Salem's Sight (3 page)

I didn’t move a muscle, tense,
waiting.

Mom sighed. “I don’t know how you do
that, but yes, I do have news you’re not going to like.” She paused
for a second, gathering her courage. “I made an appointment for you
with a doctor.”

Holy crap. This was going to be
ugly.

Either this would be that dreaded
first visit to a gyno, or, she was going to try again to get my
head shrunk. Yuck. What a choice. Kind of like being asked by your
executioner if you’d rather be boiled in oil or thrown to the
lions.

Now I was majorly pissed. “Why do I
need a doctor? I’m not sick.” I leaned against the wall for
support.

“
The dreams, Salem. I think
it would be a good idea for you to talk to someone about your
dreams and the accident. You need to get a handle on this.” She sat
down and took a sip of her coffee like we were talking about making
a nail appointment. A new coat of polish and a psych
eval.

Not if I could help it. “We’ve been
down this road before, Mom. I saw a shrink back home. It so didn’t
help.”

She took another sip and looked
directly into my eyes. “You didn’t give her a chance. You only went
for two sessions.”

She held my gaze in a showdown,
neither one of us wanting to look away first. I expected someone to
yell ‘draw’ at any second.

No one did.

The silence seemed to echo. We didn’t
need to speak the words. They’d all been said before.

Finally I slung my backpack over my
shoulder and headed for the door. “I’ll be late for school. I’d
better get going,” I said.

Mom stood up quickly, crossed to the
sink, and emptied the contents of her cup. “I’ll drive
you.”

I looked longingly at the splattered
remains of java dotting the sink as I strode by. What a waste of
perfectly good coffee. I shook my head. “That’s okay, I need to get
used to the walk.” I made a grand exit and slammed the door behind
me.

A split second after the
reverberations the door squeaked open. “You didn’t have breakfast,”
Mom yelled after me.

I just shrugged and kept
walking.

CHAPTER threE

Mom’s last line came back to haunt me
a few hours later in science class.

There’s nothing more miserable than a
new school, no friends, a wrecked life, and an empty
stomach.

As my belly grumbled its disdain, the
girl seated next to me at the lab table held out a granola bar.
“Sounds like you need this more than I do.”

“
Thanks,” I said, as
embarrassment shrank my ego to about the size of a pushpin. Just
what I wanted, to be known as the stomach growler.

I expected her to turn in disgust and
ignore me, but she smiled instead. A nice smile. Sincere. And
pretty, too. Straight white teeth, too perfect to have been created
without braces. Been there, done that, felt her pain.

“
You must be new. I know
just about everyone.”

I cringed. New kid might be the only
thing worse than stomach growler. “Yeah, just moved here from North
Carolina,” I said instantly wishing I hadn’t brought up my home
state or the memories that went with it.

“
Cool. What’s it like
there?” She pulled a pen from her purse, lined it up against her
notebook then looked at me expectantly.

How do you clarify an alternate
reality? If I had months, I couldn’t explain it. So I went for the
obvious. “Warm. Warmer than here anyway. I’m Salem,” I said, for a
lack of anything better to say.

“
Salem. Interesting name.
Any relatives from Massachusetts?” She said it with interest like
she expected me to be the long lost ancestor of someone
significant.

Why would she ask that? Then it dawned
on me. “Oh, the witch thing. No, actually my dad worked for a
tobacco company.” I laughed as I remembered the tale. “Lucky I was
born female. If I’d been a boy, I would have been named
Winston.”

Her dark almond-shaped eyes sparkled
with amusement. “We have something in common then.”

What could she have in common with
that? “What, you were named after cigarettes too?”

For a nanosecond she looked at me like
I was a little slow. “No, but we both have strange names and
stories to go with them.”

Curiosity got the better of me and I
had to ask. It wasn’t a matter of just being polite. “So what’s
yours?”

“
Berkley.”

There was something about the way she
said her name. Not snobby or uppity, but sophisticated. I came from
money and knew my way around a country club, but she wasn’t just
worldly, she was cultured. Intellectual. “I like it. And the
story?”

“
Not as good as yours. My
parents went to school there. They spelled my name differently, but
that’s the reason for it. I believe I was conceived on a reunion
visit.”

Definitely TMI about her parents. “Do
people bug you about it?”

“
Not really. Although some
people say my name a million times whenever they talk to
me.”

“
Yeah, I know what you
mean. That happens to me a lot too.” And I really could relate.
It’s weird. When you have a common name, your friends just talk to
you regular. But when you have a different name, I don’t know, for
some reason your name constantly gets put into the
conversation.

“
So a tobacco company? Why
come here to Rhode Island? What’d he do, switch
careers?”

I didn’t want to talk about my dad, so
I made it short and sweet. “Sort of, he… Um, he died a few months
ago and my mom thought it would be a good idea to move and get a
fresh start.”

Her jaw fell open and I could tell she
wished she’d never asked. It took her a second to respond, but when
she did, it was honest and to the point. “That sucks.”

“
Tell me about it.” I hoped
that would be the end of the discussion, but she
continued.

“
Your mom didn’t get that
it would just upset you more to move out of state?”

For some odd reason, I felt the need
to defend my mom. “She really thought it was for the best. It’s
been hard on her too.”

Saying it out loud made the fact real,
which I’d so never admitted, even to myself. I liked to think I
held the world record on suffering. It made it easier to stay mad
at Mom.

Berkley took the stack of papers that
were being passed to her, gave me one, and then handed them to the
next lab table. “Well consider me the welcoming committee. I’ll
show you around. Anything you need to know, I’m the one to ask. Are
you taking all Advanced Placement classes or just this
one?”

