Born At Midnight

Three days later, Kylie, suitcase in hand, stood in the YMCA parking lot where several of the camp buses picked up the juvenile delinquents. She freaking couldn't believe she was here.



Her mom was real y doing it.



And her dad was real y letting her mom do it.



Kylie, who'd never drunk more than two sips of beer, who'd never real y smoked one cigarette, let alone any pot, was about to be shipped off to some camp for troubled kids.



Her mom reached out and touched Kylie's arm. "I think they're cal ing you."



Could her mom get rid of her any faster? Kylie pul ed away from her touch, so angry, so hurt she didn't know how to act anymore. She'd begged, she'd pleaded, and she'd cried, but nothing worked. She was about to head off to camp. She hated it but there was nothing she could do. Not offering her mom one word, and swearing not to cry in front of the dozens of other kids, Kylie stiffened her back and took off to the bus behind the woman holding the sign that read SHADOW FALLS CAMP.



Jeez. What kind of hel hole was she being sent to?



When Kylie stepped on the bus, the eight or nine kids already there raised their heads and stared at her. She felt an odd kind of stirring in her chest and she got those weird chil s again. Never, not in al sixteen years of her life, had she wanted to turn and run away as much as she did now. She forced herself not to bolt, then she met the gazes of ... oh, Lordie, can you say freaks?



One girl had her hair dyed three different colors-pink, lime green, and jet black. Another girl wore nothing but black-black lipstick, black eye shadow, black pants, and a black long-sleeve shirt. Hadn't the goth look gone out of style? Where was this girl getting her fashion tips? Hadn't she read that colors were in? That blue was the new black?



And then there was the boy sitting almost at the front of the bus. He had both his eyebrows pierced. Kylie leaned down to peer out the window to see if she could stil see her mother. Surely, if her mom took a look at these guys, she'd know Kylie didn't belong here.



"Take your seat," someone said, and stepped behind her.



Kylie turned around and saw the bus driver. While Kylie hadn't noticed it earlier, she realized even the bus driver looked a little freakish. Her purple-tinted gray hair sat high on her head like a footbal helmet. Not that Kylie could blame her for teasing her hair up a few inches. The woman was short. Elf short. Kylie glanced down at her feet, half expecting to see a pair of pointed green boots. No green shoes. Then her gaze shot to the front to the bus. How was the woman going to drive the bus?



"Come on," the woman said. "I have to have you kids there by lunch, so move it along."



Since everyone but Kylie had taken their seats, she supposed the woman meant her. She took a step farther into the bus, feeling as if her life would never, ever be the same.



"You can sit by me," someone said. The boy had curly blond hair, even blonder than Kylie's, but his eyes peering at her were so dark they looked black. He patted the empty seat beside him. Kylie tried not to stare, but something about the dark/light combination felt off. Then he wiggled his eyebrows, as if ... as if her sitting beside him meant they might make out or something.



"That's okay." Kylie took a few steps, pul ing her suitcase behind her. Her luggage caught on the row of seats where the blond boy sat and Kylie looked back to free it.



Her gaze met his and her breath caught. Blond boy now had ... green eyes. Bright, very bright green eyes. How was that even possible?



She swal owed and looked at his hands, thinking that maybe he had a contact case out and had changed his lenses. No case. He wiggled his brows again, and when she realized she was staring at him, she yanked her suitcase free. Shaking off the chil , she moved on to the row of seats she'd chosen as her own. Before she turned to sit down, she noticed another boy in the back. Sitting by himself, he had light brown hair, parted to the side and hanging just above his dark brows and green eyes. Normal green eyes, but the dusty blue T-shirt he wore made them more noticeable.



He nodded at her. Nothing too weird, thank God. At least there was one normal person on the bus besides her. Sitting down, she gave blond guy another glance. But he wasn't looking at her, so she couldn't see if his eye color had gone weird again. But that's when she noticed the girl with three different hair colors had something in her hands. Kylie's breath caught again. The girl had a toad. Not a frog-a frog she could have probably handled-but a toad. A huge honking toad. What kind of a girl dyed her hair three different colors and carried a toad with her to camp? God, maybe it was one of those drug toads, the ones people licked to get high. She'd heard about them on some stupid crime show on TV but had always thought they'd made it up. She didn't know which was worse: licking a toad to get high or carrying a toad around just to be weird.



