Tattoo #1: Tattoo (8 page)

life. Our lives" Keiri looked at each of us in turn. "And it is with our lives, human life, that our story truly begins, because S�dhe power feeds off life" My tattoo throbbed, and the moment my fingertips brushed over it, my mind echoed with memories of words I'd heard before. To fight, to live "To be S�dhe is to have life itself flowing in your blood" Keiri paused. For a long while, we waited. Keiri said nothing. I felt more like I was taking a fairy philosophy class than like I was actually learning anything useful. "What do you know about Olympus?" Talk about an abrupt subject change. One moment it was all "to be S�dhe is to." and the next, boom. "Greek mythology" Zo sounded about as thrilled as I felt. "Myths seldom get things right," Keiri said, "but they never get things entirely wrong" "What myth are we talking about here?" Annabelle asked, always the one to ask the right question at the right time. "You tell me," Keiri said. "It goes a little something like this" Suddenly, she seemed much more like a normal person, and much less like a crazy oracle-type. "Once upon a time, in a world not that far from our own, there were three young and powerful S�dhe children: two sisters, and a little boy whose life and destiny was tied to theirs. Some would call them fairies; some would call them gods. "They were born in a time when fairy power was diminishing. The barrier between the worlds was becoming harder and harder to cross, and human life and S�dhe life were becoming so vastly differ- ent that the lines that connected them, the lines through which S�dhe power ran, were becoming thinner and thinner. "And so these three children were born into the momentous task of closing the gap. They could see from their world into ours, and they were to know human life, to know humans, and through their knowledge, the power inherent in all life was to return to the S�dhe. "The two girls were as different as night and day. To the one went the task of knowing human life, and to the other, that of knowing human death" Well that certainly sounded ominous. "And so one watched humans live, and the other was with them in their moment of death, and as time went by, they crossed farther and farther from being observers to being something else alto- gether. Sister Life, as she was apt to call herself, began to weave the lines of human life, the very lines through which she got her power. It started with small things: making this person's lifeline cross that person's; lengthening this line or that; weaving together the lives of those she watched" "And death?" Unlike me, Zo didn't squeak at all when she asked a question. "Sister Death, who never called herself that, but nonetheless maintained the title among the S�dhe, was not enthralled with the lines the way her sister was. She knew the human race in death, knew it in war, and when the time came, she cut lifelines, undoing her sister's weaving and releasing the tension of life into the nothingness of death" "What about the third?" I asked, managing a relatively squeak-free voice. "You said there were three" "Birth," Delia said, answering for Keiri. All of us turned to look at her. "Duh," she said. "Was I the only one awake during Greek mythology? This is totally the fairy tale version of the three Fates" The three Fates? Adea. Alecca. Valjjius. Somehow, I'd never thought the three names together before, and the moment I did, the world around me blurred into a mess of colors and sounds, and then, there was nothing. Onbekend "My love" I turned in the direction of the bone-shattering voice. A man and a woman stood next to each other. His lips were so close to hers that I had to wonder if he was going to eat her alive. When she moved hers toward him, I grimaced and turned away. "Devour" probably would have been the appropriate word for what her lips did to his. "I shouldn't be surprised" At the sound of the new voice, I whirled around and found myself staring into startling blue eyes. I should have gotten used to eyes like those by now, but they weren't the kind of thing you could get used to. "We spend our days with them, watching their lives, their deaths, their births, connecting ourselves to them so that our people may maintain their power, and this is what comes of it" The two lovers broke away from each other. "We know their loves, their hatred," the angry woman continued. Her hair was so blond that it shined like white silver in contrast to the lovers' darker hair. His was black, almost blue, and hers was a deep red, bordering on black. Recognition shot through me, but I said nothing as I watched the drama before me unfold. "We know what it is to be human, and our knowledge is the root of our power, and now, the two of you think you are human" The blond-haired girl plowed on. "You think you've fallen in love" "We have," Adea spoke up, taking a step away from Valgius, her chin held high. "We are not human, Adea. We do not love" There was something