Broken (23 page)

I tore the envelope open and pulled out a
piece of heavy paper, almost like parchment. The writing was
elegant, a kind of flowing script that was different from anything
I'd ever seen, but which paled against the sheer artistry of the
sigil positioned at the bottom of the note.

Adriana,

Your words of thanks were altogether
unexpected, but decidedly appreciated. You're most welcome for
whatever small part I might have played in helping events to unfold
as they would have in a perfect world.

My actions were not such as to merit any
large boon from you, but still I must ask one. Please never show
this note to anyone. I ask not for myself, but for the others such
knowledge could affect.

I hope your circumstances continue on much
as they are now, but on the chance they do not, I can be reached by
leaving a note in the hollow of the lighting-struck tree half a
mile to the east of your house.

--@

Chapter 15

My alarm pulled me out of the strangest night
of sleep I'd ever experienced. Maybe I'd just been overtired, or
possibly the strange, symbol on the note, inked into the place
where a signature normally would've been, had reminded me of the
other truly alien experience so far in my life.

Whatever the reason, it felt like I'd spent
all night on the edge of one of the incredible, vivid dreams. I
kept catching glimpses of the characteristic soft glow out of the
corner of my eye, but hadn't ever actually slipped into a
full-blown dream. It'd left me feeling very unsatisfied.

I rolled over and pulled the note out from
its hiding place in my dresser. I had the words memorized already;
the symbol was what I wanted now. The note was proof of the
existence of our benefactor, but the sigil on the bottom of the
page was a clue to his identity. It was incredibly intricate and
completely different than anything I'd ever seen.

Once again I traced the sharp edges and
smooth swirls with my eyes, marveling at the way it seemed to hint
at further complexity lurking just out of sight.

With a sigh of resignation I hid the note
once again and pulled myself out of bed. Convinced as I was that
Brandon was our benefactor, I no longer felt any qualms about
trusting him to come pick me up.

I waited in the living room until I saw him
pull up, and then skipped out to meet him with a smile. He reached
over and opened my door, but some of the usual casualness was
missing from his smile.

"Something wrong?"

Brandon spared a momentarily glance from the
road, just enough to give me a querying look. "What do you
mean?"

"I don't know. It isn't anything I can really
put a name too, but I'm usually pretty good at reading people, and
something seems to be bothering you. Or maybe just distracting
you."

The smile was back, and at near normal
intensity. "Distracting is as good a description as any. Some
things have been a little different than normal. Nothing to worry
about, it just got me thinking."

Before my move to Sanctuary I probably
would've pried just a little in an attempt to get whatever it was
out in the open, but I didn't press him now. I had too many secrets
of my own now, secrets I didn't want anyone looking at too closely
until I'd had a chance to work through them.

Brandon pulled into his normal parking spot,
cut the engine and grabbed my hand before I could open the door.
"Hey, you'd tell me if you knew about anything I should know right?
Anything odd or out of the ordinary?"

For a second nothing made sense. Brandon was
the one who was saving us, and if that wasn't out of the ordinary,
I didn't know what would be. Only he'd said in his note not to say
anything to anyone. Of course. He was testing me, making sure I was
going to keep quiet about what he'd done. Probably because he
didn't want any of the praise for such a selfless act.

I was usually a pretty lousy liar, but it
isn't really a lie if you both know the truth. "Brandon you can
trust me. There isn't anything odd going on. At least nothing odder
than normal for Sanctuary."

Brandon looked at me for several seconds, and
then chuckled. "You're right, compared to other places we do tend
towards oddness. It's the small town effect I think."

Something about his voice was a little
different than normal. "You've lived somewhere else, somewhere
bigger?"

The wistfulness was gone; the smile was back
full force. "Not really. I've visited a few larger cities, but
never for long enough to get the full feel for what it must be like
to live in a Minneapolis or a New York. Someday maybe though."

This time I was going to pry, but he
preempted my question. "It looks like we'd better be going or we'll
both be late."

