Winging It (2 page)

Because she was right.

‘Nice, Zoë,’ she said, her tone more bitter than I’d ever heard it. Meagan is not a bitch – that I’ve made her sound this way said more about me than about her. ‘Really nice. Here’s hoping that your new friends are more worth keeping than your old ones.’ She closed her locker and started to walk away.

‘But, Meagan, it’s not like that …’

She paused to look back at me. ‘You can tell me anytime how it is,’ she said. ‘But I know already that you won’t.’

I looked down at the stupid invitation, wishing I’d never gotten it. As much as I liked my new
Pyr
powers, it really sucked to have to keep everything secret from my best friend.

‘Have fun at Trevor’s party,’ Meagan added. ‘And don’t worry about me. I’ve got a new friend of my own.’

She slung her pack over one shoulder and marched down the hall, and I knew I couldn’t change her mind. I watched as she stopped beside the locker of the new girl, the one who had switched to our school earlier that year.

The one I really didn’t like, although I couldn’t have said why.

Jessica has dark hair and dark eyes. She’s slim and pretty and quiet. She’s another math whiz, so she and Meagan bonded in the land where calculating derivatives is as easy as pie. (Pi, maybe. As in, recalling the first hundred digits of. So not my territory. Never mind citizenship: I don’t even have a visitor’s visa to that place.) The thing is, I should have liked Jessica; there was no reason why I shouldn’t.

But she gave me the creeps.

Big-time.

I was pretty sure it wasn’t just jealousy. I just had this sense that she was hiding something. As someone who has a pretty hefty secret myself, I think I know something about keeping secrets. It wasn’t because she wore really baggy clothes – like she’d raided her brother’s closet – or even that she kept a baseball hat jammed on her head all the time.

Maybe my Wyvern sense was tingling. There’s only one female dragon shifter at a time, and she’s the Wyvern.
I’m
the Wyvern. And the Wyvern is supposed to have mystical powers. The ability to see the future. The power to give prophecies. Lots of seriously cool stuff.

So far I couldn’t do any of it.

But Jessica creeped me out.

And I didn’t know why.

Maybe it
was
a Wyvern thing.

I watched as Jessica smiled at Meagan now and hugged her, then looked over Meagan’s shoulder at me. She held my gaze for a minute, like she was daring me, then looked away. A sly smile stole over her lips.

That smile sent a shudder right down my spine.

And gave me the worst feeling I’ve ever had in my life.

Then it was gone.

Precognition?

Jealousy?

Overactive imagination? You choose. I have no idea.

Jessica and Meagan walked toward the cafeteria, their heads bent together as they talked. I noticed the new guy at school, Derek Black, leaning against the lockers, watching me. He looked after Jessica and Meagan, then back at me, and shrugged.

I was embarrassed to have been caught staring at them – like a pathetic loser, not invited to have lunch with two math whizzes. Which I was, but still. I was used to not being noticed by anyone at school. I felt myself blush – no surprise there. A smile tugged at the corner of Derek’s mouth and I turned to my locker, apparently fascinated by its contents.

I had the sense that the slightest encouragement from me would have brought him right to my side, but I wasn’t in the mood to look for new friends. I had enough issues with my current ones. I kicked my locker shut, jammed the invitation into my backpack, and headed out to the bleachers to eat my lunch.

Alone.

I had no idea how to fix things with Meagan, and no one to ask. An older sibling, even one who found me annoying and tedious, could have been helpful. At least he or she would have dealt with the Covenant’s restrictions in the past.

But I have no brothers or sisters. My mom is human. My dad is a dragon shifter, but he’s hundreds of years old. I doubt he even remembers being a teenager – I doubt he remembers being a frisky young dragon of three centuries. The guys, who are roughly my contemporaries and also dragon shifters – Liam, Garrett, and Nick – always tell me I worry too much about it.

They are not much help.

I was sitting on the bleachers, debating the merits of asking one of the guys for help anyway, when Derek came out of the school.

