Catching Serenity (Serenity #4)

by Eden Butler

  “Wonder if he and Layla will ever figure out that they want each other.” Mollie’s smile is effortless, sweet, and when her boyfriend Vaughn stands next to her, the affection in her expression only strengthens.

  “Didn’t take us that long.”

  “Sugar, I wanted you the second I saw you,” Mollie answers, weaving her arm around his thin waist.

  “Yeah? So did I.”

  “Well Layla and Donovan have been doing this dance around each other since they were kids.” She takes a sip of her water, head shaking as Donovan withers under Autumn’s fussing. “Sometimes I think they’ll never get to it.”

  That was the way of things with my friends: Declan and Autumn carrying on like they needed to touch each other every so often to maintain a normal heart beat. Mollie and Vaughn casting long glances at each other as though they could hardly believe the other was smiling the same smile right back at them. Donovan and Layla being stubborn to realize that all the teasing, all the insults and pranks they leveled at each other, was the longest bout of foreplay to ever happen in the history of Cavanagh. And me, smiling wide, laughing with my friends, loving them for the support they offer, all while hating myself for holding my own burden to my chest because it was mine to carry.

  It is dark when I finally leave and Joe has asks twice if I want him to drive me home, just one time more than Autumn and Declan asked. They are sweet. And stubborn and mostly all drunk. So I slip from the house before anyone notices I’m gone, jotting down a reminder in my phone to meet Autumn in two days for a Saturday breakfast she made me swear I’d show up for. She understands that I need space, but that doesn’t mean she’ll let me keep sequestered for long.

  The sweltering heat has eased, but I still knot my hair to keep my neck cool and tangle my pink waves at the back of my head as I move down the front porch steps, breathing easier now that I have left the party and everyone’s attention. But then I am accosted by a plume of cigarette smoke that wafts right in my face as I come to the street light on the corner of the sidewalk.

  Quinn O’Malley is leaning against the light pole, flicking ashes on the ground, stretching his arms over his head as he exhales. The light from overhead casts shadows onto the pavement and his silhouette is one of glorious precision and finely honed perfection. Too bad all that beauty is attached to a smoking, entitled asshole.

  Though I know it’s rude, I pull my collar up, covering my nose and mouth from the stench of the cigarette as I walk behind him, hoping he won’t notice me pass.

  “This bother you?”

  Walk away. Keep quiet and walk away, I tell myself, knowing that it would be sensible to ignore him, that Autumn and Declan have warned everyone what a prick Quinn is.

  “Yes,” I say unable to help myself, turning around to face him. “It does.”

  He holds the smoke between his fingers, squinting at me, likely at the small snarl making my top lip quiver before he takes a drag. “And why is that then?”

  “Because,” I say, “It stinks.” Quinn pushes off the street lamp with the cigarette still between his fingers and I try like hell not to notice the thick scent of his cologne cutting through the reek of tobacco. “It’s rude to smoke out in the open where someone can pass by you and be subjected to…” I wave my hand in the direction of the cigarette, “that disgusting thing.”

  “Is it now?”

  “Yes.” My fingers itch to yank the cigarette from his hand and toss it on the ground. “That stench lingers on your clothes, in your hair, on your breath.”

  Something about my accusation gives him pause, draws a half smile from Quinn. “Why is that your concern?”

  “It’s not…”

  I try not to watch the slow slide of his tongue against his bottom lip as he takes a step towards me. “In fact, I’d say you’re the last one that should be fussed over the state of me or the way I smell.” Quinn stands right in front of me and that erotic scent of his cologne drags my thoughts away from the putrid smell of smoke. “My breath, for instance. Unless you’re keen to snog me, is really not for you to worry over, is it then?”

  A small image flicks through my mind, but I push it aside. “And why in God’s name would anyone want to kiss you, least of all me?”

  “Not sure, am I? You just strike me as the tightly wound sort. Been a while, has it, love?”

  There is the smallest hint of humor in his tone, along with the challenge. It makes me step forward, eager to knock that grin from his face. “That is none of your damn business.”

