by 33 authors
I’m not one for crowds. The ‘hundred plus’ part of the equation would have kept me the heck away from that party if Matthew hadn’t been the one not-inviting me. So I felt more than a little nervous when I parked my car among two or three dozen more. The party had started while I was running in circles following my less than adequate map, and most guests were already there, I supposed. I sat in my car and quite honestly considered just going back home.
I’d tell my parents that Lauren—my alibi—hadn’t been feeling well so we’d cancelled the sleepover. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d lied, truly lied, to my parents. I’d felt like squirming the entire time.
The only thing was, I couldn’t leave without at least telling Matthew. Another lie coming up… I’d tell him I felt sick or something. It wasn’t the first time I’d bailed on him. He always had so many people around him that I usually felt like he wouldn’t miss me much if I didn’t show up.
When I turned on my phone to text him, I realized he’d sent me three messages while I was driving.
Where are you?
If you bail on me I swear I’m turning up on your doorstep tonight and inviting myself over.
Come on, Cat, we had a date.
I knew he didn’t mean it that way, but I can’t deny that my stomach executed a perfect somersault when I read the last one. I hit reply and typed,
Just arrived. Your map got me lost twice, thx ever so.
Where am I supposed to go now?
That last bit I added because as soon as I got out of my car, I could see three different buildings illuminated by the moonlight. I could figure out where the party was going on—I only had to follow the music and pulsating lights for that—but I hadn’t come to dance with near strangers.
I walked through the parking lot slowly, running a hand through my hair, wondering yet again if a pair of jeans and a white shirt were dressy enough for a non-event. My phone buzzed.
How could you possibly get lost? That map was PERFECT! I imbued it with special non-getting-lost abilities! Clearly you read it wrong. Or your mind wasn’t attuned to it. Try harder next time.
And that, in a nutshell, was Matthew. He could type on ridiculously small keys faster than anyone I knew. He could spout the most random things at any given moment. And he could make me laugh without really trying.
I started to type a reply, but before I could hit send, I heard my name.
“Cathy? Is that you?”
He was at the end of the parking lot, with someone it took me a second or two to recognize as Axel.
“Who else would it be?” I called back. “Did you give a magic map to anyone else?”
I barely heard Axel’s rumbling voice, but I guessed he was asking what I was talking about. Matthew was still laughing by the time I reached them.
I was glad to see that my ensemble of jeans and a button-up shirt was indeed appropriate attire, as it was what Matthew was wearing as well. To be fair, that was all he ever wore. No t-shirts for him; one of the little oddities that made him who he was. The light was behind him so I couldn’t see his eyes, but I knew their color well enough to guess his blue shirt would match them perfectly. His hair was the same mess of dirty blond curls it always was, falling into his eyes and a bit long around his ears. I told my heart to calm down as I said hi to him and Axel.
If Matthew hadn’t made much of an effort to dress up, Axel, on the other hand, was wearing perfectly pressed black slacks and a tan shirt a few shades lighter than his skin. He even had a tie on, although it was loose, and his sleeves were rolled up on his forearms. If I hadn’t been so taken with Matthew…
“Hey Cathy. Glad you could make it. You want a mini-tour so you’ll know what’s what?”
The ‘mini-tour’ took only a few moments. Axel first pointed at the smallest of the three buildings on the far side of the parking lot.
“That’s the office building. There’s a landline in there in case you need to make a phone call.”
“She’s got a cell phone,” Matthew pointed out.
“I’m the guide,” Axel replied good-naturedly. “Let me earn my tip, would you? So. Office building. Phone. That’s also where my parents are hiding from the noise. They’ll come out at some point to patrol and make sure we’re being ‘responsible’—” He made the obligatory air quotes. “—so please don’t get me in trouble.”
That last part was said with a very pointed look toward Matthew, who only answered with a grin.
The stables were next on the tour, although we didn’t get much closer to those than we did the office building. They were a good two hundred yards away.
“Off-limits,” Axel said sternly. “Let the horses get their beauty sleep.”
“What if the horses want to party?” Matthew asked in his most innocent voice—which wasn’t innocent at all.
“If you’re okay with having my death by interminable-parent-lecture on your conscience, go and mess with the horses. But I’m warning you, I’ll be a mean ghost and I’ll haunt you for the rest of your life.”
Matthew gave him a mock salute. I stifled a laugh, nodded my understanding and we moved on to the third building. That was where the actual party was happening, half inside a large banquet room, and half on the grassy yard right next to it. Four French doors stood wide open, and music and light poured outside, people flowing in and out to dance, grab refreshments, or find a quieter place to talk. My guided tour included a walk through the building so Axel could point out the restrooms, which were right next to dorm-style rooms. We ended up in the kitchen, where the music wasn’t as loud and I could ask without shouting, “What is this place anyway?”
“Riding camp,” Axel said. “Every school holiday, my parents have groups here for a week or two at a time, longer in the summer.”
“Cool.”
He grinned. “It is, unless you have little interest in horses and are forced to basically live here. But at least it makes for awesome parties. Speaking of which…” He tightened his tie and winked. “I hear the dance floor calling. I’ll see you guys later. And please make that bottle disappear when it’s empty.”
