Forbidden

seven

That was weird, Claire thought, as she finished washing her hands in the girls’ bathroom during break. It was obvious that Alec was practically fluent in Spanish. Why was he trying to cover it up? He’d said it was the only class that fit into his schedule, but she doubted that was true. He could have probably taken French I or Japanese I instead. She shrugged, taking out her brush and running it through her hair. Maybe Alec just wanted a class he could skate by in. If so, she could understand that. This school was hard enough, and all honors and AP classes only made it harder.
She wished she’d had a chance to talk to him after class, to thank him for encouraging her to sing with him yesterday, and to apologize for unintentionally ignoring him afterward. She still felt guilty about that. But he’d rushed out of class so fast just now, she hadn’t been able to catch him.
Claire returned her brush to her backpack and was zipping it up when a sudden flush and wave of dizziness came over her. What the hell? she thought fearfully. It had been four days since her last “episode.” She’d started to think—hope—that the whole thing had just been a fluke. Apparently not. A deep heat, which seemed to be emanating from her core, now coursed up through her body like a raging inferno. She broke out in a sweat, her stomach churned, her knees quivered, and she slammed back against the bathroom wall, crying out in pain. Thank God no one else is here to see this, Claire thought frantically, as she slowly slid down to the tile floor.
All at once, an image appeared in her mind:
A silhouetted figure stood before her, lit from behind by a bright golden light, surrounded by inky blackness.
“Claire!” cried a raspy, whispering voice.
A long series of garbled words followed—an attempt at speech interspersed with static.
Only one part—the final sentence—came through loud and clear: “Don’t tell anyone.”
Then it was over. Claire gasped, struggled to her feet, and stood there for a long moment, gripping the counter for support.
What the hell was that?!
It was totally different from the other psychic episodes she’d experienced. It felt incomplete, like she could hear someone talking to her, instead of seeing through their eyes. Was she going batshit crazy? Or was this really happening? Was someone trying to contact her telepathically?
In the staticky section, the only words Claire had been able to understand were “danger,” “gift,” and “help.” Who or what was in danger? What gift? Was she supposed to help someone? Then there was the kicker: Don’t tell anyone.
Don’t tell anyone what?
Claire sighed. How was she supposed to figure this out on her own?
“I can’t wait to hear the voice that bowled Mr. Lang over,” Erica said a few minutes later.
“Yeah, why’ve you been holding out on us all this time, CB?” Brian asked.
“I wasn’t holding out,” Claire insisted. “I never used to be able to sing. I’m just as surprised as you are.”
Claire followed her friends into the music room, past the grand piano toward a semicircular row of chairs, each of which had a music stand in front of it. She’d been so excited about this class. But how was she supposed to relax and enjoy herself after that bizarre mental episode in the restroom?
“Bass section sits on that end,” Erica explained, before leading Claire toward their own seats. “Then tenors and altos. Last but not least, sopranos—that’s us.”
“I told you you’d make it, Brennan,” Neil said, striding up with a smile. “Congrats and welcome.” He placed his hand on Claire’s bare shoulder and gave it a squeeze.
The instant Neil’s hand made contact, a dizzy heat began to engulf her. Claire had a fleeting thought: How pathetic are you? The guy barely touches you and you swoon? But as her head began pounding and her knees trembled, that thought was immediately replaced by another: Oh no. Not again! Not now!! I just barely got over the last one! And then—
WHAM.
She was in her Spanish classroom. The person sitting next to her was … her.
Se?ora Guiterez laid a corrected quiz facedown on her desk.
Nervous, Claire flipped over the paper with hands that were not her own—hands that were larger and more masculine. She saw three things. First, the date on the paper. Second, a big red F. Third, the name scrawled at the top of the page:
Neil Mitchum.
Claire blinked and found Neil still standing in the flesh before her, eyeing her with concern. “Brennan? You okay?”
“Fine!” Claire manufactured a smile as she quickly wiped sweat from her brow. “Shouldn’t have had that latte at break, I guess.” She hurried off to the soprano section and sat down next to Erica, heart pounding.
