Wraith (11 page)

Conflicting feelings swirled mercilessly in my head.
Kylee and Tara—neither of whom were probably speaking to me at the moment—would
have different takes. Kylee would tell me I was INSANE for not jumping on such
a prime dish. Tara would tell me to be careful—he could be a real player back
at his school, and how would I know?

How indeed.

A fraction of a second—that was all I had. He looked
unquestionably handsome there in the moonlight, so attentive, so hopeful…

Does he know how many fouettés you can turn?

The memory of Zane’s random, senseless question
popped unbidden into my head, crashing through the rest of my thoughts like a
freight train.

And that matters
… I had answered…
why?

The swirling conflict siphoned suddenly down into a
single, unified stream. Matt didn’t even know that I was a dancer, did he? Not
that I had been keeping it a secret… he had simply never asked. We had never
really talked about
me
at all.

I took a tiny step backward.

"I’ll take you up on that," I said with a
smile. "I do want to see your school again."

He smiled back, his eyes a trifle disappointed, but
otherwise unhurt and unfazed. "It’s a date, then," he said
unequivocally, starting down the steps to his car. "I’ll text you."

"See you!" I responded cheerfully, opening
the door. Then, with a final wave, I ducked inside.

This time both my parents were waiting for me in the
great room, eager to hear all about what parts of the island I had seen and
whether or not I had any ideas of my own about schools—among other topics. They
showed admirable restraint in not asking me specifically how I felt about Matt,
but their endless questions nevertheless left me impatient and fidgety.

I wanted to talk to Zane. I hadn’t had so much as a
glimpse of him since before sunset, and I wondered if he had left me
altogether.

The thought left a pit in my stomach.

After what seemed like an eternity, I escaped the
inquisition and stepped out onto the deck. Zane was nowhere in sight, but I
took the chance anyway.

"If you can hear me," I whispered, given
that some barbecuing neighbors on the next deck were within earshot, "come
talk to me in my room. Please?"

There was no response.

I went back inside and excused myself for an early
bedtime, which raised no eyebrows, seeing as how we were all, biologically,
still half on Mountain Time. As soon as the bedroom door was closed behind me,
I looked around hopefully. "Zane?"

"By special invitation," he answered,
lounging across the foot of my bed in nothing but board shorts, which along
with the rest of him were soaking wet.

Glad as I was to see him, and as well as I
knew—rationally—that it was all an illusion, I felt a flare of annoyance at the
sight of the gritty sea water dripping onto my spread. I hated clammy sheets.
"Do you mind?" I protested mildly.

"What?" he pretended innocently, looking
down. "Oh, sorry. Forgot it’s bedtime."

He changed in a blink. This time his curls were not
only dry, but perfectly coifed with slick hair gel. He was still bare chested,
but now he wore blindingly bright blue oriental-silk sleep bottoms embroidered
with neon orange fire and purple dragons—as if he'd stepped straight out of the
seduction scene of a really bad movie. 

"
Zane!
" 

He dissolved into laughter, changing instantly into
a suitably normal-looking tee shirt, shorts, and sandals. "Sorry," he
repeated between gasps. "Couldn’t resist. What’s up?"

I took a few centering breaths, then sat down on the
bed beside him. I was pretty sure he hadn’t really left me at all this evening,
but a part of me was afraid to ask. I knew he was dead and everything, but
still, sitting with one gorgeous guy openly discussing one’s date with another
was beyond weird.

Thankfully, it wasn’t "the date" I wanted
to discuss.

"Did you see the guy at Saint Anthony’s?"
I asked. "The one Matt called Rod?"

"The one you were so worried about? Yeah,
why?"

I waited for more reaction. "Well, didn’t
you
find his attitude disturbing?"

Zane’s brow furrowed. "I’m not sure what you
mean. They didn’t look like best buds, but so what?"

My heart began to race.

It couldn’t be.

"Seriously, Kali," Zane began, his voice
more concerned. "What is it that’s got you so upset? I don’t get it."

"I could feel him!" I blurted. My heart
beat so hard I could hear my pulse in my ears.

Zane said nothing for a moment. "Okay… so can
you please explain
that?
What do you mean, you could ‘feel’ him?"

