The Amaryllis

by Alyssa Adamson

  “Ugh. Great. Now what am I supposed to tell Ashley? A big fat nothing, that’s what!”

  “As long as you keep on being Joy’s Jesus Christ, I’m sure she’ll still be plenty interested in you.”

  He shrugged. “True. That does not mean you’re off the hook!”

  I searched him over for a change of subject. As much as I’d always enjoyed my banter with Zach, talking about Phil brought some foreign sense of disappointment. For once, I wanted what he said to be true. I wanted to say that I was dating Phil Bronwyn.

  This…whatever we were doing…seemed like so much less. And still, so much more.

  “What’s with the sunglasses? Are you going for a Top Gun style?”

  “What style?”

  I sighed. “It’s not sunny enough for sunglasses.”

  “Oh. It’s nothing. That blood vessel that popped is spreading something awful. My mom thinks we’re probably going to have to see a specialist at this rate, but it’s so hard going out now. She’s afraid they’ll find something worse.”

  My lip twitched. “Worse? But you’re a god among men now.”

  “That’s what I said, but wouldn’t that just be a real kick in the crotch? Miraculously recover from a massive accident just to die of a stupid eye problem?”

  He pulled into the school parking lot slowly, waving to the disciples already lined up on the sidewalk like he was coming for the red carpet. I managed not to hiss at the sight before I laid eyes on the black Mustang, and the head of blonde hair hovering above it.

  Phil looked different now than he’d looked only hours ago. Not in the hair, still so pristinely white. Not in the figure that towered over his car. Not even in the flicker of violet eyes that shifted from disciple to disciple with territorial animosity.

  But as we passed, I swore the hint of a smile turned his lip up. Our eyes met, and his crinkled around the edges.

  It taught me to hope.

  Maybe…just maybe, I’d done something worthy of Phil’s love, too.

  Zach pulled into a spot close enough to the building that his followers watched his every move. He took his time sliding free of the car. “Edy, you coming?”

  I stared out at the parking lot, where Phil’s head floated closer as if walking on air. “You go on ahead. I think I’m going to catch up with my friend.”

  “What friends do you have that aren’t me?” he chuckled, following my gaze. “Oh. That friend.”

  I hid my blush in my backpack. Throwing myself free of the passenger’s seat, I slammed the door and started toward him with smile so wide it stung.

  Behind me, Zach yelled. “Hello! My friends!”

  An unholy crash echoed across the campus. Glass attacked us from all sides. Even as I recognized the familiarity of the situation and the fact that I would heal from any slices that cut my flesh, I shrieked, throwing myself to the pavement with hands over my head. Around me, the world had erupted in chaos, people screaming, hiding under cars, praying to all manner of deities.

  My ears rang, nearly deafening me to the residual squeal of glass raining down against the ground. When that died off, all that was left were my own cries. “What the hell?!”

  I hadn’t moved my hands! At least, I didn’t think I had.

  “Eden?” a familiar voice cried. I could picture Phil’s face, twisted with frantic need, just like when he’d pulled me from Zach’s car. “Eden!”

  I merely raised my arm, climbing up to my knees with my other arm on the wheel of Zach’s car, just as Phil slid my way. He took my face between both of his gloved hands, looking me over for damage. “Are you alright?”

  “I…I’m fine?” My skin stung and my ears throbbed, but I could already feel my body scrambling to fix itself. Looking back at him, the glass had done quite a number on his face, cutting his lip. The entire right side looked a mess of triangular gauges. The compulsion to touch him, to help him, struck me like a physical blow. “Your face!”

  Reaching up to probe his skin with my fingers, he grasped my wrists and held them just a breath away from where they could actually help. Oh. Right.

  “Jesus Christ…”

  Up above, Zach hadn’t moved. Despite the massive eruption that had cut up his face, he stood stock still, arms raised over his head. He glanced between what had been every window on the north-facing wall and his own hands. I prayed that one of the disciples had thrown a rock through the glass but I knew they hadn’t. Not at once and not at all those windows.

