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Yet.
“If I was the angel of death, you think I’d be here?”
They seemed to consider this, their shared brain struggling to make the connection.
“Why are you here?” A blond guy with a big zit on his chin asked. From his voice I knew he was the same one who’d made the “dyke” remark. His name was Aaron or Albert or something. I remembered him from last year. “Shouldn’t you be locked up with the rest of the retards?”
Heat rushed to my cheeks as people laughed, but I didn’t look away. Homeschooling was the only way I’d been able to return to my correct year. I’d busted my ass to not get left behind. Wren had been right there with me.
“They kicked me out because they needed room for your mother.” Lame, but it was the first thing that came to mind. “And I’m not retarded, asshole. I’m crazy—there’s a difference. Which you’d know if your parents weren’t brother and sister.” More laughter, but this time it was for me, not against me.
Andrew—that was his name—turned red, which only made that ugly zit stand out more. I wanted to smack it with the heel of my shoe while my foot was still inside, bust it wide-open. Gross, right? “Bitch.”
I raised a brow. “Seriously? That’s the best you can do?”
A hand settled on my arm. I looked down, expecting it to be Roxi. It wasn’t. It was Wren. Damn.
“Who are you looking at?” Andrew demanded. Then his expression turned mean—happily mean. “Is your sister here? Your dead sister?”
In books, the hero’s blood sometimes “turns to ice” in his or her veins, but that’s not right. It’s not the blood that freezes, it’s everything around it, so that your blood actually feels like hot razor blades ripping through your entire body. I lifted my head. What laughter there was gave way to uneasy, half-assed giggles. “Don’t talk about my sister.”
I shouldn’t have said anything.
“How did she die anyway?” Andrew asked with a mocking grin. “I bet your mother saw that there was two of you and lost her shit. Did she know that she killed the wrong one? It should have been you she killed.”
No one had killed Wren, she had been stillborn, and our mother had never gotten over her loss. And yeah, I wondered if the wrong one had died all the damn time.
Beside me Wren’s shape shimmered, like the edges of her were fraying. It was what happened when she got mad. Really mad. She picked up on my emotions like I’d dropped them on the floor in front of her. It meant I had to be really careful when I lied to her.
Her anger picked up my hair like a breeze.
“Don’t,” I whispered.
“Oh, are you going to cry?” Andrew pressed in a whiny voice. “Did I upset you?”
I met his gaze with a hard glare as warmth spread through me—a dry summer breeze on a hot beach. Oh, hell. I’d promised myself this wouldn’t happen. It was only the second freaking day! Wren settled in, her spirit fitting me perfectly, like a glove tailor-made for a hand. She smiled, using my lips. “She wasn’t talking to you.” It wasn’t my voice—it was lower, softer.
Andrew frowned. “What...?”
I hated when Wren possessed me without asking, but she was so powerful—like nothing I’d ever felt before. I felt strong—invincible—when we were joined together like this.
The lights flickered. Concerned murmurs rose up. People glanced at me. I shrugged—crazy didn’t affect the electricity. The lights flickered again—then the fire alarm went off, shrieking like a banshee. Hoots and cheers filled the air. Fire alarm on the second day—a lovely way to start the year. Everyone tore from the room, and Roxi didn’t wait for me—smart girl. Andrew rose from his seat, but I stopped him by grabbing his wrist.
My sister was strong. Inhumanly strong. Under my fingers, Andrew’s wrist felt as fragile as dry twigs. He tried to tug free. “Let me go, freak!”
“Sit down,” Wren commanded through my mouth. He wasn’t as stupid as he looked, because he did what he was told.
“Good boy,” I said, rising to my feet. Wren slipped out of me as easily as she’d entered. I felt her loss like someone had taken my eye or a limb. It never got any easier. She had physical contact now, sorta, and it was better if I didn’t stick around. “You just sit there a minute. There’s someone who wants to meet you.”
Andrew lifted his gaze to mine as I gathered my things. He didn’t look so smug now. “Wh-who?”
“My sister,” I told him, smiling just a little when he looked down at his wrist, still in Wren’s ghostly grip. He had to feel the cold fingers biting into his skin even though he couldn’t see them. “You know—my dead sister?”
