Covet (26 page)

There. The voices were fading away now. I could handle this. I just needed to stay calm.

“There’s our
Vogue
girl,” Anne greeted me as my friends returned to our table.

They took their seats, each one setting down a stinking tray or carton or plastic bowl full of food. My eyes told me their food was perfectly fine and should smell good. But my nose and stomach screamed an entirely different story. It was like someone had just plunked me down in the middle of a landfill during the dead heat of summer. The stench of rotting things seemed to fill my nostrils, tempting me to gag.

I made myself smile for their benefit while I tried not to breathe through my nose.

Michelle squealed and reached across the table to grab my new bracelet. “Oh my God, did your dad get this for you?” She looked up, her eyes wide and bright. Then she spotted my purse on the table beside me. “No friggin’ way. A Coach bag, too? Let me see!”

Dutifully I passed the purse over to her.

“And the heels?” Anne asked, her eyebrows arched.

Finally I could give a sincere smile. “After you and I got off the phone, I discovered Dad surprised me with some other shoe choices.” I held up a foot so she could see my new ballet flats.

Anne made a face. “I might have had to stick with the heels. Those would look like fairy shoes on me.”

Michelle ducked under the table to see, raised her head back up and squeaked, “Jimmy Choo doesn’t make fairy shoes. Besides, those are black.”

“So they’re for goth fairies.” Grinning, Anne cracked open her soda.

“Oh stop,” I said with a laugh. “You’re just jealous that my feet have been super comfy all morning, while you’re stuck wearing those sweaty twenty-pound sneakers.”

A clatter of plastic. I looked up in time to see Carrie take off.

“What’s the matter with her?” I asked.

Michelle’s face scrunched up. “She’s probably upset about the poor children in Africa. At least I think it’s Africa this time. She’s probably wishing they all had cute shoes like that.”

Anne leaned around the curved table and whispered, “I think it’s more that Carrie’s folks might be having trouble coming up with enough money for medical school.”

Carrie had wanted to be a doctor for as long as I’d known her. But I’d never stopped and thought about how expensive it would be for her, or whether her parents could afford it. I’d always assumed, since they lived in a brick house by the lake, that they had plenty of money.

“What about scholarships and grants?” I said, accepting my purse back from Michelle and tucking it under the table in my lap.

Inside my head, everyone else’s thoughts grew a little louder.

“She’s going to try, but her grades this year and last year are going to factor in on what she gets,” Anne said around a mouthful of food. She took a noisy slurp of soda. “And apparently they haven’t been all straight A pluses like she wanted.”

And here I’d been flaunting my dad’s money like a complete idiot. It was just so weird to suddenly have money after never having enough all my life. But that was still no excuse.

“Wow. I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

The voices ratcheted up a bit more in my head.

“If you’d stuck around a little longer at my party, you would have heard all about it,” Anne muttered. She said it so quietly that she probably never intended for me to hear her. But I did, and it stung. She knew why I’d had to leave early.

“Are you feeling better now?” Michelle asked. “I know Anne said you were feeling sick and all, but you still could have said goodbye, you know.”

The voices ramped up still louder. They were nearly at full blast now. I had to fight the urge to yell.

“I’m sorry I had to leave so quick. I…I’ve been having some…health problems. Headaches and stuff. Trouble hearing sometimes. Digestion issues. That kind of thing.”

Michelle’s eyebrows drew together. “Have you seen a doctor?”

“It’s nothing serious, don’t worry about it,” I said, trying to focus on breathing slowly. I could do this. I just needed to calm down again, maybe think about something else for a while. “By the way, guess who I was assigned to sit beside in English last period? Ron Abernathy.”

Anne thumped back in her chair as if I’d slapped her. She blinked once, twice, then shrugged. “So?”

I mimicked her shrug. “So he seems kind of…sad. Like maybe he hasn’t gotten over you yet.”

“Did he say something about me?” Anne stared at me.

“Not in so many words.” I wished I could read her mind right now, but Michelle’s eager need for answers was drowning out Anne’s quieter thoughts.

Anne stared into the distance, too many emotions flickering across her face for me to read them.

