I had no weapon to fight Gideon, but I was determined to do whatever I could to survive.
“I’m not afraid!” I lied again, pushing myself off the ground and standing.
My lungs burned from my panicked exertion. My feet throbbed with cuts and blisters. I limped a few steps and then stumbled again. I tried to stand, but this time the pain stopped me. I tried to crawl, but my hands were raw and bleeding.
“I’m still not afraid of you,” I said through my tears.
I was about to shout out to Gideon again when I heard footsteps. I thought about giving up, but I realized I didn’t want to die in the middle of nowhere. My body was still, streaks of blood oozed from scrapes and scratches on my skin. I sat on the hard soil, tears running down my face.
“Don’t ever entertain strangers, Abigail,” I heard my father’s voice say in my head. I wished I’d listened to him.
I felt movement around me. Someone was coming forward, closer and closer, step by step. I turned around and there he was, standing in front of me as if he had been there the whole time. Without warning, my body flew into the air and then slammed onto the ground. Pain raced through my limbs, and I groaned.
Gideon approached me. “You’re a brave one, aren’t you?”
I struggled to catch my breath.
“Still not scared of me?” he asked.
Before I knew it, my body was forcibly lifted again. This time, Gideon’s right hand clenched my neck. He choked me, and his blood-red eyes fed on my pain. I struggled uselessly. I folded my fingers around his hand, but I had no strength left to stop him.
“Let me make it easier.” He threw me into a tree. I cried in agony as my broken body crumpled to the ground.
I couldn’t stop coughing as I fought to regain my breath. I shifted my eyes back to his. As I stared at him, his hands began to glow with red-hot fire, and without warning, he hurled a ball of flames toward me. I cried out as I saw my own refection in the flames, and then—
I died.
STRANGER THAN FICTION
“One ought to fear those things
only that have power of doing harm,
the others not, for they are not dreadful.”
Dante Alighieri – ‘The Inferno’
“Abigail!” my mother called, jolting me from my sleep.
As I regained consciousness, I felt the aches in my body, pain from last night’s training. It was a dream. The party. Gideon. All of it.
I opened my eyes, wheezing and sweating on my bed, my heart still raced. Had I been…burnt to ashes?
I exhaled as I realized I was safe in my room. My bed sheets were damp with sweat and looked as though someone had spritzed water all over them. I tried to fight down the panic as I inhaled a few deep breaths. For a second, I ignored the worried look on my mother’s face. I moved my hand to my head, feeling the lingering pain caused by the limo’s wreck. A sense of danger still pervaded the air.
I tried to remember what happened in the dream, but the more my mind grasped at the remnants, the faster the dream faded.
“Bad dream?” my mother asked concernedly.
I nodded. “I think so. I don’t really remember what it was about.” Was I still dreaming? When I looked outside my window, the sun was setting. “What time is it?” Had I slept through the party?
“About ten minutes until we leave for the party,” my mother answered. She sat down beside me on the bed. “You all right?”
I wasn’t all right, and for some reason I felt uneasy, but I knew the perfect answer to her question. I faked a smile, looked down from her gaze, and then said, “Yes.” It was a lie I hoped wouldn’t come back to haunt me.
I got dressed for the party with the help of my mother, and we left. My friends attended the event, so the evening as a whole wasn’t as terrible as I originally thought it would be. I only had to be careful that no one spotted me wincing whenever someone hugged me, because I didn’t want to deal with any overly curious questions.
After the party, my mother made us hot chocolate, and we sat and drank it in the living room while watching cartoons.
We spent the rest of the weekend relaxing and watching girly chick-flicks. She was happy about the positive reviews she received on her pre-spring collection, so we went out for dinner Sunday evening to celebrate.
“I’ll see you guys after school,” I told my bodyguards, Ben and Felix, as they dropped me off at the front door to school, Monday morning. In order to attend classes without them, I wore a wristwatch that countered as a tracking device.
