Season of Mists (Young Adult Paranormal Romance) (Cupid's First Strike - Teen Love In The 80's)

by Doreen Owens Malek

  I laughed. He seemed nice. Maybe I could talk to him for a while and avoid Brian.

  No such luck. Just as I was thinking this, a girl dressed as a gypsy, with flowing skirts and bangle earrings, came through the door.

  “There you are,” she said to Phil. She went to him and put her arm through his. “Are you on the ice committee?”

  “I guess so,” Phil said. “You were the one who wanted more ice.”

  “I didn’t think you’d go to the North Pole to get it.” She glanced at me. “Hi. I’m Beth, Phil’s girl.”

  She couldn’t make the situation any plainer than that. I chalked Phil up as a loss as a diversionary tactic.

  I smiled and did a quick fade. Beth didn’t look as though she would tolerate much interference.

  In the rec room they were bobbing for apples. Ken was getting dunked and everyone was enjoying the sight. I walked into the hall and came face-to-face with Brian. This was definitely not my night.

  “I was looking for you,” he said.

  “Oh, hi. I was just going upstairs. I’ll be down in a minute.” I kept moving past him and charged up the staircase before he could answer.

  I went into Gina’s room and closed the door.

  I knew that I was acting like a baby. It couldn’t hurt for me to be polite to Brian. My behavior was bordering on rudeness and I wasn’t proud of myself. But I wanted to be with Tom and couldn’t; every other boy was such a poor substitute that I resented my predicament. I felt trapped, and angry.

  Gina’s room was an ultra feminine bower, filled with lacy pillows and stuffed animals. Her furniture was white edged with gilt; the bed had a beribboned canopy and a matching pink spread. I thought the decor was cloying and babyish, but maybe I was just jealous. The stuff in my room looked like Salvation Army rejects by comparison. I certainly wasn’t poor, but I was a long way from Gina’s elaborate comfort. When her father thought she needed a rest last year he had sent her to the Virgin Islands over Easter vacation. You get the idea.

  I sat on the bed and examined the posters on the walls. I had seen them all before; Gina liked Rick Springfield (who didn’t), and he was displayed in every conceivable posture around the room. My favorite was the drenched-tee-shirt pose: he was covered with sweat, his hair plastered to his skull, clutching the cordless mike and grimacing with the intensity of performance. Gina had hung this one directly across the room from her bed; it was the first thing she saw in the morning.

  The door opened, and I got up. It was Gina’s mother. She stopped, startled, when she saw me.

  “Cory!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here sitting in the dark?”

  “It’s light enough,” I answered, pointing through the window at the garage floodlights which illuminated the room.

  She studied me. “Are you hiding out?”

  “I guess I am.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s somebody down there I would rather not see.”

  “Hmm,” she replied, coming to sit next to me on the bed. Her tail curled up on the floor. “Don’t like the party much, do you?”

  “Oh, it’s a lovely party, Mrs. Fusco. You did a great job getting everything ready and we really appreciate it. I’m just . . .” I trailed off, unable to think of a reason for my retreat that she could accept.

  “Shy?” she supplied, laughing. “I don’t think so, Cory.”

  “A boy I went out with once was invited tonight. I didn’t like him, but he keeps after me. Outside of going home, I don’t know what to do.”

  “It’s always the ones you don’t want who want you, isn’t it?”

  “It sure seems that way.”

  She sighed. “I remember it well.” She stood and held out her hand. “Come with me. You can help me serve dessert and that will keep you busy.”

  “Okay.” I went with her to the kitchen and she directed me in setting out paper plates and unwrapping the covered trays of goodies. I was grateful for the task and managed to blend in for quite a while. I even added logs to the fireplace when I saw that the blaze was dying down. I was about to start dusting the furniture when Brian entered the rec room through the sliding doors. He had been outside.

  I made a beeline for the hall. His arm snaked out and caught me.

  “Are you avoiding me?” he asked directly.