I walked to the door, Wren’s low voice following my every step as she whispered words I couldn’t make out. I hesitated when I heard Andrew whimper.
“Go,” my sister told me.
I didn’t look, I just kept walking.
* * *
A few minutes before the end of first class I got summoned to the principal’s office. I was surprised they waited that long. Andrew was absent, and people had been looking from his empty seat to me since we were let back into the school after the alarm.
Not like they could blame me for anything. After all, I’d been outside with everyone else. If not for Roxi I would have been standing alone, with an invisible boundary around me that no one dared cross. Seriously, no one had come closer than two or three feet. It was like I had pink eye or something.
With a sigh, I packed up my books and left the classroom. Even though I’d been gone since almost the beginning of the previous year, I knew exactly how to get to the office. I’d spent a lot of time there before what my mother called the “incident.”
Incident. Somehow it didn’t have the same punch as “attempted suicide.”
I was one of those teenagers categorized as a problem or “troubled.” I got it. Last year I was troubled, and I had lots of problems. The biggest one of which was that I let myself believe the people who called me crazy, and I stopped believing in Wren.
So, yeah. I was messed up and I did some things that I really regret doing. Things that I refused to think about as I made my way down the hallway to the main staircase near the office.
I had to check in with the guy at the desk and tell him who I was. I could tell from the way he looked at me that he already knew. He pointed at the waiting area and told me to have a seat. Principal Grant would be with me in a minute.
A few seconds later a guy sat down in an empty chair across from mine. He was tall and lean, wearing jeans and a gray shirt. He had a young Keanu/Ezra Miller thing going on. Very cute, despite having a bit of a black eye.
“Rough morning?” I asked.
He grinned as he slouched in his chair. Yeah, he was really cute, even though he seemed surprised that I had spoken to him. “This?” He pointed to his eye. “This was yesterday. You should see the other guy.”
Corny, too. I smiled back. “If it happened yesterday why are you here?”
He lifted his chin toward Principal Grant’s office. “Waiting.”
I was saved from trying to figure out something witty to say by the opening of the principal’s door. A girl a year or so younger than me walked out. She took one look at Keanu and her brown eyes narrowed. The resemblance was obvious. She tossed her long, straight hair. “What are you doing here?”
He stood up, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I’m supposed to take you home.”
The girl glanced at me, and for a second her eyes widened. Then she smirked at her brother. “I can go back in if you want to wait a little longer.”
What was that supposed to mean? Keanu’s cheeks flushed, but he didn’t look away from her. And he didn’t look impressed. “Let’s go.”
She flashed that smirk at me before flouncing past. Her brother gave me an apologetic look. “Sorry you have to follow that.”
I laughed. “And here I was feeling bad for you.”
He smiled. “See you around, I guess.”
I nodded, and he was gone.
The door to the principal’s office opened again. “Miss Noble, please come in.”
Principal Grant was about six feet tall and imposing. I wouldn’t call her pretty, but she had an interesting face and curly dark hair. I was nervous as I crossed the threshold into her office.
“It’s only your second day back, Miss Noble,” she said as she closed the door behind me. “It’s not good that you’re in my office already.”
“I didn’t do anything,” I told her.
She gestured to a stiff-backed chair in front of her desk. “Sit, please.”
I did.
She sat down behind the desk and folded her hands on the top. She looked like a judge with her black suit and severe expression. I tried to keep my attention focused solely on her. “You were allowed to return to this school because of your grandmother’s ties to the community and her promise that you wouldn’t be any trouble. Are you going to make her break that promise?”
The mention of Nan yanked on my temper. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Then why did a young man have to leave school after an altercation with you?”
My eyebrows shot up. “What?”
She wasn’t buying it. “Do not play coy with me, young lady. What did you say to Andrew?”
“He was the one doing all the talking,” I replied hotly. “He insinuated that I was a lesbian, and then he made every joke he could at my expense. I told him to shut up. Then the fire alarm went off and we all left the room. Ask Roxi Taylor. I was with her the whole time.” Except for those few minutes with Wren...
“I will,” Principal Grant promised. And then she surprised me. “He called you lesbian?”
