* * *
David put the guitar aside and hopped off the teacher’s desk as I walked in. The class jeered, begging for more of whatever he’d been doing, but he refused, rushing up to meet me instead. So Cal picked up the guitar and eased the crowd. I didn’t even know he could play. I made a mental note to ask him to play for me when I went over to his house later.
“I heard you hung out with my sister yesterday,” David said.
“And?” I put my stuff on my desk and sat down.
David sat on Cal’s desktop. “She liked you.”
“Yeah?” I smiled. I liked her too. “She’s pretty easy to get along with.”
“She said that about you too.”
That surprised me. “I thought I might have offended her.”
“How so?”
“I said something… about kids. And she looked a bit…” What was that look? “Disappointed.”
David’s perfect dark lips spread and the wetness on the insides reminded me of the closet, making me twitch a little. “What did you say to her?”
“She didn’t tell you?”
“No, I guess she spared me those details.”
“Those details?” He’d said it like she’d been carrying bad news around.
“As in… she knows I like you,” he said, “and affection for another is based largely on the illusion you have of them in your mind. If you crack that open too early on, it can ruin things that might be. So yeah, she might hold back some things for my sake.”
Like me finding out about Harry. I nodded.
“So what was it?” His voice sounded so gentle and soothing, the subtle hum of humor filling it out with warmth. “What did you say to disappoint her?”
“Sure it won’t crack your illusion?”
“So be it.” He shrugged.
I smiled timidly. “I said that I doubted I was a mother in my past life.”
“Past life?”
Oh shit. How did I let that slip? She knew what I was, but David was still in the dark. “Um… yeah, you know…”
“Oh, like reincarnation?”
“Yeah,” I lied. Well, it wasn’t entirely a lie. I had reincarnated, but just… into the same life and away from the same people.
“And you think you wouldn’t have had kids?”
“Yeah.”
“And how would that be offensive?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged one shoulder, but I did know. I was just reluctant to say. “I guess because I said… that I didn’t really like kids—”
“Oh, right.” He nodded. “And you think she was worried because of…”
“Harry,” I whispered.
He laughed, fixing his eyes on my solemn face. “Of course you don’t like kids. They’re noisy and time-consuming and they talk a lot.”
I laughed, feeling a bit better about it.
“And, really,” he added, “you’ve never been around kids, right? So how would you be able to relate to them?”
I was greatly surprised by his understanding. It made me feel like less of a monster.
“Don’t worry about it, Ara.” He pressed the back of his hand to my arm affectionately and then drew it away, his face so open and his smile so sweet, I instantly liked him more. “I’m not offended, and Elora wouldn’t be that offended either. Are you planning to catch up with her again?”
“I want to, but…”
“You weren’t sure if she would now?” he asked rhetorically, nodding to himself. “She’s not like that. And I know she was eager to see you again.”
I smiled, sitting a little taller.
“You’re pretty sensitive, aren’t ya?” he added, shaking his head, the loving smile taking some of the sting out of that observation.
“I just don’t know how to act around people—”
“And you’re certain they’ll stop liking you for the most trivial reason?”
“Kind of,” I said, feeling silly about it, but in a good way.
“So”—he picked up my pencil and pressed it absently to the tip of his finger—“Cal tells me you’re looking for a part time job.”
“Yeah. And?”
“Lors mentioned they had a position open at the café—”
“Really?” I sat even taller.
“Yeah, and it’s my uncle’s café—Mike’s. So he’ll hire you if you want the job.”
“I’d love that!”
“Great. I’ll tell him.” He hopped off the desk and laid my pencil down on my book. “I’ll get him to call you after school sometime this week.”
“Sounds great,” I said as he walked away, the teacher entering then to issue orders around the class.
At the end of the day, David vanished pretty quickly. I wanted to speak to him, since I barely got a word in with him at lunch—being that he was surrounded by about fifteen girls who’d also noticed the changes in him lately—but he got up from his desk right after the bell and was gone before Cal finished asking me to pose for a painting on the weekend.
I walked out to the car, carrying a bag full of homework and some heavy disappointment.
“What’s wrong, kitten?” Brett asked as I hopped in.
“Nothing.”
“Liar.” He laughed, putting the car in gear. “Talk to me.”
“I just really wan…” I didn’t want to admit that I wanted to talk to David. I don’t know why. What could it hurt? Then again, I guess that was it: I’d had all of his attention so far, and now it seemed that his radar had widened its gaze. I was pretty sure our friendship was slipping to the background, and I was certain it had something to do with the closet, like maybe he got what he wanted from me and now he wasn’t interested. “I needed to talk to David today, that’s all.”
“And why didn’t you? Was he off sick?”
“No. He was just…” I looked out the window as we passed a group of kids, and I finally saw why he disappeared so quickly after school. Not one of those kids was of the male variety. “He was busy, that’s all.”
