"Remember anything?" Allecra asked.
"How do you know this place?" I said, staring back at her in confusion. But she turned to the door and opened it effortlessly. Wasn't the door locked the last time I had tried it? Allecra motioned for me to follow her. I stepped forward hesitantly. Once my eyes adjusted to the dark, I discovered that it was an attic. Below were school equipment, carts of valley balls and floats, and cardboard boxes.
"Why did you bring me here?" I asked in suspicion. Allecra slowly turned around to look at me. Her lips pressed together as if she was trying to hold back some secret from crawling out. We stood like that in a long stretching silence. Then she stepped towards me. The darkness around us made her quite intimidating. I took a step back, holding my bag in front of me like it was my only protection.
"Nina," she said in a soft tone, so soft, it sounded like a plea. Her eyes sparkled like glittering diamonds. Her smooth face looked tensed with inner conflicts. My heart began to pound wildly, and my knees started trembling. I had forgotten about how scary she could be. Maybe it was the effect of my crazy dreams that added to it.
"I think we should go back," I said and turned to the small door when her strong hands pulled me to her. Allecra spun me around to face her and wrapped her arms over my body. My bag dropped onto the dusty floor with a muffled thud.
Then all I could feel was her lips and tongue all over my mouth. I had no voice left, not even my breath. She had taken it all, including my strength. My struggle was unsurprisingly feeble. I came to realize how strong she was— so strong that I couldn't even move in her death-like grip.
Allecra delved her tongue deeper into my mouth, filling it with sleek softness. I felt like I was reliving the dream all over again. Only this time, it was real. Her taste made the nerves in my body tingle, and that embarrassed me to no end. It was a strange intoxicating feeling — to feel wanted by Allecra Knight.
It excited me.
Her long tongue was like a live eel in my mouth. I could barely breathe. Allecra’s hands wound around my body, pressing me against hers. My eyes fluttered and then closed from her passionate kiss. There were only the quiet noises of heavy breathing between us. I began to melt like hot butter. With that merciless tongue of hers inside my mouth, I could do nothing but surrender. Despite my confused whimpers, I was kissing her back sooner than I would like to. My hands felt the outlines of her slender body. Each part was so perfectly formed.
After a moment later, Allecra broke our kiss, making a wet sound from my blushed lips.
"Xenon is going to kill me," she said in a breathless whisper. "But I just couldn't help it."
"What—what do you mean?" I whispered back.
"I wasn't supposed to—you're not ready—"
"Ready for what?"
She pushed me against the wall and brought her face to mine and kissed me again. But she pulled away quickly. Her hands cupped my cheeks, keeping my head still. Our noses almost touched. Allecra was staring at me with those beautiful brilliant eyes. They were neither green nor blue, but somewhere between. And in that moment, I swear I could see strange light ignited like blue fire from the tissues of her irises. Something else began to stir up inside her body, but I couldn't place what it was.
Just like that, Allecra released me and stepped away. For the first time, she was breathing hard. My own mind was unreliable. I understood nothing of what was going on.
Allecra looked at me, frowning as if it was my fault that she had done what she had done. I just stood there, speechless. After a while, she turned her perfect torso away and walked out of the dark attic, leaving me to the shock and confusion all by myself.
CHAPTER 8
There must be an unspoken rule out there that says you don't leave a girl like that after you've kissed her senseless. I wished I had learned how to cope with someone like Allecra Knight before I came here.
The day that followed the incident, I didn’t see her again at school. Besides, we didn't have any other class together except Language Art and Science.
But every once in a blue moon, I would spot her and her siblings outside the school building, but they were constantly talking. I never saw them in the cafeteria at lunch break, and I knew myself better than to muster up the courage to confront Allecra about the kiss.
I wondered if she had regretted it. I wanted so badly to understand the motive of her intimacy towards me, but I found no clue.
Why did she do that to me and said stuff that made no sense?
Yet the feeling of our lips melting into each other still burned in my memory. With a sunken heart, I knew deep down that Allecra's touch would mark me for the rest of my life.
There were other things about her that I couldn't stop molding around in my mind. There was something unusual that I had come to notice later. I tried to convince myself that what I saw was just a reflection of the light. Her eyes couldn't have glowed, could they? And her tongue was perfectly fine. My mind might have overworked, which made me temporary delusional.
Yet again, when we kissed, I could feel her body changed. Something was aching and craving inside her. It was unmistakable how she wanted me in that moment. Thinking back, this thought terrified me, what could she have done if she didn't break it off? Would she and I have gone further? My body flushed all over just thinking about it. Did I want it if she were to take me? I felt my heart clenched at the answer. Yes, I wanted it. It was embarrassing how I wanted her already while we had barely known each other.
That left me completely and utterly miserable.
Aunt Vikki and Robert were preparing for their vacation. Jay and Piper were excited for them although I knew they were also excited for a different reason. But what shocked me more than anything thing was when my aunt told me she had bought me a car.
"A car?" I said.
"I knew it was hard for you to ride with Piper," she said a bit apologetically. I tried not to correct her that it was hard for Piper, not me. But my aunt reassured me that she already talked about it with her husband and that it was mostly her money. She almost made me cry right there at the table during dinner.
