“Jesus.” Dana shook her head, but her grin was impossible to hide.
Milo took a step toward me as I headed for Cal’s car. “Sky.” His voice was quiet. It made me want to run into his arms, grab him, and hold on tight.
Instead, I kept walking. “Not now,” I replied without glancing up.
He wanted space. So I was going to give him plenty.
Chapter
Ten
“Fag.”
The beefy-looking jock spewing the hate word was standing by the door in the Palm River CoffeeBoy, but his voice carried like a bell. And the message was clearly directed at the boy standing right behind me in the long line.
On my left, Cal dropped his jaw and shot the offender an
Oh no you didn’t
look.
But Jock-Boy most definitely had.
The kid standing behind us didn’t even turn around. He did nothing except lift his head a bit higher and take a long, deep, cleansing breath.
But Jock-Boy wasn’t finished with his abuse. “You are
such
. A
faggot
. God! What the fuck are you even
wearing
?”
As a matter of fact, the kid behind us was wearing an
extremely
cool rainbow-colored tank. He was stylish enough to pull off the look. He also had huge sunglasses and a designer bag that had probably required a serious down payment. And yes. Even without the Technicolor garb, he was also definitely setting off my gay-dar.
I turned to face him. His freckled face had darkened into a furious flush, and I caught a whiff of his anger. “Hi, I’m Skylar,” I said as pleasantly as possible, holding out a hand in greeting. “I
love
your shirt.” Translation:
Let’s all ignore the a-hole and maybe he’ll go away
.
The boy managed a smile as he took my hand. “Thanks,” he said in a quiet, even tone. “I’m Ray.”
The a-hole, sadly, did the opposite of go away. “
I’m Ray
,” he mocked, as he came toward us. “Like a little ray of homo sunshine. I’m
so
cute.”
The muscle in Ray’s jaw clenched, and I pointedly turned my back on the approaching idiot and continued our far more civilized conversation. “Nice to meet you,” I told Ray. “This is my friend Calvin.”
“Ray.” Calvin reached up a hand, and the two boys shook as well. “Cool bag, bro.”
“Thanks,” Ray said again. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
“Just passin’ though,” Cal said in his best
High Plains Drifter
imitation.
Ever since Cal had sent the elusive Morgan-the-Wonder-G-T an email confirming that we’d meet her tonight in Palm River, we’d been getting instructions more suited to delivering ransom for a hostage than having a casual meeting. But with our two hundred and fifty dollars in our pockets, we’d followed all of her cryptic rules and instructions.
Get off the highway at the second Palm River exit, pull off the road at the ancient car-pool lot, and send her another email with an embedded photo of the view facing west. (Which happened to include three palm trees that, silhouetted against the night sky, rather strongly resembled male genitalia. Calvin pointed that out with appreciation. I was not as amused.)
In response to our email-with-photo, we got a text from an “unknown” number telling us simply to wait—which we did for twenty very long minutes. (Calvin asked me approximately twenty-four Would You Rather questions. I answered maybe half with “
Ew!
”)
At that point, we got yet another text, telling us to drive to this local CoffeeBoy, go inside, and wait for further instructions. How? Who knew. Cal was hoping the message would come creatively—say, written in crayon on the side of our paper coffee cup. However, I was hoping Morgan herself would be there to greet us and end this farce of a scavenger hunt.
When we arrived, the little place was hopping. I scanned the crowd at the tables, searching for someone who might be a G-T. We didn’t know if Morgan was my age or older—or possibly younger. She might’ve been twelve, for all we knew.
As a Greater-Than, I could often tell when another girl was a G-T. It wasn’t foolproof, but it worked much of the time.
But aside from a table of hipster guys who ironically checked me out, there was no one in the ’Boy who even looked up at me, let alone who set my G-T senses a-tingling. Two exhausted-looking young women sat at a table together, but both had babies in strollers. An elderly woman sat alone, scowling at her laptop computer. A heavily tatted old man in camo simultaneously checked his phone and added a mountain of sugar to his coffee. Another man—golden haired and much younger, I think—hard to tell because his head was down—was at the table in the back corner, reading an actual printed book.
