Dark Calling (2 page)

Keely slams her hand on the alarm
clock
, missing the button that will silence the annoying buzzing. 
Who invented such horrible contraptions anyway?
  Her fingers
slide sideways
searching.  Hit
the snooze. 

She t
ucks her arm back under the blanket. 
The air conditioning
causes it to feel like winter.
 
It’s the end of summer for goodness sakes
.  The thought causes her stomach to tighten. 
She opens her eyes.
With a sigh,
she
turns
off the alarm
. 
There will be no going back to bed for her now. 

First day of schoo
l.  First day as a senior
.  Yay for her.
  Hip, hip fricking hooray. 

Flipping the blanket off, Keely stretches.  One of those really good, make-you-growl-loudly-
unti
l-your-face-turns-red
stretches.  She pops out of bed. T
he blood rushes to her head
and she staggers
for a moment unti
l it settles.  Yawning widely
, she heads for the
shower.

Feeling somewhat
more alert as she emerges from the
st
eamy bathroom, Keely
drags the brush through her
thick tangle of raven
dyed hair
. S
he searches her cl
oset for the days outfit.  Decides on a layered black
knee length skirt that she pairs wit
h
black and white
striped leggings.  F
inishes her
ensemble
by
doubling up black
and
white
tank top
s
. 

Keely heads back to the bathroom to brush her teeth and line her green eyes in black.  She glosses her lips and coats on mascara to cover the em
barrassingly blond lashes she’
s been cursed with.
  She looks at her reflection in the mirror.  Her hair is already beginning to curl as it air dries.  She pushes it off her shoulders so she can stare at the shiny pink line that scars her throat.  Her finger
s reach for it automatically as s
he eyes the scar
on her arm.  Her hand shakes.  Blinking, s
he pulls open the medicine cabinet with more force than necessary and places a trembling grip on the pill bottle marked with her name.  Shakes a pill into her palm before popping it in her mouth.  Swallows without water. 
Keely repl
aces the bottle, curls her hand
into a fist.  She doesn’t give herself
a second glance as she leaves the much too happily decorated bathroom.

She
plucks her black hoodie off its hanger and darts down the stairs to the kitchen.  Her parents have already left for work, but Mom
has
left a note
complete with smiley face
.  Typical. 
It’s all, “good luck” and “how exciting.”  Keel
y tosses it in the trash.  G
rabs
a bottle of juice and a banana,
she only ingests healthy foods
now that she is forced to s
wallow happy pills every mornin
g, s
lides them into her overly used backpack.  She steps into her old black Converse that are so broken in
,
trained to her feet
she no longer needs to tie them.  She takes her keychain from the hook and heads out the door.

The drive to school is
short.  She slows her
silver
Honda
as she bumps
through the pot
hole filled
lot in search of a
parking space
. 
S
he pulls next to a new BMW and slips
out of the car careful
not
to ding the
door of
the very
expensive car that makes her ride
look shabby in comparison.  Keely puts h
er hoodie on, slides
her back pack
over her shoulder
,
and
peers at
the ominous looking school.

Last year was
a nightmare.  As if it hadn’t been
hard enough after the attack.  The recovery.  The excruciating physical therapy.  The nightmares. 
The counseling. 
Then there was the move.  A different state would help the healing process her mother had insisted. 
So, she has been a resident of Hunt, Ohio for the past—
oh,
nearly two years. 
So that meant a new school.  Keely hadn’t been welcomed warmly to
West Hunt High
.  The kids there viewed Keely as an outcast emo freak due to her dark clothes and make up.
  The irony of this is not lost on her.
  Or maybe it’s her quiet manner
.  The way she shies
away from everyone, but that i
s to be expected after an expe
rience like hers.  Right?  It isn’t her fault she has
a hard time
forming relationships.  She does
n’t know how to trust any
more.  In her mind, everyone has
a motive to hurt her, and boys—
well, they do
n’t
have feelings or emotions.
  Not real ones anyway.  Boys a
re just violent, malicious actors bent on hurting girls.
Somewhere de
ep inside, Keely thinks she may be wrong about this.  Possibly
.
 

Things before the atta
ck,
o
r the accident as her m
om likes
to refer to it,
were so much better.  Keely had been popular at h
er old school.  She had
friends and
a boyfriend
.  She had confidence and was naïve to
the dangers of the world,
living her happily oblivious life as the pretty blond cheerleader
.  She was in choir and took part in art shows.  She aced Speech and D
ebate class, something
she couldn’t even bring herself to take
now
.

“What the hell is that?  Is
everyone
going freak now or something?”  Farah Fritz, a short red head with a
mushroom cut and freckles asks
in her best p
reppy girl voice.  Keely blinks
, coming out of her haze
.  Expecting Farah
to be
referring to her, she drops her head and starts
walking. 

