Feral (The Irisbourn Chronicles Book 1) (6 page)

"What did you see,
Amber?" Matt pleaded, trying to judge the severity of the situation.
 
I must not have noticed him come in.

"I don't know, I don't
know."
 
I repeated the same words
over and over again brokenly. I looked my brother in the eyes.
 
"I think there might be something in the
house."

“What, like a person?” Heather
questioned.

“I don’t know.
 
It was so dark…”
 
I put my head into my hands.

Without another word, Matt charged
out of the room, and when he came back he was armed with a metal baseball bat
and a can of pepper spray.

“I’m searching the house.
 
Stay here.”
 
He threw the pepper spray to Heather who caught it deftly.
 
“Use this only if you have to.”
 
Matt disappeared into the hallway.

“I don’t even know how to use this
thing,” Heather muttered as she fiddled with the little canister.

“Who knew Matt had pepper spray.” I
wiped my eyes and attempted to speak normally, but my voice broke on the
“pepper,” and Heather noticed.

“Hey, everything’s going to be
okay,” she assured me.
 
“You’re not hurt
are you?” She looked me over worriedly.
 
“Do you need to see a doctor?”

“No, I’m fine.
 
No medical attention required,” I assured
her.
 
“It’s just, last night, I thought I
saw a face, right there.” I pointed to the foot of my bed.
 
“It was so ghastly and inhuman… and I saw it
lunge at me.”
 
The more I said, the more
ridiculous I sounded.
 
I was even finding
it hard to believe myself.
 
It all began
to feel more and more like a dream as my memory of it slipped away with every
passing minute.

“Crazy stuff,” Heather responded.

“Indeed,” I mumbled.
 
“To be honest, it was probably just a
dream.
 
After all, I do tend to have
disturbing dreams.”

“Well, let’s let Matt search the
house just in case.
 
But I hope you were
just dreaming.” Heather shuddered.
 
“I
would never want to see what you saw, asleep or awake.”

Matt returned and announced that it
didn’t seem as if anyone had entered the house, as far as he could tell.
 
I told him I must have just made a mistake,
that I had allowed my nightmares to get the better of me again.
 
It took a while for me to convince him that I
was mentally stable enough to go to school, but finally he conceded.

Matt and Heather left the room so
that I could take a shower.
 
After
swimming in my own sweat for a night, I really needed one.

I let the cold water run over my
face and imagined it cleansing me of my madness.
 
I checked my body over for bruises, cuts, any
evidence that would support what I had seen last night.
 
I found nothing.
 
I growled into the stream of water in
frustration.
 
I had completely overreacted.
 
I was losing it.

After I was done getting ready, I
slipped out of the house with a frozen waffle in my mouth.
 
I stopped in front of the gate and tapped on
the solid iron bars before undoing the lock.
 
I couldn’t really see anyone climbing over that mountain of metal.
 
I shook my head at myself.

“You’re late for school, you know.”

I turned around breathlessly.
 
I was still on edge from last night.
 
Adrian was behind me, looking the complete
opposite of how I felt.
 
He grinned at me
like he didn’t have a single care in the world.

“Your bad habits must be rubbing
off on me.” I frowned at him.
 
I was
surprised at how relieved I was to see him, but I didn’t need him knowing that.

Adrian scoffed and fiddled with a
half-eaten apple in his hands.
 
Damn, his
healthy food was publicly shaming my waffle.

“Breakfast?” I asked, pointing to
the fruit.
 
Had he been waiting out here
for me?
 
I swept my hair to one side of
my shoulder in an attempt to make it look neater.

Adrian chucked the apple over his
fence and rubbed his hands together.
 
“It
was.
 
Oh relax, Amber.
 
It’s good for the pla-.”
 
He froze all of a sudden and paled as if he
had seen a ghost.
 
My heart stopped.

“What is it?” I asked.
 
I looked over my shoulder, searching for what
he might have seen… until I realized he was staring at me. “Adrian…?”

Adrian blinked and his expression
cleared.
 
“Nothing.
 
It was nothing.
 
Your necklace, is that new?”
 
His hand shook slightly as he gestured to it.

I had decided to wear my mother’s
necklace to school that morning.
 
Having
a small piece of her with me just seemed to make me feel safer.

“It was my mother’s.”
 
I gently pulled on the little orb around my
neck.

“Where did she get it?” Adrian
questioned.
 
His tone seemed unusually
serious.

“She said it was a family
heirloom.”
 
I shrugged.
 
“That’s all I know.”

The charm cast gold reflections in
his pale blue eyes.
 
“May I?”

I had never seen a boy demonstrate
so much interest in my jewelry before, but I didn’t judge, so I just said,
“Sure.”

