Sun Damage (The Sunshine Series)

by Rae, Nikki

  Under him, my hair is covering my face, which he’s quick to wipe away. My lips are an eerie blue and my eyelids are closed. Myles and Jade are what I see next. They rush towards him, Myles pinning Michael against a tree and Jade kneeling down next to my body.

  “You’ve gone and done it, Sunshine,” Stevie is saying. He crosses his arms. “You’ve gone and killed yourself.”

  “I’m dead now?” I ask, turning towards him. It’s easier than trying to face the situation unfolding in front of me. “I can’t go back?”

  Stevie shrugs. “You made your choice, I guess.” He’s staring at Jade who is leaning over me, searching for me with his hands in the dark. Once he’s found me, he’s lifting me in his arms and hugging my body to his chest as he cries. I don’t want to see my brother like this any more than Stevie does.

  I take a few steps forward. I try to reach out and touch my brother but he can’t feel me and I can’t feel him. I move towards Myles, who still has Michael against the tree, but hasn’t made a move to either kill him or let him go.

  Michael’s fangs are still out, my blood around his chin. “I did not want to,” he’s whispering, and except for the pitch, it’s the same voice of the little boy I saw running through the woods. “I did not want to hurt anyone.”

  Myles looks confused, but the grip on Michael’s shoulders tightens. “This is a trick.” He spits the words out at him.

  “It is not,” Michael says, tears welling in his own eyes, mirroring Myles’. “Let me try to help her,” he says. “I will prove it.”

  “You can’t help her,” Myles is saying. “You killed her. You should be dead too, but you’re not. You’re the same man you were before. Now you’ve just killed one more person I love.”

  Michael is pleading under his breath. It’s strange seeing someone who has tortured so many, killed and harmed others about to suffer the same way.

  But I don’t want him to die. I really don’t want Michael to die.

  My hand is on Myles’ shoulder before I realize what I’m doing. I’m as shocked as he is that he can feel me there. He turns without letting go of the hold he has on Michael.

  “Sophie?” His voice is choked and strained. He can see me.

  “Don’t kill him,” I say. “He isn’t the same.”

  And I know that. My light swallowed up all of the darkness within him. My blood shattered all of the poison within his body.

  “He killed you,” Myles says, shooting his gaze over to Jade and my body. My brother hasn’t noticed anything else going on. He is lost. Stevie’s kneeling down next to him, trying to console him but Jade can’t see or feel him.

  “No,” I say, suddenly aware of how light my voice sounds. Like I’m fading. Like I won’t be here at all soon. “That wasn’t him. That was the monster in him.”

  Myles blinks a few times but can’t speak. He turns back toward Michael, who is nodding his head in a shaky, quick movement. I realize for the first time that he can see me too. He can hear everything I’m saying.

  I kneel down next to Myles, placing my hand over his, gripped around Michael’s shoulder. He’s shaking just as much as Michael is.

  Michael swallows before he says anything. “I am so sorry.” He’s crying and I’m not sure what to do with it. His thoughts come next, and I’m surprised when I can hear them as if he’s talking directly to me.

  How could I have done such awful things? This girl has suffered because of me. Because of what I am and what I believed I needed to do. And…Ava.

  The thoughts get blocked out by his sobs then and I can’t hear anything else.

  I speak directly to the face of the person who’s made my life a living hell since he entered it, unexpectedly not feeling any anger or fear toward him. But that part of him is gone now. Vanished. Like smoke.

  “Is there a way you can bring me back?” I ask, not hopeful in the least.

  Michael gulps down the rest of his tears. He looks at me like I’m the one saving him. Maybe I have.

  I rest my chin on Myles’ shoulder and whisper into his ear, “Let him try.”

  “No,” Myles says through gritted teeth. He turn his head in my direction. “Are you forgetting everything he’s done?” His grip tightens but I touch his hand and it loosens a little.

  “No,” I whisper.

