Luminescence (Luminescence Trilogy) (2 page)

With a tug s
he attempted to shake off my grasp
,
but my h
old held like a vise grip
. “L-E-T go of me
,” she hissed through clenched teeth
–
drawing out the threat
. But her
anger
was nothing to match my own
. Right then my fury spiked.
I felt the fervor racing
in
my blood and tumble
d
into my fingertips. My hand trembled under the
tight
clutch I had on her arm.

When I spoke my voice sounded nothing like my own. It quivered with potency.
“
Like hell.
You should
watch what you say,
”
I spat.

There was a falter in her expression when I realized s
he’d felt the burn – the
sting that radiated from my fingers.
Again she tried to wiggle out of my hold. When she failed
a second time
, her gaze turned to mine and widened in astonishment, skepticism and a touch of fear.

“Your eyes,” she accuse
d
,
staring intently into mine.
“What’s wrong with your eyes?” h
er voice cracked, giving away the incredulity and dubiety she must have felt.
Appalled, her feet
scrambled
to back-
up.

Stepping forward, m
y heart accelerated
. T
humping heavily against my chest
–
her admission
put
anxiety into my stomach
.
I let go of h
er arm with a quick jerk
. She stumbled once, unsteady on her feet but never
took
her eyes from mine. They b
ore into
me
with fea
r, repulsion and
disbelief –
branding me
like the
freak
I felt
.

My breath came in quick pants as
I
averted my gaze and
close
d my eyes tightly,
trying to get a handle on the rage still pumping in me.
C
alm
ing
the
quick
pants
to longer slower ones,
I
recall
ed
one of the meditation techniques I’d learned.
I didn’t know what Rianne thought she saw in my eyes
oth
er than extreme anger
, I tried to cajole.
Even if her fear had been real, i
t was hardly past Rianne’s character to make a fool out of others in front of the whole school. Hell
, it was
what she did on a daily basis.

Continuing to
mentally
talk myself
down
, I felt the
slow
recession
of my flare-up. The
warm
th
faded from my skin and the overwhelming urge to
punish Rianne
drifted with the los
s
of contact.

“Brianna, are you okay?” I heard Tori ask
behind me
over the
swiftly
receding roar
in
my
skull
.

Shaking
my head
I
tried
to clear
the
rattled
outburst, berating myself for the enormous slip in front of
the
entire
school
nonetheless
. If I wasn’t thought of as odd and weird
before,
this just put
me
on the front page of weirdo
’s attending Holly Ridge High.

“What did you do to me?” Rianne
screeched
accusingly at me in
a tone of contempt and outrage.

Saying nothing,
I o
pened my eyes to see her
clutching the arm I had grasped
. Dread sunk to the sole
s
of
my
converse cove
red heels
. Had I really done that? Was I capable of inflicting that kind of h
arm with just my fingers?

B
right, swollen cherry
marks
line
d
Rianne’s arm in the spots my fingers had clasped.
The wound looked like
imprints
or burn marks
from a
flatiron
that had
penetrated
her flesh, except my fingers had been the branding-iron.

There was no doubt of the horror I saw at my hands now blistering Rianne’s forearm.
Embarrassment, regret and shame swarmed
my gut, twisting it heavily with guilt.
Not willing to answer questions I didn’t have answers for, I quickly turned to leave.

Like a gust of wind I became acutely aware of the large audience my spectacle had created. The
y
stood circled around Rianne, Tori, Austin and I
–
s
ome chanting and jeering our names
,
encouraging a fight.

Without a second thought
I
pushed my
way
through
an opening in the awkward sea of people, rushing before someone could stop me or prior to teacher arrival. The need for escape steamrolled over me
– th
ere were
to
o
many eyes, to
o
many questions, t
o
o
much emotion
.

My mind seemed to have temporarily abandoned me.
There
was no other explanation
for my actions or for my legs carrying not to my last class but to the exit doors of the school. I’d never in three years of high school ever ditched out on a class – I know unfathomable
.
H
owever
,
I’m among the select few who like school. Okay maybe not so much school but learning. Being shy and mostly social
ly
challenged, books wer
e more my friend than my peers –
Tori and
Austin
the exception
.

