Shifting

Page 18

He raised his dark eyebrows. I felt my cheeks start to flush, so I looked at my watch.
“Dude!” I blurted, shocked. It was almost one thirty, way past the end of lunch. I had been asleep a long time. I stood and started walking toward the school, making a point not to glance at Bridger again. Behind me I heard a shoe scuff cement and then someone fell into step beside me. My heart started to flutter. I knew if I looked up I would be gazing into a pair of black eyes.
Don’t get attached, I thought.
“What I don’t get is why Danni’s so convinced you’re a prostitute.”
Of all the conversation starters, he would have to pick that one. I stopped walking and looked at him with a smirk, ready to brush him off, but my heart lurched and stuttered. Standing so close, I realized how much I had missed his friendship. I glared into his eyes, eyes so dark a shade of gray, his pupils got lost. A smile danced across his face and I realized I was staring at him again. I blinked and cleared my throat, trying to remember what he had asked me. Oh, yeah—prostitute.
“Well, it’s a long story,” I said sarcastically. A warm breeze blew my hair across my face and I breathed in the smell of Bridger O’Connell. I took a second deep breath and fought the urge to close my eyes. He smelled … wonderful, like clean clothes and soap and joy.
Don’t get attached!
I took a step backward. He was cramping my personal space and making it impossible to think.
He took a step forward and leaned toward me. “I could use a good story,” he said, grinning. My heart started to patter, like rain hitting a window.
“I never said it was a good story,” I corrected.
“So, it’s a bad story? Even better.”
“It’s not a bad story, either. I’m not like that, Bridger. Look, I have to get to class,” I snapped, turning toward the door. He walked beside me and our fingers touched. I tucked my hands into my pockets.
“I’m really sorry about prom, Maggie. Is there any way I can make it up to you? Any way you can forgive me?” he asked.
I paused and looked at him again. The way the sun hit his hair made it look as shiny and black as a crow’s feathers, but there were hints of gold in it, too. He raised his black eyebrows and I realized I was gawking at him. Again.
“Well?” he prodded, the smile gone from his face.
Well what? I wondered, tearing my gaze away from his. “Oh. Yeah. Whatever. You’re forgiven.” I bit my tongue and groaned inwardly. Had I seriously just forgiven him?
“So, we’re friends again?” The breeze was back, stirring the scent of Bridger into the air and blowing my hair into my eyes. He brushed my hair from my forehead and tucked it behind my ear. I had to fight the desire to press my cheek against his hand.
Don’t get attached! I mentally screamed.
I shrugged and pushed the door open. He didn’t follow me into the school.
14
You would think that after the horse incident I would stop experimenting. But obviously I hadn’t learned my lesson.
It started because of my skin. New Mexico is dry—the air, the ground, everything. Including my skin. It was dry to the point of looking a little scaly, and when I looked at my skin, I could almost feel the forked tongue fluttering against my teeth. So I thought, Why not turn into a snake? I have an hour to kill before work.
I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, closed my eyes, and imagined sleek, green, pearly scales instead of skin, a forked tongue, and eyes with long, narrow pupils. Then I tried, very gently, to change.
My tongue thinned and split, darting out between my smiling lips. My skin changed next, turning from dry and semi-pale to metallic green scales that shimmered in layers of thin, translucent disks. I leaned closer to the mirror and studied my eyes, waiting for them to change, too.
They didn’t. I was stuck. Again.
“Crap!” I hissed through gritted teeth, fervently trying to change back into myself. I glared at the freaky scales covering my entire body and tried to visually force them back beneath the surface. They didn’t budge. At closer inspection, I realized the problem might be washed away—I was coated in a silky powder, as if the scales were slowly deteriorating into a fine, pearly dust. It floated off me in shimmering clouds and drifted down to the floor.
I stripped and got into the shower.
With half a container of body wash squeezed onto a washcloth I vigorously began scrubbing. Milky white water dripped from me, water that reflected the bathroom light in translucent rainbow colors, like motor oil in a parking lot puddle.
After scrubbing my body at least eight times, my skin looked halfway normal and the slit in my tongue was substantially smaller.
I toweled off and groaned as puffs of opalescent dust wafted from my skin. A bottle of lotion would have been ideal, cementing the powder to me. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any; otherwise I never would have gotten into this mess in the first place. I tried applying a thin layer of conditioner to my skin—bad idea—and got back into the shower.
