My Soul to Take

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“Trouble in paradise?” Sophie asked, and I looked up to find her beaming at Nash over my head.

“Nope. We’re all shiny and happy here, thanks,” Emma said when I couldn’t unclench my teeth long enough to reply.

“Hey, Hudson.” A green-sleeved arm slid around Sophie’s shoulders, and I found myself staring at Scott Carter, the first-string quarterback and my cousin’s current plaything. “Makin’ new friends?”

Nash nodded. “You know Emma, right?”

Carter’s jaw tightened as his eyes settled on my best friend. He knew her, all right. Emma had turned him down cold over the summer, then dumped a Slushie on his shirt at the Cine mark when he refused to take the hint. If anyone other than Jimmy had been working with her, she’d probably have been reported and fired.

Nash’s hand curled around mine. “And this is Kaylee.”

Carter’s eyes turned my way, for probably the first time ever, and his smile returned as his gaze traveled from my face to the front of my shirt. Which he could probably see straight down, since he was standing. “Sophie’s sister, right?”

“Cousin,” Sophie and I said in unison. It was the only thing we agreed on.

“Hey, we’re taking my dad’s boat out on White Rock Lake Friday night. You two should come.”

“She can’t.” Sophie sneered at me, curling her arm through Carter’s. “She has to work.”

As if it were a dirty word. Though personally, after what Emma had to say about him, I’d rather spend all night scraping gum from the underside of theater chairs than spend one minute on Carter’s father’s boat.

“We’ll catch you next time,” Nash said, and Carter nodded as Sophie tugged him toward a table at the front of the quad, already swarming with green-and-white jackets.

“Wow.” Emma whistled softly. “He is such a dick. He just looked down your shirt with Sophie and Nash both standing there. That’s a jock for you.”

“We’re not all bad,” Nash said, but he looked distinctly unamused by both Carter’s optical invasion and Emma’s commentary on it.

Without his teammates around, it was easy to forget that Nash played football. Baseball too. What could he possibly want with me, while girls like Sophie were standing in line to drool all over him?

“Don’t you usually sit over there?” I asked, nodding toward the green-and-white bee swarm. We’d sat with the jocks earlier in the year, when Emma was going out with one of the linebackers, but honestly, the noise and constant posturing got on my nerves.

“You two are much better company.” Nash grinned, pulling me closer, but for once, I barely noticed. Something in that crowd of matching jackets had snagged my attention. Something felt … wrong.

Nooo …! It couldn’t happen again! Nash had said it wouldn’t!

But already the first tendrils of panic were prickling the inside of my flesh.

The edges of my vision went dark, as if death hovered just out of sight. My heart hammered. My skin tingled, and my hands curled into fists. Nash flinched and pulled his hand from mine. I’d forgotten I was holding it and had drawn blood from his palm.

“Kaylee?” His voice was thick with concern, but I couldn’t look away from the green-and-white crowd. Couldn’t concentrate on him while panic thundered through my head and guilt clawed at my heart. Someone was going to die. I could feel it, but I couldn’t tell who yet. The jackets blended into one another, like a herd of Technicolor zebras, individuals hiding among the mingling multitude.

But social camouflage wouldn’t work. Death would find the one it wanted, and I couldn’t warn the victim if I couldn’t find him. Or her.

And it was a her. I could feel that much.

“She’s doing it again.”

I heard Emma as if she were speaking from far away, though I knew dimly that she’d moved to sit next to me. I couldn’t look at her. I had eyes only for the crowd hiding the soon-to-be-dead girl. I needed to see who she was. I had to see….

Then the crowd parted and the applause began. Music played; someone had brought out a small stereo. Girls were tossing their jackets onto a pile on the ground. They lined up in the grass, forming a zigzag formation I recognized from the competitions my aunt and uncle had dragged me to. The dance team was doing a demonstration. Showing off the routine that had captured the regional trophy.

And then I saw her. Second from the left, three down from Sophie. A tall, slender girl with honey-brown hair and heavily lashed eyes.

Meredith Cole. The team captain. Shrouded in a shadow so thick I could barely make out her features.

As soon as my eyes found her, my throat began to burn, like I’d inhaled bleach fumes. Devastation drenched me,threatening to pull me beneath the surface of despair. And that familiar dark knowledge left me shivering where I sat. Meredith Cole would die very, very soon.

“Kaylee, come on.” Nash stood, tugging on my arm, trying to pull me up. “Let’s go.”

My throat tightened, and my breaths grew short. My head swam with the bitter chaos building inside me, and my heart felt swollen and heavy with grief. But I couldn’t go. I had to tell her. I’d let Heidi die, but I could save Meredith. I could warn her, and everything would be okay.

