Heroes 'Til Curfew (Talent Chronicles #2) (43 page)

“Okay, Joss, move out of the way,” Eric
said. “I’ll get his head.”

“Right,” Rob said, moving to Dylan’s feet. I
stumbled back, out of the way, almost went down again. “Joss? You
gonna make it?”

“Yeah.” My voice came out all hoarse now.
“I’m okay.”

“Then get the hell out!” Eric snapped.

“You guys first.”

They had him off the floor and were already
moving toward the back of the house. Eric grumbled, “For fuck’s
sake. You’d better hope this guy doesn’t come to and realize we’re
actually listening to you. But it is too goddamned hot in here to
argue.”

“Amen,” Rob choked. His glasses were already
coated with grime. It was a wonder he could see at all. He went
first, gingerly stepping over the windowsill.

Yeah, yeah, I haven’t learned a thing.

“
Heather says she’s going to remind you
about that later.”

There was a horrendous crash behind us. I
looked back. The second floor hallway was coming down, the fire
closing in on us again.

“Go!” I yelled at them. But it wasn’t
necessary. Eric wasn’t wasting any time. Hands reached in and
pulled at me. Heather, Kat, and even Joel were there, dragging me
through the window and down the porch, away from the house. Into
the cold night air that was pierced by the sound of sirens.

* * *

Joss

I sat on my bed with my arms wrapped around
my knees, rocking myself. I looked at the book I’d abandoned
several times. I even considered going downstairs and playing
Barbies with my sister. That’s how bad it was. Mostly I wanted to
call Dylan, ask him to come over, or just talk on the phone. But I
was trying to give him some space.

I had been through all this stuff with
Dylan. You’d think he’d just remind me of it. But I knew he was the
only person who could take my mind off it, could stop the loop that
kept playing in my head. Was it wrong to want him around for that?
But maybe it was different for him. Maybe he wouldn’t want to see
me right away.

We hadn’t gone to school. Either of us.
Lakota had fixed us up, and physically we were okay. Tim and Raine
too, thank God. But Dylan and I were a little broken on the inside,
and we’d agreed that we needed to take a little rest time. I
couldn’t imagine having to sit in a classroom all day when all I
could think about was this endless replay of brutality, hatred, and
fire.

I heard someone gasp and I looked up,
startled.

Heather was standing in my doorway with her
hand over her mouth. She had tears in her eyes.

Damn.
She knew.

“How did you get in here?”

“Jill let us in,” Kat said, moving Heather
out of the way so she could get into the room. “Nice to see you,
too.”

“I am so not up for company right now.” It
was true, but it was still hard to put on just my usual
leave me
alone
act.

“You don’t come to school, your friends have
to visit. It’s a rule.”

“Since when?”

“Since, um, always. If you’d miss school
more, you would know these things. Now be gracious and appreciate
the visit.”

“Haven’t I suffered enough? Did you see
Raine and Tim today? Did they seem okay?”

“Yeah,” Heather answered me. “They’re fine.
Well, sort of.”

“What does that mean?”

Heather pursed her lips.

“Oh, it doesn’t take a mind reader, Heather,
Geez.” Kat plopped down on the foot of my bed. “So last night,
right, Raine goes all Ponyboy, runs into the burning building. Tim
freaks all the hell out, goes in after her and starts absorbing
thermal energy until his skin practically bubbles. He was probably
about half a minute from stroking out.”

“Thank you for that vivid recap,” I drawled.
I was pretty sure she meant Johnny, not Ponyboy, but I wasn’t about
to get into literary quibbling.

She held up a hand. “Please, I’m not done.
So then he carries her out of the burning building and the touching
scene, a lot of which you missed due to your
only have eyes for
Dylan
thing, with half burned Tim giving CPR—now tell me
there’s nothin’ there.”

“I don’t know, I’m guessing…there is?”

“Of
course
there is! Trust me, it was
movie quality. She comes to, she’s okay, but he’s all, like,
toasted, right? You know that had to hurt. And she’s all there
blowing on him with her frost breath until Lakota could get done
with you two who sounded like you were going to hack up your lungs
onto the lawn.”

“Okay…”

“You should have seen the way they were
looking at each other. That’s the thing. Whew! In-tense. And then
today at school? Nothing. I mean, she wouldn’t even look at him.
And there he was with his puppy dog face and her talking with her
friends and pretending she didn’t notice him.”

