Page 23

23

It’s Groundhog Day!

L ayla shook her head in what appeared to be astonishment. “‘What,’ she says.”

“Yeah, what ? Why are you all looking at me like that?” I asked.

Because we all heard you being a total sap about Griff, my bestie bitch. You want to kiss him ‘all over’? Her face puckered.

Despite my total awareness that we were almost certainly being monitored right now in some way or another, I couldn’t keep my eyes from widening to the proportions of cartoon flying saucers.

My mouth dropped open until Griffin subtly elbowed me. I jerked my jaw shut before glancing up at him. His grin was devilish, drawing me closer.

You heard me too? Layla’s shocked voice filtered into my mind as if it were my own inner dialog, but not quite. It sounded like her.

I whipped my head around to study her. Yeah, I can hear you, I attempted experimentally.

Layla’s forehead scrunched into accordion lines with her mounting shock.

Can we … can we all hear each other? I asked.

I think so? Brady “said” in an uncharacteristically uncertain tone. Assuming you guys can hear me now?

I can , I said.

Me too , said Layla.

And me , added Griffin.

As one, we glanced at Hunt. Holy crap, you guys. This is actual fantasy-level shit. We’re like Galadriel from Lord of the Rings .

I snorted. Not bloody likely .

How come you guys didn’t seem to hear me earlier, then? Brady asked. I was trying to push thoughts into your heads before Joss did.

Dunno, bro, Layla said. Maybe you’re just a weakling and you needed a girl to give you a boost. She shrugged as if she’d spoken aloud, snickering. That tracks, for me.

Guys! Griff said urgently, even as Brady’s body stiffened at his sister’s goading. We gotta be really careful here. If someone’s watching us right now — and my money’s on them being up our asses — then they’ll know something’s up if we keep being so obvious about having silent conversations.

So true . Shit. Now I was going to have to play a part for Magnum and our faux parents and also pretend not to be hearing my friends’ voices in my head? I didn’t have the self-restraint, discretion, or finesse for that. Layla had even less. And I didn’t think Brady could pull it off either; he led with his reactions. Only Hunt and Griff had that quiet introspection down already.

They’ll catch on fast, Griffin added, especially if this was one of the ‘other powers’ we displayed before. Even if it’s new to us, they’ll be on the lookout for signs of it, and whatever else.

Dammit, so true, I said.

“Fuck, I hope your phone screen didn’t just crack, man,” Brady told Hunt aloud to fill the suspicious silence we’d allowed to stretch.

“Yeah, me too,” Hunt said, but made no move to retrieve his phone from where it had fallen.

“Hunt!” a girl’s voice yelled, and as one we turned. It was Zoe.

“Hey,” she called ahead with a smile as she bounded across the parking lot toward us, her backpack bouncing. When she reached us, she didn’t bother with individual greetings, just wrapped both arms around Hunt’s neck and pulled his face down for a kiss.

You’re stiff as a board, Layla told him urgently through our apparent mental bond. Too obvious. Loosen up, dude.

Hunt’s arms had been clamped to his sides, but now he wove them around Zoe’s waist. His touch was still light, but it was definitely an improvement.

When it became evident Zoe was slipping Hunt tongue, and my friend’s fingers were clenching and unclenching behind her back, Layla whistled obnoxiously before patting Zoe on the back.

“Whoa, Zo. Lay off a bit there, will ya? We need you to leave some of Hunt there so he can make it to class.” She snorted a laugh that to my ears was fake, but I doubted Zoe would notice.

Zoe pulled back with a lick of her lips but left her arms looped around Hunt, gazing up at him dreamily. “Good morning, handsome. You’re looking especially hot this morning.”

Hunt blinked away the deer-in-the-headlights look that wanted to creep up on him and forced a smile to his glistening lips. “Thanks. You look … great too.”

Oh, nice one, Layla said. How’d you come up with that smooth line?

I realized at once we were all in even more trouble than we’d thought. Now we’d have Layla heckling us inside our minds too? Talk about a mega distraction when we definitely needed to keep our shit together and all our stories aligned. But I already knew she wouldn’t be able to help herself. Layla would be Layla, even when playing the part of herself.

Zoe, appearing unbothered by Hunt’s modest enthusiasm, continued to gaze up at him with evident adoration.

“You’re such a sweetie,” she told him. Her hands traveled from his neck to his shoulders, then his arms, where she squeezed. “Did you, um, did you get my text?”

Right . The one where she wanted to bone our friend to carry out some orchestrated ruse. Talk about a violation for Hunt. This took our situation to a whole new level of fucked-upness.

I shuddered, drawing a questioning look from Griffin. Just wondering what else our pricks for parents have done to us that we don’t know about.

I’d intended the thought to travel solely to Griffin, but Brady answered, meaning I’d once more failed to deliver my words as precisely as I’d intended.

