by David James
The room buzzed with quiet whispers, clicked as computer keys pounded down, as the bell rang. No one looked up; The Hollow’s Homecoming issue deadline was yesterday.
When the smell of cotton candy hit my nose, I ducked my head close to my desk pretending I was correcting an article.
Not today, I thought. I don’t have the energy for this.
“Hey, Calum,” a voice said, as sickly sweet as her perfume.
I didn’t look up. “Hi, Tanya. I’m actually in the middle of this article for Knight. Sorry.”
There were too many people noticing me today, too many moments that made me remember why I didn’t want to be noticed.
I thought, Just let me be a ghost for one more day.
“Oh,” she said. She must have leaned close because suddenly I could barely breathe. She tapped a highlighter-pink finger on my desk, slow like her words. “I was hoping you could, like, maybe help me with my article.”
I shook my head. “Sorry. You know how Knight gets. I really need to finish this.”
She whispered, “Too bad.”
Sighing, I said, “I don’t think I’d be much help with the gossip column anyway.” I looked up to see her pouting.
Her lips stuck together in shades of pink, strings of gloss hanging down like prison bars. She twirled a finger in her hair, leaned back, and giggled. “I think you’d be good at anything. By the way, do you like my new lipstick?” She puffed out her lips so the gloss bubbled in the middle. “It’s called Pucker-Me Pink.”
“Calum, could you come here for a second?” Mr. Knight called from his desk, saving me.
I quickly stood up. “Sorry, Tanya. Gotta go!”
I almost laughed at the look on her face, as though her perfume had been discontinued.
What a horrible day that would be.
“What’s up?” I asked Knight. “I’m almost done with setting up some interviews for the Homecoming bonfire, I just have to ask a few more people.”
Knight held up a hand. “Relax, Calum. I just thought you might need some space to, ah, breathe, so to speak.” He laughed under his breath, making me realize again how young he was.
I pressed my hands to a paper on his desk, feeling my body lean forward into it. “Thanks.”
Knight set his pen down. “Rough day?”
It was one of those moments when a whisper wouldn’t do, but speaking normally was too much.
So I nodded, breathed deeply, and felt words fill my lungs like paper breaths: Yes. It’s been a day I want to forget. Too much is running through my mind. My heart is beating so fast because I’m afraid my Dad is going to come back and finish what he started, come back for my mother and me. I’m afraid I am just like I’ll become him because sometimes I get so angry I can’t control it and then I can’t see and I explode in rage. And then there’s Kate. I don’t know why I’m afraid of her she’s all I can think about.
He ran a hand through his thick, straw-colored hair, his eyes blinking beneath his black-framed glasses. He sighed, “I see. Me too. My girlfriend’s been getting really nervous about these Bloodletter attacks; one of her coworkers has gone missing. No body, just blood and gone like the rest. It’s been rough, to say the least.”
A chill ran down my back.
Blood and gone.
“Do you think we should run a story?” I asked.
Our eyes met. “No,” he said. “Not when it’s like this. We don’t run stories about this kind of thing, Calum.”
“What do we do?”
He drummed his fingers on his desk. “We think about the good things and pray the rest sorts itself out.”
Words thick with the poison of sadness caught in my throat and fell out in a burning whisper. “But what if there are no good things?”
Knight looked at me. He said, “There are always good things to see if you want them badly enough.”
His eyes, deep and dark brown, said, I’m sorry.
He knew just as much as me that the good things were not so easy to find, even if you wanted them with all your heart.
He leaned close. Moments like this he reminded me of Tyler, of a friend. Maybe even of a father. “If you ever need to talk...”
I cleared my throat. “I know,” I said. “Thanks.”
Thanks for being there, I didn’t.
He winked and said loudly, “And speaking of your article, good job on it so far. Just make sure you get those interviews done.”
I smiled, breathed, and started to turn away.
“Not so fast,” Knight said, waving me back. “I really did have something to talk to you about.”
“Shoot.”
“The Hollow is getting a new staffer and I wanted you to kind of show her around. You know, answer questions and whatnot. She’s a junior like you, and was on the paper at her old school. Her transcripts said she’s pretty decent, but you can never be sure.”
“Yeah, no problem. When does she get here?”
A knock.
A laugh. “She gets here now, apparently.”
My heart.
My stomach.
No.
And then, “Calum Wade, this is our new student, Kate Black. Kate, Calum will be showing you around for the next few days until you feel comfortable. Okay? Okay! Now, get to work both of you. If we don’t get this issue out by Monday, we won’t have it in time for Homecoming.”
Maybe it was because I hadn’t seen it before, but when she smiled at Knight the air around me seemed to shiver, making anger impossible.
Making breathing impossible.
“Thanks,” she said, eyes smiling purple. When she smiled it was something like the first light of day, or a melody played only with the black keys of a piano; panged with inconceivable mystery. The melody of her voice as she spoke reverberated off every bone in my body, making my heart quake, hurt. “I’ll be sure to let you know if I need anything, Mr. Knight, though I don’t think it’ll take more than three days to fit in.”
