I stared down at the blank line, trying not to cry and telling myself that everything would be okay—that I’d figure everything out. That’s when I heard the downstairs door slam shut. I just about jumped out of my skin. I hurried and stuffed the papers back into the folder, except the one with the list of dates on it. On a sporadic impulse, I decided to shove that one in my pocket. I set the envelope back into the secret compartment and placed the bottom board back on top of it. I piled the rest of the stuff back inside the bench, closed the lid, and threw the pillows back on, knowing full well Sophia was probably going to noticed how unorganized everything was and would know someone had been in here.
But oh well. I’d deal with that later. Right now, I had bigger problems to deal with.
I tiptoed over to the door and cracked it open. I could hear Marco and Sophia voices chattering downstairs so, holding my breath, I slipped out into the hallway and padded back to my room, gently shutting my door behind me.
I let out a huge exhale. That was close. Way too close. But it was worth it. I took the list out of my pocket and stared down at the dates. What did they mean? I mean, they had to be linked to one another somehow.
Not knowing what else to do, I started for my computer, figuring there was no harm in doing a quick search on the internet to see if anything came up. But before I could even get it turned on, someone knocked on my door.
My muscles seized up. Had Sophia already discovered I’d been snooping in her room?
No, there was no way.
“Gemma.” Sophia said through the door. “Are you in there?”
I stared at the door, frozen and mute, with the image of her on the other side of it, all red faced and pissed off, embedded way to clearly in my mind.
“Gemma!” she yelled, banging on the door again.
My adrenaline soared, and I couldn’t seem to bring myself to move.
“Gemma, open this door up. Now!”
I shoved the list of dates back in the pocket of my jeans, reminded myself to breath, and opened the door.
Yep. There she was all red faced and pissed off.
“Could you move any slower?” she asked snappishly.
I shrugged. “I don’t know? Maybe.”
Her temper flared. “Next time you better hurry up.”
I rolled my eyes. “Did you need anything else?”
She pushed past me into my room and gazed around like she was searching for something.
“Umm…what are you doing?” I asked, crossing my fingers she wasn’t looking for the list of dates stashed inside the pocket of my jeans, which, right now, had seemed to have taken on the weight of lead.
“Are you ready to go to your field trip?” she asked, still staring around my room.
“Wha…My astronomy fieldtrip?” God, I’d completely forgotten about that.
“Yes, your astronomy fieldtrip,” she snapped impatiently. “It’s tonight, right?”
I slowly nodded. “But I think I’m going to skip out on it.” I know I’d really been looking forward to going to it and everything—getting the opportunity to look through a telescope was something I’d wanted to do forever—but at the moment, it just seemed irrelevant. What I wanted to do was to stay here and find out what the list of dates meant, before Sophia found out it was missing. Anyway, I’d skipped out on school today, and showing up at this fieldtrip would eliminate the old I-was-sick excuse.
“No, you’re going,” she ordered.
“Why?” I asked, eyeing her over suspiciously. “I mean, why do you even care? You’ve never cared before. So what’s with the sudden interest?”
She fidgeted nervously, smoothing out invisible wrinkles on her perfectly pressed navy blue sweater. “There is no sudden interest. I just want you out of this house for awhile. That’s all”
Ouch. That stung. “Fine. I’ll go for a drive then.”
“No, you’re going to the fieldtrip.”
“But you just said that all you cared about was me being of the house, so what does it matter where I go just as long as I go,” I argued. “Besides, I missed school today.”
“And whose faults that?”
“You’re the one who didn’t wake me up when my alarm didn’t go off.”
She scowled. “You’re going. End.Of.Discussion.”
And it was, because she left.
Bursting with anger, I kicked the door, but not hard enough to do any damage. I let out a frustrated sigh. She was hiding something. And whatever I had to do, I was going to figure out what it was.
Chapter 11
A half an hour later, bundled up in a heavy black coat, purple gloves and a matching beanie, I was climbing out of my Mirage and onto the ice-skating-of-a-rink school parking lot. It was cold and dark, and I had only one lamppost to light the way to the entrance of the school. Plus, no one was around.
Needless to say, I was freaked out a little.
The icy air seeped through my clothes and burned coldly against my skin. My breath puffed out of my mouth in a cloud of smoke. I yanked my hood over my head, zipped up my coat, and picked up my pace toward the school. I’d made it about halfway when I suddenly got the shivers. I’d have chalked it up to the fact that it was as cold as death out here, but the flash of yellow I saw from my peripheral vision told me otherwise.
I started to jog, my eyes scanning the parking lot frantically. The flash could have been from a headlight of a passing car. That’s what I tried to convince myself until I caught sight of two eye-shaped yellow lights flashing wilding in a cluster of nearby trees.
