Nightstruck - Jenna Black Page 0,97
became one of the Nightstruck?” Dr. Gilliam persisted. “You’ve seen more than enough of them, of what they do. Is that what you want to be?”
“Of course not!” I snapped, then reeled my temper back in. Piper had said that if I joined the Nightstruck, the pain would all go away. I’d stop grieving for my dad, I’d stop being scared, I’d stop worrying about other people. Maybe there was just a tiny kernel of temptation buried beneath a truckload of denial.
“We’ll take extra precautions,” Dr. Gilliam promised me. “But sacrificing you is not an option.”
I bit my lip and nodded my agreement. If I could have been sure Luke and the rest of his family would be safe if I gave in, then I might have put more consideration into actually giving myself up. But who knew what would happen to me if the night got its hooks in me? I thought I was a pretty good, nice person, but the night would take all of that away from me. Piper had been a pretty good person—if not exactly perfect—before the night took her, and look at what she had become! Who was to say I wouldn’t be a threat to Luke and his family myself, just as Piper was a threat to me?
No, I was just going to have to live with the guilt of being a danger to Luke and his family. And hope Piper didn’t manage to make it exponentially worse before someone somewhere figured out how to return the city to normal.
* * *
Luke’s mom was home for the entire Thanksgiving weekend, and though she was obviously glad for the rest—like my dad, she’d been working so hard the strain was showing on her—I could tell she also felt guilty about taking any time off. I’m sure if she hadn’t been ordered to stay home she would have been out working every night, just as she had been practically every night since the quarantine began.
On Monday night she went back to work. It was the first time Luke and I were going to spend any significant time alone together since Marlene’s startling revelations. Revelations that Piper had denied, of course, but under the circumstances, I was far more likely to take Marlene’s word than Piper’s.
If Marlene was telling the truth and Luke had been into me all along, did that change anything? Surely it at least meant that I should stop questioning his motivation in kissing me the other night. Surely it meant it hadn’t been out of pity or anything like that.
With school on an indefinite hiatus, and with me being unable to leave the house once the sun set, there was very little to do in the evenings. If I were home by myself, I probably would have spent hours with my nose buried in a book, but it seemed rude to do that and just ignore Luke in his own home. Not that I was capable of ignoring Luke when Marlene’s words kept swirling around in my head. I was painfully aware of him at all times.
I was desperate for distractions, afraid I was acting totally weird and giving my turmoil away. I wanted to ask Luke if what Marlene had said was true, but I couldn’t think of a subtle way to sneak the question in, and I didn’t have it in me to just blurt it out. When you came right down to it, I had way too much self-doubt to believe a guy like him could be into me, kiss or no kiss.
We spent some time after dinner playing video games, but I stink at them in the best of circumstances. Apparently I stink even more when I’m distracted. My reflexes were too slow, and I couldn’t seem to remember which control did what. Luke gave no sign that my ineptness bothered him, but he couldn’t be having a whole lot of fun with the nonexistent level of competition I was giving him.
“Why don’t you just play and I watch,” I suggested, after crashing and burning within about five seconds of starting a racing game set to its easiest level. I put my controller down on the coffee table and willed myself to start acting more normal. Any minute now he was going to ask me what was the matter, and I was probably going to blush so red I glowed.
Luke tossed his own controller aside. “I’m kind of sick of all my games anyway,” he said, getting up