  “Nor is me and my fags yours.” He lifts the cigarette at me as though I wouldn’t know that slang word meant cigarettes before he stamps it out with his foot. “Best you keep to your own business, unless you change your mind about that snog.” Quinn is only inches from me now, invading my space, soaking up the air around us and I suspect he is anticipating my upset. Maybe he thinks that being domineering will somehow intimidate me. It does not and I don’t flinch, don’t move even a finger as he comes closer still with his warm, tobacco drenched breath heating against my face. “Were you to ask, then I’d throw these buggers away without a second thought.”

  “For a snog?”

  A quick jerk of his chin and that humor is gone from Quinn’s expression as though he thinks I’m serious. As though he wants me to be. “Snog, fuck, whatever your willing to give up.”

  He’s no different than half the players I’ve come across at CU. The same attitude, the same smugness and faux vows to give up something they enjoy just for the pleasure of my time or the thrill of my touch. It’s all bullshit. The same bullshit that kept me a virgin until I was eighteen and unattached for the most part since then.

  I know Quinn O’Malley wouldn’t give up anything for me. That doesn’t mean I can’t lead him on.

  I take pleasure in the surprise that registers as I slip my fingers into his pocket, as I pull out his pack of smokes and free a single cigarette. He accepts it when I place the filter in his mouth, though he squints again, moving his gaze from my fingers to my face like he expects me to insult him.

  “If a snog from me will keep you off smoking…” I choose not to acknowledge the fuck comment, instead lighting the cigarette and shoving the pack and lighter back into his pocket, “then you best keep at it. My lips will never, ever touch yours.”

  Two slow steps and the scent of him dims. I’m nearly a block away before I glance back. There is a faint plume of smoke lingering about his head, but the cigarette dangles in his hand. He is watching my movements. I feel that on my neck, my face, my body as he watches me and I tell myself as I walk away that I don’t care in the least that he does.

  I AM FOUR, nearly five. I don’t remember time, how it stretches and moves, how moments are missed, how memories are distorted by the disarrangement of minutes, hours. But I remember hearing the voices. Strange words I don’t recognize, people that look nothing like me or anyone I have ever known, and the woman with the green eyes.

  The woman that held me on her lap when we left the orphanage and the crying nurses who handed me over. The woman with the green eyes and the curly ginger hair gave me a paper swan, its wings pointed and sharp, and I held it in the car, through the airport and on the plane as we flew and flew over oceans, as the movies played on the screens in front of us, as the green-eyed woman sang to me so I would sleep. And I did. For days, for minutes, I don’t remember.

  One minute I am in the village with the smell of fish hanging in the air and the clip of small boats knocking against the pier, the easy hum of music sounding beyond the orphanage walls, and the next I am with Mama and Papa, with all the people that look like them instead of me, and who call me “beautiful” and “precious.” They call me by my name, Sayo, they tell me they are my family now, but I don’t know what that means.

  A year later two boys who looked exactly the same came to our home. Mama said they were my brothers, but their skin was brown and their hair was softer than mine, curly, thicker. How could they be my brothers? One
of them, Mama called him Booker, cried the whole night. He cried the whole next day, too, and the other one, Carver, joined him, both of them keeping me from Barney and the fluffy waffles Mama made with lots of butter and thick maple syrup. But then they stopped crying when I gave them my waffles and held their hands while Barney sang on the television. Then my new brothers fell asleep next to me on the sofa, still holding my hands. They weren’t so bad when they slept. They didn’t cry at all then.

  The next year a girl came to live with us. She looked even stranger than Booker and Carver and Mama called her Adriana and she sat in Papa’s lap because, I guessed, his eyes and hair were dark like hers, not light like Mama’s.