“Well, if he’s upset about the breakup, he can just get over it.” Grabbing a plastic fork from the handful of extras Michelle had brought to the table, Anne stabbed her nachos so hard I thought the fork would break. “Because I am so not the right girl for him.” She took a huge bite of food and said, “I don’t want to talk about it anymore, okay?”

While she chewed, she gave her poor nachos a few more stabs to break up the chips. If she kept at it, she’d poke a hole through the bottom of the paper carton.

And since when had Anne ever used a fork to eat nachos anyways?

I leaned closer to her and murmured, “Anne, are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

Longing shot out of her like a bolt, then faded. “No. It’s over and done. Did you want to talk about you and Tris—”

“No, I don’t.”

A hint of smugness twisted her mouth and gave her chestnut ponytail back its usual swing. “Okay then.”

Look at that freak over there. What will it take for her to get a clue that she doesn’t belong here?

I wonder what I should wear for our first date on Friday?

I can’t believe she thinks I don’t know what she said about me behind my back! The next time I see Sally Parker, I swear….

The roar of voices in my head combined with my own frustration, driving me to say, “But, Anne, Ron seems so nice! And he’s miserable without you, and you’re obviously miserable without him—”

She threw down her fork and turned to glare at me. “If he’s so great, why don’t
you
date him?”
He’s not what he seems
, she thought loud enough for me to finally pick up.

“Because I’m in love with—” I stopped myself just in time. “You know why.”

Michelle’s already large eyes opened wider as she looked at me, then Anne, then me again.

Anne took the longest drink I’d ever seen from her soda, as if she intended to down the entire can in one long slurp.

I pressed a shaky hand to my forehead. This wasn’t working. At all. The voices weren’t getting any quieter. If anything, they were at the screaming level now. As a result, I couldn’t think straight.

Stupid ESP. At least for today, it was getting the upper hand. I needed to go somewhere quiet for a few minutes, take a quick break before third period, or my head was going to explode. “Um, listen, I think I’m getting a migraine right now.”

“Do you want an aspirin?” Anne reached for her backpack.

“No, thanks,” I mumbled. “I can’t take it. I just need to go somewhere quiet—”

“The library’s open during lunch if you can sneak by the librarian without a pass,” Michelle suggested. “Or you could ask the nurse to let you lie down for a while.”

“Thanks, I’ll do that.” I was already on my feet, fumbling for my duffel bag and purse. Should I duck into a bathroom and drink the emergency stash of blood? Somehow I didn’t think that would help with the ESP. In fact, it might even make it worse by feeding the vamp side. And then of course I’d have to deal with the blood memories immediately afterwards….

Anne grabbed my wrist, the apology loud enough in her mind that I could finally hear her. She didn’t want us to be fighting.

I forgot to wait for her to actually say it. “Don’t worry. Everything’s fine. We’re fine. Don’t worry about it. I shouldn’t have asked again about him. It’s just this…headache making me stupid. I’ll call you tonight when my head’s not trying to split itself in two, okay?”

I managed a wave goodbye then stumbled out of the cafeteria and up to the catwalk, its metal awning blocking out the bright sunlight.

The sudden and blessed quiet nearly made me sag with relief. But I couldn’t stay here for the rest of the lunch period or some teacher would probably show up and tell me to go to class. No one was allowed to hang around beyond the cafeteria on our lunch breaks. I checked my watch and groaned. There were still twenty minutes left before third period. I could go to the nurse’s station, but then I might have to answer a bunch of questions. And I definitely didn’t want to have to hide out in the restroom that long.

The library was the best option. So I ducked into the main hall, walking slowly past the glass front wall of the office, then allowing myself to rush as fast as I wanted until I reached the double blue doors of the library.

I opened one door just enough to peek at the checkout desk. No librarian in sight. She was probably in her office eating lunch, judging by the putrid smell in the air. Good. If she saw me here without a library pass, she would kick me back out.

I slipped in then moved vampire fast along the carpeted aisles past the tall wooden bookcases, looking for a table out of view in case anyone else came in and tattled on me to the librarian. Spotting the edge of a table in the far back right corner, I hurried over to it.