I’m going to kill them all for this, every single one of them.

Then, because every time we spoke to each other, silences inevitably drew out for anyone observing us, I told Zoe the first thing that came to mind.

“Hunt dropped his phone.”

Zoe looked down to find the phone abandoned at Hunt’s feet and arched a brow at him. “And you didn’t even pick it up?”

Layla popped into my thoughts. Fast, Hunt, repeat after me. ‘I felt you coming.’

Hunt, appearing somewhat frazzled, for once did as Layla directed without prior deliberation. He parroted for Zoe.

“Your beauty easily outshone my stupid phone,” Hunt told her. “I completely forgot about it once I saw you heading my way.”

Despite Layla’s lines being more cheese-licking than I thought she had in her, and despite the fact Brady looked like he was about to burst from trying to hold back an eyeroll, Zoe beamed up at Hunt, who was several inches taller than her.

“So, what was the message about?” he asked, echoing Layla’s instruction.

Zoe blushed—actually blushed—and trailed a finger along the tattoo across his collarbone. She wore mascara, which I didn’t remember her usually doing, and batted her thickened lashes at him. “Well …” Her finger ran back and forth across the neckline of his t-shirt. He looked like he was trying hard not to pull away. “Maybe we can talk about that tonight, on a private date?”

“Man,” Layla interjected, “I’m sure he’d really love to, but we’ve got dibs on him tonight. Gotta work on Joss’s car if we’re ever gonna be able to move on to Hunt’s, and he’s next in line. You want him to have his own car up and running for your dates, don’t you?”

For the first time, Zoe appeared unsure what to do. “Uh, yeah, of course.”

Brady made a performance of checking his cellphone for the time while Layla swooped down to pick up Hunt’s.

“It’s almost time for the first bell,” Brady said. “Catch up with you later, Zoe.”

It was as clear of a dismissal as it could get, and yet Zoe clung to Hunt a bit longer.

Fuck my fucking life, Hunt mumbled miserably into our shared connection, when he was the least likely to ever say something like that. Then he leaned down to give her a goodbye kiss. “Catch you later?” he asked her, pulling off what passed for a hopeful expression.

Zoe’s lips spread into a grin before she licked them in a way I suspected she intended to be enticing. “Of course, babe. I’ll always be here for you, no matter when.”

Hunt gave her a chaste peck on the lips, leaving her wanting more, then pulled out of her arms. “Perfect.”

Layla handed him his phone and he pocketed it without looking, even though Zoe’s stare followed his movements as if urging him to read her message already.

“Bye,” Layla told her, then looped an arm through Hunt’s and led him away toward the lockers, not waiting to give Zoe the chance to come with us.

“See ya later, Zoe,” I said with a smile of my own that felt as brittle as the rest of the show we were putting on. I stuffed my arms through both Griffin’s and Brady’s and hustled them after the other two.

What the fuck ? Brady snarled through our super-duper cool and now extremely helpful telepathic connection. That was all shades of wrong, guys. All shades. Fuck them for this, fuck them wrong. Hunt, you will not follow through with this sick plan of theirs. If it were me they were trying to pull this with, it’d be one thing. I’d just bang her and get it over with, and hope they’d order her to move on. But you? Nah. So messed up. You don’t do it like this, dude, and we all know it, which means they know it too.

We pulled up to our lockers and held our collective breaths as we entered the only combinations we remembered. When the doors all popped open, we exhaled loudly.

Seriously, Layla said. Fuck them for putting us under this much stress. I don’t handle stress well, you all know that.

I retrieved my calendar first, relieved to find my class schedule waiting for me at the front. Everyone have AP World History first today?

Yep, Griffin said.

I blew out another relieved exhale. Good. As I loaded the books I’d need into my backpack, I shared, What I want to know right now, I mean, ’cause there are like a billion things I’m still trying to figure out, so one at a time …

Like two billion over here, Layla interjected from a few lockers down.

Is Zoe in on it? Was that all an act?

If so, she’s damn convincing, Brady said.

No shit, Hunt said. I can still feel her tongue trying to push its way into my freaking throat.

You sound like she tasted like ass, Layla said.

No, I sound like I showed up to school after one of the very worst experiences in my entire life to have a girl I thought of as a friend, maybe a bit more, but not even crush levels, kiss me like she wanted to taste my tonsils.

Layla’s head popped out of her locker just to waggle her eyebrows in his direction. And that’s before the date she’s trying to wrangle you into.

Not cool, Lay, Griffin said. How would you like it if Rich came over, shoved you against your locker, and started making out with you?

Her expression soured. She slammed the door of her locker shut hard enough to rattle the whole row of them on this side of the hallway.

That’s what I thought, Griff said.

