by Ella James
Nick smirked. “Help you, I can. Yes. Mm.”
My laugh was so loud, it startled me. “You’re a Star Wars fan! See, that’s something.”
He just shrugged—taciturn as a Jedi.
While Nick stepped inside my bathroom to get changed, I ran downstairs to grab some of Dad’s old boots. My charmed blush had just worn off when Nick emerged. He’d toweled off his lustrous copper curls, and the reds and whites and browns in the plaid managed to bring out his already breathtaking brown eyes.
His effect on me was so stunning that when he spoke, I actually jumped a little.
“I hung my stuff in your shower. That okay?”
“Yeah. Sure.” He stepped away from the bathroom, and I walked past him. “Just a second.”
With Nick around looking so fabulous, I needed to at least give myself a glance.
Eh. Thank God I did. My hair was…well, messy didn’t do it justice. I had ’80s hair-band hair. I grabbed my brush out of the drawer and grimaced as I tugged it through my tangles. I didn’t normally wear make-up, but imagining Nick just a few feet away, I wished I’d bought some that day at the Clinique counter with Halah. As it was, I tamed my tresses and rubbed my Badger chap stick over my lips, then stuck my silver owl studs in my ears.
I surveyed the landscape, feeling unusually critical. But I didn’t have time to do anything more, and anyway…
I shimmied into the pair of jeans draped over my hamper, then turned my attention to Nick’s dripping clothes. On impulse, I checked his pockets again, hoping he had missed something. But all I found was his red whistle.
I slipped it into my pocket, smoothed my hair once more and stepped into my room. Nick was waiting, leaning casually against my dresser.
He nodded down at my dad’s old boots. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” I reached into my closet, grabbed a pale green down jacket, and passed Nick the giant suede coat I’d worn the day before. “It’s a guy jacket.” I smiled as he slipped it on and stuck his hands into the pockets.
“So,” I led him toward the stairwell, “I thought of my first question.”
“Shoot.” He hesitated, cracked a half-smile. “Not at me.”
Another blush. What the heck was wrong with me? I stepped in front of him, leading the way down the narrow stairs. “What’s Colorado Academy’s mascot?”
From behind me, silence.
“It's no big deal if—”
“Mustangs.” I sensed him stop behind me, and I turned. “Did you remember something new?”
He shook his head. His face was wary, though, and suddenly I got it.
“My mom’s not home,” I told him. “She works all day up at the turbines.”
As soon as I said it, I felt a bite of fear; every girl knows not to tell a stranger it would be a long time before her parents came home.
Maybe I am getting better.
If I was afraid, I clearly cared about living.
Suddenly aware that I’d been silent for too long, I said, “Okay. So you know the Colorado Academy mascot. Does it feel familiar?”
“What does familiar feel like?”
“Touché. I got ya.” We walked through the living area and into the kitchen, dimly lit by sunlight; the generator was still off.
“So what do you know about football?”
I waved for him to sit down in the nearest egg-shaped seat, while I stepped across the stone floor to the pantry. Since the generator had cycled off, nothing electric worked, which meant I couldn’t microwave anything. “Cereal okay?”
“Sure.”
I fixed it, and sat down while Nick explained football until it was evident to me that he knew a lot about it.
“So maybe you play football. Let’s think cities. Maybe we can figure out where you’re from.”
As Nick crunched his Kashi, I slung questions at him, and it soon became clear that he wasn’t visiting from the East Egg. He knew all about Denver and all of its suburbs. He knew more than I did. He knew every question I asked him, in fact, from populations to mayors to industries, and he wasn't just guessing. He knew.
I gave up as he spooned the last bite into his mouth. Random questions weren’t going to get us anywhere. We needed something more specific to jar his memory. Something like the news.
I felt like smacking my hand to my forehead. Of course the news!
I led him into the den and cleared some pillows off our cozy leather couch. Nick sat gracefully. Oddly graceful, actually. But not in a girly way. Not even in a male gymnast kind of way. He just didn’t waste any movements. Where, when I sat down, I plunked down on the cushion and my arms fell down beside me, then my toes pressed down into the rug, Nick did everything at once. He just sat. Like our drama teacher told the actors for our production of The Music Man.
“You ready?” he asked, handing me the remote.
“For what?”
He winked. “To find out that I’m really a teenage billionaire.”
“At least you won’t need to sue me.”
“Why would I sue you?”
“Emotional distress.”
“But I’m having a good time.”
At that, my cheeks flushed big time; my hands sweated as I guided the TV to the biggest Denver news station.
