Markings (3 page)

My eyes narrowed.
Or was it broken
? Jogging over to investigate, I found the window had been pushed up halfway. It, too, had smashed glass, and the wooden panes were uneven, snapped in half.

“Weird,” I whispered to myself. Very weird. At least the cat was no longer in the building. I was about to turn away when a swatch of white grabbed my peripheral vision. I stared beyond the ruined window, into the night. The white shape outside had a familiar form, lying across the ground. It was something—no, wait.

It was
someone
.

I bolted back down the hall. Kat and I almost crashed into each other at the corner. “Someone’s lying out there, outside the building! It looks like a kid,” I exclaimed, jamming a finger behind me.

Her eyebrows shot up. Her cell lay open in her hand, still ringing. Snapping it shut, she said, “Let’s go.”

We escaped out the emergency exit. At first, I lost sight of the white blur on the ground. What if it had been just a passing animal of some kind? Maybe a weird spot on my glasses. As we rounded the cage of a recovering eagle, however, I saw it again.

“There!” I jabbed a finger into the distance. “Over there.”

“I see it. Come on.” Kat tugged my hand. We ran.

As the figure came into view, the air around me felt uncanny, unreal.

“Holy smokes.” Kat slowed herself to a walk.

I stared at him, stared at the dirt on his freckled cheeks, the blood seeping through the leg of his camo shorts as he lay unconscious on the ground. “
What
is he doing here?”

It was Aaron.

Chapter 3: Suspicious

T
he room smelled of anti-bacterial, its walls papered in shades of blue and white. Kat sat on the counter, me on the chair against the wall. I hated hospital rooms. I hated hospitals all together. Not only for their blandness, but because I’d been in one once after a car accident. They reeked of human instability, of untimely deaths, and of severed families.

Aaron lay still in the bed before us. His eyes were shut, chest lifting and falling in a delicate, even pattern. His face had gone pale, dark circles under his eyes.

Kat stared as if in a trance. “He’s so beautiful,” she said.

I snorted. “Jeez, Kat, blink. Before your eyes dry out.” He was like a vampire; even when he looked horrible something about him remained utterly brilliant. Not many had that natural ability. My thoughts, along with the silence, were suddenly interrupted by the sound of Michael Jackson’s
Thriller
.

“Crap!” Kat grabbed at her pajama pocket, the one hiding her cell phone.

“Take that out of here,” I snapped, waving my hands towards the door. This was not the time to wake Aaron up, especially since I didn’t know what to say to him yet.

“I’m sorry! I’m going.” She stumbled off the counter and clambered outside.

Aaron stared, awake. “What are
you
doing here?” he whispered.

“Uh—I—Kat and I got you here,” I said, feeling my neck get all itchy—a sign my nerves were back. “We found you on the field behind the wildlife shelter.”

“Oh.” His eyes meandered to the window. I twitched at the sight of the IV in his wrist. I hated needles. “Great,” he muttered. “I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember?” How would you not remember passing out in the middle of an outdoor field?

“No.” He frowned at the hospital blankets. “Not really.”

“So, you don’t remember being attacked? No big tan cougar wandering around? No lying in the grass?” No memories of snorfing up my hair in the woods either, I take it?

Our eyes met again. His stare weighed on me heavily. I wanted to look away but couldn’t. He narrowed an eye. “An attack?” That seemed to jog his memory. “Oh, the attack.”

“You know now?”

“Um.” He looked to be in a mental debate, or lost in a distant memory. “It’s . . . it’s pretty fuzzy.”

“I see.” I had a feeling he knew more than he was leading me to believe, but I didn’t press. We might’ve met but we were still strangers; I didn’t trust him and he didn’t have to trust me. After a short silence, I asked, “How’s your leg? The doctor said you already had stitches before now, but you tore some out.”

“Yeah. I got stitches last Friday.”

“Friday?” I twisted my face in confusion. If he’d gotten stitches Friday, something had happened Friday, too. “So you weren’t attacked tonight then?”

