The Gifting (15 page)

Luka gets out his notebook to take notes—something I’ve never seen him do before—and in the process, his forearm touches mine. I don’t move. I don’t reach for my pencil. I sit like a statue, unwilling to break the contact of his warm skin against my own.

Mr. Lotsam explains that we won’t have much partner time in class. The majority of our project will need to be completed outside of school—as homework. I bite the inside of my cheek and stare straight ahead, while Mr. Lotsam writes the word
Holocaust
on the board.

“I want to hear what you know about it.” He focuses his attention on Luka, no doubt thinking about the comparison he made in Current Events a couple days ago, about fetal modification being a modern-day Holocaust. But Luka doesn’t raise his hand. He keeps his arm right where it is, touching mine. For the remainder of the period.

When the bell rings, he leans close and whispers, “See you soon.” His breath tickles my ear and before I can respond, he slips out of class. Across the room, Summer scowls. I can’t bring myself to care. Or heed Leela’s warning.

*

“What’s your deal?” Pete stares at my thumb, which taps the steering wheel.

“Nothing.”

“You’re speeding.” Pete eyes the speedometer. “You never speed.”

“I’m eager to get home.”

“Why?”

“I’m … meeting someone.”

Pete shakes his head disgustedly. “Is it that Williams kid?”

“How do you know?”

“I overheard some seniors talking in gym class.”

I turn off the winding road onto Linden Avenue, which brings us to the gates leading into Forest Grove.

“I don’t like that kid.”

I scrunch my nose. “Why not?”

“He’s full of himself”

Full of himself? Matt Chesterson is full of himself. Luka, no way. Those are about the last words I would use to describe Luka. “Pete, you don’t even know him.”

He slouches in his seat as the iron gates slowly open. “It’s a feeling.”

“Well, I have a
feeling
about the kids you’re hanging out with too.”

I drive into Forest Grove, my mouth suddenly dry. Luka’s car is parked in the driveway. He is home. Waiting. For
me
.

“Since when do you hang out with the popular kids?” Pete asks, unbuckling his seat belt.

I pull into our driveway. I have no idea how to respond. I don’t even care to. For once in his life, Pete is being the pestilent younger brother, a role he has never played. A piece of my brain knows I should ask him what’s going on—the change in clothes and the loner attitude and the awful music. But I’m too anxious to get to Luka. “Since when do you have a problem with popular kids?”

Pete shrugs.

I roll my eyes, open the car door, hurry through the cool fog, and step inside our house. Mom is there, as always. I can’t think of a time she hasn’t been. Ever eager to ask us about our day, about our friends and classes and how we are doing. Usually it isn’t a big deal. Usually I don’t have much to report, but today is different. Not only do I have something to report, I really don’t want to report it to her.

Pete slinks in behind me and lets Mom kiss his cheek. “How was your day, sweetie?”

“Not nearly as interesting as Tess’s,” he says.

I shoot him daggers.

Mom gives me an interested, sideways look. “Oh?”

“She has a boyfriend.”

“He is not my boyfriend.”

Despite my denial, Mom’s eyes go bright. Pete heads up the stairs, leaving me alone with the nosy parent. “Who’s he talking about?”

“It’s nothing. I’m going next door to work on a school project.”

“Next door? To the Williams’ house?”

I kick my shoes off into the closet. “You know them?”

“We met a few weeks ago. Mrs. Williams came over to welcome us to the neighborhood. Are you really doing a project with their son?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow.” Mom follows me up the stairs. “He’s a hottie.”

“Mom!”

“What? Isn’t that the lingo you kids use these days?”

My cheeks grow warm. “Please never use that word again.”

She follows me into my room. “So tell me about this project you’re working on.”

“We have to research genocides throughout history and give a presentation on it.”

“Cheery.”

I stand in front of my full-length mirror and run my hands down the front of my sweatshirt, wondering what it would be like to be sexy like Summer or pretty like Bobbi or even cute like Jennalee. I consider putting on eyeliner or eye shadow or mascara. Anything that might make me less average. But what if Luka notices? What if it looks like I’m trying too hard?

“You look beautiful, honey.”

I dip my chin at Mom’s reflection in the mirror. “You have to say that.”

“Yes, but I really mean it.” She puts her hands on my shoulders and squeezes. “Have fun at Luka’s.”

I take a deep, rattling breath and try to return her smile.

Confessions

T
he short walk over to Luka’s doesn’t give me enough time to gather my courage. I find myself wishing he lived on the other side of the country instead of next door. In all my seventeen years, I’ve never worked alone with a boy before. At the library in groups, sure. But never one-on-one.

I hike the strap of my backpack over my shoulder and step onto his front stoop, inhaling deeply through my nostrils. I can do this. I can work on a history project with Luka. If the topic is broached, I can talk to him about insane, impossible things—like spiritual beings that aren’t supposed to exist. I shake my head, wondering if psychosis would be the better scenario. At least then medicine could solve the problem. But angels and demons that nobody else can see but me and him? There’s no solution that I’ve heard of.

I glance at my house, then back at Luka’s door. How long before he regrets asking me to be his partner? How long before he realizes the girl with the frozen tongue is an idiot? I lick my bottom lip and stare at the doorbell. Why is it so hard to reach out my finger and push a stupid button?

The door swings open.

I step back and almost stumble off the step behind me.

Luka stands on the threshold, his hand on the door, his head cocked, his eyebrow quirked. “I was starting to wonder if you were ever going to knock.”

“You were watching me?”

“Maybe.” He opens the door wider—a nonverbal invitation to step inside.

The foyer is large and tall with a hanging chandelier that looks like it came straight out of the nineteenth century. The house is warm and quiet. I look past Luka toward a kitchen that is different from our own.