Erica shot Claire an intensely curious look. “You just saw something, didn’t you?” Erica whispered urgently. “When Neil touched your shoulder?”
Claire nodded as she lowered her eyes. Thankfully, no one else seemed to have noticed anything.
“See! I told you it was a touch thing. Was it a vision about Neil?”
Claire nodded again and leaned in to Erica’s ear. “It was a vision of the future!”
“Really? Are you sure?”
“I saw Neil get an F on a Spanish quiz. It was dated next Wednesday.”
“An F? But Neil’s a good student.”
“Apparently not in Spanish.”
Claire’s brain was going a mile a minute. Was all this somehow connected to the garbled message she’d gotten just before class? Danger … gift … help. Suddenly, the whole thing made sense. She was supposed to help Neil—who was in danger of flunking Spanish. For some reason, she was supposed to keep it a secret. But Erica already knew everything that was going on with her. Surely, she could tell Erica about it.
“And guess what?” Claire went on softly. “I had a separate vision a few minutes ago. I think I’ve just been charged with a mission: to help Neil pass that Spanish quiz.”
Erica raised an eyebrow, incredulous. “Who would send you on a mission?”
“I have no idea. What should I do? Is it okay to meddle with the future?”
“Of course it is!”
“But if I help Neil get an A, it might change the course of history. There’s a cause and effect for everything. If Hitler had gotten into art school, there might have been no World War II.”
“Did you just liken Neil to Hitler?”
“They’re both vegetarians.”
Erica rolled her eyes. “Claire, come on. How can you sit back and do nothing? If you’d known about my mom’s accident beforehand, I would’ve totally wanted you to warn me.”
Before they could continue, Mr. Lang breezed into the room, sat down at the piano, and began playing scales with a flourish. An elegant man with a neatly trimmed auburn goatee, Mr. Lang’s no-nonsense, down-to-business attitude was complemented by an upbeat, positive inner energy. Everyone began to warm up, singing along with the piano. Claire tentatively joined her voice to the chorus of sopranos. She had no clear idea what she was doing, but somehow it all seemed to come naturally to her—and thank God, since she was finding it impossible to concentrate. Her thoughts were consumed by the task ahead of her.
Claire would have to initiate a conversation with the guy she’d had a major crush on for the past two years—the guy every girl in school had a crush on—and the one person she’d always been too shy speaking around, let alone to. And of all things, she had to somehow convince him that he needed her help. Could she do it?
She had to at least try.
As they exited class, Claire strode quickly after Neil. You can do this, she told herself.
When she caught up to him, she put on her most cheerful smile. “Se?or Mitchum.” Her voice cracked, her mouth had gone dry, and her heart was pounding so hard it threatened to leap out of her chest.
“Brennan.” Neil casually returned her grin. “How’s it going?”
“Good.” The single word came out like a squeak. Claire cleared her throat. “You know,” she said slowly, straining for calm, “you did me a huge favor by getting me into Concert Singers. I’d like to perform a service for you in return.”
Neil looked at her. “I’m not quite sure I get your meaning,” he said hesitantly.
Claire was suddenly aware of the innuendo in what she’d said, and felt her face grow hot. “I meant … that is, I was just wondering … if … you might like some help with Spanish.”
His smile faded. “What makes you think I need help with Spanish? Just ’cause I don’t get soap operas?”
“No, that’s not it,” Claire replied quickly. “I didn’t know how to answer that question either, even though I saw the episode last year. But… I couldn’t help noticing that you were struggling with verb tenses, which are super hard. I finally understand all that stuff, and I just thought…” Her voice trailed off.
Neil glanced aside, clearly uncomfortable and reluctant.
Before he could openly refuse, Claire blurted, “Neil. The thing is, after what you did for me, I’m beholden to you.”
His eyes returned to hers, and he shrugged, his grin back. “All right, Brennan, you’re on. We’ll try it and see how it goes. But only because you said beholden.”
At lunch, Claire finally had a chance to talk to Alec. They were sitting at their usual table on the upper terrace with Brian and Erica. Alec was tense and quiet, concentrating on his chicken stir-fry.
