Authors: Amy Garvey
She’s gone before anyone can say another word, pounding up the stairs to her room. I wince when the door slams.
“We should really get the stairs carpeted,” I say finally, and Mom narrows her eyes at me.
“Not funny, Wren.” She gets up and carries plates to the counter while Aunt Mari sinks into Robin’s abandoned chair. Even her curls suddenly look deflated.
“Do you want me to go up there?” she asks, and Mom shakes her head.
“Give her some time to cool off.” She scrapes rice off her plate into the garbage and sets it in the sink. “She has a point, Wren. If you wanted to, we could certainly invite your dad here for Christmas instead, although I’m not sure what his answer would be.”
I look up from the mess of mushy rice and vegetables on my own plate, startled. “Are you saying this is up to me?”
Mom’s brow arches, and she shrugs. “I think I am. But it’s either or, not neither, just so you know.”
Great. I can choose whether to completely wreck my little sister and suffer through a day of mortifying family togetherness with my new boyfriend and hope my aunt doesn’t accidentally poison him with her cooking. Or I can face up to meeting my dad again in less than a week.
For a second I close my eyes and summon up the fading scent of Dad’s leather jacket, the image of the strong, square hands that used to tie my shoes, the sound of his low, surprised laugh when I tickled his nose with my hair.
I want that back. But it’s too late now. I’m not a little kid anymore, and a lot of years have passed. I don’t know who Sam Darby is, and after the last few months, I’m not sure I can stand it if he’s not the man I remember.
Especially when the one thing I can’t forget is that he’s the man who walked away from us.
At ten o’clock I put down my trig book and groan, laying my head on the dining room table with a thunk.
When I lift it again, Mom is standing there, arms folded, smiling. “Problem?”
“Tell me exactly how I’m going to use trigonometry in the future. Seriously.”
“Nice try.” She runs a hand over my head gently. “You should go up to bed soon, babe. It’s getting late.”
“Yeah.” I sigh and scoop up my homework, which is scattered over most of the table at this point. It’s easier to spread out down here in the dining room, and it’s also farther away from Hurricane Robin, the preteen storm of angst. After dinner tonight, I was in no mood to even listen to her pouting through the wall between our bedrooms.
When I get upstairs, the door to my room is cracked a few inches, and I scowl. It drifts open if you don’t click it just hard enough, which means someone other than me was in here at some point after I came up for my backpack.
Since there’s no clean pile of laundry on my bed, I’m pretty sure that someone is Robin, aka the biggest snoop in Snoopville.
I don’t see anything obviously out of place, and my spare cash is still in my top drawer, stuffed in an empty box of cough drops. Then again, my room is, as usual, such a mess, it would be hard to tell if someone had come in and trashed it.
I drop my books on my desk and glare through the wall in Robin’s direction before settling on the bed with my phone.
Gabriel answers on the first ring. “Hey there.”
“You weren’t sleeping, were you?”
“Nah.” I can picture him smiling, and my heart trips a half beat faster. “Just watching TV.”
For a minute we don’t say anything, connected only by the sounds of breathing, but it’s nice. I’m pretty sure I want him and Olivia to come for Christmas—or more precisely that I’m not ready to have my dad here yet—but I’m not going to ask Gabriel now. Not yet. I want to sleep on it, at least.
“Did you finish your trig?” Gabriel finally asks, and I hear a muffled yawn trailing off the end the word.
I groan. “Mostly. I think it was designed to torture prisoners of war. I mean, what other use could it possibly have?”
Gabriel laughs. I love the sound of it, this low, soft ripple of sound. “Uh, I think civil engineers probably need it once in a while, Wren.”
“Fine, be logical.” But I’m smiling when I say it, and I know he can hear it.
I know if I asked him, he’d be able to tell me how much I’m missing him right now, how much I wish he was here, curled up next to me, instead of blocks away. And he wouldn’t have to use his ESP to do it.
“You sound tired,” he says.
“I am.” I shrug and rub my eyes. “We should both go to bed soon.”
“Yeah.”
But it’s a good twenty minutes before we hang up, talking about nothing and everything, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
GABRIEL IS WAITING AT MY LOCKER IN THE
morning, slouched against the dented metal door and talking to Jess. A couple months ago, I never would have believed it. What’s startling is they actually like each other, too.
