Great, so he had noticed that. “David, look, we can talk about this later, but my boyfriend is looking for me, and I have to go—”
“Harper?”
Oh, shoot. I turned just as Ryan rounded the corner. He was holding his cell phone in one hand, a look of total confusion on his face.
“Ryan,” I said, trying to make myself smile. I guess I thought if I just smiled a lot, Ryan wouldn’t think there was anything unusual about me arguing behind the chapel with David.
But Ryan wasn’t even looking at me. He was glaring at David, who towered over him by at least four inches. “What the hell is going on?”
David dropped his hand. “Nothing, man,” he said to Ryan. “We were just talking about the paper. That’s it.”
Ryan was looking between us, an unfamiliar expression on his face. It took me a second to realize that he was angry. More than angry, really. He was furious. And Ryan never lost his temper.
“Why can’t you just leave her alone?” he asked David. Ryan’s jaw was clenched, and I’d never seen his hazel eyes look that cold. “I mean, other than being better than you in every class, what has Harper ever done to you?”
David must have been as weirded out by Angry Ryan as I was, because for once, he didn’t have a smart ass response. His skin went a little pale, and I could see the whites around his blue eyes. “Look, I’m sorry. You’re right, I’ve been a dick, but I swear to God, I wasn’t bothering her. I was sitting here first, and she just—”
“Save it,” Ryan said, holding up a hand. “Whatever your little war on Harper is about, it’s over. I don’t want you to write one more damn word about her. I don’t want you to talk to her. I don’t even want you to look at her.”
I knew that Ryan was trying to protect me, and maybe I should’ve been thrilled to watch my boyfriend go all alpha male for me, but instead I felt . . . irritated. “Ryan, I told you I could handle this.”
“But you haven’t,” he fired back, his voice unnaturally loud in the quiet behind the church. The breeze had died down, and there wasn’t even the rustle of leaves. It was hard to believe that only a few hundred feet away, kids were eating lunch, talking, laughing. “This guy is a jerk, and you’ve just taken it for years. I get that you’re sucking up to his aunt, and that you want to be nice to people, Harper, but damn. You don’t have to be a doormat.”
“I’m not sucking up!” I said, just as David moved forward, saying, “Take it easy, Ryan—”
And then everything exploded.
Ryan, sweet Ryan, who had never purposely hurt anyone, shot a hand out to push David away, and suddenly, it was like a screen dropped in front of my eyes. I could see Ryan’s hand hit David’s chest, saw David stumble back as his glasses flew off.
I saw his head hit the edge of the stone steps of the chapel, blood erupting from underneath his sandy hair. I saw his blue eyes roll up until all I could see were the whites.
Then the vision vanished.
I was moving before I even really knew it, just like with Dr. DuPont. My hand shot out and caught Ryan’s wrist, his hand just inches from David’s chest. I yanked Ryan’s arm down as my knee came up, catching him in the stomach. While he was bent over from that, I leaned down and put my shoulder into his chest and, still holding his arm, flipped him over my back. All six feet, three inches, 200 pounds of him.
He landed on his back. As he landed, I straightened up and put my foot on his throat, pressing down slightly. My fingers were tight around his wrist, and some inner knowledge told me that if I pulled up and twisted in a certain way, I’d break it, along with a few bones in his hand.
And if David hadn’t shouted my name, I probably would have.
It was like waking up from a dream. I looked down and saw Ryan’s wide, panicked eyes, my boot against his neck. I saw the shocked look on David’s face.
“What the hell?” Ryan squeaked, and I immediately dropped his arm, stumbling a few steps back.
Getting superpowers was supposed to be a good thing. You helped people. You didn’t nearly twist your boyfriend’s hand off.
David was leaning down, helping Ryan to his feet, but all I could do was stand there, numb. That feeling I’d had when I was fighting Dr. DuPont, like I wasn’t even in control of my body. Then it had been cool. But this? So out of control that I’d hurt someone I loved? That was terrifying.
“Pres?” David asked hesitantly. Both he and Ryan stood there, waiting for me to say something. Dozens of excuses ran through my mind. New energy drink. New, high-tech cheerleading moves. But in the end, no words came out of my mouth, and I just did the easiest thing I could think of.
I ran.
From behind me, I heard someone call my name, but whether it was Ryan or David, I didn’t know.
Or care.
I didn’t stop to get my bag, which meant that I couldn’t drive home, but I knew I had to get out of there.
Stopping just outside the gates, I looked left, then right. The Grove was located in one of the town’s nicer neighborhoods, full of tree-lined streets and big houses. My own house was a good three miles away and to the left. So I turned to the right.
I had no idea where I was going, so I figured I’d keep walking until my Mentor found me, or the cops came after me for assaulting Ryan.
A cool breeze ruffled my hair and blew my skirt against my legs as leaves skittered down the sidewalk. I didn’t realize that I’d started crying until the wind cooled the tears on my cheeks.
