Gravity, a young adult paranormal romance (6 page)

She glared at me, and her blue eyes
were icy. I had never seen her look at me with so much contempt. I
wondered what horrible thing I'd done, flickering quickly through
the possibilities.

"I don't have time for this," she
said, stomping out of my room. Then she headed for the outside
door. 

"Take your sweatshirt, it's getting
cold," I said. Jenna always complained about being
chilly.

She sighed at me, the dampener on her
good time, grabbing her yellow sweatshirt off the back of a
chair.

"Anything else you need, mom?" she
asked, rolling her eyes at me as she stood impatiently by the open
door.  

A tear rolled down my cheek and I
wiped it away.  

"Stop acting like a baby," she
commanded sharply, bracing her arms against the doorway. "I'll be
back before midnight. You'll never even miss me." She swung outside
into the night, but she made sure I heard her next
words.

"I won't miss you."

And with that she was gone. Out of my
life, possibly forever. Would I always wonder what I could have
done to stop her from leaving that night? If I'd known she wouldn't
be back, I would have chased her outside, but she would only have
become angrier with me.

She hadn't always been cruel. In fact,
for years we'd been thick as thieves, our personalities the exact
right fit. I patiently listened to her stories, almost never
pointing out how she embellished her dates to make her life sound
more exciting. But in the months before she left, she changed.
Sometimes I felt like whomever she had been vanished before my
eyes, long before she stepped out into the night.  

Chapter 5

When the end of the day finally
arrived, I found I was wary of going back to the electives hall. I
still hadn't come up with a logical solution to what happened with
the lockers, unless I had mad cow disease eating my brain, and to
be honest I hadn't been trying to think about it. Once I actually
got there, my irrational fear dissipated. The crowd was busy
shouting and joking and scrambling to get to class. No room existed
for my dread.   

I went into the art room, and saw that
my calculations through the window were correct. It was quite a bit
roomier than our classroom from last year. But bright replications
of famous paintings covered every wall, and carts of paper and
paints crowded the side aisles. I looked to the board; no assigned
seating. Those were the hardest classes now. Just finding someone
to sit by became an awkward chore.

A girl sat alone in the back row,
dressed in dark, creative clothing. Her dress looked like it was
made out of torn sweater pieces stitched together. I wished I had
the guts to dress like that, instead of my bland uniform of
t-shirts and jeans. Behind her little tortoiseshell glasses, the
girl's eyelids sparkled with thick silver glitter.

I walked towards her. She looked like
a fascinating person to talk to, and I had never seen her before.
But she spotted me, and picked up her brown messenger bag from the
floor. Dropping the bag on the seat next to her with a clunk, she
scowled at me. The bag was covered with little pins that had
phrases on them I was too far away too read. I assumed they all had
an antisocial theme.   

"Okay..." I said under my breath,
turning back around.  

I took a seat in the second row next
to a nerdy boy who ignored my presence. I had been getting a lot of
that reaction today, so it didn't bother me. In front of me, I
noticed with an internal groan, sat Lainey. Her cloying cloud of
fruit punch scented perfume hit me in the face like a chemical
warfare attack. But the only other empty seat in class was right
next to her, and bumping elbows would be ten times
worse.

Henry breezed in through the door the
second before the bell rang.

"You have got to be kidding me," I
said out loud, shocked at the coincidence. Both Lainey and the boy
next to me looked at me as though I were insane. I began to
conclude I probably was. But the situation was getting a little
ridiculous, like the universe enjoyed rubbing absurd but gorgeous
smile boy in my face. He swung into the seat next to Lainey
agilely, depositing his books on the table.

To my surprise, Henry spun in his
seat, looking at me. Gripping the chair back, he said, "I'm not
following you, I swear. This is pure coincidence."
 

"Uh huh," I said, frowning. I had no
idea how to react to his attention. I'd checked my face out
discreetly earlier for stray ink or anything else that would have
caused embarrassment, but found nothing.   

"I have a question for you," he said,
tipping the chair off the floor and looking at me down the bridge
of his nose.  

"Fire away."

"Why do I irritate you so much?" His
face was open and patient, watching for my explanation.

Lainey had now turned towards us, her
china doll face wrought with confusion, openly watching our
conversation like she had stock in it. I remembered her words about
going ballistic if anyone got near Henry, and I had no doubt that
she meant it.   

"What gave you that idea?" I asked,
avoiding Henry's inquiring, curious eyes. Something about his stare
seemed both intimate and knowing. I was mortified that he had
caught on; I didn't think I acted that obvious. But judging my
actions had become hard, now that I felt so removed from
them.

"Just had that feeling," he continued,
unfazed. "But I think you'll get used to me, now that we'll be
spending our afternoons together." It seemed as if he enjoyed that
idea. Or perhaps he was playing with me like a toy on a string. I
felt hopeless to tell the difference.

"Funny how that turned out," I said
softly.  

My eyes flicked to Lainey again, whose
face was scrunched so much at the center she risked imploding. That
would be interesting to witness. Henry swung back around before I
could respond again.

With the moment broken, I felt a wave
of guilt crash over me. How could I be worrying about boys when I
had no idea where Jenna was? Or even if she was alive or...I felt
seeped in selfishness. I stared at the shiny copy of Van Gogh's
Arles bedroom on the wall, until the orange and cyan started
running together. I blinked. I could practically hear Jenna
whispering, "What about me?" in my ear. But then of course I really
would be nuts.

I breathed in sharply through my nose,
shutting my eyes and detaching myself from the feeling as much as
possible. It was a talent I had discovered recently, and while I
knew it probably didn't fall under the healthy coping category, it
worked to keep me functioning.  