  I can’t. He killed my father, he killed Stevie. He had Jack rape me so I would kill myself and part of me died because of it. But that was something else and it happened before. Before I was the one who pulled Michael—who Michael was before the darkness consumed him—out of the waves. I brought back something that died in that hole in the ground, the same way Myles brought me back.

  Myles’ expression softens. He’s heard it all and I didn’t realize I was broadcasting my thoughts.

  Michael’s face only intensifies with fear when Myles turns back to him. He stares at Michael for a long time. I can’t imagine what he’s thinking. It occurs to me that I can find out easily if I want to, but I decide that whatever’s going on in his mind is almost as dark as what was flowing through me a few minutes ago.

  “If you can’t fix it,” Myles says, tightening his hold on Michael. “I’ll kill you.” His voice is back to that same one I heard a few months ago, the one he used when Jack showed up. The one that scared me so much. Now it doesn’t.

  I find that when I think about it, I’m not really scared of anything right now. I’m fucking dead and I’m not scared. Not afraid of leaving Jade and Myles here to go wherever it is I will go with Stevie. Not afraid of Michael. Or of Myles killing him, or of how he, my family, and my friends will have to deal with me being gone.

  Myles finally lets go of Michael and instead of standing, he scrambles the few feet to my body. Jade is still holding me, smoothing my hair out of my face. He whispers calmly now and then, only because he has no energy left to scream or cry.

  “I’m sorry,” he’s saying. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  I stand next to Stevie again while Myles slowly hunches down next to my brother.

  “You think it’ll work?” Stevie asks me. The life in his voice is gone; he sounds completely emptied out.

  I shrug. “Part of me doesn’t care.”

  “That’s normal,” Stevie says. “When you die, you don’t really care about shit that mattered before. Like living.”

  “Or leaving.”

  “Yeah.”

  Myles places a hand on Jade’s shoulder and he jumps. “Move away for a minute,” he tells my brother, who is eyeing the little bit of Michael he must be able to see as he approaches my body.

  “Why–What?” Jade asks. “I’m not letting him near her.” He begins backing away, my body hanging in his arms.

  Myles pauses. It’s hard for him to do this, I can tell. He glances up at me.

  Should I tell him you’re talking to me? He asks.

  I nod.

  “Sophie’s here,” Myles says.

  Jade begins shaking his head. “Yeah, no fucking shit,” he says. “Look at her.”

  Myles squeezes Jade’s hand slightly, trying to reassure him or maybe hold on to some semblance of calm. “No,” he says. “She’s speaking to me.” He gulps. “She wants you to move away so Michael can try to bring her back.”

  Myles doesn’t glance at Michael. I don’t think he can.

  “How is he going to help her?” Jade asks. “Even if she is talking to you, how? How does she think he can help? He did this.”

  “She just knows,” Myles answers for me. “Please.”

  “I can’t see her,” he whispers to himself.

  I move closer to him, trying my best to be seen, touching his hair, his hands that are around my lifeless body. “I love you,” I say stupidly.

  Finally, he gently lays my body down in the dirt, careful with my neck, which is still bleeding. Jade pushes some hair out of my face again, as if I were merely sleeping and ready to wake up at any minute.

  When he’s finally not touching me anymore, Mich
ael moves in. He places my head in his lap. My brother refuses to fully let go of me, keeping his hand tightly wound around mine.

  Michael glances at Myles, who is clenching his jaw so hard that I can hear it clicking.

  “Do it,” Myles says, but the fire has gone out behind his words. He’s calm now too, but it’s different than how Jade is calm. Maybe he believes this will work or maybe he thinks just the opposite.

  “Please,” Myles whispers. “Please try.” Suddenly, he doesn’t sound like he wants to kill Michael anymore either.

  Michael doesn’t look back up after that, concentrating on my body.

