Echoes

by Michelle Rowen

  After the morning announcements blasted over the speaker, Helen leaned back from her seat directly in front of me. “Why didn’t you call me last night?”

  “I didn’t know how late the party would go.” Also, the last thing on my mind had been chatting on the phone.

  “My parents kicked everybody out at eleven.” She rolled her eyes. “Happy birthday to me.”

  Sure, it was a Monday night, but I’d expected the party would have gone till at least midnight. “You didn’t get mad about that?”

  “I pick my battles. This one wasn’t worth it.”

  I absently scratched at a rough chip on the edge of my desk that another student had diligently carved away. Helen usually got what she wanted, especially from her parents. Her own car when she turned sixteen, swim lessons with a coach that likely cost a small fortune over the years, a new and improved laptop whenever she got bored with the old one, a weekly clothes and entertainment allowance large enough that she’d never had to work a part-time job. She’d even showed me the dress she’d convinced her mother to buy for her for Junior Prom this coming Saturday. Well out of my price range, let’s just say.

  My dress was still gorgeous, but I hadn’t needed to borrow my father’s credit card. Not that he would have lent it to me.

  It was kind of funny, really. Prom had seemed like the most important thing in my life up until last night. Helen and I had talked about it for an hour before everyone arrived at the party.

  “Are you okay, Liv?” Helen asked with concern.

  My traumatic experience must have been etched onto my face. I wanted to tell her everything. I mean, I usually told Helen everything, so why would this be any different?

  “I—I’m fine. It’s just that last night I—”

  Ethan entered the room. My heart immediately started to pound faster as the events of last night came back to me in full force.

  “Last night you what?” Helen asked when I went silent.

  I shook my head, my attention elsewhere.

  This morning, Ethan wore faded jeans, a loose fitting green T-shirt, and he clutched a battered binder and a copy of Othello under his arm as he made his way to his desk. When he sat down, his gaze flicked to me for a split second before he instead looked at our teacher, Ms. Carlson, who had red hair so bright it made it difficult to look anywhere else when she was in the room. Maybe that was part of her master plan to keep our attention on her at all times.

  I gingerly touched my forearm where I’d received a cut from the knife—thankfully it was just a small one. One Band-Aid had been enough to cover it up.

  I knew one thing about last night for absolute certain—Ethan Cole had saved my life. And then he refused to acknowledge that anything happened and he’d told me to forget about it. My brain ached as I tried to piece together how it was possible for two people to burst into flames and vanish into thin air. But I’d seen it. It had happened. It was real.

  And I wasn’t crazy.

  They’d known my name was Olivia. And for some reason they’d wanted to kill me. Me in particular. They’d said something else, too.

  “Your death will mark a new beginning for the Upyri.”

  Upyri.

  Why did that word sound so familiar?

  Lost in my thoughts, I barely heard anything Ms. Carlson said during class. She had a tendency to drone on, so lost in her love of English literature that she frequently forgot there was a class of thirty bored and restless teenagers in front of her.

  We were currently studying Othello and it was Ms. Carlson’s favorite play of all time.

  That made one of us. I found Shakespeare unbelievably dry and virtually unreadable. I didn’t understand why we didn’t study modern literature. Instead we were forced to read musty tomes from hundreds of years ago.

  I’d debated this with Ms. Carlson only last week. She seemed interested in my opinion. I got good grades despite my disinterest in the subject matter so I guess she was willing to tolerate me.

  During class I stole so many glances in Ethan’s direction that Helen started to notice.

  “Something’s wrong,” she whispered. “Tell me what it is.”

  I shook my head. After nearly spilling everything to her at the beginning of class, I’d come to my senses. Helen was a hardcore realist who didn’t believe in strange phenomena. I knew she’d just laugh it off and tell me I was imagining things.

  There was only one person I wanted to talk to. Ethan had the answers for me. I knew he did.