Before I could remove the chain
from around my neck, he stepped directly in front of me and took the charm in
his hands.
 
I had never been this close
to him before, and I could hear him breathing.
 
Unlike most other boys, he didn’t smell like he had doused himself in
cologne as a substitute for taking a shower.
 
Instead, he smelled pleasantly of pine needles and night air.

“Remarkable,” he whispered, his
eyes fixated on the necklace, while my eyes were fixated on him.
 
He gently let the necklace fall back to my
chest and backed away.
 
“You should ask
your mother how your family came into possession of such a trinket.”

My breath caught in my throat.
 
We had reached the conversation-killer, the
red zone wrapped with caution tape.
 
I
didn’t feel as if I could outright lie to him without him knowing it, so I used
my go-to euphemism.

“She’s… no longer with us,” I
explained.

“Ah, I see. I’m sorry,” Adrian said
quietly.
 
Unlike other overly inquisitive
people, he didn’t tack on a nosy “how?”
 
He looked genuinely sad for me.

“But living with my brother is
great,” I said brightly, trying to revive the flatlined conversation.

“You have a sister too, don’t you?
 
Sometimes I see her when she returns from
school.”

“Uh oh, you better not be stalking
my sister too.” I raised my eyebrows and pursed my lips.

Adrian chuckled.
 
“Of course not.
 
Do you know how much time it takes to stalk
one
person, much less two?”

“No, I tend to have more healthy
proclivities, like painting and sculpting and reading and – oh shit, my English
class!” I gasped.
 
I looked down at my
watch.
 
I had already missed all of first
period.
 
“I’ve got to go.”

I bit my lip and looked up at
Adrian.
 
I didn’t really want to
leave.
 
Damn this kid and his bad
influence.

“You get so anxious when you’re
running late,” Adrian observed with an amused look.
 
Actually, I was anxious mostly because of
him, but I was never going to tell him that.
 
“Oh and, by the way, you may want to keep that in a less conspicuous
place.”
 
Adrian pointed at my necklace,
and I stared back, not understanding what he meant.
 
“Just my opinion, since I’ve heard that
things of value tend to get stolen quite often at Pierce High.”

“Oh, okay. Thanks?” His advice
caught me a little off guard.

I waved and walked down the street,
taking extra caution not to trip or do something embarrassing.
 
When I felt that I had walked far enough to
be out of Adrian’s line of sight, I looked at my mother’s necklace and
sighed.
 
I slipped it off my neck and
tucked it into my innermost coat pocket before breaking into a full sprint.

Chapter
Nine

The next two weeks went by
painfully slowly.

Lately Matt had been in annoyingly
high spirits, as if he were keeping a secret that was just too great for anyone
else to know.
 
I strongly suspected he
was dating someone.

Also, I hadn’t seen any more scary
creatures lurking about in my room.
 
Yet
I couldn’t shake the nervous certainty that someone was watching me.
 
I had been more jumpy lately, or, as Heather
preferred to put it, more paranoid.
 
The
worst part was that I couldn’t even talk to Dylan about it since he hadn’t been
answering his phone much, which was making me worried and miserable.

Perhaps that was the reason I
thought I glimpsed his messy caramel-colored hair in the hallway one morning.

“I still haven’t finished my social
studies essay,” Alexis huffed as we made our way to English.
 
She, I had learned by now, had a serious
problem with procrastination.
 
“I don’t
have the slightest clue what Zoroastrianism is, do you?
 
Amber? Amber?
 
Earth to Amber.”
 
Alexis stopped
and tapped her foot expectantly.

“What?” I turned back to her.
 
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening.”
 
My eyes combed through the sea of students,
searching for anyone who looked remotely like Dylan.

“Well, what did you write
about?
 
Your essays are always better
than mi-”

“Sorry, Alexis, but I have
something I need to do.”
 
I shot her an
apologetic look.
 
“You should ask
Spencer, though.
 
He might be able to
help!” I took off in pursuit of my Dylan imposter.
 
But I never saw him again, and I ended up on
the wrong wing of the school when the bell signaling the beginning of class
rang.

“Amber, glad to see you could make
it,” my English teacher remarked when she caught me tiptoeing into the
classroom.

I smiled weakly in defeat.

“Slept in again, I take it?”

“Something like that.”
 
Since Adrian had made a habit of waiting for
me in front of my house in the mornings and afternoons, I had been late to
school more than once.
 
And, as much as I
hated to admit it, those tended to be the high points of my days.

I took my seat and removed my copy
of
The Count of Monte Cristo
from my
bag.
 
In front of me, Alexis rapidly
moved her pen across her paper in a furious race to finish her social studies
essay.
 