“Yeah, I don’t know,” Jess is saying when I get close enough to hear her in the early morning noise of the hallway. Her hair is scooped up in what I think of as her all-business ponytail, and even her sweater is a no-nonsense gray. “There’s a slight Neanderthal vibe once in a while.”
“From Gabriel?” I snort, and Gabriel lifts one slim blond eyebrow. He’s a little pale, and he looks tired. “He is to cavemen what I am to Amazons.”
“How do you talk to boys you
don’t
like?” Gabriel says, and ruffles my hair.
“Not Gabriel, you goof.” Jess rolls her eyes, but she’s blushing, too, and studying the front cover of her history notebook a little too intently. “Cal Gilford.”
Cal Gilford? I twist the dial on my lock, trying to hide my surprise. Cal Gilford is the ultimate high school jock—big, broad, beefy. Definitely a blunt instrument on the football field and not exactly sharp anywhere else. At least not that I’ve ever noticed.
And while Jess may sometimes look like the ultimate blond cheerleader, she’s really, really not.
“Don’t say it,” she warns when I finally turn around with my French book and shut my locker. “He’s . . . cute, okay? And he’s not as dumb as he looks.”
“That’s a glowing recommendation,” Gabriel murmurs, and I bite my lip to keep from laughing.
“I mean it,” Jess insists. Her cheeks are hot with color, but she’s trying not to laugh, too. “He asked me to help him with his World Lit paper, and he’s really kind of sweet.”
“So . . . you’re dating him?” I can hear how dubious I sound, but it’s hard not to be. Jess doesn’t date often, mostly because her standards are roughly Everest height, and when it comes to academics she’s the kind of dedicated that gets you into the Ivy League. It doesn’t leave a lot of time for boyfriends.
She bristles, and beside me Gabriel tries to disappear into my locker. Jess is intimidating when she’s mad. When she’s furious, she’s terrifying, but she’s not quite there yet. “Maybe. It’s winter break in a week. I could use a little fun.” Her mouth curls into a smirk, and she looks at me from beneath her lashes. “Especially yummy fun. I mean, even you have to admit he’s decent eye candy.”
I can feel Gabriel staring as they wait for me to answer. Like he has anything to worry about. Half the girls in school are homicidal that I got to him first, if only because he was someone new. “Sure,” I tell Jess, summoning what I hope is a convincing smile. “Probably, um, mouth candy, too.”
Jess’s eyes widen but she snickers. “Classy, Wren.” She gives me a mock salute before walking off to homeroom.
“Mouth candy?” Gabriel says as we head down the hall the other way. “Seriously?”
I elbow him in the ribs, not gently. “Shut up. I had to say something. And ‘eye candy in a brute knuckle-dragging way’ didn’t seem very nice.”
“Probably not,” he agrees, and drapes his arm over my shoulders.
“How do you feel?” I ask as we walk into homeroom.
“I’m fine,” he says as he slides into his seat. “Stop worrying.”
Before I can say anything else, even to change the subject, Audrey Diehl comes in with Cleo Darnell, and I catch the tail end of their conversation.
“. . . gone for three days. Scary, right?”
“I remember him,” Cleo says thoughtfully. “He was sort of cute.”
Audrey rolls her eyes and drops into the chair in front of Gabriel’s. “He’s
missing
, Cleo. I don’t think his looks are really the issue here.”
“I’m just saying,” Cleo protests, and sniffs, wounded, as she digs in her bag.
For her lip gloss, I’m sure. In Cleo’s life, there’s no tragedy that can’t be solved with the application of a little more Frozen Raspberry Glacée.
“Who’s missing?” I ask Audrey.
“Adam Palicki.” She shakes her head, and when she looks up at me, her eyes are troubled. “Remember him? His parents enrolled him in Saint Francis after eighth grade because they wanted him in smaller classes with more supervision or something. It’s not like I really hang out with him anymore, but I’ve known him since kindergarten. It’s weird.”
I nod unhappily, even though I barely remember him. “What do you mean by missing, exactly?”
“As in not around, Wren,” Audrey snaps before she takes a deep breath and gives me a tight, semi-apologetic smile. “Sorry. I mean, he walked out of the house Tuesday morning to go to school, and no one’s seen him since. Or that’s what they’re saying, anyway.”
