He saw some staring at his girl, though, but they weren't seeing much because they didn’t truly see her. Ari was beautiful with white-blond hair, that gave her a perfect silver Corona every time the light struck her. She had near flawless skin unless you knew where to look, and the lightest of blue eyes. Like looking at the bottom of a shallow pool on the brightest summer day.
Marx had had many, many lives to consider the color of Ari's eyes; they were always the same. They were special. The way they always came back just as they were, but they weren't the only ones.
And Marx supposed that was where a lot of the trouble had come from.
They had friends in this life, new friends, different friends than usual—and then they had their best friends. Those who attracted trouble as a rule of their entire existence. Those who played an entire game of trouble every damn time they came around.
And Ari and Marx had been mixed up with them for longer than he would have liked, but he didn't have a say; he wasn't the boss. He was the sentinel, the bodyguard. He was the wall, the rock, and the wrong person to mess with if you thought you could even talk to the Oracle. Marx had done that job for so long, his soul didn't know how to do anything else.
Some people could be a butcher, a baker, or a candlestick maker, and, some of it always stuck to your soul in the next life, but it didn't have to define you. Not until it became a pattern. But Marx’s job was more than a title or definition. Marx’s job was what he was, and he wasn't ashamed of it.
Marx had a purpose, a foundation, built into his very existence, and that purpose looked lost as she sat on the bench, looking through book after book that no one else could see. A frown grew like ivy from the slants of her pink-glossed lips to the crease between her eyes.
Ari was worried, but she was still safe where Marx could see her.
Marx scanned the crowd, an old habit that often kept them alive. He picked out the Bayside teachers, wandering around giving feedback to happy painters and emo artists alike. They hadn't even glanced in Ari's direction. They were used to her erratic behavior, and unlike the general populous, knew precisely what she was capable of, and why they should avoid them if at all possible.
No good could come from seeking the answer to one’s future or the future of all.
Sometimes having friends came with benefits, but usually, it just came with danger. One little firecracker had approached Marx from behind and cleared his throat, but Marx knew exactly who it was without even looking.
Hair the color of a fiery sunset, freckles like flecks of a dying flame on ninety percent of his face.
Ripley, known to their good friends, the dangerous ones, as “The Messenger.”
"Don't even start," Marx warned him.
Ari was not in the mood for it, and neither was he, but the bite of his statement didn't come out the way he’d intended. It was hard to be angry with Ripley, although Marx always tried, but these days, he mostly just felt sorry for him.
But Marx couldn't tell him that, or even give him a look that would lead him to suspect he felt that way. Because Ripley was hopeless, and he couldn't really blame him for that. If he were in his position, he'd feel lost, too.
Fingers falling into a fist, Marx knew damn well if he was ever starring in a tragedy like the one that had befallen Ripley, he'd likely do something reckless.
"You don't even know what I’m going to say," Ripley countered, but his voice sounded defeated, not defiant, and his freckled face looked like a stark photograph of the moon.
"Look, if she could help you, she—" Marx began.
Because she would, even if they hadn't been friends in many, many lives. Marx knew Ari could probably campaign to be the Patron Saint of Lost Causes.
"This isn't about me!" Ripley managed to shout in a whisper, but clamped his hand over his mouth anyway, looking around as nervous as Marx was before carrying on.
"It's about..." Ripley did another full round with his eyes.
"You know, Ari's already looking for..."
“Ssssh,” Ripley hissed at Marx. Some of the defeat had seeped out of him and was replaced with something more cutting. A bit of the spitfire Marx knew was in there somewhere had leaked to the surface. Red rushed to his cheeks in crimson pools as hot as spilled blood, and just as quick.
"I see," Marx said under his breath, and he did see.
Lurking fifty paces behind Ripley, stood another interesting friend. A dangerous one. Bad luck followed him around like a noose, but in past lives, he'd been a bit better about shrugging it off. He didn't look like much at this point in life: dark curls, average frame, and what was probably not-so-average bags for a freshman, under massive black sunglasses that obscured half of his face. But Marx didn't need to see his eyes to know Leo was absolutely put out with all of them, especially himself.
"We should meet tonight," Marx said loud enough for Ari to hear him, and Leo, too, who pulled off his shades just to glare back at Ripley and Marx.
"Would that be before or after the actual meeting?" Leo asked. Sarcasm as skilled on his lips as a knife was in his own hands, Marx noticed.
He sounded as tired as he looked, Marx realized, more than tired. Leo's shoulders slumped in a way shoulders did when someone was exhausted with their very being. When a cruel and repetitive existence was weighing them down.
"It's nice to see you, too," Marx said lightly and meant it.
Now that Ari knew she should be looking, the Oracle would pluck the rest of the details out of thin air like she did everything else. Leo and Marx were in the same class, but neither had really been showing up much recently.
They were great artists, not academics.
They also had a lot on their minds. Everything was going wrong. Everything. Marx had Ari's back when they'd been chased off of whole continents. When they'd been hunted, when they'd realized no matter how many lives they'd lived, they'd never have families or children, and when their hearts had broken again for it every time. But during their many lives, had there ever been such a sizeable mess, where absolutely nothing had gone right.
