Luke slid his arm around the back of my chair and nodded toward Kai. "You two know each other?"
"Kind of." There was no need to turn and see the contempt on Kai's face.
Luke's eyes narrowed. "He's into you."
"No." I shook my head even as shivers ran...
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"I don't think it's a good idea, Bailey," Mom said. "You have a concussion and need to be watched." Jasmine and I stood in the living room, poised to bolt out the front door.
"A slight concussion, Mom. And it's been more than twenty-four hours." I gave Jasmine the get-me-out-of-here look. Mom had always been overprotective, but she'd become obsessively smothering in the year since Gramps was killed. Straightjacket anyone?
"Bailey." Mom closed her eyes and tucked a strand of chestnut hair behind her ear.
"Summer's almost over," I said. "We're just going to Magpies. Jazz can watch me for a few hours, right?" I stood tall, acted like I wasn't the slightest bit dizzy. Jasmine had to help me figure out what was going on. First, there was my rescuer who'd haunted my dreams, and then that dead person. Things I definitely wasn't telling my mom. Ever.
"Well, okay. I guess." Mom pointed at Jasmine. "But nothing strenuous."
"Got it." I grabbed Jasmine's arm and dragged her out the door before Mom could change her mind. We hurried to Jasmine's truck.
"Drive," I said as I scooted into the passenger seat, half expecting to find Mom running across the front deck in hot pursuit. "She hasn't even let me out to see Dakota."
Jasmine eyed me as she whipped the truck out of the driveway. "You still seeing things?"
"He was real, Jazz." I huffed. "I didn't pull myself out of the river and walk myself to the pick-up spot."
"There was no one on the mesa."
"When you looked he was gone. But he was there." I leaned toward her. "It was the guy from my dream."
"Maybe you were dreaming again," Jasmine said. "Makes sense."
"I wasn't hallucinating. And I don't have narcolepsy. None of the research says anything about narcolepsy dreams coming true. Something else is going on."
"Uh, concussion?"
Typical Jasmine. She was impossible. She didn't believe in anything she couldn't see. But I believed mysteries surrounded us. Wonderful, mystical things we couldn't see but could feel if we wanted to.
We zipped past pine trees and sunlit meadows. I rolled down my window and drank in the earthy fresh air, so glad to be out of the house. My gaze followed the sweeping landscape up the triangular red rock mesas. He could've been standing, watching, anywhere within the trees at the top.
I turned back to Jazz. "Can you really deny that someone pulled me out of that river?"
"You know I don't go for that crap." She stared out the windshield saying nothing else. I knew this was hard for her. Jasmine was on the outs with the spiritual because she'd lost her dad two years before when the tribe's healing rituals hadn't saved him. She wanted nothing to do with her tribe, either. But we'd seen many people healed by the rituals. Not even conventional doctors could save every patient.