Another admonition for Matthew. He did his little salute again, and Axel was off.
“Bottle?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
Matthew grinned. He opened the fridge next to him, and hunted for something behind an obscene number of soda bottles. He produced the champagne bottle with a flourish, holding it by the neck in one hand and resting the bottom against his other arm, the way sommeliers do in movies.
“As promised. Blush champagne for the lady.”
Despite how excited I was, I pouted at the sight of the undersized bottle.
“That doesn’t look like a lot of champagne.”
“Two glasses, pretty much,” he said with a shrug.
There were plastic cups on the table. He picked up two of them, and led the way out through another French door. I followed him into the night and onto the grass field on the other side of the building. Through the open toes of my sandals, I could feel the grass, soft and still a bit warm from the sunny day.
“It’s not like we need more than that,” he continued. “We did say we weren’t gonna get drunk, right?”
When he threw me a sideways look, I nodded hastily. “No, of course,” I said. “I just didn’t know they made bottles that small.”
“Oh, they make even smaller,” he assured me. “But we do have a few things to toast, so…”
This time, his shrug was accompanied by a grin. I ducked my head and grinned back, feeling suddenly very warm. I always loved his smile.
All year long, we’d made it a game of pointing out to each other things worth toasting to. Good grades. Bad grades. Snow days. End of term exams. His leading role in the school play. The French teacher’s extended leave of absence. The time he escaped a car crash without a scratch. Small things, and not-so-small ones. And then one day, we’d decided that we’d toast for real at some point. And that waiting until we were twenty-one wasn’t going
to happen. And that it’d have to be champagne. And that it would be pink.
And there we were.
We walked out onto the grassy field until the music wasn’t so loud anymore. Looking at each other, we grinned again and plopped ourselves into the grass. I held on to the cups while he slowly uncorked the bottle. The ‘pop’ seemed to echo around us. He didn’t spill a drop.
Like he’d said, the bottle contained two glasses. He poured, making sure each glass held the same amount, then set the empty bottle down next to him.
“So?” he said, smiling. “Where do we start?”
That one was easy.
“To the Avengers,” I said, raising my cup.
How nerdy was that, really? We owed our friendship to a movie—and to my fan t-shirt of said movie. I'd worn it a few days after the beginning of the school year, when it had become clear to me that this new school was just like the last and I wasn’t going to fit in the clique culture, so why bother pretending I was anything other than myself?
“The Avengers,” he repeated.
He’d been the only one to mention my t-shirt, grinning as he quoted his favorite line at me. I hadn’t been able to resist and had quoted the next one back at him. Five minutes later, we’d reenacted—with gestures on his part but not so much from me—two full scenes from the movie.
He raised his cup as well, touched it to mine, and we each took a sip. A small sip. There were, after all, plenty of things to toast. And toast, we did. We took turns going through that long list of things that had seemed worth toasting to at the time. Now, they mostly made me feel nostalgic. They were like the stone markers we’d dropped through our meanderings across the school year. Some great times, and some, not so great. And who knew what was still ahead…
“So, when are you leaving?” I asked when we both ran out of things to toast. There was maybe a small sip of champagne left in my cup. I could see the faintest fizzling when I tilted it just right toward the moon.
“Hmm?” Matthew had reclined into the grass, one arm curled behind his head, his other hand balancing his cup on his stomach. “Oh. First week of July. We always get there to see the fireworks.”
I nodded. He’d mentioned this before. I should have remembered. Somehow, the thought of him leaving for the entire summer to go to some vacation house on an island in the lake still felt hard to accept. Two full months without seeing him. And even worse…
“Is Isolda going with you, then?”
He sighed quietly. “Yeah. My parents finally convinced her mom that it’d do her good to get out of town for a while.”
I didn’t reply. I shouldn’t have mentioned her at all. Why had I brought her up in what was otherwise a lovely evening?
The thing about Isolda was, I hated her. And I was pretty sure the feeling was mutual. We’d only met three times, but that was more than enough as far as I was concerned. We were as different as two people can possibly be. She was the peppy captain of the cheerleaders, batting her eyelashes and crooking her fingers at her entourage, dressed in the most fashionable clothes when she wasn’t in her ridiculous uniform, and me… well, the polar opposite of that.
We had exactly one thing in common, and that was calling Matthew our friend. How he could be friends with such different people, I couldn’t fathom, but he was. The difference was that he’d known her since they were little kids, and I’d only met him at the beginning of the school year. One point in my favor: she didn’t go to school with us. One point in hers: she was spending the summer at his parents’ beach house.
“How come she’s not here?” I asked, trying to keep the dislike out of my voice. “I thought this was the kind of party she likes.”
Matthew sighed again. “She said she’d come, until Axel told her the party was dry. Then she lost interest.”
“The party is dry?” I snorted lightly, bumping my glass against his.
