Into the Deep (9 page)

10

I was Hoping You were Different

B
rant arrived at my house the next morning earlier than I expected. I opened the car door and saw him sitting there leaning back in his seat, one hand on the wheel, and his seatbelt, unbuckled, hanging loose by the door. It smelled like smoke, which both Brant and his car always did, but more so just then, as if he’d just tossed his cigarette out the window before pulling up to my house. I got in and we took off in the direction of school with more speed than necessary. I quickly buckled my seatbelt. He turned to me after a moment and looked me up and down.
     “So, I’ve got an idea on where we should start to look for our mystery murderer.”
     “Alright, what’ve you got?” I asked glad that he had an idea of where to start, as I was still feeling like all of this was out of my league.
     “Craig Fister.”
     “Huh?”
     “Craig Fister.”
     “Not a clue.”
     “He’s in my Physics class, my grade, dreadlocks, ‘hates the world’ attitude, one of those totally self-absorbed types that thinks he’s the only person on the face of the planet to ever have anything bad happen to him. I heard he skinned a cat last year for kicks and giggles. Seems like our type.”
     I nodded. I didn’t really know who Craig was, but off Brant’s description he definitely seemed like someone we should check out. I had someone else in mind that I wanted to talk to though, someone who didn’t seem as obviously homicidal as Craig.
     “I wanna talk to Eric Thompson too,” I said.
     “Teddy Bear Thompson, the guy looks big enough to crush the whole school with his gut, but he doesn’t seem like the type to go all
Unabomber
.”
     “Ryan Morgan gave him a nosebleed at lunch on Monday. Guess some of the football players in his gym class have been giving him a hard time too.”
     “You’re thinking he might be out for revenge?”
     “I’m thinking that maybe he’s getting sick of being picked on.”
     Brant nodded. We were silent the rest of the short ride to school. The air whistled through my window, as it was open only a crack, but I didn’t roll it up. Without the radio, I had nothing but that shrill to occupy my thoughts and I focused on it to keep from thinking about Eric. Even still, my mind conjured the image of
Teddy Bear
Thompson filling a pipe bomb and lighting its fuse. Brant was right, that image didn’t look right. Eric was a warm, good natured person. He didn’t have a lot of friends but he was nice to everyone. He didn’t seem like the kind of person to try and blow up the school. Still, I was learning that people weren’t always how they appeared to be. Brant pulled into the student lot and turned off the car. We sat there for a moment then he turned to me.
    
Sorry for my friends being dicks the other day
, he thought and I rolled my eyes. He wanted to apologize but couldn’t even say it aloud. Then I saw his jaw twitch just ever so slightly and realized that this wasn’t easy for him to do.
     “Don’t worry about it,” I said and we exited the car.
     As I shut the door, I looked up and caught sight of something a row over from where Brant and I were standing. Tiana looked on at me with disgust. I didn’t even have a chance to say her name, to wave, to think anything as she stormed off away from me.
    
How could she?
I heard her think as she stomped through the parking lot. For a moment all I could do was watch her go.
    
Shit
, I heard Brant think then.
     I glanced back at him for a moment and then chased after my friend. Ti had made it all the way to the courtyard before I caught up to her. I had been calling her name as I chased after her but she didn’t stop. She didn’t turn around. She was pissed at me. Finally her feet reached the grass and she slowed to a stop. She took a deep breath and then spun around to face me. Her eyes were pointed and fiery with anger, her fists clenching at her sides. I was still trying to catch my breath.
    
