Rebel Belle

Chapter 11

WITHOUT MAKING a sound, I went to slug my attacker, only to have my hand freeze in midair.

Of course.

“Are you insane?” I hissed, batting David’s hand away. It didn’t touch him, obviously, but it still made me feel better.

“I told you we’d talk today,” he whispered.

“Right. Talk. Like normal people, not . . . skulking around in broom closets.”

“Skulking? Really?” David raised his eyebrows, and even in the dim light, I could see the smirk forming.

“First of all, I’m not taking crap about word choice from the guy who uses ‘egregious’ in every article he writes. And secondly, this”— I gestured to the cluttered shelves, the cleaning products, the damp mops—“definitely warrants the use of skulking.”

Rubbing his hand over his eyes, David heaved a sigh. “Fine. We’re skulking. And since the bell rings in five minutes, we need to skulk fast. Tell me everything.”

I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. “It’s . . . kind of long. And intense. And not something that can be spilled between classes in the janitor’s closet.”

“Try,” David said, his teeth clenched.

Frowning, I put my hands on my hips. “Fine. On the night of the Homecoming Dance, a janitor passed some kind of superpower on to me before he died. Then I killed Dr. DuPont with my shoe, but when I came back to the bathroom, everything had disappeared and I thought I was going crazy, but then those bad guys chased us yesterday, and they also disappeared, so I’m not crazy, but there’s something super crazy going on, and I think it’s connected to you since I’m totally incapable of hurting you. That’s why I couldn’t slap you the other day even though, trust me, I really, really wanted to.”

I took a deep breath. “So there. That’s the fast version. Any questions?”

David stumbled backward, sitting down hard on an upside-down bucket, then shook his head. “I . . . I think my brain actually shut down,” he said. He braced his elbows on his knees, leaning forward with his steepled fingers covering his mouth.

“After yesterday, I thought whatever you said, I’d be good. I mean, dude disappeared. And my car magically repaired itself. I should be unshockable, you know?”

David still wasn’t looking at me, so I knelt down in front of him as gingerly as I could, trying not to touch the ground or accidentally flash him. “I know,” I told him. “It sounds insane. It is insane.”

His eyes fixed on mine. “You killed someone,” he said, his voice barely audible. “With a shoe.”

“He had a sword,” I fired back and then, to my shock, David burst out laughing.

“A sword. Our history teacher attacked you with a sword in the bathroom and you killed him.” He dropped his head into his hands, only to raise it a second later. “Wait. You said a janitor passed these powers on to you. A janitor who died. Mr. Hall?”

Surprised, I nodded. “Yeah. Had you noticed that he was missing?”

But David was pressing his face into his hands again, moaning. “Oh my God, oh my God.”

“What?” When he didn’t answer, I tugged on his sleeve. Apparently that much I could do. “What do you know about Mr. Hall?”

When David lifted his face, he was pale. “He rented the little house at the back of our property.”

I rocked back on my heels. “Mr. Hall lived with you?”

“Not with me, but more or less in my backyard, yeah. He . . . he took off a few days ago. Or at least that’s what my aunt thought. I even asked her if we should, like, report it or something, but she said he was a grown man, he could come and go as he pleased.”

Now David’s skin had taken a bit of a greenish cast, and I grabbed one of the extra buckets, just in case. “I was at school Friday night, working on the paper,” he said, almost like he was talking to himself. “Dr. DuPont . . . do you think he was after me, and killed Mr. Hall when he got in the way?”

“I don’t know,” I told him. “But that makes sense. And you’re sure nothing like this had ever happened to you before?”

Briefly, he was the old David again. “Are you asking me if I’m sure no one has ever tried to kill me before, Pres? Trust me, nothing like this has ever happened.”

“That you know of.”

That wiped the smirk right off his face. “Oh God. You’re right. If you hadn’t told me, I never would’ve known about Friday night. Mr. Hall and Dr. DuPont and you and swords . . .”

