“I’d never stay out al night with Max.”
“Lots of girls would … Hey! Don’t change the subject. What real y happened?”
My eyes slammed shut in self-defense, like I could wal out her words and worries. But the darkness behind my eyelids drew me back to that evening, and—my stomach made a noise and Amy dodged out of the way. “False alarm,” I apologized. Rising with a grunt I returned to the sink. Surely there was nothing left in my stomach.
Amy reached into her purse and withdrew a smal bottle of mouthwash.
“You’re not supposed to have that in school.”
“Wel , hel -o, Dick Tracy.” She pressed it into my hand. “Do us al a favor and break this rule. Mints aren’t working.”
aren’t working.”
I opened the little bottle and took a swig, swishing it into al the unholy flavored nooks and crannies of my mouth.
“I’m going to ask one more time,” she chided. “Okay, no, that’s a lie. I’m going to keep asking until I get the truth. What happened the night of Pietr’s birthday?”
I swirled the mouthwash around until it felt like every taste bud on my tongue had peeled off. Where would someone in my position start? With the CIA, the Russian Mafia, or werewolves? I spat and cupped a hand for water.
“We learned a lot about each other. He surprised me.” Not with a bouquet of flowers, either. With fangs. And far more body hair than the average guy ever developed.
A crease appeared between her eyebrows. The next words she said fel out of her mouth one by one, cut from the other. “Did. He. Hurt. You?”
“No! No. Geez, Amy. No. It’s just—we’re real y, fundamental y, so different.” He changes into a frightening wolflike thing and tears through the woods eradicating the rabbit population. I like to watch an occasional reality television show.
“People can be different, even be dating, and nobody in the pair winds up kneeling before the porcelain throne when they take a scalpel to a pig’s head.”
I shrugged. “You’ve told me before you don’t fol ow my particular brand of logic.”
“You’re stil not giving me the whole story.”
I made a show of trying to fix my hair. The results only reinforced what I already knew: Sometimes trying to fix a thing only made it worse.
“Dear God,” Amy said. Pul ing out a brush, she freed my hair from its impromptu ponytail. “Ask for help, for once. For a change.”
I glared into the mirror and let her do her best.
“So what happened the night of Pietr’s birthday that makes you freak when you see the head of a dead animal?”
I seized the sink to brace myself as the image of Nickolai’s beheading overrode my vision, as fresh as the night I’d witnessed it.
“What the—?” Amy held me by the shoulders, supporting me as my legs wobbled and threatened to give out.
“Sorry.” I fought for control, locking my traitorous knees in place.
Someone brushed Amy aside, taking al my weight even before I realized who else had joined us.
“Catherine,” I whispered.
Then I fainted.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I woke in the nurse’s office. Catherine and Amy whispered to each other, voices as animated as Catherine’s hands.
“Of course my brothers are idiots,” Catherine agreed. “It comes with testosterone. I believe its letters T-E-S-T are not a reference to male anatomy, but a warning to the opposite sex. They test us.
Repeatedly.” She sighed. “You have a brother?”
I tried to sit, but my head felt lead-loaded.
“Yes,” Amy said.
“Has he never been an idiot, a disappointment?”
I could only imagine what raced through Amy’s mind. She loved her brother, but he’d walked out on the family, enlisting as soon as he was legal. When she’d needed an al y most.
“Yes, he’s been an idiot,” she admitted.
I rol ed over on the cot to watch through slitted eyelids.
Catherine sat back, arms folded. “But you love him.”
“Of course.”
“Da. Kohneeshnoh. Of course.” Cat stared directly at me. “And Jessie says things can’t work between she and Pietr?”
“Come on. He’s total y blowing her off. And hanging on to Sarah even tighter than before. I mean, gross. I just don’t get it. What happened to push Jessie and Pietr apart and throw Jessie and Derek together?”
“Hel o, Miss Gil mansen.” The school nurse stepped in front of me, blocking my view and pinching my wrist for a pulse.
“I feel much better.”
“Congratulations. Your pulse is normal. How long have you been purging?”
“What?” I sat up. And hated myself for doing so. My head pounded. “Purging?”
“Yes. Bingeing and purging.”
I blinked, realizing. “You think I’m bulimic?”
“Aren’t you?”
“No.”
“You col apsed after vomiting repeatedly, according to your friends.”
I bent around the nurse and glared at Amy and Cat.
Amy shot me a look that clearly meant, If you’d told the truth to begin with …
“If I could keep stuff in my stomach, I’d be happier.”
She put a hand on my forehead. “You don’t feel warm, but let’s take your temperature. We’ve had a few students in here with headaches and stomach trouble. Did you eat anything questionable yesterday or today?”
An odd question. Maybe there was something wrong with the school food. Luckily I’d had none of it. “I don’t think that’s the problem.”
Catherine leaned forward in her chair, waiting.
I looked pointedly at them. “Aren’t they going to get in trouble for sticking around? Missing class?”
The nurse agreed and hurried Amy and Cat out. Cat raised an eyebrow at me. Amy stuck her tongue out.
“So, Miss Gil mansen, if it’s not food-related and you have no temperature”—she placed a thermometer in my mouth—“what do you blame for your vomiting?”
Why did nurses ask questions when you had to keep a thermometer under your tongue? Like dental hygienists getting chatty while they cleaned. “Nightmareth.”
“What?”
The thermometer beeped and she yanked it out, examining it, and me, critical y.