Earth & Sky (The Earth & Sky Trilogy) (2 page)

He’s
there. The guy in the gray corduroy blazer, leaning against the wall by the stairwell we came up through. He’s still got his book in his hand, examining the cover, but a tickle creeps up my spine, telling me that a second before I looked, he was watching us. When did he come up here?

“Everyone in?” Ms. Vincent calls. I pull my gaze away and walk through the doorway, leaving the guy behind.

2.

I
put on my best fake normal through the rest of the field trip, through lunch and the chemistry test, smiling and nodding and tossing out comments when I need to, trying to pretend I’m not cracking apart. But I am. The whisper of
wrong
ness keeps running through my thoughts, with a dull throbbing in my head and shivers that race down to my toes. No matter how many times I twist the beads and multiply into the billions, it won’t leave.

Why won’t it leave?

When I sit down for dinner with my parents that evening, every question they direct at me, every time they say my name, the faint but unrelenting sense that none of this should be happening echoes through me.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
My cheeks start to ache with the effort of holding that smile.

Nothing’s
wrong,
I tell myself.
Nothing.

The whisper ignores me.

It’s never been like this before. The feelings might be random, but they’ve always passed in a minute or two since I learned how to control them. Even all those years ago, when I didn’t know how and I’d sometimes fall apart, I just had to get away from whatever seemed to have triggered them and I’d be fine. But there’s more than a mile between me and the courthouse, and my fingers are sore from gripping the beads, and I’ve cataloged every smudge on the windows and every lump in my potato salad. And none of it is working.

After dinner, I burn through my calculus homework. Normally I can lose myself in the neat rows of equations as they wind out across the graph paper, but my body keeps tensing, pulling me back. My pencil lead snaps twice.

I turn on my playlist of what my parents call “Golden Oldies” and repaint my nails my favorite shade of pearly pink. The melodies sound tinny to my ears. My hand trembles and dabs a splotch of polish on my knuckle.

I can’t even take comfort in the crumbling leather-bound volume on Roman history I picked up last week at one of the vintage shops Angela and I frequent. Usually I find it soothing to read about people who lived so long ago, but still thought and acted totally human. So many catastrophes and so much turmoil across the centuries, and we’re still here. I can imagine visiting the ruins someday, crossing the ground where all those earlier feet once walked, making my own mark.

Except today, that insistent murmur won’t stop interrupting.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I close the book and lie down on my bed. Staring at the ceiling, I follow the edges of the glow-in-the-dark stars I put up when I was nine and never bothered to remove. My sight blurs. I swipe at my eyes, but the fear has already crept in.

Maybe it isn’t going to stop this time. Maybe whatever’s wrong with me, whatever bundle of nerves in my brain randomly misfires with those meaningless impulses, has finally gone completely haywire.

Back around the end of first grade, when the feelings escalated to once or twice a week and I shouted and cried about them every time because I didn’t know what else to do and I didn’t know they didn’t matter, my parents took me to a psychologist. I’m sure she meant well. But whatever’s wrong with me, she just made it worse. After the questions she asked about patterns and triggers, that I tried so hard to answer hoping she could make everything all right, the feelings started coming even more often. I was so afraid they’d end up haunting me every hour, every day, that I started forcing myself to conceal my distress as well as a seven-year-old could, to do my best to persuade her and my parents I was okay. Until I was faking it well enough that they decided I was recovering.

How are my parents going to feel when they find out I never did? If I don’t get over this, if I just can’t deal on my own anymore, I’ll have to tell them. It hasn’t even been a full day, and I’m already exhausted from holding back the panic.

I close my eyes, and visions of hospitals and lab coats swim through my mind. What if no one can fix me? I’ve paged through diagnostic manuals—I don’t fit any typical form of any normal disorder. Maybe I’ll just keep getting worse and worse. How am I going to travel across the world like this? How am I even going to manage college? My whole life—
everything
I want to do—

No. I can’t think that way.

