The Healing Power of Sugar: The Ghost Bird Series: #9 (The Academy Ghost Bird Series) (3 page)

“Huh?” I asked, although I got up and moved around North to sit next to Luke on the floor. North had gotten a photo. Shouldn’t Luke?

“I mean he’s got a lot of pictures of all the times he’s ever pranked anyone,” Gabriel said. He became distracted when Kota pulled out his cell phone and started looking at it. Gabriel pointed to the screen as Kota started typing. “Don’t read the articles. Check out the videos. A lot of those articles are trash.”

“You don’t know that,” Kota said.

“Just trust me. You can watch someone on YouTube take off permanent marker, if it can be done. That way you know it works, and it isn’t just some geezer writing an article for a quick buck and he didn’t actually know shit. Video is evidence.”

Luke put his arm around me, and put his phone in front of our faces and flashed a few pictures. “Smile, Sang.”

I was still half listening to Gabriel and had lost what I was doing. I smiled, cheesy and guiltily. I reached up to my hair, unsure how sloppy it might be since we were wrestling a bit on the floor downstairs. Locks fell around my face. I reached back to fix them.

Luke snapped a few photos anyway, not giving me much of a chance to fix myself. I saw colored spots after the bright flashes. “You keep photos when you do pranks like this?” I asked.

“I can’t get photos every time,” Luke said. He leaned away from me, and started swiping through photos on his phone, searching through them. “Sometimes I’m too busy running.”

“Because you know you’ll get into trouble,” North said. “Which reminds me, you still owe me some new tires.”

My lips parted and I looked over at Luke, who grinned at his phone with a guilty expression. “What did you do to North’s tires?”

“How was I supposed to know the paint would eat away at his tire tread?” Luke asked. “I thought you could just wash it off.”

“If I wash my tires with water and soap, and they turn orange, the color doesn’t just wash out,” North said.

Luke flipped around his phone to me, showing me North’s black Jeep, only with bright orange tires. The tires were wet, with North standing by, looking angry and confused. Some chemical reaction must have happened causing the tires to change colors.

Luke beamed at the shock on my face. “Looks awesome, doesn’t it?”

“You’re costing me a fortune,” North said. “You’ve been going too far. One of these days, you’re going to piss off the wrong person.”

“I only mess with my favorite people,” Luke said. “If I don’t like you, I won’t care enough to do anything.”

North shifted his feet, stretching out his legs while sitting on the floor, and then bent them again, putting his arms over the knees. He peered over them, his dark eyes showing just a hint of amusement. “Please, Luke, don’t like me anymore.”

I smiled, tempted to tell Luke the same thing. Was it better to be pranked? It was kind of fun, but I could see North’s point that if he didn’t think ahead, it might cause problems, like costing North some new tires.

Kota returned with a bottle of sunscreen spray and a roll of paper towels. “According to the internet, this works.”

“I don’t know if we should trust it,” Gabriel said, trailing behind him. “That’s just the first one we came across. And someone in the comments said it didn’t work. I don’t know if this will just streak the marker.”

“We need a guinea pig,” Kota said and then turned to Luke, shaking the sunscreen spray.

Luke chuckled. “Yeah, I guess I’m it.” He pumped his fist once. “For science!”

“Or if makes it worse, let’s just call it karma for starting this whole mess,” Gabriel said.

Kota sat down cross-legged on the floor in front of Luke. “Let’s just focus on getting this stuff off. If this doesn’t work, we’ll need to try something else.” He adjusted his glasses quickly. He shook the sunscreen can again and then picked up Luke’s arm. He started spraying the stuff thickly over the black marks.

The ink started to streak, and at first, I was worried Gabriel was right. He’d end up with a coated partially blackened arm.

Kota took a paper towel and started to wipe. The marker came off cleanly. I blew out a quick breath, relieved and hoping that this still worked when it was my turn to get cleaned up.

“We might need more sunscreen spray after this,” Kota said.

“I’ll put it on the shopping list,” North said.

At least the marker was coming off easily. Kota continued to work on Luke by spraying carefully over his face and wiping away from his eyes.

I got up, heading to the bathroom and checking the mirror, looking over the damage. Luke had lied about the curse word on my face. There weren’t any words at all. There were stick men, and stars and a moon and something that looked like an alien.

