Dark Star (2 page)

“You could’ve woken me up,” I said, grabbing a fork to steal his pancakes.

“And risked another black eye? Not a chance.”

“Even I’m not that brave,” my mother said, glancing up at me. She and I looked alike, with the same brown eyes and small, straight noses, but while my hair was a mess of brown curls, hers was straight and blond and very nicely drawn into a bun. She also appeared far more alert than I felt, even though she’d been awake all night.

I gave her a little wave. She was seated across the table, flipping through a magazine and dousing her pancakes in syrup. Since she slept afternoons and was gone most evenings, breakfast was our main meal together. She leaned forward and poked my shoulder, asking, “Everything all right?”

“I had a dream about Gram,” I said, shivering. I thought of brick and cement, tall buildings crumbling. But it was Monday morning, and the kitchen was bright with the early sun. I didn’t want to think about dark dreams. I took a sip of my juice and said, “She thinks you should let us go to the cabin this weekend.” I’d long ago discovered it was impossible to convince a Guardian to take a vacation, even for a weekend. Because Mom spent her nights prowling dark alleys and dirty streets, she was pretty much convinced the world was evil, but I had almost persuaded her that Gideon and I should be allowed to go to the family cabin up north—preferably before winter set in and the whole place got buried in ten feet of snow. Since it was already the middle of October, we didn’t have much time left.

Two days ago, she’d changed her mind.

Now she didn’t even look up from her magazine. “My teenage daughter alone for three days with a boy. In a cabin on a lake. I am thinking … no. Thanks for playing.”

“I’m sixteen, not twelve. Anyway, Gideon doesn’t count as a boy.”

“Hey.” He stabbed my hand with his fork. Syrup ran over my fingers.

I ignored him. “And even if he did, you’re gone all night anyway. We could be having just as much sex as we wanted to right here.”

Mom glanced up at that and gave me one of her looks. One of those looks that meant my comment had gone over about as well as my suggestion she try wearing something a little less obvious than a black hoodie with a bright white star on the back. (Rule #47 of living with a superhero: Don’t mess with her costume.)

“Mom,” I said. “You know Gideon and I are just friends.”

She returned her attention to her magazine. “Mmhmm. Still not happening.”

“Well, the thing is—it hasn’t really been my place to say it, but the truth is, Gideon’s gay.”

That led to more fork stabbing.

Mom smiled. “I’ve spent too many years hearing him moon over that Brooke girl to believe that one. But good effort.”

“It’s a new development,” I said, moving my hand safely away from Gideon and scooting to the other side of the table. “But if you’re not worried about us, why can’t we have the cabin? You’re not planning to use it, are you? Don’t you have nefarious schemes to thwart and evildoers to punish?”

“You’re late for school,” Mom said.

“You’re dodging the question.”

She closed her magazine and slapped it against the table.

“Because I’m your mother, and I said so. Does that still work?

How about—because I’m stronger than you and can lock you in a cage if I want to?”

“Child Services might have something to say about that,” Gideon said, apparently forgiving my earlier remarks. That went along with my inability to hate him: he never held a grudge.

“It’s not a good time, Audrey,” Mom continued.

A slight frown had worked its way across her brow. I could tell from her tone that she was about three seconds away from another of her “the world is full of death and danger” speeches, so I decided to strike first. “I’d be safer at the cabin than in Minneapolis. Nevis has a population of eighty-six, and I’m pretty sure the last time someone was murdered there was never.” Actually, I had no idea what its population was, but that sounded close enough.

“We could always be eaten by bears,” the ever-useful Gideon suggested.

I smacked him on the back of the head. “You’re really not helping.”

“And you’re really not winning this argument,” Mom said. “I don’t want you away from the Cities right now. I need you close to home.”

That caught my attention. “Why? Is something going on?”

“Nothing you need to worry about,” Mom said, which was her standard answer whenever I asked about her work. Before I could press the issue, she rose from the table and headed out of the kitchen, pausing at the doorway to call back over her shoulder. “I have a meeting this afternoon, but stick around after school. We need to have a talk.”

***

“That doesn’t bode well,” I told Gideon as I got into his car. The early air was cool, but I felt the humidity in it, the threat of heat to come. The end of summer was still dragging its heels, even though the trees had all gone orange and brown and the streets were littered with leaves.