The teacher, Ms. Vore, came down the
aisle, passing out black sketchbooks. I had nearly forgotten I
still had class to sit through. Ms. Vore had replaced the batty,
purple Mumu wearing art teacher from last year. I always assumed
dressing like a carnival fortune teller was part of the job
requirements, but this lady looked normal. Stylish even, her hair
pulled up in a smart bun, and wearing a well-fitted black vest over
a white oxford shirt.

As soon as she began to speak, she won
my approval.

"Your sketchbooks are the window to
your creativity," she said, rubbing her hands together, her eyes
excited as though she were a student herself. "I'm going to give
you assignments to complete in them, but I also want you to feel
free to doodle whatever you want when the urge strikes you. If you
fill up one book, I'll give you another. Just let yourself loose on
the pages." 

She launched into a demonstration of
different types of shading on the board, alternately putting down
her chalk and picking up a dog-eared book that she held up and
swooped around so everyone could see. I paid close attention,
hoping that my art skill could magically improve.

While she had perfectly okay skill, it
didn't seem like she was the best artist ever, either. Which I
found endearing, compared to the effortless talent my father had.
Ms. Vore seemed to have more appreciation than talent.

"All of these people spoke through
their art," she said, admiring the colorful pictures from her book
upside down. "There's no reason you can't do the same. It's very
freeing to explore various techniques. You might be used to
acrylics, for example, and find a whole new world can be created
with oils."

The class breezed by, the only one
other than History to seem faster than the hour allotted. Ms. Vore
stood in front of her desk as we walked out, smiling and saying
goodbye. She even knew some of the other students' names already.
  

I felt tired after school, but not as
hopeless as I had expected at the beginning of the day. All of my
teachers were fine, save for English and Geometry, and I would make
it through, if I kept my head down and kept going. Time had become
the thing that I lived through, instead of anticipating or keeping
track of it. 

"How was your first day back?" Hugh
asked as we were driving home. He gave me the side eye. "You appear
to be in one piece."

"Mostly. It went fine." I shoved my
heavy backpack between my knees. In some convoluted logic, nearly
all of my teachers had decided to assign homework. I thought we
were supposed to be immune from that the first day.

"I'm glad," he said. "I worried all
day about how it would go." This from the person who said I'd do
fine.

I sat wordlessly for a moment,
watching the blurry outline of trees and street signs through the
car window, the shards of sunlight falling on the sidewalk. 
  

"You know," I said, cautiously
bringing up a touchy subject, "It's such a short drive, I could
easily walk."  

He paused for a second, eyes fixed on
the road. "Claire wouldn't like that. I'm assuming that's why
you're asking me, the pushover."

"You're not a pushover," I protested.
"I'm asking you because she's hardly around, and you're here. And
it's probably only a ten minute walk. The school is in the center
of town, I wouldn't have to set foot on any back roads." I had laid
out my whole case, and now I could only wait for him to deliberate
on it.

Briefly, he took his right hand off of
the steering wheel to pat me on the shoulder, managing a quick
grin. "I'll talk to her about it."

He had finally shaved off the wiry
beard he adopted when he opened the gallery last year. His face
looked ten years younger, his childish, rounded cheeks making him
boyish. 

"When did you shave?" I
asked.

"About two weeks ago," he said,
looking perplexed. "Didn't you notice?"

"Of course I did," I said, trying to
act as though I had been joking. But I hadn't noticed at all before
now.    

The Mazda pulled into our driveway,
and Hugh parked in the garage behind the house. I went in through
the back door as he fetched the mail, lobbing my backpack onto the
table to await later attention.  

I pulled out the makings for a
sandwich from the fridge, taking the bag of bread off of the top. I
was suddenly starving, as I hadn't eaten during my odd lunch break.
I smeared mustard on bread, and I wondered again about Henry
Rhodes, the odd newcomer who had caught the attention of
Hawthorne.

It definitely seemed as though he had
assimilated with the popular crowd quickly, but he seemed genuinely
nice. And very hot, to be honest. Possibly the cutest boy in
school. Which meant I never had a chance.

Not like I wanted a chance, I
protested with myself. I had more important things to focus on. And
every possibility remained that his friendliness could merely be an
act, and beneath it lurked another carbon copy popular boy, who
rated girls on websites online and took great pride in his gelled
"just got out of bed this way" hair. It did look a little too
perfectly tousled, now that I thought about it.

As I finished my sandwich, I went into
the office, where the only computer I had access to in the house
was located. Claire and Hugh both had laptops, but they wouldn't
let me touch them. My potential for internet corruption was a great
source of fear to Claire. Only last year did she get rid of the
persnickety child filter, and only because her work website would
no longer load.  

I booted the computer out of sleep
mode, and navigated to Jenna's fan page. It had become a wall of
people posting monthly "I miss you's" and "Come back homes". But I
noticed the posts had become much fewer in the last month. There
was nothing new. I turned off the monitor, the sinking feeling only
lasting for a moment. I was so used to it now I just brushed it
off.  

I went back in the kitchen and rinsed
my sandwich plate off. A pile of dishes awaited me in the sink, so
I began rinsing those off to pop in the dishwasher. I shook my
head. A bowl with pools of running paint held Hugh's paintbrushes,
a mess against the white porcelain. He used to scold me for the
same thing when I did paint-by-number books.  

I glanced out of the window above the
sink as I washed. Startled, I nearly dropped the plate in my hands.
Bright green eyes were watching me.   

It was the weird girl from the back
row in art class. She glared at me over the fence that separated
our house from the neighbors'. Her glittery eyelids sparkled wildly
in the low sun. It took her a second to notice that she had been
caught, but as soon as she did, she quickly turned around and ran
back towards the house behind her.