by Maria Amor
“Well, open it, stupid,” Julia said, extending it a little bit closer to him. Dylan recovered his equanimity enough to take the parcel from her and set it on his lap, looking at it for a moment to admire the job she’d done wrapping it as she sat down. “I swear if you don’t love it, I’m going to kill someone,” Julia said, and Dylan almost laughed at the anticipation in her voice.
“I’m sure it’s great,” he said, glancing at her. “What is it?”
“Open it and you’ll find out,” Julia told him tartly. Dylan rolled his eyes and began carefully unwrapping it. The paper Julia had chosen was actually really pretty: like the inside of a shell, with embossed fishes on it, clearly representative of his elemental alignment. Finally, when he peeled the paper back, he saw that it was a journal—leather-bound, like the ones he used when he finally got his lyrics perfect, brown and rich and soft.
“It’s beautiful,” he said, looking up at her.
“Open it!” Julia almost shouted, her face full of barely contained excitement. “Seriously if you don’t, I might actually die of waiting to see.” Dylan frowned in confusion, and then lifted the cover on the journal.
Inside the cover, he saw a slightly familiar scrawl. Thank you! And his confusion deepened. His gaze switched down to the signature underneath it, and for just a moment, Dylan thought his heart might have dropped down into his stomach. “Wh…”
“Turn the page,” Julia suggested, her voice tight. “Starting like—two pages in I think.” Dylan did as he was told, gingerly flipping the cover page and the first, blank page. The second page made his eyes widen as he slowly realized what it was. All-capitalized print that was somehow blockish and fluid at the same time, rendered with a fine-point felt-tip pen; lyrics that moved down the page with a seemingly effortless regularity.
“Oh, my god,” Dylan said, as his gaze took in the lyrics themselves. “This—this is…”
“He hand-wrote three albums’ worth,” Julia said quietly.
“How did you—”
“It took about half my allowance for probably about three months to get it,” Julia said. “I talked to some people, got your manager to talk to some people, finally got a hold of the guy himself—and well…” she shrugged. “A major donation, a request, and a huge, huge thank-you, and the book was on its way to me about a week ago, and just arrived about an hour ago.”
“You have to have…” Dylan felt his eyes stinging with the beginning of tears. No matter what anyone else he knew got him for his birthday, he knew that nothing—for years—would top the gift that Julia had managed to put together for him. He flipped through the pages, catching snatches of lyrics. Julia was right: there were three whole albums’ worth of lyrics written out; the first pages were from the most recent album, further back from the album before it, and further back the album before that. “How did you keep this a secret?” He looked up from the book, stunned.
“It nearly killed me,” Julia said with a grin. Dylan looked back down at the journal in front of him and shook his head, still not quite able to believe it. It was better than just having an autograph; this was an entire book of handwritten lyrics by Daniel Johns.
“How in the world did you get him to do this?” Dylan looked up from the lyrics of “World Upon Your Shoulders” to stare at Julia in disbelief.
“I talked your manager into talking to his management group, and did a lot of fast talking, and made a big donation to a couple of causes close to his heart,” Julia said. “And did a substantial amount of begging on top of it.” She grinned. “Please tell me you love it.”
“If it were between you and this book in a fire, I would have to really think about it,” Dylan replied. Julia laughed out loud, sinking down onto his bed, and Dylan stood up, impulse propelling him forward. He closed the journal and bent over Julia where she lay sprawled on his bed, still giggling at his comment, leaned in, and pressed his lips to her forehead in a brief kiss—but even that, for just a moment, felt almost electric. He pulled back almost as soon as he’d kissed her, and staggered back to his chair, shaking his head again in complete shock that Julia had managed to pull it off.
He flipped through pages in the journal, staring at a few of the lyrics here and there, trying to make it real in his mind that he actually possessed a handwritten collection of three of his favorite albums in the entire world. “This is amazing,” he said, not even necessarily to Julia, who’d gone quiet on his bed. “I... nothing I could ever get you could possibly be as good as this.”
“Don’t think about it that way,” Julia said. “I just had to top the phenomenal gift you gave me. And when I found out I could do this, I had to do it.” Dylan chuckled softly.
“Yeah, I can imagine that,” he admitted; he’d seen Julia when she’d decided that something had to happen, that something had to be a certain way. Their entire previous school year had been a battle of Julia pushing for an investigation of the School of Sandrine, until she finally did it herself—and at that, she’d faced the council itself with him at her side to make the truth come to light.
“I’m glad you like it so much,” Julia said quietly. Dylan looked up at her, stroking the pages idly.
“I love it. I really—it’s so amazing I don’t even have words.” He smiled at her, glancing down at the handwritten pages. He laughed after a moment. “This is basically the high point of my birthday, and it’s not even dinner yet.”
Julia rose from his bed and stepped up to him, and Dylan felt a brief jolt of something he couldn’t quite define. She leaned in and kissed him on the forehead—just as he’d kissed her moments before—and pulled back. “Just don’t get so wrapped up in looking at it that you forget to get ready or my parents will be pissed,” she suggested, grinning. Dylan snorted, but he couldn’t deny her the triumph she’d achieved.
