Bound by Secrets

by Angela M Hudson

  “It’s good to have you back—from the dead,” she said, then pouted. “And I’m sorry for killing you.”

  I laughed. “Well, it’s certainly not the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  She smiled sadly, looking at her lap.

  “So what’s with all the boxes?” Eric asked, sitting at my desk with his feet propped on a box, tossing a pencil in the air and catching it.

  “They’re just all the stuff from my past, and some things that were in storage here.”

  “Here?” Elora said, her eyes wider as she stood.

  “Yeah.” I put my shaky, weak legs over the side of the bed and stood up, using the knobbed post to steady myself. “I grew up here apparently, but when my human mom died, they packed it all up and stored it. So it’s all stuff from my childhood, aside from that one box where the music box was.”

  “What’s in that one?”

  “Stuff from the house I lived in when I died.”

  Elora looked at Eric.

  “Why?” I said. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing.” She walked over to it and peered inside, reaching down to get something that made her smile. “Do you want some help sorting through them?”

  “I don’t think I’m ready to face my old life yet,” I confessed. “I don’t remember anything and I…”

  “You what?” She glanced back at me.

  I didn’t want to feel the pain of that—of seeing all that stuff and having no idea how it mattered to me. But even more than that, I didn’t want to remember yet. When I thought about my old life, wondered about it, my skin would go tight and I’d get this sense that it would hurt to look back on it. “It’s not time, that’s all.”

  She put back whatever she was holding and closed the lid. “When you are ready, will you call me?”

  “Sure,” I said, “it can be a team effort.”

  “Hey, a guitar.” Eric picked up my glossy blue nylon string. “Do you play?”

  “Um… no.” I sat back down on my bed. “Falcon brought it in last week—said it was mine when I was younger.”

  He strummed it once, a perfect and full chord, his eyes shooting straight to Elora then, who looked right at me.

  “You don’t play?” she confirmed. “You haven’t even picked it up to… I dunno, toy around with it?”

  “Um…” I twitched nervously. “No. Why?”

  “No reason.” She smiled at Eric, and he smiled back, giving me the odd sense that they didn’t believe me.

  * * *

  By Monday, everyone in my grade knew about the last failed date, and the conclusion had been formed that I was bad-dating juju. Well, if my Cerulean Magic was anything to go by, that might be true. I didn’t stand a hope in hell of dating a boy now unless I went out with one of my two closest male friends. Or tried girls. So I decided to end this search for the boy that would be my first kiss and just focus on my studies. I still wanted to understand love, but to understand it, I had to fall in love, and the time just wasn’t right.

  Instead, I’d have to settle for understanding complex feelings toward friends.

  I spotted David sitting on the low wall outside our class and bee-lined for him. This awkwardness between us had to end. It started the Friday after we came out of that closet, and it would end today with me telling him how I felt. As I neared him, I rehearsed it in my head: David, I’d say, friends don’t do that stuff with friends. I looked it up on the Internet. We shouldn’t have done that. But I want to do it again anyway. How about tonight?

  Just as I dropped my bag and went to sit down, Cal slipped past me.

  “I got that new app. Check it out,” he said to David, sitting down right where my butt was about to land. David jumped into the conversation and took Cal’s phone, barely even noticing me here.

  With my teeth biting together, I took a step back and leaned on the light post. He’d changed lately—David. The Catholic schoolboy hair had been ruffled away into a sort of, I had to admit, sexy-messy style, and where his wrist once only had a watch, there was now a black leather wrap atop a silver man bracelet, and the plain band on his ring finger had been moved to his pinkie, slipping to his knuckle every time he moved. But more noticeably, his necklace was as visible as his throat scar, with the absence of his necktie.

  I liked this look on him. It was a bit badass and a bit rock, while still being acceptable enough not to get reamed by a teacher. The long socks were gone too; replaced by the standard dark-blue long pants and a pair of black-and-white skate shoes where his lace-ups had been.