He shrugged matter-of-factly. “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

“Oh.” Of course.

“You said something about the shelter. What were you doing there by yourself so late?”

“Ellen’s sister went into labor. I’m a temp for Jamie right now, and I was asked to close up because Ellen rushed off. One of our wildcats escaped. I thought maybe that’s what injured you.”

He tilted his chin thoughtfully. Letting out a sigh, he stretched, his spine making several cracks. “You shouldn’t have put me in here.” He folded his non-IV hand behind his head.

“Uh, what?”

“You shouldn’t have taken me here.”

“Are you serious? You were unconscious in the middle of the blinking countryside! So, what? I should’ve just
left
you there?”

“You should’ve called Ellen.”

“And say what? Hey, tell your sister to keep the bun in the oven, your co-worker injured himself and doesn’t want to go to the hospital?”

Aaron laughed. It was a bubbly sound, nothing like the tone of voice he’d been using. “Keep the bun in the oven . . . Funny.” He smiled. “So what’s your name? Or am I going to have to guess?” He scanned me up and down. “I never asked at the shelter. You look like an Abby or an Olivia to me.”

My temper fizzled away. Gosh darn, it was hard to stay mad at him when he smiled. It made all his freckles pull tight, his cheek bones rounder. “Try Lina.”

“Is that short for something?”

“Celina. But only my mom uses my full name.”

“Celina.” Darn, my name sounded good coming off his lips. He raised an eyebrow, adding: “I take it you know my name?”

I blushed really bad just then, looking at my lap. “Aaron.”

“Very good.” He squirmed around in his bed, unsettled.

“Do you want some pillows or something?” I didn’t want to admit my longing to comfort him. I didn’t
like
my longing to comfort him as he didn’t deserve it. What he deserved was a questionnaire. He hadn’t been taken off my list of creepers yet. I should’ve confronted him about the hair sniffing thing here and now, but I just couldn’t find the words. And there was just something about seeing an injured boy in a hospital bed that made it hard to attack him.

“I’d take a cell phone if you have one handy.” He turned his head, slightly batting his lashes.

I tried not to melt, resist the urge to tell him he could have anything he wanted. “Um, okay. Why?”

“I need to call my sister, tell her where I am so she can come get me.”

“Uh, I really doubt the nurse is going to like that.”

“I don’t give a damn what the nurse wants,” he snapped, but calmed down as he saw me flinch away. Rubbing his face, he sighed. “Sorry, I . . . I don’t do well in places like this. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t blame you.” I plucked my cell from my pocket. Really, his family should know where he was. “Just, if the nurse asks? You didn’t get it from me.”

“Deal.” He dialed in some numbers. The line rang. A voice echoed from the other end. “Trinity? Yeah, I know . . . I know . . . I
know
. Listen to me, will you? No, I’m in the hospital . . . Ummm—” He gave me a funny look. “The
Providence
hospital. You know?
People
?” He paused, rolling his eyes. “Yes, come get me! Take me over there if I’m going to be traumatized. Just, get me out of here. Tonight.”

“Good luck,” I said as he handed the phone back. “You can’t run away from a secured area like this though.”

He snorted, smirking like he knew better.

Just then the door opened. Kat poked her head in, frowning. “Uh, Lina? The nurse wants us out and—oh, hi, Aaron!”

He gave a tiny nod. “Hi, Kat. New job going well?”

She went all starry-eyed. “Yeah. It’s going super well, though I can’t say I don’t miss you guys.” She was doing the nervous giggle thing.

“Well, see you later,” I said, rising from my chair.

“I’m sure you will.” He glared down at the IV in his wrist. “As soon as I can get out of here.”

I shouldn’t have been smiling, but I couldn’t help it. Creepy but magnetic and too cute for my own good, this boy was a deadly combo. “Okay. Good luck.”

“Bye, Aaron!” Kat waved as I pushed her out. He waved, or more like held a hand up. The second the door closed she squealed, going on her spiel about what had happened this evening and it was fate that we found him.

