Damage (8 page)

The words make me stumble in my haste to stop. I trip over my giant feet and would have gone sprawling if Jesse didn’t snag me around the waist and pull me upright just in time. The warmth that spreads through my body in response to his touch is nearly as shocking as the fact that I’ve almost outrun one of Madisonville Prep’s star athletes. Even with Jesse injured, that should have been impossible.

I’m a dancer and in better-than-decent shape, but I can’t go as long or hard as the other girls in the corps de ballet. I have to take a rest after fifteen or twenty minutes of dancing, a fact that’s made me worry about how realistic my dreams of becoming a Rockette really are. There’s a chance I’ll never have the stamina to dance for an hour or more without stopping.

But now … Coke-and-adrenaline high aside, there’s no way I should have been able to run so fast for so long. We’re far, far away from the bar, so far down the access road that the industrial wreckage has turned to patchy trees and I can just make out the pale blue top hat of the
Shimmer Shine Diner
sign at the south end of Madisonville.

We’ve run at least five miles. Maybe more. And how long has it been since the attack? Fifteen minutes? Twenty at most?

“This is impossible.” I put my fingers to my throat, astonished by the slow, steady beating of my pulse. My heart rate has already returned to normal. I’m not even out of breath.

“So you don’t usually run like an Olympic contender?”

“No. Never.” I look up at him, wondering at the strange light in his eyes. He almost looks … happy. No, not happy … excited. Is it possible that he feels the same things I do, that thrill at finding a similar creature, that shiver of electricity whenever we touch?

His hand moves to my face, thumb brushing softly back and forth across my cheek. For a second, I think he might kiss me and my lips prickle. I’ve never kissed a boy before. I can’t remember kissing anyone on the lips, not even my dad or mom. I’m sure I did when I was a baby, but not since I’ve been old enough to remember it.

Now, I’m suddenly desperate to know what it’s like, to feel soft skin pressed against soft skin and Jesse’s breath hot on my lips.

I press up onto my toes, relevé-ing, bringing my face nearly level with his.

“Your cheek is … ”

“It’s what?” I’m almost afraid to speak, afraid to breathe, to do anything that will stop the slow movement of his lips toward mine.

“It’s soft … ” His breath rushes out and his eyes dart to the side, as if he’s embarrassed. “But that wasn’t what I … ” He pulls his hand away. “You had a cut, after the wreck. It was bleeding, but now it’s gone.”

“Really?”

He nods. “And you seem so much stronger. And faster.”

“I’m way faster. I’ve never run like that. I’m not even out of breath, and a lot of my symptoms went away before I drank the Coke. And that wasn’t nearly enough Coke. I’d usually need the whole thing and maybe some candy too and … I just … ” I bite my lip, shocked by how easy it is to talk too much to Jesse. Even with Mina, I always watched what I said, figuring it’s better to be silent than sound stupid.

Poor Mina. I can’t believe she’s gone. Her mother is going to cry her eyes out. Her little brothers are only four and six. They won’t know what to do without “Mimi” to pick on. They call her Mimi. I’ve always thought it was so cute and was so envious of the “turds” she locked out of her room when I spent the night.

I squeeze my eyes shut for a second before opening them wide, focusing on the hint of stubble on Jesse’s chin. “But what does it mean? Why am I different all of a sudden?”

“I don’t know. But my leg is healing a lot faster than I thought it would, and the cut on my side doesn’t even sting anymore.” He pulls me closer, into a hug I can tell he needs as much as I do. “I’ve been thinking while we ran. Do you think maybe this has something to do with the things we’re seeing?”

“You saw her? You saw the little girl?” My heart leaps in my chest.

“No. I saw … a dragon.”

“A dragon. Like from a fairy tale?” I ask, more curious than surprised. After all, didn’t I know? Didn’t I
know
he’d seen something?

“Yeah, but horrible. It was on the bus right after the accident. It attacked me. Or us. I’m not sure.” He shakes his head. “I was running from it when the bus exploded. I used to see it all the time when I was a kid. It used to … hurt me.”