When they left, I counted the seconds until my friends arrived, and luckily for me, it didn’t take long.
“What’s up, people?” Jake asked as he entered the classroom, his skateboard tucked beneath his arm. I looked up at the sound of Jake’s voice. Danny and Tristan followed close behind.
Tristan was the new guy as of last month, and Jake and Danny had befriended him, so he’d become a part of our group.
The first time Tristan walked into our classroom, all the girls had stared at him, dazed. He looked like a guy who’d walked straight out of a fairy tale, the kind of tale where the prince was described as the first blossom of spring, the first hope of dawn, a new beginning. I was pretty sure the only place Tristan could have fallen from was heaven, a place that could only hint at his indescribable, unimaginable good looks. Handsome truly wasn’t a sufficient description. It didn’t even come close.
“Good morning,” Tristan said to the classroom as he walked in. The guys walked over to me. “Good morning, Abby,” Tristan said, sitting beside me. Danny and Jake took their seats in front of us.
“Morning,” I mouthed.
Jake put his skateboard on the floor and tossed his school bag beside him. When I looked back over at Tristan, our eyes met. He smiled at me, showcasing yet another indescribable feature, his perfectly brilliant teeth.
No one should be that handsome.
Tristan unnerved me, but he radiated a feeling of peace, of being free whenever I was near him. It was as if he took all my worries away whenever I was close to him.
Danny said, “Tristan, where were you this weekend? You missed the best party ever.”
“I was busy,” Tristan answered. He turned to me and asked, “How was your mother’s launch party?”
Jake answered before I could. “She wouldn’t know because she was too busy trying to hide out most of the night from the press.”
“Yeah, what was up with that?” Danny asked.
Since I wasn’t in the mood to explain myself for the millionth time about how much I didn’t like the press, I faked a smile and shrugged. I reached for my bag and winced, feeling pains all over my body.
“Can I see that?” Tristan asked, looking at my wristwatch.
I stretched my hand out toward him. The moment his hand touched my wrist, the pain in my body disappeared. My entire body stopped aching. I yanked away from him and bent down to the same position as I had done when I reached for my bag, and to my surprise, I felt no pain.
What the hell just happened? I looked at Tristan, but all he did was smile. I pulled my sleeves up to take a closer look at my arms. I squinted to see if the red spots I had from climbing the ropes were still there, but there was nothing.
“I had…” I paused as I realized I couldn’t remember what I wanted to say. Did I have something on my arm? I didn’t even know why I was staring at it. I hastily pulled down my sleeve, not really sure why I had shoved it up in the first place.
“Are you all right?” Tristan asked.
“I need to pee,” I blurted. I quickly put my hand over my mouth just as my friends and Tristan broke into laughter. “I meant…yes,” I whispered in embarrassment.
I stood and rushed to the door, avoiding eye contact with everyone as I hurried through the classroom.
Hurry up, Abby, I told myself. I hoped that by the time I got back, Tristan would have moved to another country. Yeah, that was not going to happen, but seriously, could th
e situation have been any worse?
I really should have looked before bursting out of the door because the very moment I rushed into the hallway, I slammed into someone. I didn’t apologize at first. I kept my head bowed to hide my shame and tried to breathe. As I glanced up, my eyes caught the victim’s black motorcycle boots. I continued moving my gaze upward toward the person’s face. The second my eyes met his, I froze.
“Gideon,” I whispered as the flickering memory of my nightmare came rushing back all at once.
Everything stopped.
My heart pounded so loudly that I was certain it was about to explode.
I remembered almost everything. The guy from my nightmare was named Gideon. I remembered him introducing himself, asking for a ride, and then chasing me in the forest—and I remembered him killing me. But I couldn’t picture his face at all. The Gideon from my nightmare was still a mystery.
“Excuse me,” the guy said, and I immediately pulled away from him and looked up.
I was shaking. “I am so…so sorry.”
“Do I know you?” he asked.
