Extraordinary October. Diana Wagman
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Copyright © 2016 by Diana Wagman.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher.
Please direct inquiries to:
Ig Publishing
Box 2547
New York, NY 10163
ISBN: 978-1-63246-038-7 (ebook)
For Thea,
who is extraordinary
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
I was never anything but ordinary. Average in every way. Brown hair, brown eyes, not short, not tall, not fat, not thin, and your basic “B” student. I had no group I belonged to, no after school activities; I couldn’t play an instrument or draw a recognizable picture. Three months before my high school graduation and people I’d been in classes with since elementary school still didn’t know who I was. The only thing anyone ever remembered about me was my name. October. I was named for the month my parents met and my dad gave up drinking. People always laughed when they heard it. It didn’t seem to matter that there was that beautiful actress, January Jones, and there was a girl named June in school and two girls named May. My month, my name, October Fetterhoff, always made them laugh. I even tried going by Toby, but it didn’t stick.
But I should have known there were good things about being ordinary. I should have appreciated being unremarkable. I could travel under the radar, go completely unnoticed. I could think whatever I wanted, do whatever I wanted, and nobody paid any attention. Nobody was ever watching me.
And then all that changed. I was anything but ordinary and my extraordinariness was going to get me killed.
1. Four Days Until My Eighteenth Birthday
It all started with an itch. A bad itch. A terrible, bone deep, muscle shuddering itch. Out of control. I had to scratch. Had to. Immediately.
The itch started on the bottom of my right foot my shoe. I yelped loudly in class, couldn’t help it, and Mr. Fleming turned around from the board.
“There’s something in my shoe.” I couldn’t get it off fast enough. I was wearing my tall, lace-up boots—my favorites—and I was cursing how long it took to get my foot free.
“How could there be something in there?” Jacob the jock asked. “She never takes them off.”
The class snickered. Okay, so I wore those boots a lot. Every day in fact, and for a moment I was kind of flattered he’d noticed, but the itch had taken over. I knew something hadn’t actually bitten me. This was deeper than that. It came from way inside my foot, somewhere close to the bone. I peeled off my striped sock and attacked the bottom of my foot with both hands.
“Put it back on!” Jacob pretended to gasp from the smell.
“Pee-ew,” his sidekick, Lance, echoed and held his nose.
Juveniles. I was too absorbed in the itch to make a snappy comeback. If I could have thought of one. The problem was the scratching wasn’t helping. It made it worse, made the itch stronger. I was feeling it behind my knees, all the way up in my stomach, a jittery, weird sensation. I couldn’t help it; I started scratching all over. My arms, my legs, the part of my back I could reach. The class was laughing. I was practically crying. Scratching was useless. Finally, I sat on my hands and tried to will it to stop. I was starting to sweat and I could feel my hair frizzing from the heat.
Mr. Fleming frowned. “All right now, Miss October?”
The class laughed at me again and Mr. Fleming shrugged his apology. When people tack on the “Miss” in front of my name it makes me sound like a Playboy centerfold. Years of teachers doing it by accident and it still got a laugh. Ha ha ha.
“I think I need to go to the nurse,” I said to Fleming. What I really needed was to get outside, take off my clothes and roll on the ground so I could scratch all over.
“Go ahead,” Mr. Fleming nodded. “Be sure to get the homework from someone.”
I knew I looked ridiculous hobbling out of class in one shoe, clutching my books, boot, sock, and backpack. As I shut the door behind me I looked back, but my fellow students had already forgotten me and turned back to the board. I was even less interesting than the Dual Alliance of 1879. Typical.
Out in the hall, I stopped to scratch the bottom of my bare foot against the laces on my other boot. That felt pretty good, better than anything else so far, and I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall. Then my neck started itching and my scalp. I wondered if I had some dread disease, like leprosy or skin-eating bacteria. An itch ran up my spine and I rubbed my back against the rough cinderblock wall, back and forth and up and down.
“Like a little bear.” A guy’s voice startled me.
I stopped scratching and looked into the bluest eyes I had ever seen. Beautiful, startling, turquoise, no, a brilliant sky blue. And the eyes were surrounded by a face that was just as attractive. I blushed and the itching intensified. Even embarrassed as I was, my foot could not stop scratching itself.
“What are you doing out of class?”
Surprise, surprise, Principal Hernandez was there too, but I hadn’t noticed him beside Blue-Eyes.
“On my way to the nurse,” I said. “Something bit me.”
“Then go!”
“Need any help?”
The handsome young man was talking to me. Yes, I wanted to say, scratch. Put your hands on my body and scratch. Everywhere. But I just blushed again, shook my head and limped away. I knew he wasn’t a new student; school would be out in just three months and anyway, he looked too mature, too put together to be a high schooler. On the other hand, he didn’t look old enough to be a teacher. I sighed. Whoever he was, he thought I looked like a bear. Terrific. I lifted a hand to scratch my chin and dropped my boot. Bending over to get it, I dropped my books; then my backpack swung around and hit me in the face.
So