  “I’m helping Mrs. Fusco,” I said.

  “Are you the maid?”

  “Don’ t be sarcastic, Brian.”

  “Don’t be evasive, Cory. If you don’t like me, just say so.

  “I don’t like you.”

  His face darkened with anger. “Why not? Can you afford to be so choosy?”

  “Let’s not go into it, okay?” I tried to move past him.

  He blocked my path. “I’d like to, if you don’t mind. Ever since we met you’ve been treating me like I was a leper. What’s wrong with me? You’re not exactly a glamour girl, you know. I would have thought you’d be glad I was interested.”

  I restrained myself from smacking him, but with difficulty. “Look, Brian, I don’t want to burst your bubble, but it didn’t thrill me to learn that you were out with me the last time as a favor to Ken. And I didn’t enjoy hearing about your other girlfriends and your straight A average.”

  “I didn’t come here tonight as a favor to Ken,” he replied. “I came here to see you.”

  “You came here because I didn’t fall at your feet as countless others have done before me. You came because you couldn’t believe you didn’t charm me out of my socks. You’re handsome and smart and everything else you think you are, Brian, but you’re not for me. I prefer a little less perfection and a little more humility.”

  His finely molded mouth became hard and mean. “I didn’t realize you found me so offensive.”

  “What do you want me to say? I didn’t want to tell you all this, but you keep hounding me. There are lots of girls here tonight who would welcome your company. Just go after them and leave me alone.”

  His eyes had a steely glitter I didn’t like. He cocked his head to one side.

  “You really think you’re something special, don’t you? You talk about me being conceited. Take a look at yourself. You think you’re too good for me, and I can’t for the life of me imagine why. You’re pale and skinny and a total space cadet. I don’t know why I even bothered to talk to you.”

  Despite the fact that I had brought this attack on myself, his harsh words hurt. Nobody likes to hear abuse, even if uttered by someone whose opinion doesn’t matter. I had a moment of sympathy for Brian; this was what I had just done to him.

  “I’m sorry, Brian,” I said. “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

  He shook his head disgustedly. “You’re really a zero, Cory. No wonder you spent the night in the kitchen. Mrs. Fusco was feeling sorry for you. I heard her telling Gina that she had to do more to introduce you to some nice boys. Of course, they wouldn’t look twice at you, but Gina’s mother is the type to take pity on a wallflower.”

  His face became obscured by a film of tears. I turned away from him and dashed through the house to the hall. I grabbed my coat from the closet and bolted out onto the lawn.

  I had to see Tom. The heck with the police and the heck with everybody, I was going to the one place where I was understood.

  The night was dark and cold. The lights from the house dimmed as I got closer to the street. I was crying harder now, and could hardly see where I was going. Undaunted, I ran on, stumbling off the curb and into the road.

  Headlights blasted into my eyes. A horn blared in my ears. I gasped, spinning around into the path of an oncoming car. It was going to hit me.

  “Tom,” I screamed. He was all I could think of. The noise of the horn grew louder and I braced myself for the impact. There was no time to move.

  “You’re all right, Cory,” Tom’s voice said in my ear. “You’re all right.”

  I registered his voice, and his presence, before tumbling gracelessly to the ground. I could hear
the babble of shouts and alarmed cries as people rushed from the house.

  Then I struck my head on something hard and all was silence.

  Chapter 9

  I woke up in the dark. I knew I was in a hospital from the medicinal smells around me, and from the unfamiliar bed. The sheets were crisp and starched, and there was a metal bed rail under my hand. I tried to sit up, and a knifing pain sliced through my head. I gasped and moaned, clutching my temples. My head was wrapped in gauze.

  “Cory!” My mother’s voice came out of the darkness. She’d been sitting in a chair next to the bed. She stood and grabbed my hand.

  “Oh, Cory, you’re awake,” she sobbed. “I’ve been so worried.”