  It was Zach.

  17. Different

  Since a vast majority of classrooms were rendered uninhabitable by the act of ‘delinquent vandalism,’ as they’d stooped to calling it, class continued for much of the day in the auditorium. The only exception to this time came at lunch, when we were removed at random and by the handful to go to the cafeteria. When my time came up, I glanced about the crowd for a familiar face but found none.

  Zach hadn’t stuck around after the explosion. I imagined he had to be getting tired of boneless wings by now.

  “Say the word and I’ll make us disappear.”

  I jumped, smile already alight to find Phil falling into step beside me. My teeth sunk into my lip. I would have to square those faces away for now. They’d give me away. “And then we’ll both suffer for it. In detention. And I’m facing house arrest as is.”

  He frowned. “Were your parents terribly angry?”

  “The threat of being buried in the backyard did come up more than once.”

  “So coming back tonight would be out of the question?”

  I couldn’t help but waver under the hesitant smile he shot my way. “What would you want me there for anyway? You can’t talk or see me?”

  “It’s just…” he stopped himself.

  “Just what?”

  Phil’s body went rigid. “I like knowing you’re there. That you’re safe.” Before I could even fathom what response to give, he fixed a happier façade upon his face. “But we could have all day if you’ll have me. Look around. Do you think they’ll miss us?” Stooping down to my level, should prying ears lay in wait, he continued, “Run away with me.”

  The prospect was promising, but I wouldn’t risk getting myself in trouble so soon. Not when I’d only just dug myself out. Besides, in school or out, I just wanted Phil. “I hear there’s chicken nuggets in the cafeteria.”

  His grin softened. “Chicken nuggets it is.”

  A hand met the small of my back, hastening me toward the cafeteria and to the line already forming to collect food. He took trays for both of us and claimed a table at the back that we occupied all on our own. My mouth remained consistently dry through it all.

  It knew what I was thinking. And how much I didn’t want to say it.

  “Well, it isn’t five-star, but I suppose it’ll have to do,” he chuckled, lifting a bite of mashed potatoes so it would slide through the prongs of his fork.

  “Oh quiet. You’ll like it,” I muttered.

  He lifted another forkful to his mouth. “I know better than to argue your tastes.”

  Was this where I was supposed to tell him? Over a plate of nuggets and mashed potatoes? It hardly seemed like a romantic-enough venue, but where else would there be? If I thought it over any longer, I’d say something stupid…stupider, as it were.

  It would have to be now.

  “So…Phil…could we talk?”

  He’d already engrossed himself with shoveling another bite into his mouth. “Of?”

  I shrugged. “I guess I just have questions about our kind.”

  “Ask away.”

  “Just…feelings I’ve been having…”

  He snickered, “Well that would be exclusive to you. Our kind doesn’t have feelings.”

  My stomach dropped. “None at all?”

  “We shouldn’t. If we develop feelings, it can only end poorly. Case in point: Lily.” His next inhale hissed through his teeth. He’d said too much.

  “What about Lily?” I asked.

 
He shook his head, mouth full once again.

  “You can’t get out of it this time. What’s wrong with Lily? She’s different?”

  His voice dropped. “She was not always different.”

  “What was she like?”

  “Very much like Gregory, I imagine.”

  The slap of plastic on the tabletop made me jump. Lily ever-so-gracefully took a seat at my side, staring down into the vortex of mashed potatoes on her tray like they’d personally wronged her. The air that wafted off her skin felt cold, like I was standing in front of an open fridge.

  “Lilith,” he greeted, unsurprised by her arrival.

  That made one of us. I’d never seen Lily sit in the cafeteria. Come rain or sun or snow, she always took her lunch to the car.

  “Mephistopheles,” she countered. “Eden.”

  “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

  “I thought, if we were going to discuss me, I might want to give the first-person account.”

  I returned to that moment weeks ago, when I’d succumbed to the shame of staring at Lily’s drawing. The familiar heat crawled into my neck. “I’m sorry, Lily—”

  “Do not worry yourself, Eden. Your guilt does not make any of us feel better.”