It was like she'd gone blind to the exact thing she needed to see, and even though Marx knew that was impossible, a chill ran down his spine anyway. What-if's were the very thing that his dreams were made of, but they were the stuff of nightmares, too.
Always, it was the unknown danger that would kill them. Never had they seen death coming and been unable to avoid it... but since Marx knew everything else was already messed up, fear blossomed in his chest like a bouquet of thorned roses.
"Before the other meeting, stupid," Marx said “stupid” as affectionate as he could, even as his lungs seemed to fill with infected blood.
Now that he had the thought in his head, he was having a hell of a time trying to get rid of it.
Leo didn't seem to take offense; he wasn't even looking at Marx. His eyes had shifted toward Ari, but she didn't so much as tilt her stubborn chin in their direction. Still, Marx could clearly see she knew their attention had turned her way.
"Let him come," she whispered, but Marx had caught every word.
"I'll just..." Ripley trailed off, pointing in another direction, conveniently, and absurdly toward a cement wall.
"You, too, hot stuff," Ari said from the bench. She sounded like herself then, Marx realized: self-assured, badass, sexy. Shadow clouded the crystal look of her eyes, but she was smiling, a row of pearls between two plump pink lips. Marx wondered if she'd punch him if he kissed her then.
"Chances are good," Ari said, turning to gaze up at him when they'd plodded over.
Blushing, Marx turned away from Ari just in time to catch Leo's eyes turn to angry slits above bruise-like bags. He hadn't meant to be flaunting their relationship in front of Leo and Ripley. That would be a dick move, and though Marx saw nothing against crude behavior, there was a time and place for it. Mainly often and directed toward their worst enemies, of which Ari and Marx had many, even more than their friends did. Not pouring acid and salt into raw
wounds.
Ripley and Leo were both missing their soul mates, they hadn't even met them in this life, and it was looking more and more likely that it might never happen. For the general populous, that was no big deal. Most people could go many lives and maybe never find that other part of them, most people wouldn't even know it was missing. But that wasn't the case of Leo and Ripley, or Marx and Ari, either. They were different.
They had destinies and responsibilities, they also tended to have crap for luck. The whole reason most of them were here, the reason there was a Bayside Academy, the reason they were organized against the powers that sought to undo everything that Marx had come to hold dear, was because of those missing parts. And it was starting to wear away at the foundation of their entire lives.
"There's no such thing as luck," Ari uttered, but she was in a fog and hadn't bothered to drag herself from it for Marx's sake. Her eyelashes that normally would have been as fair as her skin, were sheathed in thick black mascara that cast deep shadows down her rouged cheeks like old scars.
And Ari had a ton of those, even if you couldn't see them, Marx knew they were there.
"I take it you haven't seen anything," Leo said.
The casual observer wouldn't be able to pick up on the rainbow of emotions that flooded those few words, but there was nothing casual about the way Marx observed anyway. He was a hawk, searching a field of mice for just the right one.
There was fear in those words, and anger. There was defiance and defeat.
More than anything, there was hope.
Though Marx didn’t want to begrudge his friends their longing and dreams, they might as well have taken a gun and aimed right at Ari's heart. She might be tough, but even the strongest of people could easily be hurt by the sting of words alone.
Ari sighed. It sounded to Marx like a cross between the air as it was let out of a balloon and the growl of a drowning tiger, but he wasn't going to point that out.
It was hard enough to admit it to himself, with just how bad things had gotten.
"Sit down," Ari told Leo, slightly shaking her head as if even the Oracle couldn't believe what she was about to do.
"I'll stand, thanks," Leo said.
The words fell from his lips like rocks and landed at Ari's feet, which she just waved off.
"I'm not asking you to sit for your own benefit, you idiot. I told you to sit so when I piss you off, you won't be able to put as much power into your punches."
"Try it, artist," Marx warned, "and I'll break both your arms."
"You're both being ridiculous. I have never been prone to senseless violence against a fly, much less a woman," Leo said, but he sat down, anyway, then scooted further from Ari when Marx glared at him again.
"In our last life..." Ari began, it was like a bedtime story for their kind.
"Who do you mean by ‘our’?" Ripley asked helpfully.
While Ripley and Leo came along at roughly the same time together—that was the game they played—it didn't always perfectly align with Marx and Ari. They were on their own plane of existence.
"All of us, but for clarity purposes, know I'm speaking of Lucia and I," Ari said.
At just the sound of Leo's soulmate's name, he recoiled faster than if Ari had cracked his back with a lead-laced whip.
"What I need to tell you is going to hurt. You know I'm sorry, but it can't be helped, so I’m just going to be straight with you. Lucia and I made a plan to keep her away from this reincarnation—on purpose. To keep her away from you."
3
Silence fell between them like the slice of a guillotine, heavy and final. The stillness divided by something tangy and metallic.
Ari thought it might have been more humane to tell him Lucia had died. The reason she didn’t was selfishness, and ease—even if it was for his ultimate good, even if she was really starting to think she couldn’t do it on her own.
But if Lucia was dead, at least people would stop bringing her up.
