Death, Doom and Detention

She had a card?

Offering the rest of us a smile at last, she said, “Hey, Lor. Hope you’re feeling better.”

“Thank you. I am.”

“See you at practice, Ash.”

“Not if I see you first.”

Brooke snorted out a laugh, but I was a little too shocked. Ash was now officially my hero.

Tabitha laughed too, then wriggled her fingers at us. “Tootles.”

In all the years I’d been on planet Earth, I never actually heard anyone use the word “tootles.” The cultural diversity in New Mexico was amazing. We had everything from Hágoónee’, which was “good-bye” in Navajo, to tootles.

I looked at Jared from underneath my lashes. He hadn’t turned her down. That knowledge stabbed me somewhere deep inside. Probably my pancreas. But who was I kidding? Jared was a supermodel who deserved to be with others of his kind.

The creature whose name shall not be spoken aloud may have won this round, but I would be avenged. Or at least, thought of nicely when I died. How would people think of her? Not nicely, I was positive.

“It’s interesting to find you here, Casey.” I was so deep in thought, I literally jumped when Mr. Davis walked up.

Glitch wiped his mouth, then gave the principal his full attention. “Why is that, sir?”

He folded his arms over his broad chest. “Because you’ve been marked absent all day.”

“What?” He scoffed. It was a little too fake. Brooke gaped at him, clearly disappointed in his attendance record. “There must be something wrong. A glitch in the system.” He chuckled at his own joke.

No one else did. Jared was eyeing him suspiciously while Cameron was gazing up at the principal with the same faux innocence.

“I guess I could just talk to your teachers. Get this straightened out.”

“Sh-sure,” he said, his confidence stumbling.

Mr. Davis nodded. “I’ll get back to you.” But before he left, his gaze flitted to Jared’s arms, lingered there a second, then moved on to me. “Glad you’re feeling better,” he said. He turned to leave before I could thank him.

Though Jared was wearing the bomber jacket, Mr. Davis knew about the bands of symbols around his arms. He’d seen them when Jared and Cameron got in a fight in the parking lot a few weeks back. And he remembered them even though he’d only been around ten when he saw Jared with his older brother, Elliot, seconds before Elliot dropped dead. Then Jared had disappeared before his eyes.

I wondered what seeing that did to him. How growing up with that unsolved mystery affected him. His brother had died of natural causes. Jared didn’t actually kill him; he just tweaked the timing in answer to someone’s prayers. Kind of like he was supposed to do with me until he went all rogue and saved me instead of taking me. A fact for which I was grateful.

“All right,” Brooke said to Glitch when Mr. Davis left. “Fess up.”

“What? It’s a mistake. I can’t help it if the teachers can’t see me. I’m dark. I blend with the wood.”

“You’re skipping again, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Why would I skip? Why would I want to miss all this?” He spread his hands, indicating our surroundings.

While Glitch proceeded to lecture us on the perils of skipping, I couldn’t help but notice the lowering of Jared’s lashes as he watched him. The sharp slant of his brows when he looked at Cameron. Cameron looked right back in challenge.

I would never figure those two out.

ISAAC’S ARTWORK

As Brooklyn and I entered our sixth-hour History class and took our seats near the front, Brooke riffled through her bag and brought out the photo wallet.

“This is my chance,” I whispered to her.

She looked up from what she was doing. “What chance?” I nodded to the back of the room and she glanced over at Isaac Johnson. “Oh,” she whispered back, “right.” She continued to thumb through her photo book until she came to one that would apparently work for whatever torturous plan she’d schemed up. “So, how are you going to do it?”

I was busy trying to get a good look at the photo, knowing what she was about to ask me. “I’ll just touch it like usual.”

“No, Isaac.” She leaned closer. “How are you going to get close enough to him to try to get a vision?”

He sat in the back of the room, surrounded by friends. Several football players were in History with us. Normally they were horsing around and taunting one another into this or that. But today, utter silence. Joss Duffy sat slumped in his desk, staring at his hands. Cruz de los Santos was playing with a string on his letter jacket. And Isaac Johnson, Sydnee’s boyfriend, sat huddled over his desk, shielding his face with his massive arms. He was huge. He’d made the varsity football team his freshman year and was now the star defensive lineman. Talks of scholarships had already made the rounds, but I’d heard he wanted to go into the military like his dad.

He was such a nice guy. Polite. Gracious. So when he lifted his head and locked gazes with mine, a grimace I couldn’t quite decipher hardening his features, I had to admit I was taken aback.

“I don’t know yet,” I answered Brooke. “I’m not sure I want to get close enough to touch him. He seems testy today.”

She turned back, but he’d inclined his head again and went back to doing whatever it was he was doing. “Well, try this first. I want you to work on expanding your vision. See if you can go further back in time, see more of the scene before the shot was taken.”