The guy in front of me looked just as inhuman as Tristan, only Tristan’s opposite. From his black jeans to his dark plaid shirt, everything about him looked unnatural.
The difference between his attractiveness and Tristan’s was that when I looked at Tristan, I felt free and happy, but when I looked at the guy in front of me, his cold eyes sent my flight instinct into overdrive. “No. No, you don’t,” I answered awkwardly and then hurried past him down the hall.
I finally slowed down, but I kept on walking, smiling and waving at the people who passed by me, until the world around me spun in circles. The faces in the hall dissolved, becoming unfocused images.
I might have kept on walking if Sarah hadn’t spotted me and pulled me back to reality. The moment she spoke, the morning bell rang.
“Where are you off to?” she asked.
“I was just…out for a walk.” I wanted to tell her about my nightmare, but I didn’t want her to make fun of me for getting spooked because of a bad dream.
“I can’t wait for tonight. The concert is going to be awesome.”
“What concert?”
Her brow furrowed. “You forgot? You bought the tickets!”
I had forgotten all about it. We’d made plans last month to go see one of the hottest bands in the country. They were coming to town to play to a sold-out crowd. I gave her an apologetic look.
“You are coming. Jake and I have a plan to sneak you out of your house.”
I smiled. “Of course I’m going, especially if you can actually sneak me out.”
When we entered the classroom, Sarah found her desk. I breathed in deeply before walking back to Tristan and sitting down. He smiled at me before he turned toward the board to pay attention to Mr. Bernard, our history and English Literature teacher, who just then clapped for silence.
“I’m going to divide you into groups for our Titanic memorabilia speech, which if you all remember, is this week.” Mr. Bernard said.
One of the students murmured, “Oh, no.”
“Speeches are due before the week is over,” Mr. Bernard finished.
“Mr. Silas, you and Miss Cells will be group one,” Mr. Bernard said, looking at Tristan and me.
“Miss Tate, you and Mr. Duran are—” Mr. Bernard was interrupted by the sound of the door as it busted open. Everyone looked toward the noise.
Standing in the doorway was the guy I bumped into. The moment I saw him, my heart dropped. I prayed he was lost and wasn’t in our class. Frankly, I didn’t understand my uneasiness upon seeing him. He gave me bad vibes, but on the other hand, he was totally hot.
“You must be Mr. Chase,” Mr. Bernard said, and the boy walked toward him.
“I am,” he answered. He looked around the classroom, and his gaze stopped on Tristan.
To my surprise, Tristan looked like he knew the boy because he gave him a half-hearted smile.
“You’re late,” Mr. Bernard said, and the boy looked at the clock on the wall.
“I was actually here before the bell rang.” His eyes moved to mine. “Miss Cells can vouch for me.” I froze at the mention of my name. I wondered how he knew my name, but then I remembered I was known pretty much everywhere—the price of being famous. “She bumped into me and ran off.”
Someone please shoot me now. A few people chuckled. Jake cast a backward glance at me and grinned.
“You’re excused this time, Mr. Chase. Find a seat. I’ll assign you to a group.”
“Mr. Chase can join Jake and me,” Danny volunteered. I wasn’t surprised.
“It’s Gideon,” the boy said. “Gideon Chase.”
“What?” I blurted out in surprise at the mention of his name, and then all eyes turned to me.
Gideon? His name was actually Gideon? Why Gideon?
“Miss Cells, are you all right?” My outburst had obviously startled Mr. Bernard. Gideon stood beside him, confused, but the moment his eyes met mine, he smiled as if he knew why I was scared.
“I—I’m sorry, I didn’t—” I looked down in humiliation.
Maybe it was just a coincidence. This guy couldn’t be the same Gideon from my nightmare.
“Well,” Mr. Bernard continued, “take a seat, Mr. Chase.”
Gideon walked through the classroom and paused beside my table. My heart took a violent leap as he bent down and whispered into my ear, “Breathe.” And then he walked away to an empty desk, leaving me completely breathless.
