13 to Life (7 page)

Pulling the reins, I turned Rio’s head toward home. What was going on? Strange dogs, bizarre boys . . . I tried to clear my head. My thoughts returned to Pietr. Definitely weird.

Had I ever felt so off balance with Derek? I shook my doubt away. I absolutely adored Derek. Didn’t I? Of course! He was spectacular. And he might finally—finally—be interested in
me
.

But how bizarre was surviving a fall like that?

I dismounted and walked Rio into the barn and down the broad aisle to her stall. A few of the other horses whinnied and snorted greetings. Hunter and Maggie milled around a hay bale, digging at its edge. A mouse squeaked and the dogs redoubled their efforts to drag it out.

I slipped the bridle over Rio’s ears and off her head, rubbing the places it had pressed her hair down. I froze and she snorted.

“Hello?” I called.

No answer. I got the undeniable feeling I was being watched.

The dogs stood and looked at me, tongues lolling, the mouse forgotten.

The evening breeze shifted, scattering bits of hay and a puff of dust. Carrying scents from outside. The fur on both Maggie’s and Hunter’s backs rose into crests.

“Who’s there?” I demanded, my voice bolder than I felt.

And then the sensation of eyes on me faded and the dogs relaxed, their fur settling, tails wagging once more.

“Things are getting way too weird around here,” I confided as I unsaddled Rio and quickly brushed her down.

With Rio back in her stall and her tack away for the night, I headed inside. I stepped into the kitchen briefly and grabbed a
sandwich bag. Sneaking past Dad dozing in his recliner, I thought better of it. I crept over beside him and gently kissed his wrinkled forehead; it was starting to smooth only in sleep.

I climbed the stairs to my room and unlocked my door, locking it back before turning on the lights. My little sister was a snoop and a rat—at best. I did a quick check to see if Annabelle Lee had managed to pick the lock and mess with my stuff. Frankly, the search probably wasn’t worth my time since she had such an eye for detail. Nothing would be left out of place unless it served some purpose.

But I did my visual inventory anyhow, reading each of the headlines that crowded my small bulletin board, hoping to quiet my undeniable nerves:

“Russian Mafia accepts Moniker of ‘Werewolves’ from Newly Envisioned Mafia Card Game.”

“Dog-Eat-Dog World of Russian Mafia.”

“Phantom Wolf of Farthington: Paw Prints Too Big for Gray Wolf.”

“Crazy Cryptos at It Again: Cryptozoologists Proclaim Phantom Paw Prints Prove Bigfoot.”

They were exactly as I’d left them. Sighing, I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the newest addition, carefully unfolding it.

I read it out loud as I pinned it to the corkboard. “ ‘Werewolves of a Different Breed: Sinister Links to Russian Mafia Found in Farthington.’ ” Excellent. Even if the new guy at Junction High wasn’t forthcoming about Farthington, I could still do research.

I dug the strange fur sample out of my pants pocket and slipped it into the plastic Baggie. I pinned it to the bulletin board, too.

I sat on my bed and yanked off my sneakers. Tugging off my socks I noticed my big toe was nearly peeking through one.
Well, at least it wasn’t like anyone else knew. Reaching up, I opened my sock drawer. My hand patted along the bare bottom of the drawer. Nuts. Definitely laundry day. I stood to get a better look, reaching past my old shooting medals cluttering the drawer as I attempted to find a pair of socks without holes.

Dad sometimes asked why I didn’t hang up the medals from my brief stint with competitive pistol shooting—give them pride of place since I’d earned them with hours of practice. But every time I looked at them I ached knowing that for every hour I had practiced that solitary sport I had lost an hour with my mother. Forever.

In my opinion, life passed too quickly to spend it holed up on a pistol range shooting holes in paper targets—alone.

The nightmare greeted me as invitingly as any night—beautiful and innocuous as a jack-in-the-pulpit, and just as foul a trap. It always opened the same way, with me standing under the dogwood tree as the sun faded into a glorious glow of pink, orange, and purple. I hit send on my cell phone, Mom looking radiant as an angel when her picture automatically popped up on the tiny screen. “Yeah, I’ll be under the dogwood,” I confirmed. “On your way? Awesome.” Then I flipped it shut. No “I love you” or “Thanks a bunch.”

