Intrinsical - Lani Woodland [32]
Cherie didn’t speak for a moment. “Wow. Well, someone was out there with you.” I expected an admission like that to make her giddy, but instead she looked pale and terrified.
Chapter 7
The news of Phil Lawson’s suicide the next morning shook the entire campus. It was only the beginning of his junior year, but according to the note left next to an empty bottle of pills, the pressure had been too much.
I had never talked to him, but I knew him as a basketball star and top student in our grade. Still, the loss of him impacted me strongly. Maybe because it reminded me how someone you loved could be there one minute and then gone the next. I wouldn’t see him hanging out with his friends in the outdoor pavilion or dribbling a basketball in the gym. He was gone and his family and friends would never see him again. I wondered if he had a little sister who worshipped her older brother the way I had mine.
At lunch that afternoon, Cherie’s worried eyes kept glancing to the spot where my red marks had been, even though they had faded already. She twirled a strand of her blonde hair, her blue eyes calculating. “It wasn’t the curse,” she told me, trying to sound reassuring. “If it were, it should have happened the first week of school . . . or at the end of last year. There is no curse.”
Steve stormed toward our table. The salt and pepper shakers toppled over and my napkin drifted to the floor at the force of his orange tray banging down on the table.
“Bad mood?” I asked dryly.
His usually cheerful eyes were pure steel as he answered, “Something like that.”
“What’s wrong?” Cherie asked, her spoon pausing over her pudding.
“Just a big blow up with Brent— he is currently packing up his stuff and switching rooms, he got the RA’s permission and everything.” Steve combed his fingers through his dirty blonde hair.
“Must have been some fight.”
“Yeah.” He held his breath, cheeks puffed out before letting the air out. “I knew better than to try to talk to Brent about the suicide, but I pushed him until he snapped.”
The table next to us was crowded with Phil’s buddies, all of them grim-faced and red-eyed. “Were he and Phil close?” I asked, trying to keep my voice down.
“No, but considering the circumstances . . .” Steve trailed off with a shrug. Steve’s eyes focused on me. “He didn’t tell you about his brother, Neal, did he?”
“That his brother died?”
Steve looked down at his sandwich. “Not just died— he was the last suicide, the last victim of the curse.”
Cherie dropped her spoon. “Neal was his brother?”
“I had no idea,” I said. The apple in my mouth now tasted like sand. “He must be really hurting.” My eyes were suddenly misty. The grief from my own brother’s death washed over me. I imagined that being compounded by knowing he had killed himself. Phil’s suicide had to have reinjured a poorly healed wound. “I’ve got to talk to him.”
My hands and toes tingled as I jumped up fast and then I was caught up in a rush of cold air as my spirit separated from my body, without my wanting it to.
The entire cafeteria paused, the noises hushed, the movement stilled. The world was like a photograph. Travis was throwing a handful of popcorn at Audrey who was studying from a book. Cherie and Steve were both looking toward me, mouths open as if about to speak.
Even though every human thing was frozen, birds still fluttered in the sky, clouds rolled by, smells of citrus and flowers were carried in the gentle wind moving through me from the open windows. The sun was beating down on me through the skylights, its warmth heated the chill my spirit felt without the protection of its human flesh.
Something blue flickered on the edge of vision and I spun around as it glided toward me with purpose.
A beautiful voice, vaguely familiar, came from the light. “Yara,” it called. My heart in my body boomed, and my knees turned to oatmeal as my spirit reconnected. Shivering, I fell, knees smacking the stiff carpet with a thud as the voice asked, “Did you get my message?”
****
It wasn