Death, Doom and Detention

“Lor?”

I heard Brooke’s voice—so casual, so unfathomably calm amid such devastation—as I fell back in my chair. My arms reached blindly until my head bounced off the concrete floor.

“Lor! Are you okay?”

Brooke was beside me in an instant. I’d tipped my chair back, and a few kids were laughing as I looked around in shock. I lifted my hands—turned them over, searching for blood—then glanced up at my classmates’ faces, suddenly untrusting of them all.

“Lor, what happened?”

Despite the pain in my head, sharp and hot, I scrambled to my feet and turned on the class, searching for the culprit. But I hadn’t seen him. Not clearly enough to pick him out.

“Lorelei,” Ms. Mullins said. She was sitting behind her desk but rose slowly, watching me with a wary expression. Like she knew I hadn’t just randomly fallen. She glanced at the other students as well, and their faces turned from entertained to confused.

Before I could gather myself, a wave of nausea washed over me, the smell of blood and gunpowder so vivid in my mind. I doubled over and emptied the contents of my stomach, the adrenaline rushing through my veins too much for my body to handle. I left my breakfast on Ms. Mullins’s floor. It was very unappealing.

“Oh, man,” I heard one kid say. Nathan Ritter. He jumped up and put as much distance between himself and the acrid pool as he could, as did everyone else close by. A few students gagged. A few others groaned in disgust.

Ms. Mullins, who wasn’t much taller than Brooke and me, took one of my arms and helped me toward the door. “Nathan, go get Mr. Gonzales to watch the class. This is his prep period. And get the custodian.”

“Anything to get out of here,” Nathan said, jumping to do her bidding.

After threatening the class with dire warnings of quizzes and extra homework should they misbehave, she walked me to the nurse’s office. Brooke gathered our stuff and followed. She didn’t say anything, clearly understanding what had just happened, but Ms. Mullins kept asking me questions, wanting to know if I’d had a fever that morning or if I felt dizzy.

I stopped and looked at her. At the concern in her eyes. She’d been lying there beside me, her skin ghostly pale, her body drained of blood in seconds. A sob escaped my throat before I could stop it. She glanced around, patted my arm, and urged me forward.

“It doesn’t matter, sweetheart.”

But it did matter. How could something so heinous happen? Who would do such a thing to Ms. Mullins? To Mr. Davis?

Just before we went inside the nurse’s office, she turned to me, her expression grave. “It doesn’t matter,” she repeated. Then she placed her hands on either side of my face and whispered, “It doesn’t matter what you saw. Nothing is inevitable.”

Surprise glued me to the spot. I gazed at her questioningly, my lips parting, then closing abruptly, afraid to say anything. But how did she know I’d had a vision? Ms. Mullins wasn’t a member of the Order. She didn’t even go to our church, not that every churchgoer was a member. Far from it. But how did she know about my visions?

With a smile both grim and knowing, she patted my shoulder again and ushered me inside the nurse’s office.

* * *

Within seconds of my entering the nurse’s office, Jared and Cameron were outside the door, Cameron keeping vigil in that weird, predator-like way of his, and Jared watching me through the doorway. He refused to leave when the nurse told him to get back to class, taking in her every move as she took my vitals, scrutinizing her every decision, all the while keeping tabs on me from underneath his dark lashes. His gaze was so intense, it warmed me to the marrow. I’d been shaking uncontrollably, but with him near, my body seemed to calm. I hadn’t realized I was on the verge of hyperventilating until I started breathing normally again, rhythmically.

Nurse Mackey checked me for a concussion. “I’m going to go call your grandparents. Get them over here.”

Wonderful. I would be shipped off by nightfall.

She gave Jared and Cameron an admonishing frown. “You kids really need to get back to class,” she said before giving us the small room. It had a desk, one cot whose edge I was sitting on, and a couple of chairs.

After she left, Cameron asked, “What happened?”

“I had a vision.”

“Did anyone hurt you?”

I blinked up at him in surprise. “In the vision?”

He shook his head. “No, just now.”

Confused, I said, “No. I just had a vision. Why?”

Before he could answer, Glitch burst through the door. I jumped a solid foot. “I’m here,” he said, panting as though he’d just run with the bulls. He put his hands on his knees and swallowed hard, trying to catch his breath. “I made it,” he said between gasps for air. “I’m good. What’s going on?”

“Lor had a vision,” Brooke said, and every face turned toward him.

He paused. Straightened. Looked at us like we were all crazy. Then said, “A vision? That’s it?”

“It was a bad one.” Brooke took my hand into hers and squeezed.

“No, really. A vision? Doesn’t she have those all the time?”

“Not like this,” I said, the memory flooding back in another nauseating wave.

He finally started to get the picture.

Cameron turned to Jared, his expression wary.

Without even looking his way, Jared asked, “What?”