“
Is that Nick Wallace?”
Jocelyn Percellie, Farah’
s best friend, asks
bewildered.
  She is one of those perky types.  Very blond hair and big blue eyes.  Two years ago, Keely was just like her.

“Yeah.  He was so normal last year.  I don’t even want to know what
happened to him over the summer,
” Farah s
ays, her voice tight with disgust
.

Keely slows her pace.  Looks in the direction the girls are glaring.  Meets Nick’s eyes.  She looks away quickly.
In that
moment, Keely sees
what the nasty girls mean
.  Last year, Nick was a new student as well.  They had started school in the same week.  Where everyone hated Keely, they adored Nick Wallace.  He was that perfect recipe for popular girls.  Handsome, athlet
ic, expensively dressed, aloof, and mysterious.
  Now, he is
in faded ripped jeans,
and
not the kind you purchase that way, but the kind that get that way from a whole lot of wearing and washing.
  His dark hair is
long
er, half in his hazel eyes.  H
e
’s wearing
an old Atari tee shirt and
several
leather wris
t band
s
.  On his feet, he’s sporting
dirty red Converse, Chuck Taylor’
s, that look
as conformed to his feet as Keely’
s are to hers. 
This is strange to Keely since it’s only been a summer; not long enough for jeans and shoes to show the wear of a favorite.  She nearly shrugs.  It’s too much effort to put thought into this. 
D
ecides she
does
n’
t think he looks
like a freak
at all.  She thinks he i
s kind of cute—
not that it
really ma
tters
to her. 

Farah’s evil laugh
swarms
up around Keely like an eerie embrace.  “Maybe the two of them could hook up.  They could have little emo babies and cut themselves as a family.”

Jocelyn laughs
in encouragement.

Now they a
re definitely talking about Keely.  She spe
e
d
s
her pace, moving around a group of girls talking
about the year book committee.  Puts
enough distance
between
her
and the mean gi
rls so
she doesn’
t have to listen to their insults
.
  
 
 

Once inside, Keely goes directly to her homeroom and pulls the sc
hedule from her back pack
.
  She reads
it yet again.  First period, Algebra—she
is so not good with math.  Second
,
College Prep English.  Third
,
World History.  Fourth period Gym—
only because she didn’t take it last year
.  Fifth period is lunch.  Sixth
,
Study Hall—really?  Seventh is Art—happy dance.  Then home—even happier dance.
  Senior year is going to be so easy.  She deserves an easy year after all her hard work last year
playing catch
up.  She made sure she only took the electives she needed to walk at graduation, wh
ich isn’t really like her.  B
efore the attack, Keely was an overachiever, taking classes just because they would look good
on a college application.  A
fter the attack, not so much.  She doubted she would even go to college now
.  Maybe Hunt Community College.  S
he’
s still undecided.

Keely replaces the schedu
le and removes her banana, pencil, notepad
,
and iPod.  Pushing the ear buds into place, she rolls her thumb over the screen, her version of Russian roulette
,
and randomly picks a song.  She adjusts the volume and tears
back the peel on her banana
.  S
ketches a shadowy picture of the teacher’s desk as she eats, her leg bouncing to the beat of the song fl
owing into her ears.  She disc
ards the fruit and sits up in her seat, turning the pencil nearly on its side as she shades.  She drops the pencil to the desk and uses her finger to smudge the le
d on the paper.  Keely
is so involved, pouring so much of her heart into this simple drawing on a sheet
of spiral notebook paper
,
she doesn’t notice the boy, Nick, come into the room.  Doesn’t notice him take the seat directly next to hers
, placing his binder on the desk and removing several pens from his pocket before sitting
.  Doesn’t notice how he watches her.

Keely bites her lip as she retrieves her pencil once again and adds the details to the top of the desk.  The small wooden apple.  The in and out paper slots.  The
globe paper weight.  The unusual jar holding the pens.  The mug that says
,
“World’s Best Teacher.”  She is sketching and shading.  Sketching and shading.  Her fingers moving faster and faster.  Her wrist twittering like a humming bird’s wings.

She doesn’
t notice the boy staring
, unable to take his eyes off of her.

The bell rings loudly from just outside the door and Keely is finished.  She looks over the finished artwork then picks up her banana.  Finishes it.  Her hands are smeared with black streaks.  She doesn’t care.  She pulls the ear buds from her ears as the teacher enters the room.  Keely doesn’t remember her name, but she looks nice.  A middle aged woman with that in between color that’s not really brown, but not really any other color either.  She wears glasses, the squared invisible kind.  She begins handing out a series of papers to be filled out or signed. 
As Keely turns to hand the stack back to the kid behind her, she notices Nick at the desk next to her.  She looks him over again as the kid behind her thanks her for the papers.