Once Again (22 page)

Just to make my reasoning seem more
legitimate, I’d read fifteen or so pages of the Tolstoy story we’d
been assigned in literature class.

And now the reincarnation book lay open in
front of me.

First I scanned the pages Gwen had marked and
the passages she’d highlighted. Most of the information outlined
what she’d discussed with us over breakfast. With no idea what
direction to go next, I began turning to random pages

A heading at the top of one chapter caught my
eye.

The Gifting.

Propping myself with pillows against the
headboard of my bed, I began to read.

It is not uncommon for those experiencing
particularly strong or volatile reincarnation episodes to develop
an ability that eventually proves useful. This phenomenon is
referred to as The Gifting.

Research has documented such supernatural
abilities as telekinesis, clairvoyance, mind-reading, and other
physical abilities such as superior strength and speed. In most
instances, The Gifting is temporary, and serves as a means to some
end. If a reincarnated soul is in danger or having trouble
achieving a necessary goal, The Gifting will provide the necessary
skill to neutralize the danger or create success.

At first it sounded like mumbo-jumbo, but as
I read it a second time it began to make sense. Danger or
difficulty could be eliminated by “gifting” the reincarnate with
some supernatural ability. Like mind-reading.

And then it clicked.

The words and phrases that had fallen into my
mind. Not my own thoughts, but as if from the mind of another
person. The person who was most likely targeting me, with the goal
of destroying Lucas.

The person who was most likely the
present-day version of the one who had led the mob to kill Lucas’s
past-self in the dream.

As realization dawned, the significance of
the words I’d seen began to sink in.

I won’t lose. Not this time.

No matter what I have to do.

It won’t be long now, my love.

Even if I have to kill him.

Reaching for my backpack, I grabbed my
notebook and began furiously recording the words that had bounced
into my consciousness. I tried to describe everything about the
situations. The way I felt alone and overwhelmed the first day of
school. The happiness that bubbled inside me at The Pizza Place
after the football game. The misery and anger that coursed through
me that day in the cafeteria when I saw the pictures of Luke with
Kara.

All three had been significant days, even
before I picked up on the thoughts. That couldn’t be an
accident.

Putting words on paper as fast as they
entered my mind, I hoped desperately that giving context to the
episodes of random thoughts might give me some clue as to whose
thoughts I’d heard.

The
next several days came and went without dreams or visions. Nothing
whatsoever was out of the ordinary, except that Lucas maintained a
distance I could not explain. He didn’t act different. We sat next
to each other in literature. He walked me to my next class. He met
me in the parking lot and walked with me to my car before heading
off to cross country practice.

But something was off. Maybe he didn’t look
at me as often. Maybe he didn’t walk quite as close.

He withheld himself from me, in a way I
couldn’t describe or put my finger on, but weighed on my heart
nonetheless.

Our reactions to the last dreams could not
have been more different. I wanted nothing more than to be closer
to him after watching him die and seeing my own death. I supposed
for Lucas, the opposite was true. He was pulling away.

As if I needed another reason to wonder if
what he felt for me was real or just leftover from the past.

For lack of anything better to do in the
afternoon hours – and to make myself think about
anything
but Luke and our dilemma – I finished reading the Tolstoy story.
And when homework couldn’t keep my mind off things, random
playlists turned way up on my iPod helped drown it all out.

I was actually
happy
about the amount
of chemistry homework Mr. Hartley assigned on Friday, and forced
myself to think about that, rather than about Luke, as I walked in
to Lit class.

“Leo Emerson was married to a woman named
Lillian Bostridge,” Luke whispered just as Mrs. Chadwick stood up
to start literature class.

Way to drop a bomb. He’d been back to the
courthouse, I assumed. Or at least done some research that lead him
to Leo and his wife.

And he’d done it alone. Without me. And
waited until I couldn’t respond before telling me.

Suffering through the class discussion on
Ivan Ilyich
was torture. I had so many questions and no way
to ask them. Part of me wanted to be angry that he’d excluded me,
but the bigger part of me felt I had no right to expect to be
included in his family research.

