“Damn,” she muttered, and jerked away. She ran back to the street.
“Vanessa?” Michael ran after her. “What’s wrong?” He placed his arm around her, but she shrugged it away. She couldn’t risk his touch. Not now. She could feel the tremble of the molecules in her shoulder, pinging in delight, begging for his touch to set them free.
No, she thought, this can’t be happening. Was she going to disappear right before his eyes? She concentrated, stay, please, stay, and walked quickly, hoping the physical exertion might calm her molecules.
Michael walked in silence beside her.
Minutes later, they stepped over the chain circling the parking lot behind Musso and Frank’s, then crossed the hot asphalt to Michael’s van.
He helped her inside and crawled in after her. She couldn’t tell from his face what he was feeling.
“Vanessa,” he spoke slowly. “I get the feeling sometimes that you really like me.”
“I do,” she looked straight into his eyes.
“But then you do things that make me think you don’t. Why did you run off when I kissed you? And why won’t you let me hold your hand?”
“Well, it’s just . . .” She sighed.
“I don’t think you’re that shy . . .”
“No,” she tried again. “I’m sorry I acted that way.”
He looked away from her. “I guess I made a fool of myself coming over this morning. I should have left things the way they ended last night.”
“No, I’m glad you came over,” she insisted with rising anxiety. “It’s just that when I get really emotional I start to . . . well, I get nervous when you kiss me and I guess I do act strange.” She hated the doubtful look she saw in his brown eyes. She could tell him the truth, but would he even believe her? There was no way.
Her molecules had settled now and she wanted him to take her hand and say everything was okay, but that’s not what he did.
“Look, I see your mother coming. Maybe I should go and the two of you can have lunch alone.”
“I’d really like you to join us.”
“Thanks, but I think I’ll go to the beach.”
She waited, hoping he’d ask her to go. When he didn’t, she added quickly, “We could have lunch first.”
“Vanessa,” he said quietly and she could feel the mix of hurt and anger in his words. “It’s just not working.”
She felt suddenly dizzy. “I thought you cared about me, Michael.”
“I do,” he whispered. “But I don’t want a girlfriend who runs away from me every time I try to kiss her. All I wanted to do was hold your hand. Maybe you don’t like me the way I like you. It’s okay. We can be friends if that’s all you want.”
Before she could say anything, her mother tapped on the window. “Hey, did you guys have any luck?”
“You better go.”
“But, Michael—”
“Go on. We’ve said enough for today.”
She climbed from the van, an achy throbbing in her chest.
“Isn’t Michael joining us?” her mother said with a look of concern.
“No.” Vanessa shook her head sadly and watched the van drive away.
CHAPTER TWENTY
BY THE NEXT FRIDAY the loneliness inside Vanessa was as big as a boulder. She missed Catty. Tears had been creeping into her eyes all week and if she hadn’t been in the middle of Urth Caffé with everyone hanging around, she would have started crying again. The coffee and muffin smells reminded her of the crazy times she and Catty had there. She tried not to think of Catty wandering in the nightmarish land between times, but the thought came uninvited. She had a painful feeling that she was never going to see Catty again.
She set her café mocha on the table near the back window, then pulled her books and papers from her messenger bag. She doodled on a course outline, drawing the face of the moon. Then she opened her geography book. The words blurred.
Footsteps pounded across the wood floor. Someone jarred the table and her café mocha slopped over the side of the cup onto the map of Japan.
Morgan sat down. Her smile was like morning sunshine. She crossed her legs. She was wearing new chunky-heeled lace-up boots, her thighs golden and slim under a black mini.
“Hey, I’ve been looking for you,” Morgan said breezily. “I’m going out with Stanton tonight, you want to go with?”
“I don’t think so.” Vanessa was still angry with her.
“It’ll get your mind off Catty,” Morgan said. “Look, you got to face it, she’s not coming back.”
Vanessa dabbed at the spilled coffee with her napkin.
