“Maybe it is safe, but I don’t want to do it.”
“Please. Let’s try.” Catty jumped off the couch, animated again, and nearly collided with the door as it opened. Vanessa’s mother walked in carrying three bolts of glittering blue silky material.
“Hi, girls,” she said. “Catty, I hope you can stay for dinner. It’s been such a wonderful day. I accomplished so much. Why can’t every day be like this one?” She walked through the living room back to her worktable in the kitchen, her heels tapping on the wood floors.
“See, some people liked it.” Catty grinned. “So how ’bout it? We’ll time it so we’ll come up behind the person who was spying on you and Michael.” She made wild gestures like she was capturing the person.
“Forget it.” Vanessa dismissed the idea. An uneasiness spread through her. “And promise me you won’t go back alone.”
“Sure,” Catty said too easily.
“I mean it. At least let me think about it for a couple days. I don’t want you to go alone.” Maybe if she could make Catty wait and they went far enough into the future, Catty wouldn’t try her dangerous leapfrog plan.
“I really promise,” Catty insisted, but her eyes glanced too quickly away. “I’ve got to go anyway. I have homework to catch up on.”
Catty left and Vanessa went back to the kitchen. Her mother was cutting tissue paper. She made patterns for the dresses she had sketched that were hanging on the wall.
“Pretty.” Vanessa admired them.
“Where’s Catty?” her mother said, and snipped the tissue.
“She had to go.”
“Without eating?” her mother asked. “Was she upset?”
“Homework,” Vanessa explained. “Mom, you’re not working tomorrow, are you?”
“I have the day off. I’ll be sewing, but gratefully at home. No more measuring sweaty actresses.”
“I thought maybe we could have the day together.”
She put the scissors down. “Sounds wonderful.”
They ate mixed green salads and poached salmon for dinner. Vanessa wasn’t really hungry. She felt like she’d eaten two dinners already. She wondered if Catty was practicing again, or simply nudging time to give herself an extra hour for homework.
Vanessa watched her mother cut the salmon into perfect flakes and spear them into her mouth. She loved her mother, but she wondered if her mother would feel the same way about her if she knew the truth about her only daughter. Would she still sit at the foot of her bed to keep the nightmares away as she had done to comfort Vanessa after her father had died, or would the truth fill her with a nightmare of her own?
“I love you, Mom,” Vanessa whispered.
Her mother looked up, startled. “I love you, too, Nessy.”
“Well, good night, then,” Vanessa said. She cleared her dish and put it in the dishwasher.
“Good night,” her mother called after her.
She took a bath and decided to do her homework and go to bed early. By the time she plopped on her bed, she was so tired she couldn’t fall asleep. She stared at the luminous hands on her clock. She must have drifted off, because when she stirred again, her room was cold.
She rolled over and snuggled deeper under the covers. As she started to fall asleep she saw the curtains billowing gracefully out from her window. She had locked the window, hadn’t she? Maybe a Santa Ana had ripped down from the desert and blown the windows open.
That’s when she saw the shadow in the chair next to her bed. It looked like a person. This time, she was determined not to be scared. Finally to prove to herself that no one was there, she reached her hand out from underneath the warm covers to touch the shadow.
Cold fingers grabbed her wrist.
CHAPTER TWELVE
VANESSA JERKED HER hand back and sat bolt upright in bed, staring at the cloudy shape of the intruder. A scream scrambled up her throat and died.
“Serena?” Vanessa cried.
“Sorry,” Serena said. Her tongue piercing clicked nervously against her teeth. She moved her head, and in the dim light falling through the window, with her hair spiked and her face shining, she looked like a forgotten fairy from some arcane legend.
Vanessa caught her breath and pushed the palm of her hand against her chest. Her heart pounded as if she had almost tripped over a precipice.
“I thought you were sleeping.” Serena’s words were soft, like a lullaby. “I was trying to figure out a way to wake you up without scaring you.”
