Tiger Lily (Dark Blossoms Book 1) Read online

  “Thanks.” I stuck my face in the roses to hide my embarrassment. I couldn’t come up with anything else to say. How do you thank a person for saving your life? Also, did artificial resuscitation count as kissing?

  Josh, so beautiful it almost hurt to look at him, ran a hand through his perfect curls. He probably never had a bad hair day. I tucked my own hair behind my ears, feeling like a slob, especially next to Josh’s ultimate perfectness.

  “It’s a good thing you kept your cool and turned on your hazard lights. If you hadn’t, I might not have found you in time.”

  I didn’t correct him about the hazard lights or about keeping my cool. I’d never had any cool to begin with, and certainly didn’t keep it during the accident, but none of that mattered. All that mattered was I’d been rescued by the hottest guy I’d ever seen. Well, expect for Shadow Guy, but he didn’t count since he was probably just a figment of my imagination.

  Josh and I exchanged numbers, even though my phone currently rested at the bottom of the lake, and promised to stay in touch. My parents had already ordered me a new phone, it would arrive any day, and Josh’s promise to text made me even happier than the drugs in my IV drip.

  The blobs slid onto my bed, and covered me like a giant, creepy, blanket. I tried to touch one, to see what it felt like, but my hand went right through it. Fortunately, no one noticed my attempt to pet the black spots that floated in front of me, and I intended to keep it that way.

  Chapter 3

  Friendship is one mind in two bodies. ~ Mencius, 385-302 BC

  Dying and coming back to life proved to be a novelty at Lakeside High, and I got lots of attention from the other students. I’d always been popular, but this was different. People stared at me in awe now, and not only because of my fashion sense and my excellent eye for color.

  “Do you remember getting pulled out of the water?” asked my friend, Jessica.

  Poor Jess. She didn’t know we had company. An ever-enlarging, slightly hyperactive group of black blobs trailed after me like a bunch of ducklings following their mother. They bobbed around acting eager for any kind of attention or physical contact. One of them rested on Jessica’s head. Another curled on her lap like a kitten.

  “I remember my entire body hurting, but that’s about it.”

  As I placed my napkin on my lap, a blob slid across the table and jumped up and down on my salad. I ignored it. I’d gotten pretty good at ignoring them but no closer to figuring out why I continued to see them all the time. I’d recovered from my accident but the visual issues, aka the blobs, remained. This was a secret I couldn’t share with anyone, not even my best friends.

  I doused my hands in sanitizer, a ritual of mine, and grabbed my fork. The salad didn’t look as appetizing with a furry black blob sitting in the middle of it. I tried eating around the edges, but the blob kept moving and shifting, so I gave up and munched on my roll.

  Dying made me learn to appreciate the little things in life, like the perfect spring weather outside. I wore a sleeveless green dress that matched my eyes, part of the new wardrobe purchased by my mother right after the accident. I now had new clothes in my closet, a new phone in my hand, and a new car outside. My parents handled post-traumatic stress with excessive shopping.

  I’d always been fortunate, and appreciated it more now. My parents, although distracted at times, loved me. I was happy and comfortable. I went to a great school and hung around with a bunch of nice kids with nice parents who lived in nice houses.

  A few exceptions existed, like the Goth girl who sat by herself in the corner of the cafeteria and wore black lipstick, but she was an anomaly, and different from the rest of us. I’d never seen anyone bully her, but she didn’t fit in, and sometimes the mean girls whispered behind her back. Not anything major, but hurtful little whispered comments and snarky giggles when they thought she wouldn’t notice.

  I never did that, of course. The only problem I had with Goth Girl was her fashion choices. Her black clothing offset her pale skin nicely, but I itched to put a splash of color in there somewhere. Even her lipstick was black.

  “Is it true? Josh Parker rescued you?” asked my friend, Maura. She sat across the table from me, tugging on one of her dark curls.

  I nodded. “Do you know him?”

  Maura rolled her eyes. “Everyone knows him. He’s perfect.”

  “He goes to Baldwin,” said Jessica, munching on a roll. Baldwin was our rival school, located across town.

