Phobic (17 page)

Wait. Wishing I had no acne.

“Joel?”

“What?” He’s adjusting the rug on the floor, disheveled from my fall.

“Does the house grant wishes?”

Joel pauses with his hands on the towel rack. He speaks over his shoulder without looking at me and begins buttoning his shirt. “Not that I’ve ever heard of.”

“Hmm.”

“Why?”

Not going to tell him. “Oh nothing. Just a thought.”

“The house doesn’t deal with anything besides itself, Piper. Maybe your skin type changed.”

“Overnight?” I say, feeling skeptical and a little let down.

“There
is
this thing called puberty.” Like I’m stupid.
There is this thing called a douchebag,
I want to say, but I hold it in.

Joel tucks his shirt in and pulls the electric razor from a drawer. It gives off a soft buzz. He grazes it over his chin. “Is it true you ditched yesterday?”

“Yeah.”

He shuts off the razor and wets his hair down, then douses it with gel. He meets my glance in the mirror. “Don’t do it again. I have to know you’re where you should be.”

Is he for real? He never cared this much before, why now?

“Joel,” I say, uncertain if I should. I’m not sure whether he knows I opened the library door or not. And his strange reaction to my question last night—and the fact that I heard him talking to someone who wasn’t there—makes me wonder if he
has
seen Ada and Thomas. A million questions zip through my mind. I don’t know where to start.

“Can you give me a ride today?” I ask instead.

“What about Todd?”

I drop my head with a prick of anguish. “I think his mom wants him to have a break from me.” Mrs. Dawes is always a great excuse, seeing as how she’s hated me since we moved here. I don’t add that I want a break from him, too.

“Well, hurry, I guess. I’m leaving in fifteen minutes.” He spritzes some cologne on and leaves the bathroom.

The smell of Aqua Di Gio wafts around, and then a wave of panic hits. Todd will see me like this. I’m anxious to know what he’ll say. Or the other kids at school, for that matter.

A grin spreads.
The other kids at school
.

No one will be calling me Payback. Not after today.

I hurry upstairs and decide on a sage corduroy skirt and my black, knee-high combat boots. I wish I had something cuter. But I rub on some deodorant, run a brush through my hair, then decide to pull it into a ponytail so it doesn’t get in the way of my face at all.

The doorbell rings with a long drone.

“Piper!” Joel calls. “Todd’s here. I’m out!” The door slams shut, and my feet root into the floor. I didn’t think Todd would be picking me up today. Not after our fight.

I thunder down the stairs and fling open the door. My heart ticks like it’s made of cogs instead of flesh. I don’t know what to expect after I left him hanging yesterday.

Todd’s shaggy curls give him this careless look. He wears a gray jacket over a shirt that looks like someone let a four-year-old loose with a pen on it. “Hey, Pipes, ready?”

That’s it. No mention of last night. No reaction or exclamations. That chunk of depression unruffles itself from where it’s been lodged.

His presence is a reminder of the shoddy day I had yesterday. Of my gigantic failure. The envelope I pictured coming in the mail, announcing my win and my acceptance, will never come now. It’s not Todd’s fault, but he sure picked a crappy time to chew me out about Sierra.

I haven’t bothered to check Facebook at all, either. Not since I deleted my account. I did get an email about the profile, an apology saying they’d taken care of it. That’s that.

I want to ask if he meant what he said, and if he really doesn’t like her anymore. As an alternative, I step onto the porch, and the house shuts the door for me.

Todd doesn’t notice me. Maybe the no-zit thing is in my head and I’m imagining it because I want to be beautiful so badly. I climb into his red pickup. It smells like Cheetos. I lodge my backpack beside my feet and resist the urge to punch the dashboard.

“Chili Peppers are so classic, but my mom just doesn’t get it. They’re not even that old or anything but…” Todd rambles all the way to school, but I tune him out. He didn’t even notice, and he’s not acting like we fought at all. Maybe even without zits I’m still not pretty enough to be noticed.

