Prophecy (3 page)

She spun outside the bathroom door for my inspection. “Hobo chic, what do you think?”

“Nice.” I looked at my long sleeve T-shirt and frowned.

Allison went into my room.

I batted my lashes through a mascara brush and dotted the excess away with my fingertips. “I’m almost finished. Give me thirty seconds.”

“Take your time.”

Uh oh. I stuffed my makeup bag back into its drawer and darted across the hall to my room.

Allison knelt on my bed, peering through the curtains. A white sweater lay across the comforter behind her. I’d bought the sweater when we went back to school shopping, but I hadn’t gotten up the nerve to wear it yet. The v-neck was deep and the material clung to my curves more than I liked.

“Well, this explains it.” I crawled over the bed to kneel beside her. “You never pick me up for school because you’re perpetually late, but here you are.”

She smiled, never taking her eyes off the house across the field.

“I finally see what it takes to get a ride from my best friend.” I smiled.

“Hot. Brothers.” She gave me a cursory glance. “Put on the sweater. Let’s go stand around the office. They have to go there to get schedules.”

“I thought you wanted them to attend Wells.”

I scooted off the bed and searched my closet for a decent camisole. The sweater’s neckline was scandalous without one. The form-fitting design was a whole other problem, but I could only handle one crisis at a time before breakfast. Nothing good in my closet, I moved on to my dresser hoping for something long enough to reach the waist of my low-slung jeans, preferably with lace at the neckline and in a color that wouldn’t show through the white sweater. Five minutes later, I settled on a pale pink camisole with lace, not as long as I’d hoped, but Allison was waiting. I’d dumped two drawers to find the camisole. The mess added nicely to my whole disaster zone motif.

Allison left her post at the window and paced in front of me.

I fidgeted with the sweater. “Geez. What’s your hurry? The school’s the size of a thimble. So is the town, for that matter. It’s not like you won’t meet them both by the end of the day.”

She looked at her watch dramatically. “If they are in high school, you’ll meet them for sure, but I leave in three hours, remember? I never thought I’d be sad to miss an afternoon of high school.”

I pulled the sweater over the camisole and tugged the clingy material. “For all we know, they’re both students at the college, not the high school.”

“Come on.” Allison jogged down the steps, while I took one last look in the mirror.

The sweater was amazing, but it wouldn’t go unnoticed, and since the Fourth of July field party by the river, “unnoticed” was my friend. I finger combed the ends of my hair, making sure they were fully dry and wouldn’t coil up on me midmorning.

I pocketed my phone and hoisted my bag over my head, securing it cross-body. The creeping suspicion something was wrong tugged at my chest. I turned in a circle, looking for the reason. Allison had left my curtain askew, caught on the corner of my bed.

“Callie? You coming, sweetie?” Mom called.

I grabbed the curtain. “One minute.” My voice caught in my throat as I spoke. A man in a black suit sipped from a mug on the Hale’s front porch. He stared at my window until I thought certain he saw straight into my soul. A shiver slid down my spine and I dropped the curtain between us.

Stupid rumors. Stupid gossip. He’d probably seen Allison stalking him through my window and thought it was me. Maybe he couldn’t see me as well as I saw him. Maybe he was only looking at my house and didn’t see me the way I imagined he had.

“Callie!” Allison sounded frantic.

I bolted down the steps.

Mom met me in the foyer at the bottom of the steps with a bottle of water and an apple. “Nice of her to give you a ride. Too bad she’s in such a rush. You didn’t eat breakfast. I have yogurt cups in the refrigerator. I can make a smoothie to go.”

“I’m okay. Thanks for the apple.” I stuffed the fruit and water into my bag and hugged Mom. “You know Allison, unpredictable, impatient…”

The honk of her horn cut off my words.

“And waiting in the car.” Mom patted my cheek and walked me outside.

My gaze swept over the field to Hale Manor and its empty front porch.

Honk!

I gave Mom a wave and mustered my best happy face before sliding into the passenger seat beside Allison. She shifted into gear and drove away as I buckled up.

“They left like ten minutes ago. What took you so long? How can we coincidentally park beside them if we don’t get there when they do?”

She couldn’t have beaten me to her car by more than three minutes, but I ignored her exaggeration. To Allison, it probably felt like ten.