Nobody seemed overly surprised when the car was delivered to their front garden, except me. I felt like I had never seen a car so new in my life. It was a very cute and very red Mini Cooper with two white lines going across the hood. While the dealer talked to my aunt and her husband about the license and stuff, my cousins were feeling around the Cooper. They teased about wanting to switch theirs with mine.
"Now you don't have to take a bus when I have to pick up my friends anymore," Piper whispered to me with a relieved smile. I smiled back for it was hard to be sarcastic with her in a moment like this.
During that week, Jack Conner was becoming increasingly impossible to avoid. He waited for me outside the class and made excuses to walk with me to the parking lot.
For the two classes I had been looking forward to with Allecra, it turned out she wasn't there. I was getting upset and angry, but there was nothing I could do. It was obvious she was avoiding me.
But after a whole week passed by, she reappeared like a zombie walking into the room. She would be sitting at her desk and practically ignored me for the rest of the period. Soon after the class was over, she would just perfect her invisibility and disappeared.
No words could describe how frustrated and disappointed I was.
What was I to her? A toy-girl she could go around kissing and tossing aside after she had tried it? She left me cold and depressed, and I wasn't even the one to come her for crying out loud!
I usually ate my lunch alone outside under a dark pine tree where there were green grass and fresher air. The cafeteria was only excited when you wanted to make an impression. I had out-grown this teenage phase. In fact, after Allecra literally ignored my whole existence, I even lost my appetite. It wasn't long until Jack asked me to join his table with his group of friends. I tried to refuse but he was, again, impossible.
Jack introduced me to his clan one d
ay. I only remembered a few of them, because they were also in some of my classes. But they made an effort to talk to me and being nice. The boys looked like some sport model-wannabes with their gelled hair and aftershave smell.
"I like your hair,” Nathan, the guy from my math class said. “You could pass as a real-life Rapunzel, you know."
I smiled. Jack frowned at his friend. His other friend, Andrew, rested his chin on his folded arms and looked at me like some kind of mutt that wished you would take him home. Only I would never take him home.
The other girls, Phoebe, Claudia and Jessica laughed at some jokes. They all had high ponytails and perfect makeup. They were the cheerleaders. After a while, we were joined by another girl. But when I looked up from my lunch tray, I realized it was my cousin. Without anyone noticing, we both froze at the same time.
"Hey, Piper, come and meet Nina, she's just moved from Russia. I also invited her to our party this weekend," Jack said excitedly. Piper responded with a stiff grin and murmured a soft, “Hi”.
She actually didn’t plan on telling them that I was her cousin, and I just played along. Giving her a fake smile back, I stayed quiet as she sat down at the farthest chair of the table. The whole lunch break, we didn't make any eye contact. She was probably resenting me for being there.
After the bell rang, releasing us from the awkwardness, I stood up and retrieved my bag. But when I glanced at my cousin again, a shock hit me like a lightning. Piper leaned in to kiss Jack, but he briefly turned away pretending not to notice. I knew he didn't want me to see it, and a look of hurt registered on Piper's face. I balled my hands into fists. But before I could do anything to save my cousin from that potential player, I dashed out of there. It was none of my business.
Jack called out to me, but I didn't turn.
In biology, I sat with Jordan as usual. We hadn't talked much since the day I gave my oral report. I knew I shouldn't have told her about my mom. It must have made her uncomfortable. But Jordan didn't bring it up again, which was a good thing. We carried out our work with little to no conversation at all.
Today, as we were taking notes, Jordan turned to me.
"Don't cut it," she said, reaching out to touch my hair. Normally girls would do that to me like they wished it were theirs, but she seemed to just appreciate what she saw.
"Your hair, I mean," she added and withdrew her hand with a smile. Her dark eyelashes were long and feathery, but she hardly wore any makeup. I realized Jordan had a pleasant face that needed no extra help anyway. With her big greenish eyes and sun-bleached hair, she was like most Californian beach girls.
Jordan was not what I would describe as beautiful. But she was pretty in her own way. The main impression I got from her was she didn't mind being plain and ordinary, and that she didn't bother to wear anything mainstream.
Maybe I should surround myself with more ordinariness rather than chase after the mystery.
That night after successfully avoiding Piper, I went to my room and started writing in my notebook. The images of a certain blonde always seemed to poke their ways into my mind. I wrote the title of the writing, "Trapped".
“All my life I lived in an acorn.
It was cramped and dark.
But what pained me was I had no way. The outside world seemed scary to be exposed to. If no one out there happened to find the acorn, if no one cracked it, then I would be forever trapped.
To live all my life in the nut, and maybe even die there alone and lonely.
I died in the acorn years later, though.
Then they found the nut and cracked it and found me shrunk and crumpled inside.
"What a pity!"
"If only we had known it earlier..."
"Then maybe we could save her..."
"Maybe there are more of them trapped in like that..."
"We should try to save them from their shells."
"No used! A waste of time! There are too many of them!"
They might be right or they might wrong. A person who chooses to live in a coconut is even worse, the shell is hard and the taste might be sour.”