in her voice, in her tone, that made me wonder whether or not she really believed that; made me wonder if she'd ever loved. Valgius stepped forward next to Adea. "We are S�dhe," he said simply, answering the allegations the third one had thrown at him. "We do that which we will" The blond woman grinned, and though she was beautiful (totally centerfold material), it was a horri- ble sight. "You do your will," she said, "and I'll do mine" "Alecca, we have not betrayed you" Adea's voice dropped to a whisper. "No?" Alecca continued smiling. "There are three of us. There have always been three of us" For a moment, I sympathized. She'd just found out that her sister and her best friend (possibly also her love interest?) were getting it on. Talk about being the third wheel. I tried to imagine Zo or Delia hooking up with Kane behind my back and physically shuddered. "We were three," Alecca said, her tone for the first time almost sad. "And now?" She shook her head. "Now you have their love, and I have their hatred" Alecca laughed, cold, dry laughter that nearly split my head in two. "But one day, I'll have it all, and you, Adea, and you, Valgius, will bow before my power. You will have nothing, and I will have everything, and both worlds will fall at my feet" "Not while I live," Adea said quietly. "No," Alecca agreed. "That would hardly be an ending worthy of lovers such as you" She sneered. "Tragedy would suit better" "You cannot kill us" Valgius sounded sure on this point. Alecca held her hands up, and her whole body glowed with power. "You know each other," she said, taking a step forward with each word. "I know only them. How much more powerful, then, am I? I know them. I will absorb their lives into mine, and with their power, I will destroy you" Adea and Valgius joined hands, and I had to look away from the light shining off their bodies. Turning around and squinting into the light, I could see Alecca take a step backward. "It doesn't have to be this way," Adea said softly. "Sister. " "You will weaken without me," Alecca said through clenched teeth. "You will weaken and fade away. Without me, you will be nothing, and your love won't do a thing to save you. And just when you're most vulnerable, just when the balance of power begins to shift, there I'll be" Startling blue eyes surged with fury, and though her voice was low, Alecca's next words sent a shiv- er racing up and down my spine at high frequency. "I will end you" Alecca lashed out with one hand, and blood trickled down Adea's face, leaving a blue-green line in its wake. "To destroy us would destroy the balance. Both worlds would be thrown into chaos. S�dhe, human." Alecca threw her hand through the air, cutting off her sister's plea. Valgius flew backward. He re- gained his footing, and made his own appeal. "We are still three," he said. Alecca stared at him for the longest moment, her blue eyes piercing his. "No," she said, and the qui- et word screamed of betrayal and vengeance. "Never again" She advanced on them. Adea and Val- gius began speaking in low tones as Alecca continued her onslaught, her fury slashing across their bodies, marking them with trails of blue-green blood. The lovers joined hands and continued chant- ing primal-sounding words I couldn't understand. Alecca shook, but whether it was with anger, in fear, or from the power of their words, I couldn't tell. I could feel the magic in the air, sizzling, pushing me back as Alecca began her own chant. "To earth I go From air I breathe I command myself Unto the sea For time unknown The hate you've sown Shall live in me Until your weakness Sets me free And as I will So mote it be" Adea and Valgius kept chanting, the words persisting against Alecca's in an odd rhythm. Power surged, light flashed, and the world around me shook violently, spastically. And then they were gone. "She does this sometimes" As I came back into consciousness, I became quickly aware of the fact that every inch of my body felt as if it had been beaten from the inside out. "My grandmother used to do this" I opened my eyes. "I hate my life" I paused. "And my body" I felt like throwing "and your grand- mother" on the end of that to Keiri, but somehow, that didn't seem like the best idea. The first thing I saw was Keiri glaring at me, and I remembered a second too late that she was psy- chic. "I saw them again," I said, more than ready to change the subject. "Only this time, they didn't see me" I tried to sit up, but pain shot through my body, and a cry escaped my mouth. "Bailey" Zo, Delia, and Annabelle were at my side in an instant. "What's wrong?" Delia asked, panicked. "Are you hurt?" Zo cursed under her breath. "What did you see?" Annabelle and Keiri asked at the same time. Great. Synchronized psychics. "It was weird," I said, my voice hoarse from what I'd seen. "It was Adea and Valgius, and they were ...kissing" That seemed like a nice way to put it. "And then " It took me a moment to spit out her name. "Then Alecca