As for the other people in line with us, everyone else looked like they’d stopped in for liquid energy before dragging their tired butts home from a long day at work. Cal, Ray, and I were the only ones in our under-twenty age group.
And A-hole, of course. Who sadly hadn’t become invisible simply from our desire to render him so. “Cool bag,” he mocked. “For a homo.”
When he uttered the ugly slur, he reached out and pushed Ray solidly in the chest.
Ray, half A-hole’s size, took a wobbly step backward and nearly fell into Calvin’s lap.
I could smell fear now—it was thick and fishlike and awful.
Enough was enough. “
Hey!
” I said, and very deliberately stepped in between the bully and Ray. “Get a life, will you? That’s
not
okay!”
A-hole’s varsity jacket had the name
Eric
sewn onto the front. He was a big dude. Big enough so that I had to crane my neck to lock eyes with him—which was saying something. My mom likes to describe me as
statuesque
. Which is code for freaky-tall.
Eric had surpassed statuesque a long time ago. He was gargantuan. Ginormous. Gozilla-esque. And he had muscles.
He also didn’t scare me. Oddly enough, the fear that I smelled? It was coming from
him
, not Ray.
“What are you gonna do about it, Sugar-Tits? You gonna call your mommy on me?” He held an imaginary phone to his ear and spoke in a mocking falsetto. “
Hello, Mommy? It’s me, Sugar-Tits! Come save me!
” Eric laughed uproariously at his own words, as if he were the funniest person in the world.
But I wasn’t laughing.
Cal wasn’t either. In fact, he’d wheeled himself closer to the action as well. “Nope. She doesn’t need her mommy. In fact, if you mess with her, you’ll most likely end up going home crying to yours. And, stop me if I’m wrong—
Eric
—but I doubt that would help with your precious he-man reputation.”
By now, the people in the ’Boy were flat-out staring. The line was still fairly long, with about three more orders to be placed before Cal and I made it to the counter. A lady in front of us whispered uneasily into her cell phone. I scanned the crowd again, because just then, I could’ve sworn that I felt it… It was faint, but it was back there. I was
not
the only G-T in this room.
“It’s all right, guys.” Ray put his hand on my shoulder and shook his head. “I’m just gonna leave—”
“What?” I said, pulling my focus back to the situation at hand. “No! You can’t just let him bully you like that—”
“Or what?” Eric took another step toward me, and this time I was the one he pushed, his hand against my chest. It was not quite a boob-grab, but it was close. The
thwap
of his giant hand was enough to knock the wind out of me, and I almost fell on my butt.
Almost.
Instead, I dug in my heels and stayed right where I was. I crossed my arms and breathed, willing myself to keep my G-T powers securely under wraps.
I hadn’t honed my abilities enough yet to use them
discreetly
, as Dana would say—and I’d proven that to be true yesterday at the Sav’A’Buck.
Here and now we were already drawing too much attention. The last thing we needed was for cups of coffee and little packs of creamer to start flying around the room. Until I had a stronger grasp on my abilities, the only safe time to plug into them was when no one was watching—or when someone’s life was in imminent danger.
Eric was a bully and an a-hole, but he hadn’t gotten to
that
point. Yet.
I’m pretty sure, however, that my best friend disagreed. “Oh,
now
you’re in trouble!” Cal bellowed and wheeled himself directly between Eric and me. The left tire of the chair rolled over the top of Eric’s sneaker. It didn’t look like an accident.
“
Owww!
” The a-hole howled as he hopped up and down, grabbing at his foot. “What the
fuck
?” Just as fast, his pain turned to rage, and he pulled back his giant arm and turned his ham-sized hand into a fist.
I moved faster, throwing myself between them, using my back to shield Cal from the incoming blow. It was gonna hurt, but I had wicked-fast healing abilities in my superpower toolbox, while Calvin not so much.
“Eric,
don’t you dare
!” I heard Ray shout.
I braced myself, but Eric didn’t hit me.
And then, a heartbeat later, he
still
didn’t hit me.
And then?