When Julia had left his room, Dylan pored over the book for a few moments, looking at the lyrics for the most recent album. It’s getting a little hard not to talk to one another but I’m sick of playing it cool/ In the end everybody needs someone… He shook his head, smiling to himself, closing his eyes and hearing the song in his mind. His parents could give him his own place to live in, and he wouldn’t be any happier with that than he was with the gift that Julia had worked so hard and planned for so long to acquire for him.
He forced himself to put the book away when he knew that far too many minutes had passed with him just looking at it, just staring and making it real in his mind that he owned it. There was no way that he was going to let the amazing gift keep him from enjoying everything else that his birthday had to offer: time with his parents, a night out on the town, and all of his favorite foods.
As he and Julia had gotten older—and in Dylan’s case, as he’d entered and left the music industry—birthdays had become slightly less about big, raucous parties and more about spending time with people; Julia’s last birthday, in the midst of the scandal at Sandrine, had taken them through the city, to an amazing restaurant, one of few venues that let under-18 patrons in, and a bowling alley for a few frames before they made their way home. Dylan didn’t even want that level of excitement, and he’d made it clear to his parents and Julia’s both that all he wanted was to spend time with them.
He’d been working hard at focusing his energies, at drawing from the reserves that he had deep in his mind as much as possible, he spent the time they had to be with Ruth on her property far outside of the city practicing, even meditating under her guidance, learning to not only control his elementally-aligned abilities more thoroughly, but also discovering new tricks and strategies. He had to; after all, the girl he was supposed to be protecting and acting as a companion to could far outstrip him in sheer power, and that was becoming more and more evident by the day, as they got closer and closer to her seventeenth birthday.
The political landscape surrounding her had become more intense as well. She’d made her real debut in the world of adult Guardians the day she’d appeared in front of the council to ac
cuse Terron Dimitrios of stealing relics from the school, and one of the members of the council of funding and aiding him in the interest of securing more power for his father, who was one of the potential future rulers of the element of fire.
The trick that she had pulled when challenged to a battle with the accused had shocked the entire council, and word had spread about her even beyond what her grandmother had tried to carefully release to the supernatural world in introducing Julia to different Guardians aligned with earth and water. Nobody had expected that a girl who didn’t even have her full abilities yet could pull a stunt as spectacular as Julia had—even if it had been with Dylan’s help. Everyone wanted to be connected with the girl, preferably before she came into her full abilities.
As a result of that, Dylan had had to go with Julia to almost too many events to count, acting as her escort; it was common knowledge in their world that he was also her protector, and he knew that there would come a time—eventually—when someone would try and test his ability to fulfill that obligation. Ruth knew it too; their sessions together focused on the older Guardian imparting as much as she possibly could of her skills, as quickly as Dylan could master them.
He had never worked as hard in his life—even when he’d been trying to justify the success of the first album he’d released by becoming the best musician he possibly could; then, it had been his self-esteem on the line. But protecting Julia, who in spite of her outward acceptance of his role insisted on putting herself into dangerous situations, meant that someone else’s well-being, not just their pride, was involved.
Dylan stripped off his jeans and tee shirt and went to his closet, sighing at the fact that he would have to dress up for the evening. More of his allowance than he liked had gone into making sure that he had clothes that would at least look appropriate next to Julia’s outfits at the different events they were expected to attend; it helped that his parents had bumped up the amount of money in his account weekly—Ruth had insisted on paying them for Dylan’s assistance, and while they had control of his royalties, they recognized that he was nearly an adult, capable of making more of his own decisions—but just the idea of going shopping for clothes didn’t appeal to him.
He took the hanger with the suit he wanted to wear that night out of the closet, and grabbed one of his dress shirts as well. At least, he thought, being dressed up generally meant that people at restaurants would take him seriously; and he thought with a grin about whatever Julia would decide to wear for his birthday, shaking his head as he took the dress shirt off of the hanger and slipped it on.
She had certain rules she had to stick to for their appearances at events where other Guardians and supernatural creatures and people would be—and they had a dress code that they had to obey at Sandrine—so when she did have the opportunity to completely choose for herself, Julia tended to pick things that would, if she were in the entertainment industry, get her on the cover of magazines. She had no such goal, but the dresses she wore, or the skirt-and-blouse combinations, whatever she wore to go out with their friends, was bound to be eye-catching, and Dylan was almost certain that she wouldn’t disappoint for his birthday.
He tightened his belt around his waist and looked at the suit jacket, deciding that he’d deal with that when the time came. His parents should be at the apartment at any moment, and he would have more presents to unwrap; he’d have to pretend to be more excited about them than he was—but that wasn’t their fault. They couldn’t predict that Julia would outdo them, he reminded himself.
Dylan left his bedroom and padded towards the living room with his shoes in one hand and his blazer draped over his arm to wait for everyone to arrive, for everyone to be ready. In the back of his mind, as he flipped through the channels on TV, he was already planning how he could possibly meet the standard that Julia had set for birthday presents. Probably not possible, he thought, reflecting again on the book she’d worked so hard to make happen for him. But it’s going to be an important night—you should come up with something. It was hard not to wish that he hadn’t already set the bar so high with her last birthday present; if he hadn’t done that, then competitive Julia wouldn’t have topped him, and he might have something big he could do for the most important birthday she would have in a while.