  Nevertheless, I somehow managed to feel even more embarrassed with myself. “Of course.”

  “I have enough of my own to endure,” she confessed. Then she stared off into space, forgetting us as I expected she might. Phil snapped his fingers until she snapped back to reality.

  “Apologies. The grey comes and it…” she chuckled humorlessly. “I cannot hold it back.”

  “Grey?” I inquired. “What grey?”

  Phil cleared his throat. “As you know, our kind is incapable of human emotion, barring whatever we can take from them. Our kind cannot handle strong feelings of devastation. We are not built for it. So when we are exposed to it—”

  “We die.”

  He stared at his sister. She stared at the mashed potatoes. He let his eyes fall to the tabletop. “Right.”

  I looked at Lily and didn’t feel so surprised. She already looked like a corpse. “You’re dying?”

  “Slowly. Very slowly.” She explained. “It comes on suddenly. When I think. When I am sad. When I remember. And then it stabs me in the side and it steals my eyesight. It brings me to my knees and one day it will kill me.”

  Her voice emerged so even. So dull. Not a hint of inflection.

  “And you don’t feel…anything?”

  Her ironic smile slipped off. “I feel everything.” She hesitated. “I do not fear death because I welcome the chance to feel nothing.”

  “What happened?”

  Lily lapsed into another staring contest with the wall. Phil raised his hand to snap her out of it again, but she spoke with faraway stare. “The last high school we went to was in New Mexico. Teenagers everywhere feel similarly. Either they are carefree and indestructible, or they are dark and angsty.”

  Her eyes glazed over with a grey film and her body buckled over itself. She knocked over her carton of juice and Phil caught it before it could make a mess all over us. Instinct made me reach for her, if only to stop her from falling out of her chair, but her arm snapped out like a striking snake to stop me.

  “Leave me. It will pass,” she croaked. The moments passed slowly until she drew herself up to her actual height and continued, “One boy…exuded more pleasant feelings than others. Ethan. He liked school. And he liked his parents. And he liked to have fun with his friends. For as long as I knew him, I always wondered if there was anything Ethan didn’t like.

  “And like a moth drawn to the flame, I could not resist him. I spent every waking moment with that boy, soaking in those feelings and feeding on him…he was the most delectable creature I could imagine…” she mused. Her eyes narrowed. “And then he fell in love with me.”

  Now that wasn’t so surprising. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “As if I needed another reason to be close to him,” she rubbed her face like it was paining her. “I felt whatever he felt. It becomes as real as what you would perceive as your own feelings, so I…I loved him.”

  Another pain seemed to tear through Lily. She jerked away from the table, breathless and wobbling on her feet. Without another word and without her tray of food, she fled the cafeteria.

  Phil looked after her with something akin to pain on his own face.

  “I had thought moving to a place called Joy might reverse the Fade. I have not seen it slow down in the least.”

  “Are you sensing her pain?”

  “I do not have to. Those of our kind are connected. When one of us dies, it weakens the collective. My instincts can feel that she is fading, and it pains me as well.”

  I didn’t need him to say anymore. “He died. Didn’t he?”

  “It’s why we left. Anyone for a hundred miles would’ve seen the blood on her hands,” he muttered. “She claims it was an accident. I do not know whether it was an accident or if she became so enthralled in feeding that she no longer cared…”

  “She killed him?” I gasped. “But she loved him.”

  “One of the pitfalls to letting herself fall in love. I warned her. I warned her.” He shook his head. “Stupid girl.”

  “Warned her of what?”

  “The pain. When she first showed interest in that boy, I told her it was a bad idea but she just couldn’t help herself. Now look at her.” Darkness shadowed his gaze. “She’s wasting away.”

  My mouth went dry. The back of my throat squeaked. “Speaking from experience?”

  He opened his mouth to lie to me but he stopped in mid-disagreement. Then he caught my eye and he swallowed hard. “There was a time I loved. I wish someone would’ve been there to talk me out of it.”

