Balance (The Balance Series Book 1)

by Janelle Stalder

  “No worries though, your dear father has other ways of dealing with people.” He took a big gulp of the cognac, and let the warmth slither down his throat.

  The voice was weak and far off in the distance. I could just make out the sound of my name. It was faint, and the voice was unfamiliar, but they sounded like they needed my help. The light outside my bedroom window was bright, almost blinding, which made me wonder what time it was.

  How long had I been asleep?

  Caleb was nowhere to be seen. The voice was so persistent that I ignored his absence for now. Slipping my feet into the ballet flats that were tossed beside my bed, I walked slowly over to the window. My movements felt sluggish and groggy from just waking up.

  When I stuck my head out the window, I was surprised to find that the air was eerily still. No leaves stirred on the branches of the trees lining my street, and the grass all stood up, unmoving, like little soldiers at attention. No one else was outside either, which I thought odd, but again pushed it aside. I lowered myself down onto the roof, and then proceeded to lower myself onto the ground.

  The voice sounded urgent now as I drew closer. Still I could not recognize them, but I could tell it was a woman. My mother perhaps? What would she be doing outside?

  “Mom?” I yelled out. My voice echoed down the empty street as if I had spoken through a megaphone. I cringed, and quickly looked around, embarrassed by the unnatural level. No one was around to notice, thankfully.

  I slowly walked down the street where I could see two cars sitting in the intersection. It looked as though there had been an accident. My heart began to race when the realization hit me that the voice really was in trouble. I hoped I wouldn’t be too late to help.

  Trying to pick up my pace, I struggled to force my steps to quicken. I seemed to stay at the sluggish pace, even though in my head I begged to move quicker.

  Had Caleb given me something before I went to sleep? I wondered suddenly. It would explain the fogginess in my head, and the fact that I had slept at all. I would have to ask him when I found him again, I decided.

  I studied the two vehicles during my long approach to see if I knew who they belonged to, but they both seemed foreign to me.

  “Mom?” I called out again.

  The voice had stopped calling my name at that point. Was I indeed too late to help this person? If it had been my mom she would have responded, I thought reassuringly. This must be someone else, but who?

  “Amanda?” I called now. No answer. The sun burned my eyes, making it impossible for me to see any other shapes besides the cars themselves. I sheltered my eyes with my hands to see if it helped, but the sun’s rays bounced off the windows of the two vehicles, making it hopeless. Still my feet would not quicken.

  “Vivian, you must hurry!” cried the voice.

  A large gust of window suddenly sent my hair flying forward, whipping me in the face, and sent my feet staggering forward. I looked back and saw that all the trees were just as still as before. The wind had disappeared just as suddenly as it had come.

  I was confused and yet I didn’t want to stop, worried about the people in the crash. Why was there no one else helping? From the looks of both front ends, the impact would have been loud. Surely someone must have heard it? Did no one think to call an ambulance?

  Finally I was only a few feet away from the cars, and I could see two people lying in the front seats. My heart sped up.

  One car was black, very similar to that of Alan Mansfield, although not quite the same. The other was a bright blue, nothing that seemed familiar to me. I walked cautiously over to the black one first, avoiding the scraps of metal and glass that now littered the pavement.

  I breathed in deeply before peering through the window, not wanting to smell the blood should anyone be injured. My breath came out in a loud huff.

  The car was empty.

  I whipped around to see if the person had perhaps crawled out to a safer spot, but the street was just as empty as it had been before. The door was firmly shut, showing no evidence of someone having left.

  I stood motionless for a minute. Someone had unquestionably been calling my name, I assured myself.

  I wasn’t going crazy.

  Wiping the sweat from my forehead, I turned to go check the other car. As I did, I almost fell back in shock, gasping at the sight in front of me.

  The other car was gone.

  I looked around frantically in search of the blue car, but it was nowhere to be seen.

  “That’s impossible,” I said out loud. I turned back to where the car had been and faced two bright headlights that were speeding towards me.

