Destiny Binds(3)
He leaned in so close I could feel his warm breath on my neck. I thought he was going to whisper something in my ear, but instead he quickly inhaled twice through his nose.
Well, I certainly had never been sniffed before.
“What is she?”
The question was aimed at Jase, but I took the liberty of answering. “What she is, is offended and quickly becoming angry.”
“Leave my sister out of it,” Jase said, sounding like a kid telling the bully to give his lunch money back.
Our new friendʼs eyes flickered quizzically between Jase and me. “Do they know about her?”
Jase didnʼt say anything, which apparently qualified as an answer. He finally backed away, giving me room to breathe.
“Iʼm staying,” he told Jase is a quiet, controlled voice. “I suggest your people stay out of my way. Iʼll take out anyone who crosses me.” He shot a pointed glance in my direction. “Even her.”
Once he was out of earshot, Jase wheeled on me. “Why couldnʼt you have stayed out of this? What am I supposed to do now?” He yelled out a stream of profanities and kicked a nearby tree hard enough to dislodge some bark and possibly a toe.
“Who was that? Whatʼs going on?” My anger matched, if not surpassed, his. “Were you seriously going to fight that guy? Heʼs like three times bigger than you!”
“Heʼs not that big.”
“It would have been like The Rock versus Seth Green. Now, tell me who he is.”
“I donʼt know.”
Liar.
We glared at each other for a long moment. Finally, Jase stalked off, whipping out his cell phone along the way. I waited until he finished his call to strike again.
“Are you in a gang?” It was the most logical conclusion I could reach. I overheard just enough of his conversation to know he had called Toby, a cop. Convincing his naive young cousin to infiltrate a local gang sounded like the kind of idiotic plan Toby would have.
“Does this look like inner-city Chicago to you?” Jase gestured at the tiny town nestled in the forest. “Do you think the Bloods are doing drive-bys in pick-ups and mini-vans?”
“I think that something very weird just happened. Something about ʻterritoryʼ. Something that ended with Jean-Claude van Crazy threatening to snuff me out and sent you running to Toby. Did your idiot cousin put you up to something?”
“Canʼt you just drop it?”
“Not likely.”
Jase growled in agitation. “Please, Scout? Just this once? I promise, I wonʼt let him hurt you.”
“Can you promise that you wonʼt get hurt?”
“You donʼt have to worry about me,” he said, assuming what must have passed as a tough guy expression in Jaseʼs mind. “Iʼm made of 100% awesome, totally untouchable.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Then Iʼll drop it,” I said as I began plotting ways to uncover the truth.
Chapter 2
Just five days before school resumed Ms. Northington resigned her position at Lake County High. Apparently, she met a nice Finnish man on a cruise over the summer, fell madly in love, and was moving half-way around the world. Of this I had been informed. What no one bothered to tell me was that crotchety old Mr. Beck had come out of retirement to fill her position. If someone had mentioned it, I would have changed my schedule. AP Calculus was going to be bad enough without having Satanʼs right-hand man as a teacher.
One of Mr. Beckʼs many faults was believing high school seniors should still be forced to sit in alphabetical order, which left me stuck behind the aromatic John Davis. I knew that between Mr. Beckʼs soporific voice and my brainʼs insistence on trying to solve the mystery of Johnʼs unique scent, I was going to have a hard time keeping focused.
“Scout, do you understand anything Mr. Beck is talking about?” came a frantic whisper from my left.
“Itʼs the first day. Heʼs just going over the class rules and stuff,” I explained as quietly as possible.
The tiny girl in the chair next to me nervously gnawed on her nonexistent fingernails while simultaneously bouncing her left leg up and down at about a million miles an hour. Joi Fitzgerald was sweet, but she could make a Tibetan monk anxious. “How on earth did I end up in AP Calc? Iʼll never be able to keep up.”
“Youʼre in AP Calc because you scored 98% on the placement test. Youʼre going to do fine.
Stop worrying.”
A shadow fell across my desk. “Harper, is there something that you want to share with the rest of the class?”
“Itʼs Scout,” I snapped in response to hearing my given name before remembering who I was snapping at. “I mean, my name. Itʼs Scout. You can call me Scout. Please.”