By the end of the day, Michael had determined that the scientifically real full moon was in fact on Friday night. That didn’t help us too much, since we still weren’t sure whether or not Nell would know that and my generic calendar showed three other possible dates when the moon would be considered full by us non-scientific folk.
Through deceptively casual questioning of Anne, Michael had also learned that Amber, Nell and company were all going to the dance together.
“So,” Michael announced to me on the way to school the next day, “this means that not only can we go to the dance, we must be there. We are morally obligated to attend, in order to protect Amber.” Whatever reservations or concerns Michael had had earlier, he seemed to be much more relaxed today.
I, on the other hand, was grumpy and frustrated. My listening the day before hadn’t netted us any more hints on exactly what Nell planned to do or when she planned to do it. I knew I would have to spend more time today trying to tune everyone else out while I tried to hear only Nell’s thoughts. I pushed out an aggravated sigh.
Michael shot me a sympathetic glance. “You do know, right, that if something happens and we can’t stop it, this doesn’t fall on your shoulders. Amber isn’t your responsibility—and neither is Nell, for that matter. If you didn’t have your—ability, your gift, we wouldn’t know anything about this.”
He wasn’t helping my state of mind. “But I do have the ability. I did hear what Nell’s planning. Like I said to you before, what if this is why I can do what I do? What if it’s not just a fluke, a weird anomaly in my brain? What if it’s got a purpose, and I’m supposed to use it to help people?”
Michael frowned. “You’re not a fluke, and you’re not weird. And I don’t know that you’re that far off in what you’re saying—aren’t we supposed to use all our gifts for the betterment of ourselves and others?”
I stared at him. “Well, that’s deep.”
He shrugged. “I do read, you know, even if I’m not quite up to your caliber of books.”
“So if you agree with me that I should be using my extra hearing to help other people, and I’ve heard—not by seeking it out, but just by accident—that someone is in very real danger, doesn’t that mean that Amber is my responsibility? And Nell… well, no one has taken responsibility for her for a long time, I think. That’s part of the problem.”
“But Nell has chosen this path. Which means that we’ll do our best to make sure no one gets hurt, but you are not going to beat yourself up about any of this.”
“Easier said than done,” I muttered as we pulled into the parking lot.
We were quiet as we walked into the school, each preoccupied with our own thoughts. I could feel Michael’s worry, and I understood it. But at the same time, I knew that I had to everything in my power to be prepared for what Nell was going to do.
We were at my locker, and Michael stood close to me as I exchanged books.
“So let me ask you something,” he said abruptly. Uncertainty wavered around him. “You said before, and then again just now, that maybe you have your abilities for a reason. We’ve never talked about why you can do what you can. Do you think there’s a higher purpose?”
I closed the locker and leaned against it. “I’ve thought about it quite a bit. You know, I’ve had plenty of time, before we moved here, to consider stuff like this. I believe we’re all given gifts, and maybe some of those gifts are just different than others. So you have a way with plants, you can make things grow. And my mom can draw and paint. And I can hear extraordinarily well.
“You and my mom can use your gifts in a more open way, to make a living even. I can’t do that, but maybe I can—and more than that, maybe I’m supposed to use it to help make the world a better place.” I glanced at Michael sheepishly. “Does that sound incredibly corny?”
“Not at all. I get what you’re saying. But you keep saying that you were given this talent—who do you think gave it to you?”
I tilted my head thoughtfully. “If we had time to get into a long discussion about this right now, I could tell you how I came to this conclusion. It’s not really that interesting, just a lot of soul-searching and long hours to mull things over. But we don’t have time—the bell is about to ring, I think—so I’ll just say that I consider my talent just as God-given as yours and my mom’s. And since I believe that God does work all things for the good, if He gave me my gift, He must expect me to use it for something good. Does that make any sense?”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah, it does. But I want to talk about this more when we have time. I’ve got lots of questions for you.”
“Hold onto them, and after we make the world safe again, we’ll have a long talk. But this morning, I’m a woman with a mission. I’m going to possibly sacrifice my budding Chemistry career on the altar of doing-good.”
Michael looked at me as though I’d lost my mind. “Huh?”
I shook my head impatiently. “I’m going to concentrate on listening to Nell during Chemistry class instead of paying attention to Ms. Lacusta. C’mon, try to keep up with me, okay?”