That small part of me that knew I was deep in the grasp of the nightmare tensed, urging me to change some detail . . . to lessen the pain it knew was coming. But I couldn’t. I struggled; my body surely twisted in my bed, but the connection of my real self to my dream self was just strong enough that dread and anguish felt real and inseparable to both.

And then, as quickly as I’d realized I was too weak to change the past, I saw Mom’s car turn into the parking lot. I heard the
squeal of tires . . . the crunch and shattering noise of two equally matched titans meeting, the chattering sound that comes when two things that shouldn’t rub together
do.
. . . I screamed, choking on the smell of burning rubber.

I felt eyes on me—strangely brilliant eyes—watching with an odd detachment equally distant and fascinated, like an alien observing human tragedy for the first time and not knowing how to dull the victim’s pain. Not knowing if it
should
be dulled.

I woke, my pillow strangled in my arms, my chest heaving. I repeated my mantra:
I can get through this. I will get through this.
This was the normal part of night for me. I sat up, glancing around my room, half-expecting the eyes to be there, glowing back at me. They were a new addition to my nightly terror, and I wondered what they meant. Or if they meant anything at all.

I was glad to get back in the normal swing of things the next morning. The weirdness surrounding the new guy at Junction High left me feeling totally off balance. My dreams had been different—not a bad thing, really, when I considered what usually greeted me in sleep—but it was so exhausting.

That morning on the bus Stella Martin (the local gossip-queen wannabe) leaned across the aisle to talk. Life just kept getting better and better. “Those Rusakova boys are pretty hot,” Stella said, as if it were a natural way to open a conversation.

I shrugged.

“Seriously?” she asked. “I mean, I know you’re still crushing on Derek—
everyone
knows that—but I think Pietr really likes you. I saw the way he watches you,” she added to justify her assumption.

I sighed. “Stella. He hasn’t been here long enough to
really
like anyone,” I protested.

She snorted. “Haven’t you ever felt a crazy attraction to somebody? You know, like something that defies explanation?”

“You mean love at first sight?” I smirked.

“Not
love
at first sight. Lust at first sight. Haven’t you ever just wanted something?”

“Yes. Yes I have,” I admitted. She leaned closer. I looked into her pale blue eyes and said, “Every time a new vampire novel comes out I
want
it.”

Stella groaned. “I don’t get girls like you.”

I laughed. “I’ve heard that before.” It was one of the phrases signaling the death knell of many of my relationships. That and:
It’s not you, it’s me
.

“Have you ever thought that instead of reading about exciting stuff, maybe you should make some excitement yourself?”

I blinked. “I’ve had enough excitement recently, thank you.” I turned to the window just as the bus rolled into the parking lot, ignoring the way my stomach quivered. Because, like it or not, there was something about Pietr Rusakova that excited me. So it was even smarter for me to stay away and regain my emotional balance instead of being swept up in some crazy infatuation about the new boy.

The best way for me to regain my balance, as lousy as it was, was to recommit to my education. Even if it meant actually
trying
in gym class.

I caught up to Pietr in the hallway before homeroom, still not relieved of my guide duties thanks to Junction’s hectically switching A-B schedule. “Huh. You’re here.”

“
Da
. I don’t have a choice,” he said.

I wondered if that was a clue about the cop accompaniment yesterday but didn’t want to bring it up. It was surprisingly easy to forget that Pietr had a past that somehow included law enforcement. Oh, well. I could ask about it later and maybe try again for an interview about the Phantom Wolf of Farthington.
“Wait right here after homeroom,” I instructed in my most authoritative voice, pointing to the glossy floor.

He nodded, the same curt movement as yesterday, but his eyes glinted in response.

“Unless you’re ready to give me an interview about Farthington . . .”

He shook his head, a clear
no
.

Fine. I wondered if he’d noticed the way I’d looked him up and down. No cast. No sling. “Arm’s okay?”

Again, he nodded.

Total weirdness. Shaking my head, I realized an arm in a cast would probably only have improved Pietr’s popularity. The whole sympathy angle of attraction would be invoked. Disgusting.

