by Cassia Leo
My vision began to blur as I watched Reno struggle. The pressure on my head closing in on me. Then he entered.
I’ll never forget the grin on Tuket’s face when he saw me with my head flattened against the table like an animal offered for slaughter. Tuket drove his spear into Reno’s chest four times; three more times than was necessary. It only took one shot to the heart for Reno to die. It only took one broken heart for my spirit to abandon me.
Chapter 22
Although I haven’t slept in almost forty-eight hours and I’ve spent the day and night being battered by ocean waves, I still have trouble getting to sleep. I can’t stop thinking about how Conor introduced me to his friends as his girlfriend and how Mara revealed Frankie to be a murderer.
I don’t know how I’m going to deal with seeing Frankie during third period and at the library. Every nerve in my body is zinging with the anticipation of seeing him.
He didn’t deny it. He didn’t lie to me. Frankie has never lied to me—unless you count the fact that he never told me the truth about Tuket. Would I have believed him? No.
If you told me you’re a fucking vampire I’d believe you.
His words ring in my ears like accusations. He heard me out. He believed me.
He murdered someone… more than three hundred years ago. The words bounce around inside my head, pulling me this way and that, twisting themselves around my mind until I can no longer think straight. I need to talk to Frankie.
I manage to get two hours of sleep, but I slide out of bed feeling dizzy and weighed down. I can hardly hold my head up during first and second period. When the third period bell rings, I consider going to the nurse’s office and calling my mom to pick me up—anything not to have to face Frankie—but the guilt propels me through the halls toward Mrs. Preciso’s classroom. When I enter, Frankie is already in his seat.
My heart thumps so hard I can see my chest jumping with every beat. I take one step, then the next, willing myself forward as he watches me. His words play in my head again: I’d believe you. I have to hear him out.
His eyes follow my face, searching for some sign of openness as I take my seat. He swivels around in his seat to face me, but he doesn’t speak. He’s waiting for me to say something. The exhaustion and expectation are heavy on my shoulders. I want to close my eyes and wake up in a year or two when this is all behind me.
“We’ll talk at the library,” I whisper because I don’t want anyone around us to think Frankie and Belinda, best friends forever, are having a spat.
He nods once before he turns around. I heave a deep sigh and bury my head in my arms. Mrs. Preciso must be distracted today, because she never tries to wake me up. The fourth period bell startles me awake and I wipe the drool from the corner of my mouth as I attempt to heave my backpack onto my shoulder. The strap slips out of my hand and my backpack drops to the floor.
Frankie reaches down to pick it up. “Don’t bother,” he says as I reach for it then he walks out of the classroom carrying my backpack.
I catch up to him in the hallway. He’s hustling toward the science building. I have Physics with Mr. Spiezka fourth period. Frankie has gym class at the other end of the campus. He’s going to be late. He’s only carried my backpack once before, when I broke my shoulder freshmen year playing basketball during gym. He carried my backpack everywhere for three days before I threatened to cut all his hair off in his sleep if he didn’t stop.
I’m too tired to fight him today. When we reach room S-113 he hands me my backpack and pats me on the shoulder before he takes off down the hall. I don’t know if it’s the friendly pat on the shoulder or the fact that he never looks back as he runs away, but it’s almost as if nothing has changed. I should probably be outraged, but I don’t have the energy for that. Maybe I don’t even have the capacity to be angry with Frankie.
Frankie and I always ride our bikes to the library, unless it’s raining, then he drives. He never calls to ask if there’s a change of plans. He shows up at my house at 3:45 just as I’m pushing my bike down the front walk.
I hop onto the bike and we ride the eight blocks to the library in silence. The silence is beginning to creep me out until he finally speaks, just as we’re locking up our bikes in the rack outside the library.
“I’m not going to buy you a new bike to make you forgive me,” he says.
He’s trying to break the ice by making fun of my rusty bike. Normally I would laugh at this, but I can’t even manage a smile right now.
“Come on, B,” he says as we walk past the fountain in front of the library. “You said we would talk about it once we got here. I’ve been waiting all day to hear you say something.”
The library doors slide open as we approach. We pass through and walk straight down the hall on the left toward the stockroom. Even though we’re volunteers, we still have to clock in like everyone else.
“I don’t know what to say,” I reply as we pass the employee restroom. Frankie speeds up so he can open the stockroom door for me. “I’m not mad,” I whisper as I catch sight of our coworker, Greg Lawrence.
Greg is sitting at the computer workstation where we clock in. The wire shelves surrounding the workstation are stocked with supplies for the restrooms and the employee break room: toilet paper, paper towels, coffee, and cleaning solutions. Greg is two years older than we are and he had a crush on me last year. I kindly rejected his invitations to the movies three times before he finally got the hint that I wasn’t interested. Frankie says he looks like a chubby Tom Cruise. Greg stands from the workstation where he’s already typed in my name to make it easier for me to look up my employee record and clock in.
“Thanks,” I mutter before I bend over the workstation and hit Enter.
