Broken (28 page)

I felt a surge of heat rush through me as the
room wavered slightly. For a second I worried I was going to pass
out, but movement behind the two punks distracted me from my
heaving internal landscape.

There was just enough light for me to see
Alec lean forward and put a hand on each troublemaker's shoulder.
There was an abortive movement by the two loudmouths, as they tried
to spin around and confront him. Granted, the lighting was less
than ideal, but it didn't look like Alec was holding onto them very
hard. Still, neither of them made it more than a quarter of the way
around before being slammed back down into their chairs.

The tingly heat that'd convinced me Alec was
staring at me earlier was back, and even more intense. I felt the
tiny hairs on my neck stand up as the feeling redoubled yet again.
The darker, more vocal of the two opened his mouth and got the
first part of a swear word out before ending in a hiss of pain that
was almost completely drowned out by a crescendo from the orchestra
pit.

Alec leaned forward, whispered something in
each of their ears, and then finally let both of them go. I
expected them to turn around swinging, or at least swear at him. I
didn't expect them to remain in their seats stunned and shaking
like trauma victims.

An usher finally arrived to see what all of
the commotion was about. The older boys shook themselves and then
looked for a second like they were going to try and get Alec kicked
out of the theater.

The sense of being caught in some kind of
electric sandstorm momentarily intensified, and then faded away as
they got up and left.

I felt my mouth drop open again as they
scurried out of the theater without once looking back. Alec, who
I'd always figured had the depth of an old-style Mickey Mouse
cartoon, had just faced down two older boys, and singlehandedly
saved my Les Misérables experience.

Valjean launched into the 'Who am I?', and
almost against my will I was pulled back around to where I could
see the stage. Even as enthralled as I was by the music, I made a
mental note to thank Alec after the performance. For once I wasn't
going to try and get the best of him verbally, I was just going to
walk up and thank him.

The sense of being able to feel Alec behind
me didn't diminish during the course of the play, if anything it
gradually increased almost to the levels it'd been during the face
off with the college boys. Now though, it felt more reassuring than
threatening

The rest of Les Misérables was even better
than I'd hoped. Minutes and seconds went by faster than at any
other time in my life. As the curtain finally came down, I brushed
away the traces of tears that'd appeared on my face during the
performance, and turned in my seat as the lights came up.

Alec was gone. The drapes were swaying gently
as if they'd been brushed by someone moving quickly, but other than
that there was no trace of him.

It wasn't until I'd filed out into the grand
foyer, eager to spend a few minutes taking in the gorgeous bronze
statues liberally scattered throughout the room, that I realized
why I felt so odd. Part of the difference was the normal sensation
of having vicariously been part of something larger than life. My
head knew all I'd done was sit motionless while performers
portrayed a fictional story. The rest of me felt as though I had
just risked life and limb, seen people I loved killed, and played a
small but tangible part in altering the course of history.

Returning to my mundane, ever so boring life
was an incredible letdown, but that didn't explain the hollow
sensation that'd lodged itself somewhere between my heart and
stomach. Illogical as it sounded, the only explanation for feeling
as though a part of me had been ripped out and lost, was Alec's
having disappeared sometime between the last note and the final
bow.

It was unsettling. Even my growing feelings
for Brandon didn't hint at that kind of need. It was a pale shadow
of what it felt like to lose a family member, but it was made up of
too many of the same elements.

One of the chaperons, an over-bleached woman
who looked like she was struggling to deny her last eight or nine
birthdays, had to call my name at least twice to shake me out of my
funk.

I followed everyone else out to the bus, but
there wasn't any refuge there. I was just too different from
everyone else.

Hour after hour passed in silent misery,
until finally the rest of the kids wore themselves out and it
quieted down enough for me to lapse into a fitful sleep. I was
smack-dab in the middle of a dream about Rachel and Britney when
everything changed.

Ever so slowly, the normal dream scape took
on a sharp-edged glow, and then morphed into the breathtaking
colors that'd wormed their way even deeper into my heart than I'd
realized. I didn't recognize my surroundings, but they were
different than any of the places I'd been before. The new scents
whipping past me on the breeze were sign enough even if I hadn't
been able to detect the subtle differences in the light emanating
off of the foliage paving the trail I was walking along.

For the length of the dream I lost myself in
the wonder of experiencing the world in all of its amazing depth.
Still, even the pure delight in my surroundings wasn't enough to
mute the feeling something was missing.

Chapter 19

It seemed like the old karmic scale was still
going strong and trying very hard to make up for how great Les
Misérables had been. We finally arrived in town after way too many
hours of driving and then I had to wait for mom to come pick me
up.

The last chaperon had been about five minutes
from throwing in the towel and just taking me home herself by the
time mom finally pulled into the school parking lot. Mom hadn't
even apologized. She'd mumbled something about needing to hit one
of her 'close' sites while the moon was still high in the sky as
she dropped me off at home and then drove off without looking
back.

I'd just managed to drop off into a fitful
sleep when she came back home and ruined any chance of me catching
up on the sleep I'd missed because of the trip. I'd never been able
to go back to sleep after being woken up in the morning, but I
tried anyways. By the time I finally gave up and got out of bed I
was not a happy camper.

I was even less so by the time mom finally
woke up. Rachel not having been at Les Misérables had been preying
on my mind the whole time I'd been studying, and since Brandon
wouldn't work for girl talk, I needed to hash it all out with my
mom.

Only she was so far gone, getting anything
out of her was all but impossible. She interrupted partway through
my description of what'd happened, to ask if I'd noticed when the
light outside my bedroom had stopped working. As if I cared when
some stupid bulb burned out.

I tried for another fifteen minutes, but once
her mind started focusing on a new project, anything less than the
domestic version of a tactical nuke had effectively zero chance of
catching her attention.