He rolled his eyes and pulled me alongside of him as we walked. “Whatever. Just be cautious about the superhero bit, okay? We don’t have any indication you’re invincible, and I kind of like you upright and walking around.”
“Right.” I gave his arm a light squeeze as I broke away from him to head for my classroom. “See you later.”
To my utter frustration, I wasn’t able to pull anything constructive from Nell during Chemistry. She was concentrating completely on the lesson Ms. Lacusta was teaching. Her only stray thoughts involved her obsession with impressing our Chemistry teacher and being annoyed with a variety of people around us. As far as I could hear, she didn’t think about me at all, nor did I hear anything about Amber.
After the lesson, Ms. Lacusta handed out a worksheet for us to work on during the remainder of class then complete at home. I stifled a sigh, thinking that not only had listening to Nell instead of the teacher been a bust, but now I had homework and no idea how to do it. I was counting on Michael to help me out with it, science whiz that he was.
As I sat at the table, trying to look busy even when the numbers and letters on the paper in front of me were gibberish, I glanced up and noticed Ms. Lacusta sitting at her desk, gazing around the classroom. And it occurred to me that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to listen to her, especially if I wasn’t getting anything from Nell. While I was almost positive that she didn’t have any knowledge of Nell’s plans for Amber, hearing her thoughts might give me some insight somewhere, particularly if she happened to be thinking about Nell.
It was harder to tune her in than it was to hear the thoughts of those around me. I bowed my head and closed my eyes, using my hands to shield my face, so it looked as though I was just concentrating hard on my worksheet. At first the buzz of student thoughts grew louder, and I struggled to push them down, mentally moving closer to the front of the room and to the teacher.
Again I was hit with that same uneasy feeling. Whispered thoughts in a language I couldn’t understand swirled around me. I caught Nell’s name here and there, but I couldn’t comprehend the context. And then I froze, as I heard my own name surrounded by that unfamiliar tongue.
I forced myself not to pull away from Ms. Lacusta’s mind. I realized that I wasn’t going to understand the thoughts I heard from her—obviously, she still thought in her mother tongue, which wasn’t unusual. But if I could pick up an image or two, it might help me in some way.
I concentrated harder, pushing my mind even closer to hers. The foreign words grew louder and clearer, and suddenly something clicked. This language was the same as the chant I had heard from Nell last week. Knowing that the two were connected shouldn’t have surprised me, but feeling the link ran a chill up my spine. Nell must have learned the words from Ms. Lacusta, although I supposed it was possible that she had taught herself in an effort to please her idol. The bigger question was why?
&nb
sp; As I considered all of this, suddenly an image from the teacher’s mind appeared in my own head. It was Nell, and she was standing somewhere—it was outside, part of me realized I could see trees—and there were other girls standing apart from her in a loosely grouped cluster. But Nell was not with them. She was looking up, and I saw an eagerness and joy in her expression that was so foreign to me it was startling. Of course, with the picture coming from Ms. Lacusta’s thoughts, it must have been Nell looking at the teacher. And this supported my suspicion that Nell saw Ms. Lacusta as the mother-figure she had been missing.
The image shifted, and Nell’s expression had changed. The eagerness was gone, and in its place was a desperation, a need. I wondered if this represented a different time, or if Nell’s mood changes were this mercurial. The pictures were accompanied by feelings, which from past experience I knew came through Ms. Lacusta. She was annoyed with Nell, almost bored by her. At first Nell’s infatuation had flattered her, and she had used it. Why? That wasn’t clear. But once Nell had moved from simply appreciating her attention to demanding it, Ms. Lacusta had pulled back. And now her feelings toward Nell were… I forced myself to probe deeply. Impatience… anger… perhaps a small bit of fear?
A sudden blast of unintelligible thought assaulted my inner ears. I sucked in a breath and with effort stopped myself from clamping my hands over my ears, as if that would help. The language was the same that I had heard earlier, but the words were whip sharp and so fast they blended together. My mind was being pulled into the storm, and for a terrible, terrifying moment, I wasn’t sure I could escape. With real, painful effort I yanked myself away, and the ensuing mental silence was deafening. There was no baseline buzz of thoughts, no underlying murmur. The relief was palpable but short-lived.
My heart was pounding. I kept my head down and tried to slow my breathing. I was amazed that the whole room hadn’t noticed my distress, but even Liza, sitting next to me, continued to scribble on her worksheet, somehow solving the problems I couldn’t even understand.