saw them, and she was beyond ticked off, like they'd been doing it behind her back or something. And the way she looked at him, at both of them, it was like she'd been majorly betrayed. So Alecca goes off on this whole rant about how they aren't human and they're not sup- posed to love that way, and she threatens to kill them, even if it means destroying both worlds in the process. Or something like that" "Wait a second," Delia said. "Are you telling me that this whole apocalypse-y `our lives, your fight, both worlds' thing started because of some kind of twisted fairy love triangle?" I shrugged and nodded at the same time. "It's looking like a definite possibility" "Sweet," Delia said. All of us looked at her. "Sweet?" Annabelle asked. "Sweet?" "Not the whole whatever-it-takes, murderous part, but don't you think it's just a little bit cool that we're caught in the middle of some passionate cosmic affair?" "Trust me," I told her. "It didn't feel cool" "Soap opera" That was Zo, who folded her arms over her chest, still keeping an eagle eye on me ly- ing on the sofa. "I told you. Greek mythology: one giant soap opera" "It doesn't seem that much like Greek mythology," Annabelle, who was in all likelihood an expert on Greek mythology, said skeptically. "Myths," Keiri said, shaking her head. "If it wasn't for people like my grandmother, and Bailey, we'd probably never have known" "This is just a temporary gig," I said. "It came with the tattoo, and believe me, if I'd known what I was getting myself into " "You mean you don't know?" Keiri asked. I stared at her. "That's Bailey's clueless face," Delia clarified for the older woman. "I assumed that you knew. There are so few Guardian lines left these days, and--" "Guardian lines?" all of us asked at once. "Blessed Ones," Keiri said impatiently. "Those touched by the S�dhe, chosen to guard their heir- looms and powers in this world to maintain the great balance" I stared at her. Great balance? Heirlooms? Blessed? As if. "Your dreams are S�dhe-blocked," Keiri told me. "I can't read them, and I'm betting your friend there can't, either" I purposefully didn't look at Annabelle, who'd told me from the start that my dreams were a mystery to her. "But you can't read Annabelle, either," I said in my own defense. "Right," Keiri said, as if I'd just made a point in her favor. "I can't read Annabelle at all, which tells me there's some kind of external magic at play. I'm far too strong for a noninitiated mortal to block me completely" Was it me, or did Keiri say "mortal" as though she ...well, as though she wasn't one? "The women in my family were once priestesses at the S�dhe temples" Keiri answered the question I hadn't had the guts to voice. "Guardians of their secrets, owners of objects that they passed from their realm into ours" "Blessed," Annabelle said. Keiri nodded. "The S�dhe smiled upon the Guardians and blessed them. Touched them. Trace amounts of their power leaked into our blood. My daughter and I are the last of an ancient line of Guardians. We are blessed. Short of some kind of S�dhe magic intervening, I should be able to read all of you" "That's Bailey's clueless face again," Delia piped up. I was starting to wonder if I had any other face. "Annabelle isn't blocking me" Keiri spelled it out. "Something else is blocking me from reading Annabelle. A totem, a spell, I don't know what, but Annabelle's mind is well hidden behind some kind of outside mystical veil. Bailey, you, on the other hand, are an open book" She smiled at me. "Your thoughts practically broadcast themselves over a loudspeaker, and yet, when it comes to your dream-visions, the voices you hear, I get nothing" She paused. "It's not a broad enough block to be coming from outside magic. You're blocking me" "Maybe someone else doesn't want you to see the dreams, and they're blocking you," I said reason- ably. I was being the reasonable one here. Tattoo mojo aside, people just weren't descended from fairy-touched Guardian chicks, and even if they were, I certainly wasn't. That was crazy. This coming from the girl who heard voices, I reminded myself. "Besides the blocking, there are other clues" Keiri plowed on. "Your hair, for one" "Not my actual color," I said quickly. "And for the record, not my shirt either" Keiri turned to Delia. "Could you change her hair back?" she asked. "I've gotten a visual of her nat- ural color from your minds, but I'd like to be sure" With a surprisingly small amount of grumbling, Delia lifted her hands to my head and changed my hair back to its normal color. "It's bicolored hair," Keiri said. "Not one color streaked with another, but actually two different col- ors in one" I fingered my not-blond, not-brown hair. I'd always hated it. "It's the mark of the S�dhe," Keiri said, "and those chosen from birth by their ancient magic" I opened my mouth to protest, but a strong visual hopped into my mind. Adea, with her red-black hair, arm in arm with a blue-black-haired
