Fluorescence: The Complete Tetralogy (12 page)

“What happened?” I fell to my knees beside them and tried to find someplace to put my hands. I touched something warm and damp. Blood on the concrete. I gasped and frantically wiped my fingers off on my jeans.

Brian swept her long tangled hair away from her face, his blood-covered hands shaking.

“I-I think she tripped on the steps,” he said, a shudder in his voice, cradling her head in his lap. An open wound on
her forehead oozed blood. A streak of
crimson trickled down her face. “She’s unconscious. Those damn high heels of hers.”

“What do we do? What do we do?” Sam whimpered.

A splash of red darkened Brian’s jeans and I winced.

“We should call 9-1-1,” I said. “Definitely.”

Sam scrambled with her cell phone. “On it!”

“Wait!” Brian held up his hand.

“What?” Sam paused and loomed over us, panicking. “What?”

A rosy pink color radiated up the right side of Kareena’s face, followed by tiny sparks of hot pink light forking both up toward her brow and down toward her collar bone.

“We were right!” Brian took Kareena’s hand.

I untangled the stringy scarf from around her neck and bundled it up into my hand to press against her forehead, hoping it might stop the bleeding.

“We need to call an ambulance!” Sam paced behind me.

“We can’t let anyone see her like this,” Brian replied.

“She could DIE!” Sam cried.

The pink grew brighter and brighter, coloring the entire side of Kareena’s face with a fuchsia glow.

“Alice!” Brian brought his other hand out from behind her back. His fingers resonated with fiery white-blue light.
The veins
snaked
up his arms, burning
much more intensely than before. An aura of color came to the surface of his skin and blue vapor wafted from his fingertips, like dust in a sunny window. He touched her face, tinting the pink of her cheek a rich purple with his light.

“Kareena, come back to us, please
,” I said, holding tightly
to her frigid hand. Her body temperature was dropping fast, her grip weakening. “I might hate you, but I don’t want you to die!”

“It’s doing something. I can feel it,” Brian said, readjusting his grasp on Kareena and propping her up against his leg. “The heat. The light. Something’s changing. Take that away.” He pointed at the scarf.

I carefully peeled it back and watched as a violet glow webbed around the torn flesh, lighting and blurring the edges of the wound.

The bleeding stopped.

Kareena opened her eyes and cried out in pain. She choked on a drizzle of blood streaming down her face and Brian wiped it from her cheek.

“It hurts!” she muttered, the agony in her words making my stomach sick.

Brian cupped her face in his glowing hand.

Beneath the dingy yellow cast of the porch light, I saw the wound closing—healing. It softened and smoothed over, the new skin forming like a fresh coat of paint overlaying the gash. It was as if nothing had ever happened to her perfect olive skin.

“Are you doing that?” I asked Brian. He looked me in the eye.

“I… think so. I can feel the energy moving through me.”

“Leave me alone!” Kareena growled, pushing me off her and struggling feebly to shove Brian away, too. “What the hell is going on?” She came to her feet and took another step up the porch steps, wobbling and mumbling to herself furiously. Brian followed.

She stopped cold in her tracks, looked down
at her hands and screamed. There was blood on everything. The ground. Her shoes. Her clothes. She took a clumsy step closer
toward the door and reached for
the handle, her hand shaking. Then she let out another piercing shriek.

The reflection in the glass front door revealed her pink face glinting back at her.

Brian held up his glowing blue hand. “You’re one of us now,” he said.

Chapter 17

T
he police officer opened the car door for me and I stepped out
, nauseated. Mom stood in the driveway, fuming.

“Your daughter and some friends were loitering in the street past curfew. Neighbors heard some bickering and called it in. Thankfully, it was only an accident.”

“An accident?” Mom shot
me an angry glare
. “What happened?”

“The older girl they were with apparently had a fall on the pavement. A paramedic checked her out and said she should be fine.”

“Paramedic?” Mom’s angry look transformed into a death stare. Her eyes narrowed. “Alice?” Her voice turned really gruff. “What the hell were you doing out in the street in the dark? I thought you were with Sam.”

