Revelations (3 page)

He popped open the lock of the passenger side door, opened it, and pulled the little package out of the glove
compartment. The sheet of the Sunday comic section he’d used as wrapping paper was looking a little grungy, but
whatever. He wanted to get the present into Rae’s locker today so it would be there for her when she got to school
in the morning.

Anthony slammed the car door shut and headed for the main entrance.
Will Rae be pissed when she realizes I

went into her locker without asking?
he worried as he pushed though the double doors.
Yeah, Anthony,
he
answered himself as he made his way down the hall.
She’s going to really hate you for using the locker combo she

gave you. That’s a lot worse than hooking up with her supposed best friend without even saying one word to her.

Rae’s agonized face continued to push its way into his mind. Anthony picked up the pace until he was running full
out.
It’ll go away once I put the present in the locker,
he thought, although he didn’t believe himself.

He turned the corner into the hallway whereRae’s locker was and skidded to a stop. “I don’t frickin’ believe this,”

he whispered, feeling his muscles clench. Who could have done this? Who could have done this to Rae?

Not important now,
he told himself, trying to control the anger rising up in him. He turned around and strode to the
guys’ bathroom. He rolled the handle on the towel dispenser until the strip of rough brown paper towel was long
enough to touch the floor. Then he ripped it off, got it wet, and covered it with gritty pink soap powder. Rae was not
going to see what Anthony had just seen.

Anthony hurried out of the bathroom and back over to Rae’s locker. He paused for a second, staring at the mess,
his body going to steel again. He could barely believe what he was looking at.

The word
unclean
was scrawled across Rae’s locker in dripping red letters. Anthony balled up the sopping paper
towel and scrubbed until the muscles in his arm were screaming. The word was still faintly visible.
Unclean.

Anthony went back to the bathroom for more paper towels and soap.

“Why don’t you go tell Anthony your problems?” Rae demanded. She gave the front door a hard shove. Yana
grunted, but she kept her arm straight so that the door couldn’t close.

“Anthony hates me even more than you do, if that’s possible,” Yana answered.

Don’t believe her,
Rae told herself.
You know you can’t believe anything she says. She’s a liar. Remem ber that.

“He wasn’t in on the… you know, on trying to get back at you for the letter,” Yana added. “He just-”

“Hooked up with you and then went sneaking around. Almost like he knew he had something to be ashamed of,”

Rae interrupted, although she was unable to keep a few glowing specks of relief from appearing inside her. Anthony
at least hadn’t tried to maul her heart. He was just an idiot.

Yana opened her mouth, but Rae cut her off before she could speak another word. “Look, I don’t care who you go
to with your
issue.
I’m not-”

“Weren’t you listening?” Yana burst out. “You’re the only one who can help me, Rae. No one else. Just you.

Without your power-” Yana stopped and shook her head. “This isn’t what I meant to say. I’m going to start over.”

A long beat of silence stretched out between them. Finally Rae forced herself to meet Yana’s gaze. It seemed to be
the signal Yana was waiting for. “I’m sorry,” Yana said. “That was the first thing I was going to say. Even though it’s
so pathetic. Like saying two words changes anything.” Yana grimaced.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered. Her eyes skittered away from Rae’s for a moment, then Yana locked gazes with Rae
again.

Rae waited. Yana obviously wasn’t going to leave until she spat out her little speech. But that didn’t mean Rae had
to help her out.

“My dad, he went ballistic when he got that letter,” Yana said. “I still don’t get why he gave a crap that somebody
thought he wasn’t being the kind of dad he should be. Like did he actually think he was a father-of-the-year
contender or something?” Yana shrugged. “Whatever, for some reason, he went off. He started screaming about
how I was screwing up his life. How people were sniffing around him because of me. It didn’t help that a week
before the letter arrived, the principal of my school made him have a meeting with her. He was none too pleased
about that, either. Although again, I don’t know why he gave a crap.” Yana stopped short. “I’m doing it again. This
isn’t what I was going to talk about. I know you don’t care about this garbage.”

Rae let her keep talking, waiting her out. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, unable to help noticing
that Yana was definitely pretty upset about something-it took a lot for her to lose her cool like this. In fact, the only
other time Rae hadseen her so freaked was when they’d been kidnapped together.

“Like I said,” Yana finally went on, “I’m sorry that I blamed you for the letter. When it first came, I just kind of went
nuts. I was sure you’d sent it. It was the only thing that made sense to me.” Yana sucked in a long breath. “Then
later-after I went to your school and spewed all over you-I started to think I might be wrong. You never gave me any
reason to do something like that. And the more I thought about what you said to me that day at your school… well,
we did both think someone was listening to our conversations in the Motel 6.”

“If you started thinking all that, then-” Rae began.

“Just let me get all this out, okay?” Yana interrupted. “I really knew you didn’t do it-at least after I managed to grow
a brain again. But I don’t know, I’d made such a huge thing of it. I’d already totally screwed our friendship. And so I
guess I pretended to myself that I didn’t know what I knew, if that makes any sense.”

Rae pressed her lips together. “I know what you mean,” she admitted. She’d definitely had quite a few times in the
last months where she didn’t want to accept the reality that was being shoved in her face. “But it’s still no excuse for
what you did to me,Yana.”

“This is no excuse, either,” Yana told her. “But I’m going to say it, anyway. It’s just that while my dad was doing his
lunatic act and I was still trying to convince myself that you were pure evil, I kept thinking about you and your dad.

How you actually talk about stuff. I… basically I got jealous. And that made it a lot easier to stay mad and not just
come to you and tell you what an idiot I’d been. It didn’t seem fair that you-”

“We do have something called furniture inside.” Rae jerked her head up at the sound of her dad’s voice and saw
him heading up the front walk toward them. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t even noticed him drive up. It was just
that she’d hardly ever seen Yana like this, all emotional. Despite how angry Rae still was, it was getting to her.