“I know you miss her, but she ditched you,” Morgan said. “She didn’t even tell you she was running.”
The disquieting tunnel flashed in Vanessa’s mind. “Maybe she couldn’t tell me,” she snapped.
“Come on,” Morgan cajoled. “I’m just trying to cheer you up. It’s better to think she ran than to think—”
“Enough!” Vanessa shouted in a burst of anger.
Morgan was silent for a moment, then she held up her slim tan wrist. “Look.” A silver watch dangled on it. “Stanton gave me this watch. He didn’t like the one I was wearing.”
“I liked your old one.” Vanessa frowned.
“This one is digital,” Morgan said. “He said I had to get modern.”
“Morgan, maybe Stanton isn’t really the guy you should be going out with.”
“Jealous?” That seemed to please her.
“No.” Was she? She had never warned a friend away from a guy. Why would she be? She still liked Michael. But she couldn’t get rid of the uneasy feeling she had about Stanton. “Stanton hangs with some really strange people and—”
“Quit worrying about me. I like Stanton. He doesn’t act like other high school boys. You know, how they have to be tough and have this attitude like they’re so cool. He’s different—dark and intense like a poet. I’ve never had a guy write a poem for me before.”
Vanessa felt a sudden yearning for Michael. She wished she hadn’t ruined things with him.
“Besides, it’s nothing serious.” Morgan looked down and waited a long time before she spoke again. “I need a guy in my life. I know that’s not cool, but I can’t help it. How could you understand anyway? You make friends in a snap, you’re really popular and you’ve got the look.”
“Me?” Vanessa looked up, surprised. “That’s what everyone says about you.”
A satisfied smile crossed Morgan’s lips. “Thanks. So don’t worry about me. It’s a waste of time. I’ve got it all together.”
Vanessa sighed. “Be careful.”
“I don’t need to be.” Morgan looked outside. “He’s so fine.”
Stanton stood at the edge of the back parking lot, wearing jeans and a black shirt, hair blowing in his eyes. He was incredibly sexy in a wild and dangerous way. She could see why Morgan was attracted to him. Maybe he really did like her.
“Yeah, well, gotta fly,” Morgan said. She almost knocked into Serena and Jimena as they walked into the café.
“Hey.” Jimena walked over to her table. She had transferred to La Brea High on Tuesday. Maggie thought it was safer if they all went to the same school. Vanessa still didn’t believe the things Maggie had told her last week. But she liked Jimena and Serena and had started to sit with them at lunch. After school they went to Pink’s for chili dogs, Retail Slut to look at punk rock clothes, and Aardvark’s Odd Ark so Serena could buy Hawaiian shirts. More than once, she’d had a strange feeling that she had known them a long time. Everything would be so good now, if only Catty were back. Well, and Michael. She wished she could think of the right thing to say to him.
Jimena handed her a roll with pink sugar sprinkled over the top.
“Here, my grandmother made pan dulce. Dunk it in your coffee,” she said. “It’s really good.” She pulled two more from a brown paper bag.
Jimena had three dots tattooed in a triangle on the web of her hand between thumb and
index finger. She caught Vanessa staring at it.
“I got that when I got ganged up. It’s for mi vida loca.” She smiled but there was sadness in it, then she pointed to the teardrop tattooed under her right eye. “I got this in a Youth Authority Camp. Means I’ve served time so all the little hood rats will know I’m one tough chola. I got caught up again but the judge gave me community service instead.”
Vanessa didn’t know what to say. Jimena understood. “You don’t need to say anything.”
Serena set two cups of café au lait on the table, then sat down. Her hair was parted on the side and slicked back, eyes and lips metallic violet. She looked pretty.
Serena smiled. “Thank you.”
Jimena laughed at Vanessa’s shocked expression. “You’ll get used to Serena reading your mind.”
Serena’s green eyes stared at Vanessa and then she said in a low whisper, “I can’t do it all the time, or the way I need to be able to do it, but I’m learning. Maggie’s been teaching me.”
