Warped (22 page)

For a second Tessa thought she had been mistaken and called to the wrong person. “Opal?” she repeated, staring.

This girl’s hair wasn’t in flyaway wisps. It had been expertly styled into a sleek, tapered fringe with ultrablond highlights that framed her features. She wasn’t dressed in a crazy, colorful mix of clothes but in a pair of skintight, low-slung jeans and a clingy Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt. Opal was also wearing makeup. And a cold stare.

“Wow,” said Tessa warmly. “You look amazing. New look, huh? I’ve been trying to call you.” She pointed to where her tray sat. “I just got this table. There’s plenty of room.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Opal. Her eyes, outlined in a smoky blue, slid up and down Tessa with doubtful appraisal. “Why would I sit with
you
?”

Tessa’s smiled faltered. She heard Opal’s words, saw her icy expression, but just couldn’t connect them to the person in front of her. She glanced around, looking for the joke, and then looked back at Opal. “Um. Because we’re friends?”

Opal gave a snort. “Since when?”

A sick feeling lurched in Tessa’s stomach, but she tried to smile through it. “Ever since we met, dummy. First day of second grade,” she said lightly. “What’s up with you?”

“First day of second grade?” repeated Opal. “You mean the day you wet your pants on the playground? Oh yeah, I remember, Brody. You had to sit on a newspaper in the front office till your mom came and picked you up.” She let out a peal of laughter that struck Tessa like shards of glass.

“What?” Tessa gasped. “No. That’s not what happened.” Tessa’s face reddened as she glanced around the café.

“Maybe you just blocked it out,” sneered the Opal-who-wasn’t-Opal. “Too traumatic.”

Traumatic? Tessa remembered the day. She’d fallen off the jungle gym, and it had hurt so badly she . . . Yeah, she had peed her pants a little. But Opal had walked with her to the girls’ room, given her an extra set of clothes from her cubbyhole. And had never breathed a word to anybody. On a pinky swear. It wasn’t traumatic. It was one of her best days ever. Until now.

“Hi, beautiful,” said a deep voice.

Hunter Scoville walked up, holding a tray of food. He glanced at Tessa but then directed his gaze to Opal with a charming, slanted grin.

“Where’re we sitting?”

“Far, far away,” said Opal with a pointed look at Tessa. She spun on a flat-heeled shoe and sauntered toward a table in the corner, Hunter in tow. As Tessa watched, Opal put a hand on Hunter’s shoulder, leaned close to him and whispered something in his ear. They both laughed.

Tessa swallowed and approached their table. “Opal, what’s wrong with you?” she said in a low voice. “Why are you acting like this?”

Opal raised a perfectly manicured hand. “Brody, you’re the one acting freaky. Why don’t you just go over to your loser table and leave me alone?”

Hunter leaned toward Opal. “I see what you mean,” he murmured, raising his eyebrows. “Attack of the Living Losers.”

Tessa left and walked quickly to the bathroom. She splashed cool water on her face. What was going on? It seemed like some kind of a crazy joke. Opal could never be mean to anyone. It just wasn’t in her. Something was wrong.

No, Tessa thought.
Everything
was wrong. All at once she remembered the glowing image of three shrouded figures. And their words came back to her, sending a shiver down her back.

Your world will be torn apart.

Tessa walked home as the air grew thick and damp and the sky welled up with dark thunderclouds. The cold air was gone; the wind that flapped at her sweater and skittered loose papers across Harbor Square was warm. It almost felt tropical.

The store was closed up and there was no sign of her father, but the phone was ringing as she went through the door of the apartment upstairs.

“Hello?” Tessa answered.

“Hello? This is Dr. Robard from the medical center. Is this Tessa Brody?”

The floor dropped away beneath her. Sometimes a voice doesn’t even need words to tell you something is wrong.

“Yes?” Tessa whispered. She clutched the phone, feeling incredibly aware of it in her hand. The smooth, cool plastic seemed like a foreign object. The stranger’s voice came through, distant and detached:

“Your dad is stable right now, but he’s very sick. He’s going to be admitted to the hospital this afternoon.”

“What happened?” Tessa’s voice was faint. “Is he okay?”

“I’d like you to come to the hospital. Right away, if you can, please. So we can talk.”