I felt those words attack me: Three days.
“Three days, huh?” Knight raised an eyebrow. He grinned. “That’s confident of you. I like it! Now go work.”
Kate smiled. “Yes, sir.” She turned to me, her smile set like stone against her sunset skin. “Let’s go, Calum. Time is ticking away.”
We walked to the back of the room and sat. I could see Tanya looking daggers at us, and I couldn’t help feeling thankful Kate didn’t smell like candy. That girls like Tanya wanted nothing to do with ones like Kate. Instead, Kate smelled like a rainstorm and, as I looked at her, I realized she was probably just as dangerous.
“Stop looking at me,” she said as she flipped open her notebook and started writing.
“Okay, sorry,” I muttered, but couldn’t look away.
As a flicker of sunlight flashed through the windows, I caught the shape of her tattoo. A deep black circle was inked on her finger in the place that a ring might hold. In it rested six lines crossing in a star, held together by a smaller circle in the middle. Several of the outer sections were filled in with ruby red ink, making it look like blood had spilled on the edges. The rest of the sections were pale, as if the blood had been there once and then was gone.
Blood and gone. I shivered.
Snap. Her pencil broke in her hands.
“Sorry,” I said again, though I didn’t know why.
“Pathetic,” she growled and turned away.
A sad pang of Kate and three days and Dad washed over me beginning at my heart and destroyed what could have been. Or maybe, what never was.
I’m tired of this, I thought as I tried to write. I’m so tired of pretending things aren’t happening when they’re all I can think about.
I’m tired of being me.
Outside, falling leaves covered the grass. They kept swirling around as if being thrown by cruel, unseen hands. In the orange I saw images of my mom, and in the yellow my dad. In the red, Kate’s eyes shown through. I picked a spot on the ground outside just visible from my sea
t, and told myself that if a leaf landed there I would start over new. I would forgive and try again.
I would become a different me.
Maybe I would even give Kate one more chance.
Fall, a thought whispered in my mind. Fall there.
I had another secret: I lied before.
The truth was that I could see the good things in my life, but they were all singed with dark, burnt edges that would never fade. All the good seemed to burn away before I had a chance to keep it.
Good and gone.
Fall.
I closed my eyes-
Fall there.
opened them, and pretended the leaves were stars.
Fall.
And then it did.
A heart-shaped leaf of brilliant red, brighter than all the rest, dropped from the sky like a star through the night, and landed in the exact spot my eyes watched. It was violently red, like blood on the green grass, except for edges that were turned up, brown and curled and dying.
Chapter Four
Never More
-Calum-
“Mom says the news just reported twelve more people missing in Jefferson County,” Tyler said when I got to his locker after school. His voice was dry; he’d heard this before. We all had. “She said the report was pretty graphic. Apparently ‘blood flowed freely’ in Jefferson today, and there were even more disappearances in Denver. Still no bodies though, aside from White. The houses were all just destroyed with bloody words, and the bodies were just-”
“Gone?” I interrupted.
He paused. His eyes flicked to me like he was remembering, or realizing something he’d forgotten. Then, quieter than usual, “Yeah. Gone. Like always.”
I said nothing.
We looked at each other for a minute, maybe more. Watched each other as people rushed passed us in the hall, as they moved toward the door screaming happily.
Finally I asked, “You think we should be as worried as they say?”
“About the people gone missing?”
I shook my head. No. “About the blood.”
Tyler’s face moved back and forth. Stopped. His mouth opened and closed. Then, after too long, “I don’t think so. If there was anything to worry about, really worry, everyone would be more afraid. Act more serious about it all.”
I nodded. “You’re right. Ready to go?”
“Yeah. After you.”
As we walked out to meet the sky puckered black, I couldn’t help but think: What if that’s the problem? What if they’re acting okay because they’re afraid? What if they’re ignoring it all in hopes it’ll go away?
Like me.
Thunder boomed above.
“I saw Kate again,” I said as I stepped in a puddle.
Tyler bumped into me. “I thought she went home sick?”
“Nope, guess not. She’s in Newspaper with me.”
He tapped my back. “Guess you can’t cut a break today, huh? Just stay clear of her for a while and see what happens.”
I felt a certain slant of something baneful blur inside me. Staying away from Kate would be good. Being close to her made me not know how to pretend; today I could only think of her when she was close. Always too close.
I remembered: Three days.
Until what?
All I could think of was that and her.
I felt my teeth grind together, felt the anger take hold of my heart and squeeze until her name beat through me like a pulse.
I wanted her gone, wished the Bloodletter would take her like the rest. Blood and gone like all of them.
I heard Tyler from a distance. “Calum? Get it together! You’re shaking.”
I felt and saw and thought: Three-
Tyler’s hand against my cheek, hard and fast
Thunder clapping, lightning breaking the sky open
Kate, so close I miss her when she’s gone
-days.
“I’m back,” I said.
Tyler looked nervous, afraid maybe, and the pain of that made me want to run. “You sure you want to stay away from her?”