  “What happened?” My tongue felt too big for my mouth. They had given me something that made me groggy.

  “You were almost hit by a car, and you fell jumping out of the way. You hit your head on a rock. You’ve been unconscious for five hours.”

  “My head is all wrapped up.”

  “You had seven stitches.”

  “Why am I here?”

  She started to cry, relief and the memory of alarm in her voice. “You didn’t wake up,” she whispered. “You have a serious concussion and the doctors were very concerned when you didn’t regain consciousness right away. I had to put you in here.”

  “Have you been here all night?”

  “Yes.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Almost four a.m.”

  “Mom, you should go home.”

  “Not on your life, young lady. Just relax and get some rest. I’m staying right here.”

  I recognized that tone of voice. There would be no arguing with her.

  I shifted position, and again felt that blinding pain. “Who was driving the car?” I asked.

  “Someone who shouldn’t have been driving,” she replied grimly. “He’d been drinking.”

  “It wasn’t the driver’s fault, Mom,” I said. “I ran right into the road.”

  “Why on earth did you do that?”

  “I . . . had an argument with someone at the party. It upset me. I reacted badly and ran outside.”

  “Cory . . .” she began, and then evidently realized that this was no time to be giving me a lecture. “Don’t worry about it now,” she concluded. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Your father will be here then.”

  “You didn’t call Daddy!”

  “I certainly did. You’re his child too, and we didn’t know what was going to happen to you. Now excuse me for a moment; I was told to get the nurse if you woke up.”

  I closed my eyes and thought about my last memories of the incident. Had Tom really been there? Had he saved me? It seemed so, but I knew that he couldn’t leave the mill.

  He’d told me so himself. But I’d heard his voice, felt his touch.

  My mother returned with a nurse and a doctor. The doctor switched on an overhead light, making me wince, and examined my eyes with a tiny flashlight. He took my blood pressure and fired off a prescription to the nurse.

  “It looks like you’re doing all right, young lady, no thanks to you,” he said. “The next time you decide to go one-on-one with a sports car, put on your football helmet first.” He switched off the light.

  “I will,” I said feebly.

  “I’d like to stay,” Mom said to him.

  “All right. But let her sleep.” He said curtly to the nurse, “Call me if there’s any change,” and left. The nurse followed him.

  Mom resumed her place in the chair.

  “Mom, did anybody see another person there besides me when I fell?”

  She shook her head. I could barely discern the movement in the light from the nurse’s station in the hall. “Linda didn’t tell me anything about that,” she answered. “Was someone there?”

  “Did Linda come right out?”

  “She said they ran out when they heard the horn and then the screeching of the tires. Poor girl, she was very upset. She was as white as paper. She found you lying on the ground, bleeding.”

  “Trust me to break up a party.”

  “One of the boys was blaming himself. I suppose that’s the one you had the argument with. He said it was his fault that you ran out.”

  “That isn’t true,” I said wearily. “Whatever he said to me I deserved; I was mean to him and he answered in kind. I asked for it.”

  “All right, all right. You shouldn’t be talking so much. Go back to sleep now, and everything will look better in the morning.”

  I settled myself on the pillow, hoping fervently that she was right.

  * * *

  My father arrived in a state of high anxiety. I don’t know what my mother said to him on the phone, but it was enough to convince him that I was at death’s door. He came rushing into the room, and stopped short at the sight of me, which I knew must be alarming. He threw his coat on the chair and then ran to my bedside.

  “Baby, what happened to you?” he asked worriedly. “I got here as soon as I could.”

  “I’m all right, Dad,” I answered, glancing at my mother, who remained silent on the other side of the bed. “It was a close call, but I came out of it with just a bump on the head.”

  “Which required several stitches,” my mother supplied dryly, speaking up.

  “If you’re okay, why are you still in here?” he demanded.

  “I have to remain for observation, whatever that means.”

  “It means that you were unconscious for five hours,” Mom said. “They want to monitor your condition.”

