Free Blue Bloods by Melissa de La Cruz

happened.
    The world went gray. She was in her skin but not in her skin. The room was constricting. The world was shrinking. All four walls of the temple were suddenly whole. She was in the desert.
    She could taste the acrid sand in her mouth, feel the hot sun on her back. A thousand scarabs—
    black and shiny, buzzing flew out of the temple door. And that was when she began to scream.
    Catherine Carver’s Diary
    30th of November, 1620
    Plymouth , Massachusetts
    Today Myles Standish took a team down the coast to Roanoke , to bring medicine, food and supplies to the settlement there. It is a fortnight’s sail, so they will be gone a good while. I was heartsick to see John go off with the men. So far, we have been safe, but who knows for how long. No one dares say. The children grow quickly and are a delight to all. There has been an abundance of twin births. The Allertons recently had triplets. Susannah White, whose husband, William, also journeyed to Roanoke , came to visit. We agreed it is a fertile season. We have been blessed.
    — C.C.

ELEVEN
    Schuyler was still thinking about what Jack had said after Aggie’s funeral when she arrived at Dr.
    Pat’s all-white office in a chrome-and-glassFifth Avenue tower later that afternoon. He’d asked her why she had ignored his note, and she’d explained she had simply dismissed it as a prank.
    “You think Aggie’s death is funny?” he’d asked, his face stricken. She had tried to protest—but her grandmother was calling her and she had to leave. She couldn’t erase the look on his face. As if she had disappointed him deeply somehow. She blew out her bangs loudly. Why did he have such an effect on her? An emaciated woman in a fox-fur jacket across the room glared at her.
    Schuyler stared defiantly back.
    Cordeliahad made a big to-do about Schuyler seeing Dr. Pat. The doctor was some kind of dermatologist, a famous one. The office was more like the inside of a Miami hotel—the Shore Club or the Delano —than a normal waiting room. It was all white, white flokati rugs, white tile walls, white lacquer tables, white leather couches, white fiberglass Eames loungers. Apparently Dr. Pat was the Dr. Pat, the one who all the socialites and fashion designers and celebrities credited with their fabulous complexions. Several signed and framed photographs from models and actresses hung on the walls.
    Schuyler pushed Jack out of her mind and began flip ping through the glossy magazine articles extolling the doc tor’s virtues, when the door from the inner office opened and Mimi Force walked out.
    “What are you doing here?” Mimi spat. She had changed out of her Dior suit and was wearing a more “casual” out fit—a pair of tight four-thousand-dollarApo jeans with the platinum rivets and a diamond button, a chunky Martine Sitbon sweater, and slim butter-colored Jimmy Choo stilettos.
    “Sitting down?” Schuyler replied, even though it was obvious Mimi had asked a rhetorical question. “What hap pened to your face?”
    Mimi glared. Her whole face was covered with little pin points of blood. She’d just received a laser dermabrasion peel, and it had left her skin a little raw. It helped mask the blue veins that were starting to fade around her eyes. “None of your business.”
    Schuyler shrugged.
    Mimi left, slamming the door behind her.
    A few minutes later, the nurse called Schuyler’s name, and she was ushered into a treatment room. The nurse took her weight and blood pressure, then asked her to change into a backless hospital gown. Schuyler put on the gown and waited a few minutes before the doctor finally entered.
    Dr. Pat was a stern, gray-haired woman, who looked at Schuyler and said, “You’re very thin,” as a greeting.
    Schuyler nodded. It never mattered what she ate—she could live on chocolate cakes and French fries and she never seemed to gain an ounce. She’d been that way since she was a kid. Oliver always used to marvel at her capacity. “You should be