House of Reckoning (11 page)

So that was it—at Warwick High, Nick was in the same boat she was.

“Meds,” Nick muttered, fumbling a pill bottle out of his pocket, shaking two into his hand and washing them down with a swallow of milk.

“How come the alarm?” she asked. “They might not tease you if you didn’t beep.”

Nick shrugged. “They’ll tease me anyway. And I can’t trust myself to remember to take the pills.”

“Even if it’s the same time every day?” Sarah asked, frowning in puzzlement.

He nodded, his lips twisting into a wry grimace that Sarah was pretty sure was meant to be a smile. Should she volunteer to remind him herself, the way he’d volunteered to carry her tray? Or would that make him feel even worse? She picked up her fork and began to poke at her macaroni and cheese, but Nick just sat silently, staring at the hamburger and fries on his tray. Sarah paused, her fork hovering in the air.

“Aren’t you going to eat?”

He nodded, but made no move to pick up his fork.

Sarah glanced around, but no one seemed to be looking at them. “What is it?” she asked quietly. “What’s wrong?” He glanced up at her, and she could see the fear in his eyes. “Just tell me,” she pressed. “Maybe I can help.”

Nick looked at her again. “Promise not to laugh?” he whispered.

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Oh, sure, I’m going to laugh my head off, just like you did when I couldn’t even hold on to my tray any longer.”

Nick still hesitated but finally leaned closer, and when he spoke, his voice was so soft she could barely hear him. “I see things sometimes. Things that aren’t there. That’s what the pills are for.”

Saw things? What did he mean? What was he, some kind of a nu—Sarah cut off the thought even before it was fully formed, but still felt a wave of shame—she wasn’t any better than the other kids in the room.

Except that at least she hadn’t said what she’d thought out loud, and from now on, she promised herself, she wouldn’t even think it. “So are you seeing something right now?” she asked, keeping her voice as level as if they were just talking about the weather.

Nick nodded.

“What?” Sarah asked, her own lunch forgotten for the moment. “What do you see?”

He hesitated, but then looked straight at her. “Worms,” he said. “I know there’s supposed to be french fries on my plate, but that’s not what I’m seeing.”

Sarah glanced at Nick’s plate and saw the tangle of skinny fries. Reaching over she picked one up. “Mind if I eat one?” she asked. “I always used to like worms with my mud pies when I was little.” Without waiting for an answer, she popped the fry into her mouth, chewed it, and swallowed. “Pretty good—tastes exactly like french fries. Looks sort of like worms, though, doesn’t it?”

“But it’s not, right?” Nick asked.

“It’s not,” Sarah promised. “It’s just french fries.”

Nick took a deep breath, nibbled a fry, then picked up his hamburger and bit into it. As he chewed, Sarah finally took her first forkful of the macaroni and cheese, then pulled all but the first taste back out of her mouth. “You sure it wasn’t this that looked like worms?” she asked.

Nick just shook his head. “That always looks like maggots.” Abruptly, he grinned. “But I’m not sure that’s a hallucination at all.”

Staring at the lunch she now knew she wasn’t going to finish, Sarah decided she liked Nick Dunnigan.

At least she liked him a lot better than the macaroni and cheese.

S
arah sat quietly at her table in Miss Philips’s room as her classmates disappeared out the door into the corridor.

What had she done?

Why had Miss Philips told her to stay after school?

Had she done something wrong today? But there wasn’t even an assignment—all they’d done was listen as Miss Philips talked about still life drawings and how the really good ones were so carefully composed they didn’t look composed at all. And Sarah knew she certainly hadn’t done anything wrong—in fact, she hadn’t done anything at all, except take notes.

When the room was finally empty except for the two of them, the teacher pushed the big door closed and perched on the edge of her desk. Sarah’s heart began to pound.

Witch
.

Her foster mother’s words from last night rose in Sarah’s mind, and she glanced at the window in the door to make certain Tiffany and Zach weren’t peering in, ready to tell their mother that she had stayed after school.

“What did you think of the class today?” Miss Philips asked. “It must have seemed pretty simple, given your talent.”

Sarah shrugged, saying nothing.