“It’s messed
up
,” Cleo says, and if she thinks that brilliant observation is going to win her points with Audrey, she’s wrong. Audrey may be the prototype of the popular girl destined to win prom queen, but she’s not stupid, and Cleo, sadly, pretty much is. It’s a good thing she’s beautiful.
“Morning, ladies and gentlemen,” Mr. Rokozny says as he walks in, letting his briefcase drop on his desk with a bang. “Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?”
And that’s the end of the conversation, at least for the time being. When I glance at Gabriel, he’s only half listening, looking at his French notebook idly. He doesn’t know Adam, after all—Gabriel and Olivia only moved here in October. Then Rokozny starts barking out the roll the way he does when he’s in one of his fouler moods. I slide my foot across the aisle and toe at Gabriel’s ankle until he looks at me, so I can smile at him.
He smiles back, and when Mr. Rokozny isn’t looking, I reach over to hold his hand. Gabriel’s smile turns into a grin, and it’s so sweet I can nearly taste it.
The news about Adam is all over school by lunchtime, but it levels out at a low hum. No one’s really hung out with him for more than two years, and aside from people in his neighborhood, like Audrey, no one’s even seen him. Saint Francis is way across town, and most of the kids who go there are enrolled practically at birth. They tend to stick together in a big, uniformed crowd, and I guess Adam fit in well enough.
Gabriel’s picking at a ham sandwich instead of eating it, and he doesn’t object when I lay my head on his shoulder while Jess chatters mostly to herself about the pros and cons of letting Cal take her to the movies.
“By the time midterms are over, I’m going to be so brain-dead, I’d probably go out with him,” Jess says, and jerks her head at the next table. Tiny little Duncan Miley, a freshman, is sitting by himself, scowling at his PSP. His faded Cthulu T-shirt is only a slight improvement over the World of Warcraft one he had on yesterday.
“He’d probably die of fright.” I get the pink end of her tongue pointed at me for that before we all separate to head to our next class. Gabriel kisses me before Brian Sung snags him to walk to chemistry, and I realize I can still taste him when I slide into my seat in World Lit.
Darcia looks up, eyes wild and hair wilder, corkscrewing all over. “I’m going to fail this exam. I am
totally
going to fail this exam.”
“Dar.” I reach across the aisle and lay my hand on her arm. “The exam isn’t until next week. We can study all weekend. You are not going to fail, I promise.”
She ignores me, indignant. “Who writes a book about turning into a giant bug, Wren? I mean, come
on
.”
She’s not a straight-A student, but she’s also not stupid. She just thinks she is, which sucks in ways that make me want to do horrible, vile things to whoever made her feel that way. And she’s in the same boat I am—she’s going to need both financial aid and scholarships, or it’s the county community college all the way.
It doesn’t help that her older sister scored a full ride to Rutgers. We don’t talk about Davina much.
Darcia either missed the news about Adam or she’s too stressed to care, which isn’t like her. Not for the first time, I wish I could do more than sit her down and quiz her on themes and symbols, and suddenly I blink, Mrs. Duvall’s voice a vague drone as she begins class. Who am I kidding? I could totally help Dar with this.
My power flares to life, and it’s startling. I close my eyes for a minute, concentrating on taming it. What the hell am I thinking? I can’t use magic on Darcia.
I mean, I
could
. I could do a lot of things, and most of them aren’t anywhere near as taboo as bringing someone back from the dead. Dosing my best friend with magic is either brilliant or one of the sketchiest ideas ever.
When I finally hear Mrs. Duvall’s voice, it’s half amused and halfway to assigning detention. “Ms. Darby?
Wren Darby
. Contrary to popular opinion, this classroom is not the place for a nap.”
I open my eyes and scramble upright, guilty and blushing. “Sorry. I was, um, thinking.”
Someone snickers across the room, and I can see Darcia out of the corner of my eye, looking at me like I’ve completely sprained my brain.
“I hope you didn’t hurt yourself. If you’re ready?” Mrs. Duvall says, dry as sand.
I know from experience that the floor never conveniently opens up to swallow you, which makes wishing for it pretty useless. “I am.”
But I miss most of the discussion on Gregor Samsa’s identity anyway. Sometimes it seems like everyone has an identity but me. And the one thing that sets me apart—the one thing I can do well—is a power I can’t even share with my best friends.