“Maybe you two have heard of it. It’s basically padded structures that you can sit on with comfort,” Rae’s dad
continued as he reached them.

“Hi, Mr. Voight,” Yana said.

“Hello, Ilyana.”

“Ilyana?” Rae echoed, raising her eyebrows.

Mr. Voight flashed a broad grin, and Rae recognized the expression-he’d had one of those good days where his
students actually got all the complex stuff he taught.

“Yes, I’ve decided to start calling her Ilyana,” he replied. He looked back at Yana. “It suits you, I think,” he told her,
his tone full of that good-mood pep. “Unless you hate it,” he added. “Rae threatens me with a long and painful
death every time I forget and call her Rachel.”

Yana actually blushed. Lea, Rae’s old best friend, would have gotten a pained expression on her face and shot Rae
a get-me-out-of-here look. But Yana seemed like she could stand there all day. And with Yana’s dad the way he was,
it kind of made sense.

“No, it’s okay,” Yana answered, her blush deepening. “No one calls me that. But I like it.”

“So are you going to invite us in?” Rae’s dad asked.

Rae tried not to wince. “Sure,” she answered, backing up and swinging the door all the way open. “Let’s go into
my room,” she said to Yana. She was going to have to listen to the rest of what Yana had to say. But she wasn’t
going to have the conversation in front of her dad. She jerked her chin in the direction of her bedroom and silently
led the way there. “Okay, in a few minutes I’m sure my dad will show up with some lame kind of snack thing for us.”

Rae shut the door behind Yana. “After that, you leave.”

She expected Yana to launch right back into herapologizing slash begging slash explaining. But Yana just sat
down in Rae’s leather desk chair. It was like a switch had been turned off inside her.

Seeing my dad hurt,
Rae realized. She couldn’t stop herself from feeling a little squirt of sympathy.
Remember

what this girl did to you,
she told herself as she sat down on the bed. She planned to stay as silent as Yana until the
snacks arrived. Instead she blurted, “You might as well finish what you were saying. It’s better than us sitting here
staring at each other.”

Yana let out a long sigh but didn’t say anything.

“You were telling me how you felt jealous of my dad,” Rae prompted.

“Yeah. Shocker, huh?” Yana gave a harsh bark of laughter. “You have this perfect dad, and I have-forget it. I’ll leave
when you tell me to.” She grabbed a copy of
Glamour
off Rae’s desk and flipped it open. “Just pretend I’m not here.

I shouldn’t even have come.”

“But you
are
here,” Rae said. “Don’t try to guilt me out by acting all martyr. It’s not you, and we both know it, so-”

There was a thump on Rae’s door that sounded like a kick. Rae jumped up and opened the door. Her dad came in
with a glass of Coke in each hand and a plate of something chocolate balanced on top of theglasses. Yana stood
up and rescued the plate. “Made those myself,” Rae’s dad bragged.

“Wow,” Yana said, staring at the little disks of chocolate with swirls of white icing inside.

Rae’s dad leaned close to Yana. “They’re Yodels, carefully carved Yodels,” he told her in a loud whisper. “Don’t tell
Rae. She really thinks I bake them.” He set the Cokes on Rae’s desk. “I’ll leave you two alone. I can see when I’m not
wanted,” he said. Then he left, closing the door behind him.

He must have had a genius in his class today,
Rae thought. He was being even loonier than usual. Of course, it
also could be because Rae had a friend over for the first time in a while. Maybe he’d been getting worried since Yana
and Anthony hadn’t been around lately.

“Your dad’s kind of funny,” Yana commented. She picked up a Yodel slice, studied it, and popped it into her mouth.

“He’s just happy that I finally seem mentally stable and actually have a friend,” Rae answered. She picked up one
of the Cokes and wrapped both hands around it. “So what’s your deal? What do you need me to do? I’m not saying
I will or anything-but what’s going on?”

Yana hesitated.

I’m not going to plead with her to tell me,
Raethought.
I asked her. That’s enough. More than enough. God, the girl

ripped out my heart with her fingernails.

But if Yana was in trouble, real trouble…

“Just tell me,” Rae said, her voice raised.

“I think my dad wants to put me away,” Yana burst out.

“What?” Rae squinted at Yana. What was she talking about?

“I caught him talking to one of the doctors from the hospital where you were in the summer,” Yana rushed on. “The
doctor was actually at my house. At my
house
.”

Rae frowned. “Okay, but that doesn’t mean he’s planning to have you institutionalized,” she replied. Just thinking
about the hospital made her feel sick and weak, like someone had removed half of her bones and vital organs.

“There were girls in that place who weren’t at all crazy, you know that,” Yana protested. “Girls whose parents just
didn’t want to deal.”

“But-”

“You’re never going to get it,” Yana snapped. “Not with a dad like yours. But my father, he’s always basically acted
like I wasn’t even there. And as long as I didn’t cause him any problems, that was fine. But now with the letter, and
getting called to the principal for a lecture about me skipping school and getting in a fight with this loser girl-it
pissed him off.”

Yana took a swallow of her Coke and kept on talking, like now that she’d started, she’d never be able to stop. “Plus
his new bimbette hates me. I know she’s doing everything she can to convince him to dump me somewhere so the
two of them can do their thing with no interruptions. The witch probably put the call in to the doctor herself.”

“You’re not going to end up in the hospital,” Rae said firmly. And she meant it. She couldn’t let anyone-even
someone who’d completely betrayed her-end up there. Not someone who was totally sane.

“You’re going to help me?” Yana asked, her voice cracking.