Gifted Touch (6 page)

wrapped her in a fast hug. Too fast. Like he didn’t want to touch her for too long. Like she might be contagious. The acid in her stomach splashed up into the back of her throat.

Get over yourself,
Rae thought.
It’s just weird for
him. Awkward. That’s all.

“Come on,” Marcus urged. “Everyone wants to see you.”

Rae hadn’t gotten the chance to buy food yet, but she followed Marcus toward the usual table. “Jeff, you want to come?” she called over her shoulder. He was standing where she’d left him, his hands shoved awkwardly in his jeans pockets.

“Sure,” he answered. In about two seconds he’d caught up to her and Marcus. Rae put her hand lightly on Jeff’s arm. “Marcus, this is Jeff. He’s new this year.”

“Hey,” Marcus said. He grabbed Rae by the wrist and started walking faster, tugging her along with him. Jeff kept right up with them.

Good. It wouldn’t hurt Marcus—and everyone else who was still staring at her—to see a guy look at her in that she’s-hot way, not in the did-you-hear-she-spent-the-summer-in-a-nuthouse way.

“Lea, look who I found!” Marcus called when they’d almost reached the same table they’d always sat at last year.

Lea let out a whoop the second she saw Rae. She 55

sprang off the bench and gave Rae one of those long, rocking hugs, her smooth black hair pressing into Rae’s cheek. “It’s so great to see you,” she said as she finally released Rae.

“Hey, I think you grew a little upstairs,” Rae said softly.

“Yeah, I might actually start having to wear a bra,” Lea answered. And for that moment it was as if Rae’d stepped back in time to B.C., before crack-up.

“It’s the Rae of sunshine!” Jackie called from the other side of the table. Her voice came out a little too loud and a little too high, but she was trying. And that counted.

“It’s the Rae man,” Vince bellowed from his seat next to Jackie. “She’s back!” Vince sounded like regular Vince. Rae knew he was totally glad to see her.

The nice thing about Vince, which was also sometimes the annoying thing about Vince, was that he was a no-subtext kind of guy.

“Sit down,” Lea urged, twisting the long chain of beadwork daisies she wore around her neck.

“I actually didn’t get food yet,” Rae answered.

“I’ll do it. I know everything you like.” Lea turned toward the food counter.

“Wait,” Rae said. “Take Jeff with you.” Rae pointed to him and noticed he was starting to blush again. It was actually kind of sweet. “He doesn’t have 56

food, either. And he’s new. So be nice to him.”

“Aren’t I always nice to cute boys?” Lea asked.

She grabbed Jeff by the arm and whisked him away.

Rae sat down next to Marcus. Then wished she hadn’t. Until she figured out what his deal was, she didn’t want to look too eager or like she was assum-ing too much. How humiliating would that be?

“So, Rae, what classes do you have this semester?” Jackie asked. She leaned across the table and patted Rae’s hand. Actually
patted
her hand.

“I bet you’re doing art again,” Vince jumped in before Rae could answer. “You’re really great at that.” He grinned at her, and she noticed he’d gotten the chip in his tooth fixed. How many other things had changed while she’d been gone?

“Rae’s an awesome artist,” Marcus added. He glanced nervously over his shoulder.

Rae followed his gaze and saw Dori Hernandez heading toward them. Dori had completely done the caterpillar-to-butterfly thing over the summer. She’d always been cute, but now—complete eye candy. Her long, dark brown hair now fell almost to her waist, and her midriff-baring top showed that she’d lost the few pounds of baby fat she’d been toting around. But what Rae really noticed was how often Dori’s eyes darted to Marcus.

A lump the size of a plum formed in Rae’s throat.

57

She swallowed hard, then plastered a smile on her face. There was going to be no scene in the cafeteria today. “Hey, Dori. You look great,” she said as Dori reached the table.

How long did it take you to make your move?
Rae wondered.
A week? A month? Or did you go for it the
second after I had my little fit? Did you comfort
Marcus about his poor, sick girlfriend?

“Um, thanks,” Dori finally answered, a deer-in-the-headlights expression on her face. She glanced from the empty seat by Rae to the empty seat on the other side of Marcus, shifting uneasily from foot to foot. Marcus finally put her out of her misery by patting the seat next to him.

