Ephemeral (The Countenance) Read online

“Fletcher.” She over annunciates. “I want to snatch Fletcher from Grayson.”

  “Oh, so we’re going to be those girls.” I don’t really mind the role as long as I get the guy.

  Jen comes over and drops her tray a good foot onto the table before taking a seat.

  “There’s one unaccounted for.” She begins to butter her roll in a pissed off manner.

  “My roommate?” Knew it.

  “Who?” Jen looks genuinely confused. “Casper? Yes. Your roommate is MIA. I called twice. She’s not picking up.”

  I’m panicked over this. “Call the police.” Not that the police are going to extract her from the belly of a Fem. And why would they? They have an impenetrable fort in place to protect wayward students from such attacks, what with the school’s fierce “surround sound” defense system. The only thing they’re going to accomplish by playing “Fur Elise” is lulling some wolves to sleep. And yet, I have a feeling that might be equally acceptable to the authorities of this wayward establishment.

  “She’s got an hour past curfew before I report her missing.” Jen sighs. “And she thinks she hates kitchen duty now.” She spears the two of us with her anger. “What’s this crap about you breaking up Wes and his girlfriend?”

  “I didn’t break anyone up.” I look past her shoulder over at Kresley, moping into her food. She’s still dressed in her tennis garb complete with a pink headband that’s about to slip into her eyes and conceal the world from view. “I don’t control who Wesley sees.”

  Grayson and some other girl I don’t recognize sit huddled on either side as she folds her arms around herself like a bat settling in for a nap.

  Jen gives a secret smile. “I’m sort of glad,” she whispers. “I’ve always thought Wesley was a nice kid, and you’d make a super cute couple.” She glints into me with approval. “Now we can do fun things—like double date.”

  Right, like that will happen. The last thing I want to do is spend my precious “Wes time” with his fictitious brother, Blaine, and my new ditz of a sister.

  “I’ll think about it,” I say, making tracks in my mashed potatoes.

  “What do you mean you’ll think about?” She ticks her head back. “You’ll need a chaperone. Mom and Dad aren’t going to let you run around with boys just because you feel like it.”

  Dad? We have a dad?

  My own father was somewhat of a myth. My mother said he was a truck driver who came and went as he pleased. But I found it odd that one day she was pregnant with Lacey, and yet our home maintained its testosterone-free status. Of course she’s long since divorced my absentee father, the mythological creature that he was, much like the giant ass on display in the student quad. Lately, everyone in my past feels like a fabled creature.

  “Seriously?” I lean into her. “Ixnay on the double atingday.” I shake my head.

  “You have no say in the matter.” She gives an authoritative blink as though I might be obligated to fear her. She may be prettier than my own sister, Jen, and in some ways nicer, since old Jen never said six words to me our entire childhood, but in just about every other way, this version is far more annoying. That alone might prove she’s the real thing.

  I have my first official date with Wes tonight, and there’s not a damn thing she can do about it.

  I glance up at Jen and give the hint of a self-serving smile.

  This is one date she won’t be chaperoning.

  Jen’s cell goes off and her entire person brightens as she answers.

  “No, I’m not busy at all.” She drops her fork and walks over to an oversized Ficus sprouting from a glazed pot the size of a bathtub.

  “Probably Blaine.” Carter scrolls the ceiling when she says his name. “When are you going to tell her?”

  “Tell her what?”

  “That he’s cheating.”

  “He’s what?” I’m not sure why this alarms me.

  “Everybody knows.” She twitches her head back at someone at the next table.

  “Which one?”

  “Jax with an X.” She ticks her head again at the girl rubbing Kresley’s back. “Hair the color of a penny, face like the back of a horse.”

  I lean in and catch a better glimpse. Unfortunately Carter exaggerates, and the girl in question could double as a supermodel.

  Jax with an X. Soon it’ll be Jen with an ex, if I have anything to say about it.