“Kat…” Heather started.

“I’m not judging. I’m just describing the
scene for Joss. Who probably would have missed it even if she’d
been there.”

“Oh, thank you so much.”

“Well you’re welcome. And thank you, because
I’m going to find them a very entertaining couple to watch. I mean,
now that you and Dylan are done with the dance of denial, I needed
someone to fill that slot. Oh, and we came with newsy news.”

“Uh huh…?”

Heather was still staring at me, studying
me, looking tragic.

“It’ll probably be in the paper tomorrow
that they found bodies at an abandoned factory near the river.
Marco, Jeff, Corey, Nathan, Curtis, and Mr. Dobbs.”

“Jeff?”

“Yeah, Jeff. Eric told me that after they
dropped us off, Dylan asked him to go back to your dad’s store and
move Jeff’s body to the factory. They threw it into the tank with
Marco and Dobbs. I thought you knew that.”

“No.”

“Well, now you do. I guess Dylan didn’t want
any more questions coming at your family or something. He said
Marco did the deed.”

“Yeah.” I couldn’t help but shudder.
Marco losing his temper at that moment—
I glanced nervously
at Heather and broke off the thought. “Um, wow. That was really
cool of Eric. We really owe him a lot. I. I really owe him.”

Kat smiled, threw her arms out and sighed,
“He’s fabulous,” as she fell back on my bed.

Eric had come through for us. Multiple
times. And Kat totally wasn’t rubbing my nose in it or anything
like that. Which was cool of her.

Heather was still standing there, watching.
Watching me.

“But that’s not all!” Kat went on. “What
won’t be in the paper is that NIAC picked up Bella, Angie,
and…Trina!”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yep. So you don’t have to worry about them
anymore either. Seems like all the bad guys got it in the end.”

“Yeah,” I mused. “Seems like. Did you hear
anything about how NIAC knew about them? I mean, the rest of
Marco’s crew getting picked up like that, after everything that
happened…”

“We’re thinking Dobbs said something, or
sent them something, before he went crazy,” Heather said.

“Or maybe Vivian—”

“Nope,” Kat interrupted me, “wasn’t her. I
almost forgot that part. Vivian and her guys? Mysteriously murdered
while in police custody.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Damn.”

“So that’s what you missed at school today.
How’s your dad?”

“Um, the same, I guess.”

Kat nodded, looked at Heather. “Does she
need a lecture on how that’s not her fault?”

“If you’ve got breath to waste.”

“Always. Honey, that is not your fault. Your
daddy has problems, that’s all. And all that time you were doing
just what he wanted, he still had problems, didn’t he?”

“Well yeah, but—”

“The jury will note the witness answered in
the affirmative.”

“What the hell?”

“She’s on this lawyer kick.”

“I’d make an awesome lawyer. And then could
afford many important shoes. But that’s besides the point. I’m
thinking maybe small doses of sense, administered daily? Maybe
it’ll have an effect over time.”

“Worth a shot,” Heather said. “Did you get
that, Joss? None of it was your fault.
None.
”

“I hear you.” I couldn’t look at her.

“Oh, look who’s here,” Heather said.

Kat and I looked around. “Who?” she
asked.

“Well, almost here.”

Kat rolled her eyes and bounced up to look
out the window. “Ooh! Eric’s car. He was going to visit Dylan.”

“Yeah, Dylan’s with him,” Heather confirmed.
She looked like she was about to say more, but she shut her
mouth.

“You know, I should totally get Eric to
start hanging out with Rob more.”

“Kat…” Heather said in a warning tone, “no
meddling. You promised.”

“I promised that? That doesn’t sound like
me. Does that sound like me?”

I smiled. It felt weird on my face. “No, it
really doesn’t.”

Dylan gave the open door a double-tap and
walked in cautiously. “Hey.”

Kat pushed him aside to jump on Eric. Kind
of like the way I wanted to jump on Dylan only with more enthusiasm
and less angst. He made a show of blowing Kat curls off his face
and said, “Hi, Joss,” over her shoulder. “Doin’ okay?”

“Sure. I, uh, hear I owe you yet another
thank you.”

