I was no cheerleader. I was much farther down the social food chain. Nobody wanted a football jock dating an editor of the school paper.
Derek finished loading his backpack and propped himself against the neighboring desk, waiting for me.
I invented reasons to stay. I rearranged my pens and pencils. I adjusted my stack of textbooks, ordering them neatly by period. I straightened my notebooks. Everything I’d put away, I took out and redid, buying time.
Derek waited, beaming. Handsome, strong, charming. Impossible to ignore.
Pietr leaned toward Mr. Miles, hands ruffling against stacks of papers as he spoke softly.
Mr. Miles frowned and shook his head. “I certainly don’t change service learning assignments because of a lover’s spat. Imagine how often I would be rearranging things if I did.”
Pietr hung his head.
Derek’s mouth slid into a smirk. “Come on, Jessica.” He straightened, shouldering his backpack. “We don’t want to be late.”
As cool as it was that Derek used “we” to refer to me and him—together—I couldn’t leave. Not yet. Two months ago I wouldn’t have given Pietr Rusakova a second glance if Derek had shown any interest in me. But he hadn’t. “I’m sorry, Derek. I have to talk to him.”
“Don’t waste your time. Sarah will give him whatever he wants—if you know what I mean.”
I did. Everyone did.
“But you”—he set a hand on my desk, so close I could smell the cinnamon scent of his breath—“you have higher standards.”
I wanted to disagree, stand up for Sarah and say she and I were cut from the same cloth. But it was such a lie. The truth was I couldn’t even afford a yard of what Sarah’d been cut from.
Instead of disagreeing with Derek, I said, “Go on. I’ll catch up to you later.”
He shrugged, not worried. Derek was top dog at Junction High School.
Before the werewolves moved in.
“I don’t think there’s anything you can say that would make me change your service learning assignment.”
Pietr groaned.
I stood and slung the backpack over my shoulder, heading for the door. I’d just taken a position outside in the hallway, my back cooled by a locker, when Pietr stepped out. My stomach tightened, quivering in anticipation.
He knew I was there before I said anything.
“Why are you doing this?”
Mr. Miles closed the classroom door. Students completed the race to class, leaving us alone in the hallway.
Pietr stood silent, looking down at me.
“I don’t know what to do,” I confessed. “I thought—when I had time to think—we’d come through everything stronger. I didn’t expect this. You choosing Sarah, Derek choosing me.…”
“You said a girl will know when she’s not wanted. She’ll move on,” he said, shoving my logic back at me. The logic I hoped would work on Sarah. It hit me in the chest, a strike to my heart that left me gasping.
“I’m not—you don’t—oh. God.” My hands covered my ears, but it didn’t matter. His words spun in my head, mixing with my racing pulse. Like Rio’s hoofbeats thudding at full gallop.
“Eezvehneetyeh. I’m sorry, Jess. It’s for the best.”
“God! How can you just”—I fought for breath, for words, for hope—“how can you hurt me like this?”
Red seeped from his pupils to stain the edges of his irises purple. He grated the next words out, saying, “Things. Change.”
“I know that, Pietr. Things change, life goes on, it’s not you it’s me, all’s fair in love and war … boys become men—or more … or is it less, Pietr?”
I stepped forward, closing the distance between us for a heartbeat before he closed his glowing eyes, clenched his jaw, and stepped back.
“Pietr. I know you’ve changed. But what I saw then wasn’t half as horrible as what I’m seeing now.”
Opening his eyes once more, he avoided looking into mine.
“You want to know what makes a man a monster? This.” I waved a hand at the thin space between us.
Stoic, he took it. Where had his fire, his fight, gone? I’d seen it the night of his seventeenth birthday. I’d been both mesmerized and terrified by it. Now all I wanted was some glimmer of that strength, some hint of that passion pointed in my direction.
I dropped my backpack. “Don’t you feel anything for me, Pietr?” I lunged and hooked my hands over his shoulders, stretching to cover his mouth with mine, willing my lips to do what words would not.
