Scorched: Book 1 of the Scorched Trilogy Read online

  As if being pulled by an invisible string, my legs pushed off the stool and I started through the crowd toward him. It was a pull that I didn’t understand. Why was I walking toward this man who I couldn’t even see, whose eyes I could feel hadn’t moved from me since the moment I’d sensed him watching me? Normally I’d be shouting at him to stop being a creeper and getting the hell away, but there was something compelling me forward; a need that felt primal and instinctive.

  The crowd of people had surged again, as the band started back up. The bodies pushed against me and knocked me into people surrounding me. I pushed through, shoving someone’s back to get them out of my way, before squeezing between a couple that refused to move. It didn’t matter, I needed to get to the other side of the floor. I could see the man still stood in the shadows against the wall, but he’d straightened up as he realized I was approaching.

  A sort of desperation thrummed through me with the need to reach him, but it was as if the crowd was conspiring to hold me back, making me feel like I was slogging through quicksand. Finally breaking through the mess of bodies, I nearly screamed in relief as I took a step closer to the man who now appeared to be waiting for me. A hand grabbed my shoulder and tugged, drawing my attention away. I spun my head around and saw that the hand belonged to Maggie, who had tears in her eyes that were threatening to spill.

  “What happened?!” I shouted though I wasn't sure she could hear me over the noise of the music that had started back up.

  “Can we go?” Maggie bit her lip to try to contain a tremble and a tear escaped down her cheek.

  I could barely hear the words, but I understood. What the hell had happened with Sam? Grabbing her hand, I squeezed it as I nodded, letting her know I understood, and we could leave. Before we started to maneuver through the crowd, I looked behind me to where the man in shadow had been. My stomach churned with disappointment because he was gone.

  I didn’t want to think about why I felt so upset that he’d disappeared, instead I focused on fighting our way through the bodies in the crowd once more. I was practically ready to punch someone by the time we broke through all the people. Just before we reached the edge of the dance floor, someone grabbed my free hand and a shock of electricity spiked up my arm causing me to gasp.

  If color could be felt it was this touch: warm and bright, golden and glowing like fire. It caused me to stop dead in my tracks and I looked down to see masculine fingers pulling away from my own smaller hand. I briefly saw a black mark, like a tattoo, between the thumb and pointer finger of the hand that was retreating from mine, but it was too dark to make out.

  Wanting to see his face I looked up, but the man was already lost in the crowd. All I could make out was a dark mess of hair as he walked away from me, leaving me stunned. Maggie was tugging on my other hand bringing me back to reality and I turned to see a confused look on her face. I shook my head at her, motioning forward as I yelled over the noise, “Let’s go.”

  Even though the air outside was suffocating with heat and humidity, it was a relief to be out of the crowd and breathe in some fresh air. Whatever happened down there when that guy had touched me was causing aftershocks, because I still felt a spark of electricity pulsing through me, like the blood in my veins was charged with a residual current. Part of me was dying to go back and find the guy while the other, more reasonable part was reminding me that my friend was hurting and needed me.

  Now that we were out of the noise, I looked at Maggie who was walking quickly to where we’d parked.

  “What happened? You guys looked like you were talking and have a great time.”

  Maggie’s face crumbled and she sucked in a ragged breath jingling her keys in irritation. “We were, but he wasn’t there alone.”

  My stomach dropped for her, shit. “Who was with him?”

  “Ugh!” Maggie shouted, letting out her frustration to the sky. “Freaking Melinda Chase.”

  Melinda Chase was what Maggie called her push-in-a-hole person. The topic had come up one night when we were discussing mean people that deserved to, well, be pushed in a hole. We never claimed to be creative.

  Melinda was always incredibly rude to Maggie, but that was how she acted with just about everyone she met. Maggie really didn't like her because she knew Melinda had been trying to get Sam to take her out, and I guess she'd been successful. Melinda was the kind of girl who was unfairly pretty. She was a royal bitch to everyone except whoever she was sucking up to at that moment. If her outsides matched her insides she'd be a troll.

  Dammit, I was kind of pissed at Sam. What the hell was he thinking? Could he not see through Melinda’s bullshit facade? She had been throwing herself at Sam for the last year, but I’d never seen him pay her much attention until lately. I wondered if she’d finally wore him down or if he’d really taken an interest?

  I did secretly think that Melinda knew Sam had a thing for Maggie and resented it, which was why she was such an utter bitch to her, and me by proxy. My gut told me that if Maggie just told Sam how she felt about him then he’d be at her beck and call.

  “Are you sure they were there on a date, and not just with a group of people?” I kept my fingers crossed that this was the case.

  “I don’t know.” Maggie huffed out as she violently jammed her keys into the lock on her car door. “I sort of panicked when she came up behind him and put her hand on his arm.”

  “That does not mean they were there together! What did his face look like?”

  Maggie pulled open the door of her car with a little more force than necessary and I suppressed a grimace when it made an awful creaking noise of protest. She flopped onto the seat and plunked her head down against the steering wheel, waiting for me to get in before she responded.

  “I don’t know. I sort of lost feeling in my face and there was this whooshing noise in my ears and I was afraid if I said anything my head might explode. I told him I had to go and just took off.”

