by Kristie Cook
Very quietly, she said, “Maybe it’s time to let go, honey.”
I jerked out of Mom’s arms as if she’d just slapped me. How could she say that?
“No,” I whispered, pushing her away and shaking my head, slowly at first and then more violently. “I can’t. You just said our souls are bound together.”
“But maybe letting go of the memories will make the rest easier for you.”
“No! I can’t do it. I’ll never let go!”
Swirly Alexis jumbled my thoughts, and Psycho tried to push her way in. Before I let her, before I lashed out at Mom again, I grabbed my coffee cup and stormed outside. A tumult of emotions battered at me, a hurricane suddenly raging in my mind. How could I make any changes, move forward with Dorian, if I refused to let go of the past? Of the pain the memories brought? Letting go of everything that caused days like yesterday meant letting go of him. And I absolutely refused to do that.
Did that mean changing would be impossible? Did I have to live like this until he returned? Or until the Ang’dora, which would change me, make me strong and give me powers so I could find and rescue him? Or did I hold on to something that didn’t really exist? Was holding on to the thread of hope that he still lived completely futile?
Ugh! I hate you, Swirly! Stop messing with my mind!
She responded with more irrationality. An unexplainable and overwhelming need to move overcame me. I went around the corner and pulled out my stash of cigarettes from under the air conditioning unit, needing to take the edge off. As soon as I lit one, I gagged and choked. Gross! When did I start doing this? I smashed the butt out and crushed the pack in my fist. I took a swig of coffee. What I normally called the nectar of heaven now tasted bitter. The warmth felt thick in my mouth and coated the back of my throat. I tossed the rest out. I didn’t need the caffeine anyway. I already felt wired. What’s wrong with me now?
I was too on edge to write again. My publisher would be expecting those final chapters before our meeting next week; it had been too long since I’d submitted anything. I didn’t care about their deadlines as much as I did about Dorian, though. But despite my revelation this morning, I just couldn’t bring myself to sit down and finish the story. My mind refused to focus, and my body balked at physically sitting still.
While Mom took Dorian to school, I paced anxiously through the sprawling house, first through Dorian’s and my bedrooms, as well as my office, which together made up the east wing. I picked up toys in Dorian’s room and straightened the bed, though it was unnecessary. He hadn’t even slept in his bed last night. I moved to the kitchen and scrubbed the counters and then the floor. Again unnecessary—Mom kept the house immaculate—but I needed to do something.
I ventured into the west wing that housed Mom’s suite and the guest room, which we called Owen’s room. Besides Rina’s visits every year or two, he was the only one who used it. Wondering why the door was closed, I cracked it open and peered into the darkness. A pillow flew at me, and I jerked the door shut. Crap. I’d forgotten Owen had arrived yesterday. I wondered how much of my tantrum he experienced. Not that it was new to Owen. He’d seen the worst of me.
He must have had a difficult time at first. He mostly stayed away then. Being the one to return that ill-fated day and deliver the crushing news, he’d obviously felt survivor’s guilt, and it was hard for him to be around me. I probably didn’t do or say what I should have to make him feel any better. I didn’t blame him for what happened. But I did, every now and then, wonder why and how he, Solomon, and the other soldier came back and not any of the others. I never asked him, though. I didn’t want details . . . details that might tell me something I really didn’t want to know. Owen never brought the subject up himself, either. I didn’t know if he didn’t like talking about it at all, or just not with me.
Although we didn’t need extra protection, not even a shield, he started coming around more. Especially recently. Dorian loved his Uncle Owen. He was the closest thing Dorian had to a father figure, although I ensured everyone remembered he was not his father and he would never replace him. Mom enjoyed his company, too, and I didn’t mind it.