“If you didn’t want to scare me, why didn’t you use the doorbell?” Irritation wrapped in tight coils inside her.
“I had to talk to you,” Serena said. “It’s really important, and I didn’t want your mother to know I was here.”
Vanessa pulled the covers tighter around her. “Couldn’t you just call next time, or talk to me at school?”
“I tried at school, but I needed to talk to you privately.”
“You should have tried harder,” Vanessa said, her heart still beating rapidly. Maybe this was what Morgan had been talking about when she said Serena was weird. “What’s so important?”
Serena hesitated as if she was trying to find a way to put her thoughts into words. “I’m sorry if I upset you Sunday night.”
Vanessa sighed and shook her head. “Believe me, you could have waited until school tomorrow to tell me that. How did you get in here, anyway?”
“How?” Serena seemed surprised. “Your window, of course.” And then she giggled in disbelief. “You mean you’ve never used your window to sneak out?”
Vanessa thought of the times she had left her room late at night under the steady light of a full moon. If Serena ever saw her do that, the sight would jam her giggles down her throat.
“You have snuck out.” Serena leaned close to her. “But there’s something different about the way you leave your room, Vanessa.”
“What do you mean?” Vanessa asked, and wondered how Serena could know what she had been thinking. And then another panicked thought came to her—had Serena seen her?
“Tell me. It’s really important. I need to know.” Serena grabbed Vanessa’s arm, the fingers icy cold. “What is it about you, Vanessa, that makes you so different from everyone else? I need to know more about your secret.”
A sudden fear pushed into Vanessa’s thoughts. How could Serena know there was anything different about her? Unless . . . the thought came as quickly as lightning struck. “It was you. You’ve been following me. Why? Don’t you know how much you’ve been scaring me?”
“No.” The word hit in one staccato beat and hung in the air between them. “It wasn’t me,” she added softly. “And stop calling me weird. I hate that.”
“I didn’t say the word.”
“I know,” Serena answered quickly, “but you were thinking it.”
“You can’t know what I’m thinking,” Vanessa said, more to herself than to Serena.
“If I prove to you I can, will you go with me?”
“Where?”
“Just promise to go with me if I can prove to you that I can read your thoughts.”
“Sure, why not? Like people can do that,” Vanessa said sarcastically, and thought, A dog has brown spots.
Serena stared at her. “This isn’t fair. I can’t do it if you’re giving me something that has no emotion attached to it. No content!”
“All right, here’s another.” Vanessa thought of the number seven.
“You’re trying to trick me.” Serena seemed really frustrated now.
“I’m not!” Vanessa said too loudly, and hoped she didn’t wake her mother. She stumbled from the bed and turned on the fluorescent lamp near her computer. White light flooded the room with a buzzing sound. “I don’t want you sneaking into my room ever again, and I really think we should wait and talk tomorrow. We could meet at Urth Caffé after school, okay?”
Serena sat back on the chair, green eyes reflective, and studied Vanessa like a cat.
A jolt of ener
gy suddenly filled Vanessa’s head. The sensation confused her at first. She tried to close her thoughts, make her mind blank.
Serena squinted. The feeling stopped. Then Serena opened her eyes and the feeling returned like the slap of a cold wave. It felt like Serena was rampaging through her mind, examining stored memories. Impossible. It had to be a headache, some strange flu, a virus. She was beginning to feel dizzy and nauseated.
“Stop!”
Serena seemed to draw back, although no movement was perceptible.
Vanessa sat on the edge of her bed and stared at her. “You can read minds.” But even as she said the words she started to disbelieve. People can’t do that, she thought. It’s probably the cold and being awakened with such a start. Or she hypnotized me. Why?
“Sorry.” Serena licked her lips. “I hope I didn’t scare you too much. I had to be sure. I needed to know you weren’t a trap.”
“Trap?”
“It happens now and again. I get deceived,” Serena explained.