Things I wouldn’t say cut my throat, burning: No. Today’s the first day in a long time I’ve felt something other than sad. Today’s the first day I haven’t known who I’m pretending to be and I think Kate is a part of that. I can’t help but think about the way she looked at me, like she knew all my secrets, ones I don’t even know. One look in her eyes and I could see that she knew more about me than I ever have.
I think I dreamed of her eyes.
But instead I said, my voice so deep and low it hurt my throat, “Yes. I want her gone.”
Without warning a flash of lightning shot down from the dark sky and pierced the ground beside me, cracking a stone in three. Water from a close puddle sprayed up, soaking my jeans.
“What the...” I said jumping back.
Rain began falling in slow drops. I felt the air grow cold around me from it, thunder dropping heavy, too.
Then, as though every drop of rain was a note, I heard a voice fall from the sky:
Caeles.
Become who you are.
Look to us.
Give in.
Don’t be afraid.
Don’t give up.
Tyler’s eyes were wide. “What was that?”
The voice from my dream. “You heard that too?”
He pointed at the rock. “Yeah. Wow, that almost took you out!”
My head tilted. “You heard the thunder? Saw the lightning? Nothing else?”
“Yeah. Why? What did you hear?”
I said, “Nothing. Just making sure I’m not dreaming.”
He laughed. “That was way too close.”
I could smell the burning stone. “Everything is these days.”
Tyler stopped a few feet from his car. “You know, if you like her then I like her. She might have seemed like a piece of work today, but everyone has bad first days at new schools. You wanna just give Kate a second chance?”
I remembered the leaf.
The voice: Don’t give up.
“Maybe,” I said as I got in the car and shut the door.
Tyler opened his door and fell in. “Just let me know where we stand.”
I didn’t say anything.
Maybe the voice was just another me inside. Like advice from the real me I couldn’t see, my subconscious.
But then who was Caeles?
Maybe I was going crazy.
I crossed my fingers: I am not my father.
Tyler said, “You know Homecoming is just around the corner-”
“I’m not asking her, Tyler.”
“Just saying,” he laughed, normal and easy like always.
~
“Thanks, Mrs. Little!” I yelled as Tyler and I ran up to his room.
“Anytime, dear!” Mrs. Little called back, a smile planted firmly on a face covered in make-up looking barely there, surrounded by curls of soft blonde hair that never moved. “Wait, Calum! Don’t you boys want something to snack on?”
“We’re fine, Mom,” Tyler said. He gave me a push to move.
“Dinner is in a few,” she said to the both of us as we disappeared up the stairs.
Tyler’s room was hidden from the rest of the house in the attic of their two story home. I loved being in it, tucked away in a piece of the world that was untouchable.
I thought Tyler had his room decorated perfectly, with band and sports posters everywhere, his massive amounts of CDs and DVDs covering every other square inch of the place. Clothes were abandoned in piles. There was an abundance of football and baseball trophies covering one wall, complete with his bat and glove. His football jersey was thrown over a chair by the computer.
Tyler’s room always smelled like freedom.
Here, my family didn’t exist.
“I think Mom likes you more than me,” Tyler laughed.
I wanted to smile.
In ways, I knew this house, this family, better than my own. Mr. Little was a doctor a
t the Wheat Ridge Medical Center one town over, and Mrs. Little was a teacher with the Lakewood Hollow Jump-Start program, only working half days so she could stay home for most of the afternoon with their little four year-old daughter, Kendra.
“Here,” Tyler said as he handed me a stack of clothes. “These don’t fit me anymore and Mom wanted me to give them to you. I promise they’re still cool, Coach just has me bulking up this season.”
“Thanks,” I said. Brother, I didn’t.
I wanted to smile, but couldn’t.
“Careful, I don’t know if Mom washed them,” Tyler joked.
“Sick!” I laughed once and sat down in the chair next to his computer. “Remind me why I’m your friend again?”
He jumped to lay on his bed, threw a pillow at me, and said, “Because I know all your secrets. You’d have to kill me if we ever stopped being friends.”
I leaned back in the chair and sighed as quiet comfort fell between us. Somehow, even though my mind felt heavy and tired, being in this house felt good. Relaxing, as though it really were my home.
Slowly, I let my lips curve up.
Still, a soft, steady beating sounded in the back of my mind like a drum: Caeles. Become who you are. The words that only I could hear. The voice I had kept a secret.
Not all my secrets, I thought. You don’t know them all.
Tyler’s voice broke my thoughts. “What was up with you today?” he asked, too loudly.
I shifted my weight. Even though I knew, I asked, “What do you mean?”
He blew a puff of air. “You were all over the place today. Eyes darting left and right. I mean, I swear I saw you twitch a few times whenever you thought you saw Kate. I know what she said to you, and I agree it’s creepy, but you just weren’t yourself today. You haven’t been for a while.”
“Honestly?”
“That would be the way to go.”
I sighed. “I don’t know.”
Tyler rolled his eyes. “How is that being honest? I thought we didn’t have secrets.”