  When the bell rang at the end of class I jumped out of my seat so fast that I knocked my binder to the floor.

  Helen eyed me strangely. “You’re acting so weird today.”

  “I know I am. Sorry. But I—” I quickly snatched the binder up. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

  Without waiting for a reply, I was out of there like a starting gun had gone off. Ethan had taken off the moment the bell rung and was already in the hall. I kept my eyes locked on his dark hair and green shirt so I wouldn’t lose him since I had no idea where his next class was.

  The warm, sticky press of kids leaving their classrooms was all around me along with the scent of heavy cologne and sweat as everyone simultaneously emerged into the hallway heading in a million different directions. Ethan turned left at the corner up ahead. I did the same, but when I got there I’d lost sight of him. I stood on my tiptoes trying to look past the faces of everyone, trying to stay in one spot without getting jostled. A girl I didn’t know jammed her elbow into me, and I gave her my best dirty look.

  Then I saw him.

  Ethan stood at the side of the hall, just past a long flank of green lockers, watching me with an extremely guarded expression. I made a beeline toward him until I stood right in front of him.

  “Are you stalking me, Olivia?” he asked.

  That almost made me smile. “What gave it away?”

  “I could practically feel you breathing down my neck. If you want to be my stalker, you’re going to have to learn to be a bit more subtle about it.”

  I ignored my racing heart. “I need to talk to you.”

  He glanced toward our left as if he didn’t want to meet my gaze directly. “So talk.”

  “You took off last night before you told me anything.”

  “Anything about what?”

  The breath of frustration I hissed out made a whistling sound. “I want to know who those people were and why they tried to”—I lowered my voice—”kill me.”

  I warily eyed the other kids in the hall to see if anyone was listening. Their numbers had decreased rapidly as everyone made their way to second period. Returning my attention to Ethan, I was surprised to see he now looked annoyed.

  “What?” I said.

  “It would be easier if you forgot about last night.”

  “How am I supposed to forget? I nearly died.”

  His jaw tightened and he swept his hair off his forehead. It stayed to the side for about two seconds before it fell back into his eyes. “Here’s how it is. I was out walking last night. I do that a lot to try to clear my head lately. I saw you in front of Helen’s. Then I went around the block once and headed for home. I saw that woman with the knife and I intervened—”

  “Intervened,” I repeated.

  “That’s right. Anyone would have done the same thing. It’s no big deal.”

  “It’s a huge deal.”

  “If you say so. I saw someone in trouble and I tried to help. I disarmed the woman and she and the man ran back to their car, or wherever they came from.”

  I shook my head. “No, you fought with them. You—you stabbed them.” I whispered it. “And then they—”

  “And then they what? Then they disappeared in a flash of fire?”

  “Yes!”

  “Come on, Olivia. That sounds kind of crazy, don’t you think? I probably wouldn’t share that theory with anyone. Wouldn’t want to spend your summer vacation locked up in a mental ward, would you?”

  That was why
I hadn’t told anyone yet. I knew how insane it sounded. “I don’t understand why you won’t tell me the truth. It’s obvious you know more than you’re letting on.”

  “You’re entitled to your opinion, of course. It’s time for me to go now.” He eyed me. “Are you going to try to stop me?”

  “I might.”

  “People are going to start gossiping. The popular Olivia Hawthorn cornering the loser Ethan Cole after first class. It’s fairly scandalous.”

  I stared at him incredulously. “You think this is funny?”

  “Hilarious, obviously.” But he wasn’t smiling.

  “I nearly got stabbed in the heart and you’re trying to pretend it was nothing.”

  “I do that a lot.”

  “What?”

  “Pretend.” There was a bitter edge to his voice. “Okay, listen to me, Olivia, and please try your best to hear me. What happened last night was nothing. You don’t owe me anything for it. You don’t have to talk to me, be nice to me, or even acknowledge my existence. Got it? All I want you to do is forget about it. Go back to your regularly scheduled life. Can you do that?”