  A scream worked its way up my throat, echoing through the empty streets, when suddenly the sky around me went dark, and it was night again.

  A hard object hit me from the side and sent me reeling to the ground, scraping my whole left side. The pain shocked me into full consciousness.

  A car horn blared in the background as I blinked, taking in the ground in front of me now. My hands braced against the pavement, bits of rocks biting into the soft skin of my palms. The skin on my side burned.

  “Vivian! Vivian, are you ok?”

  A man’s voice was right at my ear. Apparently this was the object that had knocked me so hard.

  I sat up, brushing the dirt from my hands. I was going to be black and blue, I cringed inwardly. I looked up and saw two green eyes staring down at me in expectation.

  “Artem?” My voice sounded groggy. Shaking my head, I glanced up at the streetlamps lining my street. I was sitting on the ground beside the stop sign at the end of it. “How did I get here?” I asked, confused.

  Looking down, I realized I was still wearing the clothes I had been sleeping in. My feet were completely bare. Hadn’t I put shoes on? It slowly dawned on me that I had been dreaming the car accident the whole time, but that didn’t explain what I was doing outside.

  “Vivian, I think you might have been sleepwalking,” Artem said in a concerned voice.

  I looked up in alarm, and observed my surroundings again. There was no way I had been sleepwalking, I thought reluctantly. “I don’t sleepwalk,” I managed to get out. I felt so out of sorts.

  Do people actually sleepwalk like this?

  “Didn’t you see the car then, sweetie?” came another man’s voice, this one a lot deeper than Artem’s. Looking past Artem’s expressive face, I saw Murray standing behind him with the same concern in his eyes.

  “Murray?” I asked, shocked. “What are you doing here?”

  “Oh, well Artem and I were just taking a walk, and we happened to see you,” he said quickly. “You seemed pretty content, so we didn’t want to disturb you, but then we saw you step out in front of that car, so Artem hurried over here to get you out of the way. Are you hurt?”

  I looked back at Artem who was still sitting quite close to me. I could feel the puzzlement on my face. “Why were the two of you walking?”

  “It’s a nice night,” Artem shrugged indifferently.

  I shook my head. “That’s not what I meant. How do you two even know each other?” I looked from face to face, but neither appeared to want to answer me. “Why were you walking on my street?” Again neither man spoke. It was time for me to stand, and have the situation cleared up. As I went to, I instantly groaned in pain.

  “Are you okay?” Artem asked, supporting me under my good arm.

  “I think I’m going to be pretty bruised. You tackled me,” I accused, holding one of my elbows.

  “You were about to get hit by a car, so a thank you will suffice,” he said, letting go of my arm and stepping back.

  We stared at each other, and then I heard someone new calling my name. I turned to see Caleb sprinting down the street towards me. He was unnaturally fast. Within a couple of seconds he was by my side.

  “What happened?” he asked, frantically searching my face. His gaze zeroed in on the cuts and bruises that were already appearing along my arm. He turned accusingly tow
ard Artem, stepping protectively in front of me. “What happened?” he asked again, anger seeping through his voice.

  “Calm down, Caleb, Artem didn’t do anything wrong.” I quickly stepped in, squeezing his arm. “It appears that I was sleepwalking, and Artem here saved me from getting hit by a car.” As each word came out, I realized how absurd it sounded.

  He turned to me with a disbelieving and yet horrified look. “You were sleepwalking?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.

  “It appears so, yes.” I replied, nodding and shrugging my shoulders.

  “You don’t sleep walk,” he pointed out.

  “I didn’t,” I corrected. “Until tonight…apparently.”

  He looked back at Artem sceptically, and then returned to me. “You almost got hit by a car?”

  “Um, yes. I seem to have stepped out into the street, and a car almost hit me,” I explained, biting my lip. “Artem here pushed me out of the way, causing a little bit of damage on my side,” I said pointing at the scrapes that were visible.