“I was. I really was. But…”

“I don’t want excuses right now. Get in the house.” She pointed sternly at the door. “Now!”

“Yes, Mom.” I slunk past her and rushed into the house.

She stayed outside with the officer for a while longer. I had no idea what they were discussing. It was just a lot of nodding on the officer’s behalf and some angry shaking of Mom’s head in response. It scared me to death imagining what she’d
say to me when she came
back inside. She looked furious.

The door slammed behind her.

“Alice!” Mom yelled hoarsely. “Get down here right this second!”

“I’m coming.” My voice broke. I tiptoed down the staircase.

“Alice! What the hell do you think you were doing outside
this late? With Brian? And
that… older girl. Whoever the hell she is. Really, Alice?”

“I didn’t mean for anything to happen. I just… wanted to check on Brian.” I
couldn’t tell her the whole truth.

“Oh yeah? Well, I’ll tell you what. How about we make this little escapade the last time you see him? How’s that sound?”

“Mom, no! He didn’t do anything wrong.”

“But
you
did. I
can’t tell them what to do.
If their parents are idiots, that’s their problem. What I say to my own daughter is what matters to me. You need to listen to
me
, Alice.”

“Mom, please! This is crazy!”

“No. You being brought home by a police officer past 10:00 at night is crazy! Seeing that car pull up into the driveway scared the crap out of me. I tried to call you three times, Alice. Three times and you didn’t pick up.”

Oh, God.
I pulled out my cell and turned on the ringer. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Then I called Sam’s parents to check on you, thinking maybe you were just in the basement watching movies and weren’t getting a signal, but no, they told me they didn’t know where you two had gone. Do you know how goddamn scared I got when I heard that?”

“I’m sorry…”

“Sorry is not good enough right now.”

“Mom.”

“I don’t know what to do about Sam, but… I don’t want you talking to Brian anymore. Do you understand?”

“You can’t make me—”

“Don’t talk back. And yes, I can. He’s not allowed over. You’re not allowed to call him. No texting—and believe me, I can get those records if I need to. If I catch you emailing him or anything else, I will take your computer away. I swear.”

“No! I need it!”

“Apparently not as much as you need to keep secrets from me. I trusted you, Alice, and you lied.”

“I didn’t lie.”

“You told me you were going to see Sam and somehow… somehow the night ends with you, Brian, and the police. I gave you two a chance but apparently that was a mistake.
You’re not mature enough to be in a
relationship. This stupid little game is over.”

“Please listen.”

“You didn’t listen to me.” Her lips thinned. She crossed her arms and looked away. “Go to your room!”

. . .

Sam had been smart enough to grab the garden hose and wash down the steps of the patio, but the police showed
up literally minutes later, asking questions. Nosey
neighbors… We had such little time to clear things up with Kareena before everything went south. To make things worse, our stupid city had an early curfew for teens under seventeen. Kareena was exempt—lucky her. Brian, Sam and I didn’t get off so easily.

I hadn’t heard from Brian since last night but found him at lunch time, resting on a table, his head nestled in his folded arms. Sleeping? His wrinkled clothes made him look like he’d stayed in the woods overnight.

“Hi,” I said quietly.

He looked up at me almost mechanically, exhausted.
Dark circles shadowed under his eyes. He didn’t even
acknowledge Sam, who was standing right beside me.

I brushed a hand through his hair and frowned. “Oh, Brian. You look so worn out. Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he groaned beneath his breath and cupped his face with his hand. “Three sodas and I still feel like shit. Sorry, Alice. I mean…”

I’d told him before I didn’t like him swearing. He was so tired, though, I had to let it go.

“It’s alright.”
I nudged him in the shoulder and sat
down on the bench, scooting closer. Sam sat down across from us.

I leaned over to kiss his cheek,
playfully tickling the back of his neck with my fingernails. He forced a smile. It faded with his next heaving sigh. It was tough seeing him like this.

“When did your mom pick you up from the police station?” I pulled a little compact brush out of my bag and brushed his messy hair, straightening it as best I could. He scowled at me.

He dropped his head onto the edge of the table with a thud. “She didn’t,” he grumbled.

