“Sh-h-h.”
“Alcohol?”
Shushing her with an index finger across my lips, I said, “Only a little.”
She broke free of my grip. “Lorelei Elizabeth McAlister.”
Great. Time to be judged again. “What are you doing here anyway?” I peeled off my jacket as Cameron climbed in and closed the window against the crisp night air.
“Cameron called me.”
I glared at the traitor before sinking onto my bed. Completely unaffected, he turned to stare into the darkness.
Brooke sat beside me. “Why would you go to that party, Lor? What could you possibly have had to gain?”
“I don’t know.” Leaning against the headboard, I clutched a pillow to my chest. How could I tell her that I just wanted to know what it felt like to be normal? That I just wanted to belong? And that I was super curious why Tabitha had invited me in the first place.
I couldn’t miss the hurt that flashed across her face before she reined it in. “Did you think that going to a party without me would earn you brownie points with the cool kids?”
“What? No. Why would you even say that?”
“Why would you even go to that moronic party? Especially with everything that’s going on?”
“No,” I said, suddenly annoyed. “In lieu of everything that’s going on. Don’t you just want to forget it?
To pretend that there’s nothing wrong with us?”
She leaned back, clearly offended. “Wrong with us?”
“Oh, my god, Brooke, look at us. The only normal one in our bunch is Glitch, and that’s debatable on his best day. We have an angelic being, a nephilim, a girl who was possessed and has a cracked aura to prove it—”
“Don’t dis my crack.”
“And then there’s me. Whoopty-freaking-do. Oh, yes, the world will surely be saved now. And by whom? By us. The misfits of Torrance County. We are supposed to stop a war between good and evil?
When we can barely make it to school on time, we are destined to safeguard humanity?”
She put a hand on my knee, her face knowing. Sympathetic. “You mean you.”
I stilled. Questioned her with my eyes.
“You mean you are supposed to stop a war.”
I swallowed hard with the reminder. “I just don’t want it anymore. I don’t want the prophecy, the visions, any of it.”
“But why?” She grew animated, her movements exaggerated. “Your visions were so cool. You could’ve changed people’s lives with them, Lor. You could’ve helped people.”
I wanted to scoff at her. To rant and rave about how wrong she was.
She bit her bottom lip in thought, and I could see the wheels spinning. “We just need to practice more.
That’s it. I’m sure you’ll get them back.”
My next statement was little more than a whisper, but I couldn’t keep going on like this. It wasn’t fair to her. To either of us. Gathering my courage, I said, “I never lost them.”
“What?” she said, sobering.
I shifted away from her. Plucked at the pillow. “The visions. I never lost them.” I looked up to gauge her reaction. “In fact, they’re so strong, so fierce, I can’t control them. They come at me like missiles.
They punch me in the gut. They tear through my heart. They make me sick. Every single one.”
She scooted closer. “You’re still having them?”
“Yes.”
The surprise on her face confirmed she really had no idea. “Lor, why didn’t you tell me? Why would you lie about that?”
“Because I don’t want them.”
“Why? Why would you not want something so miraculous?”
“Miraculous?” That time I did scoff. “You call what happens to me miraculous?” I drew in a ragged breath and readied myself to give her the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Curling my fingers into the pillow, I asked, “Did you know there is a student at Riley High who was raped last year?”
Her eyes widened, but I barreled forward, afraid if I stopped, I wouldn’t be able to start again.
“She never told anyone, because she thinks it was her fault. She keeps it bottled up inside.” I leaned into her. “Do you know what it’s like to be raped, Brooke? Because I do. Now I know exactly what it feels like. It is a complete and savage violation of body and soul.”
Stammering, Brooke said, “I-I didn’t know.”
“Then did you know that another student is planning to kill himself?”
Her expression morphed into a mixture of shock and sympathy. “No.”
“Not just thinking about it. Planning every moment. He’s going to do it with his father’s gun. Do you know what it feels like to be that desperate? That lost?” Before she could answer, I asked, “And do you know what it feels like when a bullet enters the roof of your mouth and blows the top of your head off?” I was shaking with the memory of something that had yet to come to pass. My stomach lurched as I heard the gun go off. As I felt, for just a split second, a bullet enter my brain before everything went black.
“Lorelei,” she said, her voice faltering, “I’m so sorry.”
“And did you know that there is another student who will die in a motorcycle accident this summer? Or another who is almost going to die of exposure and dehydration when he goes rock climbing with a friend in Utah and gets lost in the desert? Do you know what it feels like when your kidneys shut down? When your tongue swells to three times its normal size until you can barely talk? Barely swallow?”
She put a hand on mine. “I’m so sorry, Lor.”
“You don’t understand. I don’t just see what happens to them. I feel it. Every ounce of horror. Every wave of nausea. Every pang of heartache. I’m right there with them. And I get everything—every emotion, every jolt of pain—in a blinding flash that leaves me in a stupor. The aftermath lingers for days on end. I can’t eat. I can’t concentrate.”
Her hand pressed against her mouth as tears spilled over her lashes and onto her cheeks.
I gazed into her huge brown eyes, not wanting to offend her, but hoping—no, praying—that she would understand. I was not prying when I saw what had happened to her. I would never do such a thing. It came to me when I least expected it. When we were working on a science project in lab. It was just there.
“And did you know that another student at Riley High was almost abducted when she was seven? That a man reached out of his car and grabbed her as she was on her way home from the store? That terror filled her so completely, she wet her pants?”
Brooke stilled in disbelief for a second, then she fell into the memory like a skydiver during free fall, her expression blank, void of anything but that moment in time.
“And when she wrenched free of him, ripping her shirt and staining it with the orange Popsicle she dropped, she ran all the way home, too scared to scream, too in shock to cry. But she never told her mother. She wasn’t supposed to go to the store by herself. Ever. And she was more worried about getting in trouble for that than turning the man in. So she never told anyone.”
After taking a moment to let the memory resurface, Brooke stood and stepped back, struggled to absorb the fact that I knew.
“How would you suggest that I tell her that?” I asked, my voice soft, empathetic. “The student who wet her pants and told her mom she’d fallen in a puddle of water? How should I approach her and tell her that
I know one of her most guarded secrets? Do you think she would believe me?”
I hadn’t missed the clenching of Cameron’s fists when I talked about Brooke’s memory. The tensing of his jaw. He cared for her deeply. That much was obvious. And I was glad because of it. To have a nephilim on your side could only be a good thing. He was super strong and super fast and could protect her from so many of life’s dangers. Like pedophiles.