“Alec,” Claire said apologetically, “when I was telling you earlier about getting into Concert Singers, I didn’t get a chance to say the most important part. It never would have happened if you hadn’t encouraged me to sing with you yesterday. I’m really grateful to you for that. I really enjoyed it. Singing with you, I mean. And I’m sorry if I abandoned you afterward when we got interrupted. I didn’t mean to.”
Alec looked at her in surprise and seemed to relax a notch. “Don’t worry about it,” he intoned softly.
“Claire said you have a great voice, Alec,” Erica put in. “I hope you try out for the Homecoming assembly.”
“What? They’re having musical acts this year?” Brian asked. “How do you know?”
“Because … drum roll, please?” Erica said with a dramatic pause. “I have just signed up to be on the Homecoming Committee.”
“You?” Claire retorted. “On a committee? Are you on crack?”
“College admissions people place a great deal of emphasis on extracurricular activities,” Erica said. “And it sounds fun. Homecoming is only a month away, and we just had our first meeting. We decided to have performances at the assembly, along with the usual carnival, football game, and … dance. Which—might I add—I insist we attend this year.”
“Go to a dance?” Brian made a face. “But we’ve avoided those so successfully thus far.”
“Brian, you only hate dances because you don’t have the nerve to ask anyone,” Claire said.
“Oh, like you’re the expert,” he retorted. “How many have you been to?”
“Zero,” Claire admitted, blushing a little. “But only because no one ever asked me.”
“Wait. Could someone please explain this to the foreigner?” Alec inserted. “Isn’t Homecoming supposed to be for visiting alumni? What’s this dance about?”
“The dance is the one thing that’s for us,” Erica explained. “It’s our first opportunity of the year to agonize about getting a date, buy an expensive dress, cheer as the most popular kids get crowned king and queen, and dance to ridiculously loud music in a gym filled with helium balloons and crepe paper.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to miss that,” Alec said with a smile.
It was the first time Claire had seen Alec smile all day, and she realized he was suddenly gazing at her. The look in his eyes was so warm, it made her stomach flutter, as if a rush of a hundred butterflies had taken wing. She smiled back, wondering what she should say to get Alec talking more. Just then, she heard a voice over her shoulder.
“Brennan? So this is where you four hide out for lunch. Nice spot. Great view.”
Claire sprang out of her seat. “Neil! Good timing. I just finished eating.” To the others she said, “Excuse me, guys. I’ll catch up with you later. Neil and I are going to work on Spanish. Where do you want to sit, Neil?”
“You’re the boss. Would you prefer a cubicle in the house of knowledge?” Neil gestured to the library. “Or as they say in Spain, tutoring alfresco?”
“Over there will do just fine,” Claire replied, pointing to a nearby bench on the terrace, “and alfresco is Italian, actually.”
Neil shrugged with a light, self-effacing chuckle. As he and Claire walked off, she thought she caught a look of frustration and disappointment on Alec’s face—or did she imagine it?
The tutoring session went well. Claire coached Neil on all the things the teacher had promised would be on next week’s quiz. By the time they finished, he seemed to have a better grasp of the material.
“Thanks, Brennan,” Neil said as they put their notebooks away. “I’m glad you twisted my arm about this. It pisses me off that I suck at Spanish, since I’m halfway decent at everything else.”
“Aw,” Claire responded lightly as she zipped up her backpack. “He’s as modest as he is pretty.” The moment the words left her mouth, Claire thought she’d melt into the ground with embarrassment. Had she actually said that out loud? She felt a tug on the end of her ponytail, and glanced up to find Neil grinning at her with a mischievous glint in his eyes. She’d seen that look before with people he was close to and was thrilled that he was using it with her now.
“Pretty, eh?” He chuckled.
“Well, studly seemed a bit over the top.” She couldn’t believe she was talking to him like this, as if they’d been friends for years.
“Fair enough,” he said with an approving nod. “I’ll take pretty. You can be studly.”
Had Neil just implied that he thought she was pretty? As Claire struggled for some kind of witty reply, the bell rang, ending the lunch period. They both stood up from the bench.
