Poison (11 page)

“Which is . . . ”

“Which is something he’ll tell you himself when he’s good and ready,” Hattie said. “Now, I don’t want you to go blabbing about that, because the poor boy’s going through enough of a culture shock without being treated like some kind of freak. Especially at school. Whatever he’s been sent here to do, I want him to feel like a normal teenager. For once.”

“For once?”

“Now, that’s all I’m going to say about it.”

“Okay,” I said. “Er . . . thanks.” I had to be—or at least pretend to be—content with that.

•  •  •

Bryce moved into Hattie’s living quarters at the restaurant. At Hattie’s request Peter moved back in too, even though he had a room at school. In fact, he moved out of the dorms at just about the same time I moved back in.

Great. Just great.

In a strange turn of events, Bryce—far from being considered an outcast, as Hattie had feared—quickly became one of the most popular guys at school. Girls were crazy about him, especially Becca, who thought he looked like Prince Harry. Peter liked him too. In fact, for two guys with a lot of extracurricular work to do, Peter and Bryce managed to spend a lot of time together. Time Peter could have spent with me.

There, I’d said it. Sometimes I just got tired of being understanding and non-clingy and self-sufficient. I missed the old, poor, awkward Peter. Old Peter once carried me down the ivy-covered wall of a burning building on his back. New Peter couldn’t eat lunch with me because he was either taking etiquette lessons from his great-uncle Jeremiah’s butler or else
hanging with Bryce and fighting off the girls who were all over the two of them like a coat of paint.

That was my state of mind—insecure, dejected, and melodramatically depressed—when my two so-called best friends, Becca and Verity, plopped down next to me in the cafeteria. It was the first I’d seen of them since I’d fled the dorms.

Since then I’d been alone so much that I’d stopped thinking about having friends, but here they were, uninvited and . . . Well, I was going to say “unwelcome,” but that wasn’t true. I’d missed them. Even Verity, who was usually a pain.

“Is this seat taken?” Becca asked, smiling. She always looked like she was in a shampoo commercial. Her curly blond hair literally bounced. With her dark eyes and pouty lips, she was as close to movie-star gorgeous as anyone at Ainsworth could get.

“What do you think,” I answered dryly. Since it was common knowledge that I was the school leper, I figured she’d get my drift.

Verity blushed as she placed her napkin on her lap in preparation for chowing down on the radishes and cucumber slices on her plate. “We need to talk,” she said in her usual breathy whisper.

“So talk,” I said, taking a bite of my cheeseburger.

“Are you really going to eat that?” Verity asked, looking queasy.

“No, I’m going to smear it all over my body, and then I plan to swim the English Channel.”

“All right, all right,” Becca said, leveling her soulful brown eyes at me. “Katy, are you okay?” She took my hand. I started to pull away, but I decided not to because I knew it wasn’t just
a gesture. “We came to your room earlier, and you were out cold on your bed.”

“Maybe I was asleep,” I suggested. “It’s been known to happen.”

“But we couldn’t wake you up,” Verity said.

“So?”

This, I admit, was bravado. Actually, I’d spent the previous couple of hours walking through a Moroccan pillow into a street bazaar in Fez. Ever since Morgan had shown me how to walk through objects, I’d been practicing. So far I’d gone to a Native American powwow through a feathered dream catcher, to a hippie commune through a beaded lamp, and, most surprisingly, to a nineteenth-century English drawing room, where some awful woman kept screaming at her daughter to sit up straight.

I wanted to see how far I could go with this new skill. Of course, my body wouldn’t be very active while I was visiting these places with my mind. I guessed I’d look pretty inert to the casual observer, but there usually weren’t any observers, so what did it matter? Also, it was a lot more fun than studying all the time.

“We thought maybe you were drunk.”

“Right. Thanks, Verity,” I said. “As supportive as ever.”

Becca looked down, blushing, but Verity got all steely, which was funny, considering how timid she was. It was like one of those cartoons where the mouse squared her shoulders and marched off to face the cat.

“I really thought you did it,” she said. “Zapped Summer, I mean.”

“So did everyone else,” I said. “With no proof at all.”

“That’s just it. I thought I had proof.”

