Silver (9 page)

FOU
R
T
E
E
N

I find Mom in the den going through the Multiple Listing Service on her computer. She's surrounded by color signs and mock ups.
Cyndi Paxton sells dreams!

I sit down on the loveseat next to the desk. I don't say anything at first, not sure where to start. But there's no point beating around the bush.

“What am I?” I ask.

Her face twitches, just for an instant. She still doesn't look at me. For a minute, I think she's not going to say anything at all. Then she says, “You should know better than to fish for compliments. It's unbecoming.”

“That's not what I meant.” Now that I've put the question out there, I'm not leaving until I get a straight answer. Mom has avoided me long enough. She's avoided
this
long enough.

“Fine. You're a smart, beautiful girl I'm proud to call my daughter. Is that better?” It's exactly what moms are supposed to say to their kids. Probably something she heard on a talk show.

I'm not going to let her off with generic platitudes. “I'm some kind of freak.” I hold up the wrist with the bracelet. “That's why Nana gave me this, isn't it?”

Mom's nose crinkles up at the corners, the same way it does when a seller is unreasonable about a listing price or when an escrow falls apart. She doesn't like any bumps in her perfect suburban world. “Nana gave that to you because it's part of your heritage.”

“Please. I need to understand what's happening to me.” I wonder if she hears what I don't say.
It's happening again. I need for you to talk to me.

Her face relaxes. “Honey, you're just growing up. Your body is changing.” She pats my knee, her Clinique Happy perfume filling the air with the movement. “Didn't you read that book I left in your room?”

Mom's idea of a good talk consists of discretely placed books and magazine articles. “This isn't about sex,” I say. At least not entirely. “Something else is happening. Like before.”

She can't hide the wrinkles that cross her forehead. She takes a deep breath. “Honey, nothing happened before. The fire was caused when a few of the vials of chemicals broke.”

“Then why did you ask me about the wildfire? Why did you think that was me?”

Her lip quivers. “I was wrong to think that. You weren't even in town.” She looks away. “I shouldn't have asked.”

“Stop it.” She's not going to ignore it anymore. I can't pretend that nothing is wrong. “Nana knew something about it, but she's not here. I have to know the truth.”

Mom weighs her response. After what seems like forever, she finally speaks. “I don't know.” She lowers her voice, almost to a whisper. “There were stories. I never paid much attention to them. It all seemed kind of silly.”

I'd thought the same thing about Nana's talk of faeries and witchcraft and vengeful men. Once. Now it's all I can do to keep from hurling all over the laminate floor. “What do you know about my bracelet?”

“Not much. Nana made me promise to make sure you always wore it. But you always wore it anyway.”

“You thought I took it off last fall. Why?”

Mom pats her hair, making sure every strand is perfectly in place, as if being well-groomed will somehow prevent the truth from coming out. “The flames,” she finally says. “They were blue.”

Blue fire. The color of my fire. But it was a chemistry lab, and gas burns blue. It's an unusual color for a brush fire, although possible if the fire is hot enough. “Why does the color matter?” I ask.

Last night at the beach, when Blake kissed me, the fire turned blue.

Mom shifts in her chair. “It was just one of your Nana's superstitions.”

“Then why did you think I took off my bracelet? When you thought I started the wildfire?”

She puts her hands in her lap, wringing her fingers together. “You know Nana believed in the old legends.”

I wait, silent, until she takes a breath and goes on.

“She believed our family was touched; that every seventh generation there would be a daughter with great beauty and power.”

Nana believed a lot of things that had no application to our real lives. “What does that have to do with me?”

Mom's hands shake now. “Honey, I don't believe it and you shouldn't either.”

“Believe what?”

“The stories.”

“Tell me.”

“Nana's great-grandmother's grandmother. She was supposed to be a seventh-generation daughter.”

“What about her?”