  Months later another girl, my sister Alessandra, with lighter skin than Adriana’s and eyes that were small like mine. Then there were so many people in our house that Mama and Papa packed big boxes and hid away all my dollies and every one of Booker’s trucks even when he cried and cried for them. And then our new home got crowded with all the children, but every night before I said my prayers, after Mama would tuck me in and read me a story and tell me I was her sweet girl, Booker and Carver would come into my bed and hold my hand and then Adriana followed and Alessandra came too until Mama fussed, until she stopped fussing and we stayed with each other when the night came, when the house got quiet.

  Until the memories of Shirakawa-go weren’t as strong. Until I didn’t smell the fish in the air or hear the murmur of music in the echo of the wind, until my only leftover memory was of that paper swan, and my little brothers who held my hands until they fell asleep and the little girls who looked nothing like me, nothing like anyone I knew, curled in ball at the foot of my bed and we slept, my siblings and I, we slept because that was where we felt safest.

  Together.

  “Sayo? You stopped reading.”

  “Did I? I’m sorry, sweetie.”

  I’d arrived this morning to find Rhea upset. Claire, her older sister was acting out. It happened now and again when she felt left out, when Aunt Carol spent too much time focusing on doctor’s appointments or how she’d cover the deductible on Rhea’s new meds. Uncle Clay hadn’t been around much lately, something I knew worried Carol, but still wouldn’t complain about. Claire, though, resented Rhea. It was understandable. She was ten and hadn’t yet grasped the concept that Rhea needed attention, sometimes all the attention.

  “Okay, so,” I say, turning the page. “Where were we?”

  “The Midnight Duel. Peeves is about to start screaming.”

  A brief nod and I continue reading from the book, smiling when Rhea rests her head against my shoulder. We’d read Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone at least half a dozen times, but my little cousin never got bored with it, could likely repeat what I read verbatim.

  “Draco’s a snot.”

  “Duh. He’s supposed to be.”

  She feels warm, like she is courting a fever and I tick off yet another note in my head to mention to Aunt Carol. Turning the page, I let myself travel with Rhea to Hogwarts, losing myself for a moment in the magic and mystery of those darkened, ancient halls and the threat that loomed at Harry’s every turn. From my peripheral I notice Rhea’s eyes are closed, but she mouths the words as I voice them, each syllable coming out with a reverence only cherished stories are treated to. She loves disappearing into her imagination as much as I do. It takes her away from the things that threaten her own narrow world.

  After a moment, once Harry had met Fluffy, Rhea blinks, her eyes going glassy and I know her attention is no longer with me, that she feels distracted, irritated. I doubt it has anything to do with the fight she’d had with Claire. Those come often enough now that they rarely manage to upset her.

  Without me uttering a sound Rhea glances up at me, points to the pencil and sketch pad on her bedside table. I know what she wants.

  “I was thinking,” she says, nodding at the small doodles she’d already made in the book as I thumb through it to find an empty sheet. “Fairies have no colors. Not really.”

  She does this often—lets her mind run around with random, unconnected thoughts, following her own internal timeline. I’d seen it with my grandfather when I was ten. He’d been diagnosed with lung cancer and after the doctor’s visit that had resulted in what was his death sentence, Gramps found it nearly impossible to keep his thoughts organized. He wanted to stroll down memory lane. He wanted to do things he’d never gotten around to. He wanted to read books, watch films that had once meant something to him. Rarely had he stayed focused enough to finish anything.

  Rhea, I’d found, did similar things—attention distracted from whatever she was doing, pulled into an idea, an untethered opinion that then consumed her.

  “What about Tinkerbell?”

  “She wasn’t really like the cartoon. I’ve read Peter Pan.” Rhea took the pencil from my hand, scribbling without any concentration a form with wings but no flourish, nothing that made the fairy unique at all. It may have been a moth for all the detail she left out. “Even in my books and comics, the only colors the fairies have are on the dresses they wear, maybe in small splotches on their wings. And there are none that look like me.”

  This was a travesty to her. She had voiced the desire to rectify many times before, on those low days when her mood is somber and her hope is almost nonexistent.