  “I’ll need some proof.” I don’t know why I have the sudden urge to protect nuJen, but the last thing I want to do is sever her relationship if there’s no hardcore evidence. If he’s anything like Wes, it would kill her to lose him.

  “I’ll talk to Wesley.” I lean over secretively. “Um, I dropped my books a couple of days ago, and this really cute guy helped me out. I wanted to thank him, but he left before I could get his name. He’s got dark blond hair and broad shoulders, real serious eyes.” I shake my head.

  “You’re cheating on Wes and you haven’t even gone on your first date?” It comes out a little too loud.

  Kresley and crew turn in unison before trying to play it off like they didn’t hear—like they weren’t gearing up to eaves drop on the next leg of our conversation.

  “No,” I hiss. “I just want to say thank you.”

  “First, I seriously doubt you had books day one because day one officially commences tomorrow, and second, you just called him cute.”

  “I did, didn’t I?” My mouth falls open.

  She’s right.

  I love Wesley. I should have no interest in saying thank you or anything else to this person, whoever he is, even if he did hack the bogeyman to pieces for me.

  But a part of me feels otherwise.

  13

  Love and Such

  After dinner, I head upstairs. The door to my room sits slightly ajar, and I race inside fully expecting to find Casper sprawled out on the bed or sitting at her desk clicking through her emails, but I don’t. Instead I see the exact person who I wouldn’t mind never seeing again, Kresley.

  “Can I help you?” This is precisely why the doors at Austen House should have locks, and oddly, they’re devoid of that security-enhancing feature.

  She’s sitting on the floor, tight against Casper’s bed. Her dark hair is rumpled over itself as if she had just emerged from doing a clean sweep from underneath it.

  “Just looking for this.” She holds up a history book before shoving it into her backpack and spikes to her feet. “I don’t know who you think you are coming here and messing with me.” She pants, her hair wild from her historical conquest, which, by the way, I find total bullshit. “I think you should know, Wesley and I have something special.” Her sage-colored eyes glow against her perfectly tanned skin.

  “And I think you should know, I have something special with Wes, which happens to be real.” It takes everything in me not to pummel her against the wall. “In fact, it’s so amazingly special, there’s nothing you can do to keep us apart. Believe me, others have tried—and failed spectacularly.” By others I mean death.

  Her nostrils flare with irritation. I’m pretty sure Kresley isn’t used to being on the receiving end of a confrontation.

  “I had the chance to talk to some of my friends from Rycroft today.” Her lips exaggerate into a quivering smile. “Heard you’re quite the skin diver.” She puffs a quiet laugh when she says it. “Like I told you the night you got here, start with Flynn, someone a little more in line with what you’re used to.” She knocks into me, hard with her shoulder on her way out the door, but I’m quick to block the exit.

  Skin diver?

  “You didn’t happen to see Casper this morning, did you?” I’m pretty sure there is a better way to do this.

  “Move.” She gives a slow disbelieving blink.

  “I think something happened to her.”

  Her features cloud over. She gazes past my shoulder with those haunting crystal eyes as if she were remembering a very bad dream.

  “I gotta go.” She takes a step to the rig
ht, and I stop her.

  “You had fresh mud on your shoes this morning,” I pant. “You know something.”

  “I’ll tell you what I know.” She seethes. “I know the only reason Ephemeral let you in was because your family promised to up the scholarship fund even though your grades were shitty. I know that you double as a prostitute and that Wes would never touch trash like you unless he was drunk or stoned. Step the hell away from him, if you know what’s good for you.”

  She darts around me and speeds out of the room.

  Kresley knows something, and it has nothing to do with the aforementioned bullshit she just spouted off. It one hundred percent has to do with Casper. The truth was there layered just beneath her anger. I’m betting the history book was a lame consolation prize for whatever the hell she was after.

  I block the door with a chair in the event she comes back with a machete and feels the sudden urge to imbed it into my skull.

  It takes all of my concentrated effort to revert my focus back to my date with Wes. I change into an off the shoulder sweater and jeans that, quite frankly, I’m flattered the powers that be thought I might fit into. I press my feet into a pair of white stilettos, overlaid with black lace. Back home I owned one pair of heels. They were soft pink and I only wore them on special occasions.

