Lost in Thought (21 page)

“I…don’t hate her,” I said, and realized it was true. “Not really. I mean, I don’t really
like
her either, but definitely not hate. I…think I feel sad for her too.”

Brooke snorted, but delicately, like she did everything except play volleyball. “I promise not to tell her that! She probably would bust a vein then.”

“Well, even I wouldn’t wish that on her…”

“For such a pretty girl, she does get ugly sometimes.” Brooke paused, sighed, then brightened again. “But I have a great idea! Let’s not talk about Lex anymore and you tell me
all
about dating Carter Penrose, yeah?”

I laughed and then I told her, just a little bit.

aturally, I tried to spend as much time with Carter as possible, even if it was only studying in the bookstore lounge some eveN nings—not always the most conducive place for
actual
studying—and I began a ritual of having dinner with his family on Sundays. We also began a ritual of meeting on Wednesday evenings for my official Sententia practice sessions.

The third floor of the library housed the Academy’s Special Collections—its historical documents and donated artifacts. It was also closed to the student population in the evenings, making it the perfect location for our needs, private and neutral. Most of the floor was divided between displays for the collections and a space for class meetings and guest lectures, but the back half featured a handful of library tables and a few stacks of Academy and local history books.

This was where Carter and I sat, staring at a box of cutlery.

An expensive box of antique silver cutlery, to be exact, and one that was making me lightheaded and nauseous. It was the week before Christmas and our third Wednesday meeting. I had done pretty well at my previous practice working with a wooden stool from which I’d seen clearly how a man toppled off of it and broke his neck. It was

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awful, of course, but I was able to watch the vision three times without passing out, and one time I was able to keep myself from having the vision at all. My head ached when I was done, and I was exhausted, but I felt like I’d accomplished something.

Carter had wanted to work with the same object, to have me try to prevent the vision consistently, and possibly read more from it, but I said no. I wanted to work on the not passing out first and foremost, and, well, there were only so many times I could watch a man die before I wanted to take a break from his tragedy. So instead, I was waiting for a vision of someone else’s likely tragedy. But it wasn’t coming. And I was
trying
to have it.

“I just feel sick again,” I said in frustration.

Carter picked up my hand from where it rested on the mahogany lid of the silverware set’s box and kissed it gently. This was one of the problems with our practice sessions: staying on task. I was easily distracted and my tutor was the distraction. “You aren’t actually sick, are you?” he asked.

“No. I feel fine otherwise. Now. This set is definitely
something
; I’m just not seeing it.”

“Maybe you’re not close enough to whatever piece was involved.”

He opened the lid so we could see the dully gleaming forks and knives and spoons. It was an enormous set, in a heavy case with a lid that flipped up and two drawers of specialty and serving pieces. I felt bad that Carter had had to lug it all the way over to the library, but since I found him distracting enough in this setting, I
really
didn’t think practicing in his apartment was a good idea. Especially since his aunt was still at work.

“Try again,” he suggested.

I dutifully rested my hand over the stacks of silverware, closed my eyes, and concentrated on opening my senses.
My own personal death
senses
, I thought glumly. I couldn’t exactly focus them yet, not specifi-L O S T I N T H O U G H T | 159

cally in the way I could concentrate on hearing or touch or taste, but I
could
tell when I was resisting them. The pressure in my head increased.

Carter believed that was why I so frequently fainted and had migraines, because I was fighting the gift, making my brain shut down in order to protect itself. If I worked
with
the gift, and felt my way through the visions, I shouldn’t have those problems. Unfortunately, this time all I felt was more dizzy. The vision would not come.

I sighed. “Still nothing. Just dizzy. If I keep up with the dizzy much longer I’m going to pass out just from that.”

Carter thought for a moment. “Maybe you’ll need to find the specific piece that was involved. It’s obviously not the case. Probably not any of the pieces your hand was touching directly either.”

