Chaos (Kardia Chronicles) (Entangled Teen) Read online

  There’d been a lot of them recently. I thought back to the night it all started, and I remembered thinking, Well, at least it can’t get any worse. How cute I was. How cute, and delusional, and fucking arrogant to think that. It could always get worse, and I’d finally realized that this path I was on was a downward spiral. I just had to figure out how to survive until I reached the end, if that was even possible.

  So I took my mother’s promise and tucked it into my heart like another little stolen treasure, despite knowing it wasn’t worth the breath it took her to say it. Lie to me, I’d all but begged her.

  And what did that make me?

  I shoved myself to my feet and tossed the banana back into the bowl. “Whatever one you like will be fine, then. How soon are we talking?”

  She shook her head and shrugged. “It will take at least a month to get all the paperwork and insurance issues taken care of. Maybe longer.”

  A month. That was good. A lot could change in a month.

  I nodded, the tension that had my temples pounding finally starting to dissolve. “Okay, once I do this thing, I’ll come down and feed her dinner before I go so you can take a nap if you want or run to the store.”

  She caressed my cheek and gave me a shaky smile before shoving her glasses higher on the bridge of her nose. “You’re so strong, Mags. Just like your dad.”

  I hated when she said that. My dad was sweet and kind and normal. He was the rock that had held the rest of my crazy-ass family together. AKA, nothing like me, but I let it pass.

  When I left the room, I slipped my hand in my pocket, letting the warm circle of gold there comfort me with its power. By the time I got to my bedroom, I was back in full-on Sméagol mode, the need to sit and soak in the energy stronger than my sadness, stronger than my worry, and far stronger than my guilt.

  I pulled out the ring and set it on my dresser, dragging over the little red vanity chair so I could sit close to it. The stone at the center was a dark blue, probably Alex’s birthstone. Maybe his favorite color. I reached out and traced the engraved year around the gemstone with my fingertip, closing my eyes at the rush that blasted through me. I stayed like that for a long time. Long enough that my ass cheeks got numb. Long enough that my foot fell asleep. And by the time the light outside started to fade and my stomach growled, I felt better. Sane. Centered.

  Picking up the ring, I made for my closet door to pull out the box where I planned to keep it, but something stopped me. Maybe I’d carry it for just a little longer. That would be okay. I stuffed it back into my jeans’ pocket and peered around the darkening room. Bink and Libby would be there by seven, and I still needed to get ready and feed Gram.

  I flipped on my desk lamp and groaned when I got a load of the towering mountain of laundry in the corner that had spread to take over a quarter of the room. I’d totally forgotten to throw something into the wash and now I was going to have to go out in the clothes I’d worn to school. I refused to think about why the idea bothered me now. I hadn’t even given it a second thought that morning when I’d thrown the outfit on. Whatever. Tons of girls dressed like me, and what I wore was none of Mac Finnegan’s beeswax. I ran a quick brush through my unruly hair, brushed my teeth, and then jogged down the stairs.

  “I’m here,” I called to Mom, who I could hear clattering around in her office down the hall.

  “Okay, I’m going to run to Carlino’s and get some groceries. Be back in less than an hour.”

  I went into the kitchen and put together Gram’s dinner, then made my way into the living room where she sat on the recliner, cocooned in a swath of blankets with a black and white movie blaring in the background. I grabbed the remote and turned it down. “Hey, Gram,” I whispered softly, not sure if she was awake or sleeping. She looked up and gave me a toothy grin.

  “I’m watching Bogie and Bacall. What’s shakin’, bacon?”

  I set down the bowl of chicken soup and the piece of buttered white bread and smiled, feeling lighter than I had all day. What’s shakin’, bacon. That was really good. Far better than I’d expected after Mom’s doom-and-gloom report of the day. Maybe she’d turned a corner and—

  “I’m not sure why they sent you. The lady told me they weren’t allowing any more visitors once the cuckoo chimed.”

  Her green eyes had taken on an olive cast these past few years, and she stared at me, searching my face for answers.