I shrugged. Again, I tried to keep my gaze focused on her, and not what was behind her. “A dyke. He was just being a jerk.”
“I take that sort of harassment very seriously, Miss Noble. This school has zero tolerance for bullying.”
“When did that happen?” I asked before I could stop myself. “Because it certainly didn’t the last time I was here.”
She looked embarrassed. “That was before I took over as principal.” Yeah, she’d been the vice principal then. “Things are different now, I promise you. If Andrew returns to school, he won’t speak to you in that manner again.”
If? Huh. “You kicking him out for picking on me won’t make my life any easier. I don’t care if he comes back, so long as he leaves me alone.”
Ms. Grant stared at me for a few seconds—enough to make me nervous. “I’ll take that under advisement. You’d better get back to class.”
That was it? “Okay.” I stood up and made for the door.
“Oh, Miss Noble?”
I stopped, hand on the doorknob, and turned. “Yeah?” Don’t look. Don’t look.
“Victim or instigator, I don’t want to see you in my office again. Am I understood?”
I nodded. “No offense, Principal Grant, but I don’t want to see you again, either.”
Or the ghost of the former principal standing behind her, his brains blown all over the wall.
* * *
“What did you do to Andrew?”
I glanced up as Roxi fell into step beside me on the walk home that day. My heart gave a little skip. After my “talk” with Principal Grant I was paranoid that everyone was out to lynch me.
“Nothing.”
“Okay, what did your sister do to Andrew?”
Huh. Grant hadn’t thought to ask me that.
“Nothing permanent,” Wren answered from her place beside me. She had changed clothes since this morning and was wearing a long boho skirt, peasant blouse and a floppy hat. Her feet were bare. Who needed shoes when your feet didn’t actually touch anything?
I was going to miss shoes when I died.
I barely looked at the living girl walking beside me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t seen him since the fire alarm this morning.” When we’d come back to class he was gone. I hadn’t asked Wren what happened and I didn’t want to know. My sister was normally quite gentle, but she was dead, and the dead took offense easily. Andrew had screwed himself when he’d suggested I should have been the one who died.
“Come on, Lark.” Roxi stopped on the cracked sidewalk. Weeds poked up through the concrete near my feet and I nudged them with the toe of my secondhand pink-and-red Fluevog shoes. “I’ve known you since we were five. I know you’re not crazy, and I know Wren is real. I’m not the only one, either.”
My eyes narrowed. “Could have used you when everyone else thought I was a liar...or nuts.”
Wren stood behind Roxi, studying her. “She seems sincere.” She didn’t care who I told about her. She only cared about me. But I cared about us.
“I told everyone who would listen that I didn’t think you were crazy.”
I looked her dead in the eye. “Gotta think that wasn’t too many people.”
Roxi blushed. She was even pretty with her face all red. “No.” She started walking again. I fell into step beside her. “Still, I wanted you to know I believed you.”
“A little late coming.” Wren walked on Roxi’s other side, still studying her as though the girl was a dress she’d like to try on. “Nice thought, though. I think she means it.”
“Thanks,” I said, looking straight ahead. My grandmother’s house was just down the block. I could feel relief loosening my shoulders. I’d only been out of some sort of care for the past few months, and being back to school had exhausted me with all the noise and bustle. All those bodies conditioned to respond to the sound of a bell reminded me a little too much of the “hospital” my mother had abandoned me to when I had refused to say that Wren was all in my head.
When I had tried to die to be with her.
I didn’t think Mom believed I was crazy, either, but it was easier than saying she hated me because Wren talked to me and not her.
“Is she with us now? Your sister?”
I cast a distrustful glance at her. Was she trying to trick me into saying something wrong? You give people messages from dead relatives, fight a few ghosts on school property, try to kill yourself and all of a sudden you’re Trouble. Huh.
“What do you think?”
I tried not to laugh as Wren jumped in front of her and shouted, “Boo!” My thoughts were getting too morose, and she knew it.
Roxi shot me a shrewd glance as she walked right through my sister—and shivered in the early September sunshine. “I think you’re not about to discuss her with someone you’re not sure you can trust.”