I listened, fingers tingling around my cell. It was still warm from Aaron’s touch.

•   •   •

Tuesday morning I woke with a bizarre case of itchy shoulders. No matter how much I scratched it wouldn’t go away. I took an extra-hot shower, hoping to burn out the problem. Grabbing up my new conditioner, I glanced at the ingredients, but gave up decoding words like lipopeptides and xylene sulfonate pretty quick. Maybe I had gotten into something on the reserve. After dousing myself in Cortisone spray, I settled on the softest, lightest top in my closet: a navy cardigan with a white tank top underneath. I rolled the sleeves up and pulled on my high-tops.

The front desk was all by itself as I came into the shelter’s lobby. Tossing my purse under the counter, I stepped into the hall. Besides the muffled sounds of the birds down in Room 6, everything seemed strangely still.

“Ellen?” I called, voice echoing. She didn’t answer.

Pushing the storage room door open, I peered around at the shelves, the fridges. No one.
How strange
. Jamie wouldn’t put me here all on my own, at least I didn’t think she would. Returning to the hallway, I was about to call her when I heard giggles from a door on my far left. Voices drifted out from behind a cracked door. Tip-toeing to the end of the hall, I peeked inside.

Shelves lined two of the room’s white walls, books and notepads and papers stacked neatly on them. A couple board games and a box of playing cards hid among the office work as well. A desk against the west wall had been piled with similar objects and a flat-screen computer.

Behind the desk, a girl in sweat pants stretched along a pool table. Armed with a black pool stick, she slid its tip back and forth along her finger, preparing to smack the cue ball. Two long, chocolate-colored braids fell across her back, a black bandana tied around her head.

At the other end of the pool table, I spotted my nightmare: a clothespin girl. Long-legged and thin as a post, she sat on the table’s edge. Her skin glowed golden—a color I would never achieve because my skin doesn’t tan, it burns—waves of sun-paled hair rippling to her waist. Her hair and fragile features made me think,
mermaid
. If she became a model, or maybe secretly was one, at least editors would save themselves some trouble. They wouldn’t need to digitally edit her photos, remove flaws or intensify features; she was pretty much perfect. Helen of Troy’s descendant for all I knew.

I endured a sudden wave of self-consciousness.

“Okay, missy, your turn,” the girl in the sweats said after missing a striped ball.

Mermaid Girl pursed her lips, examining the table. Picking at the low rim of her tank top, she hopped off and strode to the other side. Her jean shorts rode up as she bent over, a sight even a married man would peek at. Even from the door, I could smell her. She reeked of Juicy Couture perfume. A loud
clack
echoed through the room as the pool balls collided. Sweats Chick whistled as the girl shot a solid five across the table, into a corner pocket then proceeded to hit another. She missed.

“Crap,” Mermaid Girl said. “Missed. Your turn, Alison.”

“Awesome.” Sweats Chick—err—Alison smiled.

Mermaid Girl looked like she was about to say something else, then stopped. Her nostrils flared. Straightening up, she tilted her head to the side. “You can come in, whoever’s standing outside the door,” she called.

I cringed. Oops. But how had she even heard me? I’d been silent, and neither of them had glanced my way. Nudging the door open, I gave a sheepish smile. “Hi. Sorry, I was looking for Ellen,” I explained.

The girls blinked at me. Alison looked to Mermaid Girl, who tilted her head like a puppy, scanning my profile. She seemed to be searching for information, or making a mental note that I wore glasses and cardigans. Her sapphire eyes caught my attention. Like Aaron’s, they had strange flakes of gold around their edges.

Flashing this A-plus smile, she said, “Oh. You’re the new girl, right? Wait! Don’t tell me your name. It’s on the tip of my tongue. Um . . . Sarah? Cecelia. Serena—”

“Celina,” I said.

