Crave (Harlequin Teen)

she’d suggested.
    A few minutes later while leaned back against the tree in the biting-cold air, I heard the squeak of the cafeteria doors. At the same time, my gut and stomach ached from Savannah’s nearness. Smiling, I snuck a peek at her.
    She wore a matching smile as she emerged from the cafeteria with her friends. Then she looked my way, and the smile she flashed me was like looking directly at a summer sun at noon, lighting up the gray winter day.
    And then she glanced past me at something. Her smile slipped, and her feet stumbled to a stop.
    I looked behind me. Nothing there but an empty road, the practice field and the edge of the woods that circled three sides of the school grounds. What could make her freeze up like that?
    Savannah
    They were definitely staring at me. I wasn’t sure how I knew this, but I did. And the longer I looked at the trio of adults standing at the edge of the woods behind Tristan, the more I could sense someone else’s emotions…anger, curiosity, patient determination, fear, all roiling together in a dark, seething cloud against my skin despite my best efforts to shield against them. The emotions had to be coming from them. No one else nearby looked anything but happy.
    Why didn’t they ever blink? Or move?
    I gripped my notebook, hugging it to my chest and stomach, my palms turning damp. Gut instinct screamed at me to run away. And yet my feet seemed frozen in place.
    Why were they standing over there? And why were they staring at me?
    From this distance, they looked like middle-aged adults, two men, one woman. Their faces watched me without any expression. The wind flipped the men’s dark suit jackets and turned the woman’s hair into a writhing black cloud around her head, yet she made no effort to push back the wild strands.
    “Hey, Anne, do you know who those people are?” I jerked my head in the trio’s direction, trying to act normal.
    Anne glanced at the woods then gave me a blank look. “Who?”
    “Those three people standing over there by the woods. At the edge of the practice field.”
    She continued to look clueless. But she was just messing with my head. Miss Always Practical Carrie wouldn’t, though. “Carrie, do you know who they are?”
    Carrie looked in the correct direction. “Where?”
    “Oh, not funny, guys. The two men and one woman standing right over there.” Feeling rude, I pointed anyway. Let the trio know I was talking about them. They’d been rude first by staring at me.
    Carried stared at me, too, her blue eyes expressionless. “Sav, there’s no one there.”
    “Oh, come on! Michelle, you see them, right?”
    Michelle shook her head, and now all three of my friends were looking at me as if I’d gone nuts.
    Maybe I had. I turned toward the creepy trio. Yep, they were still there, still solid and unwavering, and still staring at me. Goose bumps raced over my arms and thighs.
    “Y’all swear you don’t see them?” I’d meant to sound calm, but the words came out in a croak instead.
    “I swear,” Anne replied, and Carrie and Michelle nodded.
    “Come on, let’s…get to class,” Anne muttered, grabbing my arm and dragging me away.
    Lovely. As if I wasn’t already freakish enough, now I was seeing invisible people. Either that or ghosts.
    Thankfully, my afternoon classes were in the main building on the opposite side of the campus. Regardless, every crashing locker door in the main hall between classes made me jump.
    And looming ahead after school was the usual Charmers practice. In the field right next to where those watchers had been standing.
    Please be gone now, my mind chanted as I shuffled along the walkway to the sports and art building after the final school bell rang.
    As I made my way up the cement ramp to the foyer doors, I glanced back at the woods. And stumbled. The trio were still there, and they were staring at me again. The woman’s hair was impossibly tangled as the wind continued to whip it around her face unchecked. They looked as if they hadn’t moved in hours and were perfectly capable of standing there until the end of time. Their seething mixture of emotions reached out like invisible fingers, spreading over my midsection like a malicious fog until I wanted to claw off my own skin just to get away from the sensation.
    What did they want?
    Panic rose, icy cold, starting in my chest and stomach then spreading out to numb my limbs. I clamped my teeth together and hurried inside. At Mrs. Daniels’s office,