  Working up a smile I didn’t feel, I gave her a wink. “Yeah, well, they gave me special permission, since I brought this awesome soup for you.” I swallowed the lump in my throat and tried to think positively. At least she wasn’t upset or afraid. Plain old confusion was manageable.

  She gave me a stealthy wink in return and leaned forward, the blankets falling away to reveal knobby collarbones. “In that case, come on in.”

  I made a mental note to pressure her into eating dessert, too. She needed to keep her weight up.

  For the next half hour, I made small talk as I spooned soup into her mouth. A few times she pushed my hand away and proclaimed that she was full, but I’d just wait a minute or so until she forgot and start shoveling again. We got three quarters of the way through before she put her foot down.

  “That’s enough, child. I’m spitting the next one out.” She’d busted out her fancy lady voice that she only used when she was dead serious, so I set the bowl aside.

  “How about some dessert? I have strudel in the kitchen.”

  She stared past me, her gaze pinned to a spot over my head.

  “You see what I’m saying, don’t you, Phil?”

  My skin prickled, and I bit my lip. Phil was my dad. He’d died ten years ago from a brain aneurism. I was six, and I swear it still felt like yesterday sometimes. Gram muttered his name occasionally, along with a list of other friends and family members, both alive and dead. Still, she seemed so lucid and focused, it was hard not to look over my shoulder to see…

  “She’s stubborn, that one. Always was, but you and me, we’ll convince her.”

  Again, she was addressing my phantom father, so I stayed quiet, instead opting to turn the movie up louder. I glanced at my watch, feeling both relieved and guilty when I saw that I was off duty in ten more minutes. Whenever she needed help getting to the bathroom, I was first up and ready. I’d lay with her and pet her hair until she fell asleep. I’d feed her and help her bathe, watch movies with her. But this? The thing with my dad? It killed me every time.

  She rocked forward and back, eyes trained on me again, Phantasm Phil forgotten. “Cold in here?” She muttered her mantra softly, tugging the covers around herself more tightly.

  I snagged another throw from the couch to toss over her. “There you go, Gram.”

  She didn’t respond, seemingly lost in her own world again. I slunk out of the room, soup bowl in hand, and was about to wash it out when someone knocked at the front door.

  “Come on in,” I called loudly, crossing the room to the hallway. The door swung open and Libby stepped in, bringing a blast of icy air with her.

  “Holy cow, it’s chilly out there!”

  She closed the door behind her but made no move to come in farther. “Is Bink here yet?” she asked, blowing into her hands and rubbing them together.

  “Not yet. Any minute, though. Want to make some hot cocoa? I’m just finishing up with Gram.”

  The awesome thing about Libby was that she didn’t need more of an explanation than that. She was always understanding but not pushy and she knew everything—well, almost everything—about me. That had happened right after the thing with Eric. I’d been out of school for a week with what Mom and I had decided to call “mono”. Libby had called every day and then, in spite of my insistence that she not, she came over to see me.

  I’d been lying in bed, still not even close to okay emotionally and certainly not in shape to see people, but Mom had let her in anyway. It turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. She’d come unannounced and had swung the door open r
ight as I was levitating about two feet off the bed, still a jumble of twisted emotion and lacking the control to keep everything contained in the process of trying to understand what had happened.

  She had jerked back in total shock, and I’d dropped to the bed like a rock. It all happened in the span of about a nanosecond, but there was no amount of spin or fast-talking that was going to change the facts, and the facts were that Libby had seen something magic.

  I didn’t have the energy to do anything more than tell her the truth about me and what I was…and some of what had happened with Eric. It was like being reborn. I didn’t know much about what was happening inside of me, but what I did know, I shared with her.

  She sat by the bed and listened wordlessly. When I was done, there were a lot of tears, both hers and mine, but she never once judged or doubted me. Never asked for proof. She just nodded and shrugged her slim shoulders like, Well, people are semi-gods sometimes; what can you do? and then asked me if I wanted her to make me a smoothie. I did, and I truly think that moment was a turning point for our friendship.

  We’d only known each other for a couple of years, so Bink and I had more than a decade on that, but what me and Libby had was like nothing I’d ever had before. Maybe it was a girl thing. All I knew was, at that moment, she was a lifeline. Having someone to talk to and share my struggle and fears with was worth every treasure I had.