~*~
The next morning, Piper confronted me on my way to my car.
"We need to talk," she said.
"I didn't know they were your friends, Piper." I stepped around her.
"It doesn't matter anymore," she said, following me. "I just want you to know that I can't lose my boyfriend."
I stopped and turned to look at my cousin again.
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm blonde, but I'm not dumb, Nina," she said. "Jack is my boyfriend. He keeps mentioning you. We're having a rough time lately, but I don't want to break up with him."
"Isn't that what between you and him?" I said. "Look, Piper, you can do better than that."
I walked off and got in the car before driving away.
It was Friday.
The last day I got to see Allecra again since our last unspoken contact. When I got to Language Arts, she was already there. Her face looked straight out of the window in an attempt to ignore me as usual. I wasn't going to let her treat me like that anymore.
I sat down, willing her to turn to me. She didn't move, not until Mrs. Smith arrived. And when she did notice me, she acted like I wasn't there — like I was transparent or something she didn't care.
Nice try, Allecra.
The class proceeded slowly. Mrs. Smith told us to edit each other's writing. I didn't feel like writing anything new, so I just half-heartedly handed Allecra's the writing I did last night. I didn't expect her to give me back anything, but this time, she surprised me once again. Her beautiful hand slid a neatly typed page over to me.
I looked at it like it was a time-bomb.
"Read," she said, almost like a command and then turned away again. My eyebrows still knitted together as I looked back at her. She kept on reading my writing. I turned back and picked up her work.
It was a relief that everything was actually written in English and not some weird Picasso-ish symbols. I started reading whatever Allecra finally decided to contribute to our partnership, though she still had no sense of decency to give me a proper apology whatsoever.
But then I forgot the time and that I was reading her writing at all. It was just like I only let myself being carried by the voice that seemed to echo off the page. A dark, sure voice talked in pure poetry about the space and constellations and the black holes and the galaxies. The voice transferred me through a wormhole into the different universe.
How could she do that?
The way she wrote was sharp and raw, yet beautiful like a star was beautiful. The idea was deep even the language was simple. The words came together smoothly like the surface of a waveless sea. Each of her prose was written like spoken haiku. Every sentence made your mind sing and your heart dance.
I was blown away by her ability to place the best words in the right places and made it so effortless and perfect. How could she write off the entire universe and the tiny things that made up life so beautifully?
And all this came out of Allecra Knight?
She was a better writer than me.
I knew that it sounded kind of snobbish to say, but when you can write quite well yourself, the knowledge of how hard it is to do it, how much effort it takes to get things right, makes you a better judge of someone else's work. It makes me realize when to appreciate writing that is good.
Just like I appreciated Allecra's now.
So when it was time to give it back, all I could do was giving her a look of utter surprise.
"Where did you learn to write like that?" I asked curiously.
"Boredom." She shrugged with a nonchalant look.
I couldn't help feeling a little jealous. At last, she turned her face to me.
"Yours is not bad," she said and handed me back the book. When I reached my hand out to get it, our fingers brushed. I pretended not to notice, but she still didn't turn away.
"I'm sorry about that da
y," she said quietly like she really meant it. The heat of my anger for the past week instantly vaporized.
"Never mind," I said brashly. "Just don't kiss me again if you never wanted to."
Allecra frowned then it followed by an amused smile.
"I never recall not wanting to do that with you," she said. It made my skin prickle. My face blushed again as I looked back at her. The smile was gone, replaced by a kind of hungry look I once saw back in the attic.
Allecra reached her hand out and grabbed my wrist. I flinched and held back my gasp. My eyes stared at our joined hands.
"You've never let anyone touch you before?" She asked.
"What—what do you mean by that?" I stammered.
"You flinched," she pointed out. "I just wondered."
"I did not."
She took her hand away and rested it on my knee. This time, my breath hitched loudly. My other hand went to cover my mouth, fearing that people would hear me.
"Hmm..." Allecra nodded like a doctor examining a patient. "You need more physical contact."
~*~
The day before school was closed for that weekend, I made my way to classes as usual, yet my mind was elsewhere. It drifted back to the blonde girl, who had entered my world and filled it with intense curiosity.
I didn't expect to see Allecra while I walked down the quiet hallway, but she was there standing by my locker. With her messy blonde lock around her shoulders, she tilted her head to look at me as if she was daring me to come closer.
I stopped for a moment. She held up her index finger and wagged it at me to follow her.
Curiosity kills the cat.
I walked after her. My heels clicked sharply on the floor. The sound gave an eerie echo against the silence. My feet obeyed her unspoken summon. There was no one around as I followed the mysterious blonde up the empty stairwell. Allecra turned the corner and disappeared.
I ran after her. Looking around, I saw a door opened to what looked like a janitor closet. My hands were trembling at my sides with each step I took. Turning the knob slowly, I pushed my way in. Then a hand grabbed my elbow and pulled me inside. The door slammed shut, and I heard the lock clicked, but I could not see anyone. When my eyes adjusted to the semi-darkness, a pair of bright unnatural eyes emerged from the shadow. Then her angelic face appeared.
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