“What?”

“A Talk,” I said. “Capital A, capital T.”

“Sounds like someone’s in trouble.”

I sighed. I had an idea what it was about. Mom’s partner-incrime-stopping, Leon, thought I shouldn’t be telling fortunes at school. And he’d been rather vocal about it recently. “Leon’s trying to get me to stop bringing my Nav cards to school. He says people will ask questions.”

Gideon shrugged. “It’s not like you’re telling the future,” he said, pulling onto the highway that ran past our houses, toward Whitman High. It was after eight. We’d be twenty minutes late even if he sped, which Gideon never did.

Starting the week with a tardy notice and yesterday’s jeans: another thing that did not bode well.

As for telling the future …

“I’m not,” I agreed.

“You can’t do that, can you?”

“I predict this will not be the last tardy notice we receive from Whitman,” I said. I didn’t tell him about my dream, the void that pressed in on me, a night without moon or stars. That had felt like some sort of future, sitting out on the horizon, waiting.

“What’s Leon’s problem, then?” Gideon asked.

“He says I’m using my powers too blatantly.”

Powers. That was what Leon called my Knowing. What he called my mother’s strength, and his own bizarre ability to transport himself various places. Lately I’d been wishing he would accidentally teleport himself somewhere very far away. Like maybe the sun.

“You’re not selling fortunes for lunch money or anything,” Gideon said. “Besides, no one takes it seriously.”

“And even if they did believe it, they’d think it was the cards, not me.”

Gram had given me my Nav cards five years ago. There were only a few dozen sets of the cards in the world, she told me, and half of them had been lost. She had one of two sets located near the Astral Circle—and she had given me hers.

Gram always told me our abilities were gifts. She thought they should be encouraged, treated with reverence. The Nav cards were a way to enhance my Knowing: a deck of fifty-one cards that allowed me to focus my thoughts and energy into a particular task.

I liked to see into people, and it didn’t seem likely anyone would start asking questions. Except for Gideon, I hadn’t told any of my friends about my Knowing—and most of the other students at Whitman High already thought I was weird.

Which was actually becoming more depressing by the day.

Aside from a brief stint of popularity in middle school, I was once again known only as Gideon Belmonte’s Best Friend. Not that Gideon’s likability had done him much good. The girl he was convinced was his soul mate was the one girl who barely knew he existed: Brooke Oliver, a beautiful blond Barbie doll of a girl. I’d thought they were supposed to start making them look like real people, but apparently Brooke hadn’t gotten the memo.

“Are you even paying attention?”

I looked up. We’d pulled into the parking lot at Whitman, and Gideon was frowning my way. The lot was empty except for a few stragglers and two boys sneaking cigarettes behind the cars.

Coils of smoke drifted up in the early light. “What? Sorry.”

“Zombie Audrey rises again.”

I touched my hair. The ponytail had it somewhat contained, but the clinging heat made its curl turn to frizz. “I’m not that bad. What were you saying?”

“Friday? Drought and Deluge? Tink said you weren’t sure, since you were trying to get the cabin.”

“Oh. Yeah, I can be there. It doesn’t seem like Mom is going to change her mind.” The Drought and Deluge was a club downtown that allowed minors every Friday, served watered-down soda, decent appetizers, and less-than-decent music. I wasn’t a great dancer, but when it was dark and crowded enough, it didn’t really matter.

“And she said something about wanting to talk to you in Homeroom.”

“Which we’ve already missed,” I pointed out as Gideon pulled into an empty parking space. “You should really let me drive.”

“I will. Once you get a car. Or, you know, a license.”

“Corner backing is a completely made-up skill,” I countered. “It shouldn’t even be on the test.”

“Don’t feel bad. Not everyone can fail a driver’s test three times. That takes real talent.” He put his car into park. The engine made a long, rattling gurgle, and Gideon patted the dashboard fondly.

“At least I don’t drive like I’m ninety,” I shot back, hopping out of the car before he had a chance to respond.

I looked at my watch as we hurried toward the office. It was the beginning of first period—precalculus with Mr. Alvarez. I sighed. Mr. Alvarez wasn’t known for being overly charitable, and he tended to smell like chalk, two things that put him low on my list of favorite people. And even though he was only in his mid-twenties—the youngest teacher on staff—he didn’t seem to remember anything about attending high school. He delighted in destroying egos and piling on homework.

