Trust Me (4 page)

Anthony felt like someone had just run a finger down his spine. “That means-”

“It means that whoever left me my little present probably knew I could get their thoughts if they left any prints,”

Rae interrupted, her voice low and strained. “It means yet again there’s someone out there messing with me. And I
don’t know why. And I don’t know who-except that whoever it is had no problem finding my locker.”

“Crap,” Anthony muttered.

“Yeah,” Rae said.

“I guess we gotta assume that it was the work of the same freak who was behind the pipe bomb and kidnapping
Jesse,” Anthony said.

“And bugging your car, and taking all those pictures of me, and who knows what else,” Rae answered. “Yeah, let’s
hope it’s all the same person; otherwise…” She didn’t finish the thought.

Why wasn’t there somebody he could go beat the hell out of for her? He hated feeling so freakin’ helpless.

“But you know, there was one good thing that happened today,” Rae told him. And she smiled. An actual all-out
smile that made the corners of her eyes crinkle.

“Cool. So tell me. But make it quick,” Anthony added. “We’ve got to get some pool time in.” He knew the swimming
thing scared her, but it would be a distraction from all the other crap. And she really did need to learn how to swim.

“Okay, Vince, he’s a running back on the Sanderson team, he broke his leg, bad break,” Rae said in a rush. “The
team needs a killer replacement; otherwise they’re not going to make it to state. And I told the coach about you.”

“About me?” Anthony repeated. His head filled with static.

“Yes, about you. And how great you are. And how you could be the savior of the Sabertooths,” Rae said. She gave
a small bounce on her toes like a little girl. “The coach says you should show up for practice tomorrow. If he likes
what he sees-”

“I’m supposed to go to a practice?” It was like her words were getting all distorted by his brain static. Was she
really saying what he thought she was saying? Playing on the Sabertooths, maybe getting to state-Anthony
suddenly got a picture of Tom in the stands, watching him. That would finally shut the SOB up. Maybe Anthony’s
dad would even-he shook his head and forced himself to listen to what Rae was saying.

“-need to be on the field at three. The coach, Mr. Mosier, said that a scholarship is a possibility if you’re as good as
I said you were, which I know you’ll be. You’d just have to take some academic tests-”

Rae kept talking, but Anthony didn’t hear a single word after “academic tests.”

“What is wrong with you?” he demanded. “You know better than anybody that I have zero chance of passing any
kind of test.”

“That’s not true.” Rae’s blue eyes were almost shooting sparks at him. “You’ve been working really hard, and
you’ve improved a ton. Even your English teacher mentioned it.”

“Yeah, I’ve been doing real good-for a complete idiot,” Anthony snapped.

“Don’t say that,” Rae ordered.

“I’ll say whatever I want,” Anthony replied. “Now stop stalling and get in the pool.”

Rae whipped her towel off her shoulders and threw it over against the wall, then she strode over to the shallow
end and marched down the steps without a second of hesitation. Anthony followed her more slowly, trying not to
focus on just how much of her skin was exposed right now.

“Okay, first thing you have to learn is how to float on your back. Try it,” he instructed. He noticed that she was
trembling, just a little. He didn’t know if it was because she was cold, or scared, or having some delayed stress
reaction, or if she was just furious at him. Didn’t know. And didn’t care. The girl had no idea what she’d just done to
him. She’d held out this thing, the thing she knew he would die to have. Then teased him with it a little and snatched
it away. Why had she even brought the team up when she knew there were tests involved? He was stupid, anyway.

But on tests-forget about it.

“Why are you just standing there?” he barked at Rae. “You’re supposed to be practicing floating.”

“I told you I don’t know how to swim. At all,” Rae shot back.

Anthony reached over, wrapped one arm around Rae’s shoulders and one around her knees, and maneuvered her
into position on her back. “Just keep your head back and your chest out, and you’ll float,” he told her. “I’ll hold on to
you until you’ve got it,” he added.

Rae pulled in a long, shuddering breath and squeezed her eyes shut. She looked like she was about to face a
firing squad.

“You don’t have to try so hard,” Anthony said. “Think about something else. Like those clouds you painted on
your hallway. Just forget you’re in the water and imagine yourself floating on those clouds.”

Rae’s body stayed tight. He could feel her muscles clench as he held her. Man, she wasn’t kidding about being
afraid to swim. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.” He kept repeating the words until he could see her begin to relax. Then
he just shut up and waited until she started to float on her own.

“You’re doing it,” he finally announced, keeping his voice soft so he wouldn’t startle her.

Rae opened one eye and looked up at him. “I am?”

“You are,” he answered. He slowly pulled his hands away from her and held them up. “See? It’s all you.”

She floated for half a second more, then she tilted her head too far back and pulled in a snootful of chlorinated
water. And it was over. She went down kicking and flailing.

Anthony reached out, grabbed her hand, and pulled her back to her feet, sputtering and coughing. A stream of
water was running out of her nose. “You look-”

He stopped abruptly when his fingers began to tingle. It felt like an electric charge was running from Rae to him, up
his fingers, up his arm, all the way up to his brain. He glanced at her face, nearly jerking backward when he saw the
expression in her eyes as she stared at him. It was almost like she was staring inside him.

She’s getting a mind dump from me,
he realized. He pulled his hands from hers, breaking the fingertip-to-fingertip
contact.

“Sorry,” she muttered. “I wasn’t trying to-”

“I know,” Anthony answered. He didn’t even want to think about what she’d yanked out of his head. Not like she
didn’t know pretty much everything about him from the last time they went fingertip to fingertip.

“So, you ready to try again?” He knew she was still freaked from going under, but if she called it quits for the day, it
was going to make it a lot harder the next time.

