Part 9 (1/2)

Sarah stared at her. ”Seriously?”

”Seriously,” Bettina repeated. ”And I do my best for them. I'm nice to them. I lay out the tarot cards and try to tell them what I think they want to hear, and they go away grateful. Sometimes they come to me for herbs, thinking I might have some magical potions. And often my herbs work for them, but it's not because of any magic-it's just that I know what I'm doing with medicinal herbs.”

”Does Angie Garvey come to see you?” Sarah whispered.

Bettina shrugged. ”I never say who comes to see me. The point is that you shouldn't listen to the rumors. You're fourteen years old and smarter than most of the kids around here. So when you hear things about people, you should weigh all the evidence and make up your own mind about them.”

”Except,” Sarah reminded her, ”that I still have to live with the Garveys.”

”Very true,” Bettina agreed. ”And I certainly don't want to cause you any trouble. I just didn't want to lose you as a student because of what amounts to nothing more than medieval nonsense. And I don't want you doing the bare minimum to get by in my cla.s.s, either. I see exceptional promise in your talent, and I think I can help you hone your skills.”

Sarah smiled. ”I'd like that.”

”Me, too,” Bettina said, pus.h.i.+ng back from the table. ”But I can't do it if you're afraid of me. So have a nice evening and I'll see you tomorrow.” The teacher turned back to her desk and began shuffling a stack of cla.s.s drawings into a zippered portfolio.

Sarah picked up her backpack and left the art studio, suddenly feeling better than she had in a long, long time.

Nick Dunnigan was in love.

At least he was pretty sure it was love as he moved down the hallway toward the school's front doors. After all, what else could it be? He felt sort of light-headed and had a sort of hollow feeling in his stomach, and just thinking about sitting across from Sarah Crane in the cafeteria not only made his heart start to pound but also plastered what he knew must be a really stupid-looking grin across his face. Until lunchtime, he'd had no idea, really, what love was, but now he knew.

It made you happy, and it made you want to dance, and it made you feel funny.

But most of all, you knew you had someone you could trust.

Someone you could tell everything to. Absolutely everything.

How could it have happened so quickly?

And how was it that when Sarah Crane was close to him, his voices went quiet?

Profoundly quiet.

Unimaginably, astonis.h.i.+ngly, joyfully quiet, as if she had the same effect on them that she did on him. They hadn't even objected when he started telling her about the hallucination. And that was weird, too-he never talked to anyone about the hallucinations except his mother and the doctors. But today he'd been able to tell Sarah Crane about it and she hadn't laughed or made fun of him.

He pushed through the heavy doors into the crisp outside air and paused on the steps. Maybe he should wait for Sarah and walk her home. But what if she didn't want to walk with him? What if she'd thought about what he told her at lunch and decided he was crazy?

He didn't even want to think about that possibility, and suddenly the whole idea of waiting for her seemed stupid.

Really, really stupid. How was a girl as beautiful and nice as Sarah Crane going to feel the same way about him that he felt about her? Taking the steps two at a time down to the sidewalk, he turned right, then headed diagonally across the football field toward home, his footsteps crunching on the nearly frozen gra.s.s.

He was pa.s.sing the bleachers on the far side of the field when a movement from under the seats caught his eye. Then he heard a voice that made his stomach clench.

Conner West.

Conner got away with everything because his father ran the Warwick police department, which consisted of three deputies, including Conner's dad.

”Hey,” Conner said.

Before Nick quite realized it had happened, Conner and two of his friends had surrounded him, and the euphoria of the hours since lunch drained out of him in an instant.

He was back to being crazy Nick Dunnigan.

”So the lunatic has a girlfriend, huh?” Conner said, his lips twisting into a sneer. ”What do you think it'd be like, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g a crip?”

Bobby Fendler edged closer and leered at Nick. ”At lunch we thought you two should have gotten a room.”

”Gonna go find someplace to make out now?” Elliot Nash chimed in. ”You and the gimp?”

The voices in Nick's head roused from their silence, gabbling angrily among themselves.

”Can we watch?” Conner demanded. ”It'd be neat watching Lunatic Nick try to stick it into his gimpy girlfriend.”

”Oh, G.o.d, I could puke just thinking about it,” Elliot said, clutching his belly and bending over as if about to vomit all over Nick's shoes.

”Their kids would all be hunchback psychos,” Conner said, jabbing at Nick's chest.

Nick stood perfectly still. They'd get bored in a few minutes and leave him alone.

They always did.

But then the committee in his head began howling at him to fight back, to lash out at them, punching, gouging, kicking, even biting and clawing at them until they were lying in the street, writhing in agony, bleeding and dying. The howling rose until the voices were so painful, he felt like his head was about to blow up, and something was happening to his eyes, too.

Now he could barely see Conner and Elliot and Bobby.

”Quiet,” Nick cried out, his voice choking. ”Be quiet. Please be quiet.”

”Be quiet?” Conner said, jabbing him in the chest again. ”You don't tell me to be quiet. Get it?”

A blaze of agony exploded in Nick's brain, and his vision abruptly cleared.

The flesh of Conner's face was falling away in strips as blood ran down his neck and dripped onto the ground.

Elliot burst into flames, his mouth wide-open in a scream drowned out by the demons in Nick's head. ”Stop!” Nick yelled. ”Stop it!”

”Shut up, loser!” Bobby Fendler shoved Nick hard to punctuate his words.

Now pieces of Bobby were flying off as if caught in some great wind, hanging like gory Halloween decorations in the naked branches of the leafless trees.

Meanwhile, Elliot Nash still burned, his flesh melting off his bones.

And Conner West's tongue hung by a thread, flapping grotesquely with every word he spoke.

”Quiet!” Nick screamed, suddenly las.h.i.+ng out, flailing at the air around him with a viciousness that made all three of his tormentors step back. ”Leave me alone! I don't want to see this anymore!”

”Hey, cool it,” Conner said. ”We haven't done anything to you.”

Conner's voice sounded like nothing more than warbling static to Nick, whose head felt like it would burst with the pressure of the shrieking voices he was hearing and the horrors he was seeing, even when he clamped his eyes shut. Now he put his hands over his ears and began turning slowly around. ”Please, please, please,” he said, turning ever faster until he was whirling violently, as if under the impetus of some unseen force.