Feral (The Irisbourn Chronicles Book 1) (3 page)

Chapter
Five

"What the
hell
, Heth!" For emphasis, I slammed down my fist on the
kitchen counter, a decision I instantly regretted when I felt the throbbing
sting.
 
"You almost gave me a panic
attack!"

"Relax, Amber.
 
To be honest, it was kind of your fault for
choosing to hang out in a creepy room in the first place."
 
Heather shrugged indifferently and lifted her
slender body up onto the granite countertop.

"Well, it's more productive
than sleeping for half the day," I muttered.
 
"How did you even know I was
there?"

She tapped her head with her
forefinger.
 
"Sister's
intuition.
 
Also you're not very quiet,
and you left the door open behind you."

I scowled.
 
"Well, next time I'm in a sketchy,
pitch-black room, would you mind, oh, I don't know, announcing your presence a
little sooner instead of shuffling around like a zombie?"

"Noted."
 
Heather stared out the window and thoughtlessly
ran her hands through her tangled morning hair.
 
"Where's Matt?"

"At the store.
 
He should be back any minute."

For a while, we just sat in the
kitchen in tense silence.
 
It all felt so
bizarre, trying to carry on with our lives as, for the sake of one another, we
forced ourselves to keep up the illusion that the house felt like home.
 
But it did not feel like home.
 
It felt empty, temporary – like one more rest
stop on the side of the highway on the way to our final destination.

"I'm taking a shower,"
Heather suddenly announced, jumping down from the counter.
 
"Sorry for scaring you, too."

After having time to recover from
my earlier scare, I was able to reply in earnest, "No, it's fine.
 
I overreacted.
 
I'm sorry."

Heather’s cherry lips pressed together
in a small smile before she disappeared around the corner in a flash of
hair.
 
I stayed in the kitchen until Matt
came home, so that I could help him unload his colossal haul of groceries.

When we had finished putting away
half of them, the findings of that morning’s exploration reentered my thoughts.

"I went and looked around in
those unfinished rooms today."

Matt picked up a jar of pickles and
tossed it into the air with nail biting carelessness.
 
"You mean the study?"

"What? No," I shook my
head.
 
"I mean the two unfinished
rooms at the end of the hall upstairs."

Matt thought for a moment, then set
the jar of pickles on the counter.
 
"I never saw two unfinished rooms."

"Probably because the door was
locked.
 
But they're there, and I got
in.
 
Come, I'll show you."
 
In my eagerness to share my new discovery, I
didn’t wait for Matt’s response before dashing upstairs.
 
Matt followed, his face screwed into a
dubious expression.
 
He must have missed
the door entirely.

This time I entered the rooms without
the slightest sensation of anxiety.
 
Perhaps it was because things just didn’t seem as frightening when they
didn’t have to be faced alone.

Matt produced a long whistle that
cut through the stagnant air.
 
"Wow.
 
This is really
interesting”

I squinted through the darkness in
an unsuccessful attempt to read Matt’s facial expressions.
 
"And strange.
 
Don't forget strange."

"Yeah, that too.
 
I can’t believe I didn’t notice the
door.
 
How’d you even unlock it?”

I was about to tell him about the
necklace, but the words stuck in my throat.
 
I couldn’t quite understand why I didn’t want to tell him.
 
Perhaps it was because the way I had unlocked
the door had been so unusual.
 
I wasn’t
even sure he would believe it – hell, I could barely believe it myself – and I didn’t
need him asking me questions about something I didn’t understand.

“Oh, you know.
 
Paperclip,” I lied.

But Matt was so caught up in his
inspection of the room that he seemed to have already forgotten about me.
 
My suspicions were confirmed when he jumped
at the sound of me clearing my throat.

"Well, if you want, I can put
away the rest of the groceries while you stay up here."
 
I knew we would be lucky if the box of
popsicles we had left sitting on the counter hadn’t become a rainbow puddle by
now.

"Sure, that's a good
idea.
 
Thanks, Amber."

After I had finished unpacking the
groceries, I decided to take the kitchen for a test run and do something I
almost never did – make breakfast on a stove. After an hour of experimenting,
cursing, and burning, I stood before a barely satisfactory meal of fried eggs
and toast.
 
I took more pride in my work
than I had a right to.
 
As I watched my
brother and sister chew, I silently prayed my culinary handicaps wouldn't
result in food poisoning.
 
To my relief,
Matt and Heather didn't complain or make disgusted faces, so I took that as a
sign of success.

I spent the rest of the afternoon
in my room in a state of idleness.
 