  The cold stab of jealousy pierced my heart. “Who was she?”

  “She lived nearby, we’d played as children. I’d known her all her life.” The muscles of his face twitched. He hid it from me. “Jehanne married another. A man with land. But that didn’t mean I stopped wanting her, even if it went against God’s law.”

  Shaking his head in disgust, he continued, “If she said the word I would’ve taken her far, far away, but I knew I couldn’t provide for her like her husband could.”

  Dead air escaped me instead of an answer.

  I wondered if she was pretty—this Jehanne. I wondered if she was nice. I wondered what she’d done to capture the heart of the man before me—or, at least, the man he’d been back then. “Did she love you?”

  “She did. Not enough to leave with me, but enough that she would come to me when her husband had gone. Enough to sin with me.”

  He hung his head in shame, pupils flickering desperately about the room. My hand wished to reach out and take his but I held back. “Is that how you became…the way you are? You sinned?”

  “I wasn’t damned for loving her. I was damned for falling on my own sword when I returned from the wars to find her husband had killed her.” His throat bobbed. “For falling pregnant. By me.” As the silence turned deafening between us, his chuckle made me jump. “I can think of no greater punishment for someone wanting to end their life than to make them live forever.”

  “That’s…” I ran through the words in my mind but none seemed tragic enough. “Terrible.”

  He shrugged as though the confession had brought him no pain at all. Like I hadn’t seen it play out on that face. “It wasn’t without its own solace. I met Gregory soon after. He taught me that, so long as I fed, I never had to feel that agony. Even now, I can remember only a fraction of what I felt back then. At the time, it was as though the world had ended.”

  “But you’re not feeding anymore. Does that mean those feelings could come back?”

  Those eyes narrowed dangerously. “I will never feel like that again. I resolved a long time ago. So long as I can help it, I will never love, never suffer, never regret like I did all those years ago. I would rather fall on that sword all
over again.”

  I hadn’t thought my hopes could be even further dashed. My heart hurt for Lily, it hurt for Phil—or, more appropriately, Roland. But, more than that, it hurt for me. For a love that had to die before it had even lived.

  My jaw bobbed, walking a line of wanting to tell him and wanting to swallow my own tongue so I could never speak again. Phil didn’t love me—he didn’t want to love me—by his own admission. But then, where was I supposed to go from here?

  I had to get out of this room. Just looking at him physically pained me.

  I faked a smile. Rising to my feet, I pretended not to notice him place a hand over his heart.

  “I think I’m going to head out early—”

  He stood as well, fierce determination melting into concern. “Are you alright?”

  “Yeah. Just…heartburn. Greasy food, you know?”

  He shook his head. “No…”

  “It’s just a stomachache. I’ll be fine by Calc.”

  “O…okay? If you’re sure?”

  I didn’t do more than nod on my way out the door. The burn of eyes on my back made speech incomprehensible. With my own glued to the floor, I didn’t see the body approach me until it had made full contact with my chest.

  “E…Edy?”

  He looked so un-Zach-like. With skin pale and eyes lined with heavy bags, I might’ve thought Gregory had gotten his hands on him again. That was…if I didn’t know any better. Knowing what I did now, I pinpointed the look on his face as something more than weakness.

  It was hunger.

  “Oh my god. What the hell happened to you?”

  Zach looked around the hallway with unabashed terror. He reached out to take my arm, hand stilling midway and jerking back to his side. “C…could I tell you something?”

  “Of course!”

  “Alone.”

  I shifted nervously, meeting a set of violet orbs from down the hall. Phil’s thoughts must’ve been running on a similar frequency, as his face creased with worry. Still, I nodded. Maybe to Phil. Maybe to Zach. Maybe for my own reassurance.

  “Sure. Where to?”

  He shoved his hands into his pockets and trudged toward the Art room. Mrs. Brown must’ve been on a lunch of her own, since the echoing silence didn’t break with her high-pitched trilling.