And then I remembered my ear and I checked. There was a tiny heart, small and cute, right on my lobe.

I smiled at it, and then combed out my hair a bit, letting the locks that frame my face hide my ear. I didn’t want Kota to get rid of it just yet. If I could get away with it, I’d keep it. At least for a little while.

When I got out of the bathroom, Luke was wiping at his skin with a dry paper towel. Kota was collecting the stained dirty ones into a plastic bag. Gabriel was lying on the bed now, looking like he wanted a nap.

“I smell like I’ve been to the beach,” Luke said.

“Get over to the diner,” North said. “Take your shift back from Nathan.”

“I know what I need to do,” Luke said. “You don’t have to tell me.” He got up and started walking toward the stairs.

“You’ve been running off lately whenever you get a break from the diner,” North said. “Nathan needs a break. He doesn’t need you running off now.”

“I never miss a shift. I’m always back on time,” Luke said, pausing to turn and look at him. He held his hands out. “I do my job. Just because I’m not a slave to it like you are—”

“I’m not talking about working more at the diner,” North said. “I’m talking about you disappearing every day.”

“I don’t go anywhere,” he said. North opened his mouth to reply but Luke waved him off in a very abrupt way and rushed to the stairs. His footsteps shuffled quickly over the carpeted steps. I listened to the noises he made going through the house, and finally when he closed the door as he left.

I eased over to sit next to Kota on the floor, feeling odd about being there while North was fussing at Luke. Wasn’t North being a little harsh on his brother? I wasn’t sure what Luke might be up to, but unless Luke was really needed somewhere, like for the Academy jobs or for the diner, if he wanted to spend time alone, shouldn’t he be allowed? Just because North didn’t know where he went, did that mean Luke was going to get into trouble?

And where was Luke going? I hadn’t noticed him disappearing anywhere. The boys were coming and going all the time, so it was difficult to keep track, and I always assumed they were either at home or on some Academy job.

North scooted over across the carpet, heading my way. He took the sunscreen spray from Kota and motioned to me. “Let me get that shit off of you.”

I checked in with Kota, who wasn’t looking at me, but at the window, as if he following Luke with his eyes. Absently, he passed over the supplies to North. “Just be careful around her eyes.”

“I know, I know,” North said. He tried to look at my face while on the floor, but frowned. He got up and sat on the bed, nudging Gabriel over. “Don’t go to sleep. You’ll be up all night.”

Gabriel rolled over and faced the wall, giving North more room. “I’m a teenager,” he said. “I need lots of sleep. Science people said so on YouTube.”

North curled his fingers in my direction. “Get up off the floor.”

I sat on the bed next to North, and let him clean off my face. I wrinkled my nose at the heavy scent of sunscreen filling my nose. It was a little much and my eyes blurred as I wanted to sneeze. He ignored my ear, and cleaned my face and the marks on my arm. I didn’t need to say anything about leaving the heart. Either he forgot, or he liked it, too, and left it alone.

“Gabriel,” Kota said and got up to sit at his computer chair. He turned on his computer and started clicking on different files. I could see little over his shoulder, only the edge of Internet windows. “Where has Luke been going lately?”

“Shit if I know,” Gabriel said. “We haven’t really been hanging out lately.”

“What have you been doing?” Kota asked. “Are you two okay?”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Doing what?”

“Just trying to stay out of Pam’s way,” Gabriel said. “She’s still into that new guy, the one that basically kicked me and Sang out. He stinks and is always looking for money. They fight about it. I might start storing stuff at Victor’s house before the guy thinks to sell things off while I’m not around. And whenever I see Pam, she’s handing me condoms. Like she thinks I’m fucking around with Sang every time I leave the house.”

I blushed, staring at the floor, embarrassed to think of if I ever had to go over to Gabriel’s house again and see Pam. Could I look her in the face?

Suddenly, I realized Kota might not know the truth. I stared at the floor, afraid that Gabriel might reveal some hint of we’d been caught kissing or something else. Kota may not be ready for that.
I
hadn’t been ready…

“Don’t talk like that,” North said, spraying sunscreen into a paper towel and using it to wipe closer to my eyes. The cool spray wetted my skin, and my eyes watered at the strong smell. I wanted to wipe at them, but knew better, as I’d probably get ink and sunscreen in my eyes.