  “I know. We’ve been texting.” I held up my new phone.

  “You’re lucky,” said Maura. “He’s smart, nice, and the star of the soccer team. You basically got rescued by the hottest guy in town, which is so Lily Madison of you.”

  Maura waved to indicate my entire person, from head to foot, with one well-manicured hand. She was right about lucky part, and about Josh, but I took a moment to grab her hand and admire her nail polish.

  “Is this Forever Yummy? I love it.”

  Crimson and sexy, it suited her, but Maura had gorgeous brown skin and dark hair that fell in soft curls around her face. On me, with my red hair and naturally pasty skin tone, that color would have been a total disaster.

  “It is Forever Yummy,” she said with a wink. “Just like Josh Parker.”

  I grinned, as I leaned closer and lowered my voice. “I call him ‘Lifesaver Candy’ since he saved my life, and he is rather delicious.”

  “And he has zero calories,” said Maura so earnestly it caused us to break into a fit of giggles.

  One of the blobs slowly ascended higher and higher, twirling merrily around in a happy blobby dance until it hit the ceiling. As I watched it, mesmerized, I noticed I wasn’t the only one who could see it. Goth Girl stared up at it too.

  My mouth dropped open in shock as our eyes met across the crowned cafeteria. She ducked her head, but not before I saw a flash of fear cross her face. I didn’t understand the fear, but if Goth Girl could see the blobs, too, I might not be crazy or brain injured after all. I jumped to my feet, ready to walk over and talk to her, but she got up and ran out of the cafeteria, leaving her lunch on the table. I tried to follow her, but Maura grabbed my arm.

  “Hold on, Lily.”

  “What?” I tried to wiggle out of her grasp, but Maura pulled me back into my seat.

  “You are so distracted lately,” she said with a huff. “Didn’t you hear me? I asked you a question.”

  “She died, Maura. Give her a break.” Jessica narrowed her eyes, and Maura scowled at her. They had a love/hate relationship. They loved me and hated each other. Jess, president of the drama club, ran purely on raw emotion. Maura, captain of the debate team, enjoyed nothing better than a good fight. It made for an interesting friendship triangle.

  They were going to push me over the edge with their bickering. I had to remain calm. “What did you ask me, Maura?”

  “Prom. Three times.”

  “Oh. I forgot about prom.”

  They both gasped in shock. I guess I could understand why. Prom, and especially prom dresses, had been the main focus of my existence for the last few months. Now I had something different to obsess about, like things no one else could see.

  The blobs were bad enough, but I couldn’t seem to get the strange boy from the hospital out of my mind. As much as I tried to chalk up my encounter with Shadow Guy as the direct result of a lack of oxygen to my brain, I couldn’t shake the feeling I’d see him again someday…and I couldn’t deny I wanted to see him, either.

  “Four boys asked you already. You haven’t decided yet?” Jessica’s big blue eyes widened with concern.

  “No, but I’ll have to soon.”

  “I know what you should do,” said Maura plotting my fate with a twinkle in her eye.

  “What?” The twinkle worried me. It usually led to trouble.

  “Ask Lifesaver Candy,” she said.

  Jessica clapped her hands and bounced up and down in her seat. The blob resting on her lap bounced up and down too
.

  “It’ll be so romantic. I can see the caption in the yearbook, Lily Madison, attending her junior prom escorted by Josh Parker, the boy who rescued her from drowning in Lake Eugene!”

  They waited for a reaction, but I didn’t have time for this right now. I needed to chase Goth Girl and find out what she knew about the blobs.

  “Sorry. I’ve got to go,” I said. The blobs had gotten bored. They flew back and forth across the room, slipping through the unsuspecting bodies of the students still milling around and finishing their lunches.

  Maura narrowed her eyes at me. “I mean it, Lily. You should pull a Sadie Hawkins on Josh. Think about it.”

  Asking Josh Parker to the prom could be a nice solution, but I didn’t want him to agree to go with me out some misguided sense of duty. He’d saved my life, yes, but that didn’t make him obligated to date me.

  “I’ll think about it. I promise.”

