you here?” A blond guy with a big zit on his chin asked. From his voice I knew he was the same one who’d made the “dyke” remark. His name was Aaron or Albert or something. I remembered him from last year. “Shouldn’t you be locked up with the rest of the retards?”
Heat rushed to my cheeks as people laughed, but I didn’t look away. Homeschooling was the only way I’d been able to return to my correct year. I’d busted my ass to not get left behind. Wren had been right there with me.
“They kicked me out because they needed room for your mother.” Lame, but it was the first thing that came to mind. “And I’m not retarded, asshole. I’m crazy—there’s a difference. Which you’d know if your parents weren’t brother and sister.” More laughter, but this time it was for me, not against me.
Andrew—that was his name—turned red, which only made that ugly zit stand out more. I wanted to smack it with the heel of my shoe while my foot was still inside, bust it wide-open. Gross, right? “Bitch.”
I raised a brow. “Seriously? That’s the best you can do?”
A hand settled on my arm. I looked down, expecting it to be Roxi. It wasn’t. It was Wren. Damn.
“Who are you looking at?” Andrew demanded. Then his expression turned mean—happily mean. “Is your sister here? Your dead sister?”
In books, the hero’s blood sometimes “turns to ice” in his or her veins, but that’s not right. It’s not the blood that freezes, it’s everything around it, so that your blood actually feels like hot razor blades ripping through your entire body. I lifted my head. What laughter there was gave way to uneasy, half-assed giggles. “Don’t talk about my sister.”
I shouldn’t have said anything.
“How did she die anyway?” Andrew asked with a mocking grin. “I bet your mother saw that there was two of you and lost her shit. Did she know that she killed the wrong one? It should have been you she killed.”
No one had killed Wren, she had been stillborn, and our mother had never gotten over her loss. And yeah, I wondered if the wrong one had died all the damn time.
Beside me Wren’s shape shimmered, like the edges of her were fraying. It was what happened when she got mad. Really mad. She picked up on my emotions like I’d dropped them on the floor in front of her. It meant I had to be really careful when I lied to her.
Her anger picked up my hair like a breeze.
“Don’t,” I whispered.
“Oh, are you going to cry?” Andrew pressed in a whiny voice. “Did I upset you?”
I met his gaze with a hard glare as warmth spread through me—a dry summer breeze on a hot beach. Oh, hell. I’d promised myself this wouldn’t happen. It was only the second freaking day! Wren settled in, her spirit fitting me perfectly, like a glove tailor-made for a hand. She smiled, using my lips. “She wasn’t talking to you.” It wasn’t my voice—it was lower, softer.
Andrew frowned. “What...?”
I hated when Wren possessed me without asking, but she was so powerful—like nothing I’d ever felt before. I felt strong—invincible—when we were joined together like this.
The lights flickered. Concerned murmurs rose up. People glanced at me. I shrugged—crazy didn’t affect the electricity. The lights flickered again—then the fire alarm went off, shrieking like a banshee. Hoots and cheers filled the air. Fire alarm on the second day—a lovely way to start the year. Everyone tore from the room, and Roxi didn’t wait for me—smart girl. Andrew rose from his seat, but I stopped him by grabbing his wrist.
My sister was strong. Inhumanly strong. Under my fingers, Andrew’s wrist felt as fragile as dry twigs. He tried to tug free. “Let me go, freak!”
“Sit down,” Wren commanded through my mouth. He wasn’t as stupid as he looked, because he did what he was told.
“Good boy,” I said, rising to my feet. Wren slipped out of me as easily as she’d entered. I felt her loss like someone had taken my eye or a limb. It never got any easier. She had physical contact now, sorta, and it was better if I didn’t stick around. “You just sit there a minute. There’s someone who wants to meet you.”
Andrew lifted his gaze to mine as I gathered my things. He didn’t look so smug now. “Wh-who?”
“My sister,” I told him, smiling just a little when he looked down at his wrist, still in Wren’s ghostly grip. He had to feel the cold fingers biting into his skin even though he couldn’t see them. “You know—my dead sister?”
I walked to the door, Wren’s low voice following my every step as she whispered words I couldn’t make out. I hesitated when I heard Andrew whimper.
“Go,” my sister told me.
I didn’t look, I just kept walking.
* * *
A few minutes before the end of first class I got summoned to the principal’s office. I was surprised they waited that long. Andrew was absent, and people had been looking from his empty seat to me since we were let back into the school after the alarm.
Not like they could blame me for anything. After all, I’d been outside with everyone else. If not for Roxi I would have been standing alone, with an invisible boundary around me that no one dared cross. Seriously, no one had come closer than two or three feet. It was like I had pink eye or something.
With a sigh, I packed up my books and left the classroom. Even though I’d been gone since almost the beginning of the previous year, I knew exactly how to get to the office. I’d spent a lot of time there before what my mother called the “incident.”
Incident. Somehow it didn’t have the same punch as “attempted suicide.”
I was one of those teenagers categorized as a problem or “troubled.” I got it. Last year I was troubled, and I had lots of problems. The biggest one of which was that I let myself believe the people who called me crazy, and I stopped believing in Wren.
So, yeah. I was messed up and I did some things that I really regret doing. Things that I refused to think about as I made my way down the hallway to the main staircase near the office.
I had to check in with the guy at the desk and tell him who I was. I could tell from the way he looked at me that he already knew. He pointed at the waiting area and told me to have a seat. Principal Grant would be with me in a minute.
A few seconds later a guy sat down in an empty chair across from mine. He was tall and lean, wearing jeans and a gray shirt. He had a young Keanu/Ezra Miller thing going on. Very cute, despite having a bit of a black eye.
“Rough morning?” I asked.
He grinned as he slouched in his chair. Yeah, he was really cute, even though he seemed surprised that I had spoken to him. “This?” He pointed to his eye. “This was yesterday. You should see the other guy.”
Corny, too. I smiled back. “If it happened yesterday why are you here?”
He lifted his chin toward Principal Grant’s office. “Waiting.”
I was saved from trying to figure out something witty to say by the opening of the principal’s door. A girl a year or so younger than me walked out. She took one look at Keanu and her brown eyes narrowed. The resemblance was obvious. She tossed her long, straight hair. “What are you doing here?”
He stood up, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I’m supposed to take you home.”
The girl glanced at me, and for a second her eyes widened. Then she smirked at her brother. “I can go back in if you want to wait a little longer.”
What was that supposed to mean? Keanu’s cheeks flushed, but he didn’t look away from her. And he didn’t look impressed. “Let’s go.”
She