Valgius. I chewed on the inside of my lip. Alecca's hair had been silver-blond. It's in the blood, it is. Things of power always are. "Bailey?" Annabelle spoke up. "When did you say the first time you heard the voices was?" "When I saw the tattoos" I said without thinking. "S�dhe blue, blood green" I remembered the words I'd heard, saying them out loud. "And the room went all funky-like when I put on my tattoo, right?" Delia asked. I nodded. "So?" "Bailey, that was before you put on your tattoo" I opened my mouth and then closed it again. They were right. I'd heard the voices before I'd ever put on my tattoo, and if our powers did come from the tattoos, then... "It's in the blood," I said out loud. "Valgius, it was something he kept saying, about the power being the blood" I paused. "I thought he meant his blood and our powers, but maybe he meant my blood" I gulped. "My blessed blood" Delia lifted her arms above her head in an impromptu stretch, and Keiri's eyes went immediately to her stomach. "Or maybe," Keiri said, her eyes locked on the tattoo, "he meant both" She leaned forward and ran a finger over the edge of Delia's tattoo. Delia squirmed. "No touchy," she protested. "That tickles" "The power is in the blood," Keiri said. "Of course" "Care to let us in on that `of course'?" Zo asked. I thought she was restraining herself quite nicely, all things considered. "I'd wondered how they managed to give you all such strong powers. S�dhe powers" Keiri finally tore her eyes off Delia's stomach. "It's their blood" "What's their blood?" Delia asked suspiciously. I answered for Keiri. "The tattoos" I took a deep and only somewhat cleansing breath. "I keep see- ing that color everywhere, whenever any of us uses our powers" It all clicked into place. "S�dhe blue, blood green," I babbled on. "Don't you get it?" I didn't wait for anyone to answer. "And when Alecca made Adea bleed, she " "She what?" Now it was Delia's turn to squeak. "Her blood was the color of our tattoos," I said. "It was a transfer of power by blood," Keiri said, her eyes sparkling with the very idea of it. "Their blood, applied to your skin" "I'd like to take a moment to ewwwwwwwww" Delia wrinkled her nose. "I don't want some guy's blood all over me. I don't care if he is a fairy king" "It's not all over you," Zo said, half to comfort Delia and half to torment her. As for me, at this point, there wasn't much that could surprise me. I was descended from people who'd been literally and mystically touched by fairies? Sure. I was wearing fairy blood on my back? Okay. An evil fairy who may or may not have been one of the three Fates was on some kind of murderous power trip just because she'd ended up on the wrong vertex of a love triangle? Why the hell not? I tried not to think it. Every part of me that had ever seen a scary movie absolutely forbade me from thinking it. I was determined not to think it. And yet... "What next?" Onbekend It took Annabelle all of about thirty seconds to shove a pen and paper into my hands. "I don't even know if I can move," I said. That last dream-vision, or whatever Keiri had called it, had taken a lot out of me. Actually, that was an understatement. That last dream-vision had kicked my butt and then gone all kamikaze on the rest of me. Keiri put her hands on my shoulders. I stared back at her, more than a little uncomfortable. I barely knew this woman. Granted, I was ly- ing on her couch and she apparently knew more about my long-past family history than I did, but still. "Relax," Keiri said, and I felt myself instantly relaxing. Was she pulling an Annabelle on me? The next second, I didn't care, because slowly, the pain trickled out of my body like water off an icicle. "What was that?" I asked when she was finished. Keiri shrugged. "Let's just say that my Guardian gifts extend beyond mind reading" As casually as I could, I got a good look at her hair. It was dark, somewhere between brown and black. Or maybe, I thought, it actually was both. I didn't say anything, even though I was pretty sure that Annabelle, Keiri, and the entire psychic population of the Western Hemisphere were picking up my thoughts. Instead, I took the pen Annabelle had given me and started writing down everything I could remember about the argument between Adea, Valgius, and Alecca. "You know anything else useful?" Zo asked Keiri bluntly as I wrote. Keiri didn't seem put off by Zo's tone. "More?" she asked. "I told you what I knew of Adea's ori- gins, and the mechanism through which you received your powers. What more can I tell you?" "Do you know what our symbols mean?" Annabelle asked. "I have a linguist looking into them, but anything you can tell us would be greatly appreciated" "May I see?" Keiri asked. Without a word, Annabelle slipped her barrette out of her hair, turned around, and lifted her hair off her neck, baring her tattoo. "It's a symbol associated with Adea," Keiri said. "I'm not sure what it means, only that my grand- mother carved it into