“
All AP.” I hated saying
it. Most college-bound kids had only some AP classes. To be in all
of them meant you got labeled brainiac or nerd.

Which was ironic. I mean, I wasn’t all
that into school. I wanted to get good grades and I studied, but it
wasn’t like I had to put in a lot of extra effort. Unfortunately,
being smart was the antithesis of being cool. You could be cool and
be smart in an area or two, but highest honors in all AP classes
without breaking a sweat could be hell on your social
life.

I’d never thought about it back home
because most of my friends had been my friends since we were little
kids. Long before the school pigeonholed us in terms of
intellectual potential.

“
Good, then we’ll have
other classes together too. Probably most. There aren’t many of
us.”

She didn’t need to say more, I
understood completely. We were brethren. Which meant time to show
the sarcasm. “So the only thing weird about us is our
names?”

Berkley grinned, “Looks like
it.”

We completed our introductory lab,
chatting through it like we’d known each other forever. For the
first time, I wondered if it would be possible to like it here.
There was something instant with Berkley, a type of kinship I’d
never felt before.

When class ended, the masses hurled
through the door and Berkley and I meandered to our next class. I
started to relax and feel comfortable, as if I’d fit in
fine.

Then I saw him.

Or he saw me. I mean, somehow you just
know when someone is staring at you. Not just looking, but staring.
I glanced away from Berkley and my eyes honed in on his. My breath
caught, my stomach flipped, and my heart beat double
time.

Can we say seriously cute? I mean, way
more than just cute. Try Adonis. A Greek god. No, a movie star.
Maybe my destiny. Yeah, right, get a grip. But he was staring at
me.

Unfortunately he wasn’t ogling me in a
‘wow, she’s hot’ kind of way. Instead, he gawked at me like I had
two heads or something.

So much for feeling
comfortable.

“
Um, Berkley, who is that
guy and why is he looking at me like that?” I looked down at my
clothes to make sure I wasn’t covered in a bizarre substance or
missing an article of clothing.

“
Answer to question one –
senior hottie Robbie – and answer to question two – absolutely no
idea.” Berkley gave me the once-over to check for some catastrophe,
just the way I had a moment earlier. Nothing.

We looked back to see if his face
would give us a clue, but he had evaporated like a ghost. I looked
in both directions, but couldn’t see any sign of him.

“
Is he … strange, or … ” I
shrugged wondering how the mere sight of me could have sent him
running. I mean, really, it’s not my normal affect on
boys.

“
No, he’s cool. Used to be
big man on the hockey team.”

Okay, I know I’m an English geek but I
instantly picked up on the past tense. “Used to be? What happened?”
I turned to face her, wanting to know every detail about the hot
guy whom I’d repulsed at first sight.

“
Not sure. He won the
championship game last season, but hasn’t been on the ice since.
Insists he’s not going to play this year. It’s kind of crazy
considering he might end up with a scholarship if he stays on the
team.” She paused and thought a second. “It could have something to
do with his mom though. She died last year. I’m pretty sure from
cancer. Anyway, that’s about the time he changed.”

At her words, I stopped in my tracks.
I couldn’t help my visceral raw reaction.

When it’s happening to you, it’s easy
to forget that it takes place everyday and affects many people. Not
as unique as I thought I was. Robby, the hottie, suffered too.
Death, the equal opportunity employer, treated everyone the
same.

It’s so easy to look at people who
appear perfect and imagine they have perfect lives. My stomach
clenched and Berkley’s granola bar, which sat like lead, threatened
to reappear. I felt guilty for carrying around so much self-pity. I
was old enough to realize the world wasn’t revolving around
me.

“
Come on,” Berkley said.
“We’re going to be late for class. And being new might work for
you, but it certainly won’t for me.”

****

Okay, so it felt a little strange the
first time I had a friend over to my new house. In North Carolina
we had a show place and I guess I never realized how proud of it I
was. Everyone I knew had these big expensive homes and I never
thought much about it.

So totally different now. For the
first time I felt self-conscious about where I lived. Which is
stupid. It’s not like it’s the slums or anything. Grandma’s house
is nice. It’s just small compared to what I was used to. And not
completely redecorated. Somehow, at this point in my life, it made
me feel… less. Not that I needed help in that department. Since the
accident, self-esteem has been one of my issues. It all related
back to guilt, but then again, what didn’t?

Anyway, my point is, I was a little
edgy when Berkley came over for the first time, especially since I
hadn’t seen her house yet. I kept watching her reactions, which, to
my relief, seemed totally normal. That made me think maybe her
place wasn’t much bigger.

She seemed at ease and strolled into
my room behind me. Still nervous, I thought I’d explain why it
looked such a mess.

“
It’s still a work in
progress,” I said.

She rolled her eyes like I must have
thought her dim witted. “Yeah, I know, you just moved in a few
weeks ago.” Then she plopped down on the blue bean bag chair. The
one that should have remained in North Carolina. The one that
belonged to another era and another life.

“
I need a new bean bag,
this one’s falling apart,” I said almost to myself.

She nodded in understanding. “That’s
the problem with redecorating. Once you start, everything that
isn’t new looks old and out of place.” She twisted her long brown
hair like she was wringing it out, and then tucked it inside the
back of her shirt causing a lump.

I couldn’t imagine why she’d cover it
up. Her hair was shampoo-commercial gorgeous. Silky, shiny, and
almost to her butt.

While mine was… average, nondescript,
nothing-special kind of hair. Well, that’s not exactly true. It was
a little past my shoulders and mostly straight. That was the
average part.