by Lola StVil
“Randy, Soul Diving is a game where two angels leap off the tallest mountaintop at the same time without using their wings. Whoever opens up their wings first, loses. It’s what the humans would call a game of chicken,” I explain.
“Oh, that doesn’t sound too bad,” he lies.
“Really?” Key asks.
“Well, what happens if one of them doesn’t pull up in time?” he says.
“There are Ports at the base of all the mountains. They take you straight to Difi,” I reply.
“What’s Difi?” he asks.
“Hell.”
“Oh...” he says quietly.
Key and I exchange a look of bemusement. Key comes over to him in her bathing suit and takes his arm in hers.
“I know if you had wings, you’d Soul Dive and not even think twice about it. But since you don’t, I thought we’d hit the waterfall in the lower terrain while Bex and the others are diving. What do you say?” Key asks kindly.
I think Randy lost his power of speech in that moment. All he could do was nod and give her a goofy grin. He then rushes and takes his shirt off, leaving only his Star Wars shorts. The two of them jump into the water and cry out excitedly as they splash around and swim. A few mountains over, I watch as the rest of the team Soul Dive and carry on like happy maniacs.
I strip my clothes off and reveal the bathing suit underneath, but I don’t go in the water. I sit on top of one of the cliffs and look out at my team. Well, most of my team. Aaden isn’t here.
Aaden isn’t here...
I allow myself to go back to the night we kissed for what I hope will be the last time. I can feel his hand on the side of my face as if it’s happening right now. His soft lips felt like summer breezing through my wings. And when I parted his lips with mine, it sent a rush of pleasure to parts of my soul I didn’t know existed until that very moment.
It’s not just the kiss I miss; it’s him. I know it makes me a complete loser for missing a guy who doesn’t give a damn about me, but I do. I miss the way his eyes glaze over when The Face is talking. I miss the intensity in his voice and the confidence of his walk.
Most of all, I miss the way he says my name. It always sends a tingle whirling through me and makes me feel like I’ve had a double shot of Coy. And no matter how many times I’ve witnessed it, it still amazes me how he can be so aggressive in battle and yet so gentle in his touch.
“Moping is not allowed today!” Randy says behind me.
I look just in time to see him and Key coming for me. They pick me up and scold me for staying out of the water.
“I don’t want to swim, I’m fine here,” I promise.
“Well, too bad,” Randy says.
He signals to Key and the two of them conspire and hurl me off the cliff. I scream in delight all the way down. When I hit the water, I gasp at how cold it is and they all laugh at me. Soon East and the others join us in the water. It’s the most fun I’ve had in awhile.
Things go from entertaining to outright hilarious when the force of the waterfall knocks Randy’s shorts off. He’s horrified but still laughing as he tries to find his shorts in the water. Swoop and Key make inappropriate and silly comments. The guys join in and I’m laughing so hard my sides hurt.
Finally Randy emerges from the water with his shorts in hand. He says it’s not funny as he puts his shorts back on, but we catch him laughing at himself yet again. We point out the stray flower petals, leaves, and seaweed that have latched on to his body.
“Did I get it all?” he asks as he turns his back to us.
“Yeah, man, you’re fine,” Bex says.
“You still have one behind your thigh,” I call out from a few yards away.
“Pryor is just messing with you,” Swoop laughs.
“Oh really?” Randy says as he playfully leaps towards me and sends me flying backwards into the water.
We have a “splash” war for a few moments then head out of the water. I then swear to Randy I wasn’t messing with him. He doesn’t believe me so I make him turn around so I can take it off for him. I bend down and swipe the small stray debris from the back of Randy’s thigh.
“Damn, it’s stuck,” I tell him.
“Oh no, is it some kind of jellyfish? Is it sucking my blood or something?” Randy says, starting to panic.
I get all the way down to the ground so I can take a closer look.
“Pryor, c’mon, tell me! Is it a jellyfish?”
“No,” I reply.
“Then what the hell is it, Pry?”
“It’s a rose; a blue rose.”
END OF BOOK I
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CHAPTER ONE: THE BOY
Okay, it’s official: I’m a coward. No one is in class today but me—and the new twin foreign exchange students from Japan. The boy’s name is Rio. He’s tall, lanky, and on the cutting edge of fashion. His hair is flaming red and falls into a shaggy bob cut that usually covers his face. His lips are plum red and he has eyebrows most girls would die for.