“What do you say we do this again tomorrow—after school?” Neil added. “Maybe in the Student Life Center?”
“Sure. I usually have to wait about an hour for my mom to pick me up, anyway.”
“Cool. See you later.” Neil waved as he headed off.
As Claire watched him go, she felt another tug on her ponytail, causing her to jump.
“Isn’t there a law,” Erica said, “against tutors fraternizing with their students?”
Claire gave her friend a faux shocked look. “We were hardly fraternizing.”
Erica just smiled. “If you say so.”
Over the next couple of days, Neil showed vast improvement during their after-school tutoring sessions. Claire grew more and more comfortable around him and wasn’t tongue-tied anymore in his presence. She loved Concert Singers. Her year of piano lessons helped her to sight-read the music with ease, and she fit right in with the more experienced students, as if she’d been doing this for years. She found herself singing in the shower and while doing the dishes. If only she’d had the nerve to try her voice years earlier, instead of being so shy about it!
To Claire’s disappointment, however, Alec was quiet and standoffish. He didn’t sit at their table at lunch, and when she saw him in class, he didn’t speak to her. She didn’t run into him again with his guitar, and he was never at their locker at the same time she was. Was he just the loner type, or was he angry and purposely avoiding her? When she’d apologized that day at lunch, she’d thought—hoped—she’d smoothed things over with him. His behavior hurt more than she cared to admit.
Alec wasn’t the only one acting peculiar that week. Twice, while Claire was doing homework in her room, her mom stopped in the doorway to silently stare at her, then walked off without a word.
On Thursday night, her mom finally spoke. “So! Claire … how was your day?”
Claire glanced up from the calculus problems she was working on. “Fine.”
“How’s choir going?”
“Good.”
Silence ensued. Why was her mom looking at her like that? Claire wondered self-consciously. She felt like a piece of produce her mom was inspecting for possible defects before purchase.
“You’ve seemed a little … preoccupied the past few days,” her mom said at last. “Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”
“No.”
“Has anything … unusual been going on lately?” Her mom was clearly fishing.
Claire sighed. It wasn’t like she could tell her mom, of all people, about the weird visions she’d been having. “Mom, I’ve got a lot of homework.”
“Okay! Just … keep studying. I’ll call you when dinner’s ready.”
Friday was a shorter day at Emerson. Although Claire had been dreading the week culminating in another one of Mr. Patterson’s belittling lectures, there was no way she could’ve anticipated what would happen at the end of the period.
In her hands, she now held her history paper—the paper she’d stayed up most of Monday and Tuesday nights writing—which Patterson had already graded and returned with lightning efficiency. It was littered with red marks, and at the top of the paper was a thick, rosy D, accompanied by a note: “Eschew prolixity.”
D. Claire felt the hot threat of tears behind her eyes. She’d never gotten anything below a B in her life. Patterson couldn’t find fault with her grammar, she knew, or her historical accuracy—but clearly he thought she’d been too wordy. Entire paragraphs had been red-lined, and the pages were full of comments like: “Awkward,” “Why?” “Unsubstantiated,” “Get to the point.”
“I figured,” Mr. Patterson drawled as he finished handing out the papers, “since I gave you only two days to write these, it was only fair to return them two days later. You’re welcome.”
The bell rang, signaling the end of the school day. Claire stuffed her book and paper into her backpack, her lips trembling. How would this grade affect her scholarship? She felt Alec’s eyes on her but was too mortified to look in his direction. She hurried up to the front of the room. “Excuse me, Mr. Patterson. Can I talk to you for a second?”
Mr. Patterson didn’t even turn to face her. “No time. Week’s over. See you Monday.” Abruptly, he left the room.
Shocked by his coldness, Claire trudged out the door. To her surprise, Alec was waiting for her.
“I saw your grade. I’m sorry,” he said gently.
It was the first time he’d spoken to her in days. The sympathy in his voice and the kind look in his eyes—which she hoped implied that he wasn’t angry with her anymore, if he ever had been—unleashed the tears that Claire had been holding back. “I worked really hard on that paper,” she said brokenly as she and Alec moved down the path. “It wasn’t Shakespeare, but it didn’t deserve a D.”
