Chapter Six
Michael and I waited. We hung around, wishing that Ruth had some news to share. The rest of the school week, the waiting felt interminable. Here we were, armed with the knowledge that we were elect creatures critical to preventing the impending apocalypse, and we could do nothing. Nothing but spend our days suppressing our powers and roaming the halls of Tillinghast High School and the streets of our little town as if we were like the other kids. Nothing but spend our nights attempting to sleep in our beds, while succumbing to increasingly disturbing dreams, instead of soaring in the nighttime skies.
I was ready. And restless. All the waiting shook my vulnerable interior.
The weekend loomed long before me. When Michael announced that he’d have to go to an extra football practice on an uncharacteristically sunny Saturday morning—the coach had called for one since they didn’t have a game Friday night—I decided to sit in the bleachers and half watch, half do my homework. I found it easier to pass the endless hours of waiting when I was in Michael’s presence. Somehow, it soothed.
For the first fifteen minutes or so, I watched Michael and his teammates perform drills, while the sunglass-wearing coaches barked orders from the sidelines. Very quickly, the exercises became pretty routine and pretty boring. So I threw myself into my Spanish homework, finding it surprisingly intriguing compared to what was happening on the field.
I was lost in verb conjugations when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I instinctively jumped.
“Hi, Ellie,” a familiar voice said.
It was Ruth. “God almighty, you scared me to death.” As she moved to sit down on the bleacher next to me, she looked so contrite that I felt bad for chastising her.
“Sorry, Ellie. I should know better, right?”
“Right,” I answered with a sigh of relief, as I scooted over to make more room. “What are you doing at school on a Saturday?”
“Yearbook meeting.”
“I should have guessed.” Ruth always filled her schedule to the brim, hoping that all her good grades and all her leadership activities would merit a college scholarship when the time came.
“Hey, Jamie and I are going to the movies tonight. We’re going to see The Controversy. Do you and Michael want to join us?”
I paused for a second. Part of me wanted to scold her for not spending every free minute working on our research. Didn’t she understand the stakes? I stopped myself. Ruth was doing us a major favor by undertaking such a risky project; I should be very, very appreciative.
“Oh, I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Ruth.” Michael and I had planned a low-key evening: a movie at my house and takeout. Plus, I didn’t know if I could face an evening of playacting with Jamie. Pretending to be normal was harder than I thought. I needed a break from it.
“Come on, Ellie. You’re supposed to be an everyday, average teenager, aren’t you?”
Ruth had a point. I was reluctant, but I decided to give in. “All right. Thanks for asking us.”
The Controversy turned out to be a mainstream thriller. Not the kind of foreign or indie film Ruth and I usually liked, but maybe it was Jamie’s turn to pick the movie. All the chase scenes and death threats were too close to our recent adventures in Boston for my taste. Still, it was a relief to check out of my own crazy reality for a while.
Afterward, we headed to the diner to have dessert. Over brownie sundaes and apple crisps, we talked about Miss Taunton and the grueling workload she assigned. We had some serious laughs, imagining what her private life must be like, given her strange proclivity for assigning gothic romance.
“How do you manage all your homework and papers with your football practices?” Jamie asked Michael.
“It’s tough with Coach Samuel’s schedule. Sometimes I’m up all night,” Michael answered, smiling at me. I knew what actually kept him up at night. Or what used to, anyway. Coach Samuel had arrived at Tillinghast High School during the summer from a Boston high school, with an incredible reputation and an over-the-top work ethic—for himself and his players.
“Seriously?” Jamie asked. He was kind of in awe of Michael.
“Absolutely. It’s worth it, though. I mean, Coach Samuel is turning the Tillinghast team into a contender for the state championship,” Michael said proudly. Then, in a smaller, more modest voice, he added, “And he’s mentioned that, if I work hard enough, he might even be able to get me a football scholarship.”
I was surprised. Michael hadn’t said anything to me about a football scholarship. In fact, he hardly used to talk about football at all.
Before I could respond, Ruth interjected. “That’s amazing, Michael. I’d love to get a scholarship for anything .” Michael had hit right onto Ruth’s dream.
Jamie reached over and put his arm around her shoulder. “You totally will, Ruth. Look at your four point oh grade average; look at all the clubs you are the president of.”
While Jamie and Ruth lost themselves in conversation of how amazing he thought she was and how certain he was she’d secure a scholarship, I linked my hand with Michael’s. “You never said a word about this whole football scholarship business.”
He smiled sheepishly. “Well, we’ve had a lot of other things on our plates lately, haven’t we?”
Looking into his piercing, pale green eyes, I smiled back and said, “We definitely have.”
I almost whispered that we needed to solve the end-days problem before we worried about college, but I paused. This whole acting-normal thing was working well for Michael, as it should be. Why should I rain on his parade, because he was better at acting “normal” than me? Because he could lose himself in football when I couldn’t find anything to capture my attention—and act as a salve for my nerves—during our interminable wait?
I told myself that I should be happy for Michael’s happiness, regardless of what happened to his dream of college football in the long run. I swallowed my words, squeezed his hand, and said, “A football scholarship would be awesome, Michael. I’m so proud of you.”