Les Misérables. I managed to put the
impending drawing more or less out of my mind for the first half of
the day, but I actually missed Britney's constant gossip. There was
almost no redeeming value to most of what she said, but it did have
the benefit of being distracting. By the time lunch finally came
around I needed some kind of distraction. This was my only chance
to see Les Misérables performed live before I turned forty.

Unfortunately, while the conversation at
Brandon's table was plentiful, it wasn't very distracting. I was
quickly realizing that Brandon's friends weren't very nice. I'd
pretty much known Cassie was a wench, but Vincent seemed even
meaner.

While a story about how someone tricked some
poor girl into thinking he was going to ask her out was highly
illuminating, it wasn't particularly the kind of thing I wanted to
dwell on. Especially considering how many parallels there were
between her story, and mine.

I kept looking at the clock; and the later it
got, the more certain I was that Principal Gossil was just about to
get on the loudspeaker and call out the winners of the drawing. The
last two minutes of lunch seemed to drag on forever, but then the
bell rang and I was left sitting stunned as Brandon and his friends
stood to go.

I let Brandon help me to my feet, hardly
noticing the way his touch left my hand tingling and headed off to
class. It was stupid, but I couldn't help feeling this was yet
another sign I wasn't going to win a ticket.

I tried to shake the feeling during History,
but was still fighting it when I walked into Physics. In a
departure from his normal routine, Alec was already seated when I
arrived. I flipped open my notebook and tried to distract myself
with a brief sketch, only to tear the page out and ball it up as
the bell rang.

I looked up to see Alec staring at me, which
just made me mad. It was completely unfair. I wasn't going to get
to go to Les Misérables, but he was rich enough to fly to New York
and book the whole theater.

As Mrs. Alexander stood up to take roll, a
burst of static silenced us all. "It's my pleasure to read off the
names of the five winners in our drawing for tickets to Les
Misérables."

"The first winner is Pam White."

Somewhere down the hall I heard someone yell,
and then an entire class broke out into cheers. I knew I should be
happy for Pam, but I was too busy wishing everyone would quiet down
so we could hear the next name.

Mrs. Alexander shut the door, muting the roar
as Principal Gossil continued with a slight rustle of papers. "Also
winning a ticket to Les Misérables next weekend, Mr. Andrew
Webbs."

A couple of half-hearted cheers broke out
towards the front of the class, but they were short lived. Andrew
wasn't in the class, and his friends were probably spending almost
as much time thinking about their odds of still winning, as I
was.

I only had three chances left, three in two
hundred assuming that everyone else in the school had entered the
drawing, which was virtually guaranteed.

"And the third lucky person is Suzanne
Bergerman."

And my chances were down to two, with even
worse odds than I'd had a second before. My hands hurt, only when I
looked down to see why, it was because my fingernails were digging
into my palms. The blood was pounding so furiously in my ears that
I couldn't hear the next name read. I could tell it wasn't mine
though because nobody turned back to congratulate me.

There was only one name left to be read, and
I somehow knew that it wasn't going to be mine. I'd never been that
lucky in my entire life. As quickly as that my pulse slowed and my
fists relaxed.

I could clearly hear as Principal Gossil
cleared his throat and continued. "The fifth winner is Ms. Adriana
Paige."

The cheer from my classmates wasn't nearly as
loud as the one for Pam, but it didn't matter. I'd won a ticket.
Me, the person who never won anything, was going to get to see the
greatest musical of all time.

I smiled and thanked everyone who yelled back
congratulations, and then turned to find Alec staring at me.

"Congratulations, Adriana. Les Misérables is
one of the best. I hope you enjoy it."

I thanked him sweetly, and even managed a
smile, but I wanted to tell him he was a jerk. I'd been desperate
to win a ticket, and he had to take yet another opportunity to rub
in the fact that he'd already seen it. That he was rich enough to
see it anywhere in the world as often as he wanted to.