Pul ing her suitcase up on the seat next to her just so no one would feel the need to join her, Kylie let out a deep sigh and looked out the window. The bus was moving, although Kylie stil didn't see how the bus driver managed to reach the gas pedals.



"Do you know what they cal us?" The voice came from the seat where toad girl sat.



Kylie didn't think she was talking to her, but she turned her head that way, anyway. Because the girl looked directly at her, Kylie figured she might be wrong.



"Who cal s us?" Kylie asked, trying not to sound too friendly or too bitchy. The last thing she wanted was to piss these freaks off.



"The kids who go to the other camps. There's like six camps in the three-mile radius in Fal en." Using both hands she pul ed her multicolored hair back and held it there for a few seconds.



That's when Kylie noticed the girl had lost her toad. And Kylie didn't see a cage or anything where she could have tucked it away. Great. She would probably have some freak's humongous drug toad hopping into her lap before she knew it. Not that toads total y scared her or anything. She just didn't want it jumping on her.



"They cal us boneheads," the girl said.



"Why?" Kylie pul ed her feet up in the seat just in case a toad hopped by.



"The camp used to be cal ed Bone Creek Camp," the girl answered. "Because of the dinosaur bones found there."



"Ha," said the blond boy. "They also cal us boners."



A few laughs echoed from the other seats. "Why is that funny?" the girl wearing al black asked in a tone so deadly serious that Kylie shivered.



"You don't know what a boner is?" Blond Boy asked. "If you'l come sit beside me, I'l show you." When he turned around, Kylie got another look at his eyes. Holy mother of pearls. They were gold. A striking feline gold. Contacts, Kylie realized. He had to be wearing some kind of weird contacts that were doing that.



Goth Girl stood up as if to join the blond guy.



"Don't do it," Toad Girl, without her toad, said and stood up. Moving out into the aisle, she whispered something in Goth Girl's ear.



"Gross." Goth Girl slammed back in her seat. Then she looked over at the blond boy and pointed a black-painted fingernail at him. "You don't want to piss me off. I eat things bigger than you in the dead of night."



"Did someone say something about the dead of night?" a voice came from the back of the bus. Kylie turned to see who'd spoken.



Another girl, one Kylie hadn't known was there, popped up from the seat. She had jet black hair and wore sunglasses almost the same color as her hair. What made her look so abnormal was her complexion. Pasty. As in pasty white.



"Do you know why they renamed the camp Shadow Fal s?" Toad Girl asked.



"No," someone answered from the front of the bus.



"Because of the Native American legend that says at dusk, if you stand beneath the fal s on the property, you can see the shadows of death angels dancing."



Dancing death angels? What was wrong with these people?



Kylie swung around in her seat. Was this some nightmare? Maybe part of her night terrors? She pushed deeper in her cushioned seat and tried to focus on waking herself up from the dreams the way Dr. Day had shown her.



Focus. Focus. She took in deep breaths, in through the nose, out the mouth-al the while silently chanting, It's just a dream, it isn't real, it isn't real.



Either she wasn't asleep or her focus had gotten on the wrong bus, and darn if she didn't wish she'd fol owed it onto a different bus. Stil not wanting to believe her eyes, she gazed around at the others. Blond Boy looked at her, and his eyes were black again. Creepy. Was none of this coming across completely off the normal chart to anyone else in the bus?



Turning in her seat again, she looked back at the boy she'd dubbed the most normal. His soft green eyes, eyes that reminded her of Trey's, met hers, and he shrugged. She didn't exactly know what the shrug meant, but he didn't appear al that weirded out by everything. Which in some smal way made him as weird as the others.



Kylie swung back around and grabbed her phone from her purse and started texting Sara. Help! Stuck on a bus with freaks. Total, complete freaks.



Kylie got a text message back from Sara almost immediately. No, you help me. I think I'm pregnant.