Authors: Amy Garvey
“Don’t you want to know what it means?” His voice is carefully even.
For a second I want to let loose, just shout at him. About how there are a lot of things I want to know, starting with all the things he never talks about. Do I want to know what it means when I kiss him and it feels like we’re both turning into molten gold, melding together hot and smooth? Of course I do, since I’m not a complete idiot.
But what I want to know most is how he can stay so composed, so . . . grown-up, almost, when any other boy would let it rip, at least once in a while. And I want to know what made him so guarded, so reserved, that he clams up even when I can tell he doesn’t want to.
“Look,” I say instead, after taking a deep breath. “We have exams this week. I have to work tomorrow. It’s not like we’re going to have a whole lot of time to be . . . well, you know.” I poke him in the ribs gently. “Okay? But I will figure it out, I promise. I figured out what I had to do with Danny, didn’t I?”
The last part is whispered, since I never know when Robin will be lurking. And Gabriel smiles, the cloud in his eyes clearing long enough for me to see the boy I’ve fallen for so hard, the one who’s smart and serious and funny in the most unexpected, dry ways. The boy who
is
just a kid, too, and worried about his girlfriend.
A boy who would most likely lose his shit if he knew a couple of strangers had caught me doing magic and then tracked me down.
But right now he’s the boy who’s leaning down to sneak one or two more quick kisses, hands clasped tight, before we’re interrupted.
I hope wherever they keep track of this stuff, I’m getting extra points for understanding today. And that if Gabriel is still keeping parts of himself shut away, it’s okay to keep a secret or two of my own.
AUDREY DIEHL IS HANGING A POSTER ABOUT
Adam’s disappearance in the north hall Monday morning when I walk by on the way to my locker. His school photo is blown up in the middle of the page, and he smiles beneath the stark, bold
MISSING
above his head.
All Audrey’s usual armor is gone. As far as I can tell she’s not even wearing lip gloss. “Still nothing?” I ask her.
She shakes her head. “I sat with his little brothers most of the weekend while his parents were knocking on doors.” Her smile is tight and sad. “It was even less fun than you might have guessed.”
I had forgotten Adam had twin brothers. They’re probably ten or eleven now, young enough to want promises that Adam will show up safe, and old enough to figure out that it probably won’t happen, not after a week.
For a minute, the whistling hollow in my chest opens up, just like when I heard that Danny had died, and I have to swallow hard.
“I’m sorry.” I don’t know Audrey well enough to hug her or even touch her arm, but I want to help. “I can take posters, if you want. Put some up downtown and in Bliss. My boss would be totally cool with it.”
Oh God, her eyes are filling up. I make myself stand there while she pulls a sheaf of flyers out of her bag and hands them to me. “Thanks, Wren.”
She’s already leaking tears by the time I grab the posters and head down the hall, and I have to hope Cleo or one of Audrey’s regular entourage will show up.
I’m halfway to my locker when I see the dark back of a long wool coat down the hall, and I freeze for a second before I realize Bay doesn’t go to this school. When the boy in the coat turns around, it’s some senior laughing with a bunch of other guys.
Gabriel and I walk to homeroom together after we meet at my locker, and I stay close to him, glad of his solid warmth pressed against me. I spent most of yesterday at Darcia’s printing out the photos I took, and then at the café. Gabriel and I only managed to talk for a little while last night, and I missed him.
But I’m still not going to tell him about meeting Fiona and Bay. I definitely don’t want to give him another reason to worry about me. And there’s nothing to worry about, anyway. Bay and Fiona are just
kids
, like me, even if they do have power, but I haven’t seen any evidence of that. They’re probably wannabes with a Ouija board and a couple of grocery store herbs who think a few words in Latin are going to send them to another realm.
Gabriel faces me across the aisle when we sit down in homeroom, and I shove down all thoughts of everything that isn’t his slow, gorgeous smile.
“French exam today?” he asks, crossing his legs at the ankles.
“Oui.”
I nod. “That means yes, for the uninformed.”
“Yeah, I got that, smart-ass.” He grins wider and slides his foot across the linoleum to toe at my scuffed Doc. “How do you say good luck in French?”
I snort. “If I knew, maybe I’d pass the exam.”
He rolls his eyes, and we both look up when Audrey walks in with Mr. Rokozny. She’s clutching the flyers, and he waves her to the front of the room instead of into her seat.