And nearly shrieked out loud when I discovered someone already seated there.

CHAPTER 18

At the last second, I managed to swallow the gasp and whisper, “Sorry, didn’t see you there.”

Ron looked up from the book he’d been reading. “Oh, hey, Savannah.” He was alarmingly loud.

Then I remembered how deaf I’d seemed in English. “Shh. I’m not deaf anymore. I can hear you now.”

Smiling, he held out a hand toward the table. “Have a seat if you want.”

I opened my mouth to say no thanks.

It’d be nice not to have to eat alone for once
, he thought.

Well, he did have the only table out of view of the front desk.

And maybe if I sat here and listened to his thoughts long enough, I’d hear the truth about his breakup with Anne.

I took the creaky wooden chair opposite him and sat down.

“So what’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?” he whispered with a lopsided grin. But underneath that, I heard him think,
Anne’s best friend. Maybe she can tell me how to fix things with Anne. It’s been months. This is getting ridiculous.

“I could ask you the same thing,” I whispered back. “I didn’t realize jocks read.”

He shrugged, his smile fading. “It’s better than being in that jungle you call a cafeteria.”

“That’s for sure,” I agreed without thinking. At his surprised look, I added, “It gets pretty noisy in there. It’s much quieter in here.”

“I thought you were deaf last period.”

It was my turn to shrug. “Temporary hearing loss. It came back with a vengeance. So what’s the deal with you and Anne?”

He froze. “Why? What did she tell you?”

“Nothing. That’s what makes me wonder. All she said was that she’s not the right girl for you. And that maybe you aren’t what you seem.” Or had Anne only thought that last part?

“Nobody’s what they seem around here. Take you and Tristan, for instance. What’s the story there? No one knew you two were even dating for months.”

I so didn’t want to talk about that. “Why don’t you focus on telling me what’s really going on between you and my best friend. Did you hurt Anne? Because if you did—”

“No way!” He grabbed the edge of the table. “I would never hurt her.”

I searched his thoughts. He was too upset for me to pick out a single thought, his emotions swirling into a big tangle. But he was telling the truth. “You really cared about her.”

He blinked once, twice, gave a short, sharp nod. “But now she won’t see me, won’t talk to me. I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried to be patient, but she’s driving me nuts here.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Maybe she has a good reason.”

“Or maybe she’s just being pigheaded.”

“Maybe. It is Anne we’re talking about.” We smiled at each other in understanding. “You’ll just have to let her come around when she’s ready. If she does. Or you could always move on, date somebody else.”

He was cute in a boy-next-door kind of way. With that quick grin and those blue eyes under a flop of straight, light blond hair, he could easily find someone new. Last year before Anne snapped him up, he’d briefly dated Vanessa Faulkner, and she was notoriously picky about her arm candy.

He stared at me. “You act like moving on after getting dumped is no big deal.”

“You moved on fast enough after Vanessa.”

He rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair. “I wouldn’t count dating her as a real relationship. More like pretending to be a giant Ken doll for her to endlessly make over. Besides, I broke up with her, not the other way around.” Seeing my eyebrows shoot up, he added, “Anne told me what you overheard her saying to her sister in history class. Did you guys think I’d just sit back and wait for Vanessa to dump me first?”

Interesting. My respect for him went up several notches.

“Speaking of getting dumped,” he continued, “I heard what you did to Tristan. Rumor has it the event was brutal, even by high school standards. Did you really dump him in front of his entire family?”

I winced. No telling what version of the real story he’d heard.

I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms. “I didn’t
dump
Tristan.”

“Really? Because that’s not what I heard. Guess I should consider myself lucky Anne wasn’t that harsh. All I got was a Dear John text.”

“My breakup with Tristan isn’t anything like your breakup with Anne. Trust me.” Why was he even comparing the two events?

“Oh yeah? How do you know?”

I snorted. Unless he was half Clann and half vamp and Anne had suddenly joined the Clann without telling me, there was no way their breakup was even remotely similar to mine. “Look, you don’t know anything about us or what really happened—”