  Now she stood in the hallway, a steampunk bowler hat over one eye and a swingy cape-like coat wrapped around her.

  “So does that make me Sherlock or Watson?” I asked drily.

  “What?”

  I eyed her outfit and she followed my gaze, glancing downward.

  “Oh, this? I was going for a Diane Keaton meets Cyrano de Bergerac.”

  I didn’t know who either of those people was, so I just nodded and smiled. She was such a goofball sometimes.

  Another knock sounded, but this time it was muffled. I swung the door open to find both Bink and my mom laden with plastic grocery store bags.

  “Look who I ran into outside,” Mom said, a cheerful smile pinned in place. “And good thing, too. He got all the heavy stuff.”

  “No problem, Mrs. R.” Bink carted the lion’s share of the stuff into the kitchen and put it on the counter. “Are there cookies in one of these bags?” he asked, poking through them with a finger.

  She set her bags down and slapped his hand playfully. “You’re going to get movie candy and popcorn, I’m sure, so you don’t need anything in these bags.”

  He grinned, flashing his dimples, and managed to get a genuine smile in return.

  “Gram ate most of her soup and is waiting on strudel. Maybe warm it up because she’s feeling chilly,” I said, suddenly anxious to get out of there while Mom was still smiling.

  “Okay. Don’t be too late.”

  The three of us filed out, and I stopped off at the coat closet to grab another layer. By the time we all piled into Bink’s car, we had only ten minutes to get to the theater before the movie started, and we ended up making it by the skin of our teeth. Bink and I stood at the concession stand while Libby went into the theater and saved some seats. She’d brought her own snack anyway. A paper sack full of what may or may not have been birdseed.

  “Chia seeds. Mixed with raisins,” she’d told me when we first got there.

  I’d grimaced and she’d grinned.

  “Raisins are nature’s candy. Don’t hate.” She turned and took off with a dramatic swirl of her cape.

  I snorted. As if. Everyone knew that nature’s candy was Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Nuts. Sugar cane. Cocoa beans. What could be more natural?

  I was next in the snack bar line, looking forward to an icy, high calorie, fizzy beverage, something chocolatey, and a hundred and thirty minutes of blissful, mindless entertainment, when a voice had me flinching in shock.

  “Hey there, Magpie. Fancy running into you.”

  Only one person in all of New Hampshire called me Magpie. FML.

  I raised my brows and shot for super casual as I turned around. “Hi, Mac.”

  Now that he had something on me—hell, more than one thing—I couldn’t outright ignore him. Until our dreaded talk, I had to play nice. And then it hit me again…

  Want.

  My hands itched to touch him, and I dug my fingernails into my palms. He was wearing his standard tan jacket that clearly wasn’t meant for this weather, his hair perfect as usual, and I had to fight the urge to lean in and smell him. Weirdo alert. Ugh. Why did I want to sniff and grope the enemy? Was I some kind of masochist?

  “I don’t believe we’ve met,” Bink said, moving closer and standing a little straighter, puffing up his chest. Even fully puffed, he was no match for Mac.

  “Oh.” I jabbed a thumb over my shoulder, mumbling, “Uh, Bink, Mac, Mac, Bink.”

  “Hey, Mmmac.” He said it like it was the dumbest name he’d ever heard, but Mac’s grin only grew wider as he tipped his head.

  “Dink, is it?”

  Bink had the good grace to flush a little. “Uh, Bink, actually. With a B. Real name’s Aaron. Bink’s just a nickname.”

  He’d gotten it when he was four because his mom still hadn’t managed to pry the pacifier out of his mouth. Once he’d tried to sneak it into kindergarten, though, the teacher called shenanigans on that and did something his mom had never had the heart to do. I remembered it like it was yesterday. She just plucked it from his mouth and tossed it into the garbage can.

  Oddly enough, Bink was totally fine with it. He stared at her hard for a long second, shrugged, and went on his merry way. He’d moved on to eating paste, and when they stopped him from doing that, he’d taken to sticking Tic Tacs up his nose, so I guess Bink was better than some of the nicknames he could’ve gotten tagged with. Still, at the moment, I felt a little bad for him because he’d only been bagging on Mac out of loyalty to me, and he was clearly out of his league.

