Suspending Reality

by Chrissy Peebles

  Fair enough, I thought, though it was a bit ironic. He was here for freedom while I was running away from my problems—far away to another country, as if even that could bury the pain.

  Hunter pointed at my neck. “Love the necklace. Hey…wait! You must be that gypsy girl everyone’s talking about. Your mom, Madam Destiny or something, does readings on TV, right? Think she’d do one for me? I need to know whether I’ll pass math this time.”

  I could feel the heat rise in my cheeks. Great. He had to bring up my mother. She’s so… The truth is, it was difficult to describe my mom. She wore long, ruffled, flowing skirts, large hoop earrings, beaded jewelry, gold bangle bracelets, and scarves in vibrant and obnoxious colors. She completed the gaudy, hippie street fair costume with a large opal ring to complete the look. Yes, my mother was a typical gypsy, complete with sandals that she even wore in the winter.

  He cleared his throat. “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Do you think you could give me a reading?”

  I shook my head grimly. “I’m not like my mom.” I didn’t have a psychic bone in my body, and I didn’t really believe in all of that even think that stuff was for real. It was entertainment, and my mom made a fantastic living off of it. “I don’t believe in that crap. Now, can you please get out?”

  He just sat on the edge of the bed, smiling at me and revealing a row of perfectly white teeth. “Hey, Zoey…” He moistened his lips and cocked his head to the side.

  I peered from his shimmering eyes to his flushed cheeks, and the perfect shape of his lips. My heart began to beat a little bit faster. I had never been around someone so unbelievably hot. I’d read about guys like him in books and seen them in movies, but such chance encounters with hunks never happened to me. This can’t be happening, a guy who looks like that sitting in my bedroom in a freaking castle, I told myself, but I couldn’t let him know how shocked I was. “What?” I said, irritated that the guy would have any effect on me.

  “Am I gonna pass math or what?”

  He was irritating me, so I saw no harm in returning the favor. “Give me your palm, and we’ll see,” I said, trying to sound serious.

  He played along and stretched out his hand.

  “Hmm…” I said, wrinkling my brow, as if I saw anything other than a strong hand that made mine burn with hotness as soon as he touched it. “See the top line in your hand, the one that goes from your middle or index finger toward your pinky?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  I’d seen Mom do readings a million times, so it wasn’t that hard to pull off an Oscar-worthy performance. “I need to see where the heart line starts. If it’s under your index finger, it means you’re happy with your love life.”

  He grinned. “Really? I’m anxious to hear this one.”

  I ran my fingers across the lines in his hand, and a cold chill ran through my body. Flashes of light dotted my vision; a loud crack echoed in my ears, a gunshot; Hunter clutched his heart as he collapsed to the ground; I hugged him, weeping, as if I’d known him 100 years. “You killed him,” I shouted up at someone I couldn’t see. “Why? Why did you have to do it?”

  “Zoey?” Hunter said, breaking into my thoughts. “Are you okay?”

  I snapped out of it and peered around the room, confused. Everything was just the same as before, with no trace of blood or gore. “Yeah, I just…” My tongue stuck to the back of my throat, and I was unable to complete the sentence. There was nothing I could tell him anyway. I didn’t want him to think I was crazy, some weird chick with an overactive imagination. I dropped his hand as I felt the blood drain from my face. “You’re fine. You’ll have a happy life, with 2.5 kids and a white picket fence.”

  “What about my love life though? Because I think it’s dramatically improved within the last hour.”

  My cheeks burned, and I didn’t know what to say.

  Fortunately for me, we were interrupted by the door creaking open. A tall lady with her red hair wrapped in a tight bun walked in. “Mr. Connors, please return to your room immediately.”

  I peered at her, taking in all the details, from her frown to the way her hand clasped the door frame, as though she could tear it in tiny pieces any minute. I swallowed hard. “He thinks this is his room.”

  “This is the girls’ section of the castle. Clearly, this room belongs to Zoey Sanders.” She checked her list. “You’re in room 2c. Now, Mr. Connors, please leave.”

  He shot me a smile, then grabbed his suitcases.

  The woman blocked his path. “Shoes, Mr. Connors…now.”

  “She’s just jealous I wasn’t talking to her about my love life,” Hunter whispered in my ear, then grabbed his Nike tennis shoes from under the bed.