  He bites into his wrist with minimal force, but he bleeds heavily from the small wound. He seems just as alarmed as Myles when his blood drips like tinted water to the ground and down his arm. It’s different now too. It isn’t held down by the poisonous darkness inside of him anymore. He glances to where I’m standing, as if asking for permission. I nod at him. Stevie grabs hold of my hand and I squeeze it back. Without comment from him or anyone else, Michael parts my lips with his free hand and presses the wound to my mouth.

  For a long time, nothing happens. The blood trickles into my mouth and down my throat and I can feel it, but it’s a detached sensation. Like a mosquito buzzing far away.

  You have to come closer, he tells me.

  Now I’m suddenly uneasy. What if the whole blackness thing was some kind of trick? What if he’s waiting for me to come back to my body so he can destroy it? And more than that, what if I can’t go back? What if I don’t want to badly enough?

  Do not be afraid, Michael’s voice echoes in my head, bouncing around and making me calmer. My feet begin moving towards him. Now Michael’s thoughts aren’t directed at me. They’re from deep within him.

  I killed them, he’s thinking. I killed all of them. I am a monster. I should be dead. I should let Myles and Evan kill me. I’ve taken so much from them. So much from everyone.

  He doesn’t realize that I’m right next to him until my hand grazes his face. He breaks concentration on my body so he can stare into my eyes.

  You’re not a monster anymore, Michael, I direct at him. I don’t know what happened to you. I don’t know all of the things you’ve done, but it’s okay now. You don’t have to be that person anymore.

  I don’t know why I say it. I can’t even explain to myself why I would want to comfort someone who has caused me so much pain. Maybe it’s because there’s no point in fighting when there isn’t anything to fight besides a memory. And that’s who that person who hurt me and others is now. A memory.

  He doesn’t respond, only tries building a flimsy wall around his thoughts. I can still hear him, only now it’s muffled a little bit.

  How is this even possible? He thinks. How can she be so powerful? How did she get rid of the monster in me? And how can she forgive everything I’ve done so quickly? How can she be so human when we’re all doomed to be demons?

  I let my hand fall and glance down at my body, my mouth partly open with Michael’s pale wrist against it. Human or monster, I tell him, what difference does it make?

  He seems to take that in.

  I don’t know how the hell I’ve become so frigging philosophical right now, but I’m guessing it has to do with the fact that I’ve been away from my body for so long. Stevie said that you suddenly know things when you die. Maybe this is what he meant.

  After a long pause, I ask: what do I need to do?

  Michael finally takes his wrist away from my mouth and gently places my head back on the ground.

  Try to get back in. He holds his wrist with his hand, trying to stop the bleeding. It is up to you to figure out how. Or if you want to at all.

  I don’t even know where I should begin with the task. I look back at Stevie still standing where I left him. I glance at Myles staring at me with his arm around Jade. And my brother, who will probably crumble into a million pieces if I can’t figure out how to go back.

  I love you, Myles directs at me and his eyes are brighter than anything else that I can see in the dark. No matter what happens, I want you to know that.

  Maybe it doesn’t have to be hard. Maybe dying and going back is something that shouldn’t happen but it obviously does. To humans. To vampires. To who knows what else.

  I place my hands over my body’s arms. They’re so cold that I begin shaking. I don’t want to go back in there. It’s cold.

  But it can also be warm. Life can be something so beautiful that when you’re dead and staring at your own body, I guess it’s easy to forget.

  I’m just about to dive in when something makes me stop.

  A man is kneeling next to me, staring at my body. He has blond hair like Jade and green eyes like me.

  “Dad?” I ask.

  He smiles a little. The same smile from the photograph at my mom’s house. “You can do it,” he says, placing a hand on my back.

  It’s hard to look away from this man, but it’s harder to not let him push me back into my body. It won’t always be beautiful, of course. But life never is, even when you’re human. I can’t say what’s going to be waiting for me if I choose either side of this decision I need to make, but one last look at Jade and Myles makes the choice easy.

  I can feel the weight of my body again, but I’m not completely back in it. I look to Stevie, whose smile has returned to his face. “See you some other time, Sunshine?”