Except that it might well affect me just as
much as it affected him.

I glanced over at him toward the end of Mrs.
Chadwick’s lecture and noticed his hand clenching into a fist over
and over again. Clearly he was as agitated as I was.

Good.

I wasn’t exactly mad at him. Frustrated was a
better word.

And yes, my feelings were hurt. But I
wouldn’t let him see that. I shoved it all inside, locking my
disappointment away and refusing to let it show on my face. When
the bell rang to end class, I put on a neutral expression and left
the room.

As we walked toward my U.S. History class, he
filled me in a bit more.

“Thanks to Patsy, I knew what to look for,”
he explained. “Once I had the name Leo Emerson, it wasn’t hard to
find his name and the name of his wife.”

“And what did you discover about them?”

“They owned the house in the mid 1800s.
There’s no record of children, and no date of death listed. When
the house was abandoned, it went to his brother. Which was how it
eventually ended up being William and Patsy’s.”

“So, are we now operating under the
assumption that one of my birth parents was somehow related to
Lillian Bostridge?”

“I think that’s what we’ve got to assume at
this point.” We stopped just short of my classroom door, leaned
against the wall out of the way of the traffic. “We know I’m
connected to the Emerson’s. The logical partner to that is that
you’re connected to Lillian’s family. Even if you never find out
who your birth parents are, I figure it’s a safe bet one of them is
descended the Bostridges. And you coming here to Sky Cove must be
one of the two intersecting events that caused the reincarnation
visions to really amp up.”

I nodded. It made sense, as much as anything
in this whole mess could make sense. “And we still have no idea
what the second event could be.”

Luke shook his head. “Maybe we should talk to
Brooke McKenna. We know she’s connected to the Emersons, that she
has some kind of knowledge of the tragic story that happened to Leo
and Lillian.”

“And she works in Boston. As a labor delivery
nurse.” I lowered my voice as two cheerleaders, Jade and Kristin,
walked into the room. Though they’d actually been okay and given me
no indication of taking part in Kara’s bad attitude, I wasn’t
willing to risk them overhearing me.

“But she didn’t work there when you were
born.” Luke shifted closer to me. “Patsy said she worked somewhere
else until just a few years ago.”

“It can’t be coincidence, Luke. Her job. The
fact that she’s in Boston. It’s too much overlap to be
insignificant.”

“You’re right.” He looked at his cell,
checking the time, and I knew he was going to have to head to his
next class. “Can you come to the house this afternoon?”

I nodded.

“I’ll call you when I’m done with practice
and swing by and pick you up. You can have dinner with Mom and me
and we’ll figure out where we go from here. I have a few more
theories we ought to talk about.”

“So do I,” I said. “But you don’t have to
pick me up. I can drive out, so you don’t have to drive back into
town to take me home.”

He shook his head. “Don’t want you out by
yourself at night. Not with all this going on.”

I started to protest, but he stopped me with
a pleading look. “Let me do what I can to protect you.”

And how could I argue with that?

Just like that, my emotions were fully
engaged again, and the pendulum that was my doubt about Luke’s
feelings swung back to the side of believing they were genuine and
real.

If it was a delusion, I was buying it
willingly.

And probably regret it later.

***

I called Adrienne that afternoon. I’d been
woefully neglect in keeping in touch with my best friend in
Nashville. Part of me felt guilty for making new friends in Sky
Cove, but I supposed that was the natural way of things. And I was
thankful for Jessie and Marsha and the other girls I’d met. It was
good to be able to share the day-to-day happenings with them.

But the prospect of hearing Adrienne’s voice
somehow made the vortex of my crazy emotions seem less
daunting.

“Layla!” she squealed when she answered the
call. “I miss you!”

“Me too. How are things?”

“Same as usual,” she said. “High school drama
and all that goes with it.”

I thought of Kara and the pictures on the
lunch table. “Some things are the same wherever you are.”

