Freaks of Greenfield High

Freaks of Greenfield High (Chapter 13)

Freaks of Greenfield High

By Maree Anderson

Chapter Thirteen

Jay yanked up her sleeve to better examine the injury. She extracted the shard from her flesh and let it drop to the floor. The slash bled freely. Blood dribbled down her arm.

Caro made a strangled noise and Jay glanced up. Caro had turned an even paler shade of white beneath her makeup. "Call 911," she told her brother in a voice that was husky with shock and fear.

"Unnecessary," Jay said.

"You're so gonna need stitches," Caro insisted.

"I won't. I'll be fine."

"No freaking way will you be fine!" Tyler yelled.

Jay pinched the wound together with her fingertips. "The bleeding will stop soon."

They both stared at her, disbelief staining their eyes, creasing their faces, hunching their bodies. "I could do with a soda, though," she said, not because she was thirsty but because she hoped to break the tension.

"Get Jay a soda, Tyler." Caro's gaze remained fixed on Jay as her brother leaped to do her bidding. "You really should get that seen to," she said, visibly shaking off her shock and trying her best to assume a parental role. "If you've got some phobia about hospitals or doctors, and you're scared to go on your own, we'll come, too."

Jay smiled gently at her. "Thank you, Caro. But it's not that I'm scared of doctors, it's that I truly don't require the attentions of one."

"Bullshit." The slight tremble in Caro's voice betrayed her.

Jay gave her wound one final squeeze with her fingers before performing an internal diagnostic. Given the depth of the wound, it'd take a couple of hours to heal completely but it was hardly a serious injury. Turning aside so Caro couldn't see what she was doing, Jay licked her fingers to coat them with saliva and brushed them down the already knitting slash. Her saliva would further speed up the healing process and insure that her dermis healed without scarring. She swiped the blood from her skin with her fingers and then licked them clean.

She heard a muffled imprecation and glanced up to see Tyler's horrified face. He'd seen her administering to her wound. He'd noted how quickly it was healing.

Wordlessly, he handed Jay the soda and then joined his sister, dropping to the floor by the settee and leaning against Caro's knees. He appeared to draw comfort from the physical contact.

Jay considered the situation, running various scenarios and options. Logically, she knew she could—and should—provide some feasible explanation for what Tyler and Caro had witnessed. But her programming stuttered when factoring in the human equation of friendship. And trust.

She ignored her programming. Again. "You should make yourselves comfortable," she said, popping the tab on her soda. "Both of you. I have something to tell you."

In eerie unison, Tyler and Caro levered themselves up onto the settee. They sat very close together, knees touching, united in the face of something strange and disturbing.

Jay envied them their closeness. She'd shared some of that today—enough to know she'd give all she possessed to have more. But once she told them her secret, their freely offered friendship would die, to be replaced by fear and loathing.... Loathing of her. And everything that she was.

Jay wouldn't taint their friendship by lying about what they'd seen. She would tell the truth. And then she would do what she always did: Cover her tracks and run. A pall mantled her at the thought of leaving this town—of leaving Tyler, giving him up. Even Caro now held a place in what Jay had come to think of as her heart. She liked having a female friend to "hang with".