She gunned the engine, cutting down two side streets and through the Methodist Church parking lot before bottoming out on South Main and two-wheeling around the corner into the gravel pit beside our school. I held tight to the little handle in the ceiling and laughed, despite myself. Gravel spun out behind us as she motored through the lot and parked one row back from a shiny black Mercedes.

I wasn’t surprised by the crowd of guys circling the car and taking selfies with it. Of the nearly forty cars in the parking lot, at least thirty were pickup trucks. Allison’s hatchback was the nicest of the cars. Except this sleek, black machine. I walked past slowly. I didn’t know much about cars, but this was no pickup truck. I let out an appreciative whistle.

“Can you believe their car?” Allison practically skipped beside me. “Do you think it’s really their dad’s but he lets them drive it?”

“I don’t know.” My mind wandered to the man on the porch.

“Did you see them? I only got a glimpse.”

I shouldered my way through the crowded doorways as the first bell rang, allowing us inside. “I think I saw their dad on the porch.”

“No. I didn’t see anyone on the porch.” Allison lifted onto her toes, trying to see above the crowd.

Justin Maze lumbered into view. The crowd parted for him as always. “What are you doing here before the tardy bell?”

“Came to see you.” Allison blew Justin an air kiss and continued tiptoeing toward our lockers.

“She picked me up,” I tattled.

Justin ducked his head and rubbed his chin. “I don’t understand.”

“I got new neighbors, or haven’t you heard?” I slid my gaze toward Justin briefly, keeping a watch on where we were going. The last thing I wanted to do was trip on a freshman.

We followed Allison around the corner, past the glass office walls. No new guys. A few paces later, we were in the hall with an endless row of lockers. I broke off and headed for mine. She had one foot in college. She could be late and screw off more than the rest of us. I spun the lock and popped my locker door open, sorting through the books inside and swapping for a few in my bag, getting set up for classes until lunch.

“Have you seen them?” Justin leaned against the locker beside mine, fingertips stuffed into the pockets of his cowboy jeans. His boots were caked with mud from a morning with the horses and the buckle he’d earned this summer shined between his hips. His crisp white T-shirt was perfectly opposite everything else he wore and he looked amazing. Justin was all suntan and muscles. Both qualities were hard earned from hours of labor-intensive work in the sun and a lifelong rodeo obsession.

I realized a few beats too late my observation of his ensemble ended with a look at the perfect bow of his lips and never quite made it to the cool blue of his eyes. Lately, things were like that between us. Complicated. I’d admired Justin’s eyes since I was old enough to connect the brown of mine to the color of mud or horse apples in his barn and his to a perfect cloudless sky.

His lips curled up on one side, forming the cutest half-smile on Earth. The smile of my childhood friend killed the whole hot cowboy thing, as usual. His family had moved to Zoar when we were in fifth grade. We met when Dad bought me a pony. The Mazes taught horseback riding and performed at shows. They ran the only stables in town and made a killing. I’d sold the pony and kept Justin instead.

“What?” I looked around, avoiding eye contact. Allison was gone.

He chuckled and shook his head. “Can I walk you to class? It looks like Allison’s gone man hunting.”

I nodded.

“Let me.” Justin took my book bag and tossed it over his shoulder. He palmed two books in his free hand and headed to my homeroom. If I had giant mitts like those, I’d leave the book bag behind, too. Together, those hands spanned the width of my waist. In the past year, he’d touched me more often, more casually, more protectively and I liked it. In the weeks since my summer break up, he’d carried me, spun me and playfully tossed me over one shoulder with those hands and he’d set me down, carefully cradled in sculpted arms, pressed to his rock hard chest. My cheeks burned at the thought. I pressed my mouth shut, thankful he couldn’t know the things I thought about him or the way his confident touches made me feel. We were crossing a line lately. A dangerous one. Even my mom mentioned the flirting last weekend after Justin came by for lunch. Flirting with my closest guy friend was weird. Having him flirt back was flat-out bizarre. It needed to stop.

We cut through the lunchroom and skirted around a table of jocks befitting the title. One mimed the throwing of a football and a group of freshman girls clapped. Three guys in jerseys huddled up around a lunch table and made low, whooping sounds. I sighed, thankful for the freedom of my summer breakup. I used to be one of those girls.

Kirk Fennel called to Justin as we passed. “What’s up, Maze?”

Justin lifted his chin in acknowledgment. “Don’t pay any attention to him,” he whispered. “He knows what he lost.”