  “Well, it was nice seeing you. I’ve got to get myself a”—I drew a blank and turned toward the glass displays— “a d-dill pickle before they run out.”

  A dill pickle? Like they’d ever run out of those. Oh hey, look at all these delicious chocolate treats. I think I’ll skip ’em and go straight for a giant graying pickle, said no one ever. They tasted like lukewarm pee and the three flaccid samples left in the display case were probably the same ones that had been there since the place opened six years before.

  I flushed and Mac treated me to the same shit-eating grin he’d given my bestie. Apparently Bink wasn’t the only one out of his league. I couldn’t be around Mac for more than three seconds without him infuriating, confusing, or flustering me, and I was about sick of it. Still, when it was my turn at the counter, I ordered the goddamned pickle to save face, kissing three dollars good-bye and ignoring Bink’s massive eye roll. I scurried out of line before he even got his change from the ginormous carton of popcorn he’d ordered, just to get away from Mac’s penetrating stare.

  Bink caught up before we got to our theater but kept his mouth shut until we settled into our seats, just as the previews ended. “So are you going to tell me what’s going on between you and Fake Gyllenhaal or not?”

  I stared sullenly down at the soggy wax-paper-wrapped pickle in my hand and sighed. “Nothing’s going on.”

  “Wait, what are you guys talking about?” Libby hissed, leaning in to hear better.

  “We just ran into Mac Finnegan, and he was sorta flirting with Maggie.”

  “No he wasn’t!” I protested, relieved when the lights flickered and went low. Surely they would leave me alone now that—

  “I know flirting. I do it all the time,” Bink said flatly. “He was flirting. The question is, why? Yesterday you hated his guts, and now today, you’re all friendly and acting like a chick with a crush.”

  Ugh, was I? And did Mac think so, too? My leg started bouncing wildly, and I used my elbow to hold it down. “Ew, no I’m not.” I looked at the pickle with self-disgust. At a loss
, I punched Bink’s knee, and he brushed me off like a mosquito. “And I wasn’t that mad yesterday.”

  “You were pretty mad,” Libby said, raising her voice to be heard over the opening credit music.

  “Fine, I was mad. We talked today, and it was a misunderstanding. I don’t care about his stupid column anyway, and we’re…friends now, I guess.” That was one word for it. Blackmailer and blackmailee were two more, but why split hairs?

  Mac walked by then with Ella Stevens, a girl who used to live next door but stopped talking to me once we hit high school. So apparently curvy, vacant redheads with nose jobs that made them look like Michael Jackson were his type. Good for him. The Coke in my hand warmed instantly, and I set it down in my cupholder, mentally cursing him for ruining both my snack and my drink.

  “If you’re friends, then why do you tense up like you’re about to get sacked every time he comes around? That’s not normal, Mags,” Bink reasoned, clucking his tongue at me.

  Damn straight it wasn’t. And I had no clue what to do about it. The plan, if one could call it that, was to get through the next couple days until I saw him and had a chance to figure out what he wanted. So had he shown up tonight just to add more pressure? I had told him I’d be at the movies. Still, half the high school was at the movies on a Friday night. It was the only entertainment in town during the colder months. But he hadn’t said, Well, I’ll see you there, when I told him I’d be going. Oh, paranoia, my old friend…

  “Can you either eat that thing or throw it out? The smell is making me want to hurl,” Bink whispered loudly, poking a finger at my pickle.

  Two girls in front of us turned to shush him but changed their tune when they got a look at him. Their shushes turned to giggles, and they offered a wave.

  Sometime between the opening credits and the first car chase scene, the two girls were sitting next to us, elbow deep in our double-buttered popcorn.

  The first half of the movie went by in a haze as I did my best not to stare at Mac and his date a couple rows ahead of us. It was no easy task. Not like I cared, but I was curious to see if they were together together and if he really did have that bad of taste in girls. Then Ella leaned in and rested her head on his shoulder. So together together it was. Not like I cared.