Intrinsical - Lani Woodland [2]
Chapter 1
The next afternoon by the pool, I angled my lounge chair to give me the best view of Brent. He was taking a lifeguard training course, treading water while holding what looked like a smooth, black brick above his head. I bit my lip as he sank lower in the water.
Cherie, my best friend, sitting beside me nudged me with her elbow. “Yara, he isn’t going to die just because you take your eyes off him.”
“I know that.” I sighed, shifting my gaze toward her.
“You’re going to have a permanent image of him burned into your retinas if you keep staring at him so hard.”
I laughed. “Not a bad way to go blind.”
She shook her head. “You’ve got it bad.”
I nodded, glad the heat had already flushed my cheeks so no one could see my blush. “I know.” My eyes slid back toward Brent.
“You’re hopeless.” There was no judgment, only amusement in her voice.
My book— well, my celebrity magazine carefully folded inside an SAT prep manual— was propped on my stomach so it looked like I was reading and not staring at Brent. I wasn’t sure how long I had been watching him when Cherie left to go swim with Steve, Brent’s best friend and potentially Cherie’s next boyfriend.
Clearing my thoughts of Brent, I put on my sunglasses and admired our new boarding school’s beautiful glass pool house. An enormous clock hung on the largest wall, a focal point that drew the eye toward its iron hands. Though beautiful and elegant, it wasn’t enough to keep my attention for more than a couple of seconds. My eyes kept flitting back to the largest of the two swimming pools where Brent and the other trainees were swimming laps.
I still had a hard time believing that Cherie and I were really students at Pendrell, the elite and— until yesterday—all-boys prep school. Classes hadn’t started yet. We were on campus doing the whole “Welcome to your new school thing” and getting settled into our dorm room before the school year began.
I closed my eyes and enjoyed feeling the sun on my skin. There was a slight breeze courtesy of the open retractable roof. I inhaled the warm end-of-summer air, relaxing and feeling all my worries float away. The school seemed so peaceful, and I had a hard time believing Brent had almost been killed in front of my eyes the day before. I tried to swallow down the image of what had tried to hurt him. I didn’t want it to be real. I wanted nothing to do with ghosts and spirits, especially ones that appeared as sinister patches of storm clouds, trying to kill people. They belonged in the world I had rejected.
I heard Cherie’s familiar laugh and looked up to watch as she playfully splashed Steve. She had met him last night at our first dinner in the cafeteria where he had accompanied Brent over to meet me officially. Cherie had tossed her blonde hair, batted her eyelashes and convinced Steve and Brent to eat dinner with us. In the course of that meal, Steve and Cherie realized they were into each other.
With the two of them controlling most of the conversation, Brent and I had barely spoken last night— although, whenever I had glanced in his direction, I caught him watching me too. I was hoping that seeing me today would help him realize that he desperately wanted to ask me to the dance tonight. Now that there was a gorgeous guy I was interested in, it was the part of the school’s orientation I was most looking forward to.
On the stone table beside my chair sat an open package of my favorite candy. I fished out a handful and sorted out the greens into my discard pile before popping the rest into my mouth. My older brother Kevin used to eat the greens, but he wasn’t around to do that anymore, so now they’d just end up in the trash.
I turned my attention back to Brent, who stood on the side of the pool shaking the excess water out of his dark brown hair. His slow stretch emphasized his cut chest and caused a group of girls to fan themselves and call out to him. My eyes