Chapter 34

T
he medical office building was attached to the hospital. Tessa parked the Subaru in Patients’ Lot A and entered the lobby with a feeling of weird detachment, as if she were watching things happen from a great distance, or maybe even to someone else. As she rose in the cool, softly lit elevator to the third floor, she looked at the sign mounted inside.
3RD FLOOR—DR. ROBARD—ONCOLOGY ASSOCIATES
.

Dr. Robard was younger than she’d expected. He wore glasses, and a striped blue and yellow polo shirt and chinos beneath his white lab coat. His voice was calm and pleasant. He had a picture on his desk in a clear acrylic frame of two small children sitting on the edge of a sandbox. Framed diplomas hung on the wall. An ivy plant in the corner needed water. It all seemed important for some reason. In her odd, disconnected state, Tessa felt she should try to pay attention to all these things. But first she had to listen to what the calm, pleasant voice was saying.

Acute leukemia.

“Leukemia,” she repeated. The feeling of calm, of distance, was suddenly gone. The words crashed in on her as if they would crush her. “You mean cancer? My father has cancer?”

“Yes.” Dr. Robard nodded. “It’s a type of cancer of the white blood cells.”

Tessa held herself tightly. If she stayed completely still, maybe everything would stop. And it wouldn’t be real.
This can’t be real
. But the doctor was looking at her as if he expected her to say something.

“I don’t believe it. It’s wrong,” she said. Her voice sounded jerky. “It’s impossible. Things just don’t happen like this out of the blue. Cancer takes years to—” She stopped and clasped her cold hands together. She started to cry.

Dr. Robard said gently, “Believe me, Tessa. We’ve double-checked everything.”

Tears ran down Tessa’s face as she leaned forward suddenly. She blinked them back and shook her head. “No,” she said, wiping her eyes. “You show me.”

“What?” Dr. Robard looked at her in surprise.

“I said show me. The leukemia. The biopsy or the X-ray or whatever it is. Show it to me.”

Dr. Robard sat back in his chair. He nodded at her with an expression of sympathy. “Yes. Of course.”

Dr. Robard picked up a glass slide. Tessa could see a faint pinkish smudge on it. The slide had a sticker on one end with a number and
Brody, J
. printed on it.

The doctor put the slide into place under the microscope with a faint click. He directed Tessa to look through the eyepieces on her side of the microscope as he turned the focus.

“You see these cells?” he asked. Tessa looked at a bright circle of light filled with small pink ring-shaped cells. “These are the healthy blood cells. Now look here.” The image blurred as he moved the slide and focused on another area. A small black pointer appeared. “These are the cancer cells.” The pointer, under the doctor’s manipulation, circled a large, irregular cell that had spattered blue blobs in it.

“How could this happen so suddenly?” she whispered, still staring through the microscope.

“Sometimes things are happening for a while before the symptoms finally become noticeable. Then things progress rapidly.” Dr. Robard lifted his head and leaned back. “Your dad is very anemic. That explains the shortness of breath and fatigue. I know it’s hard to take in right now. Give it some time. And meanwhile, please know that we’re going to do everything possible to treat the cancer.”

Tessa was still looking through the microscope at the tiny cells when some filmy pink material in the background began to move. The wavy pink filaments seemed to swim into focus as if coming to the surface of a pool of water. They swirled together and linked to form a ropy trail.

The pink material coiled into crude words:

Give back the threads.

“It’s them,” Tessa said faintly. She gripped the side of the microscope. She took a deep breath and felt a sick, hot rush of anger. “It’s them!” she whispered. “The Norn. They’re doing this!”

Dr. Robard gave her a puzzled frown and said, “I understand, Tessa. It’s not easy to accept, but—”

“No!” Tessa cried. “You
don’t
understand. Look!”

Dr. Robard hesitated and then leaned forward to peer through the opposite eyepieces. He nodded. “Yes. It’s a very aggressive form.”

He doesn’t see it
.

Tessa pressed her eyes to the microscope again. The slide appeared as before. Spatters of pink and blue cells. There were no words. “They’re gone,” Tessa murmured, and sat back in the chair.

How had she let this happen? She hadn’t been paying any attention to her father. Hadn’t even been thinking about him. Now they were using him. Punishing him to get to her.

Dr. Robard was clearly mystified by Tessa’s outburst. “Okay,” he said gently. “Why don’t we go over and see your dad now.”

Tessa stared at the old man lying in the hospital bed.