“Uh oh. What’s doing with the boy you told me
about?”

I wanted so badly to confide in her, but how
could I possibly tell her what was going on without sounding like a
total freak?

“It’s just weird,” I began, deciding to just
skim the surface. “We’re still together, I guess, but there are
some things from the past that just keep creeping up and making me
wonder.”

“An ex-girlfriend,” Adrienne declared. “They
so suck.”

I laughed. It was true. Ex-girlfriends
sucked.

“Sort of,” I replied. “Anyway, I just keep
having these doubts, like maybe he doesn’t really like me as much
as he thinks he does. Like any minute now the new will wear off and
everything’s going to just fall apart.”

True enough, even though Luke’s ex-girlfriend
was only a small part of the problem.

“Layla, you’ve always had a self-confidence
issue.”

Really? I had? I mean, I’d always known I
wasn’t cut out for “popular status”, but I’d also felt right at
home in the middle of the pack. I was comfortable.

“What makes you say that?” I asked, even as
my doubts about Luke waved red flags in my face.

“Oh, I know you don’t think you have any
issues with your self-image, and in a lot of ways you don’t. You’re
smart and you embrace that. You’re happy being who you are, and you
don’t kill yourself trying to fit in with the popular crowds. All
of that’s good. But I don’t think you’ve ever looked at yourself
and thought of yourself as pretty or attractive. I think when it
comes to guys, you’ve always just sort of wondered what they could
possibly see in you.”

She was right, I realized. She was absolutely
right. Adrienne was pretty and thin and stylish, and I’d always
just thought of myself as plain, inside and out. Hadn’t I been
surprised by Luke’s interest in me?

“Does your silence mean you think I’m right?”
Adrienne asked.

“I see your point,” I said. “I guess it’s
because I never wanted it to matter what a guy thought of me.”

Far less likely to get hurt that way.

“But what Lucas thinks matters, doesn’t it?”
she asked.

Did it ever. “Yes, it does. Very much.”

“Then trust him. If it falls apart, it falls
apart. You won’t be the first person to experience that. But if you
keep doubting, you might miss out on something great.”

“I need your pep talks more often,” I said
with a smile.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m a regular teen shrink.”

“You should come visit, maybe spend some of
the summer here with me.”

“Maybe I will.”

When I hung up, I felt somewhat better. At
the very least, I had a better understanding of where some of my
doubts came from.

Now if I could just have a better
understanding about what craziness went on in the past and what
Lucas and I were supposed to do about it in the present.

Gwen
wasn’t home when Luke and I arrived. A note on the kitchen table
said she’d gone to the dentist and would be back in time for
dinner.

Luke headed upstairs to drop his backpack in
his room and I followed. I pushed the door wide open as I stepped
in, watching him stand at the window for a long moment.

“Layla, I need to apologize again about the
other night,” he said, when he finally spoke.

I said nothing, my silence prompting him to
turn and look at me.

“For the way things got out of hand between
us.”

I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t sorry
about it, especially since we’d both had the good sense to put the
brakes on. And feeling the way I felt about him I didn’t have it in
me to regret the way we’d clung to each other after the death
dream.

It bothered me that he was sorry.

“I mean, I’m not sorry I kissed you like
that,” he corrected. “I’m just sorry I pushed you that far.”

Okay. So maybe he wasn’t sorry about the
kissing. Maybe it wasn’t dislike or regret. Maybe he felt...

“I feel guilty for manhandling you, and I
wish you’d say something because I’m so incredibly sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” I stepped closer, though a
good five feet remained between us. “You have nothing to be sorry
for. You didn’t do anything. It was a reaction to what we saw in
the dream. It was natural. And it was
mutual
.”

“It’s just... I don’t know.” He shoved his
hands through his hair and walked back toward the window. He took a
deep breath, shoulders slumping and turned to look at me. “We’re in
the middle of this insane situation, and I feel like I have to hold
myself back and not feel what I’m feeling so we don’t cloud over
things or piss off the bad guys, so we can keep our focus.”