The weirdest thing happened. I felt it again. That sense that there was another G-T here in the CoffeeBoy with me. But it was so faint and…distant—like whoever she was, she was here, except she wasn’t…
And I turned to look and saw giant Eric stand up straight, his hand relaxed and down by his side as he tipped his head back and literally screamed, “Ray, I love you and I always have and I just wanted to get up the nerve to be as brave as you are and ask you to the prom and I love your rainbow shirt and I think you’re gorgeous and amazing and if I could, I’d kiss you right! Now!”
And suddenly, the fear I could smell made total sense.
There was a long, awkward pause. The sound of the clock on the wall was like a bass drum thumping.
“Wait-wait-wait. Come
again
?” Cal’s voice finally broke the silence. He craned his neck to peer out around my shield-stance to verify that he really had just heard what he thought he’d heard.
He had.
We all had.
Someone in the CoffeeBoy started to applaud, and others joined in, like this was the ending of some sappy romantic comedy movie.
Ray was openmouthed. And rather horrified. Like, kissing Eric was on his ish list instead of his wish list.
Eric also seemed stunned. His chin wobbled for a split second before he turned on his heels and sprinted out of the CoffeeBoy.
“Whoa,” Cal said. “Just whoa.” He shook his head fast, as if trying to manually reset his brain in order to decipher the last five minutes of his life. “What
was
that?”
“I don’t know,” Ray replied. “But I’m pretty sure I no longer need any caffeine. Maybe not ever again.” He extracted himself from the line as he pulled his cell phone from his bag. He’d already started to put it up to his ear when he turned back to us. “Thanks,” he added. “Nice meeting you both.”
I nodded and looked at Cal as Ray hurried for the opposite exit, already talking on his cell. “Holy crap, Lisa. You will not. Believe. What just happened.”
“I saw it, Lisa,” Cal called after him. “And I’m not sure
I
believe it.” He looked me up and down with concern. “You okay? He hit you pretty hard.”
I was about to say that I was fine. But I didn’t have time to respond.
Because the young man who’d been sitting in the corner reading that book with real paper pages? He was standing right beside us. I glanced over and saw that he’d left the book on his table, spine up to mark his place.
Up close, I could see that he was younger than I’d first thought. Maybe Milo’s age, maybe a little older. A college boy. Palm River had a handful of expensive private universities. In fact, my mother had already started making noise about taking campus tours, and was all
Wouldn’t it be nice if you went to college somewhere close to Coconut Key?
I’d given little to no thought to the future—my main focus these days was on keeping myself and my friends alive.
But this guy’s photo could’ve been in the dictionary next to college-student-comma-wealthy. He was one of those too-handsome-for-his-own-good types: wavy blond hair, emerald green eyes, lightly tanned clear skin, average height with a lean, strong runner’s build. His shabby-chic wardrobe screamed—almost as loudly as Eric had—that his trust fund was at least eight figures.
Please don’t hassle us, please don’t hassle us…
Calvin was thinking the same thing that I was, although he put what I was thinking into words. “If you really need a piece of us, too, dude, can you wait until
after
we get the coffee?”
The young man shook his perfect blond head and smiled with a mix of exasperation and disgust. “You must be Skylar and Calvin,” he said in an accent that I couldn’t quite place. “I’ve been waiting for you. Get your coffee but then come. Join me in my corner.”
He didn’t say please. He just turned and walked back to his table.
————
“Who the hell are
you
?”
Cal’s question was a good one, although it
could
have been asked a bit more politely with about half-a-boatload less attitude. But after our little escapade with Eric and his projectile vomit of an emotional outburst, I was willing to cut Calvin some slack. I even raised his opening bid with an elevated eyebrow and slightly narrowed eyes aimed at our new blond associate.
“My name is John Morningstar,” the blond said. “Please. Join me.”
I sat, and Calvin rolled closer, and it was strange—I wouldn’t have labeled this guy as
sexy
, because one, wealthy college boys had never floated my boat. And two, let’s face it, after Milo had come into my life, no one held a candle in comparison. But as I studied John Morningstar, the word
beautiful
popped into my head. And he
was
—in an ethereal, almost elfin way. In fact, he looked as though he had slipped out from the pages of a leather-bound collection of fairy tales. The kind of book with gold-edged pages and a red velvet page marker sewn into the spine.