He pushed me away. Voice strangling, he replied, “Eezvehneetyeh. I’m sorry, Jess. Take care of yourself.” He stormed away, red eyes flashing.
I didn’t have the heart to watch him go—couldn’t bear that he wouldn’t look back.
I wound up late to biology, struggling to cool my heart. I was fine until I noticed the dissection trays and pins.
Amy was at our station, carving up the detached head of a pig. My world wobbled and I was back at that night, in the old park as Nickolai’s head was torn free of his body.
* * *
I tugged back my hair, barely knotting it at the nape of my neck before my throat tightened and I latched my hands onto the cool toilet seat. And threw up.
Again.
I fumbled with the toilet paper dispenser and tore free a wad of the rough stuff to wipe my mouth, tossing it into the bowl before I closed my eyes and flushed.
The door to the bathroom squeaked open and I tried to regain control of my swirling stomach. No good. I lurched forward and heaved more of my guts into the waiting water.
“Jessie?” Amy’s voice froze me, though my insides quivered mutinously. I flushed and rustled through the contents of my purse for mints.
“Jessie!” She pounded on the stall door. “What’s wrong?”
That was Amy: straight to the heart of a matter—no How are you doing? when she could guess by the sound and the smell that I was far from okay. Hoping the mints worked, I stepped out, purse dragging behind.
“Ohhh.” She wrinkled her nose and looked me over. “You smell almost as bad as you look.”
I reached into my pocket, digging for my worry stone. Its touch did little to combat my twisting stomach. “I’m fine.”
“Liar.”
I shrugged and headed to the sink.
“Are you pregnant?”
My head snapped up and I glimpsed myself in the mirror. Not good. “Not unless I’ve been chosen for immaculate conception.”
It took her a moment, but she got it. “So.” She grabbed a paper towel, wet it, and rubbed at the ends of my makeshift ponytail. “Why are you puking your guts out during bio?”
“I just…” How could I explain without giving everything away? Or making her think I’d lost it? “Something must not be sitting right with me.”
“Bull. Is it the dissection? You got a soft spot for pigs? You can opt out and use that computer program.”
I tried to imagine the process on a screen instead and headed for the toilet again. Dry heaves rattled me until my head ached. Even on a computer screen dissection—the slow examination of anatomy—would remind me of death. Of violent nightmares spiraling out again and again in slow motion.
Amy knelt beside me, stroking my back. “I had to do this for my mom a couple times,” she confided. “But she was dumb about drink. You’re not suffering from the same thing, are you, Jessie?”
I shook my head—slowly—not sure what to do with my mouth. There were plenty of words to explain the situation. But none of them were believable.
“This has to do with Pietr.”
I could give her that much, so I nodded. Ow.
“Bastard. Why are they always such bastards?”
“Marvin seems okay,” I suggested.
She let go of me and adjusted her sweater. “Yeah, he does seem pretty okay, doesn’t he?” Her eyebrows drew together as the wheels in her head turned. “Sure, Pietr’s dating Sarah, but that’s not new. So what’s really got you t
ied up in knots—what happened with Pietr you didn’t tell me about?” I felt freshly sick. “What happened the night you sneaked out?”
“You know.”
“No. Not the first night you sneaked out. The night of Pietr’s birthday. What happened between you two?”
“Was that when I went to see Max?”
“Ha!” Amy snorted.
“That’s what Sarah probably believes.”
“And you can thank me later for talking to her long enough to create an interesting reason you’d get grounded.”
“I’d never stay out all night with Max.”
“Lots of girls would … Hey! Don’t change the subject. What really happened?”
My eyes slammed shut in self-defense, like I could wall out her words and worries. But the darkness behind my eyelids drew me back to that evening, and—my stomach made a noise and Amy dodged out of the way. “False alarm,” I apologized. Rising with a grunt I returned to the sink. Surely there was nothing left in my stomach.
Amy reached into her purse and withdrew a small bottle of mouthwash.
“You’re not supposed to have that in school.”