You are such a bitch
, I heard her think.
     “Ti.”
     “What were you doing with Brant, Ivy?”
     “Nothing.”
     “Nothing? He drove you to school, and I saw you two talking the other day, what the hell is that about?”
I really liked him and he hurt me.
     “We… we were just…” my mind raced for an excuse. “We got partnered up in Psych for this project, that’s all.” I figured if I was going to lie that I might as well keep to the same one.
     “So what, you were up working on this project at like six a.m. or something? He drove you to school, Ivy. What the hell? I told you he’s an asshole, that… look, I just don’t get why you’re hanging out with him… I don’t get it at all.”
     She spun away from me again and stormed off. I watched her go. Tiana made her way to where Christy and Eliza were talking. Damon was nowhere in sight. I saw her say something to the other girls, and the way their expressions changed to shock and disgust. The three of them stood there looking down on me as if they were the
Weird Sisters
straight out of
Macbeth
, deciding my fate and predicting my demise.
    
Ivy’s really been falling off the deep end lately
, Christy thought.
    
What is she thinking, hanging out with a loser like Brant?
That was Eliza
. She’s got it so good, why would she want to be around him?
    
I didn’t approach them. I just stood where I was and looked on. I felt terrible, felt like I’d betrayed Tiana, and like she’d betrayed me. She was over there now, most certainly telling them about how she’d seen me hanging out with Brant and what a lowlife he was, but I’m sure she left out the part where she hooked up with him at Nicolette’s party. There’s no way she’d admit to having a crush on the school bad boy, not to the Queen C, Christy Noonan. No, they wouldn’t understand that she’d had feelings for him. If they knew that, they’d have been looking at her the way they were looking at me, appalled. Ti wasn’t really disgusted with me for hanging out with Brant, not unless she was disgusted with herself for it too. No, she was hurt. She felt like I’d swooped in and gone after a guy that she wasn’t over yet and that wasn’t okay with her. 
     What hurt the most was that I wasn’t even doing anything wrong. I didn’t steal her crush away from her, maybe she still wanted Brant but I didn’t. I didn’t want him at all. We weren’t even really friends, least not voluntary ones. Brant and I were hanging out by circumstance and nothing more, but I couldn’t explain any of that to them.
     “I’m sorry,” I heard Brant say as he walked up behind me. He put his hand on my shoulder but I shook it off.
     “Don’t” I said with resentment in my voice. “Just stay away from me,” and I walked off.

I
had my Monday/Wednesday classes that Friday, which meant I had first hour with Tiana. I walked into the math room and saw that she had taken a seat on the far side of the room. She glanced at me as I entered then turned her head.
    
She better not even try to sit by me
, she thought.
     So I sat on the other side of the room in a seat as close to the door as I could manage. I tried not to listen to her thoughts as Math went on but found I couldn’t help myself.
    
She was the only one I trusted to tell her that I’d been seeing Brant and then she betrays me
.
     I felt a stab of guilt but I also picked up on something else. She’d just thought that she’d been seeing Brant. She only told me she’d hooked up with him and just what that meant exactly she hadn’t clarified. I realized then that she hadn’t told me the entire story, and to some degree that made me feel worse.
    