“There’s this spot on my leg that got numb,” Rae answered. She ran her fingers down her left calf.

“Like a cramp?” he asked.

“Like a dead place. I can’t even feel it.” She jabbed her calf with one finger. “I need to get out for a minute.” She
started for the steps, but before she was halfway there, her left leg buckled.

Anthony caught her around the waist before she went under again and helped her out of the pool. He led her over
to their towels and grabbed hers without letting go of her. She was really shaking now. “You okay?” Anthony asked
as he wrapped the towel around her.

“Uh-huh. Fine,” Rae answered, her teeth chattering. Anthony used a corner of the towel to dry off her face.

“Thanks,” Rae mumbled.

Anthony kept smoothing the towel down her cheek, even though it was dry. She was so beautiful. Why did she
have to be so freakin’ beautiful?

His eyes drifted down to her lips. They were full, lush, like they were filled with something sweet. And all he wanted
was to kiss them, to kiss her and feel her close to him.

Rae moved a fraction of an inch toward him. Did she know what he was thinking? Did she
want
him to kiss her?

Anthony let go of the towel and stepped back. “Maybe you should sit down for a while,” he said. “I’m going to…

I’m going to swim a couple of laps.” Then he got himself into the cool water before he could do something stupid.

Because kissing her would be stupid, very stupid. Nothing could happen between him and Rae. They were friends,
yeah. But they were way too different to be anything more than that.

Rae put her book down on the bedside table and ran her fingernail lightly down her calf. Even though the nail was
barely touching the skin, she felt it. The numbness was gone. It had been gone by the time she got home from the
pool almost an hour ago, but she was compelled to keep checking. Because what if-

Don’t even go there,
Rae ordered herself. She picked up her copy of
The Scarlet Letter
again, found her place,
read a sentence, read it again, then firmly closed the book and flung it across the room. She had zero concentration.

If there was a pop quiz tomorrow, she’d just have to wing it. She pretty much knew the whole story, anyway.

Rae ran her fingernail down her leg again. Still fine. But what if… she squeezed her eyes shut as if that would keep
the thought from coming. It didn’t.
What if what’s happening to me is what happened to Mom?

It wasn’t a new thought. Rae had been wondering for a while if her mother ended up in the mental institution
because she had a power like Rae’s, a power Rae’s mother hadn’t understood the way Rae did. Getting random
thoughts all the time was enough to make anyone think they were crazy. Rae knew that from personal experience.

She tapped her leg. Still fine.

The thing was, until today she hadn’t thought that maybe the way her mother died had been connected to the
fingerprint ability-if her mother even had it. Did the power do something to the body? Was that why her mother’s
body had deteriorated so quickly? Rae’s dad had told her the doctors never figured out exactly what caused the
deterioration to start. And obviously they’d never figured out how to stop it.

Am I going to die, too?
The thought had the force of a punch.

A couple of numb spots that hardly lasted any time don’t equal deterioration,
Rae told herself. She tapped her leg.

Fine. She tapped the spot on her arm that had gone numb at Anthony’s house. Fine.

Maybe I should have used Tom as a motivator to make Anthony get his butt to practice tomorrow,
Rae thought,
remembering the fight Tom and Anthony had had yesterday. She looked over at her phone. She could call him. Give
it another shot.

No, he’d been way too pissed off. If she could just make him see how much he’d really improved-Rae sighed. She
guessed that was something he’d have to figure out for himself. The big, stubborn… Anthony.

God, everything had gone wrong with him today. First the crash and burn of the football surprise. Then she’d
freaked him out when she accidentally touched his fingertips. They’d broken contact quickly, but she still got a rush
of thoughts, fears, desires.

The longing to know his father had been right at the top of the mix. Rae had the feeling it was something Anthony
carried around all the time. Since she’d ended up getting stuff from him, she wished there had been more about his
dad, something that would help her track him down. But the only other father-related info she’d just gotten was a
tiny piece of memory from when Anthony was really little, a toddler, probably.

Anthony was sitting on his dad’s lap, and his dad was playing peekaboo with him. Each time he uncovered his
face, his dad would give a different name. “Now I’m Joe Malone.” “Now I’m Andy Hall.” “Now I’m Rick Ramos.”

That was it. A sweet little memory. But nothing she could use.

Rae glanced over at
The Scarlet Letter,
lying on the floor. Should she give reading one more try? She tapped her
leg, thinking about it. Before she could decide, the phone rang. Rae snatched it up eagerly. “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Yana.”

Rae smiled, relieved to have a little “normalcy” interlude. With Yana there were no heavy issues, no worrying about
being stalked or pipe bombed. “Hey,” she replied. “What’s up?”

“Tomorrow we’re going shopping,” Yana announced in her typical blunt manner. “I’m picking you up at your
school.”

Rae pressed her lips together. “Actually, tomorrow’s not that good for me,” she said. She was planning to go over
to Anthony’s school and see if she could dig up
something
about his father.

“No. You don’t understand,” Yana said. “It’s either that or you’re going to have to do a mercy killing on me. I just
had major ugliness with my dad-again. He’s out now, thank God. But if I don’t have some kind of fun, and soon, well,
you might not even have to kill me. I’ll probably just spontaneously combust.”

“Does it have to be right after school?” Rae asked, feeling a twinge of guilt. “Could we meet up at, like, five?” That
would give her enough time to go by Fillmore.

“Nooo,” Yana wailed. “Just whatever you’re doing, let me go with you. If you’re going to the dentist, I’ll sit in the
office and read magazines. I don’t care. I just can’t be by myself.”

“Okay, fine. Pick me up,” Rae answered. Having Yana there would make the errand more fun, anyway. “Do you
want to tell me about the ugliness-”