“Well, hell-o, Dick Tracy.” She pressed it into my hand. “Do us all a favor and break this rule. Mints aren’t working.”
I opened the little bottle and took a swig, swishing it into all the unholy flavored nooks and crannies of my mouth.
“I’m going to ask one more time,” she chided. “Okay, no, that’s a lie. I’m going to keep asking until I get the truth. What happened the night of Pietr’s birthday?”
I swirled the mouthwash around until it felt like every taste bud on my tongue had peeled off. Where would someone in my position start? With the CIA, the Russian Mafia, or werewolves? I spat and cupped a hand for water.
“We learned a lot about each other. He surprised me.” Not with a bouquet of flowers, either. With fangs. And far more body hair than the average guy ever developed.
A crease appeared between her eyebrows. The next words she said fell out of her mouth one by one, cut from the other. “Did. He. Hurt. You?”
“No! No. Geez, Amy. No. It’s just—we’re really, fundamentally, so different.” He changes into a frightening wolflike thing and tears through the woods eradicating the rabbit population. I like to watch an occasional reality television show.
“People can be different, even be dating, and nobody in the pair winds up kneeling before the porcelain throne when they take a scalpel to a pig’s head.”
I shrugged. “You’ve told me before you don’t follow my particular brand of logic.”
“You’re still not giving me the whole story.”
I made a show of trying to fix my hair. The results only reinforced what I already knew: Sometimes trying to fix a thing only made it worse.
“Dear God,” Amy said. Pulling out a brush, she freed my hair from its impromptu ponytail. “Ask for help, for once. For a change.”
I glared into the mirror and let her do her best.
“So what happened the night of Pietr’s birthday that makes you freak when you see the head of a dead animal?”
I seized the sink to brace myself as the image of Nickolai’s beheading overrode my vision, as fresh as the night I’d witnessed it.
“What the—?” Amy held me by the shoulders, supporting me as my legs wobbled and threatened to give out.
“Sorry.” I fought for control, locking my traitorous knees in place.
Someone brushed Amy aside, taking all my weight even before I realized who else had joined us.
“Catherine,” I whispered.
Then I fainted.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I woke in the nurse’s office. Catherine and Amy whispered to each other, voices as animated as Catherine’s hands.
“Of course my brothers are idiots,” Catherine agreed. “It comes with testosterone. I believe its letters T-E-S-T are not a reference to male anatomy, but a warning to the opposite sex. They test us. Repeatedly.” She sighed. “You have a brother?”
I tried to sit, but my head felt lead-loaded.
“Yes,” Amy said.
“Has he never been an idiot, a disappointment?”
I could only imagine what raced through Amy’s mind. She loved her brother, but he’d walked out on the family, enlisting as soon as he was legal. When she’d needed an ally most.
“Yes, he’s been an idiot,” she admitted.
I rolled over on the cot to watch through slitted eyelids.
Catherine sat back, arms folded. “But you love him.”
“Of course.”
“Da. Kohneeshnoh. Of course.” Cat stared directly at me. “And Jessie says things can’t work between she and Pietr?”
“Come on. He’s totally blowing her off. And hanging on to Sarah even tighter than before. I mean, gross. I just don’t get it. What happened to push Jessie and Pietr apart and throw Jessie and Derek together?”
“Hello, Miss Gillmansen.” The school nurse stepped in front of me, blocking my view and pinching my wrist for a pulse.
“I feel much better.”
“Congratulations. Your pulse is normal. How long have you been purging?”
“What?” I sat up. And hated myself for doing so. My head pounded. “Purging?”
“Yes. Bingeing and purging.”
I blinked, realizing. “You think I’m bulimic?”
“Aren’t you?”
“No.”
“You collapsed after vomiting repeatedly, according to your friends.”
I bent around the nurse and glared at Amy and Cat.
Amy shot me a look that clearly meant, If you’d told the truth to begin with …
“If I could keep stuff in my stomach, I’d be happier.”