I felt bad about abandoning her
in the hallway, so I took out my history notes and scrawled “sorry” in the
margin before discreetly passing them to her.
 
Hopefully they would help.

***

“I’ve got a game coming up at Moore
Stadium,” Spencer said from the seat next to me while we made a pitiful effort
to pretend to work on the math homework.
 
Ms. Garner was out for the day, and our elderly substitute had fallen
asleep at her desk.
 
The class was pretty
much free to do whatever it wanted.
 
The
elation in the air was practically tangible.

“Are you nervous?”
 
I was watching Alexis, who had moved to the
back corner of the room so she could concentrate on her essay.

“Nah,” Spencer said with
confidence.
 
“I don’t think we’ll lose
this one.
 
The team’s been practicing all
month.”

“Err, what sport is it you play
again?” I asked meekly.
 
I thought he had
mentioned it once or twice before, but I must not have been paying attention.

Spencer was visibly flabbergasted.
 
“Only the best sport, of course.”

“Baseball…?” I tried tentatively.

“Wrong season.
 
Try again.”

“Football?”

“Again.”
 
Spencer crossed his arms.

“Volleyball,” I said
exasperatedly.
 
My knowledge of sports
was severely limited.

Spencer shook his head.
 
“This is just embarrassing.
 
I feel bad for you.
 
The best sport in the world is
basketball
.
 
Everyone knows that.”

“Of course.
 
Everyone
,”
I scoffed.

Spencer grimaced.
 
“You’re desperately in need of some sports
education.
 
Hey, you should come to my
game.”

“I’m not familiar with sports
etiquette.
 
I’ve never been to a game in
my life.
 
I might end up cheering for the
wrong team,” I warned him.

“Don’t worry.
 
You’re just in the crowd.
 
But after the game we can do something, like
go to dinner or see a movie.
 
It’ll be
fun.”

“Are Alexis and the rest of our
lunch group going?”

Spencer looked at me as if I were
joking.
 
I had a feeling I had missed
something important.

“I didn’t invite them,” Spencer
said slowly.
 
“I was thinking it would,
well, be a date.”

“Oh.”
 
My ability to pick up on male signals was
shameful.
 
I had no idea Spencer even
thought of me in that way.
 
I had never
considered him more than a friend, and my brain went into overdrive thinking of
ways to decline politely.

“Uh, what night again?”

“Saturday.”

“This Saturday?”

He nodded expectantly.

I couldn’t lie and say I was
busy.
 
When he had asked me about my
weekend plans at the beginning of class, I told him I would just be at home
watching an
Arrested Development
marathon all Saturday.
 
And, somehow,
“Sorry, but I was actually planning to sit on my couch and watch TV for hours
on end” didn’t seem like a respectful enough reason to turn someone down.
 
I fiddled with my eraser in an attempt to
waste time.
 
Maybe if I waited long
enough, he would forget he asked the question.
 
When I looked up, he was still watching me.

“So?” he prompted.
 
He was starting to get impatient.

“Yeah?”

“It’s a date then,” Spencer
beamed.
 
Wait, what
?
 
That was a
“yeah” as in “yeah, so, can you please repeat the question?” not “yes, I agree
to let you take me out and pay for me.”
 
I mentally cursed at myself.

“I know a great place by the
stadium we can eat.
 
It’ll be
perfect.”
 
Spencer was grinning from ear
to ear.
 
Crap, he was practically glowing.
 
I sighed.
 
I couldn’t bring myself to crush his spirits now.
 
I could endure one date.

“Sounds great?”

Just then the bell rang, and
everyone got up to leave.
 
From the back
of the room, Cecelia cast me a contemptuous look.
 
She still did not seem to be enjoying my
presence.

Spencer and I met Alexis just as we
were walking out the door.
 
She was
shuffling a disorderly stack of papers in her hands.

“Almost done,” Alexis grunted.

“You said that this morning.”
 
Spencer shook his head at her.
 
I could have sworn I heard him mumble, “Get
it together, Alexis,” under his breath.

“Well, this morning I didn’t have
Amber’s notes.
 
Thank you, by the
way.
 
They’re really detailed.”

“No problem,” I said.

“Hey are you okay?
 
You seem quiet and pale.”
 
Alexis put her hand on my forehead as if to take
my temperature.

“I think she looks beautiful,”
Spencer piped in unnecessarily.

Alexis glanced at him
strangely.
 
I mentally gave him negative
points for subtlety.

“I’m just cold, that’s all,” I
lied.

“Do you want my jacket?” Spencer
offered as we walked through the doorway of our chemistry class.
 
