The Reaping of Norah Bentley (22 page)

She winced. “Seriously?”

“Twice.”

“Ugh. Sorry about that, Lukester.”

“I think we need to have a talk about your choice in men, young lady.”

“Oh, he’s not so bad,” she said, waving a dismissive hand. “He can actually be really charming.”

Luke laughed good-naturedly. “Oh yeah, he was super charming curled up in my passenger seat, covered in his own vomit.”

“Okay,” I broke in, “That is disgusting.”

“Disgusting, charming—same difference to Rach,” Luke said.

“You’re just jealous,” Rachel said.

“…Insanely jealous. You caught me.” He sighed, shook his head. “I’m not even sure how I managed to get to sleep these past couple nights—it’s all I’ve been able to think about.”

“Oh, shut the hell up,” she muttered, pulling her chap stick out of her purse and popping the cap off. “It’s not like I’m going to marry the guy.”

Luke and me exchanged a glance, and I mouthed the words
thank God.
His eyes lit in agreement, and for one wonderful second it was like we were on the same team again. But he quickly looked away, turned his attention to Miss Neely clearing her throat at the front of the classroom.

We were starting a new project today, using any medium we wanted to create a still-life of something in the classroom. Rachel still had her chap stick in her hand, so she set it in front of her, pulled out her pencils and started to sketch. Luke grabbed some paint and the first inanimate object he came across—a dusty old Art History book—sat back down and stared out the window a little while. He didn’t even pick up a paintbrush until Miss Neely paused at our table and hovered over his shoulder for a few seconds.

And I pretended to think about my subject for a minute, but the second Miss Neely told us to pick an object, I already knew what I wanted to try and capture on paper; it was hanging around my neck, feeling heavier ever since Rachel had asked about it. So I was glad to take the necklace off for a little bit, to set it in front of me and admire the swirling purple glass some more. I gazed at it for a long time before finally deciding: watercolors. I carried it with me when I went to supply closet.

Thirty minutes later, class was going about how it normally did. Rachel had almost finished a perfect sketch. Luke had gotten bored with the assignment, opened his sketchpad and started scribbling in it instead. And I was getting frustrated. My side of the desk was already lined with crumpled pieces of paper, all failed attempts to capture the beauty of Eli’s gift. I scowled at them, and then down at my fifth attempt, which was quickly turning into an amorphous purple blob, just like the rest of them.

I sighed, and started to ball that one up too, but Rachel reached over and grabbed my arm.

“Will you stop?” she said. “It doesn’t look
that
bad.”

“It doesn’t look that good, either,” I said.

“You picked a hard subject,” Rachel said.

“I think you recreated it perfectly though,” Luke said. I gave him a skeptical look, and with a crooked smile he added, “If you squint really hard. And maybe cover one eye.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Look who’s talking,” Rachel said, nodding towards his half-done assignment. “My five-year-old cousin could have done a better job than that.”

I laughed loud enough that several people turned confused looks our way. “You liar. You don’t even have any cousins,” I said, lowering my voice.

She shrugged. “Still, the point stands.” She looked at Luke. “You can’t paint worth crap, either. So hush.”

“That was just mean,” Luke said.

They kept the banter going for several minutes, and my attention slowly started to drift away from the familiar sound, because it was too confusing to try and sort out how I felt about it. Part of me just wanted to join in, laugh and joke and forget Saturday night had ever happened. The other part of me was tired, annoyed with the act—and didn’t want to be a part of it.

I gave up on my painting too, because thinking about Eli just made things even more confusing; so instead I focused on whatever else I could in the classroom. On the hum of the overhead projector, the ceiling tiles that were all painted a different color, some of them featuring reproductions of famous paintings that students had done over the years. Rachel had painted one of the best—the one almost directly above us of Van Gogh’s
Starry Night
.

I looked down, and my eyes fell on Luke’s sketchbook, lying open in front of him. He’d stopped sketching, the tip of his pencil poised just above the creamy-white paper while he and Rachel bickered.

“What are you looking at?” Rachel asked suddenly. She reached over and grabbed the sketchbook, held it up in front of her and tilted it from side to side. Then she lifted her eyes to Luke. “What is that supposed to be?” she asked.

He shrugged. “A drawing?”

I looked away from the book, but the shaded figure Rachel had been pointing at was already fixed into my mind, was still floating in my vision no matter where I tried to look. Two tear-drop shapes, lying side by side with their narrow ends converging in the center; I’d seen it before, but I couldn’t remember exactly where. I knew what it was, though.

“It’s an infinity symbol,” I said.

Rachel looked thoughtful for another moment, then nodded. “Oh yeah…I remember now. Ivey talked about that in class last year. About that guy, Georg something or other—the guy who came up with the Set theory, right?” She looked at me expectantly, but I had to shake my head.

“Don’t look at me,” I said. “You know I don’t pay attention in math.”

“Georg Cantor, I think,” Luke said.

Rachel smiled and her eyes widened dramatically. “You mean you actually
were
paying attention?”

“Just happened to catch the name,” Luke said with a smirk. “Don’t get too excited—the rest of the time I was definitely drawing awesome pictures like that—” he nodded at the notebook— “and writing your phone number all over my desk.”

“And did you write ‘call for a good time’ underneath it, too?”

“Naturally.”

“Figures,” Rachel said, rolling her eyes. “You are so juvenile.” She studied the notebook for a few more seconds and then flung it at Luke, who caught it about an inch from his face and closed it without looking at either of us.

Rachel turned back to me. “So, is tomorrow night good for you or what?” she asked.

“Tomorrow night?”

“Going out for your birthday.”

“My birthday’s not until next week.”

“I know,” she said impatiently. “But next week is fall break, and I’m going to be out of town. Going to New York, remember? My grandparent’s anniversary thing.”