No, that’s not how it was. I was alone one minute, and the next, he was there.

Just as if he’d been sitting at the other end of the bleachers all along.

I didn’t hear him coming, not at all. That might not seem like much of a big deal, but I
should
have heard him. No matter how quiet he was. We dragons have sharp senses, sharper than human senses, but I didn’t hear him come outside. I’m not used to having people sneak up on me – because it never happens.

Was I losing the
Pyr
powers that I had?

Or had I just been really, really lost in my thoughts?

I thought for a minute that Derek had followed me, but he didn’t glance my way. His back was toward me as he unpacked his lunch. Courtesy of my extra-keen vision, I could check it out. His lunch looked a lot like mine – homemade sandwich, piece of fruit, granola bar. Except he had two sandwiches, and he’d bought a carton of milk.

I studied him as he ate, pretending not to. He was a bit stocky, solidly built but not fat. Dark hair, and he wore dark clothes. I’d guess that he was an inch or two taller than me, and I’m the tall skinny type. Not sure because I’d never been that close to him. He was the kind of quiet guy people overlooked. He slid in and out of English class like a shadow and never said much. Even when he got called on, his answers were always short and gruff. He could have used a haircut – I’d noticed before that his hair hung over his eyes. It made him look a little wild. Or just scruffy.

He seemed to spend a lot of time alone, which made me wonder whether we had something in common. The fact that we were the only two outside having lunch on a snowy day just reinforced that sense. In a few hours, the bleachers would be crowded for the big football game against Central, but I liked it better quiet. It was snowing lightly, a bit cold for a picnic, but a little frigid solitude suited my mood.

Which was bleak, in case you weren’t sure.

I decided not to send messages to the guys. I wasn’t ready to be told that I was being a dope. They’re good friends, but they’re
guys
. I would have loved to talk to Meagan.

But she was with Jessica.

Which brought me right back to square one.

I could have used a confidence boost, the kind I get from shifting shape, but Derek was too close. He would notice the sudden appearance of a dragon in the bleachers and he’d guess that the dragon and I were one and the same. (He didn’t seem to be stupid.) That was Covenant-breaking territory again. I shoved my hands into my pockets and tried to content myself with shifting my thumbnail to a talon instead.

It was no substitute.

I didn’t eat my granola bar, even though it was
chocolate-dipped.
That tells you everything you need to know about the state of the world in Zoë terms.

Like I said, it was nearly my sixteenth birthday. There were three things I wanted for the big day:

Of the above, I had a remote chance of achieving only #3. Even with it being my birthday. I knew what my dad thought about me fighting anyone, and I knew what my mom thought of tattoos. But they both knew Jared, and they knew I knew him. And his band was playing a concert right in town, on Saturday (thus not a school night) at a co-op club downtown that didn’t serve alcohol.

The way I saw it, Jared had chosen the venue because he
expected
me to come.

Or he was daring me.

He’s like that. Irreverent. Challenging.

Hot.

Whether it was to deliver the flight on Dragon Air that I owed him, to snag another kiss – just to verify that the first one had, in fact, been amazing and of the bone-melting variety – or to barter for another peek at the book he had on my kind, didn’t really matter.

I wanted to go.

I
needed
to go.

Which meant that I needed to persuade my mom that going was a good idea. And do it without beguiling her. Beguiling is kind of like hypnosis and it’s a dragon trick I mastered pretty early. We conjure flames in our eyes; the humans look closer; we make suggestions. That’s beguiling. As you might expect, it works best when it’s a suggestion the person already wants to take – which meant that beguiling my mom wasn’t a good plan on a whole bunch of fronts. She’d likely catch me – she’s not stupid, either – and then I’d be toast.

Better to go with plain old begging.

Negotiating.

Shameless groveling.

Even being a dragon girl didn’t make me think that sneaking out to go to the concert without parental approval would end well.

So, I
had
to convince my mom.

