CHAPTER ONE
BLUE
"You're so hypnotizing!
Could you be the Devil?
Could you be an angel?"
~ "E.T." by Katy Perry
"Good to see you, Nick!"
Glancing up from the dull gray carpet in the front office, I pasted on a smile for Mrs. Koschei, the AP Literature teacher. She seemed pretty cool, for a tiny middle-aged Russian lady. I figured she was in the front office to check her mail or whatever before heading out for summer English tutoring.
My smile kinda hurt as I slid past Coach Garrison, who'd been trying to recruit me for football the last two years. He glared as I sank into my secretary-appointed desk just outside the door to our in-school daycare. Summer school had just started—and so had summer football training. Thankfully, I had a better job than letting a bunch of jocks beat the crud out of me: organizing the school's daycare paperwork. I got messed with enough as it was, for so many lame reasons. This would keep me out of trouble.
I had desk-duty the first few hectic days because I was kind of OCD. My counselor said it was because I was organized and she could trust I'd get it done before summer school started officially in two weeks, but I knew better. I had to have everything filled out just right or there'd be chaos, and then my sister Ami—one of the "interns" doing a stint with the daycare over the break—would have a heart attack. So would Mrs. Shell, the vice-principal technically in charge of the center.
The center was a classroom-sized space just off the front office, where teen parents of Thompson-Aarnes High School could drop off their kids. One counselor, two teachers, and two "student-interns"—me and my sister—took care of the kids. And it looked great on my college applications.
I pulled a water bottle from my mostly-empty backpack and opened a folder. When the office door's bell jingled, I barely glanced up. People had been clomping in all morning to talk to counselors about messed-up schedules or a thousand other problems. Only as the front door thumped closed with another silvery jangle did something make my eyes flick up.
She walked in with a backpack made of blue duct-tape hung over one shoulder and a toddler balanced on her hip like she'd been doing it for years. A hulking guy in a brown muscle-shirt came in behind her, closing a lacy blue parasol. I figured the parasol was to block the blistering mid-May sun. Arizona summers were brutal, especially on little kids. The girl glided past my desk on killer knee-high boots and went to speak to one of the tired, sweaty counselors slumped at a computer beneath one of the blasting AC vents.
I didn't know why I kept watching her. Maybe because of the kid. If he was gonna be at the daycare, I wanted to check him out. Part of my job was dealing with any incoming problem children. I wanted to make sure the tyke wouldn't be one. We had enough already. Surprisingly, teens didn't make the best parents. Shocker.
The kid was bizarrely well-behaved, though. Most little kids would've made a grab for dangling jewelry (even a pair of glasses could be a temptation). Not that kid. The delicate, inches-long silver chains hooked into his mom's ear glinted in the harsh sunlight blazing through the office windows whenever she moved her head, but her baby didn't make a grab for them. Something metallic flashed at the girl's slender wrist as she filled out a form. The kid just kicked his legs and waved a fat, stuffed black sheep in one chubby fist. He didn't even show any interest in the blue-streaked hair hanging loose around the girl's face like a curtain of dark ink.
Now, I considered myself kind of an expert on profiling teen parents; I'd seen a billion of them when they dropped off their kids. There were a few dads, but mostly girls; a lot they just dumped their kids in the morning and picked them up later in the day, complaining about the fact that they even had kids in the first place. Not surprising, considering the way people treated them for having a baby. Few of the moms did what this girl was doing—lightly poking her kid in the nose with the capped pen so that he wriggled around, giggling when she bounced him; giving him little kisses on his cheeks so he giggled some more; and tickling him with wispy strands of her streaked hair. She seemed to love her kid. That made me kinda like her automatically.
But something about this girl bothered me, too. Though her focus seemed totally on the kid and the form she was filling out, I could tell she was also completely aware of her surroundings. Her stance, the way she angled her head and glanced around every so often—even the way she shifted to keep the guy with the parasol at her back...
I'd only seen that kinda tense vigilance once before, from my mom and dad—a habit my dad had picked up during two tours in Iraq and still hadn't dropped years later; my mom had always been like that. And the guy with the parasol was the same—hyper-aware, totally on edge. Almost as if he and the blue girl were waiting for someone to attack them.
Every so often, the girl touched the bejeweled chains dangling from her left ear. Just like, I realized with a weird churning in my stomach, my dad sometimes checked his gun to make sure it was loaded, even though it'd been years since he'd been in a combat-zone.
