Duality: Vol 1, Melancholia (A New Adult Paranormal Romance) (16 page)

“Let go, D!”  Brody yanked his shirt with his opposite hand, pulling it away and then trying to straighten it on his shoulders as he stood there glaring at Dan.

“Don’t do anything stupid.  Holder’s here.”  Derek pointed to the person getting out of the brown sedan.

Holder.  What’s he doing here? 
The voices from the bathroom came back to me - Holder in the restroom talking to another student about getting a girl alone.  I got a seriously messed-up feeling about it all over again.

What are the chances that I’d see this guy in a weird situation twice in one day when I almost never see him otherwise?  Probably not good.  I tried to convince myself that it was totally random, but it didn’t work.  In my experience, there was no such thing.  The only random event that had ever happened in my life was me being born the way I was.  That’s it.  Everything else followed a pattern and was totally predictable.

“What’s going on here?” the teacher asked, walking up onto the curb to reach the spot where Brody was standing, near the front of the red car with its smashed-in front.

“I’ll tell you what’s going on here, Mr. Holder … that
dick
ran the stop sign and smashed into my Porsche.  And the repairs are going to cost a fortune.  You better have a shitload of insurance, Dan.”

“That’s not what happened!” Dan was waving his arms around, a trickle of blood dripping down from a small cut near his hairline.  “You weren’t even there!  The intersection was totally clear, and then, BAM!  There you were!  You must have been speeding.  That’s the only explanation.  I hope
you
have good insurance, because you’re going to have to pay for this shit.”  He gestured to his car.

“Like hell!  The only explanation is you’re fucking blind and   probably stoned, and now you’re going to be
dead
too!”

Brody leaped for him, but was tackled from behind by Derek.

“No!  Let it go, man!”  Derek had gotten him by the waist and took him down in the grass.  Brody was struggling to get away but Derek was on top of him, holding him down.

Rae spoke up.  “Um, I’m really sorry this happened, Brody, and I’d love to stay and help you work it out, but I have to go.”  She was inching away from the scene and towards the sidewalk that would take her in the direction of her house.

“Where are you going?” asked Mr. Holder.  “I can give you a lift.”

“Highlands,” she said, looking from him to me.  She was worried, that much was clear.  “Do you know him?” she asked me.

I nodded.  “He teaches Chemistry at the high school.”

She gave the teacher a tentative smile.  “If it’s not too much trouble.  My parents are expecting me home any minute.”

He smiled back at her, ignoring the students wrestling in the grass and acting like they weren’t even there.  “It’s not a problem at all.  Come on.  Let’s get you home.”  He held out his arm, gesturing towards his car.  “Did you get hurt?  Do you need to go to the hospital?”

I stood there frozen in place for a few seconds.  Rae was smiling, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear and walking towards Mr. Holder.  She looked so innocent with her hair a mess, that dimple in her cheek, and her JC Penney clothes.  And he looked so … not.

I forced my feet to start working.  They were heavy and uncooperative.  I almost fell as I shuffled and stumbled through the grass trying to get to her.  “I need a ride too.  You can drop me with Rae.”  It was a struggle to speak.  It would have been so much easier to just stand there as an observer and do nothing.  I’d trained myself so well to stay out of other people’s business I didn’t even know how to get involved now.  My best skill is being alone, and up until now, I considered that a good thing.  Now it just felt wrong.

Rae was almost to the door of Mr. Holder’s car when I spoke.  She looked up and smiled.  It was like a light had gone on inside her and all her apprehension had melted away.  “Yes!  Malcolm can’t be late.  He needs to come with us.”

Mr. Holder’s expression went from agreeable and solicitous to dark and foreboding.  Or maybe I just imagined it.

“Don’t you think you should stay here and help with the police report?  You’re a witness.”  He frowned at me, giving me the stern look I know he used to intimidate students into doing their homework and not cheat on his tests.

It crossed my mind that I should stay and help Brody.  That’s what a real friend would do.  That’s what a responsible person would do.  That’s what
I
should do.  I blinked a few times as the pain from that frigging headache kicked in again.  It snapped me out of my good samaritan fog and woke me up to the creepy vibe I was getting from Mr. Holder again.