  I smile back. Sad, but happier to be coming back to life. Again.

  I feel the hand on my back leave and everything turns black again. I melt back into myself. My body welcomes me. It feels like coming home. It’s everything I’ve ever should have loved or cared about. It was there, inside of me the entire time, I could just never see it.

  ***

  It’s dark.

  I realize that I’m completely back in my body now, weighted. Heavy. My neck aches. The bones hurt. But there’s something else running through me. Something that overrides the physical pain: emotion.

  I’m overcome with joy. There is warmness in my fingertips and it spreads upwards. Nothing is going to be wrong anymore because I know what I’m meant to do. I know how to help Myles. I know how to help myself.

  I know how simple life can be when things like good and evil are only concepts. When human and monster are only words.

  “You think she’s coming back?” Jade is asking someone, his voice cracking.

  I can’t open my eyes just yet, they’re still too heavy. But this time, waking up will be quicker. Easier. I don’t want to keep swimming.

  Michael’s voice is what I hear next and he’s still right next to me. “Yes,” he says quietly. “Did you see her mouth twitch? She is trying to smile.”

  Then Myles speaks, and I become aware of hands on me, how he’s holding me close to his chest, because I can hear his mechanical heart inside, calling out to me.

  “She’s happy.” And when he says it, he sounds astonished. I can’t blame him. When was the last time I was happy? When was the last time I could smile without wondering if it would crack and slip off of my face? That’s not going to happen anymore. “Happy?” Jade whispers.

  I can hear Myles crying above me. “Yeah.” He laughs softly.

  When my eyes finally do open, I know that the world will be out there, that there will be more questions, more confusion, and more, endless choices for the rest of my life. But I also know what lies ahead. How Jade will be happy again, how successful our band will become, how Ava and Evan and Michael and Myles will be okay. I can see it all before me, playing out. Smiles and laughter. Music and sunny skies. I don’t know how we’ll all get there but that’s not important. What’s important is that it goes on.

  Epilogue

  Four Months Later

  I climb the steps to our house with a fluttering in my chest that I don’t think I’ve ever come close to feeling before. It’s Halloween in New York. Orange lights and jack-o’-lanterns line the other buildings on the street and orange and brown leav
es, despite how few trees there are, cover the sidewalks.

  I haven’t felt the cold in a while but I wear a light jacket anyway to keep up appearances.

  After I came back from death for the second time, I became more of a “real” vampire. Now I can drink blood from a bag or donor, though I much prefer Myles. I can hear and see things more accurately. I don’t need to breathe and I’m not really sensitive to hot and cold anymore. My heart still beats, though, which at first almost bothered me, but I’ve come to like it. It’s something from my human life I can never lose.

  Myles is in the basement, I can feel him. He’s been painting something new for a while. When I asked him what it was, he wouldn’t tell me. He doesn’t like showing me the painting too much either because it isn’t finished but he knows I can pop into his head at any minute to see what it looks like. I only did it once and I made sure he wasn’t aware of it. All I saw at the time was a figure standing in the middle of the otherwise blank canvas. She had my face and light coming out of her chest.

  He likes to paint in the basement when I’m not home. He says my energy sticks to the walls and he can feel it for days after I’m gone. An Anachronism just got back from a west coast tour that was a month long and we only got to see each other a few times, so I guess that comes in handy in those long gaps. It was last minute and the spots were meant to be played by Honus but I heard that Manny left the band as soon as I came back to the club. The rest of them disbursed, joining other bands or fading away, back into normal everyday lives.

  Myles wanted to come with me this time but I told him not to. I wanted to tour without a safety net, and though I missed him every day, it felt good knowing I was okay on my own. For the first time in a very, very long time.

  When I open the door, he’s lost in himself and his work, only seeing the colors in front of him on the huge canvas that could take up half the wall in our room.

  I’m careful when I speak so I don’t startle him. “Hi,” I whisper.

  Myles glances up and smiles, dropping his paint brush and palette onto his work table before I can say anything else.