I push myself upright and go grab my laptop. There’s one more thing that might distract me. I don’t turn to this very often, because it’s started to feel like an unhealthy indulgence. Noam ran away when I was five—I doubt I’d even recognize him if I saw him now. But if a little indulgence will keep me sane, I don’t care how pointless it is.

I type a single word into the image search. “Crowd.” For several long minutes, I scan photo after photo for my brother’s face. Searching every corner, every shadow. As if maybe this time, after all this time, I’ll discover where he took off to.

I don’t, of course. But after I’ve worked through a few pages of results, the crushing terror has retreated enough that I can close the browser and start one of my Cary Grant movies playing. A little banter, a little eye candy. Daniel looks a bit like him.

While the images flicker across the screen, I sink back against my pillow. Sometime before the credits roll, exhaustion wins and I fall asleep.

The shrill beeping of my alarm yanks me back to consciousness the next morning. I groan and roll over, still tired. Then I remember yesterday.

I lie still, waiting. My head’s stopped throbbing. The chant of
wrong
ness has gone silent.

I switch off the alarm and prop myself against the oak headboard. My bedroom looks the same as always. Bookcase stuffed with history and science books and classic novels. Framed print of one of da Vinci’s sketches beside it. Two photos tacked to the wall over my desk: Angela and me at our middle school graduation, taken by my mom; and Bree, Lisa, Evan, and me grinning and brandishing marshmallow sticks on our junior year camping trip, taken by Angela. I ease open the drawer of my bedside table. Ten glass beads on my bracelet. Three bottles of my favorite nail polish. One more photograph, the top right corner creased: me perched on my brother Noam’s lap in a sea of wrapping paper, the Christmas when I was four and he was fourteen.

Everything is as it should be. Everything is right.

A laugh stutters out of me. I don’t know why it took that feeling so long to fade, but I’m okay now. As okay as I’ve ever been, anyway.

The spray of the shower has never felt quite so delicious. Down in the kitchen, I take a weird enjoyment out of the tinkling of the Bran Flakes falling into my bowl—so very marvelously normal. Mom walks in, her hair, the same cinnamon brown as mine, swishing in its tight ponytail. She’s wearing her work “uniform” of track pants, yellow T-shirt, and logo-ed hoodie that announces her position as a personal trainer at the Steel & Sweat Gym downtown.

“No cross-country practice today?” she asks.

“Practice is in the afternoon on Tuesdays,” I remind her. “Coach has morning hall duty.”

“Oh, right. You remind me when finals are scheduled, okay? I’ll be there.”

“I’ve got to place in sectionals first.”

“You will.” She squeezes my shoulder as she brushes past. “Think positive.”

I wonder, like I do every time she recites that slogan, whether Mom really thinks positive about everything or whether, like me, she’s just good at sounding positive no matter what’s going on in her head. It’s one of those things I wish I could ask, but don’t. I’ve committed myself to being the kid my parents
don’t
have to worry about, and I’d like to keep it that way as long as I can. Hopefully forever, if I don’t have another attack like yesterday’s.

After she’s hopped into the car with Dad, whose office is just a few blocks away from the gym, I make my rounds, checking all the windows and the back door, flicking the latches open and closed three times so I’m satisfied that they’re locked. Safe. Secure. It’d sound silly if I told anyone, but it helps clear my head for the day. Then I heft my backpack over my shoulder and head out.

The high school’s only five minutes away, one of the reasons my parents picked this neighborhood. My gaze roves both sides of the street as I walk. Number 208 has a “For Sale” sign up that wasn’t there before. A station wagon I don’t recognize sits in the driveway of 175—a new purchase, or someone visiting. When I come around the corner, the sight of the concrete school building starts me ticking through my schedule. Calculus. English. Lunch: help Angela with dance decorations. Physics. Spanish. Cross-country practice until five. Tutoring Benjamin from five thirty to six thirty. Home for—

My thoughts and my feet jerk to a halt at the edge of the courtyard outside the main doors.

As usual, clusters of students are hanging out there, chatting and waving to friends. And standing on the far side of the wrought-iron fence near the bicycle rack is a guy I recognize, but not from school. A guy with jagged black hair and a gray corduroy blazer.

