The Gifting (Book 1 in The Gifting Series) Read online

  Chapter Seventeen

  Angels

  The next morning, I spend a good fifteen minutes staring at my dream journal, contemplating last night, unsure if I should record the events. Did it really happen—me and Luka and the Edward Brooks Facility? Or was it a really long, vivid, drawn-out hallucination? I decide to leave the pages blank and deflect Mom’s questions about the strange brightness in my eyes.

  I can’t decide if the truth—that I snuck out of the house in the middle of the night and broke into a private facility with the boy next door—would freak her out or not. Most mothers, yes. Absolutely. Mine? For all I know, she could be relieved that I’m making friends. If that’s what Luka is.

  On the drive to school, I’m lost in a whirlwind of questions. If last night was indeed real, then how am I supposed to act in front of Luka today? Will he want to sit next to me in class? Will he want to talk about our shared dream again? Will he tell me more about this angel-demon theory of his?

  As soon as I step inside the school building, Pete takes off toward his locker and Leela gives me a half-frantic, half-excited wave from the drinking fountain, races over and pulls me off to the side, away from the throng of students. “What happened yesterday? You just got up and left class and then Luka asked to go the nurse and didn’t return until halfway through Ceramics.”

  As much as I want to confide in Leela, as much as I’m dying to tell her about Luka following me yesterday morning and then me following him last night and this bizarre connection we share, I can’t. There is too much I still don’t understand myself. So even though I’m a terrible actress, I do my best impersonation of dumb. “He left class too?”

  “Yes! Right after you bolted. The whole class stared after you and then Luka raised his hand and told the teacher he wasn’t feeling very well and would like to go to the nurse. Usually that never works on Mr. Lotsam. He doesn’t let anybody out of class unless they’re bleeding from the head or have a severed limb. But Luka’s never asked to visit the nurse before and he looked so pale that Mr. Lotsam let him leave and then he spent the rest of the period trying to reign everybody in.”

  The bell rings—our five minute warning. With our shoulders together, we walk out of the locker bay. Leela, with her thumbs looped beneath the straps of her backpack and me with a note from my mom clutched in my hand. Given how yesterday morning started, she one hundred percent believed me when I told her I left school in the middle of first period because I was about to be sick. “He came back to Ceramics, though?”

  “Yeah, but he seemed distracted. At lunch too. Rumors are buzzing. First he asks you to be his partner in history class—which you totally owe me a story about, by the way. And then you both disappear yesterday morning.” Leela opens the door leading into the stairwell. I slip through and the two of us walk up the stairs while others pass us by. “People are saying he never went to the nurse. Jennalee’s brother is a senior and was driving in late after a dentist appointment and he said he saw Luka peeling out of the parking lot in his car.”

  I keep my face as blank as possible. “That’s weird.”

  “So what happened to you?”

  I hold up my mother’s note. “I really was sick. My mom didn’t even want me to go to school in the first place.”

  Leela plucks it from my hand and scans the short paragraph, her expression sagging with each successive word. “You didn’t see Luka?”

  I press my lips together and shake my head, a twinge of guilt stabbing my stomach. I hate lying to anyone, but especially Leela, my good friend—the girl who welcomed me into Thornsdale with opened arms.

  Her posture droops. “Rumors are always more interesting than the truth, aren’t they?”

  If she only knew.

  I’m quite positive the truth couldn’t get more outrageous. Me and Luka at the Edward Brooks Facility at two in the morning? Me and Luka seeing things nobody else can see? Visiting each other in a dream? I’m still not sure how that worked. Still not entirely sure that in my desperation to not be crazy, I didn’t make the whole thing up.

  Mr. Lotsam’s classroom comes into view and my insides squeeze tight with a strange mixture of misery and anticipation. I don’t want to record last night in my dream journal, but I can’t fight the sinking sensation that I will be. That last night was truly a deranged figment of my imagination. I’ve never been more uncertain, or hopeful.

  When I step into the classroom, Luka is already there. Summer sits on the table in front of him, her feet on the chair to his left, successfully gathering his attention as she laughs and talks. The seat to his right is taken by Jared. Disappointment crashes through me. Not that I’d be brave enough to sit by him if that were an option. Still, a small piece of me hoped he might save me a seat. I find myself staring at Summer’s cleavage. The view is no accident. She has flirting down to an art form and Jared is practically drooling. My shoulders droop to match Leela’s as I follow her toward two open chairs, unsure if I want Luka to look at me in light of the perfect, creature in front of him.