Guess I can really stop hoping that we’ll get back together now.
     I tried to talk to her after the bell rang, tried to apologize, but she walked past and refused to even acknowledge me. After that my mind was a daze through both Lit and Bio as my entire body sat fuming with rage. I couldn’t think about anything but what had transpired that morning and it all made me so angry. I was angry that Tiana hadn’t told me the whole story about her and Brant, angry that Brant had hurt her, angry that I had hurt her. I was mad that I had told Brant about the things that have been going on with me and hadn’t told my friends, mad that I felt like I couldn’t tell them, and I was mad at the fact that this had happened to me to begin with.
     All of it made me want to explode, made me want to scream, but I felt like there was nothing I could do about it. Tiana wasn’t talking to me. I couldn’t get rid of Brant as he was the only one who knew about my ability, as well as possibly the only person willing to talk to me at all at the moment. I couldn’t dispose of my ability and on top of it I still had to somehow stop the school from getting blown up.
     By the time I walked out of Bio, my nerves were a knotted ball. I felt like a compressed coil ready to spring. So when Brant grabbed me by the arm and yanked me down an empty hallway, I had to curb the instinct to punch him straight in the nose.
     “I don’t want to talk to you right now,” I said.
     “Yeah, well, you’re gonna listen.”
     “I don’t care what you have to say. Tiana…”
     “Tiana what? Told you that I’m a dick? That I got some then got gone, yeah? That I won’t talk to her anymore?”
     I didn’t nod, I just glared at him.
     “Did she tell you
why
I won’t talk to her anymore?”
No probably not,
he thought. “Well
I’ll
tell you… Tiana and I were seeing each other, for almost a month.”
     “What?”
     “Yeah, she left that part out, huh?” Brant looked around. The halls were filled with students as they met with friends before lunch, stopped in classrooms to talk to teachers or went to grab things from their lockers. “Come on, let’s talk somewhere else.”
     I followed him out. We avoided the common and walked out a side door. I kept my arms crossed as we moved, still not fully ready to trust or believe him. We stepped outside and Brant dug his hands into his pockets searching for something. Then after a moment he pulled out a pack of cigarettes, Marlboro Reds, and tugged one out of the box. He had a cheap plastic blue lighter that’d been stuffed in the pack among his smokes. He pulled it out as well and lit up. I watched as he inhaled, the end of his cigarette glowing orange.
    
I thought Tiana was different.
He exhaled and ribbons of white smoke spiraled up into the sky.
     “So talk, that’s what we’re out here for isn’t it.”
     He took another drag of his cigarette. “A few weekends ago, there was that big house party on Longview Drive.”
     “Nicolette’s house, yeah, I was there. Ti said you and her hooked up that night.”
     “Hooked up? We made out in some bedroom on the second floor, wasn’t much more than that and it certainly wasn’t the first time… I had shown up that night because she said she’d be there. We were seeing each other on the down low, didn’t really want to make a big deal out of it. At least, that’s what I thought it was about. Turns out Tiana just didn’t want to tell her friends about me.
     “God forbid she date someone who isn’t a jock or on the honor role. That night she walked in with Christy, I was in the living room talking with Jason by the keg. I waved at Tiana and she took one glance back at Christy and turned away.” He took another drag of his cigarette and looked up squinting into the sun. “It wasn’t until after Christy disappeared with two brainless lugs that Tiana said a single word to me. I wanted to know what was going on. If she was serious about me, and I thought she was, then she shouldn’t be ashamed to be seen with me. So I asked her about it. She gave me some bullshit about not seeing me when she walked in and when I said that maybe we should start doing more things together, maybe meet each other’s friends, she got pissed at me and asked me why I was trying to ruin what we had.
     “The truth of it is I didn’t fit into the perfect little world her life revolved around. We met a few months ago at some beach bonfire for the field hockey team. Skyler, Jason and I were crashing it. Tiana got frustrated with one of her teammates and stormed off down the beach. I followed her, I thought she enjoyed my company cause we started to meet up every here and there after that, then we started to see one another regularly for about a month before that party. She didn’t care about me though. She just used me to make herself feel better ‘cause when she hung out with me I didn’t ask anything of her like everyone else does. But it doesn’t matter. It was never about me, just the escape I offered her.
     He took a deep breath. “I figured it out that night at that house party. So yeah, I said screw it and had one more good night fooling around with her in Nicolette’s or whoever’s house that was, and I told her I was done with it and I left.”
     I was silent for a moment. I didn’t know what to say. He looked genuinely hurt by what had happened between him and Tiana and his story did seem to fit with what I knew. Tiana had always been a good friend though. I didn’t want to think that she was as selfish as she seemed to be, but after having heard her thoughts I began to realize that Brant’s version of the events made perfect sense. Christy was extremely judgmental, and I had always known that about her, but it was even more apparent after being able to hear her thoughts. We were all so concerned with what other people thought about us, with what she had thought about us, that it didn’t surprise me that Tiana had kept her relationship hidden from us. There was pressure being a girl at Alta Ladera High, pressure to be liked, to be considered pretty and smart and athletic. You wanted to live up to what everyone thought you should be, what your parents, teachers, coaches, girlfriends, cute boys all thought you should be.
     Christy would have looked down on Tiana for seeing Brant. She would have been mean and I can understand how that would have been scary for Ti. But it wasn’t right. Tiana couldn’t stand up to Christy or any of us when it came to her and Brant, and she had sold me out to their judgmental critiques.
     “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” I finally said. He nodded.
     “I just hope you’re different, don’t know why I’m letting you in to all of this because I thought she was different too. But that day you thought I called her a bitch, thought I called you one too, and you got right in my face about it and stood up for what you thought was right.”
None of those other girls woulda done that for you.
     I winced at his thought, but he was right. Even now they were all off sitting at our usual lunch table and they were talking about me. I didn’t have to listen in on what they were saying, didn’t have to try and read their minds. I knew what they were doing, and it wasn’t standing up for me. I looked at Brant, my eyes meeting his, and in that moment I felt different. Maybe it was what had happened to me that made me that way, maybe not. For whatever reason, in that moment, looking into Brant’s eyes, I knew that I wasn’t some petty, vain Valley girl, even if that was the kind of girl I had chosen to be friends with in the past.
     “You’re right,” I said.
     For a moment his eyes widened as if he hadn’t expected me to agree with him. He looked as if he was about to say something, but then his eyes shifted. His gaze moved to focus on something behind me.
     “Look,” he said.
     I turned around
     “Eric Thompson.”
     I saw him then. He was walking toward the school from the student lot. He stomped as he moved, each step heavy. His black backpack was swung over one shoulder. I watched as he wiped his nose with the sleeve of his dark sweatshirt. Then I saw Brant walk past me.
     “Wait, Brant, what are you doing?”
     He stopped and turned back to face me. “You said you wanted to talk to him.” Then he turned back around and continued walking toward Eric.
      I sighed then followed after him watching as he flicked his cigarette off into the distance. Orange specks hit the asphalt and bounced back up into the air like the world’s smallest fireworks.
     “Hey, Eric,” he called out and I watched Eric stop and turn to face us.
     I caught up to Brant by the time he reached him.
     “Hey,” Eric said, his brown eyes bouncing back and forth between Brant and me.
     “We just wanted to ask you a few things.”
     Eric pushed his black hair out of his eyes.
    