An anchor wearing a red blazer and matching lipstick was standing outside what looked like a hospital, saying something very grave-sounding about, “affected by the outage.”
The shot panned to a man wearing a light blue dress shirt and a yellow tie, sitting behind a crescent-shaped desk. “Sondra, the outage has a connection to a our next story, an update about the family whose Honda Odyssey slammed through the railing on a mountainside and landed three hundred feet below on a lookout point.” The man looked down at his notes, then back up, his eyes all wide and serious.
“Channel Nine Action News has just confirmed that Hugh DeWitt, the forty-nine-year-old father driving the family vehicle, has passed away, two days after his wife and teenage daughter were pronounced—”
Annnnnnnd, the screen went black.
I looked down at my fingers, clenching the remote. Crap! I glanced up at Nick, and my fear was confirmed.
I’d done my Tiffany Traumatized routine, my Neurotic Nancy act, the one where I zoned out. Naturally, in close proximity to mention of death or anything having to do with Dad. The word “leukemia” would set me off any day of the week. As could some passing comment about nature, chemotherapy, or the Atlanta Braves.
One look at Nick’s neutral expression, and I knew my distress was painted onto my face like stage makeup. But that didn’t mean I had to acknowledge it.
“Sorry,” I said, as casually as I could manage, and I turned the TV back on.
Nick grabbed the changer from me, pressing the off button. “That’s okay. I wanted to get going anyway. With all that stuff about the power, they won’t have anything about me.”
He stood up, and the generator hummed back to life.
8
I stared at the TV.
“Milo?”
“Yeah.” I frowned. How in the world was the TV on if the generator… “Wait a second. Never mind.”
Mom must have added it to the circuit that was powered by the solar panels. In the old days, that’s the sort of thing Dad would have done. As it was, I was surprised she’d even had the idea.
I smiled at Nick, that same smile I’d smiled at so many other people. The one that said I’m fine, okay? Seriously. No more Milofreak.
I led him outside, over the driveway, through the firs, and out into the field from whence we’d come. It was a bright day, with only a few clouds drifting through the blue sky. The turbines, smaller than pinwheels from this distance, were still frozen.
“I’m sorry again,” I said suddenly. Nick raised his eyebrows, and I said, “I know there’s no way to know if the dart caused this, but…it could have.”
“No way to know for sure,” Nick said.
“I forgot to look up the side-effects
,” I said, “although I guess without the power…But we could go in town, to the library. If you haven’t remembered things yet. You will, I think. Going back to the creek is a good idea.”
Nick didn’t seem to share my enthusiasm.
We walked in silence for a while, and I could sense him brooding. I kept shifting my gaze between the still wet grass and his face. He even looked attractive from the side. Kind of Roman, if Romans came with deep red hair. His shoulders seemed hunched inside my dad’s thick jacket. His hair, curls tighter now that they had dried, fluttered slightly in the breeze.
Half-way through the giant field, I started feeling like the silence wasn’t comfortable. I wondered what I could say to break it.
Then Nick did. His voice sounded sharp and deep against the stillness around us. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
There was a moment’s hesitation, during which he clasped his hands and kind of swung them like a batter during warm-up. I felt an intense apprehension, though I didn't know why. And then he asked me something that literally took my breath away. “Is someone... buried here? Out here?”
“Yes.” The word hissed out like air from a balloon.
His voice was deep. “Who?”
My heart froze, but my mouth kept moving. Auto-pilot. Just get through it. “My dad.”
Nick’s eyes widened. So did the space between us. “I’m sorry,” he said gravely.
“Thank you.”
As we walked, I could feel his eyes on me, his thoughts on me. I wondered how I looked. Upset. I was lousy at hiding my emotions. Might as well throw them out.
I took a breath. “Why did you ask me that?”
Nick shrugged—too fast, too stiff. “Just wondering.”
“Really?”
His eyes slid over me. “You go there a lot?” he asked casually.
But it wasn’t casual. At all.
“Kind of,” I said. A minute of swish, swish—our shoes smashing grass, our pants rubbing together; the two of us in unison—and I said, “How’d you know?”
“I didn’t,” he murmured.
I wanted to believe him.
*
I led Nick to the oak tree and past my father’s marker, walking slowly in case the sight of it triggered something for him. It didn’t. We continued toward the river, but when we sighted the pancake stone, Nick’s face paled. Mine might have done the same, so eerie was the feeling creeping over me.
