoodie was in the same place I left it after dinner. Nothing was out of place, not even the unlaced running shoes I supposedly slipped on to follow Luka in the dead of night. The one person who could provide the proof I want doesn’t even acknowledge me. He looks completely unfazed and well-rested. Surely he can’t be that good of an actor.

“Hey, you okay?” Leela finally asks, as we shuffle inside the dusty basement classroom.

“Still feeling a little off, I guess.” I’m suddenly very grateful I didn’t tell Leela anything. What a freak I am, believing a boy like Luka Williams would go through the trouble of sneaking out at night, breaking into a facility, all to read
my
file.

I hang my bag over the back of a chair. The teacher calls us over to the pottery wheel for a demonstration and I join the rest of the class. Someone moves to stand slightly behind me, a smidge to the left—unusually close. I glance over my shoulder and all my muscles tense. Because it’s Luka. He’s not looking at me. He doesn’t even seem to notice me. But he’s there, so close that if I were to lean back on my heels our bodies would touch. My scalp tingles at his nearness. I hold my breath and cross my arms and pin my eyes on the spinning wheel, even though the teacher’s instructions are a muffle of indecipherable sound. My heart thumps in my ears, my throat, my wrists. It’s like I have a hundred hearts placed throughout my body.

All of a sudden, the heat of Luka’s closeness combusts into something infinitely hotter. So much so that for a fraction of a second, I think the kiln has exploded. I jerk my head around, toward the corner of the room, and see something—a ball of brightness. Luminous and terrifying and beautiful. I am about to stumble back, but Luka’s fingers wrap around my forearm and hold me in place.

I’m frozen. I can’t even look over my shoulder to see Luka’s face. So I stand there, panic swelling, as the rest of the class stares with glazed, bored eyes at the teacher and the pottery wheel, unaware of this very not-normal thing hovering in the corner of the classroom. But Luka sees it. He must, otherwise why is he holding my arm, anchoring me in place? My knees shake. As much as I want to, I can’t look away from the light. It’s so bright that it’s impossible to look away.

The ball of light moves out of the corner, toward me. I am terrified, like yesterday. Only instead of feeling threatened, I am enraptured. In awe. It takes everything in me not to fall to my knees.

Luka’s grip tightens and he shifts his body so he stands in front of me, like a shield, only I don’t feel in need of protecting. Not from this. The light hovers in front of both of us, its warmth like the sun. My heart crashes against my sternum. I’m positive it will burst straight through the bone. But as quickly as the light appeared, it vanishes. And I’m left blinking and dazed.

My chest rises and falls as I look one way, then the other. Leela covers her mouth with a yawn. Jennalee picks at her nail mindlessly. A few students look genuinely interested in the hypnotic way our teacher’s hands mold the spinning clay on the wheel. Luka lets go of my arm, but the heat of his touch remains. A million questions spin in my mind. They chase each other in circles, like a frantic dog after its tail. Our teacher finishes his demonstration and the class disperses. Without acknowledging me or the bizarre thing that happened, Luka claims one of the pottery wheels.

Dumbstruck, I follow Leela to our table. She talks as I poke at the hunk of clay in front of me and sneak covert glances at Luka. He is a master at the wheel. Just as good, if not better than the teacher. About halfway through class, Leela waves her hand in front of my face.

“Earth to Tess?”

My eyelids flutter.

She glances at Luka, then at the hunk of clay I have decimated in front of me. I don’t even know what I’m trying to make. “You should probably be a little more subtle,” she mumbles from the corner of her mouth.

“Huh?”

“About the staring.” Leela’s almost finished with her project—a ceramic lantern with lopsided walls. “I know Summer can seem nice at times, but she’s really possessive when it comes to him. With all those rumors flying around about yesterday … let’s just say you don’t want to get on her bad side.”

I bite the inside of my cheek and will Luka to look at me.
Come on, give me something. Please. I’m freaking out over here.

Nothing.

His eyes stay glued to the clay in front of him.

I scoot back from the table. “I think I’ll go get a drink.”

“Did you hear anything I said?” Leela calls after me.

“Yeah. Promise. I just need a drink.”

I slip out of the classroom, slightly terrified the bright thing will reappear while I’m all alone. Its warmth remains like an invisible residue coating my skin, but the hallway is empty. Nothing but quiet and chlorine. I shuffle toward the restrooms and take a long drink from the fountain. The cool water does nothing to soothe my frantic thoughts. I take another drink and the sound of a closing door jars the quiet. I stand straight and whirl around. Jumpy.

Luka walks toward me, closing the gap between us with long, sure strides. I let out my breath and wipe away the wetness from my bottom lip. He stops in front of me, a divot creasing the space between his dark eyebrows. “Are you okay?”

I don’t know. Am I? The warmth is still there, on the outside, like a cloak. But inside, my bones are cold.

“Tess, look at me.”

I do what he says. It does nothing to de-frazzle my nerves.

“Are you okay?”

Caution keeps me silent. Because what if I imagined it all again? What if Luka didn’t really see what I saw? What if he simply thought I was having some sort of panic attack and so he grabbed my arm in an effort to calm down the crazy girl who ran into him on the way out of the Edward Brooke’s Facility yesterday morning?

His divot deepens. “Tess?”

“Are—are you okay?” Great, now I’m turning into Dr. Roth. Answering questions with questions.

“I’m not sure. I’ve never …” He shakes his head and curls his hand around the back of his neck.

“Never what?”

“I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“What do you mean?”

“That thing.” He jerks his hand toward our classroom. “It was almost as if it was trying to interact with you.”

That thing.
So he saw it. He really saw it. All my despair and fear and questions evaporate. I want to grab a hold of those two words and hug them close. “You saw it.”