I put down my burger. “What are you talking about?”

“I went into Summer’s room a couple of days after it happened,” Verity said.

That would have been after I’d been there with Peter. “Why?”

“I thought maybe I could help you. With a defense or something.” Now she blushed. “You see, sometimes I can . . . I can sense things.”

Right
, I thought. Verity claimed to have sensed plants screaming as they were being harvested. “Like what?” I asked, in what I admit may not have been a very respectful tone of voice.

“Like . . . ” Verity took a deep breath. “Like the fact that those girls lost their souls.”

“Lost their whats?” Sometimes Verity was so vague and inarticulate that you couldn’t tell what she was talking about.

“Well, maybe not
lost
, exactly. It’s more like their souls were pulled out of them.”

“Pulled . . . ” I couldn’t get my mouth to close long enough to form more words.

“Out of them,” Becca finished for me.

“I could see their traces,” Verity said. “Well, not
see
, exactly . . . ”

“Omigod,” I said, finally understanding. “You’re a scenter.”

“Not yet,” Verity protested. “That’s why I didn’t say anything. My parents don’t want me to tell people about this talent until it’s more developed.”

“But you . . . you saw Summer’s soul?”

“Not
saw
, exactly—”

“Okay, okay,” I interrupted. “Whatever. Where did they go?”

“That way, I think.” She pointed vaguely out the cafeteria’s north-facing windows. “I couldn’t follow the traces for long.”

“So you don’t know what happened to them?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“There was nothing else? No other traces?”

“Just fish,” she said. “It’s like someone had brought a lot of dead fish into the room.”

That had been me, of course, in the garbage can where I’d hidden after dumping out the oyster shells that had filled it.

“And one other thing,” Verity said after a long pause. “Although I don’t know if it means anything.”

“What was it?”

Verity looked embarrassed. “It was an image I got. A picture.”

“A picture?”

“Or maybe it was a dream. Or something I saw in a book. See, that’s why my parents don’t allow me to—”

“For God’s sake, what was it?”
I demanded. Sometimes Verity’s dithering could drive you crazy.

Her head swiveled, panic-stricken, between me and Becca. “It was . . . ” She lowered her eyes. “It was
toys
,” she said at last.

“Toys?” Becca looked at me. “Summer’s soul went to Toyland?”

“I knew I shouldn’t have said anything,” Verity said bitterly.

“What kind of toys?” I prompted.

“I don’t know. All kinds. Old toys. A jack-in-the-box. A doll with a lace collar. I don’t know.”

“Think.”

“I
can’t
, okay? That’s all I can do. These . . . things I get, the pictures, whatever . . . they’re like ribbons or something, floating through my mind. I can see them for a second, and then they float away again. And then I don’t know if I ever really saw them at all. And it wasn’t really
seeing
in the first place.”

“Okay,” I said. I’d never met a scenter before, but it seemed to be a really amorphous talent. Perfect for Verity. “So you don’t know if you really experienced it or not.”

“That’s it,” Verity said, seeming to have grown a little calmer. “Maybe when I get older, I’ll understand it better.” She smiled hopefully.

“But why didn’t you tell Miss P?” I wanted to know. “Even that much might have helped.”

Verity made a face. “I told you,” she said. “I thought you’d done it!”

“What? Taken their souls?”

“Yes. I thought that by keeping quiet I
was
helping you.”

There was a long silence. “Wow,” Becca said finally. She turned to me. “And I thought
you
were scary.”

“Anyway,” Verity went on after chewing her cucumber slice exactly fifty times and then dabbing her lips with her napkin, “that’s why I didn’t come around while you were having that trouble. I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” Becca said. “Not that I thought you’d done it or anything. But my mother . . . ”

“I get it,” I said. Most parents weren’t perfect, but Becca’s mom was something else. Wherever there was blame, Livia Fowler could be counted on to stick it on someone. After growing up with her, Becca was lucky not to have been a raving
lunatic. As it was, Becca had been pulling out her hair since she was twelve. Until last year she wore a red wig—because her mother liked red hair. We’d finally burned the thing one night after Becca had decided to face the world as she was, blond and semi-bald. And with me as her friend.

