Shattered by Amanda Valentino

Author:Amanda Valentino
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

CHAPTER 16

At school the following day, I just couldn’t get everything Bea had told us out of my head. Seeing Heidi swanning down the hallways now—and in classes, in the cafeteria, applying a fresh coat of lipstick at her locker mirror—took on a whole new edge, because I couldn’t help but wonder: Did she really have the potential to kill?

Needless to say, we never did get to the pharmacy that night. After Bea left, it was all we could do not to tear Hal’s bedroom to shreds. That’s how angry we were. And how desperate we felt.

And so during trig class, I gave myself little tests. I found myself touching various objects, looking for answers—from Stew Loicamar’s dropped pencil to the hood of Tanya Rosegrey’s sweater when she draped it over her chair.

But I felt nothing. And I pictured even less.

Completely frustrated, I pulled Bea’s tarot card from my backpack. I’d managed to pocket it before I left Hal’s last night, promising to return it later today so that Cornelia could add it to the website. I slid my fingertips over the card’s edges, suddenly able to visualize it perfectly in Amanda’s hands.

Only this time she wasn’t in the hospital. I was picturing her on a different day—Amanda had different nail polish (plum) and she was wearing a big ruby stone on her index finger.

In my mind’s eye, I could see her in a tiny, eclectic book shop—just like the one I’d seen when I touched my edition of Ariel. She was sitting in a red velvet chair, reading an old copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. When she was finished with her page, she tucked the tarot card into the book as a placeholder.

“Nia?” Mrs. Watson’s sharp voice interrupted. She was squatted, one seat back, in the row beside mine, checking over Muriel Spencer’s polynomials. “Do you have a question?”

“No, ma’am,” I said, slipping the card beneath my notebook so she couldn’t see it.

“So, then, do you always talk to yourself for no apparent reason?” she asked.

A sprinkling of giggles erupted in the classroom.

“I was thinking out loud,” I corrected her. “It’s hard to concentrate with all the chattering going on.” And I wasn’t just referring to her chattering as she worked with students. I was also talking about the whispering going on at the rear of the classroom, where Darryl Coppersmith and Goofball Gus were comparing the stench of each other’s breath by exhaling on graph paper. “Since we’re working independently today, would you mind if I took the rest of the block at the library?” It wasn’t as if I hadn’t gotten all of my word problems right within the first ten minutes of class. I’d even finished the assignments for the next three nights, including some extra credit exercises I’d thrown in out of sheer boredom.

“Fine,” she said, after a five-second pause, unable to come up with a good reason to deny my request.

I hurried out of class and headed to the library, eager to start researching antique book shops in Orion.

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