'I know you are, you always are.' Her mother sighed, and folded her in a suddenly fierce embrace that smelt of powder and perfume. 'Are you looking forward to seeing Elizabeth again?'
Claire's friend Elizabeth from high school had moved to Cambridge as well, though she was attending a different school from MIT. But honestly, beyond exchanging e-mails and phone calls, and the flurry of sudden plans in the past few days, she didn't really know Elizabeth any more. Two years apart was a lifetime these days.
She still remembered the rush of excitement and consternation she'd felt opening the first e-mail. Your parents told me you were moving to town, Elizabeth had written. You CANNOT live in a dorm!!!! I'm renting a place. Share? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE? That was Elizabeth, all right; she probably had been bouncing up and down, unable to stand still while she wrote the pleases. And there was no reason not to accept.
Except now, Claire felt a little sick to her stomach. Maybe I should have just stayed in the dorm. But she hadn't had such good luck with that before at Texas Prairie University.
Mom noticed her silence. 'Oh, sweetie. I hate you going so far away, but I'm so proud of what you've accomplished. I know it's just the beginning of such great things for you.'
That was a very odd thought, suddenly. She'd done so much these past few years in Morganville that the idea there was more ... well. It just seemed strange.
Like the thought that she was about to get on a plane and fly to Dallas, and then on another flight off to Boston. She'd been in Dallas only once before ... with Michael and Eve. With Shane. And she remembered every second of that sweet, beautiful, wild weekend, where the two of them had just begun to discover each other in new and personal ways. It was ... it was magical, in her memory.
Going back to Dallas without him seemed just the opposite of magical. It seemed like the ominous sign of a curse.
Dad helped her check her suitcases through to Boston, and she got through the nervous excitement of showing her ID for the tickets, and then it was - all of a sudden - time for goodbyes again. Hard ones. She threw her arms around her dad's neck and hugged him breathless, and kissed him on both cheeks, which made him surprised and happy; she was usually more reserved than that. Her mom got the same, and they both pretended not to notice how unsteady each other's voices were as they said all the usual things, all the loving things.
And then she was in the security line, and leaving her past behind her with a finality that was more than a little terrifying. I'm alone. Funny. She'd faced so much these past few years - life and death and all the stages in between. Loss and love. Heartache and joy. Most of all, danger, constant and unremitting danger ...
... Yet, she was shaking all over as she handed the TSA agent her ID card and her ticket, and frantically wondering if she'd scrubbed her backpack clean of all the usual Morganville survival aids - silver nitrate, stakes, blades, the works. What if she'd overlooked something? What if ...
'Miss? What's this supposed to be?' The uniformed officer frowned at her and held out her ID card.
Oh. Her Morganville ID card. She'd grabbed the wrong one, and quickly blushed and fished out the Texas driver's licence instead. 'Sorry,' she said. 'Uh - library card.'
He hadn't read the text, luckily, and he just shrugged, scrutinised her face long enough to make her even more nervous, then waved her through.
Shoes were hard to get off - she hadn't planned for that - and her hoodie had to come off, too. Her backpack passed through scanners without trouble, thankfully, and then she was clutching all her stuff, breathless with relief, on the other side of the barriers. Claire walked barefoot to some seats, donned her hoodie and her Skechers, put her ID back in her wallet (moving the Morganville ID safely to the back to avoid confusion with legit state-issued stuff) and then, finally, took a moment to let the enormity of it hit her.
She was committed. Checked in. Bags headed for the plane. Her dad was shipping the rest of the boxes to her directly to her new apartment.
She was on her own. Completely, utterly, totally on her own, going into a new world without Shane, without parents. Without enemies, even.
Nobody cared. People walked past her, and ignored her existence.
Claire sat for a moment in silence, taking that in and adjusting herself to the reality that outside of Morganville, she was just some mildly pretty eighteen-year-old girl headed up to college, like ten thousand other girls she'd see along the way. Not someone special at all.
It was, she thought as she picked up her backpack and headed toward her departure gate, the scariest thing she'd ever done, and the most freedom she'd ever had.
Ironic.