“A lot of kids got Ds. The guy behind me got an F.”
“Really? What did you get?”
Alec looked self-conscious. He silently formed an “A” with his fingers.
His admission cheered her somehow. “You must be the only human being alive who’s embarrassed about getting an A.”
“I just feel bad.” He shrugged. “Mr. Patterson seems to think he has to humiliate students to get results.”
“Ds are so confusing. It’s like you didn’t pass, but you didn’t fail, either.” Claire wiped tears from her cheeks and took a deep breath. “Please don’t think I’m crying because I’m some übernerd who needs to get As on everything to feel validated. It’s because of my scholarship. It requires a 3.8 GPA.”
“3.8? Wow. That must be difficult to maintain.”
“You have no idea. I have to work my ass off. I’m not a genius like you.”
“I’m not a genius,” he protested.
“It’s not open for debate. I’ve heard you in class. Calculus, English, history, whatever. You always know the answers to everything. You speak Spanish better than Se?ora Guiterez.”
He blushed. “Maybe I … should’ve taken a different language.”
“You think?” Claire teased. They’d reached their locker now. As Alec dialed the combination, she continued, “Anyway, all the hard work is worth it. I love it here. I’d do anything to stay at Emerson. That’s why I basically have no life. Well, that and the fact that my mom is an overprotective worrywart who watches over my every move.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“What? That my mom never lets me go anywhere?”
He opened his mouth to reply, but just then Brian and Erica descended on them.
“Whassup, peoplez?” Brian crowed. “Anybody hungry?”
“You’d better be,” Erica chimed in. “It’s Friday! I’m taking us all to Venice Beach for empanadas, maintenant. That’s French for now, in case you were wondering.”
“Neil’s coming with us,” Brian added. “He’s waiting down by the circle.”
Claire saw Alec’s smile fade at the mention of Neil’s name, but he didn’t comment.
“Have you ever had an empanada?” Claire asked Alec, as they finished retrieving their books and headed toward the library stairwell.
“Are we always going to play the ‘Has Alec Eaten This?’ game?” he asked quietly.
Claire worried that she’d offended him, until she saw a good-natured smile tug at his lips. “I’m just curious. I mean, after the pizza thing—I’ve never met anyone before who hadn’t—”
“Let’s put it this way,” Alec interjected. “If it’s fried, fattening, caffeinated, alcoholic, or high in sugar content, it’s safe to assume that I rarely eat it—or have never tried it.”
Claire stared at him. “Why?”
“Are your parents fitness freaks, or do they just hate you?” Erica said.
Alec stiffened visibly. “They just followed a healthy lifestyle, which I continue to embrace. But they … died when I was young.”
Erica went red in the face. A silence fell.
“Way to go, Erica,” Brian said, clapping. “That was awkward.”
“I’m sorry.” Claire felt terrible.
“Me too.” Erica looked at her feet.
“Thanks, but … don’t worry about it. It’s okay.”
Now Claire understood Alec’s earlier comment about her mom. No wonder he’s often so quiet and moody, she thought, her heart going out to him. It was bad enough to grow up without a father. But to have no parents at all? That was too awful to contemplate. She’d assumed Alec had moved here with his parents because of a job transfer or something. Who does he live with? she wondered. A grandparent? An aunt or uncle? She wasn’t sure this was the right moment to ask.
They neared the bottom of the stairs, where the construction crew was still working atop a three-tiered scaffolding tower. Claire spied Neil standing just beyond it by the drop-off circle. He waved at them and shouted something Claire couldn’t hear over the annoying beeping noise of a truck backing up.
The four of them passed underneath the scaffolding, heading toward the circle. They were halfway through the makeshift corridor when Claire heard the sudden, loud roar of an engine. To her horror, the truck was speeding backward toward them. Before she could think or move, the vehicle collided with the base of the scaffolding with a devastating crash.
The screech of tearing metal ripped through the air as the entire structure overhead began to collapse.
A huge wooden platform barreled down directly at them.
Claire screamed and ducked, a single thought popping into her mind: I’m going to die.