Jesse swallows, the effort it takes to perform that simple action telling more than words ever could. The dragon didn’t just hurt him, the dragon traumatized him, scarred him so badly he can’t remember what it feels like to have a good night’s sleep. I smooth my hands back and forth on his chest, hoping to offer some comfort, or at least let him know I understand.
Really
understand.

“But no one else could see it.”

I nod. “That’s exactly what it was like with me.”

“The doctors and nurses thought I was crazy,” he says, relief in his voice.

Doctors and nurses. A frightening suspicion grows inside me. The warmth rushes from my skin, leaving me cold down to the bone. “You said you were in the hospital when you were little. What hospital?”

“Baptist Memorial, the ninth floor, terminal wing. Guess they didn’t have much hope for me.”

My stomach cramps. “That’s where I was. I was eight. You said you were … ”

“Ten.” Realization dawns in his eyes and his fingers dig a little tighter into my waist. “I’m seventeen now.”

“I’m fifteen. I won’t be sixteen until June.”

Jesse shakes his head. “We were both there at the same time.”

“And we both … ” I don’t finish the sentence. We both know what I was going to say. We both have imaginary “friends,” creatures only we can see, that try to take our lives.

“But the little girl—”

“Rachel,” I say, grateful for the chance to share her name with someone who believes in her. And more importantly, in me.

“Rachel went away, right?”

I nod. “It took a while, but by the time I left the hospital I didn’t see her anymore. I haven’t seen her in years. Not until today.”

“After the accident.”

“Right. What are you thinking?”

“I don’t know,” he says, taking my cold hand in his warm one. “But there has to be some kind of connection between the hospital and the things we see. It’s too much of a coincidence.”

“Maybe there was lead in the paint at the hospital? Or a gas leak when we were there or something?” I ask, reaching for any explanation, no matter how far-fetched. “Maybe it made us crazy?”

“Crazy doesn’t make bruises on your ribs from wrestling a monster half the night. And crazy doesn’t make trees fall or bottles fly across the room.”

He’s right. There is something … magical going on. No, magical’s the wrong word. Magic makes me think of
The Nutcracker
, of enchanted Christmas trees and journeys into fairy kingdoms where flowers dance and snowflakes come to life. But there are also rats in the Nutcracker’s world. Rats, rats, rats. I definitely smell one. Something pungent and wrong that summons a spark of hope all the same. If something at the hospital did this to me and Jesse, then there’s a chance it can be undone. If we can find out the cause, maybe we can find the cure.

I’ve never dreamt there could be a cure, that there might be a chance I could put Rachel behind me and know she was never, ever coming back. The thought makes me smile. Jesse smiles back, the curve of his lips transforming him into something truly magnificent. My breath rushes out and I forget how to pull another back in.

When he glares, Jesse is the ultimate gorgeous bad boy. But when he smiles, he is … breathtaking. “You should smile more often.”

“Maybe I will.” His smile glows even brighter before it suddenly fades, vanishing as if someone slapped it away. “Dani … I … I think I should … ”

“Should what?”

“I … ” He scowls and drops his gaze to the ground with a sigh. “I just want to help keep you safe.”

I squeeze the hand still in mine. “Me too. I mean … you.” I blush, and hope the cold air will explain the pink in my cheeks. “Maybe my dad can help us. He’s a doctor. Well, a scientist really. He works at North Corp doing research, but he helped with my treatment at Baptist when I was little and he knows lots of people. If we talk to him together, he might actually listen.”

Or not. More likely, he’ll think the boy I’ve brought home is on drugs and I’m out of my mind again. But my father’s sharp, disapproving eyes don’t seem as scary right now. Not when I’m holding Jesse’s hand and know—for the first time in my entire life, beyond any shadow of a doubt—that I’m not alone.