My mouth fell open, but the words didn’t come. Instead, a scream clawed at my throat, announcing its arrival with the usual burst of panic, and this time there was nothing I could do to stop it. I couldn’t speak; I could only scream. But that wouldn’t be enough. I needed words to warn Meredith, not inarticulate shrieking. What good was my “gift” if I couldn’t use it? If all I could do was scream uselessly?

The keening began deep in my throat, so low it felt like my lungs were on fire. Yet the sound was soft at first. Like a whisper I felt more than heard. I clamped my jaws shut in horror as Nash’s eyes widened, his irises seeming to churn again in the bright sunlight.

My vision darkened and went dull, as if that same foggy gray filter had been draped over the entire world. The day was dimmer now, the shadows thicker, the air hazy. My own hands looked fuzzy, as if I couldn’t quite bring them into focus. Tables, students, and the school building itself were suddenly leached of their vibrancy, like someone had opened a drain at the base of a rainbow and let all the color out.

I stood and clamped a hand over my mouth, begging an oddly faded-looking Nash with my eyes for help. The keening sound rolled up my throat now and stuck there, like a growl, offering no release.

Nash wrapped one arm around my waist and nodded for Emma to take my other side. “Calm down, Kaylee,” he whispered into my ear, his breath warm against my neck, stirring the fine hairs there. “Just relax and listen to—”

My legs collapsed, even as my gaze was drawn back to Meredith, now dancing between Sophie and a petite blonde I knew only by sight.

Nash scooped me into his arms and held me tight to his chest, still whispering something in my ear. Something familiar. Something that rhymed. His words fell on me with an almost physical presence, soothing me everywhere they touched me, like a balm I could hear.

Yet still the scream raged inside me, demanding a way out, and apparently willing to forge an exit itself, if I offered no alternative.

Emma walked ahead of us to the end of the English hall and around the corner, out of sight of the quad. No one else noticed; they were all watching the dance squad.

Nash put me down against the short wall at the end of the building, next to a door that only worked as an exit.

He sat beside me again, and this time he wrapped his arms around me while Emma knelt next to us. Nash was warm at my back, and the only sounds I could hear were his whispers and my own soft keening, persisting in spite of my struggle to suppress it.

I stared over his shoulder and past Emma’s concerned face, at the weirdly gray field house in the distance, concentrating on my efforts to speak without screaming. Something rushed across the left edge of my vision, and my gaze homed in on it automatically, trying to bring it into focus. But it moved too fast, leaving me with only a vague impression of a human silhouette, out of proportion in no way I could explain with so short a glimpse. The figure was misshapen, somehow. Odd-looking. And when I blinked, I could no longer be sure of where I’d seen it.

A teacher, probably, rendered unrecognizable by the weird gray fog that had overlaid my vision. I squeezed my eyes shut to avoid any future distractions.

Then, as swiftly as it had struck, the panic faded. Tension drained from my body like air from a beach ball, leaving me limp with relief and fatigue. I opened my eyes to see that color and clarity had returned to the world. My hands relaxed, and the scream died in my throat. But an instant later it tore through the air, and it actually took me a second to realize that the shriek hadn’t come from me.

It had come from the quad.

I knew what had happened without even looking.

Meredith had collapsed. My urge to scream died the moment she did.

Again, I’d known someone was going to die. And again, I’d let it happen.

My eyes closed as a fresh wave of shock and grief rolled over me, followed immediately by guilt so heavy I could hardly lift my head. My fault. I should have been able to save her.

More shouts came from the quad, and someone yelled for someone else to call an ambulance. Doors squealed open, then crashed into the side of the brick building. Sneakers pounded on concrete steps.

Tears of shame and frustration poured down my face. I buried my head in Nash’s shoulder, heedless as my tears soaked into his shirt. I might as well have killed her myself, for all the good my warning had done.

Around the corner, the buzz of chaos rose, each terrified voice blending into the next. Someone was crying. Someone else was running. And above it all, Mrs. Tucker, the girls’ softball coach, blew her whistle, trying ineffectively to calm everyone down.

“Who is it?” Emma asked, still kneeling beside us, eyes wide in shock and understanding as she brushed back a strand of my hair so she could see my face.

“Meredith Cole,” I whispered, wiping tears on my sleeve.

Nash squeezed me tighter, wrapping his arms around mine, where they clutched at my stomach.

Emma stood slowly, her expression a mixture of disbelief and dread. She backed away from us, legs wobbling. Then she turned carefully and peeked around the corner. “I can’t see anything. There’re too many people.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said, mildly surprised by the dazed quality of my own voice. “She’s already dead.”

“How do you know?” Her hand gripped the corner of the building, nails digging into the rough mortar outlining the brown bricks. “Are you sure it’s Meredith?”