a tree in her backyard when she was a young girl" "We saw it on the website," Delia volunteered helpfully. "I asked the webmistress to add it to their website-- my best effort at luring in anyone who had any actual information on Adea after I discovered that the Daughters of Adea weren't quite what I had hoped them to be" Keiri paused and then spoke again. "Yes, perhaps I did hope too much" At the exact same moment, Annabelle's and Keiri's eyebrows shot into their hairlines. "Did you just--" "Yes, I did" "And the block?" "Gone" I was having a little trouble following, and I wasn't the only one. "Care to share with the class, girls?" Zo asked. "Annabelle wondered if I'd hoped too much of the Daughters," Keiri said. "It just took me a mo- ment to realize that she'd wondered it silently" "She read my mind," Annabelle said. She wrinkled her forehead. "She made her way through my block somehow" The idea that someone might actually be reading her mind clearly concerned Annabelle. "Welcome to my world," Zo told her gleefully, reading her cousin's face as well as I was. "I didn't fight through the block," Keiri said. "It's gone" "How?" Annabelle asked doubtfully. "How can it have just disappeared? You said there was a pow- erful, external magical force at play" Still in a bit of a huff, she straightened her hair, securing it over her tattoo with the barrette. Immediately, Keiri reached for Annabelle's hand. "And now you're gone again," she said. "I can't hear you" Annabelle, her hand still on the barrette, unclipped it and drew it back. "What about now?" she asked. Keiri nodded. "You're back," she said. All of us looked at the barrette in Annabelle's hand. "Old-fashioned, but a nice accent piece," Delia commented. "Where'd you get that, anyway?" I knew the exact moment the answer dawned on Annabelle. Her mouth dropped open slightly and her eyebrows shot up. "At the booth at the mall," she said, "where we got the tattoos" "It's magicked," Keiri said quickly. "Powerful magic. S�dhe magic" I thought of the woman who'd sold the tattoos to us. She'd had blue eyes. Eyes like Adea, Valgius, and Alecca. Eyes the color that Delia had turned mine that morning. Who was she? Yet another question to add to my ever-growing list. "Why couldn't I have gotten the mind-blocking barrette?" Zo asked, scuffing her foot into the ground. "You don't wear barrettes," Delia said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "It's totally not suited to your style" Delia paused. "Excuse me, your `style.' " She added air quotes the second time around, trying to distract Zo from the fact that she'd yet again gotten the short straw in the power lottery. "It's not like Annabelle even really needs it," Zo said. "You never have any incriminating thoughts, Anna--" "Here, let me show you something," Keiri interrupted Zo. She left the room and returned a moment later holding a small, clear crystal in her hand. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that it was attached to a translucent cord. "What is it about me that screams `give me a crystal'?" Zo asked. "Your tomboy pastiche?" Delia guessed. Keiri bit back a smile. "Or it could be the fact that those gifted with premonition are often also giv- en divination," she said, "and that Annabelle, as a psychic, would be the most dangerous to have an open mind, since she'd have already compiled everything important that the rest of you have been thinking" Keiri shrugged. "Just a thought" "What's `divination'?" Zo asked, intrigued at the idea that she might actually have another power. "Divination actually just means finding," Keiri said. "In some circles, it's another word for premoni- tion. If one goes looking for the future, through tea leaves or palm reading or tarot cards, then that's divination. At least, if they do it successfully and they find the future, it's divination. Otherwise, it's just tea leaves" Seeing Zo's look, Keiri got back on track. "If your premonition stems from an un- derlying power of divination, then you might be able to use that power toward another end" "You mean she could find stuff other than the future?" Delia asked. Keiri nodded. "And that has to do with the crystals how?" Zo asked. Keiri was winning Zo over despite herself. "Crystals are often used in scrying," Keiri explained. "If you're looking for something in a small terrain, such as your bedroom " Or your kitchen, I added silently. How had Zo known her dad had left the pizza money in a drawer underneath a notepad? How had she known it wasn't on top of the notepad? "...in small terrain, such as your bedroom, you might be able to divine for an object without work- ing with any medium. You may simply sense its location, but when you're working on finding something, or someone, over a larger space, say a city, then scrying would probably be a diviner's best bet" Keiri held the crystal out at arm's length and let it drop. She held on to the cord, and the crystal wobbled back and forth. After a moment, she