“Oh, did Kat tell you we…took out the trash
last night?”

“Yeah. Trash collection: way above and
beyond. Seriously. Thank you. Both of you.”

Dylan gave me a weird look. Actually, he’d
been giving me a weird look since he thought he had to knock on my
open door. Eric smiled at Dylan, saw it too. He looked from Dylan
to me. “You want to thank me? Tell me you’ve got popcorn. I could
go for some popcorn.”

“Yeah, sure, I guess so.”

“No, no. Don’t get up. Woman,” he said to
Kat, “get downstairs and pop me some corn.”

“Ooh, I just love it when you’re all
forceful and sexist. Later,” she said to the rest of us as she took
his hand and pulled him out of the room.

Heather shook her head as she followed. “Is
it just me, or are they, like, really disturbing?”

“Not just you,” Dylan and I said in
unison.

“Yeah, okay, you guys are a little creepy
too these days,” she told us as she walked out.

Dylan stuffed his hands in his pockets and
rocked back on his heels. “So you’re doing okay?”

“Yeah, you?”

“Sure.”

The silence between us was incredibly
awkward. What was I supposed to say? Why was he standing across the
room? Why didn’t he even want to look at me?

To be fair, you realize you’re a little lax
on the eye contact yourself, right?

“Okay,” Heather said, striding back into the
room, jolting us both, “that’s it. Lookit, this is totally against
the rules, but you won’t talk to me, you won’t talk to Kat, and now
I’m pretty sure you guys won’t talk to each other either. So I’m
going to do some talking.”

“Heather—”

“No, I don’t need to back off. You guys are
thinking horrible stuff. And a lot of it is the same, shared,
horrible stuff. You’ve got all this
crap
, and you’re both
thinking it’s your fault! And damn, that
ought
to be the
stupidest part of it. But it’s not! You’re also both thinking maybe
you shouldn’t act like you want to be around the other. Maybe you
need to give them some space. Maybe being around you is going to
remind them of the bad stuff and you should just keep your distance
for a while.”

“Joss…”

“Don’t ‘Joss’ her, idiot, when you’re
thinking the same thing.” I’d never seen Heather so wound up
before. “Both of you don’t want to talk to anyone else, don’t want
to be with anyone else, don’t want to do anything else except be
with each other. Both of you think that’s the only thing that’s
going to make you feel better. And
both
of you think you’re
being selfish and need to back off. How two people can be so
completely in sync and so completely clueless about each other at
the same time is absolutely beyond my ability to comprehend. So to
recap, both of you are traumatized, both of you don’t want anyone
but your honey to comfort you. Neither of you wants time off from
this relationship. And if you’re stupid enough to try that out of
some misguided sense of helping the other one, you’re just going to
hurt the one you love who’s going to be stupid enough to let you
go.” She fixed each of us with a glare. “Don’t. Fuck. Up.”

There was a long moment of silence while we
absorbed all that, Heather included, I think. Finally, Dylan said,
“Wow. Um…thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Crisis averted. But don’t
get used to it.” She shook her finger at us as she backed toward
the door. “Now Kat thinks she and Eric should stay and chaperone
you guys until your mom gets home. I’m going downstairs to
chaperone them before they get all PG-13 in front of your
sister.”

“Thanks, Heather,” I told her.

“Don’t mention it. Seriously. Like, ever.
And now I need a drama detox. I’m gonna go play Barbies.”

“Better her than me,” I said as Dylan closed
the door behind her.

“What you said. Come here.”

I practically flew off the bed and leapt at
him. He caught me, gripping me tight against him. So much exactly
what I needed that I wanted to cry.

“We’re gonna be okay.” His voice was rough,
uneven.

“Yeah,” I answered, just as shaky.

He cleared his throat. “Did Kat and Heather
fill you in on all the news? They’re all gone. Every one of
them.”

“Yeah, I heard.”

“It’s really over. Maybe we could…I don’t
know, go see a movie or something.”

I pulled back a little and grinned up at
him. “You mean, like, a date?”

“So I haven’t been a dream boyfriend is what
you’re saying.”

“I’m not saying that. We’ve been busy.”

“Maybe we should start over.” He pursed his
lips like he was thinking. Then he smiled. Evilly. “Joss, do you
ever think of me as more than a friend?”