Apparently someone decided that having my mom
completely ignore me in my moment of need was going a little too
far on the divine retribution. In an effort to try and balance
things out the dream angels granted me another vivid dream on
Sunday night. It was wonderful. I got to swim around in the most
glorious pond known to man. I was somehow faster than normal, and
spent what seemed like hours chasing around slivers of light that
turned out to be some kind of long, thin fish.

For perhaps the first time in my entire life
I didn't mind at all that I'd ended up in a swimsuit so small I may
as well have been wearing nothing at all. In fact, the feel of the
warm water sliding past my skin was so incredible I almost
considered skinny dipping. Of course that'd only lasted for about a
nanosecond. Even in a dream, there were things that were just too
scary to really entertain.

The dream lasted longer than any of the
others before it, but even so it eventually lapsed into a normal,
boring dream. Still, I woke up feeling more refreshed and rested
than any other time I could remember.

Even more amazing, the feeling was strong
enough to carry me through Biology and Mrs. Sorenson's relentless
grilling. I did better than expected, but still not as good as I'd
hoped. Not considering how much time I'd spent studying. It was
like she knew exactly which parts I didn't understand completely,
and after letting me start to get a little bit of false confidence,
she'd hammer me down again.

Talk about depressing. Still, I was feeling
well-prepared for my English test tomorrow and Algebra flew by. By
my latest calculations I was only about two weeks from being all
caught up.

Lunch was interesting. I was still the odd
man out, but it was amusing watching Vincent preen. I never did
figure out what it was he did, but apparently it had him thinking
he was even more of a stud than normal. Whatever it was, it had
Brandon pissed, which was a refreshing change. If he had to be
friends with some of these people out of responsibility, that was
one thing, but letting them continue to be jerks was taking it too
far.

Nobody was more surprised than me when
Brandon pushed back from the table, scanned the room, and then
pulled me to my feet. We spent the rest of lunch pacing around the
outside of the school while he worked through whatever was
bothering him. When the warning bell finally rang, he turned and
looked at me with a considering smile. We sat like that for a good
thirty seconds before he reached a single finger up and traced the
left side of my face as he leaned in slightly.

It was simultaneously the scariest and most
exciting thing I'd ever experienced. Even as I leaned in a little
bit myself, my thundering heart seemed to be trying to leap out of
my throat solely for the purpose of disrupting what looked very
much like it was going to be my first kiss.

Every tiny hair on my body seemed to stand up
in a shiver of nervousness as he tilted his head to the side, and
then he broke off, shaking himself slightly as he gave me a
smile.

For a second I'd thought he was rejecting me,
that he'd decided not to kiss me because he wasn't interested. Only
the way he'd reached out for my hand, indicated that he really
wasn't repulsed by me. It'd bothered me the entire time I was in
History, and then just before I got to Physics it hit me.

He hadn't stopped because he didn't want to
kiss me. He stopped because with all of my blushing and near terror
it'd been obvious I wasn't ready to be kissed. It was the ultimate
act of chivalry. I more or less floated through my last two
classes.

It wasn't until I finally got to tutoring
that I started to put more stock in the idea that Rachel had simply
chosen not to go to Les Misérables. She looked up, and then away
guiltily as I walked in. There wasn't a trace of smile or greeting
on her face, an abnormality that hit me hard somewhere in the
region of my stomach.

Albert stopped by to say hi, and I used his
presence as a distraction.

"It sounds like you're almost caught up."

"Yeah, finally. I've got another two weeks or
so, but then I'll be all done with this whole triple math homework
garbage."

Albert smiled, and for the first time I
noticed how genuine his expressions were. It was almost like he was
a different person when he wasn't concentrating on explaining some
particularly stubborn math problem to one of the slower students.
You know, the ones who still didn't understand why anyone needed to
know their multiplication tables.

"And here I had such high hopes for you
becoming a true math geek. Granted, you've shown pretty mediocre
progress so far. I don't think I've once seen you skip a meal just
so you could graph out some new function. Also you've evidenced no
inclination to check out old textbooks from the library in an
effort to edge out your competition at the next math bowl. Still I
had hoped. I mean being a tutor and all, it seemed like a
given."

I stuck out my tongue. "Please like you
really do any of those things. I in fact happen to know that you're
in a band that performs occasionally down in Vegas, so don't go
trying to pull a fast one on me."

Albert looked genuinely startled, but
recovered quickly.

"Hey there, idle, profoundly-untrue comments
dropped by Mrs. Campbell in passing conversation don't count. I'm
absolutely not a member of Fatal Angst."

"Yes you are, at least you are until I either
decide to dispose of your body, or let your little secret out of
the bag because you're not doing your job."

I hadn't heard Mrs. Campbell approach from
behind me, and for a second worried she was really angry, but the
way Albert chuckled as he cringed in mock fear alleviated my
concerns. Albert pushed his glasses a little ways back up his nose,
and then wandered off to help the next person with a red card face
up on their desk.

The number of people who proceeded to come
into the tutoring lab was nothing less than amazing. Based on
overheard conversations, it sounded like there was a perfect storm
of tests. Both of the other math teachers were apparently having
tests in every single one of their classes, and Mrs. Campbell was
having tests in a couple of hers as well.

The resulting number of questions kept us all
jumping. I started work half an hour early, and Albert, Peter and
Mrs. Campbell all stayed an extra forty-five minutes.

I was helping out an undersized freshman who
was having a really hard time understanding the fundamental
concepts of the unit she was going to be tested over tomorrow, when
Mrs. Campbell stopped by. "We're all done. Wait until the end of
your normal shift, and then go home. If anyone complains feel free
to suggest that they don't leave it until the last minute next
time."