“If everyone could take a couple of these and put them up, that would be a huge help,” she begins, and I have to look away from the raw grief on her face.
Audrey Diehl is the last person I would have expected to put so much into the effort to find a missing kid. Audrey’s got the attitude, and the clothes, and a sweet little ride from her daddy, and usually a flock of boys fluttering around her like love-struck birds, but the truth is, she’s not really as bad as all that. She’s not purposely mean to anyone, and she’s not completely shallow. It’s more that into every high school a prom queen must be crowned, and Audrey was born for the role.
Still, despite the fact that I know she’s more than her cheerleading uniform, it’s surprising to see how seriously she’s taking Adam’s disappearance, and how personally. She grew up with him, true, but she’s not sitting around weeping into her yogurt smoothie—she’s actually breaking a sweat, spreading the word, babysitting for his brothers.
You never know what people are really made of, I guess, or what they’ll do if you give them a chance.
When the bell rings and we all file out toward our first class, Gabriel takes my hand, his fingers warm and firm around mine. I hang on, watching as Audrey pushes down the hall in front of us by herself, flyers cradled in one arm, and her bag weighted down with more. She looks like she’s heading out on a mission instead of to history or wherever she’s going.
When I had the chance to do something right, with Danny, I did something horrifyingly selfish instead. I look up at Gabriel, who catches me and lets go of my hand to slide his arm around my shoulders. For a moment, my heart aches with both hope and regret.
I’m not going to let myself do anything like that again.
By Tuesday at lunchtime, everyone’s twitchy with lack of sleep and general exam hell. I plop my tray down on the table in the cafeteria so roughly, my yogurt slides off one end, and Gabriel makes a big show of scooting his chair a few inches away.
“You’re funny,” I say in a tone that clearly indicates he’s not, and sit down, dropping my bag on the floor.
For a moment we sit in silence, the tumbling wave of sound in the cafeteria rising and falling all around us, until I finally pick up my yogurt and peel the top back.
“Maybe he’s not even gone,” a sophomore in a loud plaid shirt says as he walks by with a kid I recognize from last year’s art elective. “Maybe it’s like, you know, what they say about hiding in plain sight. Like, he’s around right here in town, but he just doesn’t want to be found.”
“Who would do that?” The other kid is skeptical, polishing an apple on the front of his jeans as they sit down at the next table.
I know they’re talking about Adam, but I’m not paying attention anymore. The yearbook staff is marching around the cafeteria, handing out pieces of paper.
“We need your help, people,” Brittany Lowry announces as she leaves flyers on our table. Alicia Ferris is right beside her, although she glares at me. We’ve never liked each other, and the last time she actually talked to me I opened the sprinklers over her head.
Not that she knows that, of course, but still.
“We want the yearbook to be bigger and better than ever this year, and we need your contributions.” Jess snatches up the hot-pink sheet of paper in front of her, squinting at it intently. “If you’re a photographer or even have a camera—no cell phones, please—think about taking candids for us! We need them, and you can always start with your friends!”
They walk away to take their message to the next unsuspecting table, and I bite into my apple absently. I’m thinking about the look on Alicia’s face when she ended up soaked, actually, until Jess says, “You should totally do this, you know.”
She passes the flyer to Gabriel, and I roll my eyes. “Gabriel’s not a photographer.”
“I mean you, dummy,” Jess says as if this should have been clear.
Now I’m glaring at her. Way to ruin my Christmas photo surprise. She ignores me, of course.
“You take pictures?” Gabriel says, handing over the flyer with a curious expression.
I shrug. “I, uh, used to. Not really.”
“See, right there,” Jess says, leaning over the table to point at the words:
MEETING MONDAY, JAN. 4, YEARBOOK ROOM, 4 P.M. BRING YOUR CAMERA AND EXAMPLES OF YOUR WORK.
“You have plenty of time to get something together.”
I blink at her. “Who said I wanted to take pictures for the yearbook?”
She’s not backing down—I know that look. “No one. But I think you should do it, and Gabriel agrees. And so does Darcia.”
“Darcia’s not even here!”
“Yeah, but she would agree if she were,” Jess points out, which is probably true. Even Gabriel is nodding.
I look at the paper again, thinking about how very much I do not have in common with Brittany Lowry and especially Alicia Ferris, but I think Tommy Britton is on yearbook this year, and I know there have to be other people. People who don’t make me want to chew my own hair.
“I don’t know. . . .”
