4
8:02 A.M.
MELISSA
As Melissa got closer, the taste of school began to foul her mouth.
This far away it was acidic and cold, like coffee held under the tongue for a solid minute. She could taste first-week anxiety and inescapable boredom mixed together into a dull blur, along with the sour bile of wasted time that seeped out of the walls of the place. But Melissa knew the taste would change as school grew nearer. In another mile she would be able to distinguish the individual flavors of resentments, petty victories, rejections, and angry little skirmishes for dominance. A couple of miles after that and Bixby High would become almost unbearable, a buzz saw in her mind.
But for now she just grimaced and turned her music up.
Rex was standing in front of his father's house, tall and skinny, his black coat wrapped around him, the lawn under his feet dying. Even the tufts of weeds seemed to be battling some malign, invisible force. Every year since the old man's accident, the house had fallen further into disrepair.
Served the old guy right.
Melissa pulled her car up to the curb. Between the brown grass of the yard and Rex's long coat, she half expected cold winter air to rush into the car when he opened the door. But the hideous sun had already burned away the brief chill of last night's storm.
It was still early fall, still the beginning of the school year. Three months to go before winter, nine more months of junior year.
He jumped in and shut the door, careful not to get too close. When Rex scowled at the music's volume, Melissa sighed and turned it back down a notch. Human beings had no right to complain about music of any kind. The pandemonium that went on in their heads every waking hour was a hundred times noisier than any thrash-metal band, more chaotic than a bunch of sugar-rushing ten-year-olds with trumpets. If only they could hear themselves.
But Rex wasn't that bad. He was different, on a separate channel, free from the commotion of the daylight crowd. His had been the first individual thoughts she'd ever filtered from among the hideous mass, and she could still read him better than anyone.
Melissa could feel his excitement clearly, his hunger to know. She could taste his impatience, sharp and insistent over his usual calm.
She decided to keep him waiting. "Nice storm last night."
"Yeah. I went looking for lightning for a while."
"Me too, kind of. Just got soggy, though."
"Some night we'll get one, Cowgirl."
She snorted at the childhood nickname but muttered, "Sure. Some night."
Back when they were little kids, when it was just the two of them, they had always tried to find a streak of lightning. A bolt that had struck at exactly the right moment and gone to ground close enough to reach before time ran out. Once, years ago, they'd spent the whole hour biking toward a bright, jagged spur on the horizon. But they hadn't made it all the way, not even close. It'd been a lot farther away than it had looked. Riding back in the falling rain took much longer, of course, and by the time they'd made it home they were soaking.
Melissa had never been quite sure what they were supposed to do with a streak once they found one. Rex never said much about that. She could sense he wasn't totally sure about it himself. But he'd read something somewhere on one of his trips.
School grew nearer, the early morning collision of struggle and apprehension building from taste to clamor, the bitterness on her tongue expanding to a cacophony that assaulted her entire mind. Melissa knew she'd have to put her headphones on soon just to make it until classes started. She slowed the old Ford. It was always hard to drive this close, especially at the beginning of the year. She hoped her usual spot was free, behind a Dumpster in the vacant lot across the street from Bixby High. Parking anywhere else would take thinking. The school parking lot itself was too close to the maelstrom for her to drive safely.
"I hate that place," she managed.
Rex looked at her. His plain, focused thoughts made things better for a moment, and she was able to take a deep breath.
"There's a reason for all this," he said.
A reason for the way she was? For the agony she felt every day? "Yeah. To make my life suck."
"No. Something really important."
"Thanks." The Ford's suspension squealed beneath them as she took a turn too sharply. Rex's mind flinched, but not because of her driving. He hated hurting her, she knew.
"I didn't mean that your life wasn't - "
"Whatever," Melissa interrupted. "Don't worry about it, Rex. I just can't stand the beginning of the year. Too many melodramas all turned up to max."
"Yeah. I know what you mean."
"No, you don't."
The parking place was empty, and she pulled in, switching off the radio as she slowed. Melissa could tell that they were almost late - the crowd flowing into the building was harried, nervous. A bottle burst under one of her tires as the Ford ground to a halt. People snuck over here to drink beer at lunch sometimes.
Rex started to ask, so she beat him to it.