“Oh my God,” I breathed and jetted off in mad sprint, my adrenaline pulsating like mad. The monster was back. Or maybe it had never left. Maybe it had been waiting around for the perfect moment when I’d be wandering around in a dark parking lot by myself. How could I be so stupid? I’d been so focused on the whole Alex and Sophia thing when, really, what I should have been focusing on the fact that there were real-life monsters around that wanted to kill me. And now my mistake had left me completely vulnerable.
My footsteps thudded loudly as I ran as fast as I could across the ice. I heard a swoosh, and I flicked a glance over at the cluster of trees just in time to see the silhouette of an inhumanly tall figure emerging from them.
I ran like I’d never run before. The entrance door of the school was getting closer. If I could just make it inside the school then, hopefully, there’d be other people around, and I might be okay. But as I glanced back one more time at the monstrous creature, I saw its demon eyes blazing violently beneath the hood of its cloak, and the next thing I knew, it charged for me.
I knew I was a goner.
My skin buzzed, and then I was slamming into something solid. I screamed as I lost my balance and started to fall toward the ground. But someone caught me by the arm. I regained my footing and jerked my arm away from the persons grip. You might be asking, why I was being rude to the person who had just saved me from falling flat on my butt? Because I knew who this person was without even looking, and I didn’t want him touching me, even if he had just saved me.
“What the heck were you doing?” Alex asked, sliding the hood of his olive green coat off of his head.
I backed away from him, putting some space between us. But not too much space since the more space there was between him and I meant the less space there was between the death creature and me. “I was…” I shot a panicked glance over my shoulder. Nothing. No inhumanly tall figure. No glowing yellow eyes. Even the dim lamppost had burnt out, the only light now coming from inside the school.
My legs felt wobbly and my hands were shaking. “Heading into the school,” I told him as I walked unsteadily past him.
“But why were you running?” he asked, following after me.
My heart was beating so hard that I almost wondered if it was trying to escape and free itself from this madness. I know I wished I could. I was scared. More scared than I’d ever been in my entire life. “Just leave me alone.”
“No.” He matched my pace, strolling alongside of me. “Not until you tell me what you were running from.”
I yanked open the door and shot him an angrily look. I wasn’t in the mood for his crap. “Are you going to tell me what you were talking to Sophia about?”
“It was nothing important,” he said indifferently.
I shook my head and stepped inside the warm and brightly lit hallway. Then I let the door go right in his face. I couldn’t deal with him right now. Not when there could be monsters skulking around outside, waiting for the moment when they could finally kill me.
The astronomy classroom was packed with people by the time I got there. Some of the people I recognized from my class. Others I’d never seen before. Hold on. Let me take that back. I had seen them. With my town’s population being a mere glitch above 1,000, I’d basically seen everyone who lived here. I just didn’t know most of their names.
I headed up to my table that I sat at during class. Aislin was already there, wearing a pink fur trimmed coat. The same pink fur also trimmed her gloves and the top of her boots. She kind of reminded me of a big, pink bunny. I tried not to laugh.
I was really loosing it, wasn’t I?
She was texting on her phone, but glanced up as I sat down. “Hey Gemma.” She smiled.
The polite thing for me to do would be to smile back. Or at least asked her if she was feeling better since she’d been out sick for the last few days, but right now, polite was not in my vocabulary. So I muttered a grumpy, “Hey.” Then sank back in my chair and stared down at the table.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
I opened my mouth to say…well, who knew what would have come out considering the mood I was in. I didn’t get a chance to speak, though, because Alex showed up and that was that.
“What took you so long?” Aislin asked him, flipping her phone shut.
Alex’s eyes stayed glued on me as he lowered himself into the chair. “I found Gemma running around lost out in the parking lot and had to help her out.”
I scowled at him. “I wasn’t lost.”
A smile threatened at his lips. “Oh really.”
“Yes really,” I snapped, and closed my eyes, trying to pretend he wasn’t there and that the yellow-eyed creatures weren’t real. I tried to imagine that I hadn’t found Sophia and Alex discussing…whatever the heck it was they’d been discussing. That there was no list of dates tucked away in my pocket. I tried to pretend I was just a normal girl whose life made sense.
Problem was, I’d just seen the monster right outside. And that piece of paper with the list of dates on it was practically burning a hole in my pocket. Plus, the jolt of electricity shimmying up and down my back made me hyperaware that Alex was close by.
Still, I kept my eyes closed until I heard a loud clap. Then I sighed and opened my eyes back up.
Mr. Sterling was standing behind his podium. He wasn’t dressed in his normal teacher attire, instead sporting jeans, sneakers, and navy blue coat. A black baseball cap covered his bald head.
He quickly took role and handed out a packet of papers to each table. Then everyone filed outside to the bus.
