Unforsaken Read online

  Unforsaken

  Sophie Littlefield

  Hailey Tarbell is no typical girl. As one of the Banished who arrived from Ireland generations ago, Hailey has the power to heal – and, as she recently learned, to create zombies if she heals someone too late. But now, Hailey is finally getting a chance at a normal life. After realizing the good and bad sides of her power, Hailey has survived the unimaginable to settle with her aunt, Prairie, and her little brother, Chub, in the suburbs of Milwaukee. Finally Hailey has a loving family, nice clothes, and real friends. But her safe little world is blown apart when she tries to contact her secret boyfriend, Kaz – and alerts the incredibly dangerous man who's looking for her to her true whereabouts.

  Sophie Littlefield

  Unforsaken

  The second book in the Banished series, 2011

  For Bryan Lamb and Eric Lamb

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Some books come easier than others. This one was a joy. Two people made it better than I could have imagined: Barbara Poelle, my agent, who knew exactly what was missing in the first draft-and my editor, Stephanie Elliott, who took time out of a very exciting year to bring the book to life.

  1

  “ELEVEN’S LIKE… THE NEW TEN,” Jess said, cracking herself up and spitting Coke on Gojo’s coffee table. It had a glass top that showed every mark-fingerprints, smudges of guacamole, and the crumbs from the chips, which were made of blue corn but tasted like every other chip I’d ever had.

  Still, it was a first, and out of habit I said the words in my head. Blue corn chips. When I got home-which had better be soon-I’d write it in my journal. It would be number 62.

  But that was for later. Right now I had to focus.

  “That makes no sense,” Charlotte said, licking salt off her fingers. She was sitting on the floor between Gojo’s legs. He leaned back on the couch with a beer dangling loose in one hand, the fingers of the other playing with Charlotte’s wavy red hair.

  It was Gojo’s fifth beer since we’d gotten here. I’d counted.

  “No, you know, really,” Jess said, managing to stop giggling only to start up again. I was pretty sure she didn’t usually drink as much as she had tonight. Not like Charlotte, who drank more than Jess and me put together and you couldn’t tell. “Eleven o’clock isn’t as late now that we’re going to be juniors. It’s like the new ten o’clock. You know, like… black is the new… no, wait.”

  “Olive,” I said. “Olive green, it’s the new black. You know, neutral? I read it in Vogue.”

  I wasn’t making it up; I really had read it in Vogue the day before when Prairie and I went for groceries. We went twice a week, pushing Chub in the shopping cart and buying all kinds of expensive gourmet stuff I’d never seen when I lived in Gypsum, Missouri. Now we lived in downtown Milwaukee, which wasn’t exactly L.A. or New York, but our building had a concierge and our grocery store sold things like squid ink pasta and herbed chèvre and Italian grapefruit soda (numbers 34, 35 and 36).

  We always bought a magazine at the store, and then I read the articles to Prairie while she cooked. She said I ought to do the cooking since she worked all day, and she was right, but I saw how much she enjoyed it, making things for the two of us. I tried to do my part by cleaning up, keeping the apartment neat and doing the laundry. And she never complained. None of us did, not even Chub, whose chores consisted mostly of helping set the table and picking up his toys at the end of the day.

  We kept things light; we never argued. Two months after we burned the lab down, I think we were still kind of surprised we’d made it out alive-and I was still getting used to living with my aunt. Especially since until a few months ago I hadn’t even known I had any living relatives besides Gram.

  If it was weird how Prairie and I came to be in each other’s lives, it was also really easy living together. I was comfortable with her, and I never had to think about what to say around her. Not like I did with Jess and Charlotte. It should have been a natural fit, since the three of us had so much in common: we were all sixteen, all starting our junior year at Grosbeck Academy in the fall, all interested in the same things-clothes, boys, music, makeup.

  But I had a secret: they were the first real friends I’d ever had.