  Relief washed over me when Maggie started to calm down. It made me think of when the sky is so heavy with moisture that it’s almost hard to breathe, but then it finally gives and just starts pouring down rain. It’s like the sky sighs, grateful to be done with the weight of the water and the earth soaks it up like it's been dying of thirst. Everyone is relieved and satisfied in that one moment before the air starts to get heavy again and it all starts over.

  I thought about how nice it would be now for the skies to open up and give us a break from the oppressive heat and started laughing when a loud rumble of thunder broke through the air. It was quickly followed by a slash of lightning before a heavy sheet of rain was unleashed by the sky.

  Maggie lifted her head from the steering wheel to gape at the rain pounding on her windshield before she turned to me with a look of apology on her face.

  “I’m sorry I ruined the night.”

  I tsked at her and shook my head. “Hey, no way. I had a blast tonight. I’m not sure I could have danced much longer anyway. Pretty sure I sweated off about five pounds tonight. I need water and a shower and my pajamas. Thank you for celebrating with me.” Hopefully she heard the sincerity in my voice.

  I was ready to go. Between sleeping like shit lately, my earlier session with Dr. Janus, and the awful heat, I was dead on my feet. There was just that small twinge of regret that kept pecking at the back of my mind about the shadow man. I felt an ache to know who he was, but pushed down the odd longing, telling myself I was being dumb. It’s not like this man was my destiny, he was just some faceless guy from a bar.

  Maggie nodded at me as if deciding she would accept my statement. But then a haunted look crept into her eyes before it turned into a sneer.

  “She touched his arm as if she owned him.”

  “Let’s push her in a hole.” I tried to lighten Maggie’s mood. I knew how crappy this was making her feel, but unless she was going to tell Sam that she liked him nothing was going to change.

  “Hell yeah, we will.”

  “I’
ll get the shovels out when we get home,” I joked.

  “Wait are we burying her?” Maggie said with a gleeful glint in her eye, turning on the car and starting the trip back home.

  “Well… I mean we need the shovels to dig the hole, but hell, we’ll have a hole, might as well just cover up the evidence after we push her in.”

  Maggie laughed hard and I found myself joining her until my stomach hurt.

  “God, I love that we can joke about murder and it’s not weird. Happy birthday, Annie.”

  I smiled back at Maggie. “Love you Mags.”

  “Love you too Annie.”

  Chapter Three

  The following Monday, I was gently woken up when a voice whispered, “Wakey, wakey,” near my ear, but my eyelids were sealed shut, refusing to open.

  “Come on sleepy head,” the voice crooned.

  I groaned in protest.

  “Seriously, we are going to be late!”

  A pillow bounced off my head.

  I slowly lifted one eyelid to see a fully dressed Maggie bouncing around my room.

  “Get up Annie! We’re a month into school and we’ve already been late three times.”

  “Almost late,” I corrected. My voice gravelly with sleep. “We’ve made it on time every day.”

  “Yeah, well I'm sick of running from the parking lot and then sweating through first hour,” Maggie threw back.

  “Fine, I'll get up,” I grumbled as I kicked off the covers and rolled out of bed with my eyelids still partially closed.

  Taking a bleary look at the clock to check the time, I made a hissing noise at Maggie.

  “I could've gotten a good five minutes of REM yet!” And I needed it, considering how many times I’d woken up the night before.

  “If you slept any more you'd end up as a story on Dateline, the girl who slept for eight months straight.” She waved her hand in an arc like she was reading an invisible headline in the air. I rolled my eyes but couldn't contain my smile.

  “You are such a nerd.”

  “Yes, but that's all the rage right now, so I'm also very trendy.”

  I laughed as I stumbled across the room to find something to wear.

  “I'll love you forever if you make me an Eggo,” I said as I dug through my laundry basket for something that would pass for cute and comfortable. September in Iowa could be soul-meltingly hot.

  Sifting through the clean laundry I promised myself I’d fold later, I found a cotton tank top and a pair of shorts. They looked like they might be relatively cool, so I tossed them on and gave a guilty look to the rest of my unfolded laundry.

  “It’s already toasting!” Maggie chirped with far too much energy for this time of day, as she bounced out of the room and downstairs.

  Maggie and I shared a bathroom that connected our bedrooms. I hurried in to give my hair a quick brush and pulled it up into a no-fuss ponytail before splashing some cold water on my face and brushing my teeth.

  Rushing, I made the bed up quickly, since leaving my room a mess always made me feel guilty. After my parents had died in the fire, Maggie’s mom, Sara, had saved me from the foster system, helping me get emancipated so I could live with them. I didn’t have any family left and had nowhere else to go. Maggie was more than a best friend; she and Sara were my only family. It had been over two years since the fire, and I was grateful every day that they were in my life.

  I arranged the pillows quickly, trying my best and failing to make it look nice. I just didn't have the knack. Sara had a designer's touch. She could sweep into a room and organize a stack of books so that they looked ready for a design magazine photo shoot.