Justin’s breath warmed my cheek as he leaned in close to encourage me. The gesture provoked Kirk, my ex-boyfriend, King of the Jocks.

“Sloppy seconds, man,” Kirk scoffed.

My traitorous eyes brimmed instantly with tears. Justin flashed him a middle finger and kissed the top of my head. A hush rolled over the jocks. We turned the last corner to my classroom and I blinked back the emotion before tears spilled onto my cheeks and everything got worse. Justin slid my bag off his shoulder. I nodded a thank you; my throat was too tight to speak. After three months of taunting, I should’ve gotten used to Kirk’s ignorance, but instead, each new insult piled the stress higher until I wanted to implode.

I turned for homeroom and ran headlong into someone. “Sorry,” I croaked, careful to avert my tear-glossed eyes.

“Pardon me.” A deep, unfamiliar voice stopped the breath in my lungs. He moved away from me, sidestepping, as I swiped a renegade tear. Grr.

Justin turned around, watching the guy I’d collided with walk away. “Did you hear him talk?” Justin’s slow southern drawl made me smile.

“Yeah.”

Even in the space of two words, the accent was strong, nothing heard around Zoar or anywhere in southern Ohio. Truthfully, the only accent I’d heard in real life was southern.

I pulled in a long steady breath as my composure returned. “Did you see him? All I got was a close up of his shirt.”

Justin looked me over carefully. “No kidding. I think you’ve got a button print on your cheek.”

The second bell rang.

“Shit.” Justin turned and ran.

I barked a laugh and ducked into my classroom. Justin was guaranteed detention when he got to his homeroom unless those eyes and dimples could get him out of it.

Who was I kidding? He wasn’t in trouble.

Mrs. Forrester took attendance, opened a paperback, and ignored us for the next ten minutes. I doodled and eavesdropped. Word of the Hales’ reappearance had saturated the town. My classmates speculated not-so-quietly about the fancy black car in the student lot and where the Hales got their money. Mobsters. Crime family ties. Tax evasion. Royalty. I’d heard all the possibilities already.

“They’re Norwegian.” Rosie Krebs failed at her impression of the accent.

Kristy Hines fanned her face as she spoke. “And gorgeous. Did you see them? Drop. Dead. Gorgeous.”

My mind drifted to Kirk’s crude comment about sloppy seconds. We’d dated for two years and never made it past second base. This summer he’d had enough waiting. He started by pressuring me with the usual coercion tactics. I’d do it if I loved him. He needed proof of my feelings. Blah. Blah. Blah. When that hadn’t worked, he’d tried name calling. I was a baby. Immature. Chicken. Whatever. I’d considered breaking up with him but couldn’t bring myself to toss away two years of my life, even though the years weren’t awesome. I’d gone to the Fourth of July bonfire contemplating having sex with him to get it over with and end his nonstop begging and pestering. That’s how bad it had gotten. I’d been prepared to make a life altering decision out of annoyance.

Allison had run late, per her usual, making us late for the party. The bonfire had raged. Kids filled every square inch of light around the fire. I’d wandered through the field, checking my hair and breath. I’d never gotten so many weird looks. Twenty minutes later, I’d found him in his truck with Hannah Snyder’s face in his lap.

The bell rang and I dropped my pen. A few students snickered.

For the past three months, Hannah and Kirk had been the hot new “it” couple and I’d been the school joke. Somehow, probably to make herself feel better, Hannah insisted
she’d
found
me
in the truck with Kirk the following weekend. In her version, they were together and I’d made the disgusting effort to win him back with oral, but he tossed me aside. Hence the sloppy seconds comment. Me, Callie Ingram, possibly the least experienced senior in school, had become the class whore with a snap of Hannah’s fingers. Pure magic. Of course, Kirk made no attempt to disprove the ridiculous lie. Even his stupid jock friends who teased me and called me a prude for two years had suddenly believed the bullshit and everyone did their share to help spread the lies. If anyone other than Justin and Allison was unconvinced, they didn’t say. No one wanted Kirk’s or Hannah’s vitriol aimed at them.

I hustled to first period, head down, biting my tongue, and counting days until graduation. If Kirk confronted me again, there was no telling what I might say after ten minutes of fuming in homeroom. Anyone who stood up to his crew of jersey-clad jerks brought on the wrath of ignorance for all time. Smarter to wait them out than speak up. Let someone else cross their radar. Smarter, but there was my big mouth to consider.