A shiver whispered down my spine. I didn't know why, but suddenly this girl with her happy toddler and umbrella-toting boyfriend or whoever he was made me uneasy.
Then the girl turned and looked at me. Right at me. Everything around me grayed out like television static. All at once there was nothing but white noise and shadows and that girl looking at me with strangely familiar eyes such a dark, dark blue they almost looked black. Dark as pools of ink. I wondered, if I fell into them, would she drown me? I tried to shake away the bizarre thought, but I couldn't move. Not while she was staring at me like that.
She was maybe twenty feet away, so I could see her electric blue lipstick as she shot me a wry smile, a silent "oops, ya caught me—sorry about that" smile. My mouth went dry. My palms went damp. The girl lifted her chin, like she was daring me or something. Daring me to do what, I had no clue.
She shook her head at me, making her hair ripple. It fell almost to her waist in a curtain of jet streaked with the same electric blue that painted her smile. Somehow, even from here, I saw her eyelashes were painted sizzling blue, too. I swallowed reflexively when her smile widened into a grin. My heart beat a staccato rhythm in my chest.
The guy standing next to her looked over and scowled. It was like the jerk growled at me or something, though I didn't actually hear anything. Icy sweat popped out on the back of my neck as my eyes flicked between the girl and the dude. Was I really this freaked out by a guy holding a parasol? Who was he, her boyfriend? Brother? They didn't look anything alike. Where the girl's skin and hair were dark, the boy's was Viking blond. Where she was small, almost petite, the dude was built like a grizzly. Why didn't Garrison bother that kid?
And the guy was still glaring at me. What was his problem?
"Hey, if it isn't Nick Arai!" Principal Kendall's voice jolted me from the staring contest with Bear-Guy. "Gettin' cracking on those forms?" When I shrugged and offered him a false smile, he clapped me on the shoulder. "Good man. That's why we pay you the big bucks."
Not that he actually paid me. I didn't even get extra credit. But it would look good on my college applications since it was in my desired field of study. That worked fine for me.
A momentary hush from the counselor drew my attention back to the blue girl and the grizzly. Something dark—a tat?—on his bicep caught my attention when the guy reached out and tickled the kid. I looked away before he noticed me. The dude carried himself like a gangster—like he was dangerous, and knew it.
I overheard the counselor make a comment about the girl's boots. I bent over my paperwork, ready to start filing, but couldn't help one last glance at the girl. She wore a lot of blue. Blue streaks in her black hair, blue makeup electric-bright against her brown skin, blue boots, blue mini-dress. There were even tiny blue stones dangling from the ends of her earring. The only things that weren't blue were her gray leggings and the chains around her wrist and neck. Maybe it was a political statement. Or maybe it had something to do with the disappearances.
A bunch of girls had vanished from around the city lately. I'd heard it on the news—about nine girls, all around fifteen or sixteen, vanishing over the past three weeks. So far, four headless bodies had turned up in the desert (which was weird; normally when people disappeared in Arizona, the bodies were never found). The only thing the girls had in common as far as I'd heard was their ages, and they'd all worn blue. The news might've had that part wrong, but I wasn't sure. And now there was that girl, all dolled up in blue. Maybe she hadn't heard blue was a dangerous color in Tucson?
Another jangle of the door had me lifting my head to see the blue girl stroll out, her brother or whoever following behind, shoving open the parasol as soon as they cleared the doorway. My shoulders relaxed. Until they walked out, I hadn't realized I'd been tensed up, like I was waiting for a fight.
I started to go back to my job. A flash of movement caught my attention, and I turned to see the blue chick glaring at a brown cat trying to stare her down from the top of the school's inner fence. How had it gotten on campus?
The girl raised her left hand—not a friendly "come smell me" gesture, but not like she planned on throwing a rock at the cat or trying to scare it off, either. It was almost like she was showing it something. Bright sunlight flashed off the bracelet around her wrist. Her nails had been painted a dark color. Probably blue, like her lips. There was something weird about her hand, but I couldn't figure out what. The cat fluffed up and hissed before scampering off.
Cold sweat began trickling down my spine when Umbrella Boy caught my eye and glared as fiercely as the girl had glared at the cat. Like I was scum on the bottom of his boot. Douche. He said something to the blue girl. She glanced at me. Her smile flashed, almost apologetic, before she moved off toward the school's main entrance.
Okay, I thought, watching her glide away, followed by the umbrella-toting grizzly bear. Wonder what that was about. Maybe she really didn't like cats. Whatever. Not my business.