  My feet do a hard wobble as I try to maneuver in them. The world feels distant, difficult to navigate from this height, so I pluck them off and shrink four inches. I consider flats for a moment, but then imagine Wes taking me in with my kitten heels that make me feel like an Amazon princess. I carefully put them back on and grab a wool coat out of the closet the color of an ashen sky. I feel its heft and rub my hand over its rough exterior. It covers me with its weight, heavy as a body lying over my shoulders. It feels good as it gives off its generous warmth like a heater penetrating me with a thermal embrace. The inside is lined with an emerald satin the exact color of Wesley’s eyes. Loose stitching holds the split in the back together, and the pockets are both sewn shut.

  Mom once bought my grandfather a suit at the Salvation Army that had the pockets sealed this way, she said it was the mark of a well-tailored piece. The suit was for his funeral—I found it sad he had to wait so long to put on anything well-tailored. I guess I waited just as long since I’m technically dead on some level.

  I trot down to the entrance.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Jen’s voice booms from behind the expansive desk.

  Crap.

  “I thought I’d get some air.” I don’t seem to have a problem spewing half-truths to this new version of my sister.

  “There’s plenty of that in here.” She waves me back while losing herself in her laptop.

  I suppose cluing Jen in on the fact Wes is taking me out on a date, sans herself and the cheat she hopes to spend the rest of her unnatural days with, isn’t the greatest idea. So, I say the next best thing.

  I clear my throat. “Look, I didn’t want to say anything, but Casper called, and she wants me to meet her at the library.” I’m quick with the lie. It’s like I suddenly have an entire arsenal of falsehoods ready and willing to stream from my lips.

  “Bring her back in one piece.” She doesn’t bother to look up this time. “I’m going to rip her a new one.”

  “Will do,” I shout as I make my way into the crisp night air.

  I feel horrible dragging Casper in as an excuse to go out with Wes. Obviously my escape plan wasn’t well-hatched. Then again, who knew Jen would turn out to be some Draconian authority who practically strong-armed me into using a dead girl as an alibi? God, I hope she’s not really dead.

  I take an unexpected breath.

  What if Casper was kidnapped? Or what if she simply appeared at another school somewhere else entirely, freshly programmed and ready for senior year? Somewhere like Cider Plains. How would that be for irony? Cider Plains High would be quite the demotion compared to Ephemeral. Here there is an embarrassment of riches, and Cider Plains is the no man’s land of couture and fashion.

  I try to shake away all thoughts of Casper and that strange note she supposedly left me along with a shiny new phone. Instead, I focus in on the fact I get to spend some serious one-on-one time with my own reprogrammed, beautiful disaster, Wes.

  Outside of Austen House a layer of purple clouds stretch overhead, backlit by an enormous full moon. I don’t remember any night in Kansas looking so magical or smelling so alive with the ripe scent of pines—the sweet fragrance of white oak layered just beneath.

  A pair of headlights blinks from the far end of the grassy field, and I head in that direction.

  Wes pulls up next to me in a dark metallic Range Rover. The letters are spread out evenly across the hood and it gleams with pride under the lamp of Austen House.

  “Hey, beautiful.” Wes grins as I hop in next to him. The scent of new car lingers in the air. The dash looks supple, bubbling with a leathery texture, and it takes everything in me not to run my hand over it, feel the pebbly grain. The dashboard is lit up with every brand of vehicular technology—nothing but lights and backlit buttons, enough to run a spaceship.

  I buckle up and a thick layer of silence settles over the two of us.

  I’ve always been a stickler for wearing my seatbelt. When we were little, there was a PSA that had shown kids playing sports, practicing ballet, running in the streets, but ended by saying they would never do those things again because of their folly to secure their seatbelt. Scared the shit out of me, but it worked. I wore my seatbelt dutifully with dreams of ballet or participating in gymnastics. Turns out those things weren’t in the cards for me, but I still have my legs and my questionable life.