Five minutes later, I got my black T-shirt from the bedroom floor and pulled it over my wet hair. “No!” I groaned, looking at my reflection in the mirror. My shirt was no longer black. It sparkled and gleamed dark bluish silver. Even the A on the front looked rosy pink instead of scarlet. I rolled my eyes. I was such an idiot!
I pulled a brush through my wet hair and slicked it into a high ponytail, grabbed my house key, and went to the living room.
“You ready to go?” Mrs. Carpenter asked, peering over the top of a romance novel. Her eyes grew wide and she closed the novel. “What in heaven have you done to yourself?”
I took a deep breath. “Don’t ask,” I grumbled, the s in ask coming out in a hiss. Her eyes moved over my entire body and she started laughing.
“Maggie Mae, you have a knack for finding trouble,” she said, standing.
“I sure do.” I followed her out the front door.
The afternoon sun gleamed, making the snake-scale residue glow in shades of rose, baby blue, and grass green.
“You are such an idiot!” I whispered.
Mrs. Carpenter peered at me over her shoulder. “Did you say something?”
I shook my head and was blinded by my own glow. And that is when my toe caught on a knobby tree root and I crashed to the ground in a giant cloud of snake-scale dust. I sneezed once and climbed back to my feet.
“Maggie Mae!” Mrs. Carpenter clasped my elbow. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” I muttered. My palms stung and my knees felt bruised. I looked down at my jeans and groaned. This really wasn’t my day. My jeans, the only hole-free pair I owned, now had tears over both of my scraped, bloody knees, and, yes, even the blood oozing from the shallow scrapes shimmered like gold. Brushing myself off, I climbed into the truck.
As we drove through town, Mrs. Carpenter kept glancing at me from the corner of her eye and laughing under her breath.
“You don’t mind if I drop you off across the street from the restaurant, do you? It’s hard to make a U-turn in rush-hour traffic.”
I peered out the window at the busy road. “No problem.” Mrs. Carpenter pulled to the side of the road. “Have a nice night,” she called as I climbed from the truck.
I smiled and shut the door, watched her merge with traffic, then walked half a block to the crosswalk and waited for the light to change.
Every single person on that city block stopped what they were doing and pointed at me. Their scrutiny made me sweat, and, with that sweat, dust seeped out of my pores. The sun magnified the effect, giving me a full-body halo. Cars slowed and people rolled down their windows to stare. I pulled my hair out of its ponytail and let it hang around my face, shielding my identity from view.
The light changed. I kept my head down and crossed to the other side of the street. And plowed into Yana.
“Maggie Mae!” she blurted. She clutched my shoulders and shoved me into the cramped space between two buildings, staring at me with wide brown eyes. Scared eyes.
“It’s only glitter dust,” I began to explain self-consciously, brushing my arm for effect, but she didn’t notice.
“Someone’s looking for you again,” she said, peering toward the road. “A stranger—same guy that I called you about. He’s sitting in a Cadillac parked in front of the restaurant. He’s been there all afternoon … waiting. Naalyehe is nervous.”
I stared at her, dumbfounded. “Who is it?”
Yana rolled her eyes. “Didn’t you hear what I said? My grandpa is afraid of him. Afraid! And he can sense things about people.” She bit her lip and studied me.
“What does he look like?”
“Totally normal—your average middle-age man, someone you wouldn’t look at twice. Not too tall, thin, brown hair, receding hairline.”
I shrugged. “Whatever. I don’t care. He’s probably got me mixed up with someone else.” I stepped toward the street.
Yana grabbed my bicep. “Naalyehe is afraid of him! You can’t come into work,” she insisted. “At least not yet. José just called the cops and reported the guy for loitering. As soon as the cops pick him up, you can come to work. Go to the park and hide out for now. I’ll come get you when it’s safe.”
Yana pulled me into an unexpected hug. A shiver of fear danced down my spine. That hug scared me more than news of the stranger. I had the sinking suspicion she was hugging me in case this was the last time she’d ever see me.
“Be careful,” she whispered into my ear. When she let me go, her black motocross T-shirt shimmered with color. She dashed back to the sidewalk.
“Thanks,” I called in a shaky voice, darting glances all around.
I slunk out from between the shops and peered both ways down the street before sprinting back the way I had come, dust trailing after me like a rainbow-hued comet’s tail. I covered two blocks before the dust settled, then circled back another two blocks before making my way to the park.
With spring warming the air, the park was packed. I sighed with relief—where better to hide than out in the open, camouflaged by other people? College students partied at one end of the park; at the other end the playground bustled with children and people crowding the winding cement. Cotton fell from the giant trees lining the park and filled the air with the illusion of snow.