  Looking at him and Cal side by side, I got the sense that they’d been hanging out a bit—rubbing off on each other. Cal had always worn high-tops instead of lace-ups, but he often wore the long socks with them. It looked funny, and yet it went with his personality so well. He always took the long socks off before leaving school, so I assumed it was really more of a joke than a fashion statement. But when it came to man jewelry, Cal was different to David. He wore what I assumed was a thin sweatband on his left wrist. Always. And it was always colored with a smear of paint or two. Around his neck, he had a black leather chain and a long tooth of some kind. He once said it was a dragon tooth, but no one believed him. I had, at first, until David told me that dragons don’t really exist. I was disappointed.

  The other thing about Cal that I noticed was his nails. David’s were well manicured and his fingers always clean, but Cal had dark paint around the quick of his nails, always, and they were chewed down so far that you could see the tops of his fingers above them. If it weren’t for his overly-confident demeanor and larger-than-life smile, I would’ve thought he was nervous and dorky like David. Well, like I thought David was. My opinion was rapidly changing.

  “What do you think?” Cal asked me.

  I woke up, eyes wide, with no idea what he was talking about.

  “Open mic night,” David said. “We’re going to the café on Thursday to watch—”

  “And perform, you sly dog.” Cal elbowed David playfully. “This guy ever tell you he can play like a genius?”

  My eyes went from Cal’s thumb, aimed at David, to David’s eyes. “Um, yeah. Piano, right?”

  “Yeah,” David said, the memory of that night clearly caged in tension for both of us.

  “He plays guitar too,” Cal added. “So, you gonna come, Ara?”

  “Um…” I wanted to. Badly. I would give almost anything to hear David play again, but as I looked at his kind eyes and sweet smile, my hands tingled—the way they do when it storms. I thought about Elora and the warning she gave me about being able to hurt someone. Sitting with him, talking to him, all of that was okay, but seeing him play would make me want things from him that we’d only done in a closet space, and that could be dangerous. I should have said no, but my mouth opened and “Yeah sure” came out.

  The bell rang through the yard then and everyone else dispersed, us three Special Ed kids wandering toward our class shoulder to shoulder. I tried to get next to David once we got through the door, but Cal just wouldn’t move. Instead, he thought I was trying to get closer to him, and when he put his arm around my shoulder, David just sighed, lightly but enough that my immortal ears heard it. I figured he’d been trying to talk to me too, but after we sat down, he didn’t say a word. No, worse than that, he responded to anything Cal or I said with only a grunt or a head-shake.

  After half a morning went by without a word from him, I turned around to get his attention, being discreet since we were supposed to be doing a test.

  He looked up and his eyes followed the pacing teacher before landing on me. “What’s up?”

  “Question four,” I mouthed, holding up four fingers.

  He cleared his throat, scratching his cheekbone with the end of his pen as he nodded at the front of the room. I sat straight just as the teacher walked toward my desk. When she passed again, I felt a light tap on my arm. I looked down at the pen touching me and watched as David traced a light little symbol o
n my skin, making it red before it turned white and vanished, like invisible ink.

  I wrote it down and set my paper aside, putting up my hand.

  “Finished, Ara?” the teacher asked quietly, looking down at my test.

  “So am I,” David said, handing his paper to her.

  “Okay, then you can both go to lunch early.”

  We quietly stood and pushed in our chairs, and I waved to Cal, who’d been put down the back of the room for mucking around in class. Not that it helped. He wasn’t doing any work at all, by the looks of it. He didn’t even see me wave because he was too busy scribbling on his wrist.

  Out in the hot March sun, my skin seemed to open up like a flower at dawn. I drank in its golden rays and drew a deep breath of freedom. “If I get a good result on all my tests, Brett says I don’t have to go to school next year unless I want to.”

  “Why wouldn’t you go to school?” David asked. “You’re too young to quit.”