“Clock me in,” Frankie says.
“Please,” Greg says, trying to remind Frankie of his manners.
“Please, Belinda,” Frankie says as he leans over me and puts his mouth near my ear. “Please clock me in.”
The computer screen gets fuzzy as Mara enters me.
“Clock yourself in,” I say as I spin around and follow Greg out of the stockroom.
Greg grins at me as I pass him in the hallway. Frankie bursts out of the stockroom a few seconds later bounding after me.
“Mara?” he whispers.
Mara is silent. I am silent.
Frankie follows me to the circulation desk. I take my seat at the station next to Krista and Frankie sits on my other side. He immediately logs into his computer and opens up the interoffice chat program to send a message. I log into my computer (Mara must have all my passwords memorized by now) and Frankie’s message pings on my screen.
You said we would talk.
Mara knows that if she left it up to me, Frankie and I would be best buds again by the end of the night. She’s not going to allow that.
I’ll listen to you when you tell me how you got your body back.
I turn toward him to see his reaction and his eyes flash with something. I don’t know if it’s panic or anger. He begins typing and soon I hear the ping.
You know how it works, Mara.
Frankie’s eyes widen as the keyboard quivers beneath my fingers, as if the kinetic force of Mara’s rage is being transmitted through me.
How did you do it?!
“You’re tapping mighty furiously on those keys,” Krista says to me. “You might want to ease up a bit.”
I glance at Krista and her eyebrows are raised the way they are when someone tries to negotiate their overdue charges. I swivel my chair around to face Frankie just as a little boy walks toward us carrying a stack of at least ten books in his arms.
Krista hates when I pretend to talk to Frankie as soon as someone walks toward the circulation desk—especially kids. Most kids don’t know that their library cards have restrictions and they often try to get away with checking out books classified as “mature” in the library rating system. It’s always awkward having to explain to a ten-year-old boy why he can’t check o
ut The Joys of Sex. Mara doesn’t know how much it bothers Krista when I avoid patrons, but I’m certain Krista’s eyes are boring a hole through the back of my skull right now.
Frankie is staring at me. Actually, I’m pretty sure he’s glaring at Mara. “It was Una,” he whispers.
I wish I knew what this means because as soon as he says it, my keyboard explodes.
Chapter 23
Listen
Frankie’s face comes sharply into focus and I know Mara is gone. I blink a few times as my eyes adjust to the fluorescent lighting.
“Are you okay?” he asks as I rub my jaw where I must have been hit by a small piece of keyboard shrapnel.
“I’m fine,” I say, pushing his hand away before he can touch me.
“What the hell was that?” Krista shrieks.
I stare at the broken, smoking remnants of my keyboard in a daze.
“Why did she leave? What happened?” I ask Frankie, but it’s Krista who replies.
“Why did who leave?” she says as she scans the barcode on a copy of Brave New World. Looks like this boy isn’t going to be rejected by the rating system.
“No one,” I reply as I begin sweeping the shards of plastic into the trash bin under the desk.
Frankie leans toward me and my shoulders tense as he whispers in my ear, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I’ll tell you everything you want to know tonight.”
Frankie and I keep our interactions very professional until the clock hits ten and it’s time for us to leave. As soon as I begin to unlock the chain on my bike, he grabs my hand. My body freezes as I get that feeling again, that vaulting sensation in the pit of my stomach.
“Wait. Let’s go for a walk,” he says, and I find myself wishing Mara were here to help me through this. I’m not strong enough to face Frankie right now.
What’s wrong with me? This is Frankie. I’ve never had trouble talking to Frankie about anything.
I stuff my hands into my pockets as we walk along Promenade Avenue toward the beach. The whole time, I try not to wish he would grab my hand, or my face, and kiss me; tell me the past two months have been the worst months of his life and Mara has him mistaken with someone else.
“I’ve wanted to tell you ever since I figured it out, when I was nine,” he says. “But the other carrier spirits I met over the years told me no one would believe me.”
“I would have believed you,” I reply, and the moment he smiles I know this is true. I would believe anything Frankie confided in me. “How did it happen?”
The smile on his face quickly vanishes. “You have to understand that I was very uncivilized back then,” he says, and I’m suddenly struck by the fact that I’m speaking to someone who’s spirit is older than America. “Killing and brutalizing people to get what you wanted was common. It doesn’t make it right, but it was the culture I was raised in.”
Hearing Frankie speak these words sends chills through me. He wasn’t raised to kill people. He was raised by the coolest dad in the neighborhood. When my dad died, Frankie’s dad became my surrogate father, inviting me to dinner and driving me to swimming lessons and the library whenever my mom was too busy at work.
Frankie must see my inability to reconcile his words with my memories of him. “I know it sounds horrible,” he says. “But, yes, I killed Reno. I killed the man Mara loved… and for many years I didn’t feel any remorse.”
I suck in a sharp breath as a stiff breeze lifts the hairs on my arms.
