We walked into her house and I followed Brooks to her room. This was the first time that I had been upstairs. We passed by a room that looked like a mixture of a guest room and a hospital room. There were machines lined up by the wall next to a bed that reminded me of the hospital. Flashbacks came to me of my mother and the time that she spent in the hospital, with the confusion of tubes and machines beeping and needles and doctors and nurses rambling about. I remembered my mom’s pale face peering out from her sheets and how she tried to smile at me with dark circles under her eyes. I remembered the day she shaved her hair; I’d cried in the car when we left, unable to be strong for her anymore. My dad said nothing; he just drove in silence all the way home.
“Dude.”
“Hey, dude? You ok?”
Suddenly I was back in the present. “Yeah, yeah, I’m okay.” I blocked those memories from my mind. Ailey was staring at me.
“Hey, you,” she said and smiled warmly and gave me a hug. Relief poured through me.
“Are you mad at me?” I asked her.
“Here, sit down.” She pointed to a love seat by her bed. I sat down, and man was it comfortable. She sat down next to me.
“Do you want anything?” Brooks asked. “I’m going out to get something for Ailey to eat.”
“No, no, I’m fine,” I said and he left.
Ailey sat back and looked at me thoughtfully. She smiled.
“Hey, I wanted to say that I’m sorry about yesterday. I didn’t mean to – interrupt anything between you and Isolda.” She looked abashed.
I looked at my feet.
“It doesn’t matter. The whole class was there so it wouldn’t have mattered anyway,” I replied.
The room was quiet. I could feel Ailey’s embarrassment.
“Really, it’s okay,” I said, trying to make her feel better. “How are you? Where are you going?”
“San Diego,” she said.
“Awesome, I love it there.”
“Of course you do. It’s San Diego.” I sensed sadness behind her smile.
“How are things going with you and Brooks?” I continued.
“Well,” she hesitated. “Have you heard any of the rumors going around school?”
I thought carefully, trying to remember the things I had heard talked about in the hallways or in class. I usually didn’t pay any attention.
“Not really. Why?”
“Well…” she paused. “I should probably let you know that Brooks has been taking a lot of crap from some friends lately. They say things like… well, like you and I have hooked up behind his back and that he should break up with me. They call him an idiot and tell him that he should move on. I think that Greg’s ex, Heather, wants to hook up with Brooks now that Greg broke up with her, so she spread rumors around about me. And how I acted at the beach didn’t really help any.”
I sat in stunned silence; I had no idea what to say. I’d had no clue about what other people were saying. Of course, I didn’t usually pay attention to that kind of thing because I just didn’t care. And people weren’t usually talking about me so it didn’t matter, at least I thought that they weren’t talking about me. I felt really awful, there was no way that I would ever go behind Brooks’s back. It’s not like I could compete with him anyhow. Besides, even though things with Isolda weren’t ideal right now, I couldn’t imagine being with anyone else but her.
“Of course, my friends believe me. Well, most of them anyhow.”
I frowned.
“It’s okay. I understand that things can be confusing sometimes.”
Suddenly, things clicked into place with Isolda. I could understand now why she had issues with Ailey and me, why she thought that we were a thing.
I looked at her and sighed. “We are quite a pair, huh?”
Her face soured. “Yep, we sure are.”
She thought for a moment. “I wonder why.”
I thought about it. We had not spoken about it since the first time on the curb of the high school parking lot, but we had acted on the feelings that came naturally. Although we had not been friends for very long, it felt like I’d known her forever. I would text her whenever I wanted to share something with her. She would often drive me home, or we would hang out, playing cards or just talk. Just as she had opened her home to me when I met her dad, I had introduced her to my mom and dad. In fact, Ailey got along really well with my mom and would talk to her for a long time while I did grocery shopping or ran errands. It was nice for my mom to have someone to talk to besides me and Dad and nurses and doctors. One day we had taken her outside for a short walk in the field behind the house. My mom had been so quiet; just staring wistfully off into the distance. Ailey seemed to know that sometimes saying nothing is best and so she just stood there quietly holding her elbow. For whatever reason, Ailey fit so nicely into my family that it was almost natural to me now and I hardly thought about it anymore.