“Nah.”  I took four purposeful strides in their direction, my legs finally cooperating with my desire.  “My parents will get really upset if I’m not home.  I have to go now.  With you guys.”  Hopefully this guy didn’t know that I really don’t have parents.  At least not like I was pretending I do.

Mr. Holder continued to frown at me, his eyes following my progress all the way to the car.

Rae shut the front door she had just been about to go in and opened the back door instead.  “I’ll ride with you,” she said, waiting for me to get in first.

My heart immediately felt lighter.  I had this irrational sensation that I’d just avoided something bad in my life.  And it was seriously weird that getting into Mr. Holder’s car would do that for me; the brown Taurus was one of the ugliest vehicles I’d ever seen, especially with the paint’s clear coat wearing off on the top and hood in patches, leaving mottled whitish splotches all over it.  It looked like it had car leprosy.  The interior wasn’t much better, either.  The stains on the upholstery made me wonder if this thing had been used as a taxi for drunks and drug addicts at some point.

I got into the car and slid over to the far side.  The hard springs in the seat pressed into my butt through my jeans.  Rae followed me in and immediately buckled her seatbelt.  We sat there in silence as Mr. Holder walked over to the driver’s side door.  I buckled my seatbelt, trying not to look too hard at the stains on it as it lay across my chest.

Rae’s nostrils flared.  I noticed it out of the corner of my eye and turned in time to see the disgusted expression that crossed her face.

“Stinks, huh?” I asked, smiling ruefully.

She tried to hold in a grin, nodding.  Then she whispered.  “Like a rat’s ass.”

I coughed out a laugh as Mr. Holder got in, forcing my expression to go back to being bland.  For some reason I didn’t want him seeing me happy in his car.

He looked up at us, using the rearview mirror.  “Seatbelts on?  We don’t want anyone getting hurt.”

We both nodded.

“Good.  Where am I going again?”

“Highlands.”

“And step on it.  Please.  I mean, Rae’s in a hurry.”  I tried to smile my apology at bossing him around.

I could see Mr. Holder’s frown in the mirror as he started the engine and put his turn signal on.  He pulled out into the road and went around the disabled Toyota to the stop sign.

“Maybe hurrying is what got you into trouble already.  I think I should just drive the speed limit, don’t you?”  He looked up at me in the mirror, eyebrows raised.

Immediately cowed and worried I was going to get Brody in trouble, I nodded.  Brody hadn’t been speeding, and like him, I hadn’t seen that damn red car until it was on us.  The accident was totally Dan’s fault, and I was going to make sure to call the police department and give them my statement when I got home.

“It wasn’t Brody’s fault,” said Rae.

My hand flew out and tapped her on the thigh, almost of its own volition, telling her to shut up.

She looked at me with a question in her eyes.

I just stared at her, willing her to stop talking.  Mr. Holder was a nice enough guy, but something about this whole scenario was bugging me.  Here he was showing up on the scene at just the right time and getting a girl alone - or trying to.  The chances that it was Rae he’d been talking about in the bathroom were pretty much zero.  Mr. Holder and the student had been talking about someone they knew, someone with a history at the school.  Today was Rae’s first day, so it couldn’t be her.  But still…

“So, Rae, how do you like our school so far?”  Mr. Holder squeezed the steering wheel over and over as he waited for her answer.

“It’s nice.”  She glanced at me and then stared pointedly at the wheel.

I nodded very slightly.  She’d noticed it too.  I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt in my mind; maybe he was as creeped out at being with students in a car as we were about being with a teacher.

“And where did you come from?”

My face started a slow burn.  The flush was moving up my neck. 
Why does that sound like a loaded question?

“South Carolina.”

“How long were you there?”

“Um …,” I interrupted before Rae could answer, trying to think of something to say.  “I think you have to turn left up here.”  His questions were bothering me, and I hoped to get him off track.

“I know where the Highlands are, Malcolm, thank you.  Where do you live, son?  I’ll drop you first.”

“Highlands.  Drop me at the Highlands with Rae.  That’ll be fine.”

He squeezed the steering wheel again, this time until his knuckles turned white.

Rae wrung her hands in her lap.

“So, Rae …,” he continued, “… how long were you in South Carolina?”

“I can’t remember, really.”

