by Rae, Nikki
“Shh,” I say. “Too loud.”
He obeys, keeping silent until I can get a better hold on myself. After a few deep breaths, the noise starts to quiet down as well. My own beating and breathing fades into the others, which have become nothing more than distant, white noise. After waiting a few more minutes, it’s gone entirely.
Finally, I open my eyes, and Manny is still sitting next to me, his arm around my shoulders, no longer touching Myles’ mark. I gently push him away, not wanting to look him in the eye.
“You okay?” he asks. “You went completely somewhere else, man.”
I stare down at my fingers, surprised they’re not burned, or at least a little red, with how hot they were. “I–” I can’t finish the thought or the sentence.
“Something’s been bothering you since you came back,” he says, folding his hands in front of him, making the space on the bench between us even more pronounced. I’m grateful for this. “You haven’t played in a while, have you?” he asks.
I blink a few times and shake my head.
“How long would you say?” His finger lightly traces one of the keys, then one of the jack-o’-lantern lights hung above them. “A few weeks?”
“Since...” I start. “Since before I...left.”
“Well, there you go,” he says, as if this is the only explanation. It’s solved so simply, just like that. “You’re creatively backed up.”
“Backed up,” I echo the words. “I don’t think that’s what’s wrong.”
Manny forms half of a smile. “Probably not all of it,” he says. “I don’t know much about turning, but I do know that it tends to take over your life for a while, right?”
I don’t say anything.
“Yeah,” he continues. “So...having something so crazy happen and not having some kind of an outlet to express it–you can talk until your lips fall off about it, that’s not what your soul needs. You get backed up.” Manny lets his hand rest in his lap. “So when you finally do get to sit down and hash out all of the crap, you get swept up in it. Unreachable.”
“Maybe,” I say, more for his benefit than mine. Maybe that’s how it started, but my gut tells me that’s not the reason why it grew into something else. “Did it ever happen to you?”
Manny waves a hand. Like I didn’t just go into some crazy, deep trance in front of him. “Tons of times,” he says. “No biggie.”
“It is to me,” I say. Sure, I’ve gotten lost in my piano. Millions of times. That’s the reason why I began playing in the first place. But never like that. Never with all of that noise along with it. Never when I couldn’t decipher where I was in space and time. I always knew that I was sitting at a piano. I always knew I could be snapped back to the world in an instant. Usually, I never wanted to come back once I was in my own world that I designed but with this...I’m scared. I’m scared of the one thing that’s always provided me with comfort.
Manny stands now. “Well, I just heard you pounding away and decided to come and see if you were alright,” he says.
I try to put him at ease by sounding casual and making a joke. “Did it sound like music at all or just random noises?”
Manny laughs as he starts toward the door. “You’re talking to the wrong person about that,” he says. “I can never separate the two.”
He gives me one last smile before he finally exits the practice room and the door makes a dull click when it finally shuts. I decide that going back to my apartment, though scary, is less scary than being alone here.
When I grab my notebook off of the music stand, a wave of anger hits me, hard and unexpectedly in the chest. It’s like hitting a wall of fire where everything in front of my eyes turns red and then purple. I have to shut them so I don’t fall over.
But just as soon as it happened, it vanished. Carefully, I open my eyes again.
My notebook is still in my hand, and it just so happens to be opened to the page of the beginning stages of Myles’ song I wrote for him last winter. There’s something off about the letters and symbols written on the paper. Something makes them contort and twist until they’re completely unrecognizable. Just like everything else lately.
It smells, I realize. Burned. Not quite like a bonfire, but close.
And when I look up, I can see why.
The top half of my notebook has caught on fire.
I expect the entire thing to be engulfed in seconds, but that’s not what happens. Instead, it slowly burns, the orange and yellow flames only stay at the top of the paper, like they don’t want to ruin any of my hard work.
My legs give out under me and I’m plopping back down on the piano bench without knowing it. I can hear the paper crackle. It’s whispering to me but I can’t figure out what it’s trying to say.
There’s a knock on the door, making me jump, and the fire immediately goes out.
I have to clear my throat, “Yeah?”
A muffled voice comes from the other side. “You almost done in there?” I don’t recognize the voice. “We got the twelve slot and it’s twelve twenty.”
Shit.
I take a glance around without taking my hands off of the notebook still clamped between my fingers. There doesn’t seem to be any smoke in the room, but it smells awful. I wave my hand in front of my face to make it dissipate but I’m not sure if it helps at all. Or if anyone else will be able to notice it.
“Hold on!” I call back, realizing I haven’t responded to the person waiting outside. I shove the burned up notebook in my bag and practically sprint out of the room past the next waiting band but I’m just slow enough to hear them complain about how no one listens to the rule of no smoking inside the practice spaces. Once I’m far enough down the hall and away from any sign of people, I’m not sure where I’m supposed to go. Outside seems like a bad idea but my apartment doesn’t look too much better.
My feet are dragging me up the steps before I can think about it for any longer. I stare at the carpet the whole way, not wanting to think for the foreseeable future. But of course, that whole plan gets derailed immediately.