But
my mind refused to rest with my body.
 
It
was still trapped in the mysterious room.

In an attempt to distract myself, I
typed up a fast standard text message to Dylan to let him know that I had
survived another day.
 
Dylan called
within minutes, demanding to hear specifics.
 
One of the reasons that I had been friends with Dylan for so long was
because he was one of the few people I could talk with honestly, without fluff
and falsely cheerful text messages riddled with happy faces and vapid
lingo.
 
He was a childhood friend who
took me for who I naturally was, with understanding rather than judgment.
 
If anyone were to know my darkest fears, it
would be him.

"How was your day in fairytale
manor?" Dylan prompted.

"The house, it's beautiful and
huge, but it's... well, a little creepy."
 
I bit my lip.
 
It was not
something I had dared to admit to my family, not after moving so far just to
get here, but it was something that needed to be said nonetheless.

"That's normal.
 
All new houses seem creepy at first."

"I don't think that's it,
Dylan.
 
Sometimes, when I'm alone, I'll
feel – I don't know – nervous?” I shook my head.
 
“It sounds stupid when I say it."

"Are you okay?
 
Did you talk to Matt?"

"I don't want to bother
Matt.
 
It's just... nerves, that’s
all."

Dylan was quiet for a few
seconds.
 
"I'm sure you'll feel more
comfortable after a couple days.
 
Just
give it some time."

I closed my eyes to hide my
frustration with myself.
 
"You're
probably right, I'm being paranoid."

"It's understandable.”

"Our neighbor's house is even
stranger.
 
I can see it now through my
window, all worn and decrepit.
 
Yesterday
I even thought I saw a face in one of the windows."

"That's really messed
up," Dylan's voice was colored with shock.
 
"If I saw anything like that in my neighbor's house, I would be
begging my parents to move."

"Well, I was your neighbor, so
I know for a fact that you saw weirder things through our windows," I
laughed.
 
Nevertheless, my gaze remained
fixated on the house outside my window.

"True, true." In the
background I could hear Dylan's younger brother throwing a temper tantrum.
"Oh, crap, I need to go," Dylan said anxiously, his words jumbling
together the way they did whenever he tried to speak too quickly.
 
"Nathan is breaking my
Star Wars
set."

"
Star Wars
?" I teased.
 
"You mean you still have those dolls?"

Dylan sighed.
 
He had given up on convincing me that they
were not dolls, but collectibles, years ago.
 
"Not if I don't stop my brother within the next ten seconds.”

"Go save the force,
Dylan," I laughed.
 
It was a relief
to know that as much as my world had changed, Dylan was still the same.

Chapter
Six

Two days after our arrival, Heather
and I returned to school.
 
Inelegantly
streaked with teal paint, Pierce High was much smaller than the intimate
private school I had attended since kindergarten.
 
Panthers had been painted on the entire
building, from the walls to the floor to the ceiling.
 
Tiny teal panthers decorated everything, even
the bathroom stalls, to the point where the school’s panther pride had gotten
slightly embarrassing.
 
The
administration must have thought this would be a groundbreaking subliminal way
to promote school spirit.

Since I was thirty minutes early, I
reported to the attendance office to sort out any last-minute paperwork.
 
Inside, I hesitantly approached a middle-aged
woman playing solitaire on her computer, which, unsurprisingly, had three
stuffed panthers sitting atop it.

"Excuse me," I said in a
halfhearted attempt to get her attention. "Hi, I'm a new student
here."

With a quick flick of her wrist,
she minimized her card game and shot me a courteous smile.
 
"Hello, Miss.
 
Welcome to Pierce High School.
 
Name?"

"Amber.
 
Amber Tesse."

"Tesse.... Tesse..." The
woman flipped through folders in a filing cabinet behind her desk, which – what
do you know? – happened to be the home of another stuffed panther.
 
"Ah, Tesse.
 
That's right, you're from..." She
glanced at a paper in the file. "San Jose, California."

"Fine, fresh, fierce, we got
it on lock," I grinned, quoting the first thing that popped into my mind
(lyrics from an old Katy Perry song) before I could stop myself.

She looked at me strangely then
whispered the words to herself as if trying to decode them.
 
Clearly she wasn't familiar with the pop
culture reference.
 
Suddenly I wanted
nothing more than to disappear in to the ground.

"Well, I hope you'll like it
here.
 
Here's your schedule and locker
combination, and if you have any issues, feel free to see your counselor, Mrs.
Cartwright.
 
Anything you want to
know?"

"No, I'm fine.
 
Thank you for your help."
 