Matthew wasn’t amused. “For her, it is, yeah. Axel knew I wasn’t going to get drunk, so he let me bring this. But if he’d told her she could do the same… We’ve tried talking to her. I tried talking to her. She says it doesn’t mean anything, that she just likes to unwind a bit but… That’s why she’s coming with us. There’s no store that sells booze on the island. She doesn’t know that, and I don’t think she’ll be very happy with me when she finds out.”
He propped himself up on an elbow and raised his glass toward me as he said, “To a fun summer," but when I toasted him he didn’t drink. Neither did I.
Now, I felt lame. Here I was, seething with jealousy that his other best friend would spend the summer with him while I was all alone, and he was trying to figure out how to get said best friend off the booze train she’d boarded.
I don’t know why I did it. I’d claim I was intoxicated, but honestly, one glass of champagne, not even full at that, didn’t even make me feel buzzed or anything. It was probably just months of tension. Months of trying to read little glances and smiles, and wondering if they meant anything or if I was imagining things. Months of wondering if he was in love with Isolda. Months of falling in love, bit by bit, with everything he did, everything he was.
He sounded sad. I didn’t know what to say. So I kissed him.
Well, when I say I kissed him… I might be exaggerating a little bit.
What I did was lean toward him before I could talk some sense back into myself, and press my lips against his. It was just a touch, really. Hardly a kiss at all. Especially since he froze and absolutely did not return it.
I pulled back after a couple of seconds, utterly mortified. More than that, though, I was scared. Scared I’d just lost the best friend I’d ever had, the one person who understood my jokes before I even finished them, but who always let me finish telling them anyway so we could laugh together.
When he cleared his throat, I blurted out, “Can we just forget this ever happened?”
He didn’t reply. The lump in my throat was growing larger with each passing second of silence, so I tried to fill that silence with more stupid words.
“Not that anything actually happened. I mean, that was nothing. And it certainly didn’t mean anything. I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. So, what else are we toasting to? I’ve got a sip left, maybe two, how about you?”
I kept my eyes firmly ahead of me and toward the dark field during that tirade. I’d taken off my sandals, and the grass didn’t feel so warm anymore under my bare feet. I blinked a few more times than necessary, trying to chase away the tears I could feel rising. What an idiot I was…
“Cat…”
From the corner of my eye, I saw him sit up again, his knees raised in front of him, his arms resting on top of them. He leaned sideways and bumped his shoulder against mine.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “You’re one of my best friends but… I just… I don’t feel that way about you.”
I was still mulling over that ‘one of’ and wondering if it’d be petty to ask if Isolda was another ‘one of’ or if she was more than that, when he added, so softly I barely even heard, “I kinda… don’t feel that way about girls in general.”
If he’d bumped my shoulder again right then, no doubt I’d have toppled over. I turned my face to him, mouth open to say—I really had no idea what. He looked even more scared than I’d felt just a moment ago at the thought of losing his friendship.
“I’ve never told anyone. I mean, I told my parents but they’re my parents, they already knew. I’ve never told any of my friends.”
“Not even—” I started, but cut myself short. He’d already said he hadn’t told anyone, so he hadn’t told Isolda. All these months of wondering if he liked her more than he liked me—if he loved her—and now…
“Not even who?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Isolda. I thought… I kinda thought you liked her. You know, liked her.”
The worry started to ease out of his features. “You thought I liked Isolda,” he said, a slight grin curling the corner of his lips, “so you decided to k
iss me. That makes total sense.”
I huffed. “I never claimed to be all that bright. After all, I never figured out my best friend is…”
I couldn’t say it. He hadn’t used the word, and it didn’t feel right to use it until he did.
“Gay,” he finished for me. His voice trembled a little bit. “Your best friend is gay. And oh, wow. I’ve never actually said that out loud before. It feels weird.”
I laughed softly. “So… you don’t think I’m a shitty friend for not figuring it out? Or for trying to kiss you when I thought you liked another girl?”
“No,” he said solemnly. “I don’t think you’re a shitty friend for not figuring out what I spend my life hiding from everyone I know. I think that right now, you’re pretty much the best friend any closeted idiot could ever wish for.”
He raised his cup toward me. I lifted mine to meet it.
“To best friends,” he said.
“Best friends.”
To this day, we still are.
~~~
Being a teenager can be complicated.
Being a teenager when you happen to be a Shifter, when the universe is your playground, when you live with vampires or your world is under siege by demons is even more complicated.
Or at least, that’s what Angela Yseult’s characters tell her; her own teenage years were fairly uneventful… and still, rather complicated at times, too.
You can catch up with her on Facebook or her blog http://angela-yseult.blogspot.com/
COVER DESIGNER
Magz
Magz is a 30-year-old administrative assistant from Maine's midcoast region. She's been tinkering with Photoshop since about 2002, and has designed several of the covers for Kallysten's book releases during the past few years. When she's not designing covers, other printables, or websites, she enjoys photography, baking, and chasing around her six-month-old kittens. She's often considered writing her own original fiction, but as a card-carrying member of the Procrastinati... she'll finish this bio another time.
You can view a gallery of Magz's recent book covers at http://flight-of-fancy.net. Eventually.