  I gripped my binder tighter to my chest. “You’re saying that you want me to leave you alone.”

  “Pretty much.”

  I moved a step closer to him and I noticed that his expression soured and he pressed further back against the wall as if to try to escape me. He didn’t like being around me, that was obvious. Maybe it was because I’d ignored him and made him feel like a loser for so long, even though it hadn’t been on purpose. It wasn’t as if he’d made much of an effort to come out of his shell all of these years.

  The bell rang for next class and the remaining kids in the hall scattered.

  “Well?” Despite working very hard at keeping space between us, he hadn’t broken our staring contest. I continued to gaze into his eyes hoping to see the truth down in those coppery depths. It was surprisingly difficult to look away.

  “Right,” I finally said. “You want to go to class.”

  “That would be nice.”

  “Not until you tell me why those people caught fire and disappeared.”

  He hissed out a frustrated sigh. “Olivia—”

  “I know what I saw. And I know you know more than you’re letting on, otherwise you’d be as shocked at what happened as I am. And you’re not shocked at all. This is major, Ethan. And we’re in this together now.”

  He pushed at his hair again as if it was being as much of a nuisance as I was. “Just let it go.”

  “Even if they were purposely lit on fire, they’d leave a body behind, a burned up husk or something. But there was nothing. And there was no smell, either. A burning person would have, like, a cooking meat smell.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Morbid.”

  “But there was no body. No smell. Just a mark on the ground, as if they’d vanished into thin air.”

  “Well...it was really dark last night. And you had been drinking.” He shrugged as if that explained everything.

  I looked at him with surprise. “How do you know that?”

  His gaze moved to my mouth for a second. “I could smell the strawberries and vodka. It must have been a good party.”

  Frustration sparked inside me again that he continued to deny everything no matter how hard I tried to get the truth out of him. “One weak drink means nothing.”

  “If you say so.”

  “What does Upyri mean? I—I feel like I’ve heard it somewhere before.”

  His jaw tightened. “I don’t know.”

  “The woman, she said that my death would mark a new beginning for the Upyri. What’s an Upyri?”

  “No idea.” He now spoke through clenched teeth. When he attempted to move past me I didn’t try to block him. “Just do me a favor and don’t talk to me again. Let’s get things back to normal between us.”

  The rubber soles of his sneakers squeaked against the shiny linoleum floor as he walked away from me.

  “Not going to happen,” I called after him. “I’ll see you later, Ethan!”

  When his shoulders visibly stiffened I couldn’t help but grin a little at the reaction. But my grin quickly faded when I realized I wasn’t any further ahead than I was last night in my search for answers.

  I turned in the opposite direction to head to second period and was surprised to see a girl sitting with her back against the lockers on the other side of the hallway. She had jet black hair cut bluntly to her chin and a bright pink streak in her long bangs, pale skin, purple lipstick, and black eyeliner. She blew a large bubble with her gum and it popped.

  Her name was Bree Margolis. We’d been best friends through elementary school, but went our separate ways in seventh grade. She didn’t like me anymore. The feeling was completely mutual.

  Lately, she liked to talk crap about the more popular kids. She thought she was being anonymous, but we all knew who was responsible for the gossip she spread school-wide. I’d been one of her many victims. She’d tried to start a rumor about me last year that I was easy. That rumor was a total lie.

  “What?” I asked without trying to sound the least bit friendly.

  She pulled the earphone out of her left ear. “Hey, Olivia. How’s it going?”

  “Fantastic.” My eyes narrowed. “Were you listening to music or eavesdropping just now?”

  “Eavesdropping.” She wound the cord around her iPod and tucked it into her black backpack. “It’s kind of a hobby of mine.”

  Yeah, no kidding. She had to get her dirt from somewhere.

  My chest tightened at the thought that someone like Bree had overheard us. “You should learn to mind your own business.”