I tucked the papers into my pocket and fled
to my first class before I could say anything more mortifying.

My morning classes proceeded rather
uneventfully; my teachers introduced me then entirely forgot I existed after
the first ten minutes.
 
Unlike my
instructors, my classmates kept throwing curious glances back at me, which I
pretended not to notice.

Everything was going smoothly until
my third period pre-calculus class.
 
Ms.
Garner, a thin, stern-looking woman of about forty, welcomed me with a brusque
handshake.
 
“Miss Tesse,” she addressed
me in a low, clipped voice. "I wish you the best of luck in my
class."

Wait a second – what was that
supposed to mean?
 
That hadn’t sounded
like a sincere wish at all.
 
I shifted
uneasily under her scrutinizing glare.
 
"Thank you..?"

She smirked and, changing moods in
an instant, clasped her hands together in excitement.
 
"I'm sure everyone would like to know
who you are.
 
Give a small introduction
for yourself, and then go to your seat."
 
She raised a long, chalky finger toward a vacant seat in the very center
of the room.
 
"Understand?"

Of course I understood.
 
But understanding her demands and wanting to
follow them were two entirely separate things.
 
And I definitely was not eager to pick arbitrary facts from my life to
share with a room full of strangers.

Sensing my hesitation, Ms. Garner
eyed me warily.
 
"If you can't even
make the effort to introduce yourself to your fellow classmates, how do I know
you have the motivation to be in my class?"

Before I could even recover from
the shock of what she had just said, the bell rang and Ms. Garner stalked back
to her desk.
 
I could already tell I was
going to hate this class.

Alone at the front of the room, I
became the focus of twenty-five pairs of eyes.
 
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I vaguely registered that I had seen
one of the boys at the Italian restaurant.

I cleared my throat and nervously
ran my hand through my hair.
 
"Hi,
everyone.
 
I'm Amber.
 
I'm going to be in this class for the rest of
the year, and I look forward to getting to know everyone better."
 
Well, everyone except for Ms. Garner, who was
blatantly gesturing for me to continue.
 
"And... uh... I'm from California?"
 
Somehow that came off as a question.

"Oh, a Californian," a
high-pitched nasaly voice remarked just loudly enough for me to hear.
 
"I didn’t know they learned math in surf
school."
 
A few scattered girls
snickered.

"Excuse me?" I scanned
the room in disbelief.

"Cecelia!" the familiar
brown-haired boy hissed.

"Sorry, but the idea that all
Californians are below average intelligence is a completely baseless
stereotype," I clarified, addressing no one in particular.
 
I drew the line at people calling me
dumb.
 
Although I had never been one of
those students constantly calculating my GPA, I had always done quite well in
all my classes.

"But you can surf, right?"
the same voice called, which evidently belonged to a rude girl with a fake
spray tan and blond extensions.

"Do you have a half gallon
hat?" I countered exasperatedly.
 
"Stereotypes aren’t reliable."

At that moment Ms. Garner chose to
exercise her power as the authoritative adult rather than just grimace from her
desk. "Okay, enough of this foolishness.
 
Amber, return to your seat."

Taking a deep breath, I calmly
crossed the room and avoided eye contact with the obnoxious girl.
 
As soon as I sat down in my chair, the girl
in front of me twisted around in her seat to face me.

"Hi," she whispered
quickly.
 
"I'm Alexis."

"Hey, Alexis."
 
I smiled at her cute, bobbing pigtails and
doe-eyed grin.

"You're going to have to
forget Cecelia," Alexis recommended apologetically, flicking her eyes in
her direction.
 
“She’s terrible to all
the new kids.
 
It’s just her primitive
way of saying, ‘Welcome to Pierce High!
 
I’m going to make you hate it here so you know not to get in my
way.’
 
Also ignore Ms. Garner.
 
I have a theory that she hates children in
general."

"What a fitting career choice
she made, then," I muttered, my voice saturated with sarcasm.

"Right?
 
Did you know, last year sh-"

"Amber!" Ms. Garner
barked, her unforgiving eyes boring into mine.
 
"I do not know how teachers conducted their classes where you came
from, but if you plan on being in
my
class, you will follow
my
rules, one
of which involves not disturbing other students.
 
If I catch you bothering one of my students
again, there will be consequences."

Thanks to Ms. Garner's outburst,
all judgmental eyes were now focused on my nervously flushing face.
 
I must have been making an amazing first
impression.
 
I was about to open my mouth
to clarify that Alexis had been doing ninety percent of the talking, before I
realized that I liked Alexis.