  He doesn’t.

  Not when the bell rings and not through the entire first period, even though I can do nothing but look at him. Summer catches me at one point and gives me a disgusted look that seems to say in your dreams, honey. By the time the bell rings, my heart hurts, I have no idea what we discussed in Current Events, and I’m convinced Summer’s right. Only in my dreams do Luka and I have anything in common.

  It’s hard—as I walk with Leela to Ceramics—not to despair. I don’t have any proof that last night was real. This morning, my hoodie was in the same place I left it after dinner. Nothing was out of place, not even the unlaced running shoes I supposedly slipped on to follow Luka in the dead of night. The one person who could provide the proof I want doesn’t even acknowledge me. He looks completely unfazed and well-rested. Surely he can’t be that good of an actor.

  “Hey, you okay?” Leela finally asks, as we shuffle inside the dusty basement classroom.

  “Still feeling a little off, I guess.” I’m suddenly very grateful I didn’t tell Leela anything. What a freak I am, believing a boy like Luka Williams would go through the trouble of sneaking out at night, breaking into a facility, all to read my file.

  I hang my bag over the back of a chair. The teacher calls us over to the pottery wheel for a demonstration and I join the rest of the class. Someone moves to stand slightly behind me, a smidge to the left—unusually close. I glance over my shoulder and all my muscles tense. Because it’s Luka. He’s not looking at me. He doesn’t even seem to notice me. But he’s there, so close that if I were to lean back on my heels our bodies would touch. My scalp tingles at his nearness. I hold my breath and cross my arms and pin my eyes on the spinning wheel, even though the teacher’s instructions are a muffle of indecipherable sound. My heart thumps in my ears, my throat, my wrists. It’s like I have a hundred hearts placed throughout my body.

  All of a sudden, the heat of Luka’s closeness combusts into something infinitely hotter. So much so that for a fraction of a second, I think the kiln has exploded. I jerk my head around, toward the corner of the room, and see something—a ball of brightness. Luminous and terrifying and beautiful. I am about to stumble back, but Luka’s fingers wrap around my forearm and hold me in place.

  I’m frozen. I can’t even look over my shoulder to see Luka’s face. So I stand there, panic swelling, as the rest of the class stares with glazed, bored eyes at the teacher and the pottery wheel, unaware of this very not-normal thing hovering in the corner of the classroom. But Luka sees it. He must, otherwise why is he holding my arm, anchoring me in place? My knees shake. As much as I want to, I can’t look away from the light. It’s so bright that it’s impossible to look away.

  The ball of light moves out of the corner, toward me. I am terrified, like yesterday. Only instead of feeling threatened, I am enraptured. In awe. It takes everything in me not to fall to my knees.

  Luka’s grip tightens and he shifts his body so he stands in
front of me, like a shield, only I don’t feel in need of protecting. Not from this. The light hovers in front of both of us, its warmth like the sun. My heart crashes against my sternum. I’m positive it will burst straight through the bone. But as quickly as the light appeared, it vanishes. And I’m left blinking and dazed.

  My chest rises and falls as I look one way, then the other. Leela covers her mouth with a yawn. Jennalee picks at her nail mindlessly. A few students look genuinely interested in the hypnotic way our teacher’s hands mold the spinning clay on the wheel. Luka lets go of my arm, but the heat of his touch remains. A million questions spin in my mind. They chase each other in circles, like a frantic dog after its tail. Our teacher finishes his demonstration and the class disperses. Without acknowledging me or the bizarre thing that happened, Luka claims one of the pottery wheels.

  Dumbstruck, I follow Leela to our table. She talks as I poke at the hunk of clay in front of me and sneak covert glances at Luka. He is a master at the wheel. Just as good, if not better than the teacher. About halfway through class, Leela waves her hand in front of my face.

  “Earth to Tess?”

  My eyelids flutter.

  She glances at Luka, then at the hunk of clay I have decimated in front of me. I don’t even know what I’m trying to make. “You should probably be a little more subtle,” she mumbles from the corner of her mouth.

  “Huh?”

  “About the staring.” Leela’s almost finished with her project—a ceramic lantern with lopsided walls. “I know Summer can seem nice at times, but she’s really possessive when it comes to him. With all those rumors flying around about yesterday … let’s just say you don’t want to get on her bad side.”

