CHAPTER 5. “Insider out?” Nash set his tray on the nearest table and dug in his pocket

“ Insider out?” Nash set his tray on the nearest table and dug in his pocket. Coins jingled, barely audible over the clatter of silverware and the buzz of several dozen simultaneous conversation, and he pulled out a handful of change, already turning toward the soda machine.

The autumn morning had dawned clear and cool, but by third period, it was warm enough for my biology teacher to open the windows in the lab and vent the acrid scent of chemical preservatives. “Out.” Lunch in the quad sounded good to me, especially considering the swarm of student bodies in the cafeteria, and the dozen or so people who had already noticed his fingers curled around mine in the pizza line.

Including his latest ex, who now glared at me from within a cocoon of hostile cheerleader clones. I glanced over my shoulder at Emma, who nodded. “I’ll get a table.” She turned and dodged a freshman carrying three ice-cream bars, who almost knocked her tray from her hands.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, then stopped to watch her, his expression a blend of blatant lust and longing. Emma didn’t even notice.

Nas pulled two Cokes from the machine and set one on my tray, then we wove our way around two tables to the center aisle, headed straight for the exit. I could practically feel the eyes of my classmates trained on my back, and it was everything I could do not to squirm beneath their scrutiny. How could he stand people watching him all the time?

We were two feet from the double doors leading into the quad when they swung open, only inches from smacking into my tray. A gaggle of slim girls in matching letterman jackets brushed past u, several pausing to smile at Nash. One even ran her fingers down his sleeve, and I was startled by the sudden, irrational urge to slap her hand away. Which proved unnecessary when he walked past her with nothing but a distracted nod.

Sophie was the only one who even glanced my way, and her expression could hardly be considered friendly. Until it landed on Nash. She let her arm brush his as she passed, glancing up into his eyes, a carnal smile turning up one corner of her perfectly made-up mouth in blatant, unspoken invitation.

Seconds later, the dancers were gone, leaving behind a cloud of perfume strong enough to burn my eyes. I stomped through the still-open doors and down the steps. Nash jogged to catch up with me. He carried his tray in one hand, and his opposite arm snaked around my waist, fingers curling around my hip with an intimate familiarity that made my pulse spike. “She’s just trying to piss you off.”

“She says she’s been in your backseat.” I couldn’t keep suspicion from my tone. Yes, his hand on my hip made a very public statement, and that—along with his silence on the matter of my mental health—finally put to rest my stubborn fear that he’d planned a quick hookup over the weekend, and would be done with me by Monday.

But Nash had never even tried to deny the rumors of his past exploits, and I couldn’t stand the thought that Sophie had been one of them.

“What?” He stopped in the middle of the quad, frowning down at me in obvious confusion.

“The back of your car. She says there’s a rip in your backseat and wants me to think she’s seen it up close.”

Nash chuckled softly and started walking again as he spoke, so that I had no choice but to follow. “Um…yeah. She put it there. She was wrecked the night I took her home, and she threw up all over the front floorboard. I put her in the back, and she got some stupid buckle on her shoe caught in the stitching and ripped it loose.”

I laughed, and my anger melted like Sophie’s makeup in July. In fact, I almost felt sorry for her—but not too sorry to dangle that little nugget of information in front of my cousin the next time she flirted with Nash in front of me.

The quad was actually a long rectangle, surrounded on three sides by various wings of the school building, with the cafeteria entrance on the end of one long wall. The fourth side opened up to the soccer and baseball practice fields at the rear of the campus.

Emma had claimed a table in the far corner, mostly sheltered from the wind by the junction of the language and science halls. I sat on the bench opposite her, and Nash slid in next to me. His leg touched mine from hip to knee, which was enough to keep me warm from the inside out, in spite of the chilly, intermittent breeze at my back.

“What’s with the dance team?” Emma asked as I bit the point off my slice of pizza. “They came through here a minute ago, squealing and bouncing around like someone poured hot sauce in their leotards.”

I laughed and nearly choked on a chunk of pepperoni. “They won the regional championship on Saturday. Sophie’s been insufferable ever since.”

“So how long will they be squeaking like squirrels?”

Holding up one finger, I chewed and swallowed another bite before answering. “The state championship is next month. After that, there will either be more irrepressible squealing, or inconsolable tears. Then it’s over until May, when they audition for next year’s team.” Regardless, I would mourn the end of the competition season right along with Sophie. Dance-team practices took up most of her spare time for several months of the year, giving me some much-coveted peace and quiet while she was out of the house.

