Something True by Kieran Scott Read Free Book Online Page A

hear him say he loved me. Please, please, please.
    As I cleaned up my paints at the end of class, carefully twisting the crusted, corroded caps onto the tiny tubs of color, I kept an eye on Orion two easels over. He was wearing a black sweater that made him appear sophisticated beyond his years, and his dark, wavy hair had grown out a bit since he’d arrived on Earth, giving him a casual, sexy look. He shoved something into his backpack, zipped it up, and glanced my way.
    “Hey,” he said with a smile. “How was the rest of your day yesterday?”
    I dropped the paint tubs onto the counter and grabbed my stuff, my heart pitter-pattering as I approached him. “Uneventful.”
    Thank the Gods.
    “Congratulations on the whole homecoming court thing,” I said drily. “I guess that makes you a pretty big deal around here.”
    He puffed up his chest. “Yeah. Don’t get bigger than me.” Then he laughed. “Whatever, it’s just kind of cool to be nominated when I’m so new here, you know? Darla’s all over me to come over tonight and make posters and stuff, but it seems kinda pointless. At my old school, the seniors always won.”
    Whatever he said next was completely lost on my ears, because I’d just caught sight of his painting, and the entire world around it had faded to a muted gray. He had painted the arrow again—our arrow—the one that hung from the pendant I’d once given him, but that now lay flat against my own chest. I could tell because the fletching was uneven, with nine striations in the feather on one side and eight on the other, which would, of course, make a real arrow imbalanced. In fact, he’d joked when I’d given it to him that I was trying to throw off his shot so I could beat him at target practice.
    But this painting was different from the last. This time Orion had painted the arrow flying through the sky over a near-perfect rendering of the cabin we’d lived in together for the last six months in Maine. The six months before we were caught, that is.
    Orion was not supposed to remember that cabin. He wasn’t supposed to remember the arrow. Was he actually starting to recall our time together? Was he starting to realize who he really was? Maybe I’d been right from the beginning. Maybe our love was so strong it could survive even a brainwashing by Zeus himself.
    “What?” Orion asked, shifting his feet self-consciously as I gaped at his painting. “Is it that bad?”
    When he turned briefly to the side, I saw the tiny white scar near his temple, the spot where Artemis had struck him with an arrow those many millennia ago. I felt a surge of something huge and unstoppable inside me, and I knew what I had to do.
    “No. I just . . .” I looked into his eyes—the eyes I knew so well I could have painted my very own copy of them down to the last tiny gold fleck. Holding my breath, I reached up and tugged his arrow pendant out from beneath the collar of my T-shirt.
    Orion did a double take. The smile fell from his face. He looked at his painting, then back at the arrow. Then, so slowly it felt as if it took an eternity, his eyes met mine. At the easels around us, students gathered their things, dropped brushes into cans, chatted about their days, shuffled toward the door, but the two of us simply stood there, locked together inside our own little world.
    “Orion,” I said.
    He opened his mouth to speak, and someone in the hallway screamed.
    “Get out of the way, cretin!”
    There was an awful slam, as if a body had been shoved against a locker door, and a few people shouted.
    Orion grabbed my wrist. We stared at the open classroom door. Our teacher, Mrs. Fabrizi, had left for the bathroom or the teacher’s lounge or had gone out to the parking lot for a smoke. We were entirely alone.
    “Have you seen this girl? Do you know her?”
    The skin on my back began to crawl. That was Apollo’s voice. They had found me.
    A door banged shut, and someone cried out in pain. I had to protect