“You....what?” Marx moved to restrain him, but Leo hadn’t tried to throw a punch. Leo hadn’t shifted an inch from where he’d reluctantly planted himself to Ari’s right.
Marx could pass for giving Leo an affectionate bro-hug if anyone was looking—and they weren’t—two dark arms wrapped around Leo’s pale neck and T-shirt-clad chest. They both wore shades of black but filled out their clothes in much different ways.
“I thought perhaps you knew, and that you just weren’t saying, but then I realized how miserable you were and assumed you couldn’t fake it. Neither of you were ever very good actors.”
Ari was an expert, she had to act for most of her many lives.
“Thanks for that,” Ripley said, futilely trying to pry Marx’s thick arms off Leo’s neck with his spindly freckled ones.
“Well,” Ari said, “it’s true.”
“It’s so true,” Marx added, releasing Leo who ended up not being much of a threat after all.
Ari inched further away from Leo, leaving space for Marx to sit between them, pressing her naked legs flush against his denim-clad ones. Ari wore a leather skirt and heels in every kind of weather, and, similarly, Marx wore holey skinny jeans regardless of the forecast.
Marx liked to skateboard and not ruin his knees. Ari just wanted to dress pretty.
It took a heavy moment, but Leo eventually recovered.
“Don’t look so hurt,” Ari told him but didn’t bother to check to see if he was. That was just Leo’s nature.
“Don’t look so—Jesus, Arabella, are you giving me a bad line? Next, you’ll be telling me it’s not me, it’s—”
“Are you even listening to yourself right now, Leonardo?” Ari asked. There was no malice in her voice, no hint of her meaning, either. It was lifeless, and her strange eyes were a million miles away again.
Something struck her then, she’d found something. It wasn’t exactly right, it wasn’t a moment pulled from the vastness, it was a memory of hers. Lucia was there, in a house where Ari had lived with Marx. They were both older than they were now—Ari was a lot older, and though Lucia still had the radiant look of youth, there was something a little off about her.
This was not the memory containing even the smallest bit of a plan, but in this memory, they’d mentioned there was one. Only something about the whole thing made Ari’s heart hurt in a kaleidoscope of ways. Flinching, Ari abruptly slammed the book shut in her mind. She’d comb through the vision later when she had less of an audience.
Ripley had moved until he hovered directly above the gap between Leo’s and Marx’s uneven shoulder blades, but he was trying to look anywhere but at the three of them. Ari knew that feeling all too well: plants, animals, giant cement lumps—people were painful to watch.
“It’s really not you,” Ari said, pulling herself out of a trance, “It’s her, and maybe even me, it was something we planned forever ago when we were looking for a way off this runaway train. You know, it’s not like you could really do this forever. It was becoming increasingly dangerous, and if we’re being honest, fairly monotonous as well. Don’t you get tired of always running? I sure as hell do.”
Ari had forced herself to her feet, her black heels made muted thuds on the textured path as she started away.
Leo had crossed his arms across the front of his faded black V-neck, staring Ari down, but she didn’t slink back, and Marx didn’t move to protect her—so the look was lost on her. Ari hurt for him, but there was only so much she could do right now, and she was failing. Trying to add more to her burden ultimately wouldn’t help any of them.
“You know...” Ari began but thought better of it, “this humidity makes you look like an angry Pomeranian,” she finished instead.
Whatever she was about to say, was lost even to her, and Leo’s curls had seemed to run away with him.
Limply, Ari let Marx take her hand and lead her down the path where they’d been all afternoon. Other students, friends, and strangers had moved on to other little nooks and larger rooms
. The space around them had cleared out, and Ari enjoyed the mental silence she’d forced herself into.
Light filtered through the glass panes above their head in warm beams, lighting the peaks of real trees and fake rocks alike, with a hot-white glow. As if every fiber of sunlight was the hair of a paintbrush in a skilled hand.
A half circle away and down two small flights of stairs was an encased pool where the towering manmade waterfall ended. As fake as the place was, it still made very real music. Colorful fish even swam in its depths.
Little plinks of water splashed somewhere in an older part of Ari’s soul and they slapped at an even older memory. One of Ari and Marx in a real lagoon, with water bluer than the sky, crystalline and transparent. Peaks in the water would rise to reach the sun, catching diamonds and flashing them back every which way. It would have been beautiful if either people in the memory had a moment to gaze upon its magnificence.
Ari liked to trace the places where the light touched on Marx’s brown chest. He had both arms around her, and her hair fell around them like a tangled silver net. There hadn’t been much else between them when she’d reached up, and Marx had dipped down, but that memory faded away like the evening sun before she could capture the end of it.
Before she could be kissed.
She knew it wasn’t an important thought. She knew it wasn’t going to end the war or save anybody else, but maybe, Ari thought, it could save her. She had begun to feel very much like she was going to drown. Even when Marx’s arms weren’t far away.
A hopeful look etched itself into Ari’s expression. Damp strands of hair had fallen from Ari’s messy ponytail and wound around her small ears like fuzzy little feathers. Marx pushed them away from her cheekbones with two delicate fingers, slow and precise. It was a well-practiced move.
Paranormal Academy Page 101