And, as spoiled and arrogant as she was, Sophie was totally dedicated to the team. She gave the other dancers more respect than she’d ever seen fit to waste on me, and the dedication and punctuality she showed them were the only evidence I’d seen in thirteen years that she had a single responsible bone in that infuriatingly graceful body.

Plus, most of her teammates could drive, and someone always seemed willing to give her a ride. After the state championship, Sophie would go back to daily ballet classes, and now that I had a car, I was fairly certain her parents would make me drive her to and from. Like I had nothing better to do with my time. And my gas money.

“Well, here’s hoping we all go deaf either way.” Emma held her bottled water aloft, and Nash and I clinked our cans into it. “So…” She screwed the lid back on her bottle. “Heard anything new about that girl from Arlington?”

Nash frowned, his brows lowered over eyes more brown than green at the moment.

“Yeah.” I dropped the remains of my pizza onto my tray and picked up a bruised red apple. “Her name was Alyson Baker. Happened just like Jimmy said. She fell over dead, and the cops have no idea what killed her.”

“Was she drinking?” Emma asked, obviously thinking about Heidi Anderson.

“Nope. She wasn’t on anything either.” Nash gestured with the crust of his first slice. “But she has nothing to do with the first, right?” He glanced my way, brows raised now in question. “I mean, you didn’t predict this one. You never even saw her, right?”

I nodded and took the first bite out of my apple. He was right, of course.

But there was an obvious connection between the two girls: they were both dead with no apparent cause. The local news knew that. Emma knew it. I knew it. Only Nash seemed oblivious. Or at least uninterested.

Emma pointed at him with the business end of a plastic fork, her porcelain face twisted into an equally beautiful mask of disbelief. “So you don’t think it’s weird that two girls have dropped dead in the past two days?”

He sighed and pulled the tab from his empty soda can, watching it, rather than either of us. “I never said it wasn’t weird. But I don’t get this morbid obsession you two have with those poor girls. They’re gone. You didn’t know either of them. Let them rest in peace.”

I rolled my eyes and peeled the vendor’s sticker from my apple. “We’re not disturbing their rest.”

“And it’s not obsession—it’s caution,” Emma countered, aiming her water bottle at him like a conductor’s baton. “No one knows how they died, and I’m not buying the coincidence angle. That could be either one of us tomorrow.” Her gaze turned my way, clearly including me among the potential victims of…um…dropping dead for no reason. “Or any one of them.” She nodded toward the cafeteria, and I turned to see Sophie and several of her friends bounce down the steps in the company of half a dozen jocks in matching green-and-white jackets.

“You’re totally overreacting.” Nash pushed his tray away and twisted on the bench to face us both. “It’s just a weird coincidence that has nothing to do with us.”

“What if it’s not?” I demanded, and even I recognized the pain in my voice. I couldn’t let go of the possibility that I could have helped. Could maybe have saved Heidi, if I’d only said something. “No one knows what happened to those girls, so you can’t possibly know it won’t happen again.”

Nash closed his eyes, as if gathering his thoughts. Or maybe his patience. Then he opened them and looked at first Emma, then me. “No, I don’t know what happened to either of them, but the cops will figure it out sooner or later. They probably died of totally different, completely unrelated illnesses. An aneurism, or a freak teenage heart attack. And I’ll bet you my Xbox that they have nothing to do with each other.”

His eyes narrowed on mine then, and he took my hand in both of his. “And they have nothing to do with you.”

“Then how did she know it was going to happen?” Emma stared at us both, brown eyes wide. “Kaylee knew that first girl was going to die. I’d say that makes her pretty deeply involved.”

“Okay, yes.” Nash turned from me to glare at her. “Kaylee knew about Heidi. That’s weird, and creepy, and sounds like the plot from some cheesy horror movie—”

“Hey!” I elbowed Nash, and he shot me a dimpled grin.

“Sorry. But she asked. My point is that your premonition is the only weird part of this. The rest is just coincidence. A total fluke. It’s not going to happen again.”

I pulled my hand from his grasp. “What if you’re wrong?”

Nash frowned and ran his fingers through his artfully mussed hair, but before he could answer, a hand dropped onto my shoulder and I jumped.

“Trouble in paradise?” Sophie asked, and I looked up to find her beaming at Nash over my head.

“Nope. We’re all shiny and happy here, thanks,” Emma said when I couldn’t unclench my teeth long enough to reply.

“Hey, Hudson.” A green-sleeved arm slid around Sophie’s shoulders, and I found myself staring at Scott Carter, the first-string quarterback and my cousin’s current plaything. “Makin’ new friends?”

Nash nodded. “You know Emma, right?”