Mom takes a breath and then closes her mouth before she says anything. “She killed a lot of people.” She balls her hand into a fist. “Nana said she burned an entire village to get revenge on the man who broke her heart. With blue fire.”

I try to rationalize what my mother is saying. Does mental illness run in my family? Some recessive gene that manifests every seventh generation? I add up the generations between myself and my grandmother's great-grandmother's grandmother. Seven. “Am I going to go crazy?”

Mom shakes her head. “I don't know. Nana said the bracelet would protect you.”

“From what?”

“From men who would burn you as a witch. From yourself. At least until your seventeenth birthday.”

“What happens on my seventeenth birthday?”

Mom looks down at her hands. When she finally looks up, her eyes shine with tears. “I don't know, honey. You tell me.”

I can't imagine my mom believing in anything beyond the power of a beautiful smile and firm handshake. I think back to my fire. The blue flames on my hands. The feeling that the fire came from inside me. That I could control it. It seemed so real. Am I going to go so crazy that I might really hurt someone?

I put my hands over hers. “I don't know what to believe.”

We sit in silence, holding hands, for a long time. When I finally stand up, she turns back to the computer without saying a word.

I go into my room and crawl into bed, pulling a pillow over my head and crying until I fall asleep. I don't even wake up for dinner.

The next day goes by in a haze. My gut aches again as soon as I wake up, hollow and empty. I want desperately to go back to being the science geek whose main role in life is to serve as witness to Haley's string of true romances. I don't want to be the nut case who disappears in mists or imagines guys speaking to me during frozen moments in time. I don't want the pain of knowing that Blake hasn't even tried to contact me since Saturday. I don't want to wonder what it means that my seventeenth birthday is only ten days away.

As I drive to Bridle Oaks after school, I try to focus on the preparations for the Del Mar National. At least Dart loves me no matter what kind of freak I am. But when I get to the stable, Dart's stall door is wide open and empty. His halter's gone too, so it's unlikely he managed some great barn escape and ended up on the highway. Still, I don't like not knowing where he is.

Marcy's school horse, Hershey, grazes alone in the pasture where we turn the horses out. There are no horses in our riding arena. I walk over to the larger arena where Sam's students ride. A beautiful chestnut is going through a set of jumps. It takes a second before I realize it's Dart. The jumps are at least half a foot higher than anything I've taken him over. He clears them with confidence, his form textbook.

Parker Winslow guides Dart to each jump with the timing and skill of a professional. Marcy and Sam smile and talk in the center of the arena. I lean on the rail, awed that this amazing horse is really mine. I can't take credit for his natural talent or excellent breeding. Even so, I had a little to do with spotting the potential in the skinny track reject with high withers.

Jenna Bowman comes up next to me, her eyes wide as she watches Dart sail over a four-foot oxer. “He's perfect.”

“He is, isn't he?”

She nods, her eyes still following Dart around the arena. Jenna is horse crazy in the way only ten-year-old girls can be.

“You want to ride him sometime?”

Jenna's eyes grow even wider. “Really? Can I?”

“Sure.”

Both her feet leave the ground as she squeals. I laugh and make a mental note to ensure it happens soon.

Parker brings Dart down to a walk and lets the reins go slack. She smiles and pats him on the neck. Dart's ears flick back toward her, his breath fluttering through his nose in
contented snuffles.

I'm grooming Hershey in the barn aisle when Marcy catches up with me a half hour lather. “You're not going to believe this!” She grins. “Parker Winslow is thinking of buying Dart.”

I flinch. It's irrational, I know. I don't like the idea of Dart becoming the equivalent of the latest Prada bag in Parker's closet. Sure, he would have the best grooms, supplements, and trainers that money can buy. But who would love him?

Marcy must see the expression on my face. “You know that Parker wouldn't dream of owning a horse that cost less than two hundred thousand, right?”

“Dollars?”

Marcy laughs.

A groom leads Dart into the barn and puts him away. He munches a chunk of apple from his feed bin. The light scent of lavender shampoo fills his stall. He doesn't even look up to greet me when I slide under the chain.