Although Ailey had asked a question, I don’t think that she had really expected an answer and so she just stared at the bed, lost in thought.
“Don’t worry about Brooks. He really is okay with ‘us’. He just doesn’t know how to handle the pressure sometimes,” she said, suddenly out of her reverie. “And really he has so much other stuff going on with football, keeping his 4.2 GPA and all his responsibilities at home while his dad is away with business. So, yeah, all this is just the weak spot in everything that he is juggling. He’ll be fine.”
I thought about it, I guess I’d never realized how much he really did.
“So how come you still hang out with me? I mean, I would never want to come between…”
I ended the sentence, not really able to finish it. To finish saying that I would stop hanging out with her so that she could be with Brooks without rumors swirling around them… yeah, that wasn’t about to happen.
She shook her head. “People just don’t understand you and me. We can’t even understand it, how can we expect others to understand? So I do what just feels right, deep in my bones, no matter how it looks and no matter what people say about us. It is what it is.”
She sighed, and I agreed. I couldn’t think of anything else to do. Well, actually there was one thing; opening up to Isolda about my feelings. That might take considerable convincing on my part but I would also be exposing myself like never before to Isolda in the hopes that she wouldn’t stomp all over me. People might believe that Ailey and I were just friends then, and we could all hang out as couples without the stress from vicious gossip.
I sighed, feeling that my life had gotten considerably more complicated in just a few months.
“Hey,” she grabbed my hand again, “do you have a birthmark like mine?”
“Brooks told you about that?”
She smiled. “Yeah, you were thinking about something else, I don’t think you were listening to us.”
I showed her my ‘sun’ and she showed me her ‘eye’.
“Strange,” she said as she inspected it. “You’ve had that since you were born?”
“Well, that’s what my parents said. I guess if I trust them, then yeah.”
“Ha ha.” She playfully hit my arm and then looked down at hers.
“Yeah, me too. Actually that’s one thing I remember about my mom. She told me that it was from the touch of an angel. That it meant I was special. It is a bit strange though, you having one like mine. I think that most people’s birthmarks are colored darker than their skin. But ours look like someone burned it into our skin.” She grabbed my hand again and studied my mark.
“Strange,” she remarked again, then dropped my hand back onto my chair.
Suddenly Ailey’s stomach growled.
As if on cue, Brooks walked through the door with food. His face was serious but he tried to smile.
“Hey Tristen,” he said. “Look, I’m really sorry about what I said in the car. I’ve been getting some slack from people at school and I…”
“I told him,” Ailey said.
“You did?” He looked a little embarrassed.
“Anyhow,” she looked at me and grinned, “we all know how Tristen feels about Isolda…”
They both chuckled and I blushed.
“Shut up,” I said.
“So anyhow…” he said and sat down next to me and pulled Ailey onto his lap. “I get it, and I’m sorry. I don’t know what to tell people though, but that’s okay. There’s nothing that they can do about it. I — really like — Ailey, so they’ll just have to get over it.”
I looked at Ailey. She was suppressing a smile that leaked out at the corners of her mouth.
“So now,” he continued, “we just need to figure out how to get Tristen to hook up with Isolda.”
They both turned to look at me.
“Shut up,” I repeated, and slugged him in the arm. He just chuckled and sorted the fries and burgers.
“So anyway, look man, I just want to say it out loud. I don’t have those kinds of feelings for Ailey. We are just friends.” I stopped for a moment to think about our relationship. I had always felt like I had friends at school but now I realized that they were only acquaintances. Ailey was not only my first real friend since high school started, but the connection I felt to her was so strong that she quickly became the best friend I’d ever had.
“She’s kinda like my best friend,” I finally continued.
