Bo leaned forward and pressed his lips to my forehead. The tender gesture soothed my frazzled nerves like a calming tide.
He pulled back, but didn’t walk away. I imagined that he was staring down at me and I looked up to where his eyes probably were.
I knew that, in mine, he could undoubtedly see the fear, the desperation, the love, the raw need that tore at my heart.
“I love you, too” he whispered, as if reading my mind.
My chest felt like it was going to explode when I heard him turn to walk away. How could one moment in time be so bitter and yet so sweet?
Sitting back on my haunches, I listened until I heard nothing but the soft shift of my curtains as the breeze ruffled them and the nighttime symphony that played just outside my window.
I closed my eyes and inhaled. His scent was strong. It clung to my hair, to my skin, to my lips. I hugged my arms around me, feeling at the same time empty and full. It was with those conflicting feelings that I finally drifted off into the best sleep I’d had in days.
********
“The Accident.” That was the generic name that the public at large had adopted to identify the singular event comprised of Bo and Devon’s disappearance and the brutal assault on Savannah. It was during the weeks that followed “the accident” that I began to see a marked difference at school. In a good way, it was like stepping into The Twilight Zone— a whole other world. There had been many changes, but one of the biggest (and the best as far as I was concerned), however, was that people were actually sort of nice to each other. I know, crazy, right?
Trinity, the resident evil-doer, had turned into a vampire and fled school, taking with her a toxin that had plagued her peers for years. She had essentially traded in one kind of venom for another, only the venom she could spread with her fangs hadn’t become as proliferative. Yet.
Though everyone undoubtedly thought she went missing (like Bo and Devon), I think they were shamefully relieved that she was gone. With her out of the picture, it was as if a dark cloud had been lifted from the student body. Despite the disappearances of a few in our number, the mood was lighter than I’d ever known it to be.
I could really see the burgeoning love in everyone’s response to Devon. He was Trinity’s ex-boyfriend, one she’d attacked and absconded with the night of the accident. Despite his history with Trinity, everyone liked Devon. It was even more apparent now. There were always flowers at the foot of his locker and pictures of him hanging all over the door. It was a fabulous show of love and support, a loud statement saying he was dearly missed. I thought his locker looked more like a memorial. What it said to me was that, deep down, everyone suspected that Devon wasn’t coming back.
The atmosphere had gotten even better last week when Savannah had made her first appearance at school since “the accident.” She’d suffered a traumatic brain injury at the hands of Trinity and had lost her sight as a result. Savannah had no memory of it, so no one but me knew exactly what had happened, that Trinity had been involved.
Since being released from the hospital, Savannah had been schooled at home.
But last week she’d stopped by to get lesson plans from her teachers to take to her tutor. It was the first time most people had seen her since the accident, and her presence energized students and faculty alike.
Savannah’s amazing recovery and brave face were just what the doctor ordered for morale. The school had a new hero, one with flaming red hair and a quick smile.
With the fall of a villain and the rise of a hero, one could only expect that the vacuum created by the absence of Trinity would soon suck something else in to fill its void—or in this case some one else.
Trinity’s particular brand of evil had left a hole in the student body, and more and more it looked like a replacement was already on the way, and that replacement was Summer.
Summer had been what could be loosely described as my best friend until Bo came along. Our relationship had never been very typical of that sort of designation, though. I simply viewed her as the lesser of the evils among the cheerleaders. I never fully trusted her or told her anything important. I just hung out with her more than the rest, I suppose, which wasn’t really all that much.
Though I knew she’d always been a reluctant follower of Trinity, she was a follower nonetheless. For that reason, I couldn’t be totally surprised by her strange metamorphosis. Trinity had that effect on people and she’d almost hand-picked Summer to be her right-hand girl.
I always started thinking about Summer close to lunch time, the most dreaded twenty minutes of my day. I hated lunch for many reasons. Without Savannah, Devon and Bo at school—the trio that had become my official lunchtime mates—I’d been informally inducted back into “the group” by Summer. She all but insisted that I eat lunch at their table again, something that was only made more uncomfortable by the presence of my ex, Drew, the guy I’d dumped when I’d begun developing feelings for Bo.
I used to be a person who would’ve gone along just to keep from rocking the boat. But now, my reasons for going along were much different. I knew that if Trinity returned to Harker (if she’d even left), she would likely make an appearance to someone from that group, and the best way to stay on top of the situation was to stick close to those people during lunch. That’s when I could pick up on the latest gossip and learn who was doing what, when and with whom.
“What are you doing this weekend, Ridley?” Summer asked me, jarring me from my thoughts.
Her smile was pleasant enough, but it didn’t reach her eyes like it used to.
She was much…different since Trinity’s disappearance. She was colder somehow, stony and pretentious. Insincere.
“Dad’s coming home, so I’m sure he’ll have something planned,” I answered vaguely. I gladly latched onto that excuse. The last thing I needed was attention. I wanted nothing more than to stay under the radar.
Besides, it was true: Dad would be home for the weekend and I’d have to play my part in our family production of The Family That Pretends They Didn’t Lose a Member. It was an ongoing performance that you could find at my house every weekend. It was one that had been initiated when my older sister was killed in a car accident more than three years ago.
“Too bad. I was thinking of planning a pre-Halloween horror fest, starting with a bonfire in the woods right outside Arlisle Preserve. I think that would be an awesome way to start the weekend of our Halloween Masquerade Dance.”