Crave. Melissa Darnell

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      “Maybe we’ll run into each other again,” he said as we paid for our food.

      “Um, sure. Nice meeting you.”

      “Nice meeting you, too, Savannah.” But he didn’t turn away. Instead, he stood there watching me. I could feel his gaze on me as I returned to my table.

      Okay, that was weird but sort of nice. Guys never paid any attention to me. Maybe it was the bigger boob size?

      I set down my tray and sat.

      Suddenly, I felt someone standing next to me.

      I looked up and found Greg grinning down at me.

      “Hey,” he said. “I forgot to mention, we’ve got a home game this Friday, if you want to come watch. It’ll start at six at the Tomato Bowl.”

      Total silence, not only at our table, but at all the surrounding tables, too, made my cheeks burn. The unwanted attention had to be because of Greg, because I wasn’t exactly on anyone’s social radar around here.

      I blinked a few times and struggled to think of a reply. Then I remembered. “Um, that sounds like fun. But I have a dance recital that night. So … maybe next time?”

      Greg looked away for a moment. At the same time, goose bumps and a prickling sensation raced up my arms and across the back of my neck. Someone must have cranked up the air-conditioning or something. Shivering, I rubbed my arms.

      When Greg looked back down at me, his smile wasn’t quite as blinding. “Yeah, sure. Next time.” Then he walked away.

      I cringed, hoping I hadn’t hurt his feelings. Though why he’d care if I came to one of his games or not was beyond me.

      I glanced at my friends and grinned. Their shocked expressions matched how I felt. “Did that just happen?” I asked, a short laugh slipping out.

      Silence at our table, even as the other nearby tables recovered.

      In the continuing silence from my friends, I leaned forward and looked more closely at them. “Um, hello? Anyone care to comment on that?”

      Yeesh. Yes, it was true that boys never talked to me, and definitely none had ever made a point to come up to me during lunch. But my friends were acting like he’d also jumped up on the table and performed a song and dance for us or something. I’d never seen them all this speechless at the same time. I had the strong urge to snap my fingers under their noses just to bring them back to planet Earth.

      I met Anne’s stare first, then Carrie’s, then Michelle’s. Without fail, each girl’s eyes widened as I met their gazes. Okay, this was getting weirder by the moment.

      “Look at me.” Anne’s command, an echo of Dad’s demanding tone on Saturday, reminded me of my changed appearance. And of the crazy family secrets I wanted to forget as quickly as possible.

      “Oh, yeah.” My good mood faded. “I forgot, you haven’t seen how weird I look.” Now Anne would tell me what an imaginative idiot I was and how I looked the same as I always did.

      Her eyebrows drew together. “You don’t look weird. But you do look different, that’s for sure. What’d you do to your hair? It looks like a flippin’ Garnier commercial. Did you get it colored? It’s not so orange now. And it’s … poufy.”

      Oh. So maybe I hadn’t imagined the changes in my appearance.

      Feeling like a circus sideshow, I blushed. “I know, it’s kind of odd. But I swear I didn’t do anything new to it.”

      “And your eyes,” Michelle whispered.

      I looked at Michelle, who reminded me of a nervous rabbit today for some reason. Her gaze darted away.

      Oh, crap, that’s right. Dad had mentioned that my gaze might have a strange effect on others. But he hadn’t said what kind of effect. He should’ve warned me that my friends would treat me like an alien that had crash-landed at our table.

      “What do you think, Carrie?” I met her stare head-on, my hands clenching into fists under the table as fear battled with a tiny bit of curiosity. Exactly what did they see when they looked into my eyes now?

      Carrie was the calmest, coolest, most levelheaded member of our group. She had a mind like a scientist, or the doctor she claimed to want to become someday. She could offer some practical, objective feedback.

      I held her gaze for several seconds as something like the weekend’s panic threatened to overwhelm what little curiosity I’d had. Maybe I didn’t want to know, after all.

      Then I saw it … that same fearful widening of the eyes just before Carrie looked away.

      Ohhh, crap. And according to Dad, that was a vampire thing.

      I tried to remember how to breathe past the growing thickness in my throat. The noise of the cafeteria ramped up, roaring in my ears like an angry ocean during a storm, even as too many different emotions from others rushed in waves over my skin. I wrapped my arms around myself in a futile effort to block them out.

      Did this mean I was turning into a vampire?

      “Here, let me see again.” This time, Anne’s voice was far from its usual command.

      And suddenly, I did not want to make eye contact with her. I didn’t want to see my best friend look at me and become afraid. Then again, maybe it was all in how I was looking back at them, and I just needed to relax. Maybe then they would settle down and it would be no big deal.

      I slid my gaze up and over, seeing Anne’s chin first, then her mouth and nose. I hesitated, took a deep breath, focused on being calm and hopefully projecting soothing thoughts with my eyes, then made direct eye contact. And heard her gasp.

      Well, crap. That didn’t work, either. My gaze dropped to the tray of food I no longer wanted as my head began to swim.

      After a minute, Anne took a deep breath before saying, “It’s okay, Sav. Your eyes aren’t that different, at least not in a way I can really describe. They just seem kind of … intense for some reason.”

      “Yeah, exactly,” Michelle said. “Reminds me of how my mom looked at me when I accidentally broke the coffee table last month. Like she wanted to kill me.”

      “But I’m not mad!” I blurted out. “In fact, I was pretty dang happy a minute ago. That guy who just came over, Greg Stanwick, is a junior and a varsity soccer player. He just introduced himself out of the blue while we were in the food line. It was kind of weird actually….” Weird didn’t even begin to cover all the recent things I’d been going through since last week. And couldn’t talk about with them. How in the world could my friends believe me, much less understand? They hated the Clann. Michelle thought witches sacrificed small animals, Carrie was too practical to ever believe in vampires and Anne’s Pentecostal family would never let her be friends with a half vampire/half witch. They barely liked her hanging out with a bunch of Methodists and Baptists. And I still hadn’t figured out how she’d convinced them to let her wear jeans every day and cut her hair. The other Pentecostals on campus had to wear skirts and couldn’t cut their hair, which they wore down to their knees.

      “He’s СКАЧАТЬ