“Of course I saw it.”

“What do you think it was?”

“I’m not sure.”

“If you had to guess?”

“An angel.”

A laugh bubbles up my throat and tumbles into the air. It sounds panicked. Slightly hysterical. “An angel? In our ceramics class?”

“Do you have a better explanation?”

I think about the bright light in the gym my first day of school. And other instances, too. Ones that can’t be explained by science or logic, no matter how adamant my father is that the world is not supernatural. “If your theory is right, then that means everyone else is wrong.”

A student walks toward us. Luka takes my elbow and pulls me off to the side, then scratches the back of his head until the kid passes. When he does, he leans in and whispers, “Just because a lot of people believe something doesn’t make it true.”

Swallowing, I look away from his eyes, glance at his lips and settle on his nose. Safer territory. There is nothing sexy about a nose. Scratch that. There’s nothing
distractingly
sexy about a nose. “Okay, so let’s say it was an angel. Why couldn’t anybody else see it? Why was it even there in the first place?”

A muscle ticks in his jaw—in, out, in, out, like a heartbeat. “I don’t know,” he finally says.

“This is crazy.”

“I know.”

“Up until twenty minutes ago, I didn’t even think last night happened. I thought it was a dream.”

Luka quirks his eyebrow.

I scratch my wrist. “For all I know, right now is too.”

“You must have very realistic dreams.”

“In first period, you acted like nothing happened. You …” I trail off, unwilling to admit how much his dismissive attitude hurt.

“I’m a good actor, remember? I’ve been doing it for years and I didn’t want to draw attention to us.” He stands so close, I can see specks of pine-needle green in his eyes and smell the cool mint in his breath. “I’m real, Tess. This isn’t a dream.”

“Dream Luka would probably say the same thing.”

He takes my hand and puts it against his chest.

I might hyperventilate.

“You can feel my heartbeat. Would that happen in a dream?”

“I—I don’t know.”

Luka drops my wrist. “I think we should meet up after school. Get a head start on our history project.”

The sudden departure from heartbeats and angels to school projects spins me in a circle. “O-okay.”

He pushes off from the wall. “My house or yours?”

“Yours.” I blurt the word so fast that Luka cocks his head. I envision my mother and cookies and an embarrassing grand tour. I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “My brother’s into angry music. We’d have a hard time getting anything done.”

He smiles a crooked smile. “My house it is, then.”

Anticipation

T
rigonometry and Physics are painful. All I want is to fast-forward the day. I have so many questions for Luka. So many things I could tell him. And then there’s the memory in my palm—of his heartbeat and the warmth of his chest. All of it pings around inside my brain, making concentration impossible. Still, I force myself to take notes, because the last thing I need is plummeting grades.

By the time lunch rolls around, I am a fidgeting mess. Leela and I find a table with our trays and in my search for Luka, my attention snags on Pete. He’s not sitting alone today, like he has over the past several weeks. He’s sitting with two others—fork-tongued Jess and barking Wren. Not exactly a happy crowd.

Leela slides into a seat, her eyes glued to the same table. “Why is your brother sitting with them?”

“I have no idea.”

My brother looks darker, almost gothic in his black shirt and jeans. Discomfort squirms in my stomach, but doesn’t stick around for long. Not when I spot Luka across the cafeteria. Summer sits close to him, jabbering in his ear. As if sensing my stare, he looks up. Our eyes lock and in the span of our connected gaze, a sharp pain stabs my head. Like a lightning bolt splintering through my brain. Wincing, I press my fingers against my temples and look down at my tray.

Ouch.

When I look back up, he’s still staring, his head cocked, a funny look in his eyes.

I spend Study Hall at the library, Googling crazy things like spiritual realm and angels and demons and evil spirits and good spirits and ghosts and Ouija boards and prophetic dreams—which apparently, have happened to various people throughout history. When I’m finished, I delete my search history, head to Honors English, and listen to the class engage in a heated debate over whether or not Fitzgerald attacks conventional ideas about masculinity in
The Great Gatsby
. Even though it’s one of my favorite books, I cannot engage.

As soon as the bell rings, I speed walk to History. I find a seat toward the back and make an awkward, self-conscious attempt to save the spot beside me by placing my backpack on the chair. A girl takes the seat to my left and Beamer asks if he can sit where my bag is. I’m not really sure Beamer is his real name, but it’s what everybody calls him. He has blonde highlights and wears skinny jeans that sag halfway down his butt and expensive-looking V-neck sweaters. He floats somewhere between the jock crowd and the hipster-crowd.

I’m too chicken to tell him no. So he sits beside me and fills the space between us with idle chatter while I give him the occasional nod or grunt, my attention fixed upon the door. When Luka enters, his attention flickers to me, then to Summer, who wiggles her fingers at him from across the room. Seriously, how does someone turn a wave into something seductive? Letting out a long, resigned breath, I fold my arms over my backpack and give Beamer the courtesy of some eye contact, but he stops talking.

I follow the direction of Beamer’s stare. Luka stands behind me.

“Hey Beamer, do you mind if I sit there?”

“There’s plenty of empty seats, bro.”

“I know, but Tess is my partner. I think we should sit together.”

The entire class stares.

So much for remaining inconspicuous.

Beamer looks from me to Luka, hesitates a few agonizing seconds, then stands up and moves a few seats down. Luka slides into the seat beside me and I’m not entirely sure, but I think he scoots his chair closer. I put my elbow on the table and Luka puts his elbow on the table too—so close our skin almost touches. I tell myself this is a coincidence, that Luka doesn’t honestly care about being close to me, he’s only happy that he’s not crazy. Still, I do not move my elbow. I keep it in place.