“You okay, Piper?”

“Huh?”

“I just made a joke about you being a Red Hot Chili Piper. You haven’t heard a word I’ve said.” Todd pulls into the school parking lot, but all I want is for him to turn around and take me home again.

I’ve seen what I think is a vision into the past, and I can’t tell him. Not after his whole need-to-process speech from last night. And red hot. He can’t think that—he hasn’t even looked at me. I hold my binder to my face, though I’m tempted to smack him with it.

“Hey.”

Two fingers pull the binder away. His brow pinches in concern.

“Look at my face,” I say.

His warm eyes roam. And widen. There’s the look I was expecting back at my house.

“What happened?” he asks, his expression animating the longer he looks. His mouth gradually lifts, and his glance crawls all over me, bringing heat to my cheeks. “You look amazing!”

I tuck my lips between my teeth. “I just woke up and it was all—you know—gone.”

His Adam’s apple jumps in his throat. Our gazes lock, and I’m more aware of myself than ever; everything in me aches to hold him. My hands because I want to feel his skin, his warmth. My chest, to be near his; my back, to have his hands on it, pinning me closer. The pit of my stomach coils, and I distinctly catch him staring at my mouth.

Todd clears his throat and climbs out of the car. I sit there on the gray seat, ridiculously awake to the passage of blood chugging and trembling along my body. Stomach slightly queasy, I climb out, too.

I feel like I’ve grown in size. I stand out, and not in the bad way I’m used to. The people who do notice just stop and stare. Todd keeps regarding everyone but me. He must be looking for Sierra.

“See you at lunch,” he says in his usual way, leaving me at my locker before I can say anything. I slump against the cold metal lockers, surrounded by students but not really seeing them.

There’s never been anything between Todd and me but our friendship and an insane obsession with Pez dispensers and pawn shops until recently—and only on my end. But my pulse rushes, and my head whirrs, bursting with thoughts of him.

Turcott heads toward me. Puke my guts out. I turn away, nearly hitting my nose on my open locker door, desperate to find something to hold my attention other than my books. I’ll just wait for him to pass. Any minute now.

To my alarm, he stops and backs up until he stands right in front of me, stabbing me with those coal black eyes of his. I groan. Of course. I shouldn’t expect him of all people not to notice.

“Hey,” he says. I stare at the industrial brown carpet and hug my binder.

“Need help finding your first class?”

Uhh… If I respond he’ll just use it to tease me. Just like always.

He leans an arm against my locker door. “My name is Shane. What’s yours?”

My head darts up. Is he for real? “
Piper
, you idiot.”

Recognition settles in his eyes and they widen larger than bottle caps. He looks me up and down, his mouth gaping.

“Whoa, Piper Crenshaw?” Then he repeats it, his tongue between his lips. “Piper freaking Crenshaw.”

I storm past, springing inside with a little jubilation. Not only did Turcott
not
recognize me, but he thought I was appealing enough to hit on. Sure as the sky is blue, he wouldn’t have given a new girl the time of day unless he had a thing for her.

In greenhouse Coach Morris passes along the handout, and Amy turns to pass it to me. But she does an obvious double take and rips the papers back before I can take them from her hand.

“Oh, Piper.” She slaps a hand to her chest. “You’re like, pretty!”

My cheeks burn as the attention of everyone in the room spotlights on me. I sink lower into my chair.

“Um—”

“No, I mean it,” she says louder. “Your skin is like, clear.”

“You didn’t get the homework done, did you?” I say, just as loud. A few people laugh, including Coach Morris.

The door creaks open, and the unanimous gasp across the room is so thick you can swallow it. Perfect Sierra, runway model Sierra, has red blotches all over her face peeking through a poorly done foundation job. Some spots are caked so thick it makes every bump look like a mountain on her face, and it’s the wrong color. My vision blanks.

“Miss Thompson,” Morris says, ruffling his mustache. “I don’t accept tardies. Feel free to spend the hour in detention.”