“Oh yeah,” I said. I sort of remembered her saying that. “Tomorrow’s fine, then.”

“Cool.” She watched me uncertainly for a few seconds before adding, “Jordan Stevens’ band is playing at some lounge in Wilmington. I…I thought you might want to go.”

“Yeah, sounds good.” I could tell my lack of enthusiasm was bothering her, but I couldn’t help it. I was watching Luke, too busy trying to read his expression to worry about what my own looked like. He was trying not to look at me again, even though I was staring at him as hard as I could, waiting for him to join in the plan-making like he always did, waiting for him to offer to drive, since he claimed he feared for his life every time me or Rachel got behind the wheel. Crazy women drivers, he’d say. But he kept quiet now, and finally I had no choice but to ask,

“Are you going too?”

He still didn’t answer me right away, and for a few gut-wrenchingly terrible seconds, I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. Because for the first time in my life, I realized, there was a chance he might say no. The certainty between us was gone; not even he was a good enough actor to convince me it wasn’t. I knew what he was thinking: why should he go anywhere with me after what happened Saturday night? After I couldn’t even pick up the phone and call him yesterday? Why should he celebrate my birthday, my life, when all I’d been doing these past few weeks was trying to shove him out of it? Just thinking about it had me wanting to blurt out an apology, but Luke spoke before I could:

“Of course I am,” he said. He was back to acting again, looking at me like I was crazy for even asking a question like that. Rachel was giving me a funny look, too, and for a minute I couldn’t help but entertain the idea that maybe they were right to look at me like I was insane; maybe I was just imagining all the tension between us. Maybe I was imagining
everything
that had happened these past few weeks.

If I actually believed that, it would have been great. Because then I wouldn’t have thought anything about it when I turned toward the window and saw the black dog standing outside it.

I was surprised at how calm I managed to stay at first; maybe because it wasn’t completely unexpected, maybe because it looked like the same dog from the cemetery, except a little bigger maybe, a little skinnier. And it was just sitting there, not looking especially menacing but just staring at me, its eyes reflecting an unusual amount of sunlight.

I closed my eyes for a second. Opened them again, and the dog was still there. So much for imagining things.

“Sam…” I muttered.

“What?” Rachel asked.

“Nothing.”

“Who’s Sam?” Luke glanced out the window, squinted in the sunlight for a second, and then looked back at me expectantly.

I shook my head. “I didn’t say Sam,” I lied quickly. “I said ‘damn’. As in, damn, my throat’s starting to hurt again.” I got to my feet and tried to produce a decent sounding fake cough. “The medicine I took this morning must be wearing off— I’m going to go get a drink of water.”

Rachel nodded, but Luke didn’t move. He was watching me closely, not even attempting to hide the suspicion in his eyes. I guess if anybody could catch my lie, it would have been the person who’d been lying all morning his self. But I didn’t care if he caught me. The dog was pacing back and forth now, its teeth bared and making it harder to stay calm. And right now, all I wanted to do was get away from that window.

“Be right back,” I said, snatching my necklace of the desk. I hooked it back around my neck, hoping that its weight might somehow anchor me to some sort of reality, might help shake the out-of-body feeling I was suddenly experiencing. Then I got Miss Neely’s permission to leave, and hurried out of the classroom without another glance toward the window.

But there were windows along the hallway, too. Windows that spanned from the floor all the way to the ceiling, and somehow the dog was on the other side of those, too. And now he was following me, trotting along beside me, his grey-pink tongue lolling out the side of his mouth in-between those pointy-yellow teeth. I tried not to look, but I kept catching glimpses of the thing out of the corner of my eye, kept expecting to turn around and see it inside, right there next to me.

The windows seemed to be holding as a barrier for now, though; when I reached the end of the hall, the dog was still on the outside of them. And so my next, desperate thought was: get away from the windows.
Now.

I was barely jogging but somehow already out of breath, looking up and down the halls and trying to think of where to run, wondering why in the hell the school thought we needed so many windows— when all of a sudden it hit me: the auditorium was right around the corner. And it was always dark in there, because there wasn’t a single window. Perfect.

I couldn’t think about going back to class just then, or worry about what Rachel or Luke would say; for a fraction of a second my step did slow, thinking about what had happened the
last
time I’d been in that auditorium. But then I was racing down the hall, thinking only about the cool quiet, the waiting darkness that suddenly seemed so inviting.

The double-doors were cracked partway open, and I managed to slip inside without making much noise. There were a handful of people on the stage building something, the sound of their hammers and drills and shouts to one another echoing through the empty room. I crept behind the back row, to the corner farthest from the stage, and collapsed against the side of the chair on the very end. I sat very still for a few minutes, taking deep breaths of the stale auditorium air, thinking about Sam’s promise to keep in touch, and how I desperately wished I had some way to get in touch with Eli. Some way that didn’t involve leaving this auditorium.

I was being a coward again, and I knew it. But what else was I supposed to do? I couldn’t exactly go outside and shoo the dog away. My friends already thought I was crazy. Pretty much the whole school thought I was crazy after what had happened in here last week.

I was thinking about the way Rachel and Luke had looked at me, about how they were probably talking about me now that I’d left, when a new text vibrated my phone and made me jump. It was Rachel, wanting to know if I’d gotten lost on the way to the water fountain. I didn’t respond right away, trying to think of just how I could explain what I was doing in the auditorium.

I eventually decided not to bother trying to explain, since that would probably just lead to more questions I couldn’t answer; I was in the middle of texting her back, just to tell her exactly where I was, when the bell for second period rang. I stared at the screen for a second before adding:
could u bring my stuff?
I wasn’t ready to leave yet.