Schuyler felt guilty of something she couldn't even understand. Was it so terrible of her to think Jack Force was a nice person? Okay, so he was a BMOC, the biggest - she had to admit - and yes, okay, so she used to curl her lip at all the Jack Force groupies at school who thought he walked on water. It was just so predictable to like Jack Force. He was smart, handsome, and athletic; he did everything effortlessly. But just because she'd decided to stop disliking him didn't make her some kind of brainless robot did it? Did it? It bothered her that she couldn't decide.

"You're just jealous," she accused.

"Of what?" Oliver's eyes widened, and his face paled.

"I don't know, but you are." She flailed, shrugging her shoulders in frustration. It was always a green-eyed monster issue, wasn't it? She assumed that at some level, Oliver wished he were more like Jack. Adored. Like Jack.

"Right," he said sarcastically. "I'm jealous of his ability to chase a ball with a stick," he sneered.

"Ollie, don't be like that. Please? I really want to talk to you about this, but I have a meeting right now - for The Committee and I ..."

"You got into The Committee?" Oliver asked incredulously. "You?" He looked as if he'd never heard anything so ridiculous in his life.

Was it so far-fetched? Schuyler reddened. So maybe she was nobody, but her family used to be somebodies, and wasn't that what the stupid thing was all about?

But even though she hated to admit it - he had a point. She herself had been mystified as to why she would be chosen for such an honor, although there was that satisfied look on her grandmother's face again - when she'd received the thick white envelope the other afternoon. Cordelia had given her the same appraising glance as when the marks on her arms first appeared. As if she were seeing her granddaughter for the first time. As if she were proud of her.

She hadn't even mentioned it to Oliver, since it was obvious he hadn't gotten one, because he would never keep something like that from her. It struck her as odd that he wasn't chosen to be in The Committee, since his family owned half of the Upper East Side and all of Dutchess County.

"Yeah, funny ha-ha, right?" she said.

His face tightened. The scowl came back. He shook his head. "And you didn't tell me?" he said. "I don't even know who you are anymore."

She watched him walk down the hall, away from her. Each step he took seemed to illustrate the huge gulf that now separated the two of them. He was her best friend. The person she trusted more than anyone in the world. How could he hold joining some dumb social group against her? But she knew why he was angry. Up until now, they had done everything together. But she was invited to The Committee and he was not. Their paths had suddenly diverged. Schuyler thought it was all so silly. She would go to one meeting, just because her grandmother wanted her to, and then drop out. There was certainly nothing about The Committee that was of any interest to her at all.

;

CHAPTER 17

Eversince Schuyler could remember, she had spent every Sunday at the hospital. When she was younger, she and her grandmother would take a cab all the way to the uppermost reaches of Manhattan. Schuyler was such a familiar face, the guards never even gave her a visitor's badge anymore but simply waved her through. Now that she was older, Cordelia rarely joined her on the weekly visits, and Schuyler made the trip solo.

She walked past the emergency room, through the glassed-in lobby, and past the giftshop selling balloons and flowers. She bought a newspaper from the stand and walked to the back elevator. Her mother was on the top floor, in a private room that was outfitted like a suite in one of the city's best hotels.

Unlike most people, Schuyler did not find hospitals depressing. She had spent too much of her childhood there, zooming up and down the hallways in a borrowed wheelchair, playing games of hide and seek with the nurses and orderlies. She ate every Sunday brunch in the basement cafeteria, where the servers would pile her plate high with bacon, eggs, and waffles.

She passed her mother's regular nurse in the hallway.

"It's a good day," the nurse informed her, smiling.

"Oh. Great." Schuyler smiled back. Her mother had been in a coma for most of Schuyler's life. A few months after giving birth to her, Allegra had suffered an aneurysm and gone into shock. Most days, she lay placidly on the bed, not moving, barely breathing.

But on ?good? days, something happened - a flutter underneath the closed eyelids, the movement of her big toe, a twitch in her cheek. Once in a while, her mother sighed for no reason. They were small, infinitesimal signs of a vibrant woman trapped in the cocoon of a living death.

Schuyler remembered the doctor's final prognosis, made almost ten years ago. "All of her organs are functioning. She is perfectly healthy, except for one thing. Somehow, her mind is closed to her body. She has normal sleep and wake patterns, and she is not brain dead by any means. The neurons are firing. But she remains unconscious. It is a mystery." Surprisingly, the doctors were still convinced there was a chance she could wake up given the right circumstances. "Sometimes, it's a song. Or a voice from the past. Something triggers them, and they wake up. Really, she could wake up at any time."

Certainly, Cordelia believed it was true and encouraged Schuyler to read to Allegra so that her mother would know her voice and perhaps respond to it.

Schuyler said thank you to the nurse and peeked through the small glass window cut in the door so that the nurses could check in on their patients without having to disturb them.

There was a man inside the room.

She kept her hand on the knob, without turning it. She looked through the glass again.

The man was gone.

Schuyler blinked. She swore she had seen a man. A gray-haired man, in a dark suit, kneeling by her mother's bedside, holding her hand, his back turned to the door. His shoulders had been shaking and it looked like he was crying.

But when she looked through the glass again, there was nothing.

Tags: Melissa de la Cruz Blue Bloods Vampires
Source: readsnovelonline.net