“Dylan, are you done getting ready?” He looked up to see Julia emerge from her bedroom and grinned. He had been right: she was wearing a glittery, silver-sequined dress that showed some cleavage—but not enough to make her parents force her to change—and fell to two inches above her knee, with a pair of black boots that he was sure he could never walk in, and a black jacket that just covered her arms and shoulders.
She’d done her makeup, and as she walked towards the couch where he sat, he thought she must have bought a new perfume of some kind; she smelled like pine needles and incense, like something sweet and bitter and sharp and intriguing.
“I just have to put on my shoes and jacket,” he replied. “My parents should be here soon.”
“Mine too,” Julia said. “Do you think they’re going to think the outfit is too much?” Dylan snickered.
“If I’d known you were going to wear that I’d have spent the money to buy a mirror ball jacket like Daniel Johns had, so we’d match.” He shook his head. “For someone who doesn’t like all the attention you’re getting from Guardian families, you are kind of a show-off, you know?”
“I can’t help it,” Julia said with a shrug. “I need an outlet to express my individuality, or something.” Dylan grinned again.
“You know, you would fit right in if you went into the entertainment industry,” he told her.
“More people fawning over me: no thanks,” she said, shaking her head. She sighed. “And next week we have like—what—seven events we have to go to, to meet people I’m supposed to know?”
“Six, I think,” Dylan said, trying to call to mind their shared social calendar. “Also, according to Ruth, they want you to meet with some members of the council to talk about Dimitrios’ replacement.”
“Why can’t they just hire back Lilgrave and be done with it?” Julia groaned. Dylan shrugged.
“She won’t take the job,” Dylan replied—something that Julia already knew. “So, they have to find someone new.”
“I just wish they’d keep me out of it,” Julia said with a sigh. “Then if they pick someone everyone hates, it won’t be on me.” Dylan grinned.
“Well, you kind of brought it on yourself, showing off at the council,” he pointed out. “But hopefully they’ll keep your part of it as secret as possible.” There was a knock at the door; Dylan rose to go and answer it, knowing that it was likely his parents. Remember to be excited for whatever they get you, he told himself, glancing over his shoulder at Julia. “Ready?”
“Always,” Julia said, rising to her feet and teetering slightly in the boots. “Let’s get this party started.”
CHAPTER TWO
Julia found herself once more standing in front of a mirror, checking that the lines of her dress fell correctly, making sure that she was absolutely and utterly appropriate for the occasion her grandmother had gotten her invited to. She’d chosen a deep blue dress, with silvery accents on it, that fell to her knees, and matching heels to go with it. Dylan—always certain to try and coordinate with her—would be wearing a tie that went with her dress. She’d actually gone to her favorite hair stylist earlier in the day, and sat in for two hours, having her hair washed, and conditioned, her scalp massaged and then finally styled in tumbling ringlets that Julia was certain wouldn’t last in her stick-straight hair, but which had looked pretty framing her face.
A knock at her door pulled her out of her thoughts, and Julia told Dylan he could come in. “One of these days,” she said, barely glancing at him as she picked up the jewelry that was supposed to go with her ensemble, “I am going to cut my hair so short my mom will think I’m a boy the first time she sees me.” Dylan laughed.
“Maybe I’ll join you,”
he said. “It’d be nice for people to think I’m a boy the first time they see me.” Julia giggled.
“You’re obviously a boy,” she pointed out. “Even with your glorious, long, blond hair.” She inserted one of her earrings and turned to face him. “If you really wanted to confuse people, you should start wearing makeup.”
“No thanks,” Dylan said, watching her as she put the other earring in. “I just started not getting beat up last year; I don’t want to invite it.”
“I’d protect you,” Julia told him staunchly.
“Even worse! Then I’m a guy who can’t stand up for himself, much less the girl he’s supposed to be protecting.” Dylan shook his head. Julia draped her necklace around her neck and tried to get the catch in the hook, but it wouldn’t work. “Here; that at least I can help with,” Dylan said, stepping toward her. Julia carefully moved her hair out of the way, not wanting to disturb the curls, and shivered as she felt Dylan’s fingertips brushed against the nape of her neck.
She closed her eyes, trying not to fidget as he struggled for just a moment with the latch on the hook, and then smiled with satisfaction as she felt him smooth the chain against her skin.
“How do I look?” She half-spun, giving him the full effect, and Dylan stood back, taking her in with a subtly critical eye.
“Nothing your grandmother could ever come up with a complaint for,” he said. “For me, you look amazing—but you always do, when we go to these things.”
“Yeah, I can’t just roll up in a suit or something,” she said with a sigh. “I have enough dresses to send half the class to the Met Gala.” Dylan snorted.
“I thought you liked dressing up and looking nice,” Dylan pointed out. Julia shrugged.
“I like it when I’m doing it for me,” she said. “When I have to do it for other people it gets annoying really freaking quickly.”