handed the cord to Zo. "If you hold it over a map," she said, "and concentrate on your target, it should stop swinging over the correct location, allowing you to pinpoint your target" "So she's kind of like a human lost and found," Delia said brightly. "If her premonition does in fact stem from a greater power of divination," Keiri said, "then yes" Zo eyed the crystal warily. "All right," she said after a moment. "Might as well give it a try" By that time, my hand hurt from the fast and furious writing I'd been doing, and I set the pen down. "What are you going to find?" I asked her. "Let's try something simple," Keiri said. Her eyes scanned the room, and then she picked up the pair of earrings on the coffee table. "Close your eyes," she told Zo. Surprisingly, Zo complied without so much as a single sarcastic comment or eye roll. Silently, Keiri leaned over and slipped one of the earrings into the front pocket of my jeans, and then handed the second one to Annabelle, who stuck it to the back of one of the couch pillows. "Now concentrate," Keiri said, her voice soft and lilting. "Think of the earrings. Where are they?" "In Bay's pocket on the back of the couch," Zo replied without pausing. Then she wrinkled her fore- head. "One's in Bailey's pocket," she corrected herself. "The other one's on the back of the pillow behind Annabelle" She opened her eyes. Without a word, I handed her the earring from my pocket. "What about the scrying thing?" Delia asked. "Do you have a map, Keiri?" Five minutes later, at Delia's insistence, Zo was swinging the crystal over a map of the city, scrying for hot guys. Every once in a while, the crystal would change directions, pulled to a particular area of the map like a magnet to metal. "Try something more specific," Keiri suggested. "Like a particular hot guy?" Delia asked. Annabelle rolled her eyes. Delia grinned impishly at me. "Scry for Kane," she said. Zo laughed out loud and complied. She swung the crystal gently over the map, counterclockwise. I watched it, my mind on Kane. And Kane's eyes. And Kane's arms. And Kane's mouth. Without warning, the crystal jerked to a stop at the intersection of Whaley and Vermuse. "Found him," Zo said, wiggling her eyebrows at me. "Looks like he's at the school" As soon as the word "school" left her mouth, Zo's jaw clenched tight. Her head flew back with such force that I was afraid she'd snapped her neck, and she sank down to all fours, the cord attached to the crystal still firmly clasped in her hand. Even without tension in the cord, the crystal stood on its end, point- ing to the exact location of the high school. At my feet, Zo shuddered, and I bent down and rubbed my hand down her back. "Zo," I said softly. "Zo?" She was too deeply absorbed in the vision to hear me. "Leave her be," Keiri said. "She'll come back to us once she's seen what she was meant to see" When Zo finally did sit up and open her eyes, the four of us stared at her, waiting. "Dance" The first word out of Zo's mouth wasn't anywhere near what I'd expected. "You want us to dance?" Delia asked, clearly perplexed. Zo, her face ashen, shook her head. "No," she said, her voice catching in her throat. "School dance" Delia grinned. "Now this is what I'm talking about," she said. "It's about time we started getting something out of these premonitions of yours. What was everyone wearing? Who was Kane danc- ing with? Is my date hot? Do you come to your senses and buy that dress at Escape? Is there a lot of black or is it more." At the look on Zo's face, Delia finally trailed off. "Oh," she said glumly. "Not a happy dance vision?" "Not a happy dance vision," I confirmed on Zo's behalf. "What happened?" Annabelle voiced the question I couldn't seem to make my mouth form. "One minute, I was staring at the map and the crystal was hovering over the school, and the next." Zo met my eyes, only mine. "I was there, at the dance. There were these lame crepe-paper decora- tions, and the music was completely ridiculous, and the people " "Were being chain-saw-massacred?" Delia guessed, completely seriously. Zo rolled her eyes, and I breathed a sigh of relief. If she was back to rolling her eyes at Delia, she was okay. "Not chain-saw-massacred," Zo said. "One second they were dancing, and the next they were on the ground" Somehow, that so wasn't what I'd expected to hear. "It started slowly. Marissa Baker, you know, the goody-goody newspaper chick? Well, she was tak- ing people's pictures, and then, right in the middle of shooting a bunch of couples dancing, she fell, no warning, to the ground. Nobody noticed. Nobody" Marissa Baker was the kind of person people didn't notice at dances. "And then ...what's the kid's name? The one with the really thick glasses and the greasy part?" I racked my mind for a name, but I couldn't seem to remember it, even though he sat behind me in homeroom. "He asks Jessie Perkins to dance, and she's about to blow him off, and then he falls over, and she just steps