Jeesh, I knew this kid was only trying to be
chivalrous, but he was really jumping the gun.

“Err… no, that’s okay,” I said
quickly.
 
Spencer’s face fell
slightly.
 
At least he didn’t
misinterpret that.

Spencer, Alexis, and I took our
seats and waited for the class to start.
 
The lesson was on thermodynamics, which to me already sounded
confusing.
 
I was so busy taking notes
that I didn’t even look up when the teacher addressed the new student who
walked into the room.

“Hello, young man.
 
Can I help you?” Mrs. Rosa inquired.

“Yes, I believe this is my
chemistry class?”

I dropped my pencil.
 
I knew that voice.
 
But it couldn’t have been…

“Sorry I’m late.
 
I’m not from the area, so I’ve been filling
out paperwork at the front office all morning.”

“Welcome to Pierce,” Mrs. Rosa
smiled.
 
“What’s your name?”

“Dylan Winters, ma’am.”

I looked up.
 
I couldn’t believe my eyes.
 
What was he doing here?

“Mr. Winters, please feel free to
sit in any of the empty seats.
 
We’ve just
started a lesson on thermodynamics.
 
You
can meet me after class for the notes.”

But Dylan wasn’t paying attention
to her anymore.
 
He was too busy scanning
the room.
 
When his shining green eyes
landed on me, his entire face lit up like a toddler’s on Christmas
morning.
 
He winked as he passed me on
the way to the vacant seat behind me.
 
All I could do was gape like an idiot.

“What are you doing here?!” I
hissed hotly.
 
“In case you didn’t know,
you’re in the wrong state.”

Dylan clucked his tongue.
 
“If anyone’s in the wrong state, it’s
you.
 
Running halfway across the country
and thinking no one would follow you.
 
How naïve.”

“Don’t you dare call me naïve until
you learn how to use a comb!”
 
I turned
and swatted his unruly hair.

“Miss Tesse, do we have a problem?”
Mrs. Rosa paused the slideshow presentation and put her hands on her hips.

“Ooh, someone’s in trouble,” Dylan
whispered from behind my back.

I sucked in a deep breath.
 
“Yeah, the new kid’s disturbing me.
 
I don’t think he’s familiar with class policy
yet.
 
I’m sure he would appreciate it if
you could go over that with him as well after class.”

That shut Dylan up for the rest of
the hour.
 
I tried to take notes, but at
the end of class, I looked down at my notebook to find an illegible jumble of
scribbles.
 
I couldn’t remember a single
word Mrs. Rosa had said.
 
Instead of
concentrating on the lesson, I had been hyperactively aware of the kid behind
me, sitting in a seat he didn’t belong in.

“You sly little traitor!” Dylan
accused as soon as class ended.

“Why are you here?” I asked,
ignoring the insult.

“I have to talk to the teacher,
remember?
 
We’ll discuss this over
lunch.”

I stared at him, openmouthed.
 
“Fine.”

I found Spencer and Alexis waiting
for me in the hallway.

“How’d you make friends with the
attractive new kid so quickly?” Alexis raised one eyebrow and gave me a thumbs
up.

“I think he’s strange.
 
Do you know who he is?” Spencer demanded in a
manner that made me cringe.

“An old friend,” I said.
 
“We were neighbors.”

Spencer snuck a quick look at Dylan
through the classroom window.
 
“What’s he
doing here?”

“Why don’t you ask him?” I threw my
hands up into the air in exasperation.
 
“Can we go to the cafeteria now?”

When Dylan finished his
conference-thing, I opted to sit with him at a separate table so that we could
catch up.
 
Spencer looked overly
disappointed, but I was too high-strung to feel guilty anymore.

I tried my best to look pissed at
Dylan while he crossed the cafeteria, but it was really hard to stay angry with
him, especially when he looked so ridiculously happy just to see me.
 
My expression faltered and melted into a
smile, which Dylan saw as a green light to envelope me in a bone-crushing hug
once I was an arm length away.

“Please stop,” I urged.
 
“We’re not five anymore.
 
People are going to get the wrong idea.”

Alexis waved at me excitedly while
Spencer coughed on his sandwich.

“Since when did you care what
people thought?”
 
Dylan released me and
dug his fingers into my hair to mess it up.
 
“Consider that payback.”

“How did you get here?” I
persisted, taking a bite of the macaroni I had bought.
 
I tossed Dylan a salad I had ordered him from
the lunch line.

“Thanks.
 
On a plane, of course.”
 
I narrowed my eyes at him.
 
“Gosh, okay.
 
Remember how you came here about half a month ago?
 
Well, you abandoned the kid you grew up with,
and he didn’t like that very much.”