  That was a secret I meant to keep. Which was why I was sitting here in an apartment across the tennis courts from ours, an apartment that belonged to a twenty-eight-year-old bank branch manager named Gordon Johnson, who drove a red BMW and had told us to call him Gojo and offered us Cokes a week ago Sunday, when Charlotte started talking to him at the pool late in the afternoon.

  That day he’d invited us up to his place and given us sodas from the fridge, and we’d played blackjack. Today-another lazy Sunday afternoon that stretched into evening, all three of us calling home to say we were at each other’s places, lies that weren’t questioned by Charlotte’s or Jess’s mom-Gojo had put frozen pizzas in the oven, scooped guacamole from a jar and poured our Cokes into tall glasses, then topped them off with whiskey.

  It wasn’t very good whiskey. In fact, it was dirt cheap. I knew that because my grandmother used to serve it to her customers, and if there was one thing you could say about Gram, it was that she’d been as cheap as they come.

  I’d poured my drink out in the sink and filled my glass with straight-up Coke. That was at six o’clock, when we’d first arrived. I’d kept doing it all night, whenever Gojo topped our drinks off. But now it was nearly eleven, half an hour past when I’d said I’d be home, and I had a decision to make.

  Should I leave and earn the derision of Jess and Charlotte, the first and only friends I’d ever made?

  Or should I stay and give my aunt something to worry herself sick over?

  A missed curfew didn’t mean the same thing to me as it did to other kids. If I didn’t come home when I’d said I would, Prairie would immediately think that they had found us.

  And that we were as good as dead.

  “Sorry, guys,” I said, standing up and faking a yawn. “I’d love to stay, but I’ve got a driving lesson first thing tomorrow.”

  Jess gave me a forlorn little pout, but Charlotte fixed me with a chilly glare. “So sorry to hear it,” she said coolly as Gojo ignored me and rubbed her neck, his fingers dipping into the back of her tank top. “See you at the pool.”

  “See you,” I echoed, and by the time the door closed behind me, I could hear Jess giggling about something else, as though she’d already forgotten I’d been there.

  “How’s Charlotte and Jess?” Prairie asked after I’d given her my breathless apology for being late, making up a story about how we’d been watching a movie and lost track of time.

  “Fine,” I said, turning away from her and pouring myself a glass of water. I was a terrible liar, and I knew it.

  I hadn’t always been. Lying to Gram had been not only easy, but necessary. But with Prairie it was different. After all we’d been through, I felt bad lying to her.

  At home, in the apartment where I spent nearly all my time, I let myself forget that she was now Holly Garrett and I was Amber Garrett. Prairie kept telling me that I needed to stop using our old names, that we were never going back. And I kept telling her I needed just a little more time. I knew from the way the line between her eyebrows deepened when I called her Prairie that she thought it was a mistake not to force the issue. But I also knew that Prairie had a hard time saying no to me.

  I tried not to take advantage-except when it came to this one thing. I’d give up our old lives, our old names. Soon. Just not quite yet.

  “Why don’t you see if Jess and Charlotte want to go to the mall with us Tuesday?” Prairie continued, keeping her voice light. “I can get off a little early, we can try that new sushi place. My treat.”

&nbsp
; “Umm… sure. I’ll ask them.”

  I tried to ignore the lump in my throat. Prairie was trying so hard-she knew how much it meant to me to fit in here. When we’d first moved to Milwaukee, there had been only a few weeks left in the school year, so she had made arrangements for me to attend a private high school in the fall, and I’d gotten an early start on the summer reading list. Prairie had been on the lookout for friends for me even then; she was so excited when school finally let out and I met Jess and Charlotte at the pool. In a couple of months I would be attending the exclusive Grosbeck Academy with Jess and Charlotte and four hundred girls just like them: pretty, spoiled girls who were used to getting everything they wanted.

  Prairie made sure I had everything I needed to fit in. My closet was full of clothes from department stores and expensive boutiques. I had sandals in every color, to show off my pedicure. I had my own bathroom and enough cosmetics and hair products to fill all the cabinets. We had cable and highspeed Internet and great speakers.

