Seraph of Sorrow (24 page)
“Not yet.”
She didn’t answer right away, and he congratulated himself on the mystery he had woven around himself . . .
“So you must be proud of the way you weave mystery around yourself. Is that how you keep other people from getting close?”
“No. I keep people from getting close by telling them to fuck off and leave me alone.”
“It bothers you, I know, that I can see through your childish, masculine crap with zero trouble.” She paused, then added, “Are childish and masculine redundant?”
“Right up there with feminine and treacherous.”
That actually made her giggle, and he heard the slurping sound of soba noodles as they slipped into her mouth. She had a nice mouth, if he remembered correctly—thin, firm lips, with a violet shade of lipstick.
Where does she get lipstick from, anyway?
he wondered.
Come to think of it, where does she live?
“Your mom wasn’t treacherous, you know.”
Skip slapped his notebook shut, stuffed his pencil in his back pocket, stood. “And now the conversation’s over.” He stomped away, waving off the study hall teacher’s inquiry.
“I was going to offer you some flan!” she called after him.
He couldn’t help it; he turned, yelled, “Flan’s Spanish, not Japanese, you half-wit!” and resumed his affronted exit.
“This is disgusting.”
Skip stopped short. He’d ducked into the boys’ room after third period the next day, only to find this girl Andi inspecting the urinals. She was divinely dressed in tan capris and a sky-blue sweater. Cashmere, if he guessed right from the way it held her—
“What are you
doing
in here?”
“You needn’t yell. I knew what a girls’ room looked like. I wanted to see how the other half lived. Your mother and I didn’t cover that in my curriculum, back in the other—”
“Get out of here.” He stepped forward, his need to urinate completely forgotten, and seized her by the lower arm.
“Ouch!” She jerked away.
“If you’re not going to leave, I will.”
“Skip, wait. Oh, come on! I’m trying to reach out to—geez, could you stay long enough to tell me what those little cakes are in the urinals?!”
It was later the same day, while actually thinking about her, when he saw Andi again.
Talking to
her.
He marched up to them, and Jennifer saw him coming first. She wavered between a smile and a worried frown. Without a word, he grabbed Andi’s arm . . .
“Ouch!”
. . . and hauled her away. He didn’t let go until they were in the courtyard behind the school, more or less deserted at this hour.
“What are you telling Jennifer about me? You’re prying into my mind, and stalking me, and telling her all about it! She’s a lying cow and you—”
WHACK!
He thought at first she’d fallen down, but that was wrong.
He’d
fallen down.
She hit me so hard, I’m literally on my ass.
“Buh,” he managed.
“
Don’t
grab me,
don’t
drag me, and I know more about Jennifer Scales than you think.”
His voice returned. “I think I swallowed half of my teeth, here . . .”
“You’ll grow them back, like a shark.” She was rubbing her lower arm where he had grabbed her.
“Look, I—um, do you mind if I get up? It smells like gravel and cigarettes down here.”
“What do I care?”
Carefully, he climbed to his feet. In her agitation, Andi was searching her small backpack and finally extracted a wedge of Brie cheese and an orange. She bit right through the rind, chewed twice, and then stood up straight and threw the orange at Skip.
“Ow! Easy! I need that eye.”
“You’ve got seven more.” She spat the rind out and, calming, focused on the Brie. “Jennifer’s the reason I’m here, in case you’ve forgotten. More likely, you don’t care. But you should, Skip. You should care a
lot
. I can like Jennifer Scales and still be a good friend to
you
.”
“I don’t see how.”
She took another bite of cheese, and then shrugged. “Okay. Your loss.”
As she walked back into the school building, he felt something tug at his heart.
Don’t let it slip away.
This time, he couldn’t bring himself to move.
He watched her for days. She attended classes, walked down hallways, ate lunches, and scratched the backs of her pretty thighs in study hall. Her dark hair always seemed to frame a willing smile—at the teachers, at the other students, at her strange and eclectic snacks, at everyone and everything but him.
One day, he trailed her from a distance as she walked and walked and walked and walked, from neighborhood to neighborhood, without pausing. He gave up after a while, figuring she was taking in this new world, and some exercise.
Or maybe she knows I’m following her, and she’s screwing with me.
He tried again the next day. This path was through a different set of neighborhoods—old Winoka, with some of the buildings dating back to when this town was known as Pinegrove—but equally long and pointless. It was as if she was on some endless, homeless tour of Winoka.
The third time he followed her, she surveyed the historic downtown, with its riverside antique sellers and coffee shops. She found a place that sold chocolates and candies, and stayed in there for at least an hour. She also spent a good two hours in a clothing boutique, emerging with several shopping bags.
The next day, he presented her with gifts in study hall.
She glared at the two boxes with skepticism. “What’s this?”
“Peace offering.”
The first box she took was the large one. Inside was a lovely green-and-blue sweater blouse in her size (he had asked the boutique cashier, right after Andi had left). The smaller box contained two dozen truffles, of the type she had sampled the day before and loved (or so promised the shop owner, when Skip pressed him).
“Huh. I’m of two minds here.”
“How’s that?”
“On one hand, I have clear evidence that you’re stalking me.”
“True.”
“On the other hand, I think the police can press charges with just the sweater to go on. Saving the chocolates for evidentiary purposes seems like overkill.”
“Probably. Happy birthday.”
She had already popped three truffles in her mouth, before she stopped to give him a quizzical look. “Whafdyoumeanf?”
“We should celebrate it today. Because I’ll bet you don’t know your real birthday.”
She took two large, long bites and then swallowed. “How do you know that?”