I let him sleep, returning to the midsection of the house. I circled the table in the formal dining room and meandered through the living room that we only used for holidays, moving around knickknacks and putting them back the way they were. I did the same in the family room at the back of the house and eventually swept all the books onto the floor and started reshelving them by the color of their covers. I supposed Swirly made this organizational system seem rational when I started. Halfway through, though, I realized the idiocy of it. Too impatient to put them back in alphabetical order, I just piled them haphazardly onto the built-in shelves.
At some point, Mom returned and watched me as I paced and rearranged and cleaned, trying to work off this inexplicable energy. I tried to ignore her. Once Owen woke up, they both seemed to contemplate my behavior and exchanged worried glances. I couldn’t ignore that.
“What?” I demanded. They just shook their heads.
“Nothing,” Owen muttered.
“For you to worry about,” Mom added cryptically.
I scowled. “Blame the stupid birds and squirrels. They’re so damn loud today. They’re driving me crazy!”
Mom’s eyes narrowed, and her brow furrowed, but she didn’t say anything more.
By noon, my muscles twitched and ached with the need to move. Cleaning and pacing weren’t enough. Energy pulses shot through my nerves and muscles, and the sudden urge to run came over me. Run? What the hell?
I didn’t understand the impulse, but I rushed to my room to find running clothes and shoes anyway. I only found old shorts, sweats, holey and stained T-shirts and flip-flops. I didn’t even own a pair of tennis shoes. Of course, that made sense. I hadn’t run for the heck of it since high school gym class.
Oh! Mom runs. I found her in the laundry room, folding towels. “Mom, can I borrow your running shoes?”
She gave me a funny look.
“I just feel like I need to go for a run.” I hopped from foot to foot with overwhelming energy, unable to explain the compulsion. She would think me deranged if I told her Swirly decided I needed to fix my fat self, the only explanation I could conceive.
She narrowed her eyes for a moment, and then a strange expression flickered across her face, as though a realization had suddenly hit her and she dismissed it just as quickly as it came. “Yes, of course. They’re in my closet.”
A minute later, I sat at the kitchen table, tying the shoes, when Owen walked in.
“Where you going?” he asked.
“For a run.”
“Cool. Mind if I tag along?”
I looked at him with an eyebrow raised.
He shrugged. “I was going anyway.”
“I’m sure you actually run,” I said. “This will probably be more like a jog . . . or for you, a walk.”
“If I get bored, I’ll leave you alone to your trot.” He grinned, his sapphire-blue eyes shining.
“Whatever.”
We started with a jog down my long driveway. As my muscles loosened, jogging wasn’t enough. My body wanted more, so I picked up the pace to a slow run. Then a faster one.
“When’d you start running?” Owen asked as we picked up speed for the third time, neither of us breathing heavily.
“Now.”
He looked down at me, his blond hair falling across his face. He wore it long now, past his ears but not quite to his shoulders. He gave me a strange look. “Really?”
“Really. I’m wearing Mom’s shoes because I don’t even own any.”
“Huh.” He didn’t seem to know what else to say and let the subject drop.
Once off my property, we’d taken a right and ran down the middle of the quiet, residential street for several blocks. All the homes on the street sat on a minimum of two acres, most with gates at the driveways and hedges at least six-feet-high lining the street. The neighborhood
featured privacy, and the people who lived here could afford to pay for it. We moved here nearly three years ago, when my books really started taking off and the media started paying attention.
We’d stayed in the safe house in Northern Virginia until a few months after Dorian’s birth, when Mom deemed us healthy enough to move. The safe house was supposed to serve as a place of refuge for Amadis people who’d been attacked or who were newly converted from the Daemoni. Since I was still too human until the Ang’dora to be a real part of the Amadis, Rina refused to let anyone else come. So my presence created a few issues, and we couldn’t stay permanently. We moved to a house near Virginia Beach. I liked life there more than Atlanta, but we’d lived in a small town. Small towns weren’t always conducive for the famous—or semi-famous, anyway. Especially loony ones, and I was pretty loony then. Atlanta and this neighborhood provided a better environment for me and my insanity.