I was afraid to look up and meet Ms. Lacusta’s eyes, in case somehow she knew what I’d been doing. And in fact when I was brave enough to shift my hands away from my face and look up, the teacher was gazing at me with interest. She didn’t look angry or suspicious, only curious. When I didn’t immediately look away, her lips curved into a slight smile. I acknowledged her with a small nod, as I would if any of my teachers had caught my eye. And then blessedly, the bell rang, ending the class period.
It took me all of the forty-nine minutes of Speech and Debate to settle down my heart and jumpy mind. Something—either the stress or Ms. Lacusta’s frightening brain—was playing havoc with the volume control on the thoughts I heard, and all during class, they went from a nearly imperceptible murmur to a loud roar. I took deep breaths and tried to pull up my increasingly-hard-to-control mental wall.
Michael’s friend Jim, who sat at lunch with us, was the only person I knew in that class. I saw him looking at me with concern, and when the teacher was occupied elsewhere, he leaned toward me from his desk.
“Are you okay? Are you sick?”
I shook my head. “Thanks, no. I just have a headache.”
Jim nodded, looked at me unconvinced. He was a good friend to Michael, and because he knew Michael cared about me, he did too. While I didn’t know Jim as well as I did some of the others in the group, I was aware that he had a wicked sense of humor. And of course, I also suspected that he had more than simple friendly feelings toward Anne.
Thinking about that distracted me from the Ms. Lacusta after-effects. I wondered if Anne realized how much Jim cared for her. And I toyed again with the idea of saying something to her about it. I wouldn’t even really have to listen to Jim, since I could tell just by watching them together that he wanted to be more than just another friend. Considering all of these possibilities kept my mind busy until the end of Speech.
When I walked into English class, I could feel that Mrs. Cook was unhappy about something. She was uncharacteristically brusque with all of us as we straggled into the room, and I heard her think, Not in the mood for this today. Should have just stayed home… I’m not worth much right now anyway. Mrs. Cook was one of my favorite teachers, and it worried me that something might be really wrong. Of course, it was also entirely possible that she was just having an off day. Sometimes it was hard to tell.
Whatever the cause, she announced that instead of discussing Shakespeare’s sonnets today, she was putting us into pairs, and we were to work together to re-write a sonnet in modern language.
I hate group projects, and I stifled a groan. The rest of the class seemed to share my sentiments, but Mrs. Cook ignored us all as she counted everyone off into twos.
“Joe, with Kevin. Amber, with Tasmyn.” She moved through the rows, pointing at each of us in turn.
I saw Amber stiffen. I wasn’t surprised. Given her new and treasured close friendship with Nell as well as her talk with Michael last week, I imagined that being paired with me for anything was a worst-case scenario in Amber’s eyes. But I was also fairly confident that it wasn’t in her personality to buck the teacher’s instructions.
And I was right. Slowly but quietly, Amber moved out of her chair and back toward my desk. The girl who sat next to me had gone to sit with her own sonnet partner, and Amber slipped into her seat just as Mrs. Cook came by again, this time to give us our assigned sonnet, number twenty-nine.
“Oh, that’s one of my favorites!” I exclaimed. Mrs. Cook gave me a quick but genuine smile, and Amber looked at me as if I’d lost my mind.
“Your favorite?” Her voice held all the skepticism in her eyes.
“Yeah, I kind of read these things for fun, sometimes…” I trailed off my voice, realizing in embarrassment how that made me sound. “Anyway, this one’s good, and it’ll be easy to translate.”
“Good,” Amber said, relief evident in her voice. Then she frowned, and I knew she was remembering that I was the enemy. I smothered a sigh and opened my book to find the sonnet.
We worked in relative silence for a while. I didn’t want to do all of it, but Amber was very reluctant to offer any of her own insight. I could feel her confusion and doubt doing battle. My frustration level made it even harder to avoid hearing her.
“So this line—‘Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope’—what do you think? What should we put down?” Amber shrugged, but her eyebrows were knit together, and I could see that she was at least trying.
She knows all this, why doesn’t she just tell me or write it down… not like I can figure it out anyway… stupid assignment… who needs this? Nell is gonna freak when I tell her. Or if someone else tells her… so scared when she’s angry, like she’s not the same person… don’t want her to get mad before the dance with them… going to be a wonderful night, if Nell’s happy.