  I held back a smile, knowing it wouldn’t help my case if I burst out into laughter.

  “Mr. Connors, you’ll be washing the dishes tonight after supper.”

  “What? No way!” Hunter said. “That’s so not fair.” Of course we’d have to revert to hand-washing and drying the dishes, since the Maytag Man wasn’t around in the Middle Ages to install a dishwasher, but Hunter looked as if he’d been sentenced to being locked up in a dark dungeon with rats biting his toes.

  “Ma’am, it really was an innocent mistake,” I said, trying to plead his case for him. “I mean, who wouldn’t get lost in this huge place?”

  “Miss Sanders, I run this house. Since you choose to question my authority, you’ll be joining Hunter for kitchen duty tonight after supper.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I conceded, my heart thrumming. It wasn’t that dirty dishes were all that exciting, but if I was going to be stuck in the castle kitchen with a guy who looked like that, I’d happily scrub for hours.

  The school matron placed her hands on her hips and glared at Hunter, as if to stop him from saying what he was about to blurt out. “No backtalk, young man, or you’ll be doing the dishes all week.”

  He shot her a lazy smile, and I couldn’t help being turned on by his cockiness.

  I looked up at the woman. “We’re sorry, miss. It won’t happen again,” I said, remembering my mother’s sage advice to refer to teachers by “miss,” “madam,” or “sir.” I’d considered “sir” briefly, but I thought she might take offense to that.

  The matron heaved an exaggerated sigh. “I’m letting you off easy because you’re new, but the next time you disobey the rules or take a sassy tongue with me, there will be stiff penalties to pay.”

  Hunter glanced over his shoulder at me with that easygoing grin. “Sorry we started off on the wrong foot—a barefoot, to be exact, but don’t worry. This is gonna be an awesome year. It has to! We’re in Scotland! It was nice meeting you, Zoey.”

  I liked the way he said my name. “Nice meeting you too.”

  “Maybe we can play cards later tonight.”

  “Cards?”

  He winked. “You know…tarot cards.”

  I laughed, wondering how someone could be so good at breaking the ice with a complete stranger. The castle was supposed to be my getaway from the reality back at home. I hoped Hunter and all the gothic charm of the place might be just the distraction I needed from the pain that threatened to consume me every waking hour—and often in my dreams. Fate had thrown me into a real-life castle, into some kind of modern-day, twisted fairytale, but I couldn’t have been happier to escape my own dreadful reality, if only for a year.

  * * *

  The teachers purposely separated me from Hunter during dinner, so I had no way to make any kind of small talk with him until we ended up on kitchen patrol. I swished hot water around a giant pot and scrubbed away, trying to get the stuck-on noodles off. Washing dishes wasn’t my favorite thing to do, but getting to know Hunter a little better was awesome and well worth the greasy water and sticky suds. He blew some bubbles in the air, and I laughed and swatted at them playfully, like I was four years old. He was up to his elbows in suds, singing and swaying to a hit song I’d heard on the radio earlier, and boy, did
he have a fantastic voice. I caught on to the lyrics quickly and started to sing with him. I grinned as he smiled widely.

  “Somebody please call my Fairy Godmother so I don’t have to clean all these dishes,” a voice with a Southern accent echoed across the kitchen.

  “Personally, I’d just settle for a dishwasher.” Hunter laughed.

  I turned and saw a thin girl with her dyed blonde hair tied up in a ponytail—or at least I assumed it was dyed because it was so platinum blonde. It was gorgeous, unlike my own dry, frizzy bird’s nest of a do.

  She held out her hand for a shake. “Pamela Joy, but you can call me Pam.”

  “Uh…” I quickly wiped my hands on my clothes so I could shake her hand. “I’m Zoey.”

  “Zoey, huh? My best friend has a Chihuahua named that.”

  “Um…”

  “Don’t worry. It’s not a bad thing. The Chihuahua is cute,” she said with a laugh. “Nice to meet you.”

  “A pleasure,” I said.

  Hunter turned to meet her gaze. “Hunter, and it’s nice to officially meet you. You were sitting at the table behind me.”

  “Yeah, I heard you cracking all those jokes about the school food. Is that why you’re here? Were the powers-that-be offended that you were insulting their not-so-good eats?”