  I wanted to just tell him I was immortal and that I’d already done the school thing—that I only came here to learn social skills and the basics of spelling and counting—but that would lead to a whole lot more questions, so I just said, “I want to travel.”

  “Can’t you do that later—when you’re an adult?”

  Yeah, except I’d never be an adult. “Why wait? I wanna experience the world while I’m young and it still matters to me in the same way.”

  David looked disappointed. He walked over and sat down on the usual low wall, digging into his bag. I sat down beside him, dropping my bag heavily beside his.

  “It’s my birthday next week,” I announced.

  “I know.”

  “How did you know? I only told Cal so far.”

  “I uh… I must have seen it somewhere,” he said absently, drawing out a brown paper bag.

  “I’m having a party. Are you gonna come?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, you could sound a bit happier about it.” His passiveness hurt me a bit. “This is technically my first birthday, you know?”

  “I know.” He forced a smile, handing me half his sandwich. “I’m sorry. I’m just not with it today.”

  I could see that. Anyone could see that. In fact, from the second he pulled up at school this morning, I thought he’d been up all night crying. “Is Harry okay?”

  “Yeah.” He smiled for real this time. “What makes you think he wouldn’t be?”

  “Elora brought him to the café for lunch yesterday, and he was just really quiet and a bit sad. I thought maybe he was coming down with something, and then you came in today looking like shit, and I just figured maybe it was because of that.”

  His smile broadened, green eyes sparkling. “You don’t miss much, do you?”

  “Not really.” I toyed with the corner of the sandwich. “So, what’s wrong then? If it’s not Harry—”

  “I just…” He looked up as the lunch bell rang and people flooded the yard. “I got a few things going on, that’s all.”

  “Anything I can help with?”

  He considered me for a moment, his eyes moving past every feature on my face before landing on something behind me.

  “Hey, guys,” Cal said, sinking down behind me, his arm going straight around my shoulders and closing me into him. “How’d you do on the test?”

  “I think I passed.” I looked at David, who’d gone slightly pale, as if the sandwich he just bit into was a week old and tasted like feet.

  “What about you, Dave?” Cal said.

  “I… passed,” he said, closing his eyes.

  “I deliberately failed.” Cal sat back against the brick post, taking me with him, and though I felt comfortable in his arms this way, I did feel a bit uncomfortable with David sitting right by my knee. I hadn’t yet given Cal the go-ahead for us to start dating, but I guess he figured that, since things with Thomas didn’t work, it was just a given now. I’d need to correct him, but not in front of David.

  “Why would you deliberately fail?” I asked, twisting my head awkwardly to look at him. “I thought you only wanted to stay in that class to piss off your dad, not end up being kicked out of school?”

  He shrugged, winking at me over a mischievous grin. “Guess I want my dad to know I’m faking it.”

  “Why?”

  “So he’ll know I’m just doing it to piss him off.” He pulled me affectionately closer and squeezed me. “I’m over it now—if he cares what I do or not. I don’t need to pretend I’m dumb anymore. I’ll just tell him I don’t want to be a part of his stupid academic club.”

  “Have you thought more about art school?” I asked. “You left those pamphlets at my house on Friday night.”

  “Friday night?” David’s eyes narrowed slightly. “I thought you went out with Thomas.”

  “Mm.” I bit into my sandwich, speaking then with my mouth full. “He cancelled, didn’t you hear?”

  “No.”

  “Everyone thinks I’m cursed now—”

  “Yeah, Ara was pretty cut up about it all,” Cal said.

  “So then Cal turns up with a bunch of movies and popcorn—”

  “It was a good night,” Cal said simply.

  “Not as good as the breakfast you made,” I added, remembering his waffles.

  “He stayed over?” David said.

  “Mm-hm.” I nodded casually, biting my sandwich.

  I looked at David then, and if I thought he looked sick before, he now had that pre-barf sheen and his skin was a bit grey.