Jesse

For a rich girl, Dani lives pretty close to the wrong side of the tracks. Her house is less than a ten-minute walk from the seedy diner at the edge of town, and only half a dozen long blocks from my own home-sweet-slum. The difference is that her street is a private drive that curves up into the hills, away from the depressed area below, round and round, past a locked gate where Dani has to punch in an access code, and then up another hundred feet. At the top of the hill, the dense woods thin away, revealing … a castle.

No, not a castle, but the closest thing I’ve ever seen to one. The house is three stories in some places, four in others, with dark gingerbread-looking wood and glass everywhere. There’s an octagon-shaped tower room on one side. On the other, the roof turns into a giant deck that pokes up through the trees. I catch sight of the edges of what look like deck chairs and suspect there might be a pool up there.

A
pool
on her
roof
. I am … I have no idea what to say.

“This is it.” Dani squeezes my hand. She hasn’t let me go, not even when she punched in the code to the gate.

It makes me stupidly happy. I can’t remember the last time I felt like this. It hasn’t been since I was a kid, and maybe not even then. I have a hard time remembering much about my life with my birth mom except for that last year, when she met Neil, and me and my little sister became even more of a pain in her ass than we were before. It was the year she taught us the real meaning of neglect.

“I know it’s awful. I’m sorry,” Dani says. I see the worried expression on her face and realize I’ve been scowling.

I make an effort to relax, to stop thinking about things that aren’t worth thinking about anyway. “No, it’s fine. It’s nice.”

“It’s too much. It’s actually Penny’s house. She’s got a lot of money.”

“Is she a trust-fund baby or something?”

“No, she was a freelance linguistic specialist for the FBI.” Dani leads me across the gray cobblestones toward the front door. “She speaks five or six languages and developed this software that helped the spies spy better. Or something. She doesn’t really talk about it much. She quit after she and my dad got married because she wanted to have babies.”

“You have brothers or sisters? Half-brothers and sisters?” I’m strangely tempted to tell her about my little sister, the one I haven’t seen since I was eight.

When I went into the hospital, Jamie was sent to foster care and almost immediately adopted. She was only six, as tiny as a four-year-old and the cutest thing I’d ever seen. She always made me laugh. Every day, even at the end when I was trying to take care of her by myself and I lay awake at night scared of every thump in the wall, thinking robbers were trying to get in, not knowing I’d soon have much scarier things to fear than robbers. Jamie was the only thing that got me out of bed in the morning. I loved that kid.

But by the time I got out of the hospital and the Thing finally went away, she was eight. I told the social workers I didn’t want to see her. I figured she had a new life somewhere and was better off without me.

“No brothers or sisters,” Dani says. “Penny couldn’t get pregnant.”

“Oh. That sucks.” I swallow the lump in my throat.

Why am I doing this to myself? Why am I letting myself think about all those stupid memories that I’d be better off forgetting? It’s something about Dani. She makes me feel so much …
softer
. Soft enough for things inside me to crumble and all the sadness to seep up through the cracks.

I drop her hand at the first step up to the house. Before I can decide whether letting her go makes the aching better or worse, there’s a crash from inside and a woman screams.

Dani rushes for the door and throws it open. “Penny? Penny!” She pauses in the doorway, scanning an enormous open room filled with overstuffed couches and a fireplace big enough to roast a pig whole. But there’s no one in sight and the house is suddenly quiet. “Penny! Where are you? Are you okay?”

“Dani?” The woman’s cry comes from the far right, back in the recesses of a room we can’t see. “Dani, don’t come in the house!”

“Shut up.” A man’s voice now, filled with a hearty dose of nasty. “Shut your mouth, Penny, you—”

“Run, Dani! Don’t come—” Penny’s warning is cut off by the sharp smack of skin striking skin. Then there are heavy footsteps and the crack of a door being thrown open.

I run for the sound, fists itching. Whoever just hit Dani’s stepmom is about to learn what it feels like to be on the receiving end of a little violence.
Violence
. Nothing like violence to banish all that oozing softness. I’m almost glad I have an excuse to kick someone’s ass.