Awake at Dawn (Shadow Falls #2)(70)

Not that she ever stayed on any of them.

"Not really," Sara said. "I think it's the birth control pills. I heard they'd cause me to gain weight, but they seem to be doing the opposite with me."

Sara was on the pill? It struck Kylie again how much things had changed between them. The old Sara would have certainly told Kylie something as big as getting on the pill.

But then, Kylie hadn't exactly been in a sharing mood with Sara lately, either. Of course, trying to explain to a normal about being a still unidentified supernatural was a little-well, a lot-more difficult than discussing birth control pills.

"Did your mom agree to you taking them?" Kylie asked, knowing Sara's mom was a bit of a religious fanatic and constantly preached against premarital sex.

"Are you kidding? She'd die if she found out. I went to the clinic and I faked her signature."

Kylie had heard about some other girls doing the same thing to get around the Texas law that required a parent's signature before dispensing the pills.

Another long pause followed.

"So, who are you dating?" Kylie asked.

"A couple of different guys." Sara sounded purposely vague. Kylie couldn't help but wonder if Sara was having sex with the couple of different guys, too. Once upon a time, she might have asked.

"So," Sara said. "You're still coming home in a couple of weeks, aren't you? Camp from hell is almost over? No more being a boner, huh?"

Annoyance chomped down on Kylie's stomach. Obviously, Trey had told Sara about the whole boner reference, because Kylie couldn't remember mentioning it.

"Actually, I'm only coming home for the weekend. And I really like it here." Kylie didn't tell her about the whole boarding school possibility just because she didn't want to go into it. But she sent up a silent prayer that her mom agreed to it. The thought of going back to her old school and not having the old Sara at her side was just too much.

"Really, you like it? You hated it at first. Camp Freaky, isn't that what you called it?" Sara sounded shocked.

That was before I actually realized I was a freak, too. Well, not a freak, but not all human, either. "I guess things change." Kylie meant her relationship with her one-time best friend, as well as her feeling about the camp.

"Yeah, I guess so." Another pause. "Well, text me when you get in town and hopefully we can meet up."

She wasn't even going to get a definite "Yes, I'll see you" from Sara. That hurt like a paper cut to the lip. Pushing away the feeling, she answered, "Yeah, I'll do that." But she wasn't so sure she would. Seeing Sara might just be too weird to deal with right now.

"Okay, my mom is calling me to help with the dishes," Sara said.

Kylie couldn't hear anyone calling in the background. Not that she wasn't eager to end the call as well. This had been hard. Really hard. "Okay, bye," Kylie said. Have a good life. Nice knowing you.

As soon as Kylie hung up, the phone rang again. This time, she looked at the caller's phone number.

Derek?

He didn't normally call her. "What's up?" she asked with a touch of worry.

A ghostly cold invaded the room as she waited for Derek to speak. A wave of dizziness had Kylie grabbing the computer desk. She had experienced this enough to know that it meant a vision was about to occur.

Or was occurring, she corrected when she saw the casket sitting where the kitchen table had been seconds earlier. The woman in the casket was the ghost. A few people moved around the casket with tears in their eyes.

"Kylie?" Derek's voice came on the line.

"Yeah." She stared at the casket and the people and wondered what she was supposed to learn from this vision. That was why they happened, right? The ghost was trying to tell Kylie something. But what? "I'm scared, Mama." From the back, Kylie saw the little girl reach up and take her mom's hand.

"It's just Grandma." The couple walked up to the casket.

"Kylie, are you there?" Derek's voice sounded upset ... or something. She recalled her concern about Derek calling her. It was so out of character for him.

"Yeah. I'm here. Is everything okay?" Kylie asked, and her concentration on Derek made the vision fade like an old photograph. It lost its color and went into black and white mode as if dating the scene as something that happened a long time ago. Then the vision grew weaker, almost transparent. "Don't go," she said.

"Go where?" Derek asked.

"Not you," she said, but it was too late, only a vague outline remained of the scene. The woman holding the little girl's hand turned around. Kylie got only glimpse of her face, but something about her looked familiar.

Shaking her head, and remembering Derek was still on the phone, she asked, "Is everything okay?"

"No," he said. "It's not okay."

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"You're not here."

She rolled her eyes. "I thought you were serious."

"I am. I've been looking forward to this afternoon all day, thinking you'd be here."

"But I wanted-"

"Please," he said. "I..." His voice lowered. "I haven't ever seen you in a bathing suit."

"And you still wouldn't. I've grown out of my bikini top, remember?"