  “I know for sure I buckled my seatbelt that day I went to rip Tucker’s head off,” I offer. Still not certain if this is the best topic of conversation, but it seems rather compulsory, and the fact I’ve already navigated us into those murky waters lends me to continue. If I don’t talk to someone about it, even someone who’s prone not to believe me, my head is going to explode.

  “Is that what you think happened? A car accident?” He nods into my insanity as if he’s accepted this new version of me on some rudimentary level.

  “Yes.” It comes out questionable at best. Maybe shelving the Cider Plains drama until Wes and I have officially reinstated our couple status is the right plan of action. I really don’t care if the entire student body at Ephemeral gives me hell for cementing myself into his life or if they torment me all year over the fact I’m a so-called boyfriend thief. There has to be some reason we both ended up at the same place, and I’m choosing to believe its destiny. As for Fletcher, he’s probably just a byproduct—a tagalong even in death.

  “Nice ride,” I offer.

  “You should like it. You helped pick it out.” He jostles my knee before looping back around toward the main road.

  “I did?” Add that to the long list of things of which I have no freaking recall.

  “You and Fletch.”

  “What about Kresley?” I hate bringing her up so soon after I’ve swept her out of the picture, but if they were so close why wasn’t she there?

  “Kres and I don’t do much outside of school.” He stretches his neck to the side when he says her name. “We’re busy—you know, sports.” He winces into the elongating road.

  Sports. I bet he has no clue Kresley is interested in sports of the sexual variety, that she spends her free time practicing over at Melville House. At least that’s what Casper implied. Anyway, I don’t want to think about Kresley or Casper. I want to focus one hundred percent on Wes.

  I pull his hand over and bring it up to my cheek. I can’t believe Wes is sitting next to me. It all feels like a dream, like there’s still the off chance I might wake up in an ambulance, roaring my way over to the hospital, bloodied and broken.

  “You okay?” Wes dips into the steering wheel as he examines me—lowers his lids as though he suspects I’m not.

  “I am now. So, where we goin
g?”

  “Driving tour.” He gives a mischievous grin. “Thought maybe we’d hit the lake.”

  “Taking the orientation off grounds, I like that.”

  He presses out a magnetic smile, cuts a glance over at me, and takes me in from top to bottom before reversing the effort. “I’m surprised Jen let you out.”

  “I have my ways of evading her tyranny. Hey—Carter mentioned that Blaine might be cheating on her.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me.” His cheek curls up on one side, no smile.

  “That’s terrible. We should do something.” Even if I don’t believe Jen is really my sister, I still don’t want someone taking advantage of her that way, especially if he’s a grade-A asshole like Tucker. God, wouldn’t it be something if it was Tucker? That would really mess with my mind. “It’s the worst feeling in the world to be cheated on. Do we have proof?”

  “This is the first I’m hearing of it.”

  “Well, I’m not going say anything unless there’s evidence. She says she wants to double date.”

  “Are we dating?” The words sail from his lips each their own song. He gives an evaporating smile before glancing back at the road. There’s nothing but a wash of headlights over grey asphalt, not another soul around.

  “Are we moving too fast for you?” I tease.

  “Moving too fast? With Jen chaperoning our dates?” Wesley interlaces his fingers with mine. “I think if that starts up, we’ll be moving backward.”

  “So there is a we.” A hot bite of heat detonates in my stomach. I don’t remember doing this flirtatious dance with Wes before. It was all so easy, so fluid back then, but there’s something exciting about this staccato touch and go movement, the fits and starts of passion Wesley keeps igniting. I could linger here—breathe the lust-filled air all night, its fragrance sweet like perfume.

  “You have a way with words,” he says.

  Wesley Parker has a way with everything. I want to memorize him like this, with the night stamped around him as he glows phosphorescent. I want to erase the last image I had of him back home, the one I tattooed in my brain just before they shut the lid on his casket.