The teacher paused, shifting her weight, and then Sarah knew that whatever this was about, it wasn’t today’s class. Sure enough, Bettina Philips’s next words confirmed it.

“Sarah, did I embarrass you when I stopped to offer you a ride this morning?”

Sarah felt the color rise in her cheeks, but shook her head.

“Then what was the problem?” Miss Philips went on.

Sarah cast around in her mind for something that might sound reasonable, then remembered the kids in the cafeteria. “You didn’t offer the other kids a ride,” she said quietly. “Just because I can’t walk very well doesn’t mean I need a ride. And if the rest of the kids had seen me taking it, things would have just gotten—”

She cut herself off—if she started complaining about the kids who were teasing her, Miss Philips might go to the principal, and the principal might go to the kids’ folks, and then things would get really bad.

“You’re sure that was it?” Bettina asked. “There wasn’t anything else?”

Sarah hesitated, then decided there wasn’t any reason not to tell Miss Philips the truth, even if it did make her foster mother look—”Stupid” was the word that came to mind, but she quickly rejected it. Anyway, it didn’t matter how it made Angie Garvey look—she wasn’t going to lie about what her foster mother had said. Sarah cleared her throat and looked directly at Bettina. “My foster mother says I can’t spend time with you except in class.”

Bettina gave her a rueful smile. “That’s what I figured. Did she call me a witch?”

Sarah flushed, looked down again, but nodded.

“You’re not going to tell me you believe in witchcraft, are you?”

Sarah decided this had to be the most uncomfortable conversation she’d ever had. “I guess not,” she whispered, her eyes on the table in front of her.

“Good,” Bettina said. “I just wanted to set the record straight. You have a lot of talent, and I’d hate to see it wasted because of what people say about me.”

Sarah’s head came up, and the face she saw was hardly that of some kind of witch, but a perfectly normal one, with soft eyes and a kind
smile. Why on earth would anyone talk about this woman the way the Garveys had?

As if she’d read Sarah’s mind, Bettina Philips began answering her unspoken question. “I live in an old mansion called Shutters that’s seen better days. A lot of better days. So naturally all the kids say it’s haunted. It isn’t, of course, but it was built a hundred and fifty years ago, and my family has lived in it for generations.”

Her gentle smile broadened into a grin. “But living in a haunted house is just the beginning. I’m also ‘different.’” She pronounced the word in a way that turned it from a simple adjective into an insult. “I’m an artist,” she went on, and then her voice dropped so it sounded almost conspiratorial. “But it’s even worse than that: I’m also interested in tarot cards and astrology and all kinds of religions, especially the more mystical ones. I’ve studied the medicinal properties of various herbs, and grow them in my garden. And worst of all, I don’t go to church, and in Warwick that alone would make me suspect. I also don’t lunch with the ladies, or serve on the right committees, or attend the right fund-raisers. I also tend to dress the way I please, and mind my own business. All of which, as I’m sure you would have come to find out even if Angie Garvey didn’t tell you so, makes me different. In fact, I’ve always been different, even when I was your age.”

She paused, and Sarah suddenly understood exactly what Bettina Philips was saying: that when she herself was a student at this school, she was the one everyone whispered about and laughed at. When Bettina had been her age, it was probably Angie and Mitch who sat in the cafeteria making fun of the girl who wasn’t quite like them.

“And here’s the best part, Sarah,” Bettina said, moving to a chair on the opposite side of the art table. “Those same people who are always gossiping about me are the ones who always come to me when they’re in trouble. Would you believe it? They actually come and knock on my back door and ask to have their fortunes told.”

Sarah stared at her. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Bettina repeated. “And I do my best for them. I’m nice to them. I lay out the tarot cards and try to tell them what I think they want to hear, and they go away grateful. Sometimes they come to me for herbs, thinking I might have some magical potions. And often my herbs work for them, but it’s not because of any magic—it’s just that I know what I’m doing with medicinal herbs.”

“Does Angie Garvey come to see you?” Sarah whispered.

Bettina shrugged. “I never say who comes to see me. The point is that you shouldn’t listen to the rumors. You’re fourteen years old and smarter than most of the kids around here. So when you hear things about people, you should weigh all the evidence and make up your own mind about them.”