  “Are you okay, man?” Cal asked.

  He shook his head and stood up. “No.”

  “Where are you going?” I called.

  He walked backward for a moment as he threw his bag over his shoulder. “I’m going home. I don’t wanna be here today.”

  “Why?” I pushed Cal off and stood up. “What’s wrong? Are you sick?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded, turning away and leaving it at that. He didn’t tell me what was wrong with him or even answer me when I called out to say I’d drop by later, and as I took off to run after him, I was set upon by a horde of teenagers, all asking questions about my supposed curse.

  18

  David

  After Bree’s party, I naïvely thought things would be better between Ara and me. She was kinder to me, and more compassionate, but it stemmed mostly from pity. She hugged me only because no one else did, but she didn’t hug anyone the way she hugged Cal. She was growing closer to him, and not even our night under the stairs had placed me in the same league as Cal. I was stuck in the friend zone, and it looked like Cal had moved up the ladder to boyfriend.

  If it weren’t for Ara’s growing friendship with Elora, I’d have lost all hope. On the days when they hung out at the beach or the café, Elora usually had Harry with her, so while I missed Ara like I missed the flow of vampire blood in my veins, Harry did at least have his mother and the chance to build a relationship with her.

  But every day since she came back into my life, sitting behind her or talking casually with her at lunch, occasionally walking her home, it felt like I was dying a little more. She was close and yet the distance between us was so deep and so dark that I wondered sometimes if she even knew I was there; wondered sometimes if everyone was right—that she would never have loved me if I hadn’t lured her.

  To make matters worse, my beating heart had fallen victim to her curse. In a split second—one moment that she’d shown compassion toward me—she’d trapped me in it, and it was ten times more intense and cruel than the love I felt for her before. I found myself looking at Mike, even Falcon, pitying them for suffering this for so many decades. It compelled me to forgive Mike for some of the choices he’d made that hurt me in the past. I understood his reasons on an entirely new level. Understood that if Ara couldn’t love me again, I wouldn’t just be chained to her by my heart, but every inch of me would suffer that connection. I would never break free. Never fall in love again. Not that I would want to. But at least, f
or Harry’s sake, I had to try to be happy. I just wasn’t sure how that happiness could ever exist without her.

  Ara appeared by the front office then, her eyes traveling along the road as I pulled away. She looked worried, and I felt bad for walking off like that, but I just couldn’t watch another guy touch my wife that way; couldn’t watch her accept it like it was normal; like they’d spent all Friday night lying in each other’s arms just like that. Without me. Without even telling me they were hanging out. She didn’t even call me to cry about her failed date this time. Those calls were the highlight of my week, as she’d explain what tragedy befell her date for the night, and I would laugh quietly, wishing I could tell her I’d caused it.

  At the exit I turned right instead of left, and headed toward the beachfront, unsure where I’d drive or if I’d ever come back. I needed to lose myself. I needed to be a million miles away from Ara.

  I pressed the button on my steering wheel and told the car to call Mike.

  “Yo!” he said after the first ring.

  “I gotta go,” was all I could say before I completely lost it.

  “What’s happened?”

  “Just look after Harry for me. Tell him I got called away to the university again—”

  “Just wait a sec, mate,” Mike said, clearly on the move. “Where are you?”

  “I’m driving.” I wiped my eyes clear so I could see. “I just need to leave—”

  “Okay, that’s fine, you can do that, but come home first.”

  “I can’t.” My lungs contracted so tightly I couldn’t catch my breath. I signaled and pulled off the road, letting my head fall against the steering wheel before I even pulled up the handbrake.

  Mike was silent for a while, and when he spoke again it was from right outside my window. I looked up in surprise as he opened the door, squatting down by my side.

  “What happened, mate?” he said. “What did she do to you this time?”

  I exhaled and set the back of my head firmly against the headrest, rubbing my face. “She’s dating Cal.”