  I cut in. “Nope. He’s here because he’s a squatter.”

  “A what?”

  “He tried to steal my room.”

  Pam cocked a brow.

  “I tried to tell the teacher it was a huge mistake and misunderstanding, but all that did was get me assigned to kitchen duty.”

  Hunter chuckled. “Yeah, what she said. But what about you, Pam? To what do we owe the pleasure of your company on kitchen patrol?”

  Pam rolled her eyes playfully. “I guess you could say I’m misunderstood. I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to nibble on the M&Ms sitting on the coffee table. C’mon! I was starving after that long flight. The least they could have done was put out some chips or something.”

  We all laughed.

  Pam glanced at my teardrop-shaped pendant. “Cool necklace.” She peered closer. “Ooh…I love how it reflects the light, like it’s glowing or something.”

  “Yeah, it’s super neat,” Hunter said, smiling. For a moment, I thought his eyes seemed to wander a bit lower than my pendant, but I couldn’t be sure.

  “Thanks,” I said. “It’s an old heirloom that’s been in my family for generations.”

  Pam let out a small giggle. “Super neat? What, did you take a time machine out of the seventies to come here, Greg Brady? Personally, I think it’s groovy.”

  Hunter threw a soapy rag at her, and she caught it with one hand, and suds began to drip down her arm. She shot him a huge grin.

  “Awesome reflexes,” he said.

  For some reason, I felt slightly jealous about their obvious flirting, but I knew I had no right to and didn’t say anything about it. If I was going to have any friends in the place, they would be the closest thing to it, and I didn’t want to mess that up.

  “I have lots of brothers,” she said with a smirk, rolling up her sleeves. She looked around at the Leaning Tower of Dishes and declared, “Man, this is gonna be a long night. I despise dishes.”

  “You and me both,” Hunter complained.

  Overhead, the lights flickered, prompting me to drop the wet sponge in my hand and look around. A black shadow, like a human shape in a black cloak, fell in front of me, not more than twenty feet away. My heart raced. “What the heck is that?” I yelled. It glided across the room, and when the lights flickered once more, it disappeared.

  “What’s what?” Pam asked, glancing around.

  “I don’t see anything,” Hunter said.

  “I saw something,” I whispered, wiping my wet hands across my pants once again. I wondered if my eyes were playing tricks on me or if I was just suffering from a really bad case of jetlag and fatigue. I scanned the huge kitchen but saw nothing else out of the ordinary.

  “It’s probably just the electricity,” Pam said. “This is an old place. I wonder if their Wi-Fi sucks too.”

  I nodded in reluctant resignation to logical explanations. “Probably.”

  “Just think,” she said, “we’re standing in the exact place where peasants made meals for the great king and queen hundreds of years ago. This castle’s bound to have a few kinks in the plumbing and wiring here and there.”

  Hunter’s gaze met mine. He didn’t seem as if he wanted to drop the subject or explain it away like Pam had tried to do. “What did you see?”

  I didn’t even want to think about ghosts, because I’d never been one to believe in that kind of thing, but I could have sworn some phantasmal Grim Reaper or something had just paid us a little visit. I shrugged in false denial. “Nothing—just shadows playing tricks on me,” I said.

  Pam flicked water at me. “Well, c’mon, you two. These dishes aren’t gonna wash themselves.”

  “Maybe they would,” I said, “if we could get a hold of that pesky Fairy Godmother of yours. Can’t you text her or something?” I suggested with a smile.

  She laughed. “You’re right. I’m gonna have to fire that woman.”

  I grabbed the rag out of her hands while Hunter sprayed her, then me. I pushed the wet hair out of my eyes. “Hey! Payback time, mister!” I scooped up a handful of bubbles and plopped them on his head.

  He retaliated by splashing me back, and within minutes, I was soaked and he had a soapy Santa Clause—without the bowlful-of-jelly physique, of course, because everything about his figure was perfect.

  Apart from getting scared to death, washing dishes had never been so much fun.

  * * *

  And in no time, a week quickly passed by in the blink of an eye. I felt pretty settled in and was ready to face the school year head on. I changed into my nightgown and brushed my teeth. Jumping into bed felt wonderful. I turned off my bedside light, crawled into the soft covers, and drifted off to Dreamland.

