Intrinsical - Lani Woodland [14]
“We wouldn’t miss it.”
“Yes, we would.” Brent slammed one hand down on the table while his other one crumpled his napkin and tossed it on his plate. He pushed his chair away from the table and jerked up. “I’ve got to go.”
“Brent?” I asked as he turned to go.
“I’ll catch up with you later.” He gave me a tight smile that didn’t go further than his lips. I stared after him, wondering what exactly had happened.
****
After lunch, I was in the library, picking up the textbooks I needed for my classes. I had already double checked my list to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything, so I arranged my books by size and hefted them into my arms, trying to balance the unsteady stack.
“I thought I might find you here.” I glanced around my book tower and found Brent smiling at me.
“Hey,” I said. “You okay?”
Brent raised a fingernail to his teeth, then shook his head and dropped his hand. “Yeah.”
“Really? Or do you just not want to talk about it?” I adjusted the top book with the tip of my chin.
“Need a hand with those?”
I nodded and he took all but two from my arms. “I guess that means you don’t want to talk about it.” He didn’t say anything just tucked my books under one of his arms. “You just seemed ticked or something when Cherie started talking about the curse.”
He gritted his teeth. “What is wrong with your friend, anyway?”
“What do you mean?” I followed him into the library’s elevator and pushed the button for the first floor. He didn’t answer, he just stared straight ahead, and I shuffled my feet in the awkward silence until the doors of the elevator slid open with a slight squeak that echoed across the deserted floor.
“Well it isn’t exactly normal to take such a morbid interest in people’s deaths,” he said finally. We walked toward the nearest study area, with two arm chairs, a table, and a sofa illuminated by a large stained glass window. Blue, red, and green rainbows danced across the table.
“That’s not it. She wants to help, she wants to—”
“Solve the big mystery? Why do the over-worked, under-praised students of the most elite prep school on the West Coast kill themselves? The answer is in the question.” Brent dropped my heavy stack of books on the table and sagged into one of the chairs.
“It’s more than that. Cherie has this need to prove there is life after death, that the universe is bigger than science can explain.” I took a deep breath. “She had just started dating my brother right before he died.” I waited for Brent to respond in some way, but he didn’t. “His death really rattled her. Ever since then she’s been obsessed.” I didn’t mention that even Cherie’s popularity at our old school hadn’t stopped people talking about her.
“Why Pendrell?”
“You have ghost stories, curses, the best education, and it’s close to home. How could she not choose to come here? It has everything she wants.”
“Well, tell her to back off. Every year some stupid person brings up the curse and—”
“She isn’t stupid.” My hands clenched my books tightly, digging them painfully into my chest.
Brent gave me a level stare to let me know he didn’t agree.
“She isn’t stupid,” I repeated. “I mean, this place is downright creepy sometimes. You can feel that, right?”
“Creepy?”
I focused on the stained glass window, noting the graceful design of the roses. “Yeah.”
Brent rested his elbows on the table leaning toward me. “Like footprints in her room, dark, ghostly presences, and a feeling like someone is following her.”
My tongue felt numb, and my fingers tingled. “Exactly. That is exactly what she saw,” I lied. I knew I was being a coward, but I still wasn’t ready to admit it was me who had experienced these things. Brent wasn’t like the kids I had fought with as a child. The muscles in my shoulders relaxed. “How did you know?”
“Because it’s in every piece of trash book that is out there about the supposed curse.”
I felt like I had been blindsided by a semi. “But she did see it.”
“Then you’re right; she isn’t stupid,” Brent agreed. “She’s crazy!”
A sensitive internal trigger