  “Nah, boring.” She blew another big bubble until it popped, and then took a moment to tuck the gum back in her mouth. “He’s kind of hot, don’t you think?”

  “Who, Ethan?”

  She nodded. “But you probably wouldn’t notice that. He’s totally not your type.”

  I glanced both ways along the empty hallway. “You’re late for second period.”

  “I’m not going today.”

  “You’re not going to class?”

  “No. I hate math.” She shrugged. “So why bother?”

  “Great plan.” I smiled thinly. “Good luck with your GPA.”

  She snorted. “I see not much has changed. Still neurotic about everything that happens and what people will say if you don’t pretend to be as perfect as possible at all times.”

  I ignored her commentary. Everyone was entitled to their opinion. Even if they were trolls from Hell.

  The sleeves of her long sleeved black T-shirt were rolled up enough that I could see some disturbing ink on her arm. “Is that a pentagram?”

  She rubbed the tattoo. “Yup.”

  “Worshipping Satan now, Bree?”

  She grinned. “You’re so clever. That’s me. A big ol’ Satan worshipper. Actually, FYI, the pentagram is a symbol of protection against evil, not devil worship.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do.”

  I had better things to do than talk to Bree. “Anyway, it’s been super fun catching up with you. Bye, now.”

  “I heard what you said. About somebody trying to kill you, but they burst into flames and disappeared.”

  I froze, and then glanced over my shoulder to see her expression had grown more serious.

  “Best convo I’ve overheard in ages,” she continued. “It’s been so dull around here lately. Just prom, boys, prom, prom, party, prom. Blah.”

  “Nothing happened.” The lie tasted bitter leaving my mouth. “So don’t bother starting any rumors about it.”

  She gave me a withering look. “Were you being serious or were you just messing around just now? Was it really the Upyri?”

  My body felt tense and a sick feeling of panic swirled in my stomach. “Mind your own business.”

  “I know about the Upyri, Olivia. I told you about them ages ago. Don’t you remember that?”r />
  Oh, hell. That was where I’d heard the word before. Bree had always been obsessed with the supernatural world. Her oddball parents were just as wacky as she was. I remember once her mother had insisted on reading my Tarot cards.

  “I don’t remember anything.” I’d blocked most of it from my mind, but I did remember her telling me something, which was why it triggered something in me when I heard it again.

  Her penciled-in brows drew together. “Tell me more about what happened.”

  I shook my head. “Forget it. This has nothing to do with you.”

  Bree glared at me. “And here I was trying to help. Should’ve known not to bother. After all, we’re not friends anymore.”

  “Things change. Don’t take it personally. Just like I won’t take it personally that you tried to spread rumors about me being a slut. I guess that was your revenge, right?”

  An edge of actual pain slid behind her dark-rimmed eyes as she pushed herself up to her feet. “Whatever, Olivia. I took the hint long ago and left you the hell alone just like you wanted me to.”

  “It’s ancient history. Let it go.”

  “I have.”

  “Doesn’t sound like it to me.”

  She blew out a breath and studied the ground for a moment, before returning her attention to me. “The Upyri were here in Ravenridge before, but they haven’t been seen for a hundred years. If what you’re saying is true, it sounds like maybe they’re back. Trust me, that’s not a good thing.”

  I swallowed hard. “Wait, Bree, how do you—?”

  “Bye.” She started walking away.

  “Bree!” I called after her. “Wait!”

  She looked over her shoulder. “By the way, I don’t gossip or spread rumors. Never have. I think you’re thinking of your best friend forever, Helen. Total survival tactic to try to pin it on me, though. I guess I can kind of respect that.”

  Then she was gone, leaving me standing in the hallway all by myself.

  Chapter 3

  Helen said I ignored broken things hoping they would magically fix themselves. But some of the things I wanted to ignore weren’t broken, they were new and shiny and spectacularly ugly.