He trailed off, and for a long moment, he sat there, totally quiet, twisting his fingers and breathing. Then he glanced back up at me, he nodded. “Okay. Processed. Now what do we do?”

As bizarre as it sounds, I wanted to . . . I don’t know, hug him. He’d taken all this weirdness and done the same thing I’d managed to do with it: take it in, feel crazy for a little bit, and then deal.

Maybe David Stark wasn’t completely useless.

“When Dr. DuPont tried to kill me, he called me a ‘Paladin.’”

“Like Charlemagne,” David said, almost to himself.

“What?”

Shaking his head, David said, “Charlemagne. He was this French king—”

Irritated, I cut him off with a wave of my hand. “I know that. I was in AP European History, too. But what does he have to do with Paladins?”

“He had a group of knights called Paladins. I don’t remember anything about them having superpowers, though.”

Well, that was something, at least.

As briefly as I could, I filled David in on what I’d learned about Paladins so far. When I finished, he nodded. “So you think I’m your noble cause.”

“I really hope you’re not, but it’s looking like that’s it. Which is why, yet again, I’m going to ask you if there’s anything you can think of, any reason people would care about you enough to want to kill you. I know you write annoying articles, but if I haven’t wanted to murder you yet, I don’t know why anyone else would.”

He gave a little snort of laughter. “Fair enough. But I’m telling you, Harper, there’s nothing. I’m just . . . a guy.”

But he was flexing his fingers, and I knew there was something he wasn’t telling me.

“David,” I told him, reaching out to touch his knee before I thought better of it. “Seriously. Whatever it is, no matter how random you think it might be, you need to spill, and you need to do it now.”

His blue eyes blinked behind his glasses, and for a second, I thought he was going to give me the brush-off again. But then he sighed, tipping his head back to study the ceiling. “It’s so stupid I can’t believe I’m even going to tell you. But . . . the debate club thing. The article saying that Matt Hampton had stolen the other team’s questions . . .”

I nodded. That had been a pretty big deal a few months back. David had snuck the article into the paper after hours, which had seriously pissed off Mrs. Laurent. But not because it was underhanded. The match David was talking about? It hadn’t even happened yet. That debate had been scheduled for the Saturday after David wrote the article.

He didn’t have any excuse for why he’d made it up, and I honestly think he’d have gotten expelled if it hadn’t been for his aunt’s influence. I still couldn’t believe Mrs. Laurent let him stay on the paper, but I guessed that could be chalked up to Saylor, too.

“I know everyone thinks I wrote that article to be a dick or whatever. But the thing is, Pres, when I wrote it . . . it was like I was sure it had happened. I knew it. I couldn’t tell you how or who told it to me, but I was positive it had happened. I never would’ve written it if I hadn’t been.”

I took that in. “Okay. So maybe you . . . I don’t know, dreamed it. I’ve had dreams that seemed completely real, and—”

But David was already shaking his head. “No, I’ve always had weird dreams. Like, seriously intense, crazy dreams. I even talked to Aunt Saylor about taking me to the doctor for it, but she said vivid dreams ran in our family.”

“Huh,” I said, filing that away for later. David didn’t seem to notice.

“But this wasn’t like those. This was something I . . . I knew.”

“So you thought something was true, and it ended up not being true. That’s not exactly a superpower, David. And certainly not worth chasing you down over.”

David drew his legs up, pressing his heels against the edge of the bucket as he rested his elbows on his knees. “That’s what I thought. That maybe too many late nights had finally gotten to me.”

I found myself nodding in sympathy.

“But then, the day after the academic hearing, Matt Hampton caught me in the bathroom. Tossed me against a wall and asked who had told me about the questions. He had stolen them, Pres,” David said, his expression grave. “He was going to use them. But . . . hadn’t yet.”

Okay, that was a little more interesting. “So you . . . you can see the future?”

David rolled his eyes. “Okay, it sounds really stupid when you say it like that.”