Carter’s jaw tightened as his eyes settled on my best friend. He knew her, all right. Emma had turned him down cold over the summer, then dumped a Slushie on his shirt at the Cinemark when he refused to take the hint. If anyone other than Jimmy had been working with her, she’d probably have been reported and fired.

Nash’s hand curled around mine. “And this is Kaylee.”

Carter’s eyes turned my way, for probably the first time ever, and his smile returned as his gaze traveled from my face to the front of my shirt. Which he could probably see straight down, since he was standing. “Sophie’s sister, right?”

“Cousin,” Sophie and I said in unison. It was the only thing we agreed on.

“Hey, we’re taking my dad’s boat out on White Rock Lake Friday night. You two should come.”

“She can’t.” Sophie sneered at me, curling her arm through Carter’s. “She has to work.”

As if it were a dirty word. Though personally, after what Emma had to say about him, I’d rather spend all night scraping gum from the underside of theater chairs than spend one minute on Carter’s father’s boat.

“We’ll catch you next time,” Nash said, and Carter nodded as Sophie tugged him toward a table at the front of the quad, already swarming with green-and-white jackets.

“Wow.” Emma whistled softly. “He is such a dick. He just looked down your shirt with Sophie and Nash both standing there. That’s a jock for you.”

“We’re not all bad,” Nash said, but he looked distinctly unamused by both Carter’s optical invasion and Emma’s commentary on it.

Without his teammates around, it was easy to forget that Nash played football. Baseball too. What could he possibly want with me, while girls like Sophie were standing in line to drool all over him?

“Don’t you usually sit over there?” I asked, nodding toward the green-and-white bee swarm. We’d sat with the jocks earlier in the year, when Emma was going out with one of the linebackers, but honestly, the noise and constant posturing got on my nerves.

“You two are much better company.” Nash grinned, pulling me closer, but for once, I barely noticed. Something in that crowd of matching jackets had snagged my attention. Something felt…wrong.

Nooo…! It couldn’t happen again! Nash had said it wouldn’t!

But already the first tendrils of panic were prickling the inside of my flesh.

The edges of my vision went dark, as if death hovered just out of sight. My heart hammered. My skin tingled, and my hands curled into fists. Nash flinched and pulled his hand from mine. I’d forgotten I was holding it and had drawn blood from his palm.

“Kaylee?” His voice was thick with concern, but I couldn’t look away from the green-and-white crowd. Couldn’t concentrate on him while panic thundered through my head and guilt clawed at my heart. Someone was going to die. I could feel it, but I couldn’t tell who yet. The jackets blended into one another, like a herd of Technicolor zebras, individuals hiding among the mingling multitude.

But social camouflage wouldn’t work. Death would find the one it wanted, and I couldn’t warn the victim if I couldn’t find him. Or her.

And it was a her. I could feel that much.

“She’s doing it again.”

I heard Emma as if she were speaking from far away, though I knew dimly that she’d moved to sit next to me. I couldn’t look at her. I had eyes only for the crowd hiding the soon-to-be-dead girl. I needed to see who she was. I had to see….

Then the crowd parted and the applause began. Music played; someone had brought out a small stereo. Girls were tossing their jackets onto a pile on the ground. They lined up in the grass, forming a zigzag formation I recognized from the competitions my aunt and uncle had dragged me to. The dance team was doing a demonstration. Showing off the routine that had captured the regional trophy.

And then I saw her. Second from the left, three down from Sophie. A tall, slender girl with honey-brown hair and heavily lashed eyes.

Meredith Cole. The team captain. Shrouded in a shadow so thick I could barely make out her features.

As soon as my eyes found her, my throat began to burn, like I’d inhaled bleach fumes. Devastation drenched me, threatening to pull me beneath the surface of despair. And that familiar dark knowledge left me shivering where I sat. Meredith Cole would die very, very soon.

“Kaylee, come on.” Nash stood, tugging on my arm, trying to pull me up. “Let’s go.”

My throat tightened, and my breaths grew short. My head swam with the bitter chaos building inside me, and my heart felt swollen and heavy with grief. But I couldn’t go. I had to tell her. I’d let Heidi die, but I could save Meredith. I could warn her, and everything would be okay.

My mouth fell open, but the words didn’t come. Instead, a scream clawed at my throat, announcing its arrival with the usual burst of panic, and this time there was nothing I could do to stop it. I couldn’t speak; I could only scream. But that wouldn’t be enough. I needed words to warn Meredith, not in-articulate shrieking. What good was my “gift” if I couldn’t use it? If all I could do was scream uselessly?