"Like the shadows," I continued, trying
hard to make more sense, but knowing that there was a limit—seeing as how nothing
about the shadows ever made sense. "Some of the shadows… when I’m near to
them, I can feel what they’re feeling. Like that woman at the beach. I wanted
to be near her because I could feel her joy. Not just witness it… I mean, I
really
felt
what she was feeling."

Zane sat up straighter on the bed. "You could
read her mind?"

"No," I said quickly, "It’s not like
that. I don’t pick up thoughts. There’s no language to it, no words. Just
emotions."

"You didn’t mention that before."

I hesitated. "I didn’t always… I mean—" I
broke off, unable to put into words what I had refused, for so long, to allow
myself to think. "It didn’t used to be so obvious. When I was little I
didn’t really pick up on the emotions. I don’t know if it was because I wasn’t
paying attention, or if something about me changed as I grew up. But now, all
of a sudden—"

I faltered again. Zane waited a beat, then prompted.
"All of a sudden…"

I pulled myself up and began to pace. "All of a
sudden, it’s worse than ever. There are shadows
all over
this island!
I’ve never seen so many of them, at least not considering how few people live
here—I mean, how many people have
lived
here. And not only that, but I’m
feeling them more. Even the older ones. It’s like the whole emotion thing has
kicked up a notch—and I don’t know how to handle it!"

I plopped back down on the bed, exhausted.

"Okay," Zane confirmed. "I get it.
But what exactly does that have to do with this guy Rod?"

I closed my eyes. Being able to tell Zane—to tell
anyone—a load of seeming nonsense like I had just done without them doubting my
sanity was a relief of epic proportions. If I wasn’t still so freaked out, I
would be overjoyed. But there was more to my story, and the last part was
definitely the worst.

I opened my eyes and sat up. I was close enough to
Zane that, if he had been alive, we would have been touching. As it was, I felt
only the slightest buzz around my knee, where my bent leg grazed his extended
one. "You saw Rod looking at Matt," I began carefully, "and you
saw nothing except two guys who weren’t friends. You didn’t see anything…
sinister?"

Zane considered. "No. It was a stare. But he
smiled later… sort of. Matt knows the guy. He obviously didn’t take it as
anything threatening."

An involuntary shudder shook my shoulders. "I
saw
the same thing," I explained slowly. "But I
felt
something,
too."

Zane’s eyes widened. "You mean you felt him,
like he was a shadow? You think he
is
a shadow?"

"No!" I protested. "He can’t possibly
be. Other people see him and interact with him, he’s solid… he’s definitely
alive."

"Then what—"

"I’m
feeling
living people now!" I
whisper-shouted, as loudly as I dared without my parents overhearing. I needed
to say it out loud; I needed to hear it. "I have to be. There were no
shadows anywhere near Rod. It scares me to death to think that this… this
thing
I have is changing, but I can’t deny it anymore. It is. It’s getting more
powerful, more sensitive. Battlefields have always bothered me, but being at
Pali Lookout today… it was almost unbearable. I’ve certainly never encountered
anything like you before... a ghost, I mean. I don’t know if it’s being in
Oahu, or if it’s something about me, but it
is
happening. It’s real. I
wish I could make myself believe that I was imagining what I felt with Rod
today, but I know that I wasn’t!"

My voice cracked, and Zane leaned forward
instinctively, as if to reach out a comforting arm. Realizing his mistake, he
fell back against the wall instead, his jaw muscles clenched in agitation. He
was silent for a moment, then asked quietly, "What did you feel from Rod,
then? Something that scared you?"

I nodded. "He hates Matt, Zane. Really and
truly hates him. I don’t think he did always. The hatred felt, well… fresh.
Like something had just happened. Something Matt might not even be aware
of."

"Matt was just kidding about the nemesis
thing," Zane agreed. "They may be competitive at sports, but I didn’t
get that he had any hard feelings toward the guy. If there’s real hatred, Matt
must be in the dark."

"That’s what scares me," I said weakly.
"I’m scared for Matt, first. That hatred was palpable; I don’t know Rod at
all, but if I had to guess, I’d say that a feeling that strong was
going
to get acted on, sooner or later. What if he’s violent?"