“Too busy for you?”
I huffed, shaking my head. “I’m not all he thinks about, Brett.”
He just laughed off my teen moodiness and stayed quiet until we got home, which, based on my past moods, was the safest thing to do.
When he pulled up, his hand caught mine as I went to get out of the car. “It’s time again.”
“What is?”
“It’s been a month since your period.”
A wave of dread rolled over me as I realized. It had been a glorious month of freedom since my first ever period and I was not at all keen for it to return. “So I’m going to bleed again for a week?”
His mouth thickened into a line and turned up on the corners, the sound of obvious laughter narrowly escaping before he drew it back in. “Sorry, kitten. It’s a part of life.”
“Argh!” I shoved the door open and hopped out. “I hate being part human!”
“Welcome to the club,” Elora said, pulling up in the driveway beside us.
My head went warm with embarrassment. I looked in her backseat then and spotted a little face, and before Elora even shut the engine off, the door flung open and little Harry came running around the car to my side.
“We’re going to the park!” he practically yelled, wrapping his arms around my waist.
“Harry thought you might like to come,” Elora added, hopping out of the car.
I leaned back from Harry for a second to put my heavy bag down, and then wrapped my arms around his tiny shoulders. “I have too much homework, Harry—”
“Awwww. Not fair!”
“All work and no play makes Ara a dull girl,” Elora suggested, her voice high in question. “Come on. It’ll be fun. I promise.”
“I’ll push you on the swing,” Harry offered.
“Go on,” Brett said, taking my bag for me. “You can do homework later.”
I looked at Elora, with her shining golden hair and hopeful green eyes, then down into the big blue eyes of th
e dimple-cheeked boy wrapped around me. He was pretty darn cute, and he reminded me a lot of David, which made me worry less that all his attentions were on those other girls. There’s no way any of those shallow cows would be friends with him if they knew he had a son, let alone anything more. And a little voice in my head reminded me that I was just as much of a shallow cow. I might be friends with him, but never anything more.
I moved back from Harry. It wasn’t fair to him. One fight between David and me, and Harry would never see me again. I didn’t want him to get hurt too, so staying away seemed like the best option. “I’m sorry, guys. I can’t today.”
“Ara.” Elora took me by the arm and pulled me aside. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s…” I looked back at Harry. Brett led him up the steps and into the house, and as the door closed, I felt safer to talk. “I don’t want Harry to get hurt if David and I stop being friends.”
“Why would you stop being friends, and how would Harry get hurt?”
“Because Harry obviously likes me for some reason, and I won’t be allowed to hang out with him if David hates me—”
“Okay, first of all”—she put her index finger up, making a number one—“why on earth would David ever hate you? And second, he would never stop Harry from seeing you.”
“He wouldn’t?”
“No.” She laughed. “If Harry adores you, David won’t stand in the way of that just because he’s not friends with you at the time.”
“Oh.” I looked down at the ground. I really did not understand the complex relationship between a parent and a child.
“And why would David ever hate you?” she asked in a softer voice. “He adores you ten times more than Harry does.”
I laughed, glancing back at the house, wondering why Harry was so comfortable with a stranger—going inside without a word of concern. “Does Harry know Brett as well?”
“Yeah.” Elora looked at the house. “What did Brett tell you about it?”
“Only that Vicki told him David had a son.”
“Okay, he did lie about that.” She winced. “Falcon, I mean Brett, has known Harry since he was born.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“So he knew Harry’s mom?”
“Yeah, but don’t ask about it, okay. No one will speak of it.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s… painful, and we all just need to move on.”
I could tell from the slight sheen of tears in her eyes that this was a closely-guarded family horror. I was intrigued, but I knew they would tell me in time—when they trusted me enough. “Why did Brett lie about it then?”
“Because, like you, David has a front to keep up too. And it wasn’t Brett’s place to tell you the truth, or anyone else.”
“Okay.” I nodded, satisfied with that. Just like it wasn’t Elora’s place to tell David what I was, even though it was quite relevant and very cool.
“So will you come to the park with us?” she asked, hopeful.
I still wasn’t convinced, and Elora could tell; well, I figured she could, because she whipped out her phone and put it to her ear, rolling her eyes at me.
“David,” she said. “Tell Ara that you’ll never stop her from seeing Harry if you two ever hate each other.”
I heard his voice in a very high tone on the other end of the line. “Why would we ever hate each other?”
“I dunno.” Elora shrugged. “You tell me.”
“Put her on,” he said. I tried to say no but Elora jammed the phone against my ear.
“What’s going on, Ara?” he asked dully.
“I… nothing. I just—”
“You think our friendship’s going to end for some reason?”
“No, but… what if it ever did?”
He laughed. “Okay… fine. I get it. You don’t have a childhood of friendships to go on here, but it doesn’t work like that. Not everything is doomed to end one way or another.”