  Her bed always hosted a fluffy mound of fancy pillows straight out of Better Homes and Gardens magazine, while my attempts looked like someone had just flopped down on the bed for a nap. Regardless of my unattractive results, making my bed seemed a small way to show Sara I respected her home and her giving me a place within it.

  Shrugging at my less than stellar results, I turned to go downstairs when a wave of dizziness overcame me. A roaring like crashing waves thundered in my ears, blocking out all other sounds. It was quickly replaced with the loud pounding of my own heartbeat. My breath hitched as the room swirled around me. A sudden sickness roiled in my stomach, and electric pulses shot down my spine. I stumbled to the edge of the bed to sit down and lowered my head between my knees to inhale a few deep breaths.

  Even though the nightmares had become a nightly occurrence recently, I hadn't had an attack like this in a long time. Not since right after the fire. My therapist had called them acute anxiety attacks. They'd come frequently in the first few months after my parents’ death due to, no doubt, the trauma of losing them, my home, and well, basically everything familiar and safe. That, and the fact that I didn't remember how I had ended up on the front lawn while my parents had burned inside.

  I hadn't had an attack in over a year and a half. The doctor thought I'd been successfully implementing breathing exercises and meditation, but frankly, I'd been a bit of a slacker when it came to the therapeutic methods, and the attacks had just kind of gone away on their own. Frustration welled up inside me that they were back. On top of the lack of sleep, it was something else I really didn't want to deal with.

  I heard Maggie’s footsteps running back up the steps and tried to pull myself together. I hated having anyone seeing me in this state, even my best friend. But I wasn’t quick enough. I’d barely started to stand when she appeared in the doorway. The cheerful look on her face quickly morphed into one of concern when she took in my clammy complexion.

  “You okay?” She stayed in the doorway, knowing I hated being coddled.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Let’s get going.”

  Maggie tilted her head as if to say, “I’m not buying it,” but didn’t say anything. She just stepped to the side so I could get out of the room and handed me a now cold Eggo before she quietly said, “It’s been a while, huh?”

  I took a bite, tasting nothing, but forcing myself to chew. “Yeah, a while.”

  ***

  I was sitting in Mrs. Uthe’s fifth hour English class doing my best impression of an attentive listener. Between the ninety-degree weather and a school that had been built before the era of air conditioning, I thought it was a pretty respectable effort.

  My eyes were blinking so slowly that they were staying closed longer than open, but I couldn't help that the sweltering heat was sapping all my energy. As if to punctuate the heat, a trickle of sweat slid down my back. I was a little concerned about what condition the back of my shirt would be in once I peeled myself away from the chair.

  I scratched my inner arm near my left elbow. My scar often itched when I was hot, and today was no exception. It was early fall in Iowa, which meant it was humid and sweltering and generally miserable. It was akin to child abuse forcing us to melt inside what amounted to a brick kiln with little slits for windows.

  Some genius in the '70s, with an obvious infatuation with Frank Lloyd Wright, built the classrooms with small windows eight feet up in the air. The exposed brick had the double whammy of keeping in the heat and baking students all day in the warm months but providing no insulation and turning students into popsicles in the winter. Rumor had it that the school district had run out of money before they could install air conditioning. That had been about fifty years ago. I was pretty sure that if they were truly concerned about student comfort, they probably would have fixed it by now.

  “Annie?”

  My head snapped up as Mrs. Uthe called my name. It was clear by the bemused expression on her face that this was not the first time she had called on me.

  “Annie, do you want to join the circle?”

  I shook my sleepy daze off and realized the rest of the class had moved their desks to form a circle in the middle of the room. Mrs. Uthe liked to have round table discussions and preferred the class in a circle instead of the standard rows. Of course, the teachers in the room before and after this hour pr
eferred every desk and student in their proper place, so we were constantly shifting chairs around in the class.

  “Sorry!” I moved quickly to join the circle.

  Our classroom had a door that opened directly outside to the courtyard. It was propped wide open in a futile attempt to let in any semblance of a breeze. The school was shaped like a pentagon with a large courtyard in the middle. The green space had a smattering of tables for students to study or eat lunch at in the few short months when it was nice enough to do so outside. Our door and all the classrooms facing the courtyard opened out into the green space, tempting us all to get up and run away.

  Once in the circle, my chair was angled so that I had a view of most of the courtyard, and on occasion, a whisper of a breeze lifted the wisps of dark hair that had fallen out of my ponytail. I let my mind drift again while the class discussed the reading from the night before, a short story by Kafka that I hadn't cared for.

  I thought back to the dizziness I’d experienced this morning. Right after my parents died I had experienced episodes daily, multiple times a day in fact. My ears would fill with a buzz that blocked out all other sounds, my heart would pound and the hairs on my arms would stand up as though electricity was running through me.

  After I had passed out in class the second time in a week, the school counselor referred me to a child trauma specialist who taught me meditation and breathing techniques. I was to meditate every night before I went to bed. I'd done it religiously in the beginning, hating how out of control the episodes made me feel, but after a few months free of any attacks, I'd gotten lazy. I'd occasionally remind myself to do some deep breathing here and there, but it had been a long time since I'd done them every night. I guess it was time to buckle down again.