Poison by Molly Cochran Page B

in his world, so there will always be a connection between our two planes.”
    “The land where witches originated?” I asked, spellbound.
    “Something like that, yes. So as high priestess of Whitfield, it’s my responsibility to help Bryce with his mission.”
    “Which is . . . ”
    “Which is something he’ll tell you himself when he’s good and ready,” Hattie said. “Now, I don’t want you to go blabbing about that, because the poor boy’s going through enough of a culture shock without being treated like some kind of freak. Especially at school. Whatever he’s been sent here to do, I want him to feel like a normal teenager. For once.”
    “For once?”
    “Now, that’s all I’m going to say about it.”
    “Okay,” I said. “Er . . . thanks.” I had to be—or at least pretend to be—content with that.
    •  •  •
    Bryce moved into Hattie’s living quarters at the restaurant. At Hattie’s request Peter moved back in too, even though he had a room at school. In fact, he moved out of the dorms at just about the same time I moved back in.
    Great. Just great.
    In a strange turn of events, Bryce—far from being considered an outcast, as Hattie had feared—quickly became one of the most popular guys at school. Girls were crazy about him, especially Becca, who thought he looked like Prince Harry. Peter liked him too. In fact, for two guys with a lot of extracurricular work to do, Peter and Bryce managed to spend a lot of time together. Time Peter could have spent with me.
    There, I’d said it. Sometimes I just got tired of being understanding and non-clingy and self-sufficient. I missed the old, poor, awkward Peter. Old Peter once carried me down the ivy-covered wall of a burning building on his back. New Peter couldn’t eat lunch with me because he was either taking etiquette lessons from his great-uncle Jeremiah’s butler or elsehanging with Bryce and fighting off the girls who were all over the two of them like a coat of paint.
    That was my state of mind—insecure, dejected, and melodramatically depressed—when my two so-called best friends, Becca and Verity, plopped down next to me in the cafeteria. It was the first I’d seen of them since I’d fled the dorms.
    Since then I’d been alone so much that I’d stopped thinking about having friends, but here they were, uninvited and . . . Well, I was going to say “unwelcome,” but that wasn’t true. I’d missed them. Even Verity, who was usually a pain.
    “Is this seat taken?” Becca asked, smiling. She always looked like she was in a shampoo commercial. Her curly blond hair literally bounced. With her dark eyes and pouty lips, she was as close to movie-star gorgeous as anyone at Ainsworth could get.
    “What do you think,” I answered dryly. Since it was common knowledge that I was the school leper, I figured she’d get my drift.
    Verity blushed as she placed her napkin on her lap in preparation for chowing down on the radishes and cucumber slices on her plate. “We need to talk,” she said in her usual breathy whisper.
    “So talk,” I said, taking a bite of my cheeseburger.
    “Are you really going to eat that?” Verity asked, looking queasy.
    “No, I’m going to smear it all over my body, and then I plan to swim the English Channel.”
    “All right, all right,” Becca said, leveling her soulful brown eyes at me. “Katy, are you okay?” She took my hand. I started to pull away, but I decided not to because I knew it wasn’t justa gesture. “We came to your room earlier, and you were out cold on your bed.”
    “Maybe I was asleep,” I suggested. “It’s been known to happen.”
    “But we couldn’t wake you up,” Verity said.
    “So?”
    This, I admit, was bravado. Actually, I’d spent the previous couple of hours walking through a Moroccan pillow into a street bazaar in Fez. Ever since Morgan had shown me how to walk through objects, I’d been practicing. So far I’d gone to a Native American powwow