“Except,” Sarah reminded her, “that I still have to live with the Garveys.”

“Very true,” Bettina agreed. “And I certainly don’t want to cause you any trouble. I just didn’t want to lose you as a student because of what amounts to nothing more than medieval nonsense. And I don’t want you doing the bare minimum to get by in my class, either. I see exceptional promise in your talent, and I think I can help you hone your skills.”

Sarah smiled. “I’d like that.”

“Me, too,” Bettina said, pushing back from the table. “But I can’t do it if you’re afraid of me. So have a nice evening and I’ll see you tomorrow.” The teacher turned back to her desk and began shuffling a stack of class drawings into a zippered portfolio.

Sarah picked up her backpack and left the art studio, suddenly feeling better than she had in a long, long time.

Nick Dunnigan was in love.

At least he was pretty sure it was love as he moved down the hallway toward the school’s front doors. After all, what else could it be? He felt sort of light-headed and had a sort of hollow feeling in his stomach, and just thinking about sitting across from Sarah Crane in the cafeteria not only made his heart start to pound but also plastered what he knew must be a really stupid-looking grin across his face. Until lunchtime, he’d had no idea, really, what love was, but now he knew.

It made you happy, and it made you want to dance, and it made you feel funny.

But most of all, you knew you had someone you could trust.

Someone you could tell everything to. Absolutely everything.

How could it have happened so quickly?

And how was it that when Sarah Crane was close to him, his voices went quiet?

Profoundly quiet.

Unimaginably, astonishingly, joyfully quiet, as if she had the same effect on them that she did on him. They hadn’t even objected when he started telling her about the hallucination. And that was weird, too—he never talked to anyone about the hallucinations except his mother and the doctors. But today he’d been able to tell Sarah Crane about it and she hadn’t laughed or made fun of him.

He pushed through the heavy doors into the crisp outside air and paused on the steps. Maybe he should wait for Sarah and walk her home. But what if she didn’t want to walk with him? What if she’d thought about what he told her at lunch and decided he was crazy?

He didn’t even want to think about that possibility, and suddenly the whole idea of waiting for her seemed stupid.

Really, really stupid. How was a girl as beautiful and nice as Sarah Crane going to feel the same way about him that he felt about her? Taking the steps two at a time down to the sidewalk, he turned right, then headed diagonally across the football field toward home, his footsteps crunching on the nearly frozen grass.

He was passing the bleachers on the far side of the field when a movement from under the seats caught his eye. Then he heard a voice that made his stomach clench.

Conner West.

Conner got away with everything because his father ran the Warwick police department, which consisted of three deputies, including Conner’s dad.

“Hey,” Conner said.

Before Nick quite realized it had happened, Conner and two of his friends had surrounded him, and the euphoria of the hours since lunch drained out of him in an instant.

He was back to being crazy Nick Dunnigan.

“So the lunatic has a girlfriend, huh?” Conner said, his lips twisting into a sneer. “What do you think it’d be like, screwing a crip?”

Bobby Fendler edged closer and leered at Nick. “At lunch we thought you two should have gotten a room.”

“Gonna go find someplace to make out now?” Elliot Nash chimed in. “You and the gimp?”

The voices in Nick’s head roused from their silence, gabbling angrily among themselves.

“Can we watch?” Conner demanded. “It’d be neat watching Lunatic Nick try to stick it into his gimpy girlfriend.”

“Oh, God, I could puke just thinking about it,” Elliot said, clutching his belly and bending over as if about to vomit all over Nick’s shoes.

“Their kids would all be hunchback psychos,” Conner said, jabbing at Nick’s chest.

Nick stood perfectly still. They’d get bored in a few minutes and leave him alone.

They always did.

But then the committee in his head began howling at him to fight back, to lash out at them, punching, gouging, kicking, even biting and clawing at them until they were lying in the street, writhing in agony, bleeding and dying. The howling rose until the voices were so painful, he felt like his head was about to blow up, and something was happening to his eyes, too.

Now he could barely see Conner and Elliot and Bobby.

“Quiet,” Nick cried out, his voice choking. “Be quiet. Please be quiet.”