Even my desire to tell Alec off wasn't strong
enough to overcome the pure joy at having won. The next two hours
seemed to float by, and before I would've believed it possible, I
found myself heading towards the tutoring lab. Rachel met me
outside the door, her face lit up with a smile even more striking
than her usual expression.

"You won. I'm so excited that you won. Guess
what. I traded tickets with Suzanne Bergerman, so we get to sit
together!"

Life couldn't get any better. I was going to
Les Misérables with Rachel, and I only had two more hours before
Brandon would be taking me home.

Chapter 16

My time with Brandon blurred by too quickly.
It was like the time between when he picked me up and dropped me
off didn't even exist. One moment I'd be blah and mundane, then
next I'd be with him and the world was perfect. When I was by
myself, it was hard to believe it all hadn't been a dream.

Thursday morning flew by, it was like I
blinked and it was already time for Mrs. Campbell's class. A number
of the other girls, and even a couple of the guys stopped by my
desk before the bell rang to congratulate me on winning the last
ticket to Les Misérables. Britney wasn't one of them. I actually
caught her glaring at me a couple of times out of the corner of my
eye.

Under normal circumstances I probably
would've felt guilty, or at least wished things had worked out
differently. Today, I was fully prepared to acknowledge Britney as
the spoiled, self-centered brat she was.

The bell rang and then Mrs. Campbell's
lecture was over in record time. I even finished my assignment a
good ten minutes before class was scheduled to end. I was absently
sketching what I expected the inside of the opera house to look
like, when a tap on my shoulder pulled me out of my reverie.

"I'm so sorry Mrs. Campbell. I finished
early, but I should have started on one of the catch-up
assignments. I just didn't want to get into a whole new subject
with only ten minutes left."

Her smile was much more understanding than
normal for a classroom situation. It took the sting out of the
words that were probably just for the people close enough to
overhear.

"Don't you worry Miss Paige, I'll let you
know when I don't think you're keeping up. Seeing as you are done
though, would you please run something over to Mrs. North? I'd do
it, but I need to go to a special projects meeting today during
lunch."

As quickly as that, my books were in my
backpack and I was on my way to the second story of the school,
which housed music, sketching, and all the other forms of art
lesser mortals like myself would never master.

The journey would've been completely
unremarkable except that I happened to glance into one of the
classrooms just before I found Mrs. North's room. Even a brief
glance screamed art students. There were at least twenty people
sitting in front of contraptions that looked like a cross between
an easel and a desk, and most of them had the look of intense
concentration I'd come to associate with Mom attempting to frame a
picture.

The notable exception was Alec, who I almost
didn't recognize. I hadn't expected to see him in an art class, but
more than that was the way his face seemed transformed. He'd always
been gorgeous. I could dislike, even hate him, and still
acknowledge that he made my heart go pitter patter, but this was
something else. He looked so happy, so at peace with the world,
that for the brief moment between when I saw him and when I
recognized him, I thought I'd seen an angel.

I'd always thought the intense look of
concentration was the sign of a true artist. Maybe it still was.
Maybe whatever he was drawing was absolute crap. Maybe the masters
like Michelangelo and da Vinci had completed their greatest works
with expressions very similar to what everyone else in the class
was sporting. Still, I couldn't help envy such contentment.

I dropped off my bundle of papers at Mrs.
North's class, and started back towards my locker. I couldn't help
trying to catch another glimpse of the art class as I walked past.
I'd been hoping to see Alec again, but hadn't expected him to look
up as I craned my neck to see inside.

I stumbled a little in surprise. He was still
gorgeous, but the simple joy was gone. He no longer looked like
something that couldn't exist in this world, but even with anger
etched on his features my heart still skipped a beat. I ducked
around the corner and started down the stairs, my embarrassment at
being caught staring giving way to anger. It didn't make any sense.
I'd never done anything to him. Did he really hate me so much just
because I told him off about not protecting Rachel?