We said our good-byes to Ruth and Jamie and hopped into Michael’s car. But I felt nowhere near tired.
“Are you ready to go home yet?” Michael asked as he started the car.
The prospect of another long night tossing and turning in bed was unappealing. Especially since, before Boston, Michael and I had spent every night together in a secret survey of the skies and each other’s bodies.
“No, it seems kind of early for us, doesn’t it?” I answered.
Michael reached for my hand. “Way too early to call it a night. Should we go to our field?”
Why hadn’t that occurred to me first? So many of my best memories happened there, after all. And Michael had mentioned it in one of his first letters to me. “Yes, that’s perfect.”
We didn’t talk on the ride there. Instead, I thought about the first time Michael brought me to the field; he had told me that it was the only safe location for me to practice flying. He had been so patient with me, even when I gracelessly tumbled to the ground again and again. And he’d been so gentle with me afterward, as we lay together on the springy grass and studied the stars. It became our special spot, the one place we returned to night after night to be our true selves.
It felt weird going to the field in a car. In the past, we had always flown there. I used to circle the ring of evergreens, swooping in and out of their prickly branches in a game of my own design. Only when Michael arrived did I consent to land on terra firma.
Hand in hand now, we walked through the narrow path in the trees. The needles were sharper than I remembered. Perhaps the field would be different, approached by land. Only a few days had passed since we last visited here, but it seemed forever ago, so much had transpired. When we parted the boughs, there it stood. The perfect circle of our field.
The field never failed to take my breath away with its impossibly gorgeous, natural beauty. Within the evergreens’ embrace awaited the softest, most vibrant green grass imaginable. Dot
ted among its blades were unexpected patches of wildflowers and bushes of heather, despite the increasingly chilly fall weather. The skies above afforded a telescopic, crystal-clear view of the heavens. We didn’t love the field for its photo-shoot-ready loveliness or the memories it held. We loved it because it felt like home.
Michael sat down on the soft center of the field, which sat a bit higher than the rest of the ground. He motioned for me to join him, and we lay back in each other’s arms. I sighed deeply for the first time since we’d left Boston. We didn’t speak. We simply gazed at the stars.
The ground was still soft, and the stars were still bright. Michael’s embrace was still enticing and comforting. When I surrendered into his arms in this most comforting of places, I surrendered my facade of strength for a moment too. It seemed that I’d shored myself up fairly well on the outside; yet inside, I was still overwhelmed. All my apprehensions about being the Elect One—fears that I’d worked hard to suppress since we returned from Boston—flooded to the surface. I started to cry, a deep, wracking sob. How on earth was I going to rise to my calling?
Michael’s arms tightened around me. “Hey, we’re going to get through this. Together.”
I tried to calm myself. Despite my efforts, my breaths were halting and shallow. “Do you promise?”
Michael turned to me and looked me directly in the eyes. We stared at each other for a long moment, and I thought for the hundredth time how mesmerizing his pale green eyes were. Especially when they bore the promise of his devotion.
“I promise, Ellie.”
He must have seen some hesitation, some modicum of doubt in my eyes, because he drew me even closer to him. “Ellie, I have loved you since I first laid eyes on you. I feel like I have waited my whole life to prove that love to you. Keeping this promise will be that proof.”
The strength of his words dried my tears. The length of our bodies touched, and it occurred to me that this was the closest we’d been physically since the car ride we took to school on our initial return from Boston. We had taken care not to be alone too often.
I felt the heave of his chest against mine, and the warmth of his muscled thigh against my own. I felt his breath on my cheek, and his fingers entwined in my hair. And more.
Suddenly, I wanted him. Not his blood. I knew I couldn’t have that. Him.
We’d never gone too far before. Physically, that was. Sharing each other’s blood always seemed the most intimate, the most complete, of acts. We couldn’t do that at the moment, and we both needed something more.
We were just teenagers now. Wasn’t this what other teenagers did? Then Michael dragged me on top of him, and the motion drove all thoughts from my mind.
He kissed me hungrily, as if it had been months instead of weeks since we’d been together. I returned his fervor, running my tongue along his full lips and neck. Yet he still felt too far away from me. Despite the cold, I unbuttoned his shirt, and ran my hands up his muscled stomach to his chest. His skin felt silky and warm, almost hot, under my fingers, and the sensation made me want to touch him more.
Emboldened by my actions, Michael fumbled at the buttons on my jacket and then slid his hands under my wool sweater. His hands felt cold and rough and sexy on my skin, and when he reached around to undo my bra, I kissed him even harder.
Shirt undone, hair wild, Michael rolled me under him. I wrapped my legs around his strong thighs, and drew him even closer to me. I could no longer feel the cold night air on my skin, only the warmth of Michael’s breath and hands and lips all over my willing body.
We were both panting, and I knew that we’d reached the moment. The moment of no return.
Gently, Michael pulled his face away from mine to look at me with his pale, pale eyes. His eyes brimmed with adoration and desire. I never loved him more than in that moment. And I never wanted him more than in that moment.
Then his face darkened.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Ellie, I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop.”