“Are you cold?” he asks and I shake my head, but he turns back toward the library anyway. “It took me more than one hundred years to realize that the only way I was going to get out of this world was to own up to what I had done. To fix it somehow. Carrier spirits call it restoring the balance.”
“How did you do it?” I ask.
Frankie’s silent for a moment before he responds. “I helped a pregnant woman get out of an abusive relationship.”
Restore the balance. Does that mean…?
“I lost my spirit when I beat my wife and she lost the child she was carrying. Her name was Una. She was Mara’s sister. After Mara killed herself, Una took her place as my wife.”
I glance sideways at Frankie and his gaze is locked on the library building a few hundred yards away. I’m torn between trying to comfort him and punching him for the heinous acts he committed three hundred years ago.
“The shock of seeing my dead child made my spirit detach,” he continues. “Una killed me that night, in my sleep, before my spirit had the chance to reenter my body.”
It was Una.
That’s what Frankie’s message to Mara meant. He made Una lose their child and in return Una took his life.
“I can’t breathe,” I whisper as a sharp stitch in my chest makes my shoulders fold inward.
“Please don’t judge me based on what happened then,” he begs as we approach the bike racks. “I know what I did was deplorable, but you know I would never do something like that now. You know me, Belinda.”
I’m really starting to wonder about that.
“I’m just so confused,” I whisper, scratching at my throat and chest to try to open up my airways.
“Are you okay to ride home?” he asks. He’s always looking out for me. I nod as I cough and draw in a deep breath. He leans forward and plants a gentle kiss on my forehead. “Thank you for not freaking out.”
I resist the urge to reach up and touch the spot where he kissed me. “I’m so confused.” I repeat this sentence once more as I climb onto my bike.
Frankie climbs onto his bike before he reaches across and musses up my hair. “I’m still me,” he says then he starts pedaling down Promenade.
It takes me a moment to start pedaling after him. When he passes Susan Place, I know he’s either riding home with me or he’ll keep going toward the beach, and I find that I don’t care. As the breeze whips through my hair and fills my mouth, I find I’m not scared anymore. If he comes to my house, it will be like every other day he’s come to my house or like when I showed up at his house yesterday morning. We’re still the same people. The only thing that’s changed is that now I know a little more about his past… and I have a boyfriend.
I have a boyfriend and my best friend doesn’t know.
Chapter 24
Conor has no idea what he’s gotten himself into with Belinda. Now that she knows about Frankie’s past and she’s willing to accept that he has changed for the better, Conor is the one who will get hurt if this ends badly.
Conor sits at his desk surfing through page after page of music videos on the internet. He’s wearing headphones, so I can’t hear the music, but his joy fills the whole room. Each video leads him to more related videos until finally he pulls the headphones out of his ears and the laptop. The music fills the room. The path of videos has led him to classical music, and he’s clearly enjoying it. When he clicks the next video, he freezes in his chair.
It takes three notes for me to recognize the melody. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Samuel played it for me on the piano in his parlor.
Conor slips a pencil out of a metal cup on the desk and opens his sketchbook. He begins to trace a long arcing line from the bottom corner toward the center of the page. He works silently and methodically through the ten-minute concerto as I close my eyes and allow the music to carry me away into a memory.
Samuel first played this song for his sister and me after a long church service. His sister had been complaining how much she hated singing the boring psalms in church. He sat down and played Four Seasons and we were both entranced by the beauty of the melody.
Samuel’s sister never questioned how he learned such an intricate piece of music without every having taken a piano lesson. His family never questioned his many talents; they practically worshipped him. And rightfully so.
The second time Samuel performed Four Seasons, he performed it just for me. It was my eighteenth birthday and Samuel managed to sneak me out of the tiny clapboard house I shared with my mot
her and three sisters. He snuck me into his grandfather’s saloon after it closed down for the evening and played for me.
The piano was out of tune, but Samuel’s passion was mesmerizing. The emotion in his face, the way he closes his eyes and smiles faintly when he reaches a particularly beautiful chord progression, as if he is the music…. I’m completely captivated.
I sit next to him on the piano bench with my back to the keys and he stops playing as I lightly brush my fingertip over his cheekbone. He closes his eyes and sighs deeply. This is love: that moment when you realize that the beauty of the person you’re with penetrates them to their very core, and how you’ll do anything not to damage that beauty.
He lays a soft kiss on my forehead, then a second and third on each corner of my mouth. His fourth kiss lands gently on my lips and I sigh as he takes my face in his hands. I’ve kissed Samuel many times, but this is different. This kiss is tender and slow, yet fueled with desire for something more; something animalistic. I can feel it in the way we’re both breathing heavily and the carnal way his tongue caresses mine as if he’s attempting to unearth the bounty of my soul.
His leg slides over the bench so he’s straddling it as he faces me. His left hand clutches the back of my neck, holding me still as his right hand works slowly and methodically, gathering up the hem of my dress. Finally, his hand slithers between my legs and I gasp as it lands firmly on the inside of my thigh.