We’d passed my father’s marker, but this was where I came to visit it. This was where I’d gone when I had broken off from…everything.
By the time we reached the spot, I wasn’t surprised to see Nick drop to his knees and rest his forearms on the stone. He propped his head there, and I waited silently, hands clenched, chest heavy and tight.
I was thinking of that feeling I’d had, the freaky one that made me stop visiting this place, and staring at Nick’s pretty hair when my leg started itching. At least I thought it was an itch. A second later, it bloomed into a full-blown burn.
My gaze jerked down; my right hand fluttered to the painful spot. I gasped.
My skin was burning. Really burning. My first thought was scorpion, but when I smacked my hand down on my leg, I hit the bump that was Nick’s whistle. The burning pain intensified and I yelped. My hands sweated and my body shook as I dug into my pocket. Ow, ow, ow. When my fingertips closed around the thing, it scalded. I screeched and threw it in the air. It landed in the mud between Nick and me, and I stumbled back.
I leaned down to inspect my leg, hissing through my teeth because it hurt. The whistle had melted my jeans, then split them open, exposing a bright red welt on my pale leg.
My eyes flashed over Nick. “Hey!”
When he didn’t move, I took two painful steps and shook his shoulder.
His head popped up with startling force, and he whirled on me, his crouched form losing balance so he toppled to one side. His hand landed with a smack on the wet ground.
“Hey. What’s going on?”
*
I…
I…
I…
The compulsion first identified as other than need. Want.
I wanted.
her.
Her.
I wanted Milo.
I wanted her, I wanted her. The fury of it burned through me, forging new paths, making me more.
I wanted her like I had never wanted anything. I had never wanted anything. I wanted her.
“Milo,” I could hear her say. I heard the sweet bell of her voice and it made me tremble.
Milo Mitchell.
Milo Mitchell.
“What’s her name?”
“She has a name?”
“Her name is Milo Mitchell.”
The other person… hurt my head.
Terribly.
9
Man, this stuff was getting weird. Between Nick and I, we had the makings of a true freak show.
He was making noise. Mumbling. His head was down between his knees, and he was kind of rocking.
I wanted to touch him, but I was afraid to. His fists were clenched in his hair, and his forearms bulged. It was weird, because the rest of him was so still. Was he having a seizure? Or was this some kind of memory event?
I had no way of knowing if what was happening to him was good or bad.
“Nick, can you let me know if you need help?”
That actually got a reaction. He stood up suddenly, swayed like he was drunk, and said, “I need to get…away.”
He stumbled ten feet, then dropped down beside a battered fir and leaned his arms against his raised knees. Like back at the rock, he didn’t move. Just stared at something on the ground.
“Nick,” I whispered.
I knelt down and lightly touched his back.
“Nick.”
He made an odd sound, something between a gasp and a choke, and leaned forward, out of my reach. Heart pounding, I watched him rub his face and hair, then rise.
He glanced at me, then up and away. “Sorry,” he mumbled to the sky.
“What happened?”
He shook his head. He wouldn’t look at me. Was avoiding me. “I don’t know.”
I opened my mouth to tell him about the whistle, but before I got to it, he turned away, back toward my house. I grabbed his arm.
“Wait!”
He jerked free. “Don’t touch me!”
I was fuming. “Don’t snap at me!” I bent over and snatched the whistle from the ground. “Look at what your whistle did to me!” I pointed to my pants leg, at the charred spot, at the welt. “This happened when you were by the rock.” I held out the whistle. “I had this in my pocket and—”
Nick snatched it from my hand in one quick, startling moment. I jumped in surprise.
“What’s wrong with you!”
He had no reaction. Just stared at the stupid thing.
Which only freaked me out more. “Why did it burn me?” I demanded. “How did it burn me?”
His eyes flicked to mine. His voice, when he spoke, was like a rusty wheel. “I don’t know.”
He dropped the thing into his pocket, and he staggered past me. I stayed on his heels, mind spinning as I followed him.
“What is it?” I pushed. “And don’t say a whistle!”
He didn’t. He didn’t say anything, and I started to get angry.
“This is BS. You can’t just freak out and burn me with your magic whistle and—”
As suddenly as he had set off, he whirled, those brown eyes flashing. “I don’t have anything to tell you, Milo.”
The way he said my name sliced through me like lightning. I had to struggle not to clutch my chest. “Did you remember something?” I asked thinly.
“No.” His face twisted. “Yes. But it wasn’t anything substantial. It was… nothing.”
“Nothing is nothing.”
“Well, this was.”