The keening began deep in my throat, so low it felt like my lungs were on fire. Yet the sound was soft at first. Like a whisper I felt more than heard. I clamped my jaws shut in horror as Nash’s eyes widened, his irises seeming to churn again in the bright sunlight.

My vision darkened and went dull, as if that same foggy gray filter had been draped over the entire world. The day was dimmer now, the shadows thicker, the air hazy. My own hands looked fuzzy, as if I couldn’t quite bring them into focus. Tables, students, and the school building itself were suddenly leached of their vibrancy, like someone had opened a drain at the base of a rainbow and let all the color out.

I stood and clamped a hand over my mouth, begging an oddly faded-looking Nash with my eyes for help. The keening sound rolled up my throat now and stuck there, like a growl, offering no release.

Nash wrapped one arm around my waist and nodded for Emma to take my other side. “Calm down, Kaylee,” he whispered into my ear, his breath warm against my neck, stirring the fine hairs there. “Just relax and listen to—”

My legs collapsed, even as my gaze was drawn back to Meredith, now dancing between Sophie and a petite blonde I knew only by sight.

Nash scooped me into his arms and held me tight to his chest, still whispering something in my ear. Something familiar. Something that rhymed. His words fell on me with an almost physical presence, soothing me everywhere they touched me, like a balm I could hear.

Yet still the scream raged inside me, demanding a way out, and apparently willing to forge an exit itself, if I offered no alternative.

Emma walked ahead of us to the end of the English hall and around the corner, out of sight of the quad. No one else noticed; they were all watching the dance squad.

Nash put me down against the short wall at the end of the building, next to a door that only worked as an exit. He sat beside me again, and this time he wrapped his arms around me while Emma knelt next to us. Nash was warm at my back, and the only sounds I could hear were his whispers and my own soft keening, persisting in spite of my struggle to suppress it.

I stared over his shoulder and past Emma’s concerned face, at the weirdly gray field house in the distance, concentrating on my efforts to speak without screaming. Something rushed across the left edge of my vision, and my gaze homed in on it automatically, trying to bring it into focus. But it moved too fast, leaving me with only a vague impression of a human silhouette, out of proportion in no way I could explain with so short a glimpse. The figure was misshapen, somehow. Odd-looking. And when I blinked, I could no longer be sure of where I’d seen it.

A teacher, probably, rendered unrecognizable by the weird gray fog that had overlaid my vision. I squeezed my eyes shut to avoid any future distractions.

Then, as swiftly as it had struck, the panic faded. Tension drained from my body like air from a beach ball, leaving me limp with relief and fatigue. I opened my eyes to see that color and clarity had returned to the world. My hands relaxed, and the scream died in my throat. But an instant later it tore through the air, and it actually took me a second to realize that the shriek hadn’t come from me.

It had come from the quad.

I knew what had happened without even looking. Meredith had collapsed. My urge to scream died the moment she did.

Again, I’d known someone was going to die. And again, I’d let it happen.

My eyes closed as a fresh wave of shock and grief rolled over me, followed immediately by guilt so heavy I could hardly lift my head. My fault. I should have been able to save her.

More shouts came from the quad, and someone yelled for someone else to call an ambulance. Doors squealed open, then crashed into the side of the brick building. Sneakers pounded on concrete steps.

Tears of shame and frustration poured down my face. I buried my head in Nash’s shoulder, heedless as my tears soaked into his shirt. I might as well have killed her myself, for all the good my warning had done.

Around the corner, the buzz of chaos rose, each terrified voice blending into the next. Someone was crying. Someone else was running. And above it all, Mrs. Tucker, the girls’ softball coach, blew her whistle, trying ineffectively to calm everyone down.

“Who is it?” Emma asked, still kneeling beside us, eyes wide in shock and understanding as she brushed back a strand of my hair so she could see my face.

“Meredith Cole,” I whispered, wiping tears on my sleeve.

Nash squeezed me tighter, wrapping his arms around mine, where they clutched at my stomach.

Emma stood slowly, her expression a mixture of disbelief and dread. She backed away from us, legs wobbling. Then she turned carefully and peeked around the corner. “I can’t see anything. There’re too many people.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said, mildly surprised by the dazed quality of my own voice. “She’s already dead.”

“How do you know?” Her hand gripped the corner of the building, nails digging into the rough mortar outlining the brown bricks. “Are you sure it’s Meredith?”

“Yes.” I sighed, then rose and pulled Nash up, wiping more tears from my cheeks. He stood to my left, Emma to my right. Together, we turned the corner and entered the chaos.