Reborn (Shadow Falls: After Dark #1)(42)

“You should have spoken up,” her mom said.

“I’ll try to remember that.” Della realized it sounded like the conversation was winding down, and she still needed two things. “Oh, Mom. I … I was wondering if you would mind if I went to see a friend next weekend? Kylie, my roommate, you’ve met her before, she’s invited me and Miranda, my other roommate, to her house.”

“To do what?” her mom asked, suspicious.

“To hang out. You know, like I used to do with Chelsea. To go over some homework.” Her mom used to be a sucker for anything involving group study. Every date with her ex-boyfriend, Della used to bring her schoolbooks, and she’d actually open them at least once, so she didn’t have to lie when she said they’d spent “some” time with their nose in a book.

“Can’t you do that at school?”

“It’s not as fun.”

Her mom was quiet. “Can I talk with her parents?”

“I’m sure her mom would be happy to talk to you.” Della hoped.

“If her mom will talk with me, then … then…”

“Thanks,” Della said, not wanting to give her mom a chance to back out. “Oh, one more thing. We’re writing essays, and one of the things we have to discuss is where our parents went to school. Where did Dad go to high school?”

“Klein High. You don’t want to know where I went?” her mom asked, reminding Della that there had been a day her mom had been a little jealous of her relationship with her dad.

“I know where you went,” Della said. “You went to Freemont High. You told me.” And Della did remember. She remembered they used to talk a lot. She used to talk a lot with both her parents. Though, she just now realized how little her dad talked about his past. Her father was always focused on the future.

The line went silent again. “I remember the story about how you and two other girls got caught letting the frogs go before the school used them as lab experiments.”

Her mom chuckled. “I haven’t thought about that in a while.” She exhaled. “I miss you, Della.”

Tears filled Della’s eyes. Was her mom pretending, too? Or were they being real? “I miss you, too.” God, what was she saying? The last thing she needed was for her mom to try to make her come home. “Not that I don’t like it here.” Della swiped a lone tear that had escaped her lashes. “I’ll text you Ms. Galen’s number later.”

“Okay,” her mom said.

Della was about to hang up.

“Della?” her mom said in a rush.

“Yeah?”

“I know your dad is hard on you, but he…”

You’re both hard on me, Della thought, remembering when she caught her mom going through her bags, afraid she’d brought home drugs and might pass them to her sister. But Della didn’t say it.

“He what?” Della asked.

“He loves you.”

“Yeah,” Della said. Part of her almost believed it.

Almost.

By eight o’clock that night, Miranda had taken off to meet Perry. Kylie had given Della her mom’s number so Della could text it and then she had skipped out to meet Lucas. Alone, and exhausted, Della turned the lights off. Surprisingly, she did sleep. Well, until four that morning. She wasn’t sure what woke her up. She tucked her feet under the blankets to keep her toes from freezing. Okay, so maybe she did know what had woken her, and just didn’t want to admit it.

She stayed in bed, covers up to her chin, leery of the cold. Cold she hadn’t felt in a long time. Was it the ghost or was it the fever?

She feared it was the ghost. Trying to push that thought away, one equally disturbing hit and this one came with images. She saw the dead girl. Then her mind created images of her fighting a shadowy attacker. Fighting and losing.

The temptation to wake up her friends bit hard. But Della’s fear of cowardice bit harder.

Crawling out of bed, she slipped on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt and jumped out the window. Since she’d slept some, she wasn’t breaking Holiday’s rules. The only downside was she couldn’t expect to run into Steve. Thoughts of him had her thinking about Jessie, the doctor’s daughter, and she ran faster.

Wanting to feel the rhythm of her feet hitting the ground, she never went to full flight. But it was fast enough. The cold wind swept away most of her negative feelings. Moving at this speed offered a sense of freedom and an escape from the humdrum stresses. No, it didn’t solve problems, but Della would take the reprieve.

In a matter of minutes, she’d made it around the Shadow Falls property twice. Her heart thumped against her chest bone, her skin tingled from the October air, and she drew in fast and hard gulps of oxygen.

Slowing down, she bent at the waist and waited for her heart to slow down. When she went to rise up, she saw a figure fall behind the trees right outside the fence. Her first thought was of Steve. In spite of her leeriness of the doctor’s daughter, in spite of her insisting she needed a slowdown between them, a warm smile filled her chest.

She lifted her face to catch some air, hoping to identify his scent. No scent came. But she saw the person shift again. This time, it didn’t remind her of Steve.

She inhaled again. The scent of woods and trees, adorned in fall colors and preparing to shed their leaves, filled her nose. Yet no other aroma.