My actions today were so out of character for me, I began to doubt who I thought I was.
I hate
d
confrontation.
I never cause
d
trouble a
nd
I don’t attack people in the hall
burning
the
fuse
on my temper
. Never.

Right now all I knew was that I had to get out of here, run from what I just done and seen.
The walls of the school suffocated me in their confines.

A
s I stepped out the front door of school, a soothing breeze whipped through my tousled
dark
hair.
Washing
over the flush
in
my face,
it
cool
ed
the heat that had crept up on me during my impermissible mood. The balmy air
was
scented with just a taste of the ocean in the distance
– it never seemed far away
.

Holly Ridge, North Carolina
had been
in the mitts of
one those
dreamy
sun-drenched
day
s
.
But now
gray clouds were rolling across the
sky
. The ground was drenched from a downpour of rain
.
A crackling of light
ning lit in the distance followed by a gentle rumble of thunder.
W
hatever storm had passed through was on its way out.
Ironic that it
fit my mood –
dreary and unpredictable
.

Peering around at the lush landscape, a sight
I
often
took
for granted, t
he overhang of trees and grass meeting the sandy shores, then plunging into depths of exp
ansive turquoise sparkling sea
.
The grass began to glisten as sunbeams tried to break through the storm clouds.

I
nhal
ing
a deep gush of
flavored
misty
air
,
I rounded the corner to the
back
side of the building
,
rushing
toward the parking lot
. A strange prickly sensation
climbed over me, like clashing
with a cactus. Doing my best to brush it off, I
too
k the corner
faster than planned and sped
up my retreat
.
Unfortunately I wasn’t the only
one
who apparently skimmed out of school early to
day.

Leaning
comfortably
against the wall was an unfamiliar face and in my haste I smack
ed
into
him
–
literally.
My face connected with the solid front of his chest, hands clutching on the muscle
of his biceps
.
In a
n impossible
gut-reaction h
e
caught me
in his arms
.
We wavered a tad but
he
managed to
keep us
erect instead of mortifying
me further
and
tumbling us to the grass
.

Damn
, I thought. What else could happen today?

I
forced
my
glance up
wards
from the black
cotton
tee
that conformed to his
chest
,
ready to
apologize for my clumsiness
.
Heedlessly
of how much I
wanted to keep
my
head lowered,
run
and forget this day happened
.
His
hands
tingled on my arms
still holding me
.
Which should have been
to
intimate for comfort
, but I found the opposite to be true.
A sense of
safe
ty came over me
, p
robably because he had just saved me from falling on top of him
.

My hands
released their grip and
flatten on his chest
.
His heart quickened
under my fingers.
The
scent
of him
drifted to my senses
s
melling of the forest,
w
ild and reckless.
The apology
I’d been about to utter,
stuck in the
back
of my throat
. In that
blinding
moment I tripped into
a
set of sapphire eyes. My
own
heart
picked up speed, thumping
wildly in my chest
– u
ncontainable like stallions
roaming
the plains.
Nothing like the
trepidation I felt previously. This was
racing excitement.

He raised a perfectly arched brow decorated with a studded bar.
H
i
s eyes sparkled with amusement, assumingly at my
gap
ing
stare. Unaware that I’d stood stunned, feet pl
anted with no attempt to move
from his arms
.
In retrospect I can only hope he didn’t find
me
as stupid as I later felt.

My gaze wonder
ed
from his eyes down the planes of
his cheeks to lips donned with yet another
pierc
ing. This one was
a
hoop in the center of his lower lip
.
Those
silver
studded lips upturned into a
lazy
smirk.
I watched fascinated by
the
curl
of
his mouth
. An
intense
string of
butterflies flew
in
my stomach.
They
felt more like fireflies because of the warmth that swirled with the exhilaration.
F
leetingly
I wondered
if there were
any more parts of him pierced.