  On those days, when her manner is particularly low, like it was now, Rhea stays quiet, still, and demands only one thing. “Paint me,” she says and though I can’t draw anything resembling a fairy, I can make Rhea smile with my artless, juvenile sketches. That’s what I do now, because the chemo is weighing her down, because she has endured so much in such a small lifetime that I would do anything she asks of me.

  “Draw me happy.”

  And I do, obliging, moving my pencil over the paper, arching loops, curling lines until wings have formed, until the flicker of light from her wand spreads over the page and coats the ground at her stick figure feet.

  “That’s about as good as I can manage, kiddo.”

  “It’s perfect.” And Rhea picks up the paper as though the compliment has not been a lie, as though the meager fairy I’d drawn for her is remarkable and not pathetic at all. “It’s perfect,” she says again and I catch myself trying to touch her, to hold her against my shoulder like I used to do when she was barely four and already sick. But eight, I knew, was far too old to let your big cousin hold you. And so I grab a new piece of paper and hand it and the pencil to Rhea.

  “Draw me a hope.”

  It was the same game we’d had for years. Draw me a dream that you dream for yourself I’d ask her and she would, imagining herself onto the page with no hospital beds, no tubes in her nose, no machines a reach away. She would draw herself healthy. She would draw herself strong. No matter how she drew herself, no matter what form those characters took, that Rhea was perfect.

  Today she draws herself standing with her toes sunk into the white sand amidst the soft contours of a shoreline. Her skill is greater than mine, her talent raw and untrained but still immense. She draws an ocean laid out in front of that beach, and trees with fat coconuts between the fan branches On that beach she draws two figures, a man and a woman, hands clasped together, smiles wide. The woman has long hair flowing down her back, and in her free hand is a cane that she leans into as though the hunch of her frail back pains her.

  “Who is that?” I ask, wondering who she wished she was today.

  “It’s me. When I’m old. I’m so old that I need a cane.”

  “And who is that with you? The faceless man?”

  “My husband, but he’s very old too. We’re old together on that beach.” She pauses, smiling to herself about something she doesn’t share. “We’re retired.”

  The scene makes her happy, and she focuses on adding a bird in the sky and fat, thick clouds. “Your hair is beautiful.” I point to the long, wavy hair down the woman’s back and the accented tendrils that Rhea lines over and over again.

&nbs
p; “It’s gray.” She sits closer to the paper, concentrating on a second palm tree, making its limbs longer. “That… that’s the biggest dream I have,” she admits, now coloring in the space of white that makes up the old woman’s hair.

  “To be on a beach?”

  “No,” she says forgetting the drawing for a moment to stare at me, that mild grin completely vacant now. “To be gray-headed, Sayo. To… to be an old lady.”

  I am not prepared for that revelation or how desperate I am to keep the tears from spilling from my eyes. I blink them away, not wanting Rhea to notice. She doesn’t want pity. She doesn’t want anyone upset because she is sick—she’s told me at least a dozen times. So again, I deflect.

  “Maybe you should try dyeing you hair purple.” I tug on my pink hair, waving it a little. “Then we really would match.”

  For a long time, Rhea watches me, eyes moving, scrutinizing my features, then dropping her gaze back down to the strands between my fingers.

  “No,” she says, exhaling before she returns to the drawing. “I’d rather have gray hair.”

  And because she’s not watching, I close my eyes because that’s what I want too—Rhea very old and very gray. I close my eyes and pray, right then, that God would grant her the time for her skin to wrinkle, to allow time to leave its traces in her forehead, for gravity to drag down breasts that had yet to even develop. I wanted that so desperately for her.

  “Do you think it’s beautiful?” she asks and I’m not sure if she means the drawing.

  “Yes, sweetie, it’s the most beautiful dream.”

  And it is. Dreams are that way when they are heartfelt. When the significance behind them goes deeper than hope, further than a wish. Those are the dreams of the faithful. The ones who haven’t completely given up. Rhea dreams beautifully. She hopes fiercely and that night when I went to bed, it was that old lady I tried to see in my head. That gray haired woman and the faceless man who loved her. More than anything, I wanted that dream to come true.