“You grew up in a universe where you weren’t happy. If you hadn’t told me so yourself, the wounds on your arm would say enough.” He pointed at her lower arm, covered in long sleeves as usual. “You cut yourself, I’ll bet. Or maybe not that, but you’ve done
something
to hurt yourself. That’s why you think your time is well spent studying boys’ bathrooms and walking around town aimlessly and alone.”
Some of this was guesswork. From her reaction, he knew he was hitting close to the mark. “Above all, you never talk about parents, or seem to miss them. So I doubt you knew them. And if you didn’t have parents, I’m guessing you didn’t celebrate birthdays. And if you . . .”
“Okay, I get it. You want to kiss my boo-boos and make them all better, because my life up to this point was crap. In fact, it was barely a life at all. Your mother . . .” She paused and rubbed her nose. “Your mother was the only good thing I ever knew. It wasn’t enough, Skip.”
“Neither was living here, without her.”
She downed another two chocolates, quickly. “Thatf’s why I figuredf we could getfalongf. Y’know. Talkf.” She grabbed a bunch more out of the box.
“Um, those cost, like, five dollars each. You should savor—”
The last one jumped into her mouth. “Comef to dinnerf withf me.”
“Where? Home?”
She shrugged. “Do you feel like you have a home here?”
The question knocked him back. It was as if she knew him—even though he could tell she wasn’t trying to enter his mind. She just
knew
.
“Where do you want to eat?”
“Jennifer told me about a new restaurant in town. Tables of Content. My treat.”
“How’s that possible? Where do you get money from? How do you pay for your clothes? How do you not freeze at night?”
She gave him a tilt of the mouth. “I find a different young boy like you each day, charm them with my eating and shopping habits, and then curl up with them for the night.”
“Hang on, I think I just lost something in my pocket . . .”
“See you there at six!”
He watched, not without admiration, as Andi worked her way through bacon-wrapped scallops, a bowl of broccoli cheddar soup, a plate of linguini with white clam sauce, two salads (romaine with ranch, arugula with Italian), a slice of flourless chocolate cake, and crème brûlée.
“I’ll bet you’ll still be cute, after you grow obese,” he observed, slicing his steak.
“I hope so.” She delicately wiped her mouth and sat back. “Food is the greatest.”
“Food sucked in the old universe?”
“I didn’t get to sample much of it.”
“What, you were in prison?”
She shrugged at this, and he got the hint.
Change the subject!
“So you cross universes, develop apparently infinite supplies of cash, and decide to spend your time
in high school
?”
She laughed. The sound delighted him. “I gather I’m crazy for liking it. But I do.”
“Didn’t they have teachers and schools where you were?”
“We did. But for many years, my experience was . . . unique. Things had gotten a little better by the time Jennifer found me—”
“See, now, you’re going to wreck a perfectly nice night.”
She took a gulp of water and crunched the ice. “Hey. If you’ve still got that bad a crush, then ditch me now, find her, and beg her to take you back. Otherwise, get over her.”
“I don’t—”
“Then you should have no problem talking about her.”
“I wish you knew my history with her.”
“So.” Andi crunched another piece of ice. There was something heavenly in the workings of her jaw that Skip could neither explain nor resist. “Tell me.”
To his surprise, he did. After they had talked awhile, he invited her to his aunt’s place.
Aunt Tavia, thrilled her nephew had a guest, nevertheless managed to keep her poise and not hover over them constantly. After a while they retreated to his room and closed the door.
He cleared his throat, suddenly aware he was alone with a girl and a bed for the first time in his life. “So. Um, how was the Quadrivium going to change the universe, exactly?”
“Does it matter?”
“No, but I can’t think of anything else to talk about right now.”
Well, there’s your lips, and your chest, and your eyes . . . but somehow . . .
“Our leader, a man named The Crown, was going to kill what he called the most dangerous beaststalker in history.”
“You mean Mayor Glory Seabright?”
She nodded, but added nothing.
“Geez, that’s all? That changed history?” He found himself irritated at Edmund Slider and the rest of the Quadrivium. “Why all the time travel and sorcery? Why not kill her now, and make the future brighter for the next generation?”
“Killing her deeper in time prevented many werachnid deaths. Also, killing her when she was younger was decidedly easier than killing her now.”
“I’ll bet I could do it.”
Her eyes went wide. “Skip, get serious.”
“Who’s joking? Give me a gun and I’ll shoot her. Bam, look at me, I’m more powerful than the Quadrivium.”
“You’d never get close enough. Not even for a gun.”
“You’re saying she’s invincible?”
“I’m saying distance, talent, and luck are all issues. She’s a genetic marvel.”
“So get the Quadrivium to go back in time and find a relative to kill her.”
“That’s not funny.”
“You sure are sensitive about all this Quadrivium crap.”
“Can we talk about something else? Maybe you could do some more sketches.”
“Sure, I guess.” He pulled down a new sketchbook from his bookshelf and sharpened his pencils. In less than a minute, he was sketching an efficient line of shapes resembling half ladybugs, half scorpions around the border of the page.
“Pretty,” she said, her breath warming his shoulder.
“Check this out.”
She chortled as the eight-legged lady-scorps with spotted segments began a congo line that shimmied across the paper.
“I think it,” he said smugly, leaning back so her face was closer, “and they do it.”
“Brilliant. Can you get them to fetch you snacks?”
“It’s always about the food with you, isn’t it? No, they can’t really touch anything. They stay two-dimensional.” He shrugged an apology, suddenly feeling like maybe this wasn’t such a great accomplishment after all. She was Quadrivium material. What did she care if he drew self-animated cartoons? How would that be impressive to her?
He looked up and saw she was—What was she doing? She was humming under her breath, a light, pretty tune he’d never heard. And now her hands were touching his shoulders. Was she going to give him a back rub? Then her hands clamped, hard, the humming got louder, and he nearly yelped. When he saw the paper, he
did
yelp.