“Rae was just going to tell us what classes she’s taking,” Marcus said.

“Oh, great!” Dori cried, sounding like she’d just won an all-expense-paid trip to Hawaii.

“It’s just the usual. You know, English, history, bio, gym, trig, plus art, of course,” Rae answered.

“Oh, great!” Dori cried again.

Oh, please,
Rae thought.

“One Rae Voight special,” Lea called as she hurried up to the table with Jeff trailing behind her. She slid a tray in front of Rae. It had one jumbo fro-yo and a salad.

“Thanks,” Rae said.

58

“You’re extremely welcome,” Lea answered. “Oh, you need napkins,” she added. She grabbed a handful out of the holder in the center of the table and thrust them on Rae’s tray.

Oh God,
Rae thought.
Is this how it’s going to be
forever? Is everyone going to keep being all fake and
nice, like I’m some kind of severely challenged child
visiting the school?

She picked up her plastic spoon—

/can Rae tell I’m weirded/

—and scooped up some yogurt.
At least no one
asked me if I’ve had electric shock,
she thought.
But
I’m definitely going to owe that Anthony guy his ten
bucks.

*

*

*

Rae isn’t the kind of girl who finds it easy to trust people.

Maybe she did before her breakdown, but now she’s got a
wall around her. I’m not worried. I know I can make her trust
me. I’ve already made a start. Soon I’ll know the truth about
Rachel Voight. And then it will be time to decide what needs
to be done with her.

59

Chapter 3

E
nglish first period,
Anthony thought as he slammed his locker shut, then started out of the building. The perfect way to start the day.

His class was over in the row of trailers behind the baseball diamond. Fillmore High had run out of space sometime in the seventies, and the trailers were supposed to be a short-term solution. Yeah, right.

“Yo, fat ’n’ smelly,” a voice called as he headed outside. Anthony didn’t even have to look to know who it was. Brian Salerno was the only guy who still called Anthony by his grade-school nickname. Salerno was also the only guy who still actually thought the fact that Fascinelli sounded sort of like “fat ’n’ smelly” was freakin’ HBO-comedy-special material.

“Hey,” Anthony said. He didn’t slow down as 61

Salerno fell into step beside him. He wondered if there was a possibility that by the time they graduated, whatever millennium that might be, Salerno would figure out that not only weren’t they friends, but that they had never
been
friends.

“So you in Goyer’s class?” Salerno asked as they cut across the baseball field.

“Yeah.” They reached the trailer, and Anthony climbed up the flimsy aluminum steps, then pulled open the door. The metal was warm under his hand, and it wasn’t even ten in the morning. He stepped inside and immediately spotted a lot of familiar faces.

“Bluebirds,” he muttered.

No one was called Bluebirds, Canaries, or Cardinals anymore, but they were still the friggin’

Bluebirds all right. And everybody knew it. Just like back in the third grade no one had had a problem breaking their teacher’s little reading-group code.

Bluebirds equaled morons.

The second bell rang. Goyer stood up from behind her desk and wrote her name on the board. “I’m Ms.

Goyer. Welcome back to school. I hope you all had a great summer.” She smiled as she picked up a stack of paper, then handed sets of stapled-together sheets to the first kid in every row. “After I call roll, we’re going to do a little reading aloud. Just to ease you back into the routine.”

62

Just to see who are the biggest Bluebirds of them
all,
Anthony thought as the girl in front of him passed back his set of papers. He shifted in his hard wooden chair. Dots of sweat had popped out all the way down the groove in the center of his back, and they were itching like crazy. He checked the clock. Not even two minutes of class time had elapsed, and the second hand was moving in extreme slow motion.

Anthony stretched his legs out into the aisle. He clenched and unclenched his fingers.
Relax, okay?

Freakin’ relax,
he told himself. He gave a “yo” when Ms. Goyer called his name, not bothering to return her bright you’re-so-special smile. Goyer was clearly one of those special-ed teachers who was sure a little love and attention would get all her Bluebirds in the air, flying like Cardinals. Which was slightly easier to take than the special-ed teachers who thought all a Bluebird needed was to have its feathers plucked so it would learn a little discipline. Slightly.