“Sophie.”
My eyes squeeze shut at the sound of Myles’ voice. No. Not now. Not right now, please.
“Tell me what happened,” he says. It takes me a second to realize that my head is resting against his chest and he doesn’t move.
I shake my head. Despite how badly I want to pull my head from his chest, I can’t find the strength anywhere within me to do so.
“Let’s go inside,” he suggests.
I nod this time, fumbling in my pocket for my keys.
The door turns under my warm hand and for a second, I’m afraid that I’ll set it on fire too. If that’s what I did to the paper. If it was real at all.
Myles follows me inside and I’m oddly comforted by the fact that he’s here, despite how badly I’ve been trying to avoid him the past few days.
I scan the room and Jade is nowhere to be found.
“He’s still out,” Myles says. “At the convenience store around the corner.”
He’s been gone for over an hour but then again, so have I.
“Sit down,” Myles says quietly.
I don’t want to, just to make it so I’m not doing what he wants, but my legs are so weak and my head has started pounding so I don’t have much choice.
My attention is drawn to my bag thrown over my shoulder. Without thinking, I reach inside of it and pull out the notebook, still opened to the page with his song on it. Still singed around the top half. I toss it on the ground far enough so it’s between us but not so far that it looks like I tried to throw it at him. Myles kneels down without taking his eyes off of me and scoops up my notebook.
Suddenly I remember him helping us practice when we first came here, writing things down in notes and rests as I played them so Boo and Trei could understand how to play their own parts in the songs.
I’m snapped back to the present when I hear a tiny crinkle of paper. When I look up, Myles’ fingers are
tracing over the partially scorched pages. He’s no longer staring at me, but the burned words in front of him. Like there is new meaning there now.
“Tell me what that means,” I say in almost a whisper. “Can you do that?”
Myles glances up at me, his hand still against the pages as he stands up and slowly and almost cautiously takes a few steps forward. “Can you tell me what happened?”
My mouth is too dry to open. My throat is too sore to speak.
“Is it the same thing that happened over there?” Myles asks, placing the notebook down next to my knee and pointing behind me, where the painting is no longer hanging. I lean over the back of the couch and take out the remnants of it. It isn’t even heavy when I place it on the ground. “Yes,” I whisper.
At the time, it felt good, tearing myself out of the frame he painted me in to. Freeing, despite how scary it was with all of the colors and sounds rushing into my body. I nod slowly, feeling the tears creep into my eyes before I can stop them. Now I feel guilty. As ugly as the destroyed image of myself that the frame once held.
The couch dips in near me, but he isn’t too close. I’m grateful for that.
“You lied to me.” I wasn’t even aware that I wanted to say it until it’s left my mouth.
“Everything you ever said to me...Anything I ever felt with you...” I have to clamp my hand over my mouth so I shut up.
Myles’ hand hovers near me for what feels like minutes but he doesn’t let it land on my shoulder until he’s sure I won’t pull away.
I expect him to try and tell me it’s okay, but he doesn’t, and I’m not sure if I should be relieved, that he’s finally accepted that this is what I don’t want to hear, or if he really believes that things aren’t that okay.
“I can’t do this,” I say after a long time.
His fingers twitch on my shoulder. “You can,” he says. “It’s hard for everyone at first.”
I suck in a breath. “No,” I whisper, finally gathering enough strength to pull away from him. “This,” I clarify.
Myles stares at his hand for a second before folding both of them together in his lap. “What do you mean?” he asks softly.
I stare at my boots. “I can’t be with you,” I whisper.
I glance at Myles, who is staring at his hands. “I know,” he says.
My chest feels tight and the mark on my collar bone throbs. I can’t stop myself from grabbing one of his hands, absorbing the warmth that floods my skin. “I wish I could just…” I start, not knowing how to finish. Just what? Run away? Deal with this? Forgive him and pretend everything’s fine?
“It’s okay,” Myles says, squeezing my hand.
I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from crying. I change the subject to the notebook and the painting. “I am unstable, aren’t I?”
Myles doesn’t say anything.
“How am I supposed to tour?” I let go of him again and put my head in my hands. “How am I supposed to do anything?”
“It’s probably just because you’re stressed,” Myles says, though his voice is strained from the conversation I just cut short. “I shouldn’t have told you all of that at once,” he says. “It was stupid.”
I sniff as I straighten my posture to look at him. “His name was Ryan,” I say. “My mom has one picture of him and he has the same eyes and nose that I have.”
The words seem to hurt him as he clenches his jaw. Good. I want someone else to hurt for a change. “I know,” he says. “It was one of the first things I noticed about you.”
I don’t know how that’s supposed to make me feel. The urge to stand up and kick him out is about to overtake me when Myles stands instead. He stares into my eyes for the longest moment but I think we both know there’s nothing he can say to make it better.
“Just promise to keep in touch with me,” he says. “Okay?”
I nod, relieved that there isn’t going to be more of a fight because I’m tired of fighting.
“Goodbye, Sophie,” Myles says, his hand on the door.
Part of me wants to go to him, beg him to help me fix this, but I can’t move.