If Rich puts his hands, tongue, or any other body part near her, Brady growled, I’ll throw him off a balcony onto rebar, see how he likes it.

Guys, I reminded them. We’re doing too much talking in our heads. Someone’s gonna notice if we aren’t careful. We aren’t known for being quiet.

Layla frowned. No, we aren’t. She sighed, then, “Joss, have you decided what color you’re gonna paint Cleo once she’s finished?”

Right. The normal details of our previously normal lives that had never been normal at all.

Closing my locker and swinging my backpack to hang from one shoulder, I pretended to think about it. “I’m leaning toward the cherry black. I mean, let’s be real here, I’m a cherry black kinda girl. Though I do love the electric green too, so still not a hundred percent decided.”

Car talk, at least, was safe territory. We could go on and on about our Mustangs without much thought, and it shouldn’t arouse suspicion.

Good idea, Lay, I told her—and everyone else too, apparently. That was a tad inconvenient. A private channel, to Griffin especially, would have been helpful. Maybe we’d figure it out as we honed our skills.

We should make sure we have car talk running in the background whenever we do the telepathy thing, I added. I’m still not over the fact that we can do this in the first place. It’s almost as cool as the dying and coming back thing.

I made myself sound relaxed about the immortality issue, but just the thought of having to again face my death or that of my friends made a rush of panic squeeze my lungs.

Or ninja talk, Brady said as we joined the throng of students heading toward their first classes. As usual, they tended to part for us, as if they knew there was something special about us. You guys know I’m always down for the ninja talk.

Yeah, Brady, we know, Layla snarked. Still haven’t gotten over seeing you in your Ninjas “R” Us costume. It’ll probably haunt me for the rest of my days, till you’re an old fart and I’m still a spring chicken.

Hey, just ’cause you wanted to look as cool as I did—

No, Brade, I didn’t. Your junk was all on display just behind a bit of black spandex. Maybe the skanks in this school are all up for that, but not me. Keep your kink to yourself.

Brady scowled at her. You make me sound like a fucking perv, you asshole. I’m apparently the only one who understands the line that divides appropriate from inappropriate in sibling relationships.

“So, cherry black, huh?” Griffin asked from where he walked on one side of me. Hunt, now on the other, appeared lost in his thoughts, but that wasn’t all that uncommon.

I smiled, though even I could feel how tight it was. “Yeah. I’m picturing a really shiny finish. She’s gonna look so hot.”

You look so hot, Griffin said, and from behind us, I could hear Layla gagging.

Griffin glanced at me. She’s gonna be the one to give us away, isn’t she?

Brady sighed loudly enough to reach us from behind. Yep, no doubt. We’re all gonna have to work to keep her in line.

“Hey,” she protested aloud, all but proving our point. You can’t all blame me. What we’re doing, how they’re forcing us to live, this is what normal people call nuts . This is too fucking much.

It’s too fucking much, all right, Hunt said before adding aloud, “If it were me, I’d go with the electric green. That color is so bright you’ll be able to spot Cleo from a mile away. She’ll make an impression, that’s for sure.”

“She will,” I conceded, “but then she’ll just pop that much more for the cops.”

Who might just be in on this facade too, Brady grumbled.

Who knows who’s in on what anymore? Griffin asked.

“Maybe I should consider some other colors too,” I said for no one but our hidden audience. How fucking inane. “Open it back up. There are so many to choose from.”

“This day feels eternal already,” Layla grumbled. “Please tell me it’s 2:59 and that final bell’s about to ring.”

“Nope, little sis,” Brady said. “Wish I could.”

“This day is gonna go on forever,” Layla complained.

The rest of us grumbled our agreement. How were we going to keep up the ruse so well that none of the expert liars studying our every move would notice, while also figuring out our immortality and now telepathy, while also discovering a surprise way out of this situation?

“It’s fucking Groundhog Day ,” I muttered as Griffin pulled open the door to the classroom for me and held it for our friends.

In every which way, he said. We gotta find a way out of the loop before they start thinking they need to hypnotize us again and start over.

Because then they’d probably just kill us and hypnotize us while we were coming to. No need to convince us to fall in line. And if that wasn’t an option, they’d just do something else I doubted we’d like. Maybe it would be worse.

It’s a good thing we can all pass this class with our eyes closed, Brady said. We’re going to need ‘silent’ class time to talk things through and figure our shit out.

Yeah, we are, Hunt agreed.

It wasn’t a plan yet, that was for damn sure, but it was the start of one. Or the start of how to find one anyway. Beggars can’t be choosers, and all that.

For once, I settled into my seat two-thirds of the way through the classroom with some pep in my step. We had fifty minutes of time during which no one would expect us to be talking—that was fifty minutes to work everything out, and by every standard, we were geniuses.

For the first time in a long while, things were looking up— Groundhog Day or not.