Tribe (Tribe 1) by Audrina Cole Page B

me.” I watched an older couple walk past with a dog. When I looked back, I caught Alex watching me. I felt the embarrassment coming from him as he looked away.
    He’s cute when he’s embarrassed , I thought. Wait…what? No, I cannot start crushing on a guy I healed. That is not going to happen. But now that the thought had occurred to me, I couldn’t help but notice that he was kind of cute, now that his face was filling out and he had his color again. The hair he’d shown me looked a little funny—fuzzy and soft like baby hair—but I had a sneaking suspicion that Alex would normally be an attractive guy. When he wasn’t dying, that is.
    The sound of the car door interrupted my thoughts.
    “Hey, it’s getting hot in the car.” River called. He stood next to the car, and I could see even at a distance that he was sweating. Though it was a nice spring day, the Jetta was black, and River must have baking in car’s interior. “You know Mom doesn’t like us to idle the car to run the air conditioner.”
    It was my car now, and I could do what I wanted to, but running the AC would just run down my fuel supply. “I’ll be right there,” I called, though I found myself reluctant to leave.
    “I have so many more questions to ask you,” Alex said, his disappointment leaking through.
    “I know, but I can’t let him fry in the car and…I don’t really want to discuss this in front of him.”
    We both stood and started to walk back toward the car.
    “Could we…? I know I’ve been pushy about all this. But I just had to know...”
    “I don’t blame you. It’s been a big week for you.” I cast a sidelong glance at him as we walked.
    “Anyway, I’d like to…I still would like to hear more…” he halted, hands thrust in his pocket, looking at the ground. “Do you think we could get together sometime, without River around? I mean,” he added quickly, “so you could…you know…tell me more?” He peeked out at me from under the rim of his ball cap.
    Tell him no! Tell him no! a voice inside me warned. This could only end in trouble for me. But my mouth had a mind of its own. “Sure.” I smiled.
    “Is tonight too soon?” He was feeling anxious, probably worried he’d scare me off.
    Jenna and I had plans to go to a movie to celebrate my attainment of vehicular freedom. “That would be fine.” She won’t mind if I cancel.
    We agreed that I would pick him up at seven, and we headed back to the car in silence. River eyed me with suspicion as we both settled into the car, and took off. We drove in silence, and I could feel Alex’s awkwardness and the probing sensation of River’s curiosity. I tried not to look at Alex in the rearview mirror—every time I did, I caught him watching me.
    He didn’t even get halfway up his walkway before his mother ran out of the house, breathless and anxious. I could hear her chastising as she put an arm around him and dragged him into the house. She cast a disapproving look over her shoulder as they climbed the steps, and I felt Alex’s annoyance and embarrassment.
    “I don’t think you’re her favorite person right now,” River said as we watched them go inside.
    “Nope. She probably crapped her pants when she found his note. And she blames me for ‘kidnapping’ him.”
    “She’s a worrier.”
    “Yep.”
    “He likes you.”
    “Shut up.”
    River gasped. “And you like him!”
    “Shut up!” I could feel my cheeks flame, and I put the car into drive, staring straight ahead.
    “Is that why you healed him?”
    “No!”
    “Em, this is not going to end well. You need to stop it, before it gets started.”
    “Nothing is getting started.”
    “I heard what he said, at the end…about seeing you tonight.”
    “Mind your own business.”
    “Hey, when your screw-ups mean more restrictions for me, it is my business.”
    “Look,” I glanced over at him, “Mom and Dad are wrong about this healing stuff. I mean, I was wrong because of the way I went about