Dangerous Destiny: A Night Sky novella Read Free

She was now watching me with her crazy intensity on heavy-stun.
    Meanwhile, my new luncheon companion didn’t offer any conversation—not even an introduction—as I pulled my own sandwich out of my bag. So I went first. “I’m Skylar.”
    “Calvin,” he said, adding, “ Jesus .”
    Yeah. My lunch tended to be worthy of an entire hymn sung to a higher power, begging for salvation. Today, it was a sad-looking, flattened half-sandwich composed of Mom’s favorite gluten-free bread, a liberal but nasty-ass slice of Tofurky, and organic, aka puke-worthy, lactose- and egg-free mayo. With hydroponically grown Bibb lettuce, as if that made it all okay.
    “Yum,” I said and took a bite. Meanwhile, Calvin’s sandwich continued to smell as good as it looked. But he’d set it down on the open wrapper in front of him.
    “Okay,” he said. “That’s not okay—that food-like or rather food- ish substance you’re eating. Lemme guess, New Girl, your mom is a health-food freak.”
    He got the freak part right. “My name is Skylar,” I repeated, saying it loudly enough for Hobo Girl to hear it, too. She was still staring at me, obviously listening in.
    “Uh-huh,” Calvin said, although I wasn’t convinced he was ever going to call me anything other than New Girl. “So what brings you to beautiful Coconut Key, where—congrats—your mere presence lowers the town’s median age to seventy-four.”
    Okay, that made me laugh. Clearly I wasn’t the only one here who’d made note of the overflow of elderly neighbors.
    “Yup,” I told him. “Kinda the way you make this high school ‘desegregated,’ and ‘richly diverse’ like it says in the brochure.” I gave the words air quotes, and as he looked at me, his eyes narrowed slightly. And with that, I knew that there were two things nobody here at the esteemed Academy ever talked to this kid about—his skin color and his wheelchair.
    That is, of course, assuming anyone talked to him at all.
    “Of course, the brochure also claims the school is attended by descendants of European royalty,” I pointed out. “For all I know, that’s thanks to you, too. There’s something about you that screams, I don’t know, maybe…” I squinted at him, studying his face.
    He was a rather lovely shade of milk-chocolate brown, with dark chocolate eyes, a someday-soon-to-be-handsome face that still held a little too much baby fat, and a fro-hawk that revealed he’d spent far more time than I had in front of the bathroom mirror this morning. “Swedish prince…?” I concluded.
    He laughed in genuine amusement, exposing the straight white teeth of a kid with rich parents, which was no surprise, considering this was an expensive private school. “Shhh!” he said. “I’m incognito.”
    “I won’t tell,” I promised, adding, “Your Grace.”
    And now he was looking at me as thoroughly as I’d looked at him. “You’re a junior, right?” he asked.
    I nodded. “And you’re…” He looked to be about fifteen, but the freshmen had their own band so I guessed he must’ve been a little older. “A sophomore?”
    That got me another narrowing of his eyes. “I’m seventeen,” he informed me.
    “You’re a senior?” I realized.
    “Junior,” he corrected me. “Just had a birthday.”
    I’d already heard the muttered gossip about how this boy had ended up permanently in that chair as a result of some terrible accident, back when he was younger. He’d probably lost some school time while recovering from whatever had happened. I toasted him now with my Tofurky. “Happy birthday,” I said, adding, “Nice wheels. Was the awesome chair a special present?”
    Calvin laughed again. “No,” he said. By acknowledging his chair, I now had his full attention. “You know, I’m pretty sure we’re neighbors. I saw you this morning at the bus stop. You moved into old man Beattie’s house, right? That’s about a block and half from me.”
    I shrugged as I glanced over at Hobo