“It’ll be okay,” I mumbled out loud, adding talking to myself to the list of crazy things I’d done today. Not that I cared. “It’ll be okay,” I said again, louder this time, and the more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that it really would be.
All right, so my superpowers had flipped out on me and nearly made me hurt Ryan. But he and David were the only people who had seen it. Ryan loved me. He’d forgive me as soon as I came up with a reason for what happened. Preferably one that didn’t sound completely insane.
And David . . .
If there had been any doubt in my mind that David Stark was involved in whatever was going on with me, it was gone now. I’d flipped Ryan to keep David safe. And something told me that if Ryan hadn’t been joking about kicking David’s ass earlier, I would have done that ninja thing on him then, too.
But why? That was the thing that didn’t make any sense. Okay, it was one of the many, many things about this that didn’t make any sense, but it was definitely the most pressing. The why would lead to the who and the how. And that meant I didn’t have time for this middle of the sidewalk pity party I was currently throwing. I had to get back to the Grove, and I had to talk to—
Suddenly, pain slammed into my chest, like someone punched me in the sternum. It was so intense that I gasped. Then, as quickly as it had come, it was gone, leaving behind a heavy pressure that made me wonder if my lungs had been replaced with bricks.
I stood there, my hands clenched at my sides, sucking in deep breaths. I had felt this way before.
Right before Dr. DuPont burst through that bathroom door.
“Pres?”
The pain had crowded up so much of my mind that I hadn’t heard David’s Dodge pull up alongside me, which meant I had been really out of it, because that thing had to have a hole in the muffler or something.
“Oh, God, seriously?”
“Look, let me give you a ride home, okay? It isn’t safe for you to be walking here by yourself.”
The heavy feeling intensified. “Um, David, hate to break it to you,” I said, trying to sound normal even though my breathing was speeding up, “but this isn’t exactly a rough neighborhood. I think I can avoid getting raped and murdered on someone’s croquet lawn, okay?”
He leaned across the passenger seat and for the first time, I saw that he looked genuinely worried. Maybe even a little scared. “Harper—” he started to say.
I stepped down from the sidewalk, and leaned forward, my hands resting on the open passenger window. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s that car.” His eyes darted to his rearview mirror and I turned to look over my shoulder. About a hundred yards away, a black car with tinted windows idled at a stop sign. I figured the suffocating feeling in my chest had something to do with it, and that meant it was probably not filled with good guys.
“The car was outside the school when I left,” David said in a voice barely above a whisper, like the people in the car could hear us. “It’s been following you.”
Adrenaline started flooding through my system as I turned back to David and said, “Get out of here. Now. Drive—”
But before I could finish, the black car revved its engine with a roar that drowned out David’s crappy Dodge.
And then it was racing straight at us.
Chapter 8
It wasn’t like I had a lot of time to think about what to do next, so I went with instinct. I dove through David’s open passenger window and scrambled onto his lap.
I know, I know. Between that and the head-butting, I was going to get my southern belle title revoked. But I knew what I needed to do, and it was faster to drive the damn car myself than try to explain it to David. And I knew he couldn’t move into the passenger seat in enough time. That black car would be on us in seconds.
David made a sound that was somewhere between shock and outrage as I grabbed the wheel and placed my foot on top of his on the accelerator.
The Dodge rattled, and squealed, and thunked, but, thank God, it lurched forward just as the black car’s front grille kissed our bumper. The shock was still enough to send me flying painfully into the steering wheel, and David into my back.
“What the hell?” David yelled in my ear.
My eyes still on the street, I reached down with one hand and unfastened David’s seatbelt. “Scoot!” I hollered over the clunking of the car and the rush of wind pouring through the open passenger window.
We were hurtling down the oak-lined avenue, branches forming a leafy arch overhead. My hands were slick with sweat as I clutched the steering wheel, and my calf muscle was already aching from how hard I was mashing David’s foot on the gas pedal. There was still a trace of that disconnected feeling I’d had when fighting Dr. DuPont and Ryan, like I wasn’t completely in control of my body, but this time, I was definitely feeling more there, if that makes any sense.
I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that the black car was only a few feet behind us. We’d gotten a head start, but they were driving a much better car. Already, the Dodge was shuddering like its frame was about to fly into pieces, and we were only going seventy miles an hour.
Then it occurred to me that we were going seventy miles an hour on a street where the speed limit was twenty-five. I sent up a quick prayer that there were no little kids riding bikes anywhere nearby, and pressed my foot down even harder.
David gave a grunt of pain as my heel dug into his foot. “Sorry!” I yelled. “But come on! Scoot!”
I could tell he was trying to get out from under me, but the only way to do it quickly (and so I could maintain our speed and my concentration) would be to actually put his hands under my butt, lift me off him, and slide. Instead, he was trying to slide out from under me without touching my butt, or hips, or really any area that could be considered inappropriate.