In just a day, her father’s strong face had been whittled down. The full cheeks were sunken, and loose skin sagged over his jawline. His skin had an unhealthy yellowish sheen beneath the fluorescent lights, and his arms were mottled with bruises. How could that happen overnight? They
made it happen
, Tessa thought.

Your world will be torn apart
.

A bag of fluid hung over his bed and dripped through a clear tube into his arm. The oxygen tube fastened around his face and stuck in his nostrils let out a low, monotonous hiss as a TV flickered soundlessly on the wall. And over everything hung the antiseptic smell of the hospital, faintly chemical, metallic. To Tessa, it smelled like pain. Or something worse.

“Dad?”

Her father opened his eyes. “Hi, cupcake,” he said in a hoarse voice. He cleared his throat and pushed himself more upright in the hospital bed. He smiled, and his dry lips looked as if they might crack.

“Dad.” Tessa bent her head and leaned it gently against the crook of her father’s arm. “I’m so sorry. About everything.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “None of that matters.”

“Are you—Does it hurt?” Tessa asked.

He shook his head. “Naw. I’m just tired. Feel like I’ve been kicked all over. But I’m glad they know what’s causing it. Probably should have come in sooner.” He took a deep breath. “Guess I haven’t been paying much attention to anything lately. Including you.” He patted Tessa’s arm.

“That’s not true,” Tessa said, closing her eyes.

He pulled her a little closer until their heads touched. “Alicia and I . . . ,” he began. “I was going to tell you before this happened. We were going to get married.”

Tessa kept her head down and nodded. She couldn’t look at him and not cry.

“Maybe it seems sudden to you. But sometimes, you just feel it,” he said. “When everything is right.”

“I know,” she whispered. “She makes you happy.”

“Yeah. She does. Now, I know Alicia is”—he began slowly—“not the most motherly type.” He gave a weak version of his old familiar grin.

Tessa gently shook his middle. “Who needs that crap anyway?” she said, nearly breathless from trying to sound normal when she really wanted to sob.

Her father gave a dry rasp of laughter. “Right. I forgot. Miss Independent.” He let out a deep sigh. “But now
this
. Guess we’ll put wedding plans on hold for a little while.”

Tessa shook her head. “This is all my fault.”

Her father let out a faint huff of exasperation and put his other hand on her head. He ruffled her hair. “Don’t be silly. This has nothing to do with you, Tessa. I’m gonna be okay.” He sounded out of breath and leaned back as if the words had taken what little energy he had left. “These folks. Deal with this stuff. All the time.”

No, not this kind of stuff
, Tessa thought. But she nodded in agreement.

He gave her a smile. “I’ll take a nap, I think, for a little while.”

“Okay,” she whispered, and smiled back as hot tears started to roll down her cheeks.

“Store’s closed,” her father said, shutting his eyes. “Alicia’ll look in on the contractors for me. Why don’t you stay with Opal for a few days? I don’t want you to be alone.”

“Yeah. Okay.” How could she tell him that she and Opal weren’t even friends anymore? That her whole world was unraveling around her? Instead, she said, “I love you, Dad.”

“I love you too, Tessa.” His eyes were still closed. He looked exhausted.

Dr. Robard stood outside the door when Tessa came out. “Rest assured, we’re going to do everything we can,” he told her. Even though it sounded like something he had memorized in medical school, it would have comforted Tessa under normal circumstances.

“Thanks,” said Tessa. She wiped her eyes once more and nodded, looking straight ahead. “So am I.”

Chapter 35

T
essa went into the bathroom, slammed the door so hard it shook, and snapped off the light. She wasn’t afraid anymore. To hell with that. How could she be afraid? There was nothing more she could lose. Her anger felt like lightning trapped inside her. She wanted to strike.

“All right,” she said, her voice vibrating with fury. “Come out of there. Let me see you.”

Slowly the iridescent light shimmered around the edge of the mirror and the three hooded figures appeared. Scytha spoke:

“Mortal, you summon us and yet you have not returned the threads, despite the measures we’ve taken. Surely you can see that your life is in our hands.”

“Shut up.” Tessa bit the words out between gritted teeth. “I know what you’ve done. You’ve made my father . . . ” She stopped, fending off a sob. She would not cry. There was no time. “You made my father sick,” she went on. “You’ve turned Opal against me. Everything is twisted around. You’ve warped my whole life.”