Vanessa started to speak again, but the way Serena was looking at her made her words fall away.
“You’re in danger,” Serena said.
The fine hairs on the back of Vanessa’s neck bristled.
“You know who’s been following me?” she asked.
“Yes.” Serena’s voice was solemn. “I know.”
“Who?” Vanessa asked. She felt a rising impatience not only with Serena but with herself. How could she believe this? If Serena knew who it was, then it was probably Serena who had been following her.
“I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
“That’s for someone else to do.” Serena stood. “I’m supposed to take you to her.”
“You mean now?”
“Of course now. Why else would I have climbed up the side of your house and through your bedroom window to tell you you’re in danger? I could have done that on the phone, or slipped you a note at school. You have to meet someone, and she wants to do it now, before you say anything to your mother.”
“How do you know I was going to say anything to my mother?”
“You told Catty at lunchtime.” She started pacing, her shoes made a steady beat.
“You couldn’t have heard.”
“Of course not, I read the thought before you spoke it. Hurry. My friend Jimena’s waiting around the corner. We’ve got a car and we’ll drive you.” She started for the window as if she expected Vanessa to follow her. She straddled the windowsill and turned back.
“Come on,” she urged. “Get dressed. Hurry!”
Vanessa hesitated. “If you knew when I was over at your house, why didn’t you tell me then?”
“I couldn’t. I had to check first. I had to make sure you weren’t one of them.”
“Who?”
“Never mind,” Serena said. “You’ll know soon enough if you get dressed and come.”
Vanessa fell back on her pillows.
Serena read her thoughts clearly.
“It’s not a dream, Vanessa,” Serena told her. “There’s no waking up tomorrow. This is happening.”
“What is happening?” Vanessa asked. “Tell me.”
“I can’t tell you. I can only take you to the person who can explain it all to you.”
Vanessa stared at Serena, poised on the window ledge like some mysterious fairy. She could go with her. Her mother would probably never know, but there was something else to consider. Morgan had said Serena had a reputation for liking the bizarre, and maybe this was part of it. How could she trust her? Maybe Serena was the person who had been following her. Of course, she would deny it if Vanessa asked her. And even the strange feeling that Serena had penetrated her mind could have been some form of hypnotic suggestion, especially with the way she had stared at her . . . the way she was staring at her again now.
“You need to trust me.” Her voice was taking on a gentle, almost pleading tone. “Please. ”
Vanessa wanted answers. She needed to know who was following her, but still she hesitated. “Can’t we wait and do it tomorrow?”
“It has to be tonight.” Serena sighed. She stared out at the night sky. “The moon is up. You’ll be safe.”
“What does the moon have to do with it?”
Serena smiled and stretched her arms. “Doesn’t the dark of the moon make you feel uncomfortable? And the full moon make you feel strong? Do you look forward to seeing the moon rise the way some people love to watch a sunrise?”
Before Vanessa could answer, she turned to her, eyes on fire, and said, “I do.”
Vanessa hesitated but only for a second. “I’ll get dressed,”
“Great!” Serena said too loudly.
Vanessa knew it was wrong. She thought she would probably regret it, but she hurried to the closet and yanked a pair of jeans from a hanger. The hanger fell to the floor and skidded across the room. She almost had the jeans pulled on when she heard her mother.
“Vanessa,” her mother called.
There was a soft padding of bare feet on the runner in the hallway.
“Damn.” Serena quickly climbed out the window as the door to Vanessa’s bedroom opened.
Vanessa struggled out of the jeans and kicked them back in her closet.
“Vanessa, what’s going on? I heard voices.” Her mother walked into the room. “Did Catty sneak over here again?”
“No,” she said.
“I told you, Catty can spend the night anytime, but I need to know.” She slammed the window shut.
“But it wasn’t Catty!” Vanessa tried to say. “It was Serena.”