But it was. One day David would die. And one day, I would outlive Harry too. And it would hurt. It almost seemed less painful not to fall for any of them in the first place.
“How about I make you a promise?” he said.
“What promise?” I took the phone and moved away from Elora.
“No matter what you do, no matter what you say, I will never stop being a part of your life—as a friend, I mean.”
“No matter what?” I said. “Even if I mess up?”
“Especially when you mess up, okay?”
I smiled. No one had ever promised me that before. I didn’t know it was something a person could promise. “Okay.” I felt strangely like I’d gained a family, like what I imagined families would be like: people sticking together at any cost. “Friends forever then?”
“Well, as long as we both shall live,” he corrected, “let’s not get too hasty.”
I laughed, finally feeling the glow of the summer sun, even though it’d been hot all afternoon.
“Have fun, okay? And stop worrying all the time,” he said.
“Okay. I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”
“See ya.”
I hung up the phone and looked at Elora, whose face said it all.
“Told ya.” She took the phone back.
My smile turned a bit sheepish. David was a good guy. He didn’t owe me anything, and yet he just made me a very solemn promise never to shut me out—one I knew wouldn’t be easy to keep because it would mean supporting me through all the confusion and the changes that I was not only going through now but would in the future. It would even be a hard promise for me, but I liked the idea that maybe I could have a friend at my side throughout the rest of my life.
Harry came running out then with a cookie in his hand, passing his milk cup to Brett before he darted down the stairs. “Are you ready now?” he asked.
“Ready,” I said.
“Good. You can sit in the back with me.” Harry opened the car door.
“Harry…” Elora started, in the tone of an adult explaining something to a child.
“No, it’s okay,” I said, ducking my head and climbing in past Harry’s booster seat. “I like sitting in the back.”
* * *
Harry chatted the entire way to the park, and then the entire time I followed him around, climbing up ladders and going down slides. He told me every fairytale he could remember—ones I’d never heard because I didn’t have a childhood—and made me recite my numbers from one to ten, which I could do just fine, then invited me to his eighth birthday—in August, talk about planning ahead—and told me about the Halloween party his Uncle Mike throws every year. I was then ordered to get a costume ready because I could expect my invitation in the mail.
After that, I was informed about which kids at school pick their nose behind the library books at reading time, and he even helped me out with my ABCs, since I still got lost at L-M-N-O, saying ‘elemeno’ instead. Apparently, you can’t do that. By the time he spotted a friend from school and ran off to play aliens and dragons with him, I was beat. I could see what David meant when he said kids are exhausting.
I sat down on the swing next to Elora, puffing my cheeks. “Wow.”
She put her phone away, smiling at me. “You look jaded.”
I laughed. “He talks a lot.”
When Elora laughed too, it sounded just like me, and for a second, I thought she was mocking me, until I realized that was just how she laughed. “Yeah. I have to take him in small doses at the moment. It’s just a phase though,” she advised. “It wears off.”
“When?’
“Around ten or eleven years old.”
We both laughed.
“We should get ice-cream after this,” I decided. “I need some sugar to fill up my empty limbs.”
“Sounds like a plan. Baskin’s then?”
“Nah, let’s go to that place down the beachfront,” I said resolutely. “They have your favorite.”
“My favorite?” she said.
“Brownie fudge.” I pushed off the ground and swung back, flying past a few times before I saw Elora’s face. “What?” I asked.
“How did you know that was my favorite?”
I stopped dead, the forward motion making me feel a bit dizzy. “I… I don’t know.”
“Maybe I mentioned it,” she said, waving it off.
“Maybe,” I agreed, but I was certain she hadn’t.
As we watched Harry run about the park, gathering up a small group of kids to join him and his friend, time just expired. It was a comfortable silence between us—one that didn’t need to be filled by idle conversation. I’d never had a friend like Elora, even with all my human friends at school. I’d never felt so… in tune. I put it down to our extended lifespan and mutual love for sucking on flesh.
“I’m going hunting tonight,” Elora said, as if she just read my mind.
“Where at?”
“It’s a bit ‘black market’.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s what we call it when it’s not technically legal. My mother would not approve.” She laughed.
“Why wouldn’t it be legal?”
“Because the vampires usually get hurt, drained and often killed.”
My blood warmed. I knew most Vampires were immune to Lilithian venom these days, but that draining them could destroy that immunity, which is why I hadn’t ever been allowed to drain one. But I wanted to. “How can you get away with that?”
“It’s run by a few guys under the Drakarian rule—”
My father.
“They take criminals that are sentenced to death and offer them a chance to win their freedom.”
“By surviving a hunt?”
“Yeah. It ups the ante and makes for a great hunt.” She looked at me, checking past me for Harry before she spoke. “I can get you in.”
Bound by Secrets Page 15