“That’s it!” She snapped her fingers, like the light bulb had just come on. “Celina—Oh . . . Wait, you’re the girl who found my brother, right?”

Whoa. Brother? My eyebrows shot up. “You’re Aaron’s sister?” Oh. No wonder she was so flawless-looking. Anyone who shared genes with Aaron would be.

“Ha, ha. Yup. He’s my baby brother. Well, not really a baby anymore.” She shrugged, rolling her eyes. Her lids were masked in a shimmering blue powder, eyelashes so long and dark I questioned if they were real. “I’m Trinity. It’s nice to finally meet you, Celina, and thank you for saving my brother. I’ve heard so much about you.”

“You can call me Lina,” I corrected, reaching to shake her outstretched hand. She’d heard about me, huh? From who, Aaron?

“That’s such a pretty name, Celina,” she mused. “Isn’t it like, Spanish?”

“Um, I’m not sure.” I shook my head. “It was my great-grandmother’s name. She’s kind of an icon on my dad’s side of the family.” Not that Dad talked much about his grandmother, but he talked more about her than his parents or anyone else in his family, who to this day I’ve never met.

Supposedly my great-grandmother, Celine Marie Bayberry, had moments of being psychic—good with predicting weather and crop outcomes, and with a penchant for storytelling. Then in her late teen years her visions became more frequent. She lost touch with reality, and just as her family was about to hospitalize her she disappeared. I liked to think Dad was just exaggerating, and that she wasn’t truly crazy. Because if she was, that meant he’d named me after my one family member that was mentally ill.

“Well, I like it,” Trinity said.

“She has this thing with names. No idea why,” Alison giggled, a hand on her hip. “You can call me Ali if you want, but I go by Alison, too.”

“Nice to meet you,” I greeted.

“Ali, you want to go see if the boys are back? I thought I heard the jeep pull in. I’ll clean up our pool game and meet you in the lobby,” Trinity said as she stuck her pool stick in the rack on the wall then reached for Alison’s.

“All right. See you guys out front.” Alison headed for the door, closing it behind her.

I watched Trinity pull the clear wad of vinyl off the floor.
This is Aaron’s sister.
As she draped the vinyl over the pool table, I leaned against the desk, saying, “So how is Aaron doing anyway?”

“Oh, he’s all right.” She snorted. “He hates being laid up in bed though. Every time I come home, he’s up wandering around on that bad leg. Dork.”

“He couldn’t remember anything the night we were at the hospital. Do you know why he had stitches in the first place?”

She hesitated. “Um, you know, I don’t know. Some fight I think.” She waved her hand in the air, like getting in a fight wasn’t a big deal. Putting Alison’s stick away she added, “I’ve decided he’s just injury-prone . . . and tends to pick fights alone with the wrong crowd, I guess you could say.”

“Does he get into fights a lot?” I hated feeling so nosy, but for some reason part of me cared for Aaron. While I’d thought of him as a tough, sort-of creepy, pretty boys, I hadn’t thought of him as, you know, the
bad
boy sort. Like, the go partying every Friday, get drunk and in a bar fight type. Unless Trinity meant some kind of other fight, but what other types of fights were there around Wildcat Country?

“Eh. Not really,” Trinity replied. “He’s a good kid. Just kind of a loner.” There was more to that story—I could tell by her lack of eye contact and the distant tone in her voice. When she finally looked at me, she smiled and changed the subject. “Come on. Let’s go to the lobby. You can meet my boyfriend!”

Coming out of the hall, I saw a pair of boys standing with Alison near the counter. Trinity threw her arms around the neck of a boy taller and more muscled than Aaron. He swooped her up in his arms, pecking her on the lips. His blonde hair stuck up in the front, his smile broad and gleaming white. I recognized him as one of the guys who’d brought in the injured cougar. Nearby stood his buddy, the boy with the eyeliner. Slim and silent, he flipped his black hair to the side, revealing a complexion fairer than mine. I didn’t miss the way his fingers curled around Alison’s hand. She smiled at the floor.