“Don’t lie to me, Vanessa. I know it was Catty again. You two just can’t keep running around at all hours of the night. You’re on restriction. No Planet Bang tomorrow night or Friday.”
Vanessa moaned in protest.
Her mother turned off the light and left the room as quickly as she had come.
Vanessa climbed back in bed and pulled the covers around her.
Outside the roar of a car engine filled the night. The pounding beat of hard music followed. She wondered if that was Jimena and Serena, mission failed, on their way to wreak havoc in some other part of Los Angeles.
It took her hours to fall asleep. Did Serena really know someone who could answer her questions? Or was Morgan right? Was Serena just odd? When she fell asleep, she dreamed of a woman riding the moon across the sky. Her pale hair caught the light of the sun, and the long curls became iridescent rainbows that wrapped the world with love and peace.
“There’s someone you have to meet,” the woman in the dream said. “Hurry.”
But Vanessa’s feet were frozen. Shadows seeped into the dream then. Opaque clouds hid the moon, and Vanessa found herself trapped in another nightmare.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LEAF BLOWERS AWAKENED Vanessa early the next morning. She dressed quickly in yellow drawstring pants and a lacy camisole over her bra, then pulled on a sheer blouse with dragons crawling down the shoulders. She slipped into sandals with butterflies, grabbed her messenger bag, and hurried downstairs. She left a note on the kitchen counter for her mother. She apologized about last night and told her she had changed her mind and decided to go to school. Then she walked to Catty’s house. She told Catty about Serena’s late-night visit while they made breakfast burritos with red and green chili peppers, eggs, and cheese, and drank champurrados, a frothy mixture of water, cornmeal, chocolate, and cinnamon. When they were done, an early morning breeze flapped the white curtains over the soap suds and dirty pans in the sink.
“No wonder Morgan calls Serena the Queen of Weird,” Catty said. She sat cross-legged at the breakfast counter, still in her pajamas, and twisted the ear on her bunny slipper.
“Maybe she has the answer.” Vanessa spooned more hot sauce onto her burrito.
“How can you trust her? You don’t even know her.”
“She seems nice enough.” Vanessa took a bite of burrito.
“You say that
about everyone.”
“Well, she does.”
“Look, Vanessa, everyone likes you because you’re so nice to them, but I think this is one time when you should be less nice and not so trusting. What if Morgan’s right?”
Vanessa sighed, then tossed the last of the burrito into her mouth. A jalapeño pepper burned its way down her throat. She reached for the champurrado to put out the fire. “Get dressed,” she ordered. “It’s getting late.”
“You go on,” Catty said. “I’m not feeling well. I think I overdid it with the time-travel yesterday.”
“You want me to stay with you?”
“No. Get notes for me, okay?”
“Sure.” Vanessa picked up her bag.
Catty followed her through the living room to the door.
Vanessa started to leave, but apprehension made her stop. “Maybe I should stay with you.” She spoke over the rising smoke from sandalwood incense that burned near the door.
“Go on,” Catty urged. “I’m going back to bed. I wouldn’t be much company.” She held her head down and stared at the bunny slippers, as if she didn’t want Vanessa to see her eyes.
“You sure?” Vanessa said.
“Yeah, go.”
That was the last time she saw Catty.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
VANESSA DIDN’T KNOW how she got through the rest of the week. How could she do homework, take tests, or even flirt and smile with Michael when Catty was missing? The teachers said Catty fit the profile of a runaway. How could they say that when they didn’t really know her? None of them did. A policewoman had come and gone. So had a protective-services worker from the county. Each had questioned Vanessa at school and then slapped their notebooks closed as if to say, just another runaway.
On Friday, after school, Vanessa sat on the cement bench where she normally waited for Catty. The day had been hot and now the smog was as thick as tar, and made sky and trees a hazy yellow-brown. The air smelled metallic. She lifted her hair off her neck, hoping the stagnant air might evaporate the sweat.