  I said goodbye to Maura and Jessica, put my hand sanitizer back in my purse, and slipped out the door, followed closely by the blobs. As soon as I got outside, I remembered I didn’t know Goth Girl’s actual name. We’d been calling her Goth Girl for so long, I must have forgotten it. I may not have ever known it in the first place.

  It didn’t take long to find her. The commons, a grassy area right outside the cafeteria, had a beautiful view of rolling hills and a glimpse of Lake Eugene sparkling in the distance. We were allowed to sit outside and eat there if the weather permitted, but it had rained earlier, and the grass was still a little soggy.

  Goth Girl didn’t seem to mind. She sat under a tree with her knees pulled up to her chest, deep in thought. She wore a long black skirt and blouse, topped off with a full-length black velvet jacket. Very monochromatic of her, and it was a warm day for early spring, too warm for such a heavy jacket. I hadn’t even brought a sweater today, although my mother had bought an adorable cardigan with embroidered flowers on it to go with my dress.

  We had fifteen minutes left of lunch period. It gave me plenty of time to talk with her, but she didn’t look pleased to see me approach.

  “Hi,” I said, giving her a little wave and my sunniest smile. I’d pulled my hair back into a ponytail this morning and tied it with a silky green ribbon that matched my dress. My shoes were green flats with little flowers embroidered into the fabric. In other words, I looked like spring. She looked like death.

  “What do you want?” she asked, her pale blue eyes peering out at me from behind a curtain of dark, silky, bangs. Not everyone could get away with bangs. I couldn’t. But Goth Girl wore them well. And although I’m not a fan of black hair dye in general, her choice made her eyes stand out and accentuated her porcelain skin.

  I kept my smile in place as I pulled a white linen handkerchief out of my purse and spread it on the ground next to her. I didn’t want to get my dress dirty, but I needed to talk to her. The black orbs floated in a circle around me. One of them edged over to her knee, and I saw her look down at it before she could stop herself.

  I pointed at the blob closest to her. “I need to talk to you about that.”

  “What?”

  I could recognize a bluff when I saw one but decided to approach this gently. Tactfully. Politely. I had manners, after all.

  I extended my hand to her with a gracious smile plastered on my face. “Let’s try this again. Hello. My name is Lily.”

  She stared at me like I was diseased. “I know who you are.”

  I blinked and dropped my hand. “Well, you have an advantage, because I don’t know your name.” I pulled my sanitizer out of my bag. It smelled like apples and lavender, and the idea of it killing all the nasty little germs crawling on my hands brought me a great deal of satisfaction.

  Goth Girl laughed. “Are you for real?”

  I stopped rubbing the sanitizer into my skin. “What do you mean?”

  “Prim, proper, prissy, and perfect.” Goth Girl folded her arms across her chest and stretched out her legs. Although I admired her use of alliteration, I didn’t like her tone. “Look, ladybug, one day you are going to wake up and understand your parents have been training you since birth to do what they want and be who they want, and you are going to freak out because you have no idea who you truly are.”

  I glanced down at the hem of my skirt. My legs had fallen asleep, but because my skirt was so short, I couldn’t sprawl out on the grass like Goth Girl.

  “I know exactly who I am,” I said with a condescending little smile.

  She sneered. “Yeah, right. I bet your mommy still picks out your clothes.”

  I stared at her in surprise. My mother did buy most of my clothes, but she had excellent taste. Everyone said so.

  I cleared my throat and straightened some imaginary wrinkles in my skirt. Obviously, a different approach was needed.

  “Look, I could analyze the whole persona you have going here, with the hair and the clothes and the make-up, but we only have ten minutes left before the bell and I’m not in the mood to judge. Also, you don’t know anything about me, but I do know something about you.” Goth Girl raised a pierced eyebrow at me and pursed her lips, but she didn’t say anything, so I continued, leaning close and speaking in a whisper. “You can see them, too.”

  Goth Girl looked away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I groaned. “Why you are being so difficult? I have one simple question, and, if you answer it, I’ll stop bugging you.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Okay. Ask.”

  “What are they?” I asked, carefully enunciating each word.