“David, we’re huddled in a supply closet talking about killer history teachers and superpowered knights. Telling the future, honestly, doesn’t make it any weirder. In fact, it makes it somewhat clearer. At least now we know why someone might want to kill you.”

David snorted. “Yes, my ability to not predict debate club outcomes is incredibly impressive.”

The bell rang. It startled both of us, and we shot to our feet. Kneeling down, I’d been a few inches below David, but when we stood up, we were suddenly way too close, and I found myself stumbling backward away from him.

Once again, my chest tightened, and there was that weird fluttering sensation that was like butterflies. But it couldn’t be butterflies. I did not have butterflies over David Stark.

But he backed up, too, a weird look on his face. Then he cleared his throat. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll check out Mr. Hall’s house today. See if there’s anything there. What are you planning on doing? Other than keeping people from killing me.” His eyes widened. “Oh man, how are you supposed to do that? Mr. Hall lived with us and worked at the school. We can’t be that . . . that . . . close all the time.”

I nodded in agreement. “And logistics are the least of it,” I muttered, thinking about Ryan and Bee, both of whom had reasons to want me and David to spend less time together. Then something else occurred to me. Mr. Hall had died defending David. Bled out on the bathroom floor from a giant scimitar wound. Was I expected to defend David to the death? My death?

Something must have shown on my face because David squinted at me. “What?”

I shook my head. We could get into how far my protective services extended later. “Whenever you’re in danger, I can sense it. There’s this . . . jumpiness and pain and stuff. I can’t exactly miss it. Besides, this town’s not that big, and we only live a few blocks apart. And I am here at school every day. As for the rest of it, we’ll . . . I don’t know. Once we figure out what’s going on, maybe we can figure out some way to stop it.”

“Good plan,” he said, even as he gulped nervously. “Look, you said the internet didn’t yield much in terms of answers. But if this Paladin thing is ancient, maybe we should use . . . I don’t know, older sources.”

“By which you mean books?” I asked, quirking an eyebrow.

“Exactly.” Now that some of the color was returning to his face, he looked more like the David I was used to. “When the debate club thing happened, I checked out a book from the library about . . .” He trailed off and cleared his throat a little. “Um, you know, people who see the future and stuff. Here.”

He reached into his backpack and pulled out a thin black book, handing it to me. They Saw the Future! was emblazoned on the cover in bright purple foil.

I studied it for a second, pressing my lips together. “It’s like you want me to make fun of you.”

Scowling, David went to take the book back, but I held it out of reach. “No, you’re right. There might be something in here. It’s better than nothing.”

David didn’t look much happier, but he nodded. “Right. I’ve marked some of the pages I thought were the most interesting. Plus we can go to the library this afternoon and—”

“No,” I said automatically. I’d already been caught spending one afternoon with David Stark. If we got caught two days in a row, even if it was in an unsexy place like the library . . .

David scowled, and I hurried on. “I only mean not today. I have . . . family stuff.”

I wasn’t sure David was going to accept that for an answer, but in the end, he gave a terse nod. “Okay. Maybe this weekend then.”

Today was Tuesday. Surely by Saturday, things with me and Ryan would be sorted out. “Saturday is fine,” I said, bending down to scoop up my backpack. “And that was a good idea. The book thing.”

“Maybe the next time you pay me a compliment, you can try not to sound like you’re about to hurl.” He smirked, a tiny dimple appearing in one cheek.

I rolled my eyes.

“Okay,” he said, going to open the door. “I’ll pick you up at around nine on Saturday.”

I shook my head. “I’ll pick you up. One ride in that deathtrap you call a car was plenty, thanks.”

“You know, it actually wasn’t a deathtrap until someone decided to drive it down a residential street at roughly a bazillion miles an hour.”

“To save your life,” I threw over my shoulder as I left the closet.

Luckily, David had enough sense to let me leave first. Also luckily, I only got one girl looking at me as I shut the door behind me. I gave her my brightest smile. “Wanted to make sure everything was spick-and-span in there!”