  No one could tell that three months ago I’d been a freak, an outcast, an orphan in thrift-store rags. A girl nobody wanted, least of all my drug-dealing grandmother, who was now buried in an unmarked grave, courtesy of the citizens of Gypsum.

  “So it’s a date, then,” Prairie said, giving me a quick squeeze. She looked so pleased that I didn’t say what I’d been trying to find words for: that maybe we could make it just the two of us. Just for a little longer.

  I wanted-needed-to be accepted by Jess and Charlotte. Yet there was a part of me that wasn’t ready. Not by a long shot.

  2

  WHEN TUESDAY EVENING rolled around, I let Prairie down.

  I waited until she got home to tell her. I told myself it was because she never took her phone into the lab where they conducted the experiments-she was part of a team doing some kind of research with high magnetic fields, and they couldn’t take anything electronic into the lab with them-but the truth was that I could have left a message on her work phone, or her cell phone. I knew she checked both the minute she got out of the lab-after she checked the other phone, the one hidden in a pocket in the bottom of her purse.

  I didn’t call any of those numbers, though. At five, when Prairie came home all excited about our evening out, I was waiting for her, sitting on one of the barstools in the kitchen.

  Her smile slipped a little when she saw what I was wearing. I knew the blue halter top showed too much, and the white shorts were too short-and the platform sandals were way over the top. But Charlotte had called after lunch, and once she’d talked me into her plan, she coached me about what to wear-“You’ll look so hot, Amber”-and if I showed up in something else, it would be proof that I didn’t fit in.

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m going out with Charlotte and Jess,” I mumbled, not meeting Prairie’s eyes.

  “Oh, are they… We’re not going for sushi?”

  I shook my head and reached for my purse. In my sandals I was taller than Prairie. “Change of plans. We’re going to catch a movie and then maybe go out for a late dinner, just me and them.”

  There was a pause, and I edged toward the door, feeling my face go hot.

  “Okay. Just… call me if you’re going to be late,” Prairie said in a small voice, and hearing her try to stay cheerful was worse than her getting angry and yelling at me.

  Maybe that was why I snapped at her. “I always call. Remember? I’m going to have to grow up eventually, Prairie. Or do you plan on keeping me in this-this cage for the rest of my life?”

  Then I ran for the door and let it slam behind me, trying to drown out the shocked silence. But I couldn’t put the image of Prairie out of my mind: she stood there in her neat tailored clothes with her hand to her throat, looking pretty and elegant and more worried than I’d ever seen her.

  * * *

  I might have said no to Charlotte, except that Gojo was bringing his summer interns. And they were nineteen and twenty, business students at the university, which made it seem almost okay. Well, at least a lot more okay than when it was just us and a twenty-eight-year-old guy.

  We met at Charlotte’s town house, on the other side of the development. She’d snuck a bottle of vodka into her room. She mixed it with raspberry Crystal Light in big plastic glasses. While we did each other’s makeup, I drank some, instead of just pretending, like I usually did. It seemed to me that Charlotte was watching me more carefully than usual, like she was coming to a conclusion about me that would determine whether I would still be a part of the in crowd when summer ended.

  Jess had told me that Charlotte was a big deal at Grosbeck. I didn’t doubt it, and I also thought I knew why Charlotte had chosen Jess as her best friend: Jess was rich and pretty but she was neither smart nor opinionated. She did as she was told, and she seemed more than happy to let Charlotte make all the decisions.

  Like now: Charlotte told her to try the green eyeliner under her lower lashes, and Jess just sat there like one of those makeup Barbie heads I’d always wanted when I was a little girl, letting Charlotte draw it on. When Charlotte turned to me, I snapped shut the compact I was holding before she could start in on me, and announced that I was ready. I could see that Charlotte had something on the tip of her tongue, but with my short platinum hair and the clothes I was wearing, too much eye makeup would make me look like a slut, which was not how I wanted to look in front of a bunch of strangers.