She put a hand on my forehead. “You don’t feel warm, but let’s take your temperature. We’ve had a few students in here with headaches and stomach trouble. Did you eat anything questionable yesterday or today?”
An odd question. Maybe there was something wrong with the school food. Luckily I’d had none of it. “I don’t think that’s the problem.”
Catherine leaned forward in her chair, waiting.
I looked pointedly at them. “Aren’t they going to get in trouble for sticking around? Missing class?”
The nurse agreed and hurried Amy and Cat out. Cat raised an eyebrow at me. Amy stuck her tongue out.
“So, Miss Gillmansen, if it’s not food-related and you have no temperature”—she placed a thermometer in my mouth—“what do you blame for your vomiting?”
Why did nurses ask questions when you had to keep a thermometer under your tongue? Like dental hygienists getting chatty while they cleaned. “Nightmareth.”
“What?”
The thermometer beeped and she yanked it out, examining it, and me, critically.
“I’ve just been really shaken up. I’m having some nightmares and not sleeping well. That and the smell of preserved pig flesh…”
“When was your last period?”
“Seriously. It’s nightmares.”
She nodded. “Then you have to see someone about them. If your nightmares can trigger this reaction…” Her lips pressed together. “Have you spoken to Counselor Maloy?”
I sighed. Previous discussions with Maloy made me wonder why he wasn’t starring in one of my nightmares himself.
“If not him, find someone else. A professional.”
I considered Counselor Harnek from middle school. She’d come to my rescue once and wanted an update, anyhow.
The nurse tugged open a drawer in her desk, taking my silence for noncompliance. “Call her. She’s new but well recommended.”
I glanced at the card she set in my palm. Dr. Sarissa Jones. A string of letters rivaling the alphabet followed her name, proclaiming her academically proven abilities. Of course hers was the card I’d be given. Been there, done that. “Thanks.”
“As a precaution, don’t eat anything spicy. Try saltines, ginger ale. Keep t
hings simple,” she suggested.
“Yeah. Simple.” She had no idea how attractive simple sounded to me.
“And, Miss Gillmansen?” the nurse called as I hit the door. “I’ll be checking up on you.”
* * *
It seemed everyone was checking up on me. Outside the nurse’s office they’d lined up, oblivious to the scolding by the lone substitute teacher stuck on hall duty: Sophia, Amy with Marvin, Catherine with Max—even Stella Martin paused to give me a once-over (and Max a long look) as she hurried to class.
And of course there was Sarah, Pietr’s arms wrapped around her like a blanket.
His eyes were the first on me, and first to pull away.
Amy tugged free of Marvin and joined Sophia and Catherine, forming a wall in front of me. “Well?” she asked.
“Stomach flu.”
Amy shook her head. “It’s not going around.”
“Heat stroke,” I tried.
“It’s autumn in Junction.” Her fists landed on her hips. “Tell me the truth or don’t bother telling me anything.”
For a moment I looked over her shoulder and caught Pietr’s eyes. They were the coolest blue I’d ever seen, and still my knees threatened to buckle.
“Fine!” Amy snapped, stalking off, grabbing Sophia and Cat by the arms so they had no choice but to follow.
Sarah stepped out of Pietr’s shadow and touched my arm.
“I’m okay. It’s not worth worrying about.”
Pietr’s eyes bored into my forehead accusingly, like he was shouting the word liar. But only until he knew I’d seen him.
Suddenly another face was in front of mine, blocking Pietr from my sight. Derek. The guy who’d starred in my dreams before they’d been overridden by nightmares. Handsome—actually, consistently stunning—and I, well, the only thing stunning about me was my breath. And not in a good way.
“I heard you fainted.” He looked me up and down, maneuvering between Sarah and myself to slip an arm around me. My backpack hung over his shoulder, beside his own. “Sarah, I’ll take over.” He grinned at Pietr, his look full of challenge.
I didn’t care. At least that’s what I repeated over and over, fuzzy headed, as I let Derek lead me away.
Behind us a very satisfied Sarah said to Pietr, “She’s always adored Derek.”