“You can do anything,” Gabriel says softly, leaning a little closer so his words tickle my cheek, which is completely unfair.
“And it’s not like you have to take pictures
with
them,” Jess says carefully, as if she’s talking to a slow four-year-old. “Because then you would all have the same pictures.”
“Like they do every other year, you mean?” I ask her, and Gabriel snorts a laugh.
“It would look good on college applications,” he says a moment later, while Jess makes dagger eyes at me.
“Yes!” She actually pumps her fist, and I kick Gabriel under the table.
He does have a point, though. I need more extracurriculars for my applications, and everyone from my guidance counselor to my mom to my boss at the café has started reminding me about it.
Plus, I could make Alicia’s photos look really craptastic in comparison.
“It’s a thought,” I say with a shrug, and Jess throws a piece of green pepper at me. It still has ranch dressing on it, too.
“You’re going to rock.” Gabriel kisses my neck, right beneath my ear, and I shiver happily.
In World Lit, Darcia is sitting pale and nervous next to me as we start the exam, and I forget the extra, sharp pencils I had in my bag. I can’t get them out once the test has begun, though, so I just keep writing, focusing on the tip every time it starts to round out, and watch as it sharpens itself.
No bells go off, no sirens blare, no one storms into the classroom in a black suit and FBI shades to take me away. Floating may have been a spectacularly dumb thing to do in public, but there are other things I can get away with.
I walk into PE and for the first time in my life, I realize I’m not dreading it. Just for the hell of it, halfway through the lesson on yoga stretches, I focus on a bag of gym balls propped loosely in one corner and concentrate on nudging it over just hard enough to fall. Balls bounce everywhere, half of them into girls pretending to breathe through the downward dog position. In seconds, the whole room is echoing with laughter, and Ms. Singer is barking to clean it up and go get changed, fifteen minutes early.
It ends up being a pretty good day after all.
Gabriel, Dar, Jess, and I push into the steamy warmth of Bliss after school on Thursday, the last day of classes. Trevor looks up from the counter with his usual scowling bad grace. “You’re not working. To what do we owe the honor?”
I roll my eyes and drop my backpack on the window seat. “We’re paying customers, isn’t that enough?” I feel like I can really breathe for the first time in days, break is laid out in front of me like a clean sheet of paper, and not even Trevor is going to ruin my mood. The poster of Adam is sad, though.
He shrugs, and gives the others a tight smile before he turns back to the screen of his laptop.
“Was he born in a bad mood?” Jess says under her breath as she pulls out a chair.
“Yup. Get coffees and I’ll go see what Geoff has in the oven. I want a mocha.”
“Birdie.” Geoff smiles when I walk into the kitchen, and leans over his worktable to kiss my cheek. He smells like flour and spices and fresh sweat, and the kitchen is even warmer than the café. All three ovens shimmer with heat.
“Anything good in there?” I crack one door to squint inside.
“Apple fritters and molasses crisps in a few,” Geoff says, and stands back to brush his hands on his apron. The table is lined with four sheets of sugar cookies waiting to be baked, trees and stars and holly leaves smooth and perfect beneath crystallized sugar. “You here with Gabriel?”
“And Dar and Jess. Last day of school.” I wet the tip of one finger and stick it in the colored sugar while he isn’t looking.
He looks up and tilts his head, studying me a little too carefully. He’s more than my boss, really, but sometimes the surrogate dad business makes me squirm.
“All set for Saturday?”
Of course, it would help if I didn’t wind up telling him almost everything anyway.
“I think so.” I wipe my stained fingertip on the back of my jeans. “I just hope Gabriel likes the pictures.”
“Wren!” He rolls his eyes. “You’ve been together for months, sweetie. Anyway, any fool can see that he’d love it—”
“If I gave him a ball of hair. I know,” I mutter.
“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” Geoff says drily, and waves me out of the kitchen. “I’ll bring out cookies when they’re done.”
I have a little more than just the three framed photos planned anyway. I want to do something really special, something unique.
Something magical, in the literal sense.
For a couple of days there, I got so freaked out about being caught, I almost forgot how good it feels to use my power. And I don’t want to stop—it’s part of me, a big part of me, and that’s not going to change.
Gabriel, and my mom, and probably anyone I asked would tell me I’m taking risks, using it at school, and here in the café last night, when Geoff was closing up the kitchen. But I was always in reach of the rag I had wiping down the counter on its own, and I was listening for him just to be sure.