“Goodbye, Myles.”
But he’s already shut the door behind him.
Chapter 9
The Maker
“There’s this feeling I get when I look to the west, and my spirit is crying for leaving.”–Led Zeppelin
It’s hard being away from her and it’s hard seeing her, feeling the hurt inside her and knowing I put it there. I don’t think I can do anything to make that pain go away, nor do I deserve the right. It’s my fault that this is happening, whether I want to face it or not. And now, she wants nothing to do with me. She can’t be with me. Not that I could have expected her to forgive me; I don’t deserve her forgiveness either.
No matter what, I still have to follow her. I still have to make sure she doesn’t hurt herself or anyone else. Seeing her last night was only confirmation that I should keep an eye on her. It also proved that I’m just complicating things for her and her heightened sense of emotions. I need to watch what happens without her knowing I’m there, the same as before. Only now everything’s different.
If Evan didn’t need me so badly, I wouldn’t have stepped away. Every now and then, he forgets that I can still feel what he’s going through as if I had turned him yesterday. He’s starving, sick, and needs someone to stay with Ava while he gets his blood.
However, he isn’t exactly happy to see me.
“You told her?” Evan asks before he even has the door opened all the way. “How could you tell her that about me–about us?”
He was too angry to ask me about it last time I saw him, when he told me how “unstable” Sophie was. His walls were stronger than I’d ever seen them, so I didn’t push.
I run a hand through my hair. It’s easy enough staying out of his thoughts, but the emotion coming off of him could knock me over if I’m not careful. He’s angry, of course, but more than that, he’s hurt.
“Yes,” I say. “I told her. But I think we can call it even, considering everything you’ve done.” I try to keep my tone watered down but I can’t help a small burst of my own anger from escaping into my words.
Evan’s expression softens. He’s going to apologize again.
I hold up a hand. “Even?” I ask.
He pauses, but nods once.
“Then stop saying you’re sorry,” I tell him. “I know you are.”
I can feel the guilt coming off of him, even now, dripping in faint, grey waves from his chest outward. It’s hard when your maker is mad or disappointed with you. Maybe I would know what that felt like if I ever knew mine.
Evan steps aside so I can come in, and passing him, I can see how drained he is. His eyes are rimmed with red and sink into his face, and if I open my mind up just enough, I can feel how hungry he is. That he’s been starving himself for a while now.
“I told you to call me whenever you needed to go and feed,” I say. “Why did you wait so long?”
We sit down in the living room and Evan hangs his head. “I did not want to leave her,” he whispers.
The image of Ava, the skin on her chest blooming in red as she coughs comes to me by accident. We both know I’ve seen it, but neither of us acknowledges that fact.
“How long has she been sick this time?” I ask.
He shifts his head slowly from side to side. “It has been nearly a week,” he says. “No matter what I do, she does not stay healthy for long.” He rubs his hands over his face, through his hair, and down the back of his neck.
“And how have you been feeling lately?” I ask, knowing that he’s going to lie.
“Alright,” he says, smiling faintly. There’s no happiness in it. “Just...” He squeezes his eyes shut for the longest time.
“Tired,” I finish for him.
He nods, his head against the back of the chair now.
I stand and he opens his eyes when he senses me next to him. “Will you be okay fee
ding alone?” I ask. “I could have Alex or Adrienne go with you.”
Evan braces his hands on the arm rests on either side of him and shakily begins to stand. “I will be fine,” he says. “Will you just help me back upstairs so I can say goodbye?”
I’ve already placed his arm over my shoulder.
The slow walk up the stairs is enough to make me want to run out of the house. I can feel how his bones have begun to protrude from his skin around his back and ribcage. I can almost smell death on him, but it’s more of a faint, dusty, earth smell at the moment. We can always sense when someone is about to die and when it’s your vampire, you know it even more. I don’t know how long he has left but I know he most likely won’t live to see another summer. I can tell that he knows I know by the way he tenses up and they way his thoughts turn to how he should try to cover up the smell, but I don’t say anything other than, “You’re fine,” when we finally reach the landing outside of Ava’s room.
Evan lets go of me then, and I want to cry when I see how much his hands shake before he grabs onto the door frame and walks inside.
Ava is under a mass of blankets, her dark hair neatly swept to one side of her face. I stay in the hall, deciding that Evan wants a few minutes alone.
He leans down next to her on the opposite side of the bed so I can still see his face, but he’s not looking at me, only Ava. I’ve known for a long time that he loves her and that she loves him, but they’ve never done anything about it because they both know where they’re heading. Maybe they think it’s better to die as friends than as lovers. Maybe it would make it easier in some way. Evan kisses Ava on the forehead and she doesn’t move, though I can sense that she’s awake, staring at him.
“I will be back in a few hours,” he whispers. I watch as he adjusts one of the blankets around her shoulder and I can feel from here how raw her neck is from his attempts to lessen the pain of the infected blood in her body.
When Ava doesn’t answer him, he kisses her gently on her head, letting his hand linger on her shoulder for the longest time before he lets go and comes back out into the hall.