I headed to the library. Ten minutes before homeroom started. No problem. The topic I was researching was one I’d followed forever. Although I’d exhausted all resources directly related to the Phantom Wolf attacks, I was certain there was something I was overlooking. Something else must have happened before the wolf attacks. Something weird.

I pulled up Google. Farthington plus wolves, coyotes, fox, and bear—I’d zipped through reports on all of them. Any strange animal activity in Farthington that hit the Web had my eyeballs all over it. I’d even collected the weird stuff—things from folks dismissed as wackos. Werewolves, Bigfoot, even Mafia references dotted my bedroom walls. There had to be an answer to the whole Phantom Wolf fiasco. Maybe I needed to broaden my search. Look outside of Farthington. What else weird had happened—maybe before the first Phantom Wolf prints were found? Weird news, plus . . . I added a year to the search.

“Man Swallowed by Goat.”

“Elvis Alive and Making Pizzas in Nevada.” Okay, weird, but not
my
kind of weird . . .

“CIA Swamped by Tons of Russian Documents.”
Huh
. I clicked the link. Wow. That
was
lots of paperwork! The photo showed a warehouse filled with stack after stack of file boxes, each label reading
C.C.C.P.

At the right side of the photo stood a female agent—just her back, from head to waist, hair pulled back in a startlingly severe ponytail. The edge of her face was visible enough I could see determination and satisfaction firming her jawline.

The caption read:

Enough Russian Cold War research shared with U.S.A. to bury Agency for years. Agents overwhelmed as they try to find important documents amidst piles of questionable resources.

Well, it wasn’t what I was really looking for, but keeping it might remind me to quit complaining whenever I felt buried in homework. I hit print and snagged the single page it spit out before rushing to homeroom.

Homeroom was the same as always. Dull, dull, dull. I didn’t mind. I pored over the printout. It seemed the Russians had shared nearly every one of their coveted documents from the Cold War period in a show of friendship that some felt was suspicious because it happened as U.S. agencies were spread thin dealing with the Russian mafia. Hmm. I folded up the paper and slid it into my pocket to be hung on my bulletin board later.

Already standing outside his homeroom door, Pietr watched me come down the hall. He raised one eyebrow and looked at the floor with obvious dramatic intent. He glanced up at me and took a careful step to the side. “Right
here,
you said,” he stated, his smile sly.

I pursed my lips to stop from falling into his trap and smiling. “Where’s your gaggle of followers?” I asked, like it mattered. And it didn’t. Really.

He shrugged, but I noticed him touch a thin silver chain hanging around his neck. I hadn’t noticed it before.

“Cool chain.”

He nodded and tucked it a little more effectively under his shirt.

Down the hall we went. “Nuts!” I exclaimed. “I forgot something.”

“To your locker?” he suggested. “We still have four minutes.”

I nodded. “Coach isn’t a stickler about being tardy, anyhow.”

“Hey,” Amy greeted me in the hall, and turned away from the door of her class to follow me. “Hey, Pietr,” she acknowledged.

He smiled at her.

Students still milled around in the hallway, procrastinating all the way to their classrooms.

I was digging in my locker when Pietr leaned toward me and spoke again.

“You look really nice today.”

My breath caught. Probably because I’d stirred some dust up in the bottom of my locker. I really needed to clean it out soon.

“That’s a pretty lame compliment,” a deeper male voice rumbled behind us.

I turned around to see Pietr’s brother—was his name Maximilian? I tried to remember the name tag he’d been labeled with in the Guidance Office yesterday.

“Max.” He introduced himself with a bold grin.

He had Pietr’s attention. And Amy’s. Giving myself a moment
to look at him, I could understand why. He was tall and broad across the shoulders with a mop of hair so dark it was nearly black. Certainly not hard to look at. I had to give Stella credit. The Rusakova boys were pretty hot.

“The proper way to hit on a girl,” Max was saying to Pietr, who looked like he would sink into the floor, he was so embarrassed, “is like this.”

Max turned all his focus to Amy. “Hey,” he said with a nod of his head.

She froze like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming car.

Max slowly let his gaze wander the length of her body before his eyes came back to hold her own. “You have to let them know you’re looking,” he whispered to Pietr. As if we’d gone deaf.

Pietr squeezed his eyes shut, his brow wrinkling. He groaned—an apologetic sound.