Bright Eyes

29. Burn the Witch

There was something in the way they looked at them, Lyn thought, in the way their eyes followed her and her friends in their walk down the corridor.

    Yet she found no reason for the looks the other students were giving them, the whispers that echoed softly around her and the guys she walked to school with. Max's bloody incident had happened three weeks ago, too old to be buzz-worthy in Ravenwood, or in any school she knew of.

    And so Lyn thought back: everything went as normal as it could go on a Friday morning in late October. The ringing of an alarm at a little past five o'clock, the warm water waking her from her half-doze, the mechanical way she put on her school uniform, her hands reaching for her backpack and her oversized black hoodie before she made her way downstairs. Breakfast alone in the dorm cafeteria; waiting alone on the front porch; a glance up at the cacophony of voices she knew well enough by now, catching sight of Damien, Sander, and Max's familiar figures walk down the road. And with each step they took, closer and closer to where she stood, she felt her heart drum a quick silly rhythm of its own, her face flush a little despite the cold, the deliberate effort to ignore these sensations completely, as she made her way down the steps, down the cobblestone pathway, and onto the pavement where she joined them. Their conversation as they sauntered past the foliage of red, orange, and gold that lined the road—seemingly misplaced objects, warm and optimistic in color, set against the pale gray expanse of somber clouds. Then Jack caught up with them later on, after early morning basketball training, when they passed the raven statue on the front grounds of the school.

    And before that, for the past three weeks, there had been nothing unusual, nothing Lyn could think of no matter how hard she racked her brain for a sensible answer to her question.

Or you're just being paranoid again, Lyn thought to herself. That was probably it: the psychiatrist had warned her about her dangerous thought patterns. That if this habit were to go on, unchecked and untreated, it could lead to even worse problems, with full-blown paranoia a likely one at that.

Then came another memory, a sudden interjection into her stream of consciousness: her father pulling her out of the therapy program she was enrolled in—because she didn't need it, because his daughter wasn't crazy, telling her this mental health business was all just make-believe concepts psychologists invented to make more money out of therapy sessions and pharmaceutical sales. An excuse for people to act the way they want. An excuse to feed their desperate want for attention. An excuse, an excuse, a pathetic excuse . . .

    "Hey, Lyn!" A huge hand waved in front of her. She shifted her eyes up. "You okay?" Max asked, his pale blue eyes wide, staring straight into her hazel ones.

    Lyn blinked, as though she had been yanked out of a trance. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm all right," she managed to say, feeling her cheeks flush. "Just zoned out again. It's cold this morning, gets me into this daze."

    Lyn then gave her head a little shake, wondered why she was so embarrassed about this, her spacing out. There was nothing to be ashamed of, really. Max had seen her like this about a handful of times by now. But why was it—no, not the air, not external temperature—why was she so warm? And why was her heart beating so fast, pounding erratic rhythms within her chest it almost hurt?

    Was this some kind of bad omen? Some manifestation of a sixth sense? No, no, anxiety, just anxiety, Lyn thought to herself. The sadistic little thing that lived in her mind like a parasite. Stupid anxiety and nothing more.

    She drew in a few deep breaths, and looked up at Max again, then glanced over at her other friends. They seemed unperturbed, she observed. They didn't seem to have noticed the looks people were giving them, the whispers that echoed as they passed. Maybe it was just her. Maybe this was all a trick of the mind. Besides, most of the students she had seen look in their direction were girls. Maybe some of them were crushing on her friends.