Her hair started to grow back after that. In fact, Becca was so beautiful that her short hair became her trademark and something other girls copied. But I think what really saved her was that, after the wig-burning incident, Becca was allowed to board at school. The farther away from Livia Fowler you got, the healthier you became.

“Yeah. It’s really hard to go up against Clytemnestra,” she said. I could tell that it really troubled Becca to admit her fear of her mother. “But when I heard that you’d moved back into the dorms, I had to see you.”

“And I don’t think you did it anymore either,” Verity chimed in.

“Oh?” I asked. “What changed your mind?”

“Miss P. I finally did go to see her. With my parents, of course.”

The light dawned. “To turn me in,” I guessed.

Verity turned bright red. “It was a matter of justice,” she said. “I wrestled with my conscience.”

“Good for you,” I said, wondering why I bothered with her.

“My dad says that the truth is always the best way to see that justice is done.”

Verity’s father was the attorney for Ainsworth School. “Good for him,” I said acidly.

“So what did Miss P say?” Becca asked, trying to diffuse the situation. “About the losing of the souls or whatever?”

“Nothing. But she said that magic of that magnitude couldn’t have been performed by a student, no matter how gifted,” Verity parroted.

“I got that too,” I said.

“Besides, the school board has decided to drop the investigation.”

“What?” I coughed. “You’ve waited till now to tell me this?

“I really shouldn’t be telling you at all,” Verity said. “Miss P will probably—”

“Tell me!” I demanded.

“Well, they’ve decided to go with the findings of the non-adepts.”

This was news. “Non-adepts” was the traditional term for cowen, or normal people. In this case, they were the families, doctors, and lawyers of the coma girls.

“Why?” I asked. “They wouldn’t know anything about the magic that knocked them all out.
We
don’t even know.”

“That’s the point,” Verity said. “The girls and their families aren’t witches. It’s better that we don’t even get involved.”

“Better for whom?” I wanted to know. Not the girls, certainly. But I knew these weren’t Verity’s thoughts. They had come from her father, and the school’s board of directors.

“She’s right,” Becca said. “It wouldn’t do any good to tell the families that magic was the cause. They wouldn’t believe it, anyway.”

“And there’s something else,” Verity said. She looked from Becca to me. “By the way, you can’t say anything about this.”

Becca crossed her heart.

“You, too.”

I dutifully complied, even though I didn’t believe that crossing your heart meant anything.

Verity lowered her voice. “Apparently there were drugs involved.”

“No way!” Becca shouted.

“Shh. They found a jar of some weird South American herb in Summer’s room, and traces of the same thing in the girls’ blood.”

“A South American herb?” I asked.

“Apparently used for weight control,” Verity said. “People make tea out of it and drink it.”

“But . . . that’s not a
drug
,” I said.

“It’s classified as one,” Verity explained primly.

“But it doesn’t count,” I hissed. “Is that what they’re saying caused four healthy people to lapse into comas? Drinking diet tea?”

“I guess it could happen,” Becca reflected.

“Oh, for crying out loud.” I stood up. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Maybe,” Verity said. “But that’s the position of the families. They’ve stopped the tests and blood analyses. And they’re not going to sue the school.”

So now Summer, A.J., Suzy Dusset, and Tiffany had been branded as drug fiends and abandoned by their own kind.

“That’s cowen for you,” Becca said.

Verity shrugged. “The board said it was up to them.”

“So everyone’s decided to let sleeping dogs lie.”

“And let Summer live out her life as a vegetable,” I said.

It wasn’t fair. Those Muffy girls weren’t my friends by any stretch of the imagination, but they deserved better than to be ignored and left to die. “I can’t believe Miss P would let this happen,” I said.

“Hey, it’s better than when everyone was blaming you, isn’t it?” Becca said.

“Don’t you see, it’s not just about me!” I turned to Verity. “You know how wrong this is,” I said.

She refused to meet my eyes.

“Is it because they’re cowen?” I asked. “What about that stuff about truth and justice?”

“But their own people won’t help them,” Becca said. “Why should we?”

“Because they’re human beings,” I said.

Verity stood up. “I have to get to class.”

“Me too,” Becca said. They picked up their trays. “We’ll talk later,” Becca mouthed.