“I’m sorry.” I put my brush back in my bag.

“She told them to keep me there because I deserved it. I was at the freaking police department all… freaking… night. They hauled me back to school this morning.”

“That’s why you weren’t on the bus. I’m so sorry, Brian. You should have called me. Maybe…”

“Your mom was pissed, right?”

“Yeah. She was upset. Scared me a little, even. I’ve never seen her so angry in my life.”

“She’s
been looking for an excuse to hate me since we
met. Now she has one.” He turned his face toward me. “What did she say?”

I didn’t want to tell him the truth, but hiding it wouldn’t make things better either.

“I’m even not supposed to be talking to you right now, technically.”

“What?” He groaned again.

I imagined Brian being the kind of guy to bound up onto the lunchroom table, kick off food trays, toss yogurt cups into the air and shout at the top of his lungs something about discrimination and teen oppression.

“She can’t do that.” He sighed, too worn out to even raise his voice.

I put my arm around his shoulders and squeezed him closer. “Well, she’s my mom. She can do whatever she wants with me for the next four years.”

“That sucks.” He sat up and looked at me, his eyelids barely able to stay open. “And it’s not fair to me at all.”

“She says I’m not mature enough for a relationship.” I scoffed, rolling my eyes. “She has no idea what’s really going
on between us, or about the
… you-know-what. All she knows is she doesn’t want you over ever again.”

“What the hell does that mean? Ever?” Hearing those words had jarred him awake.

“No texting. No calls. No emails.”

He sneered and his eyes narrowed. “I’ll be damned if she can keep me away from you forever.”

I cupped a hand over his. “You
have
to respect my mom, Brian. Please.”

“I know and I’m sorry. It just pisses me off. And I can’t do anything about it.”

“We’ll work something out. Somehow.” I smiled, trying to be optimistic.

He stared at me for a moment, scanning my face, and I thought he might try to kiss me—right in the middle of the lunchroom.

He didn’t. He only sighed, looking defeated, and then laid his head back down on his arms and closed his eyes.

The familiar sound of the clicking of heels on linoleum drew close.

I looked up at Kareena and wrinkled my lips, judgingly. “Yes
?” I rested a hand on Brian’s forearm
protectively. I knew she was done with him for now, but I still felt the need to take ownership.

Sam screwed up her face and crossed her arms.

“Uh… can I sit with you guys?” Kareena looked around the room, clearly hoping no one else had heard her, as if it had been the most difficult thing she’d ever had to say to anyone.

Sam pointed her nose up and scoffed. “Nope.”

Kareena slumped over, fighting back a scowl.

I wasn’t going to make her beg.

“Yes. It’s fine.” I pulled my book bag off the table to make room for her tray. Sam got a quick raspberry off at her.

“Sam, stop.”

“Hmph.” She looked away. “Make me.”

“Please? We’ve been through enough.”

She shrugged, conceding. “Fine.”

Kareena set her tray of food down and sat directly across from me. She glanced at Brian, still resting, and took a deep breath. I was surprised to see a genuine fondness and admiration for him in her gaze. It had me almost feeling sorry for her. For a moment, she appeared to show concern for someone other than herself. Maybe she really did like Brian but didn’t know how to approach a
nice
guy. Regardless, of course, he was with me now and I liked it that way, even if she didn’t.

“I don’t feel like talking about last night,” said Kareena. “But, I know we need to.”

“Yeah. We do,” I answered, nodding.

“I tried to tell myself nothing happened, but I know some serious shit went down. I have a blood-stained blouse in the wash that proves it.” She picked at her fruit cup with a plastic fork, moving things around and sneaking a peek at Brian every few minutes.

I brushed a lock of his hair behind his ear and nudged him again.

“Brian? Lunch will be over soon. You’ve got to get up.”

He growled, not moving.

“Please? Just two more classes and you can go home.”

“I don’t want to…”

I pushed him firmly in the arm with my hands. “You
have
to.”

He lifted his face from his arms and yawned. His eyes were bloodshot and watery. I brushed my fingers over his cheek and smiled. He took my hand, squeezing it in thanks, smiling a tired smile.