There were really just a couple of incidents that indicated to the world I wasn’t quite right. But they were enough. The first time occurred the first year while at a book signing in New York City. I sat by the bookstore’s window and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a tall man with sandy-brown hair walk by the store. I ran outside and took off after him, leaving a line of fans awaiting my autograph. When he turned the corner and I saw the unfamiliar profile, I collapsed to the sidewalk bawling.
The second time, Mom and I were meeting with my publishing team to discuss the second book of my new series, and during lunch, someone made a remark about the absence of my son’s father and suggested I start dating. I flew off the handle. Finally, during a televised interview for the third book, my mouth open in mid-sentence, I caught a glimpse of someone standing in the shadows offset. For a moment, I thought I’d seen my husband, that he’d made his homecoming a surprise. Then I realized someone had set down a life-sized, cardboard cutout of a young Brad Pitt. I remembered the conversation of the actor’s character in Legends of the Fall the night of my first-ever kiss and burst into hysterical laughter. I couldn’t stop chortling, though the tears streaming down my face were those of grief. Someone finally dragged me off the set.
The first incident happened before I became too famous, and the luncheon was private, so both events were easily covered up. But the last one took place on live television, aired nationally. The country woke up that morning to quite a show. That was several years ago, but it’d made a lasting impression, brought up every time my books took the limelight. My publisher took me off the circuit then, and I didn’t have to make any public appearances since. Fine by me. I hated them anyway.
Now that I’d learned to wear the mask of Fake Alexis, I could probably manage an interview or two to change that public perception, and it might be required when we released this last book, but I had mixed feelings. I preferred this private life and didn’t really care if people still thought me crazy, but the older Dorian became, the more such rumors would affect him. In other words, the more fights he’d get in and the more damage he’d cause. I thought we could just homeschool him.
We would have to move away from this neighborhood soon. People would notice my “sister” wasn’t aging. But, then again, maybe we could just switch places and be mother and daughter but with roles reversed. After all, she looked like how I should at my age—twenty-seven, rather than her true one-hundred-twenty-three years. And I didn’t look exactly a hundred years older, but I did look old enough to be her mother. As I ran, I thought about mentioning this idea to her. It would at least make her chuckle. I owed her that.
Owen indicated a left turn at the intersection we approached, and I followed his command. What the hell? I don’t really care where I go. I just want to run! Although the sudden urge made no sense, the actual activity seemed like a positive action.
But then Owen had to blow it and almost make me regret the whole thing.
“Rough night last night?” he asked once we turned the corner.
“You heard?”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
I sighed. “Not your fault I’m so messed up.”
“It’s just hard to see you like that. Last time I saw you, you seemed . . . almost normal, more like you used to be. I remember when—”
Damn it, Owen. I didn’t want to remember. I interrupted him. “Let’s not go there. Please?”
“Yeah, sure.”
We ran in silence again for about half a block, the only sounds coming from our shoes hitting the pavement in a comfortable rhythm and the birds in the trees, still so loud, I swore they had megaphones attached to their beaks. Then Owen had an idea.
“See if you can keep up with me.” He lengthened his stride, and I easily kept pace with him. Then he increased his speed again. I could start to feel the push this time, but I could do it. He went even faster and got away from me.
“You’re pretty fast,” he said after jogging back to me. “You’re sure you didn’t run before today?”
“Don’t you think I’d know that?” I wiped a trail of sweat from my temple. “Look at me, Owen. Do I look like a runner?”
He chuckled, and obviously a smart man, avoided answering.
“If you want to go, go,” I said. “Don’t hang back here on my account.”
“I’m fine.”