His face is tipped toward the sky, eyes closed, as if he’s drinking in the sunlight shining on his golden-brown skin.
Wrong
. I shudder, and clutch my bracelet.

Why is he here? Yesterday was the first time I’d ever seen him. He looks young enough that I could believe he’s a senior like me, but he doesn’t go to this school. And he doesn’t look like he’s planning to join us, the way he’s set himself off to the side, away from the bustle around the doors.

As I rotate the beads and the feeling fades, his lips curl into a slow, almost goofy smile. He lowers his head to study the passing students. Watching us, like he did in the courthouse. An echo of the imagined explosion washes over me, and my spine goes rigid.

I should walk right by like I usually would, like he’s not even there. But the idea of going to my locker and then sitting down in class knowing he’s out here, watching and waiting—for what?—makes my skin crawl.

This is pathetic. How could he possibly have anything to do with what went
wrong
at the courthouse yesterday, when I know that was a trick of my mind? He’s probably just moved here, and this is his first day. His being at the courthouse was a coincidence—or he was supposed to join our class but was too shy. Which would explain why he’s hanging back now too. I can prove it as easily as going over and talking to him.

Taking a deep breath, I amble along the edge of the courtyard. The shirt the guy is wearing under his blazer today is moss green, with a silver symbol like a sunburst on the chest. Dark-wash jeans, tan sneakers. A brown leather satchel hangs from his left shoulder. His hand rests on it, a little possessively, as if he’s worried someone might try to steal it.

He’s actually kind of cute, in a soulful hipster way that makes me picture him strumming a guitar on a coffeehouse stage. I reevaluate as I pass the bike rack: really freaking cute. Just standing there, he has a presence that makes the rest of the world around him seem somehow paler. My heart skips a beat.

As I reach the fence, his gaze passes over me without pausing, then jerks back. His eyes are a striking deep blue.

“Hey,” I say, smiling. “Just starting today?”

He stares at me, tensed. For a second I think he’s going to bolt. Then his stance relaxes. “Starting?” he asks.

“At the school,” I say. “I haven’t seen you around before. I’m Skylar.”

“Oh,” he says. The corner of his mouth curves up as if I’ve told a joke. “No, I’m not a student. Just visiting.” His voice is smooth, with an inflection that sounds almost British, but also slightly muddied, as if English isn’t his first language.

I raise my eyebrows. “So why are you visiting here?” Cannon Heights High is hardly a tourist destination.

“It’s not important,” he says, and then, casually, “You were at the courthouse the other day, weren’t you?”

“I— Yeah.”

“You were scared by a spider.”

So he
was
watching us then. The back of my neck prickles.

“What were you doing
there
?” I ask.

This time, he outright ignores my question. “That was quite a reaction, for something as small as a spider.” He steps right up to the fence, into my personal space, his presence suddenly feeling more intimidating than attractive. I scoot back.

“I really don’t like spiders,” I say, more sharply than I mean to.

He considers me, as if evaluating my answer. I should walk away. And then what? Tell the office there’s a strange-but-not-necessarily-dangerous guy hanging out by the courtyard? Pretend he isn’t here, surveying our school for some reason he won’t explain?

Before I can decide, he seems to finish his evaluation. “All right,” he says, as if it didn’t really matter anyway. His attention drifts away, and his face brightens. I glance over my shoulder.

Jaeda’s just ambled into the courtyard. Her hair is loose in a kinky halo around her head, and her skin is glowing as if it’s been polished. The guy’s mouth has curled back into that goofy grin I saw before. If he weren’t making me nervous, I’d roll my eyes.

“Okay,” I say, “so you’re a stalker.”

His gaze slides back to me, his expression blank, as if he didn’t even hear me. All at once, anger rushes through me. So maybe my smile doesn’t gleam quite as gorgeously as Jaeda’s does, but I’m the one here in front of him; I’m the one talking to him. I’m the one who had to deal with the freaky panic attack he gave me yesterday and the even freakier hallucination afterward. All these stupid awful feelings I can’t do anything about.