Hush Money Excerpt

Teaser- Hush Money Opening

Chapter 1

Joss

I already knew it had happened again.

Not like I’m psychic, not really, but you don’t have to have any special mental Talent to see the signs…if you’re paying attention.

Stacy Scarpelli had had her hand in the air for, like, five minutes. Eventually she was doing that thing where you lean one elbow on the desk, and your other elbow in your hand, like you’re going to collapse from the exhaustion of trying to get the teacher’s attention. But the teacher was paying attention. She was paying a lot of attention to checking off names on the roll; or supposedly taking roll, but totally not looking at that whole side of the room where Stacy was flinging her hand limply about on her wrist.

And leave it to Stacy to be so wrapped up in Stacy that she didn’t notice how quiet it was this morning in first period English and how everyone just kind of sat there. The whispering would start later, as the shock wore off. Later, people would be saying how long they’d suspected, and how much they’d never really liked Krista anyway. But just then we were all looking around at each other and wondering who else was keeping secrets, and who would be the next one to disappear.

Ms. Carter looked up and set her pencil down very carefully on her desk, lining it up precisely next to her planner, and finally raised her eyes to Stacy.

“Yes, Stacy?”

“You assigned me Krista to be my partner for the project. And it’s not like I wanted to leave it to the last minute, but she was always later later later, you know? And finally I said we gotta get together this weekend, and we were supposed to meet on Saturday morning before my tennis lesson? So I waited and waited for her, but she didn’t show up, and I had to get to my lesson, right? And then I called her house after, but no one answered. No one answered all weekend, and now she’s not even here today, and I don’t know if she did any work at all on it. I did some, but I was kind of waiting to find out what she had, you know, compare notes, because there was no point in us doing the same thing, right? But I couldn’t ’cause she wouldn’t answer her phone and then I didn’t know what to do, and I was going nuts all weekend trying to get a hold of her­­—”

“Ok, Stacy. See me after class and we’ll work something out.”

“I mean, I don’t think I should be penalized because she was too busy to work on the project. Which she probably didn’t anyway, which is probably why she didn’t show up Saturday, and dodged my calls all weekend, and she’s probably ditching school today so—”

“She’s not ditching; she’s just gone.”

All eyes slid toward Dylan. He sat sideways in his chair, the back of his leather jacket against the chalkboard along the side wall, long legs stretched out in front of him, his expression unreadable.

In the seat behind him, Marco tipped back in his chair. “NIAC hauled her off.” His voice was laced with the kind of satisfaction over other people’s tragedies that made me think about his chair tipping too far and his skull bouncing off the linoleum.

Ms. Carter glanced nervously around the room. I felt bad for her. How’s a teacher supposed to handle this subject? Encourage open discussion? Answer questions? Should we all share our feelings about the fact that we were never going to see Krista Pace again? It just seemed to me that the faculty probably knew about it earlier. Hell, the National Institutes for Ability Control probably sent out some kind of official letter to the school, wouldn’t you think? Our regular teacher should have been there for support and guidance instead of leaving the poor student-teacher to the wolves. But then, what would Mr. Krause have done differently?

“[cough]Freak![cough]”

“Shut up, Marco.” Dylan continued to bounce his pencil’s eraser on the desk and examine his boot-tops.

“Why, did you and freak-girl have something goin’ on? Need a new date for Homecoming now that NIAC’s locked her up?”

Enquiring minds want to know. My mind was particularly interested, unfortunately.

“Thanks, but you’re not my type,” Dylan sneered back at his friend.

“Ok, people, that’s enough,” Ms. Carter finally gathered the courage to enter the conversation. “The topic of Krista Pace is off-limits in this class. If you have questions regarding her disap— If you have questions, you may take them to Assistant Principal Sims—on your own time. Meanwhile, I believe we have some oral presentations to hear today. Stacy, you can see me after class about your project. Who wants to go first?”

Personally, I think the school system is pretty messed up. I mean, if Krista had been hit by a bus or if she’d died of some terminal disease she’d been bravely fighting in secret for years, there’d be announcements, a moment of silence over the PA, maybe a memorial assembly. And we’d probably have some kind of shrine where people would leave pictures of Krista with flowers and little teddy bears and stuff like that. Out front somewhere, where the TV news cameras could see it clearly, and give it lots of attention, and call it a “makeshift memorial” fifteen times a freakin’ day. Like you’ve got to spend $5000 on a friggin’ stone pillar or fountain with an engraved placard on it because anything else is just “makeshift.”

But I digress.

Maybe we’d have grief counseling to talk about how she was just ripped from our lives, and we would never be able to say goodbye. We’d talk about how we felt that she’d never told us about this horrible disease she had, and if we’d known we would have been nicer to her, and now we’d never have the chance.

Because really, Krista was never coming back. And what she had was a lot like a disease. Something she was born with, something that couldn’t be cured, something very, very bad.

What Krista Pace had was a Talent.