“I can talk how I want, North,” Gabriel said in a deeper tone.

I gritted my teeth. Was everyone grumpy?

“Guys,” Kota said with his eternally patient tone. “Back to Luke. Is he okay? The last time he ran off like this was when we were talking about starting up at the high school and he wasn’t really into the idea. Is he upset with something?”

I turned to look at Gabriel, who was still on his side, facing the wall, but he didn’t say anything. There was a heaviness in the silence, and while I couldn’t confirm his feelings, I could only assume we were thinking the same thing. If Luke was upset about anything, it must have been the recent discovery he, Gabriel and I had made.

Luke was the one who had discovered North had been having secret conversations with someone about me joining the team. He’d found Lily and her team, and had invited Gabriel and I along to find out what they were up to.

Unfortunately, the answer was something we hadn’t expected at all. I wasn’t even sure I understood how their plan would work. To keep the team together, we all needed to stay together. For Lily’s team, that meant she and the four guys on her team got married. They’d fallen in love and lived together in a house in the middle of nowhere without neighbors.

It might not be the only way, but it was their way, and from what we’d heard, the only real way it worked out for the long term. After talking it over with Mr. Blackbourne later, we learned other teams had tried it, but hadn’t been successful.

Lily kept in contact with me, but I didn’t know what to say to her. I wasn’t really sure I had processed the idea. Gabriel and I talked about it on occasion, but we hadn’t broken off to talk to anyone else yet. I think we were still trying to get used to the idea, and what it meant to us. Luke hadn’t talked too much about the encounter since it happened, although he was always nice to me when we did talk, like today.

The silence continued. Kota went on. “If we don’t know, maybe one of us should ask him.”

“I don’t think he wants to talk to me right now,” Gabriel said. “I’ve tried a couple of times, but whatever he’s got bottled up, he’s keeping to himself.”

“He sure as hell won’t talk to me,” North said and then sighed. “I’ve been pushing at him to get his head together and he’s been fighting back, like how he fights me on everything lately.”

“You may need to back off for a while,” Kota said. “Whatever he’s going through, you don’t want to push him too far.”

The problem was, without North being able to talk to him and Gabriel bowing out, I wasn’t sure who else could get through to him. I didn’t have a chance to talk to anyone personally about where everyone else stood on this. Maybe Victor, although he’d had to spend more time at home in the last week, with an upcoming concert happening for a charity event.

It couldn’t be Kota, and I wasn’t totally sure how the others would talk to him about the issue. It left only one person, and since Luke hadn’t talked to me about it yet, I wasn’t sure he would. “Maybe...I should talk to him,” I said.

North made a last swipe at my face with a dry paper towel. “That might be a good idea.”

“I just worry if it’s a guy problem, that he’s not going to explain it to her,” Kota said. “Or he’s just going to tell her it’s no big deal when it really is. Or maybe it’s some assignment in the Academy he’s not sure about and doesn’t know how to refuse.”

“It’s either her or Mr. Blackbourne,” North said. “Personally, I think she should give it a go first. Mr. Blackbourne’s busy.”

Out there somewhere was a fake Sang in a blond wig, along with another Academy guy, sometimes it was Nathan or Kota, and sometimes it was someone else, running around ahead of Mr. Morris and other teachers, and Mr. Blackbourne followed them for extra protection. This was to keep Mr. Hendricks’s spies busy while Mr. McCoy was scouting a fake Academy school. It was meant to distract them all and allow Mr. Hendricks to feel like he had an advantage over us now.

Mr. Blackbourne had to stay away from the real me and the rest of us, though. We were lucky we hadn’t had any unusual cars or any other activity for the past week. All of the spies were in downtown Charleston with the fake Sang and Mr. Blackbourne.

We couldn’t keep up this charade forever. Tomorrow, I’d be back at school, and so would Mr. Blackbourne.

If we couldn’t subtly draw them out, we’d do it loudly, according to Kota, relaying what Mr. Blackbourne had told him. If this was the subtle part, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know about the louder version. I didn’t even know what it really meant, but whenever I heard a door open or a car passing by, my heart raced. Kota watched the street, as did the other guys, and we waited, either for orders as to what to do, or a sign that Mr. Morris or someone else had returned and had given up the chase.