I gave in as much for my own sanity as for Amber’s. “Do you think it could be… I don’t know, something like, ‘wishing I had the talents that my friends do’?”
Her eyes cleared and the lines in her forehead smoothed. “Ohh… okay. I think I get that.” She ventured a quick glance at me, still not quite meeting my eyes. “How do you know this stuff? It’s impossible for me.”
I smiled at her. “I moved around a lot all my life, and I haven’t made many friends. So I had a lot of free time for reading. I know it sounds weird, but I actually enjoy Shakespeare.”
Amber shook her head, amazed. “It just doesn’t make any sense to me.” She ducked her head shyly. “But I do like to read. Just not this—whatever it is. I like other kinds of books.”
“Really? What do you read?” I felt as though I was on the verge of a breakthrough here. If Amber realized that I wasn’t the monster Nell had painted me to be, maybe she’d feel more comfortable confiding in me.
“Mostly fantasy—you know, what they call science fiction, sometimes. I like the futuristic books and even some of the space ones.” Her eyes lit up, and I thought in
surprise that she really was quite pretty.
“Books are easier than people, aren’t they?” I observed.
Amber frowned, and her eyes lost the glow. “Sometimes. When you don’t have anyone to talk to, you know you can always count on the characters in books to be there for you.”
“When you’re lonely, it can be a lifesaver,” I said softly.
Suddenly Amber seemed to remember who I was. “I’m not lonely, not anymore,” she retorted. “And it doesn’t look like you are, either. Not many people can come into a school and be dating the most popular boy within a week or so.” She looked at me meaningfully. “So I guess you’re not reading that much Shakespeare these days.”
“What happened when I moved here doesn’t make all the other years of being alone go away,” I returned. “I still read plenty of Shakespeare. Finding friends shouldn’t change who you are. It should make you even more of that person.”
Now her eyes blazed, and I could hardly hear her spoken words for the thoughts that were shouting from her head. “If you’re talking about Nell, you have no idea. I haven’t changed, except the parts that I should have lost long ago. Nell has helped me become stronger and more powerful than you’ll ever know—” and if she knows I’m talking to you about her, she’ll be so angry. And she always knows. Somehow she always knows. Sometimes I think she can hear me even when she’s not here. She scares me but she’s my friend, and I haven’t had a friend in so long. You could never know.
“Powerful?” I interrupted, trying hard to ignore her thoughts and only answer what she said out loud. “What do you mean? That’s an odd thing to say.”
Amber flushed. “I just mean, more sure of myself. That’s all. What else would I mean?”
The temptation to tip my hand and tell Amber what I knew was strong, but I realized that it was much too dangerous. While I didn’t think that Nell had any real power, the idea that Amber was under some sort of spell didn’t feel that far-fetched right now. Her loyalty to the girl who used to make her life miserable was perplexing.
I leaned closer to Amber and lowered my voice. “I don’t know, Amber. Why don’t you tell me? Is Nell messing with something she shouldn’t be?”
Amber jerked back. “You’re seriously deranged, you know that? I see what Nell means. Just leave us alone. You don’t have any idea about—about what all of us have together. People always make sick assumptions when girls can be friends and can be supportive to each other. You’re just jealous Nell didn’t want to be friends with you.”
Now that was actually amusing. “If that’s what you want to believe, be my guest. You’re wrong. But you should listen to me about this. You need to be careful, Amber. If something is frightening you, it probably isn’t a good idea. If you have doubts, you should take some time and think about what you’re doing.” That was as much as I could say without actually telling Amber what I’d heard. I was afraid that if she told Nell that I had warned her more specifically, it might push Nell to act earlier.
Now her mood had shifted from anger to fear. She looked at me wordlessly, her lips pressed together and her eyes wide. “I can’t,” she whispered, so quietly that I had to bend close to hear her. “She would never let me pull back now.” She sat very still, looking trapped and defeated.
Neither of us moved, and our eyes were locked. As the bell rang, Mrs. Cook raised her voice, telling us to finish the assignment for homework. I finally stood, closing my notebook and gathering my books, but keeping my gaze on Amber, who hadn’t moved at all. Before I left, I touched her shoulder lightly.
“There’s always a way out,” I murmured to her. “I’m here if you need to talk.” When I turned to leave the classroom, she was still sitting there.