I sighed again and began to repeat my process, picking up pieces of silverware one by one. I started with the sharp knives, thinking they were the most obvious choices, moved on to forks, and was halfway through the teaspoons when my dizziness spiked.

Out of instinct, I dropped the spoon, watching it clatter across the table. Resisting was a hard habit to break, but at least it gave me a moment to prepare myself. I took a deep breath and picked up the spoon again.

Dizziness washed over me, but I gritted through it and concentrated on the vision. It’s hard to know what to expect when you’re about to see someone’s death, but what happened next was completely outside of any scenario I’d considered. In my vision, an aristocratic young woman sat down at an elegant table, stirring the contents of a pretty teacup with the spoon I now held. She looked up and said something—what, I’ll never know, since I had no audio during these visions—to a handsome man sitting across from her. He looked like he’d walked out of an old painting of British men on a foxhunt.

He was also cleaning a rifle of some sort, so maybe he
had
just returned home from a foxhunt. Wherever he’d been didn’t matter

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compared to what happened next. He opened his mouth to respond to the woman when the gun bucked wildly in his hands. A split second later, most of the woman’s face exploded.

I dropped the spoon again, looked at Carter in shock, and promptly blacked out.

WHEN I CAME to, I was looking up at the library ceiling, my head resting in Carter’s lap. His hands stroked my hair and the side of my face.

My head was positively throbbing, even more than usual after one of these incidents.

Carter saw my open eyes and gave me a small smile. “You had to fall off your chair away from me, didn’t you? You hit your head before I could catch you. Sorry.” I tried to sit up, but the edges of my vision got blurry. Carter gently pushed me back down. “Easy there,” he said.

“Why don’t you just lie still for a little while, okay?”

I groaned. “Please don’t tell anyone! My aunt, I mean, mostly. I’ll have to stay here for all of Christmas break if she hears I passed out again.”

“I won’t tell her,” he said, laughing. “Promise. Though it is tempting. Would make my birthday a lot better if you were around.”

I couldn’t believe I’d overlooked it, but I realized I didn’t know when Carter’s birthday was. “It will be your birthday while I’m away?

Damn. When is it?”

He nodded. “It will be while you’re away. I was actually born on Christmas Day.”

“That kind of sucks. I bet you always get screwed on presents, huh?”

His eyes took on a sad cast that confused me. “It does suck,” he said, “but it’s also the day my mom died, so that sucks more.”

I clapped my hand over my mouth in both surprise and embarrassment. “I’m so sorry,” I said and then repeated, grabbing his free hand with mine and giving it a squeeze. “I had no idea.”

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“It’s okay.” He was quiet for a moment, looking across the room and stroking my hair a little more. “It’s been almost nineteen years…I’ve kind of gotten used to it. But yeah, Christmas has never been my favorite holiday. My father always told me I was the best gift he ever got, which I think is what most parents say to their kids, right?

I believe he meant it, but I guess I was an expensive gift. I cost him his wife.” I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just held his hand tighter.

He looked back down at me and smiled a little. “I don’t know when your birthday is either.”

“February eighteenth,” I told him. “I should have come on a holiday too. Aunt Tessa tells me my mom was due on Valentine’s Day, but I insisted on waiting a few days more.”

He laughed lightly. “You’ve always been stubborn, huh? That’s right around the Winter Ball…a good time to celebrate.”

I had already heard talk of the famed Winter Ball. Apparently Northbrook didn’t hold a traditional prom in the spring, like most high schools, because the school year ended earlier here and because, well, they seemed to like doing things differently. So they chose to have a formal ball in the slowest part of the year—the deep of winter.

I hadn’t given it too much thought, but I supposed I was looking forward to it. I’d never been to any school dance before, but having seen other events put on by the Academy, I had every expectation the Winter Ball should be lavish. I supposed I should nail down my date in advance too.

“Will you go with me?” I asked Carter. I honestly didn’t know the answer. I thought he would, but I didn’t get the impression he’d ever gone to anything but sporting events when he was an actual student.