Well go on then, read his thoughts.
Brant looked to me.
     “It’s not that easy,” I mumbled. I couldn’t just look at him and see if he was the person planning to kill us all. He had to think something about it that I could hear. I looked to the heavyset guy before us. “Hey, Eric, I um… I was just wondering how you’re doing.”
     His eyes narrowed on me.
     “You know, cause of, um…” I stumbled over my words unsure of what to say to him. I didn’t really know him; I hadn’t ever had a conversation with him.
     “She heard about you taking a hit to the pavement on Monday and felt bad,” Brant said.
    
Why do you care
? I heard Eric think. “I’m doing fine.”
     I tried to listen closely to his voice, tried to determine if it was the same voice I heard on Monday and the day before in the library. I didn’t think it was, but I couldn’t tell for sure. His voice was deep, but it didn’t sound quite right.
     “Right, I know this is weird,” I said, “I know we don’t really know each other very well, I just…” then finally it came to me what to say, “I was in the library yesterday, and I saw you… you seemed, upset and…”
     “Couldn’t have been me,” he said cutting me off. “I wasn’t here yesterday… I had a dentist appointment.”
     “Oh, sorry then, my mistake.”
     An awkward moment of silence passed and after that he turned from us and continued to walk toward the school.
    
Really weird.
     Brant turned to me. “So, that’s it, we’re sure it’s not him?”
     “He didn’t sound the same, and he wasn’t here yesterday, so he couldn’t have been who I heard in the library.”
     “So why are you still staring at him as he walks away?”
     I turned to face him. “He just gave me a weird vibe.”