"He may not be," Zane offered. "Most
people aren’t. Or the anger may resolve itself—maybe there was a
misunderstanding of some kind."

"Maybe," I agreed, finding it hard to
imagine a guy as friendly and transparent as Matt doing anything to rouse that
kind of hatred. "But until I know for sure, it’s going to keep scaring me.
That… and the whole idea that this
thing
of mine—" 

"You mean this gift?"

"This
curse
," I corrected.
"The thought that this curse has more power over me than ever… that maybe
I
can’t
just ignore it anymore—"

"Then you’ll use it well," Zane
interrupted. His voice was gentle, but firm, and his eyes bore into mine, their
green depths sparkling with empathy even as he argued with me. "And I’ll
do whatever I can to help you. I promise."

Does he know how many fouettés you can turn?

Zane's nearly solid face was inches from mine. For a
moment, I had the very odd sensation, not entirely unpleasant, of careening off
the cliff of Pali Lookout myself, spinning out into oblivion, weightless,
carefree. But over my cliff, there was nothing but azure ocean, and a warm,
golden sun was shining.

I drew back, gave my head a shake, and stood up.

It had a been a very, very long day.

Clearly, I needed some sleep.

It doesn’t get any better than this,
I
thought to myself dreamily, stretching out my legs and wiggling my toes in the
sand. I couldn’t believe that any place as picture perfect as Mokuleia Beach
Park could also be so deserted… but it was. Though Mokuleia was part of the
North Shore, it lay at the famous surfing strip’s westernmost tip, just out of
the tourist mainstream. Despite the fact that it was mid-morning on a gorgeous
spring day, the wide, straight stretch of sandy beach, crashing turquoise
waves, and brisk-but-warm tropical breeze were being enjoyed by only a handful of
surfers out on the water, two middle-aged women sitting under a beach umbrella
about fifty yards away, Zane (who was currently hanging with the surfers), and
me. A few shadows flitted about too, of course, but none with emotions strong
enough to disturb me. For once, I could be alone with my own thoughts.

I had quite a few of them.

My parents had been surprised when I declined to
join them on today’s house tour with the real estate agent, but the opportunity
to have the car to myself all day was just too good to pass up. My
Wyoming-raised spirit couldn’t resist the chance to be behind the wheel again,
exploring new territory, enjoying sweet control. My sense of direction left a
lot to be desired, true, but I had something better than a GPS. I had Zane.

I smiled as I watched him catching yet another ride
with a singularly unskilled surfer in mustard yellow shorts. The surfer wiped
out on nearly every wave, allowing Zane to practice his rather eerie "this
is where the board
should
be going" move, which involved his
skimming over the water suspended in midair. This time he decided to shake
things up, wiping out along with the surfer in spectacular fashion, flying head
over heels in a back flip. Unlike the flailing mortal, however, Zane threw
himself up in a perfect arc, coming down on the board just as it resurfaced,
feet perfectly placed for the next ride.

"Showoff!" I yelled over the wind,
laughing. Zane grinned back at me, finishing with a stage bow, but my mirth was
dampened a bit when I realized that the women under the umbrella were glaring
at me.

Crap
. They no doubt thought I was yelling at
the lousy surfer, who was floundering in the rough water, attempting to get
back on his (apparently empty) board. I sunk back onto my beach mat, mortified.
For all I knew, one of them could be his mother or something.

I pulled my phone quickly out from my pocket,
wishing I had had it to my ear just now. I could get away with talking to Zane
in public as long as I had my phone around, but yelling on the beach was a little
harder to explain.

The phone had gotten a lot of use this morning.
Kylee and Tara had begrudgingly forgiven me for ignoring their texts yesterday,
but only after I agreed to describe for them every minute detail of my outing
with Matt, no matter how many screens it took. I tried, but even leaving out
everything to do with Zane and the shadows at Pali Lookout, it took fourteen
texts to get them up to speed, and they still weren’t satisfied. Kylee kept
asking questions about Matt I had no idea how to answer (e.g., Has he ever had
a serious girlfriend? Do you think he’s the kind that actually
dances
at
dances?), while Tara was apparently attempting to track our route
geographically on some internet map site (e.g., Did you actually see Kailua Bay
or did you just take H3 down to Pali Highway?).