So I wasn’t surprised that when I entered the room, trying to slip quietly to my seat in the back, he looked at me and said, “Nice of you to join us, Whitticomb. Oblige us, if you will, by solving the problems on the board.”

I grimaced and walked to the blackboard. I still felt rattled from my dream, and the numbers before me were a blur, just a series of slashes and curves, nothing that formed any sort of pattern. It might not be fire and destruction, but this was enough like a nightmare that I glanced down to make sure I was still fully clothed.

“Whitticomb?”

“Just checking,” I mumbled.

I couldn’t even delight in the fact that Mr. Alvarez had already ruined his dark pants with chalk.

Whitman High was a large school, and growing.

The dark brick building had been constructed back when my grandmother was still a young girl; by the beginning of my junior year, it seemed the school wouldn’t be able to hold all of its students much longer. As a result, the lunch area was usually overrun, and the inner terrace crowded. Trying to weave through the obstacle course of chairs and unruly jocks meant keeping a tight grip on your tray and praying to keep your balance. I picked my way carefully through the throng, because dropping a hamburger on my shoes was exactly what this day didn’t need.

The horror of Precalc had been followed by eleventh grade English. Ms. Vincetti had forced us to read our essays aloud in small groups, and I was stuck with the most boring girl on the planet and a boy whose cute-but-befuddled head never managed to absorb even the most basic rules of grammar. Surviving till lunch had seemed an impossible task. Reaching our table unharmed was nothing short of a miracle.

I set my tray down and sat beside Gideon, pressing my head to the table. Probably not my smartest idea: the tables were always sticky. Across from us, Tink had already abandoned her food and was busy reading a gossip magazine.

Gideon tugged on my ponytail. “What’s wrong?”

“Math teachers are evil,” I groaned. “And inhuman.”

“Well, that one is,” Tink agreed.

“If there’s any justice in the world, he’ll spend his next life as a toothbrush.” Or a gym shoe. Or a stick of gum. Or maybe really old lettuce.

“I keep telling you to switch into my class,” Tink said. She was basically a genius when it came to math, but she’d had an infamous altercation with Mr. Alvarez late last year and transferred into a section she liked to call Addition for Idiots. Now she spent her class time playing games on her calculator and writing lurid romances in the margins of her notebook.

“This is why I stopped after trig,” Gideon said. He tugged at my ponytail again. “Come on, sit up. You’re gonna get ketchup on your face, and you’re already a disaster area.”

I stayed where I was. “Maybe someone will mistake it for blood and they’ll send me home.”

“Or they’ll assume you’ve been feasting on brains.”

That made me lift my head. “What is with your zombie fixation today?”

Before he could answer, Tink pulled my tray away and thumped her fist on the table. “I know what will cheer you up! Do a reading for me. I want to know if I should ask out Greg.”

“I don’t know why you bother asking,” I said. “Even if I tell you no, you’ll do it anyway.”

“Sure, but this way I’m prepared.”

Tink was notorious for going through boyfriends. She had more of them in a year than most girls do throughout all of high school. I could predict without needing any sort of Knowing exactly how this next relationship of Tink’s would go: a month of delirious giggling and nonstop chatter, followed by a shiftiness in her eyes, a tendency to pull her hand from his, a week of unreturned phone calls—and three days of me trying to assure the victim that it wasn’t his fault and Tink still liked him as a friend.

But I did want to do a reading. I pulled out my cards and began to shuffle while Tink closed her eyes and leaned forward in her chair, drumming her fingers on the table. As I shuffled, I focused, studying her. Her fingernails were painted pearl, all except the pinky finger on her left hand, which she had a habit of gnawing on. With her eyes shut, I could see a smear of shimmer powder across her eyelids.

Once upon a time, Tink had been named Tina. Or, to be more accurate, Christina. But somewhere along the way, she had become Tink. The fact that she was blond, barely over five feet, pencil-thin, and pixie-haired made it seem as though her mother had given her the wrong name at birth, and Tink had simply been waiting for people to realize it. The sprinkling of glitter she always wore was just icing.