Sierra barely lifts her head. Her silky brown hair hangs in sheets on either side of her cheeks. “I have a note,” she tells Morris. Kody Gold peeks back at me like he’s trying to figure out if I’m really a human or some otherworldly imposter.

“Geez, Sierra,” says Turcott. “Who hit you with the ugly stick?”

A few kids laugh, and Sierra’s face blotches redder than ever.

I try to concentrate on the handout, but the black print smudges and blurs. One question that’s definitely not on the worksheet in front of me echoes over and over again. It stomps away all the other thoughts.

How?

I wished it—I even dreamed it! Me walking up to Sierra, saying some witchy magic words and touching my face and then hers, transferring my horrification of acne onto her perfect, beautiful façade. But I’m lacking in the witchy magic department, despite what people think because of my house.

Oh gosh.

I cling to the desk to stay upright. My house. Foam fills my brain, and my pulse thrashes at my throat like it’s trying to dislodge my head from the rest of my body. Joel said it only takes care of itself, but I wonder if the house had been behind this. If it could
read my mind
.

Psycho, that’s what this all is. Psy-cho. I want to break for the door. To hide in the bathroom or text Joel and get him to come pick me up. But it would incriminate me on the spot. I’m pretty sure Kody has already figured it out. And if Sierra has enough guts to show her face—my face—I can stick this out, too.

I suck in a deep inhalation through the nose. Calm down. Calm. Down.

Sierra doesn’t look at me. I expect her to whip out a blowgun and start pelting darts at me. But she keeps her head down, doodling on her hundred-dollar capris with manicured fingernails. A vast scratch gapes the front of her left shin. A scratch that looks like…

Trembling, I lift my arm as nonchalantly as possible and unzip the boot on my left leg.

My day-old scratch from the night I collided with Cassie is gone.

“L
et me get this straight,” Todd says after I jerk him under the bleachers during P.E. Sound is muted under here, though Mrs. Miller’s whistle blows. “You think you switched
skin
with Sierra?”

I peer behind me to make sure no one can hear us and quiver in the shade. Sierra and Jordan glare in our direction across the field. Jordan tosses his hands into the air as if upset about something.

“She’s all zitty today. And I’m, well, not.”

Todd kicks the gravel. “I don’t know what’s with you, Pipes, but I don’t believe in all this supernatural garbage. Houses don’t heal themselves. And people don’t switch skin. It’s not possible.”

“You think I’m making this up?” For sure I thought he’d believe this. The evidence is right in front of him. Not to mention what happened with him in my house. I don’t see how he can disregard it. Maybe denial is easier than belief.

“Then what
do
you think happened, Todd? With my face? At my house?”

“I know you’ve always wanted to be popular,” he says, ignoring me, “and I was trying to help you. But I told you to just be yourself, not to go to these—extremes just to get attention!”

“I’m not trying to get attention!”

“Whatever,” he says, heading back toward the sunlight. “Call me when you’re back to normal.”

“You mean when I’m ugly again?”

He groans and stops, but looks up to the bleachers above us instead of at me. It seems like hours pass before he says, “Piper, you’ve never been ugly.”

“How can you say that when we both know the first time you’ve ever actually looked at me was this morning!”

“You did not just say that.”

“Yeah, well, I did.” Great comeback.

He examines me for a few more seconds as if waiting for me to say something else. Then he scoffs and runs back out to the soccer field toward Sierra, Jordan and the others.

Even covered in zits, Sierra is still more popular than me. I knew he couldn’t just
not
like her. I knew it.

I should feel happy, but a horrible bulge gnaws inside me. On impulse, I lift my shirt to find the jagged scar near my belly button, left by a pit bull’s teeth when I was four years old. Gone. I shiver. I suppose Sierra has that one now, too.

My head nearly blanks out.

I was sure Todd would believe me about this. But it’s no wonder I’ve kept the house a secret from him for years. Todd thinks real equals provability. Murder is something that can be proven—and in my mom’s case, it was. But not something like this.