  A while later, with a huge effort, I pried my eyes open and scanned the room. My mind felt as though it was engulfed in a fog, and instrumental music, some distinctive melody with a particular musical structure and harmonic elements, echoed from the walls. I rubbed my eyes and sat up groggily, wondering why anyone would be having a classical music festival so late at night. I remembered going to bed, but my bedroom was simply gone, and I found myself standing in a large concert hall with marble floors and a glorious grand piano in the middle of the room.

  As the fog lifted, I could make out tiny streams of moonlight creeping through a large bay window on my left. The branched candelabras cast a golden glow on the beautiful instrument before me. My fingers danced back and forth over the keys in an organized rhythmic pattern, gliding over the ivories as if I’d played a million times before. How did I get here? What’s going on? My brain had a thousand questions, yet I couldn’t focus on anything but the piano in front of me. I tried to stop my fingers from moving, but music continued to pour from my finger-play. It was such a beautiful tune. I had never learned the chords needed to create such beautiful music, and I couldn’t have even picked out “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on the piano to save my life. Yet there I was, playing like Chopin.

  “Well-composed, spellbinding, and beautifully haunting. It’s extraordinary, isn’t it?” said a male voice in a Scottish accent, jerking me out of my confused thoughts.

  I glanced up at a strikingly handsome, well-groomed man in his early twenties, dressed in cutaway tailored coat, over a waist-length satin waistcoat and dark breeches. He was wearing a brocade vest covered with a robin’s egg-blue coat, tan knickers, and white hose. His necktie was quite outdated and looked more like a wide scarf trimmed with lace.

  With a grand movement, I played the last note, and then the music melted into an eerie quiet. Somewhere in the room, I could hear a clock ticking. I shuddered, pulling my white silk robe around me, and tied it tightly around my waist. “Who are you?” I asked
in an accusatory tone. Part of me knew he was the reason I was there, but none of it made much sense. “How did I get here?”

  He smiled. “How nice of you to wake up and join us.”

  “Us?” I peered around me, more confused than before, because I only saw him. “What do you mean?” I pointed to the piano and behind it, into the corners that weren’t illuminated by the candelabras, but all I could make out was darkness.

  “You must only close your eyes. When you do, if only for a minute, it shall be morning, and all will be back to normal, as you know it, milady.”

  “But I-I don’t understand,” I whispered.

  He gazed deeply into my eyes. “Victoria, you must hold the connection.”

  “What?” I shook my head. “I’m not Victoria. My name is—”

  “I’m not talking to you, Zoey.” His sharp tone and the fact that he somehow knew me took me by surprise.

  “But you’re looking at me…and how do you know my name?”

  “Reestablish the connection,” he ordered to some unseen entity, ignoring my question.

  I opened my mouth to ask again what he was talking about, when a cold gush of air traveled up my body, making me shiver. For a moment, I closed my eyes to escape the freezing sensation, but when I opened them again, there was only darkness.

  At the shrill sound of my alarm clock, I bolted up and peered at my bedside table. It was six a.m. Streams of sunlight hit my face through the window, and I blinked. I jumped out of bed, threw on my slippers, grabbed my robe, and wrapped it around me. I had no idea how I’d gotten out of bed and back. In fact, my memories were too hazy and incoherent for me to really remember anything. I brushed my teeth and threw my hair up in a ponytail, then sped out of my bedroom and down the spiral staircase, through the corridors, straight to the music room.

  I yanked the door open and stepped into the vast hall, then peered around me. I didn’t remember entering the room before, but I recognized everything, from the marble floor to the heavy furniture and large candelabra. The beautiful grand piano stood in the middle of the room, its lid securely shut, even though I didn’t remember closing it when I was somehow there before. I spun in a circle, confused, and took in several new details. There was a glass door that led to what looked like a back yard, something I hadn’t noticed before. A large painting hung on the wall to my right, and I was sure I couldn’t have simply missed it in my strange dream. I knew I needed to calm down and think for a minute. I scooted into the window seat to look out the bay window. It was the perfect place to curl up with a book or take a nap in the sun. I looked at the shrubs swaying in the wind. Maybe I was dreaming…but it felt so real. I swear I could feel the keys underneath my fingers. My gaze drifted back over to the grand piano.