I was running out of time – it was Thursday and the concert was Saturday. This had to be the day.

I figured I was due for s
omething
to go right.

During art class I sent a message to Nick, asking his advice about Meagan (and nearly had my fabulous shiny new messenger confiscated in the process. My mom says kids used to have cell phones which were plenty good enough, that they didn’t need messengers with all their apps and computing powers, right in their hands all the time. Wrong. Mine is my umbilical cord to the world). He told me – predictably – that I was making too big of a deal about it.

Right.

Meagan was at her locker when I got out of science class at the end of the day. She was alone, which had to be a good sign for making up, and tugging on her coat.

I decided to make a valiant effort.

‘Hi,’ I said as I unlocked my locker. She glanced up but didn’t say anything. Then she started to rummage in her locker.

At least she hadn’t left.

‘Going to the game?’ I asked, even though I could guess the answer.

She shook her head. ‘I’ve got two hours of piano practice to finish before dinner.’ She shoved a couple of books into her bag and zipped it up.

She didn’t ask me if I was going, which would have been a nice opening, but I’d make my own.

‘So, I was thinking, maybe I could have lunch with you and Jessica one day. Maybe tomorrow. You know, so I could get to know her a bit.’

Meagan looked at me. She tended to be very serious, but even if she hadn’t been, her glasses made her look that way.

I smiled. ‘I don’t want to fight with you,’ I said, feeling that it was impossibly lame. ‘Maybe we can hang out.’

Meagan sighed. She glanced down the hall, then back at me. She looked me right in the eye. ‘Will you tell me what’s going on when you can?’

‘I’d tell you everything right this minute if I could.’

She smiled a little then, a bit of a sad smile, but anything she might have said was cut short.

By guess who.

‘Meagan!’ Jessica shouted. ‘You’ll never believe what I got on that math test! Woo-HOOO!’

Meagan turned toward her new friend, and I stared at my boots. They squealed together about Jessica’s perfect score – how either of them could be surprised by that was a mystery – and I felt completely excluded from the discussion. Forgotten.

‘Going to the game?’ a guy asked, from my other side.

I nearly jumped out of my skin.

It was Derek. How long had he been there? I was surprised that he’d done that silent approach thing again, but there was no disputing it – I hadn’t heard him.

I looked him up and down. He was just a bit taller than me. He was watching me closely. His eyes were a very pale blue, almost icy, and he didn’t seem to blink much.

That made me feel awkward, too. I got interested in my books.

Dropped three.

He reached for them when I reached for them and our hands brushed. I pulled mine back like I’d been burned. He picked up my books and handed them to me. If I’d been blushing before, I had to be as red as a beet then.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Didn’t mean to surprise you.’ He shrugged and hefted his bag of gear. ‘Just thought I’d ask.’

‘You’re on the team?’ The fact that he had a bag of football gear made that a stupid question, but it was too late to pretend I hadn’t said it.

He glanced at the bag, then back at me, and almost smiled. ‘So?’

I liked that he didn’t make a big deal of my stupid question. Or about me being awkward and flustered. He was still giving me a shy smile, like he would wait all week for me to answer. I was a bit disconcerted by how steadily he watched me.

‘Um, I’m not sure.’ I turned to Meagan as if I would ask her, but she had already moved down the hall, hauling her backpack onto her shoulders and laughing with Jessica. They hugged and then Jessica headed for the far doors. Meagan turned toward the bathroom, her coat swinging open and her gloves in her hands.

In that moment, I saw my nemesis, Suzanne, and her followers coming down the corridor toward us. They were already in their cheerleader uniforms, the four of them cutting a path through the kids in the hallway like they were royalty. Suzanne was – naturally – in the lead. She swung her hips hard as she walked, making the pleats of her little skirt flip up. Every guy in the vicinity was watching her thighs. Probably salivating. Suzanne knew it – and she loved it. She had buckets of confidence and seemed to expect to be the center of attention.