Man, it felt weird to say that out loud, like I was in elementary school again or something.
“Okay, that sounded better in my head. It sounds funny saying it out loud.”
“It doesn’t sound funny,” Ailey said, while at the same time Brooks said, “Yeah, it does sound kind of weird.” She hit him on the shoulder and he threw a fry at her.
“Anyhow…” I breathed deeply. “I just wanted to make that public announcement.”
“Yeah, brother, we know,” Brooks said before stuffing about five fries in his mouth.
“I also wanted to say that I’m sorry for what I said to you today. I don’t know what I was thinking… actually I do know what I was thinking. I was thinking that I was really annoyed at Isolda and Greg, but still, I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”
“It’s okay, Tristen. Really it is. But thanks for telling me that.” She smiled.
“Yeah, bro. We’re cool.” Brooks looked at me meaningfully, and then he added, “It’ll work out. We’re smart.” He tapped his head. “We’ll think of something when Ailey gets back from her awesome vacation.”
He grinned at her. She smiled and took a big bite out of her Whopper and then offered me a bite. I shrugged and reached for the burger.
❦
That night, I tried to focus on my homework, or anything else besides Isolda, but I just couldn’t stop thinking about her. The way her lips felt as we kissed, soft and sweet. The way her body felt leaning into mine. The way she looked at me on the beach — like she felt something for me too. The image of her trusting me and taking my hand in the current fixed itself in my mind. Then I thought of the way she had looked at me when Ailey showed up on the beach. Betrayed.
I was confused and amazed about my passionate feelings for this beautiful girl. I was also a little panicked; I had never felt this way about anyone else before. I had this crazy insatiable desire to constantly be with her. I couldn’t explain it; this girl now filled my every thought.
Man! I was so frustrated. I tried to think about what I could have done differently. I’m sure there were a million things. I holed myself in my room for the rest of the evening, mulling over my problems and trying to find a way to work this out.
After I finally fell asleep, two men dressed in military uniforms woke me and dragged me into an old barn. This had to be another dream but it felt so real. After they tied me to a barn beam, I struggled to free myself.
This really has got to be another dream. It would almost be funny if it wasn’t so uncomfortable. I just had to wait it out.
Soon, they began asking me questions. I had no idea what they were saying, it sounded like gibberish to me. Maybe another language. Perhaps French?
“What do you want?” I asked them. “I don’t speak your language.”
They laughed. One of them left the barn and yelled out. Soon, others followed him into the barn. My stomach churned when I saw about twenty of them enter the barn. They looked similar to the shiny knights you saw in museums, except their armor cut off at the arms and knees.
What are they going to do to me? I didn’t want to wait out this dream anymore and struggled frantically against the ropes. Instinct told me this would not end well. One of the men spoke to me again. I could tell by his tone that he was asking me a question. I stared at him stupidly. He began to get angry at me and unsheathed a sword that hung at his waist. Cold sweat broke out and ran down my face and underarms, drenching me.
“What do you want? Please, speak English. I can’t understand you. Just tell me what you want in English,” I pleaded.
The man spoke rapidly again, getting so close to my face that I could see his rotted teeth and smell his repulsive body odor.
The whole situation really freaked me out; my whole body was as taut as a guitar string. Then, he spit on me, which caused the whole group to laugh and join in on spitting in my direction.
Disgusting.
The rest of the soldiers were afraid to do anything more than spit on me. The fear didn’t seem to be for the man asking me the questions, but from someone else standing aloof of the group, watching the scene. This man had blond hair and steely cold blue eyes. He was athletic and muscular and wasn’t wearing the same clothes as the rest of the soldiers. The soldier who was talking to me looked to him for guidance. The man’s posture exuded nothing but confidence. He hung out in the back, watching the men laugh and spit on me. Eventually he staggered up to me and the soldiers grew quiet. My reflexes caused me to cower automatically; this was definitely a man to be afraid of. His men laughed even harder at my reaction. When he reached me, he pulled out a long knife and, without hesitation, thrust it into my gut.