  “What were you doing on Vivian’s street?” Caleb asked then, turning to face Artem again.

  Artem stood in a relaxed pose, and shrugged his shoulders casually. “It was a coincidence,” he said.

  Caleb’s eyes narrowed at his response, and for the first time flickered over to notice Murray standing off to the side.

  “Well I’m glad you’re okay, Vivian,” Artem continued, clearly trying to wrap things up, while Caleb continued to watch them in a heavy silence. “Just make sure you’re more careful from now on.” He smiled.

  “Don’t worry,” Caleb said, interrupting the sarcastic rebuttal I had ready on my lips. “She is more than safe with me.”

  Artem’s eyebrows raised and he said coldly, “Well this must have been your off night then.”

  “Watch it, church boy,” Caleb said, stepping closer to him. I quickly repositioned myself between them, and pushed Caleb back.

  “Alright that’s enough,” I said. “Caleb let’s just go home please.”

  The two boys kept their eyes locked, before Murray called Artem to leave as well, and we finally dispersed. Caleb kept his arm protectively around me the whole walk home. I could tell by the tense feel of his body that he was still upset, so I kept quiet until we returned home.

  “What were you dreaming about that you would have been sleepwalking?” Caleb asked as we crawled back through my bedroom window. My clock said it was eleven. I hadn’t been sleeping that long after all.

  “I don’t know, I thought I heard someone calling my name,” I explained, carefully pulling my t-shirt over my head. Every movement made me cringe in pain. Caleb was by my side then, helping to undress me.

  “You look like the car actually hit you,” he noted, kissing my shoulder. “I’ll go get a cloth and something to put on these cuts.” He left my room, leaving me to try to get my pants off by myself.

  The more I lowered the pants, the more horror appeared. Every inch of my leg, hip, waist, arm, shoulder, was covered in scrapes and bruises. I groaned again.

  “Ouch,” Caleb said as he appeared back in the room.

  “I’m a mess,” I said feeling like I could cry at any moment.

  “Well that’s what you get for trying to get yourself hit by a car,” he said with a crooked smile.

  “Not funny.”

  He slowly started to clean up my side as I winced at every touch. “What ended up happening in your dream?” he asked while he doctored me.

  “Nothing really, I woke up when Artem tackled me,” I said, flinching at an especially tender spot.

  “You’re lucky he happened to be around,” he said in a tense voice.

  “Where were you?” He had been missing in my dream as well.

  “I had just gone for a quick walk,” he explained. “I almost had a heart attack when I came back here to find the bed empty.”

  The concern in his voice made me want to cry again. Clearly I was still in desperate need of some sleep. This brought up another thought I’d had in the dream.

  “How did you get me to sleep?” I asked, watching his expression.

  He raised his vibrant blues eyes innocently. “What do you mean?”

  I narrowed mine. “Did you give me something to make me sleep?”

  He tried to keep the innocent look, but I wasn’t buying it.

  “I might have slipped a little laudanum in your tea,” he admitted, looking down at his work again. I wanted to be angry at having been drugged, but I decided to let it go. I almost felt grateful for the sleep he had given me. “Are you angry?” he asked as my silence continued.

  “No,” I admitted. “I needed it.”

  He looked up and smiled. Damn the man and his rare smiles.

  “Where did you go for a walk?” I asked.

  “Just down the street, the opposite way though. If I had just gone the other way I would have been there to save you myself,” he said, almost angry again.

  He was silent for a minute, and then he continued as he started to wrap certain cuts. “I received a call from the hospital my mother is staying at. It looks like she is pretty sick,” he explained quietly.

  “I didn’t know your mother was in the hospital.” I turned to him alarmed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “She’s been there for so long, I guess I just never thought to say anything,” he replied, shrugging his shoulders. He stood up and grabbed a fresh shirt for me, helping to slip it back over my stiff body. “She’s not healthy, in the head that is, so she lives in a place where people can constantly watch her. They called to tell me she’s been having some difficulties. She’s been asking for me,” he added.