It would have been wrong to drag
her down with me, so I just narrowed my eyes and replied hoarsely, "Of
course. I understand."

Fortunately, the class didn't get
any worse from there – at least, not for me.
 
Toward the end of the period, Ms. Garner patrolled the classroom and
peered over her students’ shoulders to scour their work for mistakes.
 
As soon as she found that a student had
written an incorrect answer, she pounced on the opportunity to embarrass him or
her in front of the class by vociferously pointing out the error "so that
no one else would make the same careless mistake."
 
It was impossible not to notice the
exponential increase in the classroom’s stress level.
 
I could see students perspiring over their papers,
praying that Ms. Garner wouldn’t look at their work too carefully.

Clicking her fingernails together
impatiently, Ms. Garner stood behind me for a full minute before moving onto
the next student.
 
When she finally left,
she seemed slightly frustrated.
 
Perhaps
she had expected me to be dumb, too.

I had never seen students bolt out
of a classroom faster than that pre-calculus class did when the dismissal bell
rang.
 
Since I was unfamiliar with the
established protocol, by the time I had finished putting my books into my bag,
the class was already empty.

"Amber, isn't it?"
 
Well,
almost
empty.

I swerved around in surprise, my
bag nearly hitting the person who seemed to have materialized out of thin
air.
 
I was pleasantly surprised to find
that the person talking to me was the brunette boy who had called out
Cecelia.
 
Based off his prominent build
and tan, I could immediately tell he was an athlete.

"Yup, that's me.”

He flashed his teeth with pride,
like he had just gotten an answer right on a test.

"And you are...?" I
prompted.

"Spencer, Jess' son.
 
I also think I saw you a couple nights ago at
a restaurant."
 
He held out his hand
as an offer to shake mine.
 
Huh, I didn't
know any teenagers who typically greeted other teenagers with handshakes.

I was about to appropriately
respond by placing my hand into his when the Ms. Garner cleared her throat and
brusquely recommended that we "refrain from dilly dallying between
classes."

"Let's get out of here,"
Spencer huffed.
 
He raced to the door to
hold it open for me.
 
This kid
demonstrated exceptional manners.

"I was wondering if you knew
where chemistry room 4105 is?"
 
I
produced my raggedy, torn campus map from the depths of my bag.
 
"I have to be there next period, and I
can't find it anywhere on the map."

Spencer grinned wider.
 
"That's my fourth period too.
 
Just follow me there.
 
Oh and don't worry, it isn't even marked on
the map.
 
Always fools the new kids.
 
I'm surprised an admin didn't tell you."

No longer needing it, I stuffed the
map back into my bag.
 
"Then I guess
I’m lucky to have met you.”

We managed to arrive to class with
a couple seconds to spare.
 
From the back
of the room, Alexis waved at me and motioned that I should sit in the seat
beside her.

I was relieved to find that Mrs.
Rosa, the chemistry professor, was the polar opposite of Ms. Garner.
 
After welcoming me to the class in a way that
did not sound like a threat, she offered me the option of introducing myself,
which I politely declined by explaining that most of the people in the class probably
already knew me from their other classes.
 
She then told me that I could sit in any of the free desks that I
wanted, handed me a study guide, and launched into her lesson on covalent
bonds.

After chemistry, the class went to
lunch.
 
I had originally planned to sit
alone at the back of the cafeteria, where I could inconspicuously consume my
unexciting peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
 
Despite my best efforts to remain unseen, Spencer and Alexis discovered
me and vehemently encouraged me to join them.
 
I agreed.

Spencer introduced me to another
girl and boy at the table, whose names I forgot as soon as he said them.
 
I had never been good with names, especially
now, when everyone seemed to know mine while I knew no one else’s.
 
I was particularly afraid that I might
mispronounce someone’s name, or worse, call them by the wrong name all
together.
 
As a precautionary measure to
keep me from embarrassing myself, I decided I would just try to avoid using
names unless I absolutely had to.

The girl smiled at me amiably while
the other boy continued eating without looking up.
 
They looked nice enough, normal enough.

“Hey, babe.”
 
The girl tapped the boy across from her on
the shoulder.
 
"Please be a normal
person and say hello."

"Oh sorry, yeah, hi." The
boy glanced up reluctantly for a second then resumed shoveling some form of
pudding into his mouth.

"He doesn't like new
people," the girl whispered.
 
"He'll start talking to you eventually."

"So, how long have you been in
town, then?"
 
Alexis asked.

"Three days, including this
one."

And the bombardment of questions
from all directions began.