“For me it just happens. Wham, like a brick in the head,” Jimena said, playfully hitting the side of her head with a clenched fist. Then she looked sad again. “The first time it happened . . .” She gazed out the window as if she were remembering something that still caused her pain. “I was seven, playing with my best friend, Miranda. All of a sudden I got this picture of Miranda in a white casket. Then Miranda touched me and another picture filled my mind. She was walking down Ladera Street. A car was going by. Shots fired. I can still see the white flash coming from the gun barrel. Miranda was killed. I saw everything. After that I wouldn’t let Miranda walk down Ladera. It meant we had to go a block out of the way every day when we walked home from school.”
“But it came true?” Vanessa asked softly.
Jimena nodded. “I didn’t go to school one day. I had to stay home because I had the flu. It was around two-thirty, when kids were getting home from school. I heard the shots and then I knew.” She looked away and brushed at her eyes.
“I thought I made it happen because of my premonition.” She smiled but her chin still quivered. “Maggie told me I was seeing the future, not making the bad things happen. I don’t know what I’d do without Maggie, but in the beginning it took me almost a year to believe everything she said. I mean, goddess?” She laughed now and the sad memories seemed to fall back into their dark secret places.
Serena tore her roll in two and dipped half in her coffee. “When I was young, I answered people’s thoughts. Not all the time, but often enough so people noticed. I couldn’t tell the difference at first.”
“That must have shocked everyone,” Vanessa commented.
Jimena laughed. “No doubt.”
“Yeah, I must have really freaked them out. I know it upset my mom.”
“Do you know everything a person is thinking?” Vanessa asked.
“No,” Serena said. “Like the night you came over to have your cards read. I didn’t know you were a Daughter at first. Then I saw your memories. First I was shocked, then I was excited. I couldn’t wait to tell Maggie. I knew Maggie had been looking for you a long time. But then the cards started showing danger for you. Could you tell I was flustered?”
“I thought you saw something in the cards that you weren’t telling me.” What had she seen?
Serena gave her a curious look. “Just what I told you already.”
“That I can’t run from this problem?”
Serena nodded.
“After you left, we went over to tell Maggie,” Jimena said. “She is one cool woman.”
“How did you meet her?” Vanessa asked.
“In our sleep.” They both laughed.
“I started having dreams about her when I was about five,” Serena explained. “Then when I was around twelve she started asking me to meet her.”
“Did you go?”
“After a few months I made Collin take me. He thought I just wanted to check out L.A. By then I was thirteen and he had just gotten his driver’s license, so he was really happy to drive me anywhere.” Serena took another bite of roll. “I didn’t think she’d be there, but—”
“There she was,” Jimena finished. “Me and my home girls went to check out the address I saw in a dream.”
“I never dreamed about her.” Vanessa thought a moment. Her nightmares had always begun with black shadows covering the moon. And the other night she had dreamed of a woman riding the moon across the sky. The woman had said something before the shadows had seeped into the dream and hidden the moon.
“The Atrox must have sent you nightmares so Maggie couldn’t talk to you in your dreams,” Jimena mused.
“Maybe one of the Followers saw you go invisible,” Serena added.
“A woman saw me once.” Vanessa spoke slowly. “I was afraid she was going to tell my mother.”
“But she didn’t,” Serena guessed.
“Yeah, ’cause she was one of them,” Jimena said.
The nightmares had started after that. Was is just a coincidence?
“You want to go dancing?” Jimena asked. “We’ll teach you some more moves.
Vanessa smiled. She admired girls who had enough nerve to dance the way they did. “You’ll have to teach me a lot,” she said, laughing. But suddenly she thought of Catty. How could she go out and have a good time when Catty was still missing?
“Actually, I better not,” Vanessa decided. “I need to study.”
“It’s all right.” Serena gave her a sympathetic look. “We can practice when Catty gets back.”