His reflection in the rearview mirror showed him drawing his eyebrows together in confusion.  “How can you not remember?  Was it a long time or a short time?  Do you move around a lot?”

I had no idea why he was so desperate to know her answers, but it was obvious he was.  He wasn’t even watching the road anymore, he was so focused on looking at Rae in his mirror.

“Mr. Holder?  There’s a car coming,” I warned, pointing over the front seat to the windshield.  He’d veered a little into the wrong lane.

Mr. Holder jerked the wheel back.

Rae looked down at her phone.  “I have about one more minute before I’m late.  Are we close?”  She looked up, desperation written all over her face.

I resisted the urge to reach over and squeeze her hand for support.  It’s not like someone was dying.  Why was she so freaked out about being a minute late?  Her parents must be serious jerks.

“We’re almost there.  I’ll get you there on time.  Your parents must be really strict.  Are they possessive?”

I couldn’t take it anymore.  Rae opened her mouth to speak, but I cut her off again.  “What kind of question is that?”

Mr. Holder hit the brakes.  “Get out.  Get out of my car right now.”  His voice was low, but the menacing tone left no question that he was serious.

I was taken aback by his change of tone and obvious anger.  “What?”

“I said … get out of my car.  Right now, Malcolm.  If you can’t be polite, you can’t ride.  Goodbye.  I’ll see you in school Monday.”

I looked at Rae and noticed tears in her eyes.  She was shaking her head, pleading with me silently not to leave her there alone.

I grabbed her wrist with my right hand and the door handle with my left.  “Fine.  I’m going.”  I threw the door open and put my leg out, dropping my foot to the ground.  “And I’m taking Rae with me.”  I shifted my weight and jumped out the rest of the way, yanking on her arm for all I was worth.

The car leaped forward a few feet before she was completely out.

She screamed, hanging halfway out of the car, held up from the road only by my kung fu grip.  I used every muscle in my body to pull her the rest of the way out, my back straining with the effort.

“What the hell, Mr. Holder!” I grunted.  “Jesus!”  My headache pain ratcheted up to new levels of awful.

“I’m sorry!  My foot slipped!”  He leaned out of the front window, his whole arm out and gesturing as he threw the car into park.  The car rocked to a stop.  “Rae, please, my apologies.  Please get back into the car and let me take you home.  Your parents will be so worried.”  He gave her a weird playful kind of frown that only made him look more like a lunatic.

Rae had partially fallen against me with my last yank and her hurry to get out of the car.  She had a grip on my forearms, and I kept them bent and stiff so she could use them as leverage to get up.

“Let’s go,” she whispered to me once she was on her feet, rubbing her temple again.

“Can you run?” I asked her in a low tone.

“Yes.  Please.”

“Gotta go, Mr. Holder.  See you on Monday.”  I took off running, holding onto Rae’s hand for dear life, ignoring the throbbing pain in my head.  We raced down the sidewalk and around the nearest corner, trying to put as much distance between him and us as we could.

The farther away we got, the more my headache receded.

Chapter Sixteen: Rae

WHEN MR. HOLDER SHOWED UP at the scene of the accident, he was like a knight in shining armor.  For about fifteen seconds.  Then he just got … weird.  It started with his smile.  I hated to be thinking this way, but it looked wrong on him.  Fake.  And then the car itself.  Wow.  I’m not a snob; I’m happy to ride in Gremlins and all kinds of other beaters.  But this particular vehicle was just plain nasty inside, and it smelled like death or something equally bad.  Maybe death was exaggerating, but it was pretty awful.

When Malcolm volunteered to go with me I felt like I’d been drowning and then someone had thrown me one of those orange rings to save me.  I latched onto him so quickly, I must have looked like a desperate loser.  But I didn’t care.  I had a monster headache and my parents were one minute away from calling out the National Guard.

As we drove away from the scene, I thought I’d feel better since I was finally heading towards home again.  But then Mr. Holder’s questions started.  I like to avoid sharing personal stuff in general, but I especially don’t like talking about anything related to where I’ve lived and how often I’ve moved around.  If my dad or mom were in the military, it would explain our constant changes and wouldn’t be any big deal.  But neither of them were or ever had been involved with the government other than to pay taxes.  We were just freaks, and the longer I could hide that fact from the world, the better it always was for me.