We ran through and around a park about a half-mile from my house. Georgia pines, surrounded by brush, lined parts of the paths, giving the feeling we ran in the wilderness, and other parts took us past soccer and baseball fields. As we approached the playground, I decided I should probably turn back for home. I didn’t feel out of breath—even though I’d been smoking for who knew how long (I seriously didn’t know, but it must have been years, because I had a vague memory of someone handing me a cigarette when I felt especially stressed during a book signing)—and my muscles weren’t sore. But I knew I would pay for this asinine impulse later, and I saw no need to make it worse by continuing. Owen was about to head on for a longer run when I suddenly stopped as if I’d run into a wall.
There he is! He stood across the playground, about sixty or seventy yards away, and I immediately knew he was the same person who stood in my backyard yesterday. I could feel his eyes on me again. He stood a little closer now, but I still couldn’t see his face. His brown hair hung way past the shoulders, and it whipped around in the March breeze. The shade of the large oak he stood under also concealed his face. Something, maybe the long hair, told me he was young. Just a boy. But his body looked more developed than a boy’s. Much more. No, a man. Too young for me, but definitely a man. Just like the day before, he felt . . . familiar. I started toward him again.
“Alexis? You okay?” Owen asked, after I took only a few steps. I turned and looked at him.
“Huh?” I asked distractedly.
“Are you okay? You look . . . odd.”
I looked back at the stranger. He had disappeared again. Damn it!
“I’m, uh, fine. Go on. I’ll see you at home.” I started jogging again, which seemed to be enough for Owen. He took off in the other direction.
I wanted to search for the stranger. I had to know he was at least real. But I had no clue in which direction he’d gone. Or if he really was just a figment of my imagination. Or wishful thinking. I walked home, mentally and emotionally feeling like crap again.
Physically, however, I felt great. Owen ran up behind me just as I walked up to the beige-and-brick, ranch-style house. He said he’d run another three miles to add to the nearly three we did together. Three miles? Oh, this is going to hurt. I wanted to do it again, though, and went to the store to buy my own running wear. Of course, I would probably be over this idiotic impulse by tomorrow and would never run again, but right now, it made perfect sense that I needed my own running shoes. Which was how Swirly operated—making the most irrational thoughts seem logical.
“You’re sure you want running shoes?” the pock-faced kid at the sporting goods store asked, his nose crinkling. “I mean, we have walking shoes. Or my mom really likes these cross-t
rainers.”
He pointed to a pair of plain white shoes that looked like they belonged on a grandma whose idea of exercise was walking around Wal-Mart. I eyed the shoes and then him. Was he serious?
“Are they good for running?” I asked, my annoyance clear. “I run.”
He gave me a doubtful look, but led me over to the running shoes. I couldn’t blame him . . . except for the part of making me feel as old as his mother. Stupid kid. What does he know? He couldn’t have been more than five or six years younger than me.
“There you go,” he said a while later, handing me a bag full of shoes, socks, shorts, and sports bras. “Good luck with your, uh, running.”
Maybe he was being polite. Maybe a genuine smile stretched across his face. But to me, the grin looked like a smug smirk, and his tone dripped with sarcasm. Psycho flipped the switch again.
I leaned over the counter, my face only inches from his. “Who the fuck do you think you are, treating me like a worthless bag of shit? You don’t even know who I am!”
He stared at me, his eyes bugged and his mouth opened wide enough to park a car. I stared back. Did I really just do that? A couple of customers who’d walked in the door just in time to hear me stopped and gawked. Yeah. I did. I opened my mouth again and then shut it. Thankfully, I wasn’t so far gone to make sure they knew exactly who I was as I went completely whacko on the kid. I grabbed my bag and stomped out of the store before I could make a bigger fool of myself.
I squealed out of the parking lot, and once on the road, I stood on the gas, taking my anger out on my car, which felt bulky and sluggish. I forced myself to back off the accelerator because I already soared way above the speed limit. I aimlessly roamed the surface streets, first on the main roads, and then through a park-like residential neighborhood, but the urge to go faster overwhelmed me.
As I sat at the red light blocking my turn to the highway, my phone beeped with a text message from Mom. She worried about my uncharacteristic absence.
“Where did you go?”