  “How long will you have to stay?”

  “They said three days.”

  He let out a long sigh and pressed his lips together. “I must say I’m relieved to see you awake and talking,” he said. “Your mother led me to believe that there was reason for serious concern.”

  “I called you while she was still out,” my mother said to him tightly. “The emergency doctor thought she might go into a coma. What would you have done in my position?”

  “Don’t get hostile, Ann,” Dad answered mildly. “I was only expressing my happiness at seeing Cory better than I thought she would be.”

  I did not want the two of them to start going at it on either side of my bed, with me in the middle like a referee. “Could you give me a break, please?” I said in a tired voice. “Let’s declare a cease fire until I’m out of this place, at least.”

  They exchanged a chastened glance. “Well,” Dad said briskly, “exactly how did this happen?”

  “It was my fault,” I replied. “I ran into the street at night without looking and was almost hit.”

  “Why would you do a foolish thing like that?”

  I sighed. “It’s a long story. Do I have to go into it now?”

  He eyed me speculatively. “I suppose not, but I am going to require further explanation in the future. I have several unanswered questions about this whole business.”

  So do I, I thought. So do I.

  “Did you just get in?” I asked him.

  “Yes, I took the first flight out.”

  “You must be hungry.”

  I looked at my mother. “Mom, why don’t you take him down to the cafeteria? You haven’t had any lunch either. You could relax and discuss my demented behavior.”

  “Cory, don’t take that tone with your mother,” Dad said sharply.

  “Sorry,” I murmured.

  “However, that does sound like a good idea,” Dad went on. He said briskly to my mother, “Are you game?”

  I thought for a minute that she would refuse. Then she shrugged slightly and said, “I suppose it couldn’t hurt. I want to talk to you about some other matters anyway.”

  If my father reacted at all to the lack of enthusiasm in her voice, he didn’t show it. He put the back of his hand to my face. “You take care, Cory. We’ll be back shortly.”

  As they were going out the door, he put his arm around my mother when she preceded him into the hall. I saw her stiffen for a mome
nt, then relax.

  Well, at least they were speaking to one another. That was a step in the right direction. I would gladly suffer more than I had to accomplish this goal.

  I closed my eyes and tried to ignore my throbbing head.

  It was time to take a nap.

  * * *

  My parents stayed for the rest of the day, and had a take out dinner while I ate what passed for a meal in St. Joseph’s Hospital. Dad left shortly afterward, and my mother stayed until visiting hours were over at nine o’clock. I had a splitting headache by the time she went home, and was grateful for the shot the nurse gave me. I tried to watch television for a while, but the light hurt my eyes and made the headache worse, so I flicked it off with the bedside switch and stared into the darkness. It wasn’t long before I was asleep.

  I awoke with the sense that I wasn’t alone. The room was dark, and a night hush hung over the hospital like a spell.

  “Cory,” Tom said. He was sitting on the side of my bed.

  I gave a glad cry, springing up and throwing my arms around him. Pain shot from my head down the back of my neck, but I didn’t care. I buried my face on his shoulder and he held me close.

  After some moments I pulled back and looked at him. “How can you be here?” I asked him. “You can’t leave the mill.”

  He didn’t answer, and I knew there was something he was keeping from me. “You saved me from the car,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “How could you be there . . . and here?”

  “We were brought together to help one another,” he replied. “I was meant to preserve your life, and you were meant to set me free. Our work is done.”

  His words had the ring of finality, and I felt a thrill of fear. “You’re leaving me,” I said dully.

  “I must.”

  “Oh, no,” I cried, clinging to him. “Don’t leave me all alone.”

  “I have no choice,” he answered. “We both knew this was coming.”

  “But so fast,” I whispered. “We had so little time.”

  “I used everything I had left to keep you from the car, and to come here. Your life is my gift of love to you, and my freedom is yours to me.”

  “I’ll be left alone, like Maggie,” I mourned.