“Looking for somebody?”

Oh, just an angel. Maybe some evil spirits. Perhaps a parent. I bite the inside of my cheek. This is all so preposterous.

“You rarely say what you’re thinking.”

I pull my gaze away from the great room and look him in the face.

“I can tell you have a million thoughts racing through your head, but you keep them to yourself.” Something like amusement sparkles in the green of his eyes. “You’re very mysterious.”

Me? Mysterious? I think painfully shy is more accurate.

“My mom does Zumba on Thursdays. She won’t be home until dinner. Can I get you anything? Water? Chocolate milk?”

“Chocolate milk?”

“Your drink of choice at lunch.”

Heat creeps into my cheeks. “Water’s fine.”

He disappears into the kitchen and I’m left standing in his tall, empty foyer with dark polished floors and textured, copper-colored wallpaper. My attention follows a wide-set staircase up to the second floor. A family portrait and school pictures of Luka through the years hang on the wall in gold, ornate frames. We don’t live in one of those neighborhoods where every house is a slightly different version of every other. We lived in one like that in Illinois for about a year-and-a-half and Mom was perpetually pulling into the wrong driveways. The houses in Forest Grove are all unique and old—mansions from the early twentieth century.

A can cracks open behind me. I swivel around.

“Pretty embarrassing,” he says, raising his Mountain Dew toward the portraits.

“My mom does the same thing.” Only unlike Luka’s flawless transition from adorable boy to striking young man, mine are filled with awkward years. The winner being seventh grade, when no girl should ever be photographed. My hideous haircut is forever memorialized in a frame in our hallway. “Mine are more embarrassing though.”

“I doubt it.” Luka hands me my water. “Want to go up to my room?”

“Um …” Gulp. “Sure.”

He leads the way up the stairs, past several open doors, and into his bedroom. It’s large and not at all like the typical teenage boy room—at least not at all like Pete’s. He has no posters on his walls or dirty clothes on the floor or unidentifiable smells. The room is tidy with warm, brown walls, a large window that overlooks the ocean, a desk with an opened laptop, a dresser with an attached mirror, a queen-sized bed with a navy blue comforter, and an insanely huge bookcase that covers an entire wall. Several pictures are pinned to a bulletin board—not of girls or friends—but a couple of the ocean and one of his parents. There’s a water glass on his nightstand, a pair of glasses, and an intimidating book titled
World Dictators: Past and Present
.

“You like to read.” It’s a nice discovery.

He stands in the doorway looking uncertain, as if he’s awaiting my approval. “A little.”

I walk over to his nightstand, run my hand over the cover of the thick book, and raise my eyebrows.

He shifts on his feet. “I like history.”

I twist the cap off my water.

Luka sets the Mountain Dew on a coaster on his desk, pulls out his computer chair, and sits on it backward. He nods toward his bed. “You can sit down if you want.”

Positive he can hear the lame thumping of my heart, I take a sip of water and sit on the very edge, trying hard not to think about the fact that I’m on his bed. The air feels charged, like it does whenever a storm rolls in and lightning is about to strike. I wonder if Luka can feel it too. I twist the cap back on the water bottle and clear my throat. “So where should we start?”

He folds his arms over the backrest of his chair. “I have a confession.”

I look up from his hemp bracelet, momentarily dazed by his face. Seriously. It’s like staring at a picture of a Calvin Klein model.

“I don’t want to work on our history project.”

The water bottle crinkles in my hand. I set it beside the glasses on his nightstand, trying to imagine what he might look like in them, then slide my hands beneath my knees. “I did some research during study hall. About your theory.”

“Find anything interesting?”

“There are people out there who believe in it—a spiritual realm.” The two words sound silly when I speak them out loud. Sillier even than when I read them on the computer screen in the library, paranoid somebody might come up behind me and read my Google search. “But I couldn’t find anything about people who are able to see it.”

Luka wheels his chair closer. “I keep thinking about what happened today, in Ceramics. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

“I thought you said you have.”

“I don’t mean what we saw. I mean what happened.”

My forehead scrunches. “I don’t understand.”

“It was trying to interact with you. And then yesterday, in Lotsam’s class. It was almost like that thing was trying to provoke you. Like it wanted you to react. Every time I replay it in my head, that’s what I come up with.”

His words settle between us. I’m not sure what to do with them, so I leave them untouched. Perhaps I’ll come back to them later. “I have a question.”

One corner of his mouth lifts. “Just one?”

“It’s about our dream.”

“Okay.”

“How did that work, do you think?”

He shakes his head. “I wish I knew.”

“Has anything like that ever happened to you before?”

He averts his gaze, but in the split second before he does, I see something guarded flicker on his face. He swivels away to take a drink. When he turns back around, his expression is unreadable. “Has it to you?”

I scratch the inside of my wrist, trying to decide if I should tell him or not. Especially since he’s not being forthright with me. I can tell he’s holding something back. I just wish I knew what. “Remember the clinic bombing?”

“Sure.”

“This is going to sound crazy.”

“Crazier than angels in Ceramics?”

“Right.” I let out a shaky laugh, loosening up a bit. “I dreamt about the bombing the night before. Two people died in my dream. Then the next morning in Current Events, I learned that the bombing actually happened and the two people who died in my dream were on the news, reported as dead.”

I pause, waiting for his reaction. He stares at me attentively and waits.

“The next night …” I shake my head. “This is totally weird.”

Luka scoots even closer, so much so that his knees are on either side of mine. “What?”

“When we visited each other in our dream?”

He raises his eyebrows, urging me to continue.

“What happened to me?” I have to know what he saw.

“You sank into the ground. I tried grabbing you, but I wasn’t quick enough. Where did you go?”