“I don’t want you to,” I whispered.
“I mean, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop at this.”
The blood. Michael didn’t think he’d be able to stop with our bodies. He worried that the urge for blood would prevail. We could not allow that to happen. It could be like a beacon for the fallen.
Awkwardly, we sat up. I pulled down my sweater and struggled to rebutton my jacket, while Michael did the same. Mixed emotions plagued me. I was disappointed that Michael had put on the brakes but also a little relieved. I didn’t know if I was totally ready to take the leap.
Michael reached over and hugged me tight. “This is the right decision, Ellie, believe me. There will be plenty of time for this. After.”
His words saddened me. Would there be time? Or was the end so imminent that this was our only chance to be physically intimate with each other? “I hope so, Michael.”
He whispered. “Don’t worry. We’ll make time for this.”
“No, Michael, you misunderstood me. I meant that I hope that there will be an ‘after.’”
Chapter Seven
The indulgent escape of our weekend over, Michael and I were forced to return to the facade of being ordinary students. The endless round of classes; homework; and, for Michael, football practice took our minds off the waiting a bit. Although Michael still seemed better able to escape into the normal-teenager routine. We were afraid, though, that pretending to forget might someday become the same thing as forgetting.
So we promised to keep on writing our letters, especially because we didn’t know the potential danger lurking in the exercise of our powers. We couldn’t fly anymore, so we experienced the joy and freedom of soaring down the coast through our words. We wouldn’t take the risk of actually reading another’s thoughts, so instead we described the rush we got off a flash from another mind. We couldn’t dare sample each other’s blood, so we sought out terms to capture the intense closeness we felt when we used to. We didn’t dare become physically intimate, so we wrote words of love to each other instead. Through our letters, Michael and I clung to the truth.
On Monday and Tuesday, the letters sufficed. They even seemed romantic in an old-fashioned, Jane Austen sort of way. Michael always had a note waiting for me in his hand when we met up after every class, and I had one for him. I couldn’t wait to get to the next class, where I could unfold the pages slowly and secretly and lose myself in his words. For a few glorious minutes, I’d return to the nights earlier in the fall when Michael and I were free to revel in our powers and each other, before we learned too much about why we had our powers. His phrases got me through the endless school days and strengthened my resolve that we would make it through to the other side of the end days, whatever that meant.
Yet, on Wednesday, Michael didn’t have a letter prepared for me after English class. It was the very first time this had happened since our return from Boston. Tuesday night’s grueling football practice, he explained apologetically, had left him so spent that he fell asleep during first period. Even though I was disappointed, I understood, of course; Coach Samuel had been running him ragged, even giving Michael extra workouts because he thought he had the talent to play college football. Michael tried to make it up to me by having notes at the ready after the rest of my classes. And I relished them, even though they were somewhat shorter than the ones I’d grown accustomed to.
For some reason, when I got home after school on Wednesday, rebellious thoughts wormed their way into my consciousness. Starting with my parents. As I sat across the dinner table from them, pretending everything was hunky-dory, certain of Ezekiel’s claims nagged at me. He had told me that my parents weren’t my birth parents, that they had adopted me. That my human mother had died. As I passed the salt or answered my parents’ inane questions about homework, I felt myself get angry at them for keeping the truth from me, even if they thought they were doing it for the right reasons.
I found myself wondering about
my biological parents. Who were they? Tamiel had confessed that my human mother was “gone,” but would say no more. Did she mean dead? And where was my father? Since he must be a fallen angel—an immortal—he must be roaming the earth somewhere. I couldn’t ask my parents any of these questions, or reveal everything Michael and I had worked to hide. Instead, the questions seethed beneath the surface, making me angrier and angrier at all this pretending.
Nighttime offered little relief from the disloyal churning of my mind. I tossed and turned in my bed, thinking about how Michael treated me before I left for Boston. I relived the evening when he lured me to Ransom Beach with promises of watching the sunset together. I experienced again the feeling of betrayal when Michael instead foisted Ezekiel upon me and—right before my eyes—became an automaton for Ezekiel’s commands to sway me toward his sick quest for power. Telling myself that the Ransom Beach Michael wasn’t my Michael but some zombielike Ezekiel follower only went so far.
When I was finally able to drift off to sleep, the dreams came. Unsettling visions of death and destruction. The images reminded me of the horrific flashes I’d received from Ezekiel’s mind. Except for one, in which a luminous sword vanquished the darkness.
When I awoke on Thursday morning, I wondered what was happening to me. Why was I harboring these unfaithful thoughts about my parents and, more disconcertingly, Michael? Was my self-doubt over being the Elect One running rampant and taking Michael as its target? Michael was my love, my soul mate, the one who always had my back. I mean, he had even killed his own father to protect me.
Did these subconscious doubts actually stem from the change in the frequency and length of Michael’s notes? Why should it matter if his letters were shorter? Or if he skipped sending a letter after a class or two? It seemed ridiculous, especially in the context of the looming end days. Did I have misgivings because Michael had thrown himself into football? If so, that was totally unfair of me, since we had agreed to act as normally as possible. And for Michael, football was normal.
Eternity Page 3