Vanessa stacked her books and hurried outside. Tears came, uninvited.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
VANESSA SAT AT HER desk, her geography book open to the same coffee-stained map of Japan. She couldn’t tolerate sitting at home another evening knowing Catty was lost, even if it was in another dimension. There had to be something she could do. She wanted to go to the Hollywood Bowl and see if she could find any trace of Catty. Maybe she could find footprints. And then what? Even if she found a print, what could she do? Probably nothing. But the urge to return to the Bowl became greater as the minutes passed.
Her mother had always told her to follow her instincts. Intuition was an infallible guide. She slammed her book closed and crept to the top of the stairs. Voices and strained laughter came from the television downstairs. Her mother must have fallen asleep on the couch. It was late, past midnight. She didn’t think her mother would check on her when she finally woke and staggered up to bed.
She went back to her room, pulled on a jacket, wrapped it tightly around her, and opened the window. She stood in the soft night breeze. The velvet darkness welcomed her. It was hard for Vanessa to make herself go invisible at will. Usually the feeling came, and she either fought it or gave in to it.
She closed her eyes. Silky moonbeams from the last quarter moon washed over her. She relaxed and stretched her imagination out to the stars. In her mind’s eye she was in deep space, the blackness as warm and soft as a womb, then she came back to her body and again surged upward into the depths of the universe.
One by one her molecules lost their connection to gravity. They detached from each other with soft pings, until she was a gray mist, shimmering half inside, half outside her bedroom window. A cool breeze filtered through her body and she became one with the night.
She floated over the city. Traffic sounds, sirens, and horns seemed as far away as a dream. She sailed on a current of air over the Hollywood Walk of Fame, then caught a breeze up the hill, and hovered over the Hollywood Bowl. The concert had ended and workers were picking up trash.
She focused all her energy on tightening her molecules.
“Please let it work,” she whispered.
Slowly she slid through the treetops and fell to earth, a trickle of vapor settling between eucalyptus trees and flat-leafed shrubs. Her molecules whisked together in a maelstrom that made her body sting. She stood, dazed with the pain for a moment, then stepped forward. Her feet crushed over dr
ied leaves. Floodlights from the Bowl made long narrow shadows slant up the slope.
She stepped out on the ledge where she and Michael had sat. She picked up a paper plate, left behind in their haste. Ants crawled over the plate in single-line formation to steal the last stains of food in the paper. She stared at it and wondered if Catty had found it and held it, watching the ants as she did now, before she had fallen into a hole in time.
Something glowed in the tall dry grass near the edge. At first she ignored the sparkle. Then she stepped closer. Catty’s watch lay tangled in the grass. Catty would never leave her watch behind. She had to see the hands to know which way she was traveling, past or future. Vanessa snapped the watch on her wrist. Another glint of light caught in the corner of her eye. Her heart lurched. Catty’s moon amulet lay in loose gravel, the chain caught on a stone. She picked it up.
A twig snapped behind her. She turned quickly.
Stanton stood behind her, eyes intense.
She started to take a step back and caught herself. She balanced on the edge of the ledge. If she stepped back farther she would plummet to the cement seats below.
“I knew you’d come looking for Catty,” he said, his voice as soft as the night.
“I thought you were out with Morgan,” she said, trying to buy time.
“Morgan’s here,” he answered. “You shouldn’t worry so much about your friend.” He took her hand and pulled her from the ledge.
Her breath caught. With his face silhouetted against the dark, she knew why he was so curiously familiar.
“You?” she said as a cold knot of fear tightened in her stomach. “You followed me that night when I walked home from Planet Bang.”
He smiled, eyes fervent. “Yes,” he stated simply. “I’ve always been in the dark with you.”
He pulled her closer to him. His head leaned down and he spoke against her cheek. Soft lips grazed her skin. “I can feel your heart racing. You shouldn’t be afraid of me.” His breath caressed her. “I’ve come to help you.”
“Help me?” She glanced down. Catty’s amulet glowed opalescent. Fiery pinks and blues shot into the dark.