My first impression of Gideon was dangerous.
My second impression of him was that he was hot.
My third impression of him was murderer, because if he was anything like the guy from my nightmare, he was going to kill me.
RING THE ALARM
“Today I blinked,
and accidentally fell in love.”
Melody Manful
Even though I wanted to deny it, Gideon’s presence unnerved me. Could he really be the guy from my nightmare? I didn’t have prophetic dreams, did I? I tried to shake off my unease. After all, what was the new guy going to do, ask for a ride and kill me? No way whatsoever!
I stole another glance at him. Mysterious, good-looking guys weren’t killers, right?
History class ended, and we were given only five minutes to get ready for our next lesson, English Literature, which was also with Mr. Bernard. Those who didn’t have literature with him left while others joined the class. I couldn’t concentrate when Mr. Bernard started teaching again.
I wanted to turn and see if Gideon was staring at me, but I decided against it. Within minutes, I’d decided to avoid him, forever.
Eventually, the bell rang for lunch. Some of the students rushed out like a pride of hungry lions.
“Doreen, baby, walk with me,” Jake said as he walked toward Doreen and wrapped his arm around her waist.
“Ewww!” Doreen pushed Jake away. “Don’t ever touch me again!” She glared at him and walked briskly away.
Jake stared after Doreen with a puppy dog face. “She so wants me.”
We laughed. Out of all the girls in school that he could have a crush on, he chose Doreen, who didn’t even want to breathe the same air as him.
“Yeah, in your head,” Danny teased.
“Aren’t you coming?” Tristan asked, looking down at me.
His voice pulled me out of my thoughts about Gideon and my nightmare. I looked up at him.
“Go on ahead.” I cleared my throat and looked down, careful not to say anything else and push my luck since that was the most comprehensible thing I had said to him all day.
“Should I stay with you?” he asked.
I quickly looked up to make sure Tristan was talking to me. His eyes were on me.
Say yes, Abigail!
“Hmmm…” I choked on my words, my mouth felt suddenly dry. “That’s okay.” I looked away from his intense gaze. I wanted to take back my words, tell him I me
ant to scream yes. But my shyness wouldn’t let me.
“Yo, Gideon, care to join us?” Jake called to him.
“Later. I have to take care of something,” Gideon said.
“We’ll save you guys a chair,” Jake said.
Danny followed Jake outside, but Tristan hesitated before following. He glanced at me one last time and then left the classroom. I turned to Sarah.
“What?” I asked, looking at her playful expression.
“I think someone likes you.” She nodded toward the door. Sarah had been saying this ever since Tristan had invited me over for an early dinner two weeks ago. It wasn’t a date, though, because my bodyguards were also invited. And we didn’t even talk about ourselves; we talked about schoolwork. Tristan intimidated me—that much I’d admit. I always felt shy around him, but then again, he had that effect on every girl I knew.
“Tristan doesn’t like me.” If only my voice didn’t sound overjoyed, she would have believed me.
“Are you kidding? He was asking to spend time with you.” Sarah smiled knowingly and then turned around, fanning her face. “Wow, Gideon is burning up the place.”
“Go and bring back a fire extinguisher.” I played along. She laughed and walked out.
“Gideon, do you want a tour of the school?” I overheard Doreen asking Gideon.
Gideon asked, “Who’s asking?” And I looked up at them curiously.
“Well…” Doreen leaned on Gideon’s table, facing him. “I am,” she said, and I could only guess why she was in that position.
“Well, I am,” Gideon said, and I almost snorted. “I know this school by heart. There was a map in the student brochure.”
“Well…” Doreen stood up, reached into her left bra cup, and pulled out a card. “Call me if you change your mind. I’ll be waiting.”
Gideon took the card. “I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you,” he said, placing the card on the table.
“Don’t count on it,” Doreen said in her sexy voice—the one I’d heard her use whenever she wanted something from someone. “I’ll see you around.”
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