“
Et tu
, Dart?” It's just as well that it's a rhetorical question. Dart roots in his bin for another piece of apple. He has so moved on.

By Wednesday night, the dull ache in my gut has grown to a sharp, relentless throbbing. Blake still hasn't called, a fact I can no longer ignore. I check my phone for messages with increasing frequency just in case. Haley has already made plans to go out with Austin on Friday, and even Jonah the slimeball made the effort to text Christy again. So while Christy and Haley come up with endless plans and speculation about the upcoming weekend, I bury myself in my pillows and fight the urge to call Blake myself.

At midnight, I sit straight up in bed. I know where Blake is. Rush set up a poker game for tonight.

I throw on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and am in my car before I can think enough to talk myself out of it. Within ten minutes, I'm in Wolfgang Hunter's parking lot, my headlights pointed at Blake's black SUV.

This is definitely crazy-stalker territory. I don't care. We have to face what happened eventually, and I need to figure some things out—soon. My seventeenth birthday is a week from Friday, and Blake might be the only person who can understand what's happening to me. He said he saw the silver light too. Besides, just knowing he's here makes me feel better. At least I know he's safe.

Safe?
R.D. doesn't have much crime beyond the occasional car burglary or drunk driving arrest. It's a shock to realize that a good part of the discomfort I've felt since leaving Blake is some primitive concern for his well-being, especially since I, psychotic stalker girl, probably pose the biggest threat to his safety.

There are a surprising number of cars in the lot given the late hour. I debate whether to go in. One glance in the mirror is enough to keep me firmly rooted to the driver's seat. My hair is even wilder than usual, curling out in all directions. I instantly regret my rush to get out of the house. I turn on the radio and wait.

I'm not sure how long a poker game is supposed to last, exactly. It's almost an hour before anyone walks out of the restaurant. A gray-haired man in a long coat glides through the parking lot and climbs into a large Mercedes. He drives off without ever looking toward the Blue Box.

It's another thirty minutes before a short round man in a baseball cap walks out and gets into a red Porsche. Definitely compensating for something there.

Another hour goes by. The air temperature drops at least ten degrees while I sit in my car waiting for a glimpse of him in a dark parking lot.

At three o'clock, I make up my mind to go home before I embarrass myself completely. When I turn the key in the ignition, the Blue Box sputters but doesn't turn over. Perfect. How am I going to explain this one to my parents? I doubt they'll believe that I woke up with a sudden craving for venison.

I'm about to try the engine again when I hear laughter across the parking lot. Four people exit the restaurant. I know Blake is with them even before they cross into the light of one of the lampposts. His blond hair stands out in contrast to the darkness that surrounds him, creating a glowing halo. Endorphins ricochet around my brain. It's all I can do to stay in my car.

In contrast, Blake's walk is relaxed and casual. Two girls flit around him. The taller one brushes her hand against his arm.

I pull the key out of the ignition and curl a fist around it, imaging how I could use it as a weapon if she touches him again. My hand shakes with rage.

What is wrong with me?

The group crosses under the light just as Blake walks ahead. Portia rushes to catch up with him. The other girl is Fishnet. She drops back to where Joe walks a step behind, her shoulders slumped in defeat. Joe leads her to the right, away from Blake and Portia. Perfect wingman.

I watch with morbid fascination as Portia leans into Blake, trying to get his attention. He pulls her into an embrace that has me reaching for the door handle. He says something in her ear and then abruptly lets her go, stepping back. She glares at him, crossing her arms over her chest. I can almost feel the frustration as Blake runs his hand through his hair. Hell, I
do
feel it. And then Blake turns and walks away. Portia starts to follow him, but seems to change her mind mid-step, spinning on her heel and marching off to a blue VW.

Blake approaches his car, and I swear I feel his mood lift a little now that Portia is off his back, or maybe that's just my mood lifting.