I groaned and jerked up in my bed. I held my stomach in panic and, doubling over in pain, I could feel my heart beating a thousand times a second. I took a deep breath of relief. I was in my bed. Safe. I breathed in and out slowly, trying to calm my hammering heart. I looked at my hands. They were clammy but didn’t have any blood on them. Then I inspected my shirt; I noticed a long, thin tear in my shirt. Exactly in the spot where the knife entered my gut. I shuddered. I must have ripped it while I was sleeping.
I could still feel the pain in my stomach but eventually the fog in my brain began to recede and, seeing that I was okay, I calmed down. After I lay back down with my heart still pounding in my chest, I thought about the meaning of these dreams.
Maybe there isn’t any meaning. Maybe I’m just crazy. At this point, that wouldn’t surprise me.
I rubbed my stomach where the knife had penetrated my organs and almost felt sick as I remembered the feeling of it entering my gut. My old psych teacher would say that my dream was a manifestation of the stab of pain I’d felt from Isolda.
No, that wasn’t right. From my own self, for my own betrayal. I didn’t think the man represented Greg. Greg had only done what came naturally to him, which was to go after what he wanted. I envied him for that and my jealousy grew even stronger, even as I almost admired him for his confidence. Almost.
❦
The next day I woke up determined to speak to Isolda about where I stood with Ailey. Now that I knew about the rumors going around, I was able to put into words the feelings that I had for her. I felt bad about the things that Isolda must have heard.
At school, it felt like the whole football team congratulated me for saving the ‘hottest new girl in school’. One even suggested that she needed to pay me back, give me something in return for dragging her out of the riptide. Wink-wink, nod-nod. I just told him to shut up. The attention embarrassed me, but I was angrier about the rumors centering on Greg and Isolda.
> I found Isolda outside the school at the table where the football team hung out. Greg was sitting on the bench and Isolda was sitting on his lap, laughing and chatting with the group. Occasionally she looked up at him contentedly. The cheerleading team flocked around them as they practiced cheers for the next pep rally.
As I walked by, trying to figure out how to get her alone to talk to her, she saw me. It was as if time had slowed down; she stopped laughing and watched me pass, her eyes following me. Greg was watching her as she watched me. I soon became very interested in my feet as Greg’s easy smile shifted to a scowl. As I was about to turn the corner of the school, I heard Greg call my name.
“Tristen. Hey, Tristen. Come here for a sec, will ya?” I turned to look at the group. About eight or ten of them were now staring at me.
I looked at Isolda and said, “Yes?”
“Hey, can you come here for a sec? Isolda said she wanted to talk to you.” For a split second I could see the confusion on her face, and then her emotions returned to normal. When I reached the group I looked at Greg.
“Hey, did you want me?” I asked Isolda hoping that my face did not relay the twisted emotions I was feeling inside.
Greg smirked at me, his arms around Isolda’s shoulders possessively. “Isolda, weren’t you saying you hadn’t gotten a chance to thank Tristen yet?”
“Oh yeah, you’re right, Greg. I hadn’t.” She looked at me. “Thanks Tristen. For yesterday at the beach. I’m…” she paused, “grateful that you helped me. I really appreciate it.”
There was a coldness to her words; it was as if all sincerity had been drained out of her.
You mean, ‘Thank you for saving my life.’
“Sure, Isolda. No problem,” I said. I had goose bumps on my arms as a chilly wind rushed by. I had to find a way to speak to her alone. I turned to leave.
“Oh Tristen.” Greg put out his arm to stop me, the muscles rippling through to his chest. “Me too. I mean, I don’t know what I would do if I would have lost her. Thanks, bro.” He smiled at me, his teeth sparkling in the sun.
The Last Seeker: Book 1: a teen & YA magical, fantasy, paranormal, & adventure novel (TRISTEN) Page 10