  Goth Girl laughed as she rose to her feet, brushing the grass from her skirt. “You’re clueless.”

  “I know. Please enlighten me.” I tried to keep the irritation out of my voice. Not an easy task.

  Goth Girl narrowed her eyes at me. “They’re ghosts, stupid.”

  I stared at her, trying to decide what kind of game she was playing with me. One of the blobs flew in a circle around Goth Girl’s head. She scowled, and it retreated back in my direction. I shook my head in disbelief. They never swooshed away when I gave them dirty looks. She had a power over the blobs I did not possess.

  “That isn’t possible,” I said. “There is no such thing.”

  The blobs didn’t look like ghosts to me, and neither had Shadow Guy. He looked fuzzy and strange, and there was something sad in his eyes that tugged at my heart, but he definitely wasn’t a ghost. Still, if the blobs weren’t ghosts, what else could they be? I couldn’t think of a single thing.

  Goth Girl looked at the sky, her hands balled tightly into fists next to her hips, as if deciding what to tell me. I knew the minute she’d made up her mind. She extended a hand and helped me to my feet.

  “I know because I’m a medium. And my name is Zoe, not Goth Girl.”

  I winced. “You heard me call you that? I’m so sorry.”

  Zoe frowned. “You’re seeing ghosts, you found out that I’m a medium, and you’re worried about that?” She shook her head.

  “Well, I wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

  Zoe shrugged. “So maybe you and your posse should stop making up adorable little nicknames for everyone. They stick, you know,” she said. I knew she was right, but before I could apologize again, she continued. “But the question is why are ghosts following you around? You obviously aren’t a medium. You don’t seem clairvoyant, either. What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said as the lunch bell rang and students began rushing out the doors.

  Zoe gave me one last hard look. “Well, that’s what you have to figure out.” She turned to go back into the school, but I grabbed her arm.

  “Will you help me?”

  She wrenched herself free of my hand. “Uh, I don’t think so,” she said, but I could hear a hint of indecision in her voice.

  “Please, Zoe. I don’t know what else to do.”

  My eyes filled with tears of desperation. I needed to get rid of these blobs before someone else fi
gured it out and sent me back to the hospital. The fact that Zoe could see them, too, gave me hope that maybe I wasn’t crazy, but my parents wouldn’t see it the same way.

  “Fine,” Zoe growled. “But not at school. I can’t be seen with you here. It would be embarrassing.”

  She stomped back into the building, and I followed her slowly, still numb with shock. The black masses clung to me, like a fuzzy sweater, and I had to face facts. I had a serious problem. I was seeing ghosts, I needed it to stop, and the only person who could help me hated my guts.

  Chapter 4

  A book holds a house of gold. ~ Chinese proverb

  Saturday morning, I went to an appointment at Wan Fine Lady to make up for the whole Pretty and Pink debacle. My hands had healed, and it didn’t seem like I caused any permanent damage to myself, as far as I could tell. As I drove my new car, everything seemed pretty normal, except, of course, for the collection of furry black blobs accompanying me everywhere I went.

  Even if they seemed more like a pack of black, fuzzy, disembodied Labrador Retriever puppies, there was obviously something otherworldly about them. As much as I tried to convince myself otherwise, I knew in my heart that Zoe told me the truth. I was being stalked by a bunch of spirits, and only one person was to blame.

  Mr. Wan.

  Walking into his shop, feeling extremely irritated regarding the whole ghost situation, I considered giving him a piece of my mind about Pretty and Pink. But, in the end, he was so genuinely happy to see me, I just didn’t have the heart to do it.

  “You look good, Miss Lily.” His eyes sparkled behind his thick glasses. A tiny man and older than dirt, Mr. Wan was an artist with a nail polish brush.

  “Thank you, Mr. Wan.”

  I sat down in my usual spot, right next to a giant black and white hanging art scroll of a tiger painted in bold brush strokes. The tiger crouched, about to pounce, with its teeth bared in a menacing snarl. The blobs liked the painting. They flew over and sat on it, mixing in with the dark ink. It made the tiger look alive, which creeped me out.