  In fact, I almost went home after we said goodbye to Charlotte’s folks. I thought we were going to try to sneak out, but Charlotte took us straight past her mom and stepdad, who were watching TV in the family room. Charlotte’s mom jumped up, spilling her wine, and told us to have fun at the movie. She gave Charlotte a noisy peck on the cheek and then squinted at me and Jess, swaying slightly on her spike heels.

  “Don’t you girls look sweet?” she said, breathing wine in my face and giving me a view of her ample cleavage, which her tight pink top didn’t cover very well.

  At least I knew where Charlotte got her sense of style.

  By the time we’d walked to Gojo’s apartment, my sandals were hurting my feet. Outside his door, Charlotte gave us a quick once-over, tugging at Jess’s top, then fluffing the front of my hair so it swooped over one eye, which made it hard to see. I pushed it back behind my ear. “Whatever,” Charlotte sighed as Gojo opened the door, wearing a sunburn and a loud print shirt.

  His interns, Justin and Calvin, didn’t seem all that impressive to me. Justin was thin, with a red line of acne along his hairline, and Calvin had on a work shirt buttoned too high and jeans that looked like he’d ironed them. They didn’t match my image of the kind of guys Charlotte and Jess would hang out with, but maybe it was enough that they were older and eager to party with us. They’d already been drinking, it was clear. I decided to stick to water for the rest of the night, since I was already feeling the vodka. Until I met Charlotte, I’d had alcohol only once, back when I lived with Gram. I tasted one of her beers when I was ten and trying to figure out why she liked it so much.

  By nine-thirty we still hadn’t had dinner-Gojo had promised to get takeout but had somehow never gotten around to it-and the party had splintered into couples. Gojo turned the lights down low before he and Charlotte went out on the balcony, leaving the door open, so we could hear them murmuring and laughing. Justin pulled Jess down on his lap on the couch and she pretended to resist, but it was pretty clear where they were headed, especially since she was probably the drunkest person there. She’d been pounding rum-and-Cokes since we’d arrived.

  Calvin seemed just about as thrilled to be stuck with me as I was to be with him. I’d been making small talk, asking him about school, what he was studying-he wanted to go back to his hometown and open a mobile computer-repair franchise-and he’d been pushing his beer bottle in circles on the table, not looking at me.

  “I’m, uh, only sixteen,” I blurted after an awkward lull in the conversation. That made his eyes go wide and I knew my suspicion was correct: Gojo
had told them we were older.

  “I’m only here because Johnson made it sound like it would come up in my performance review if I didn’t show up,” Calvin admitted. “He’s always making us go to happy hour.”

  “You don’t want to?” I asked, surprised. “I mean…”

  “I’ve got a girlfriend,” Calvin said, blushing. “A pretty serious one.”

  After that, I didn’t feel so bad about leaving. It helped to know that there was someone else who felt out of place, who didn’t want to be there. Calvin said he’d walk me home, and I said he didn’t have to, and he said he’d feel better about it, that you never knew after dark, and I had to suppress a smile, wondering what he’d think if he knew exactly how much trouble I’d actually gotten into in the last year.

  “I’m going to head home,” I said loudly, gathering up my things.

  No response from the patio, which had been quiet for a while. But Jess staggered to her feet, almost tripping over Justin.

  “No, don’t go, Amber,” she said, her words slurring. “It won’t be-it won’t be-”

  I saw it coming, saw her teetering in slow motion, trying to get her balance, before she took a faltering step in her clunky flip-flops, twisted her ankle and went down.

  She crashed onto the coffee table, and from the sounds of things breaking, I was sure that the glass top had shattered, but when I raced across the room, I saw that the noise had been made by the glasses and bottles that had accumulated there over the course of the night. Most had fallen to the carpeted floor, spilling their contents, but Jess had broken a couple of glasses, and as I helped her up from the mess, I saw blood dripping down her arm.

  “Amber,” she said, her lips bunched in a confused pout. “I think I cut myself.”