  I bite the inside of my cheek and will Luka to look at me. Come on, give me something. Please. I’m freaking out over here.

  Nothing.

  His eyes stay glued to the clay in front of him.

  I scoot back from the table. “I think I’ll go get a drink.”

  “Did you hear anything I said?” Leela calls after me.

  “Yeah. Promise. I just need a drink.”

  I slip out of the classroom, slightly terrified the bright thing will reappear while I’m all alone. Its warmth remains like an invisible residue coating my skin, but the hallway is empty. Nothing but quiet and chlorine. I shuffle toward the restrooms and take a long drink from the fountain. The cool water does nothing to soothe my frantic thoughts. I take another drink and the sound of a closing door jars the quiet. I stand straight and whirl around. Jumpy.

  Luka walks toward me, closing the gap between us with long, sure strides. I let out my breath and wipe away the wetness from my bottom lip. He stops in front of me, a divot creasing the space between his dark eyebrows. “Are you okay?”

  I don’t know. Am I? The warmth is still there, on the outside, like a cloak. But inside, my bones are cold.

  “Tess, look at me.”

  I do what he says. It does nothing to de-frazzle my nerves.

  “Are you okay?”

  Caution keeps me silent. Because what if I imagined it all again? What if Luka didn’t really see what I saw? What if he simply thought I was having some sort of panic attack and so he grabbed my arm in an effort to calm down the crazy girl who ran into him on the way out of the Edward Brooke’s Facility yesterday morning?

  His divot deepens. “Tess?”

  “Are—are you okay?” Great, now I’m turning into Dr. Roth. Answering questions with questions.

  “I’m not sure. I’ve never …” He shakes his head and curls his hand around the back of his neck.

  “Never what?”

  “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That thing.” He jerks his hand toward our classroom. “It was almost as if it was trying to interact with you.”

  That thing. So he saw it. He really saw it. All my despair and fear and questions evaporate. I want to grab a hold of those two words and hug them close. “You saw it.”

  “Of course I saw it.”

  “What do you think it was?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “If you had to guess?”

  “An angel.”

  A laugh bubbles up my throat and tumbles into the air. It sounds panicked. Slightly hysterical. “An angel? In our ceramics class?”

  “Do you have a better explanation?”

  I think about the bright light in the gym my first day of school. And other instances, too. Ones that can’t be explained by science or logic, no matter how adamant my father is that the world is not supernatural. “If your theory is right, then that means everyone else is wrong.”

  A student walks toward us. Luka takes my elbow and pulls me off to the side, then scratches the back of his head until the kid passes. When he does, he leans in and whispers, “Just because a lot of people believe something doesn’t make it true.”

  Swallowing, I look away from his eyes, glance at his lips and settle on his nose. Safer territory. There is nothing sexy about a nose. Scratch that. There’s nothing distractingly sexy about a nose. “Okay, so let’s say it was an angel. Why couldn’t anybody else see it? Why was it even there in the first place?”

  A muscle ticks in his jaw—in, out, in, out, like a heartbeat. “I don’t know,” he finally says.

  “This is crazy.”

  “I know.”

  “Up until twenty minutes ago, I didn’t even think last night happened. I thought it was a dream.”

  Luka quirks his eyebrow.

  I scratch my wrist. “For all I know, right now is too.”

  “You must have very realistic dreams.”

  “In first period, you acted like nothing happened. You …” I trail off, unwilling to admit how much his dismissive attitude hurt.

  “I’m a good actor, remember? I’ve been doing it for years and I didn’t want to draw attention to us.” He stands so close, I can see specks of pine-needle green in his eyes and smell the cool mint in his breath. “I’m real, Tess. This isn’t a dream.”

  “Dream Luka would probably say the same thing.”

  He takes my hand and puts it against his chest.

  I might hyperventilate.

  “You can feel my heartbeat. Would that happen in a dream?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  Luka drops my wrist. “I think we should meet up after school. Get a head start on our history project.”

  The sudden departure from heartbeats and angels to school projects spins me in a circle. “O-okay.”

  He pushes off from the wall. “My house or yours?”

  “Yours.” I blurt the word so fast that Luka cocks his head. I envision my mother and cookies and an embarrassing grand tour. I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “My brother’s into angry music. We’d have a hard time getting anything done.”

  He smiles a crooked smile. “My house it is, then.”