  My body immediately went even stiffer at his last comment. A sense of panic started to rise in the pit of my stomach when I thought about him leaving. His hands were instantly cradling my face, forcing me to stare into his beautiful eyes.

  “I won’t leave you if you don’t want me to,” he said quietly. “She has lots of people there that are trained to take care of her, so it wouldn’t be a big deal.”

  He was just trying to not make me feel bad, which in reality made me feel even worse. I was such an ass. I knew I had to tell him it was okay to go, even though I really didn’t want him to. This was his mother, and it wouldn’t be fair of me to keep him from her.

  “Don’t be silly,” I said, trying to sound strong. “You have to go and make sure she is okay. She’s asking for you. I’ll be fine here,” I reassured him, forcing a smile.

  Caleb searched my face slowly, then leaned in and kissed me gently on the forehead and then on the lips. “I won’t leave, don’t worry.” He enveloped me in his arms, burying his face in my hair.

  I sighed, pulling away. “I’m serious, Caleb. I really think you should go. I would feel horrible if something was to happen, and you didn’t go because of me.” Hopefully this time I sounded more convincing.

  He smiled and said we would discuss it later. “You need to get more sleep now I think,” he said stroking my hair. “Would you like me to make you something to help?”

  He might have been teasing me, but I said yes, knowing that I probably wouldn’t fall asleep on my own.

  We sat outside on the roof staring up at the stars, as I sipped the hot cup of tea Caleb had made me. I didn’t even want to know how much extra ingredients he had put in it. It was almost welcomed at this point. My body felt as though it were running on empty.

  A thought occurred to me as we sat there. “How come you called Artem church boy?” I asked, tilting my head.

  He shrugged, but didn’t meet my stare. “He was wearing a cross, so it just came to me.”

  I tried to think if he really had been wearing a cross, but couldn’t recall seeing one.

  “How did you know he worked for a religious group?” I asked, this time causing him to look at me in surprise.

  “How do you know that?” he asked.

  “He told me about it at the library that night. Now how did you know that
?” I pressed.

  “I make it my business to know who my opponents are when I’m working on a trial,” he explained, looking back up at the sky.

  This seemed like a reasonable explanation; that, and I could feel my brain shutting down from the tea. I doubted I would be able to carry on a conversation for very long. Caleb noticed as well, and scooped me up to bring me to bed. I was asleep in his arms in seconds, and couldn’t recall later having been placed in my bed.

  This time I had nothing but sweet dreams.

  I slowly stretched out my legs and arms, feeling like an enormous cat. Caleb was lying next to me, smiling at the way my features appeared more rested.

  “You look a million times better,” he commented, brushing a stray hair from my face. Normally I would have been insulted at the implication that previously I’d looked like crap, but I knew it was probably true. Three days straight with no sleep would make even the prettiest of people look horrible.

  “I feel a million times better,” I replied, sitting up to notice the afternoon sun filling my room. The clock said it was almost noon. “I’m starving.” I could feel my stomach grumbling in protest.

  “We can go get something if you’d like,” Caleb said, getting up and pulling on his pants. The man’s upper body was amazing. I almost wanted to check and make sure I didn’t have drool dripping from my mouth. He stood, looking at me funny, waiting for a reply.

  I shook my head to get it back on track, and smiled sheepishly. “Sorry,” I said quickly. “I must still be half asleep.” I could feel my cheeks giving me away as I strategically avoided his bare chest.

  “Uh huh,” he replied, clearly amused. “Why don’t you get dressed, and I’ll go wait for you in the car?”

  I agreed, and ran off to fix myself up before going out in public.

  One look in the mirror and I had to choke down a scream. I looked horrible. My cheekbones seemed a little more prominent, making my eyes and lips seem larger. My eyes had dark circles under them that showed the lack of sleep I had been having, which one night of rest surely wasn’t going to fix. I was going to have to try to cover them up a bit, I decided reluctantly. I hated wearing cover-up.