He smiled. “With you? Yes, absolutely. It will be my first Winter Ball,” he added, confirming my suspicions. I told him it would be mine too, my first dance of any kind. “It’ll be fun,” he promised.





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TRUE TO HIS word, Carter told no one about my fainting in the library, and I was free to get away for three glorious weeks in sunny Mexico with Aunt Tessa and her family. Christmas for me meant beaches and bikinis, not snow and scarves. I’d never experienced a white Christmas and, except for Carter’s birthday, I wasn’t disappointed to be missing one this year either.

The fourth week we had off I spent with Amy in Boston. I liked Amy’s mom and Amy clearly loved her even if they were almost complete opposites. Mrs. Moretti was very balanced and mellow, and though they looked similar, everything about Amy was just…
more
.

Amy was prettier, curvier, bubblier, more spontaneous, more hothead-ed, and, well, more my best friend. I had no idea how much I’d missed her until I was back in her company.

The Morettis’ house was
amazing
, an enormous three stories of Victorian perfection, a few miles outside the city proper. Of course, I was forced to make that observation in only about two minutes, because Amy took me on the fastest tour of a twenty-room house that was humanly possible before dragging me into her giant third-floor room, locking the door, and flopping into one of two chairs by the windows overlooking her back yard.

“Your house…” is so beautiful, I started to say, but Amy cut me off completely.

“Thanks, I know. So we did it. Finally,” she said excitedly.

“Er.” She’d changed the subject so abruptly, I had no idea what she meant. I didn’t have time to ask before she went on.

“Me and Caleb,”
she clarified. “We
finally
had sex!”

Of
course
that’s what she meant. I smiled hugely at the not-exactly-surprising news. I knew I didn’t need to say much because, like everything, she wanted to tell me about it. The hardest part was getting her to spare me some of the details.

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I stuck with single-word responses so that I could at least express a complete thought before being interrupted again. “Great! When?”

“Christmas Eve. And twice last week.” I, naturally, blushed, but there was little point in trying to stop her. “But the first time was Christmas Eve. I drove out to his parents’ house to meet them—his town is only about half an hour from here—but then they had to leave to go to some party, and his brother was already gone, so yeah, Caleb and I had the house to ourselves. They’re really nice, by the way, his parents. I think they liked me, I guess probably until they find out what I did to their youngest son after they left…”

I hoped they wouldn’t find out, not any time soon anyway, because I was sure they wouldn’t want to hear about even half of what Amy proceeded to tell me. Caleb had been a virgin, apparently, but certainly wasn’t anymore.

After the big reveal, I got another, more formal tour of the house, and it was as beautiful and impressive as I’d thought it was but hadn’t had time to appreciate. We spent most of the week hanging out, doing homework, and going to parties at her local friends’ houses in the evenings, where we talked, laughed, and occasionally had a few drinks of whatever alcohol the hosts had managed to steal from their parents or get their older siblings to buy for them.

This, I imagined, was what most sixteen-year-olds did on their school vacations. It was foreign to me, but fun. The more time I spent doing normal things, the more I realized that I really wasn’t normal at all, in a way that had nothing to do with the absolutely-not-normal secret ability I was carrying around. I had grown up on the move, with adults as my most constant companions. Sometimes I felt like I was twenty-six, maybe even thirty-six, instead of sixteen. I related this discovery to Amy while we did something else I’d never done before: shopped for dresses with a girlfriend.

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“Lane, relax,” Amy said, holding up at least the twentieth dress in front of me before putting it back on the rack with a shake of her head. “You’re perfect. People like you because you’re not a typical sixteen-year-old. That’s why
I
like you. I mean, that’s not the
only
reason, but it’s part of what makes you so fabulous. You’re smart and fun and sexy as hell. So what if you’ve spent more time reading books than gossiping on the phone, or more time at fancy art receptions than going to the mall.” She waved her hand at the racks around us. “No one cares. Neither should you.”