CHAPTER TWO
Elizabeth Porter met Claire at the baggage claim, holding a giant sign that said BEST FRIENDS 4EVA and waving excitedly, which was good, because otherwise Claire probably wouldn't have recognised her. The chubby, shy Elizabeth from school was gone, replaced by a sleek, tall girl with short platinum-blonde hair. Her fashion sense had changed, too, from geeky to sexy ... she had on a button-down shirt, pleated schoolgirl miniskirt, knee socks, loafers, even the required Smart Librarian glasses. Guys watched as she jumped up and down, squealed, and threw her arms around Claire with the enthusiasm of a cheerleader at a championship game. A winning team cheerleader, at that.
'You're here, oh my God, I'm so excited! Claire!' Elizabeth suddenly pushed her out to arm's length and stared at her. She'd gotten taller, and now topped Claire by at least three inches. 'You look ... different.'
'You don't?' Claire said, and laughed. Elizabeth joined in, and it was like they'd never spent a moment apart ... but only for that second, because then Elizabeth stopped laughing, and something strange flashed over her face. Two years ago, Claire wouldn't have recognised it, but now she knew fear when she saw it. Well, that's weird.
It was only a flash, and Elizabeth pasted on the bright smile again. 'I just wanted a change,' she said. 'You know, leaving Texas, becoming a new person - you want that, too, right?'
'Right,' Claire said. Her heart wasn't in it; she didn't want to change any more, really, but she wanted to be more of what she already had become - more Claire. Elizabeth, on the other hand, seemed to have bent herself to becoming someone completely different, from the outside in. It hadn't stifled that spark Claire had always liked about her, though. It still showed in the bouncy way Elizabeth helped her drag her luggage off the carousel, and chattered all the way out to the parking lot.
'Why do you do that?' Elizabeth suddenly asked, very seriously, as Claire loaded her suitcase into the trunk of Liz's ancient Ford Taurus.
'Do what? Um ... doesn't the luggage go in the trunk?' Surely the world hadn't changed that much.
'Look over your shoulder,' Elizabeth said. 'You've done it every few seconds since you came out of the terminal. Are you worried about someone? Did someone follow you?' She looked very serious again, and earnest, and Claire suddenly realised that her friend was right - she'd been checking routinely, automatically, to be sure nothing was sneaking up on her.
Morganville caution.
'Oh,' she said, and mustered up an apologetic laugh. 'I guess - well, the part of town I've been living in isn't that safe, I guess. I got used to looking out for myself.'
'Well, you're in civilisation now, not Backwardstown,' Elizabeth said, and slammed the trunk lid. 'Banzai, bitch, we are moving!'
Claire climbed in the car, and Elizabeth got in, whooped in excitement, and turned the music up loud and sang along at the top of her lungs as she steered them out of the parking garage and into a weak afternoon sunlight.
The drive was really educational, because Cambridge didn't look anything like Dallas. Dallas had been steel and glass, heat and angles; Cambridge was age-rounded, grassy, still virulently green even though fall chill was thick in the air. The trees were so much taller than she'd expected, and the colours ... Claire gaped like a kid at Christmas, too stunned with the beauty of it to join in the sing-along, even though she liked the song Elizabeth was currently belting out. The houses were small and square and so neat and at the same time so ... old. Everything in Morganville looked old, too, but in a falling-apart way. This looked more like lovingly cared-for history.
'You're going to need a car,' Elizabeth said suddenly, turning the radio way down. 'I know you walked all the time in Hicksville, but we're not going to be living that close. You're going to really love the apartment, it's super cute and yeah, it's kind of small, but cosy, really ... okay, it's a pit, but we'll have fun, right? So. Tell me about this boy.'
The switch of topics was sudden, but that was Liz; she'd always been like that, leapfrogging from one thing to another without much in the way of traffic signals. 'The boy's name is Shane,' Claire said. Just saying it twisted hard inside her, and for a second she could hardly breathe; it felt like a fist closing over her heart and crushing it flat. Tears suddenly gathered in her eyes, and she had to breathe deeply to get herself under control again. 'He's - he's-'