Mental porn. That’s the only way he was going to get through.
Girl from the Gap ad,
he decided.
The
redhead. Yeah.
She came so clear in his mind that he could see every freckle.

“Okay, you take it from there, Anthony,” Goyer called in her all-they-need-is-a-little-encouragement voice. It took him a second to bring the sheet of paper on his desk back into focus.

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Both armpits started pumping juice. The trickle of sweat down his back turned into a stream, gluing his T-shirt to his skin.
Get a grip,
he ordered himself.
It’s
reading a few sentences.

“ Mike,” Anthony read. That was an easy one. A picture of his friend Mike flashed into his head as soon as his eyes hit the letters, so he instantly recognized the word.
Ran
. As soon as Anthony had pictured himself running, the word had easily come out of his mouth. He moved his eyes to the next word—
to
. One of his heels started slapping up and down on the floor.

“To,” he said. He’d actually had to think about that one. Two letters and he’d had to think about it.

Anthony moved on to the next word
—the
.

Another word that didn’t bring up any kind of picture.

But you know it,
he told himself.
It’s one of the easy
ones. It’s one of the ones kids still in diapers know.
He intensified his focus. “The,” he said.

“Good. Keep going,” Goyer urged.

Anthony didn’t look up from the sheet. He couldn’t lose his concentration. “Store,” he said. That hadn’t been a problem. He’d seen the word, and a picture of the grocery store near his house had popped into his head, but he got blank brain again on the next word—

and
. He focused until he felt like a steel belt was wrapped around his head, getting pulled tighter and tighter. “ And,” he read.

64

He wished whoever was chewing gum would stop it. The sweet grape smell was making him nauseous.

And somebody else was gnawing on a pencil, which made his teeth want to crawl right out of his mouth.

“Try sounding it out,” Ms. Goyer prompted.

Anthony jerked his eyes to the next word. The image of him handing money to his pot dealer appeared in his mind. “Bought,” he said. He moved his eyes to the next word. No picture. “Some,” he managed to get out.

The belt around his head cinched tighter. His foot tapped harder against the floor. The smell of grape gum felt like it was filling his nose and throat and lungs.

And his teeth were practically jumping with each crunch of the pencil from the other side of the room.

“Why don’t you start again at the beginning,” Ms.

Goyer suggested.

Anthony put his finger under the first word of the sentence. He knew it made him look like a goon, but it helped. An image of his friend Mike appeared in his mind. “Mike,” he said. He moved his finger to the next word. An image of Anthony running appeared.

“Ran.” He moved his finger to the next word. His mind went blank again.

“Sound it out,” Ms. Goyer said. “What is the sound of the first letter?”

Anthony dug his finger into the paper under the 65

word. The little two-letter word. He pulled in a deep breath, a sweet, grape-scented breath that made him want to gag.

“Mike ran to the girl with the humongous melon breasts,” Anthony said in a rush, half under his breath.

He cut a glance at Goyer. She didn’t look angry. She had an aw-poor-little-Bluebird-acting-out expression on her face.

“We’ll go over some techniques for attacking unfamiliar words next class,” she said. “Brian, continue, please.”

Anthony checked the clock again. They’d just about hit the halfway mark. But he needed out of here
now.
He called the Gap redhead up in his mind again and made her unbutton her sweater. She slipped it from her shoulders and let it fall to her feet in a pink puddle.
Yeah.

When he got tired of Red, he switched over to one of the blond chicks from the ad. Blondie kept him occupied until the bell rang. Then he was out of there.

He broke into a run as he cut across the baseball diamond, loving the way his muscles obeyed his slightest command, the way his crammed-with-stupid brain never would. Man, he couldn’t wait for gym. That was the one place
he
was the Cardinal. No, forget that.

He was the Eagle.

But gym wasn’t until last period. Next up was 66

math. Bluebird math.
At least it’s not in the trailer
park,
he thought as he headed into the main building and started toward his locker. He hesitated when he passed the pay phone. He shouldn’t have to do this . . .