Rio looks like a Harajuku poster boy. This I learned from Wikipedia; it is a fashion trend in Japan where the kids dress in bold colors, patterns and off-the-beaten-path clothing. I find him sexy in a dark, mysterious way.
His twin sister, Miku, is more bohemian. No matter the weather, she can be found in dresses that are usually soft, flowery, and flowing. She has almond-shaped gray eyes like her brother. Her hair is jet black, bone straight and falls down to her waist. Her bangs frame her soft face beautifully. She wears a single honey blonde braid on the right side. But where Rio stands at 6’0, his sister is nearly a foot shorter.
We’ve said hello to each other in passing, but I’ve never struck up a conversation. I wonder what it would be like if I had that kind of charm. Would I take over governments? Start wars? Or maybe, just try to get a date for senior prom?
It didn’t surprise me that the twins are here. They never miss a day of school. Since they arrived, I’ve been fascinated by the way they are with each other. They could be laughing quietly and joking around, but if a student enters the room looking worried or upset, it changes the mood of the twins. Suddenly they are concerned as well. Of course this is all me—having way too much time on my hands to analyze other people’s behavior.
Still, I imagine their lives are somehow filled with adventure. I wish mine were. I’d like my life to be as exciting as Joan of Arc’s or Queen Elizabeth’s. Their existence changed the world. I daydream about being that kind of girl. But those women were brave and defiant. Me, on the other hand, I can’t even cut one lousy class.
The reason for such a low turnout in my last class period is the weather. New York City rarely has temperatures above 30 degrees in January. But here we are just two weeks in to the new year, and it’s a blissful 70 degrees outside. So everyone said a silent “Thank you” to global warming and ditched class.
My friend Sara was trying to coax me to join her, but at the last minute, I chickened out. I never go against the rules. Not because I don’t have a desire to, but because I am afraid of the repercussions. What if I cut class and got caught? They’d call my mom and I’d be grounded. Not that I ever really go anywhere but still....
It isn’t just the weather that has made people skip Mr. White’s history class, it’s Mr. White himself. He rarely makes eye contact with the class, or even asks questions to see if we are following along with the lesson. It’s as if he’s talking to himself. He’s a one-man show, and we inconvenience the hell out of him by being there.
I raise my hand and get permission to go to the bathroom. I head down the hallway and encounter the Armani- Dior-McCartney parade. Fashionistas come towards me armed with posh handbags, pe
rfect teeth and utter disapproval.
I am the only kid at Livingston Academy that doesn’t have old money. Actually, I don’t have new money either. My Grandfather was a janitor here for twenty years before he died. As a favor, the dean arranged it so I could get a partial scholarship. It’s still out of our price range but my Mom won’t hear of public school.
Standing there, I thought I’d get my stuff and make a break for it, but no, I walked right past my locker and into the girls bathroom. Like I said: big coward.
I look at myself in the mirror and sigh. I am so uninteresting. My face is too round, my eyes are too far apart and my cheekbones lack the height needed to elevate me to exotic. The only things that stand out about me are my eyes: they’re as purple as the stupid dinosaur. And, well, that’s just weird.
What’s even weirder is that they go various shades of purple depending on my mood. If I’m angry, they become such a deep shade of purple they appear black. When I’m sad, they lighten up and take on an electric, neon glow. I hate my eyes. They come from my father. He had encountered my mother on her way home from school—and raped her. She went to the police, but they never caught him. She tried to put that night behind her, but then I came along.
My mom, Marla, calls me the one good thing in her life. Funny, I never saw it that way. She had a scholarship to Columbia University and was going to be pre-law, but she had to postpone school to have me. Then my grandparents died in a car accident and she had no one to help support her.
So, she put off school and got a series of dead-end jobs to make ends meet. Law school became a distant fantasy. She poured all her dreams into me. She wants me to be what she would have been had she not had me: a brilliant attorney slash striking social butterfly.
But it takes a full night of cramming to squeeze out a C+ or B- on my exams. That is not brilliance. And as far as being striking goes, as I said, the only remarkable thing about me are my eyes. I always get asked about wearing contacts. I get so fed up with that question.
So here I am, Emerson Hope Baxter, a fifteen-year-old, purple-eyed freak living in New York City. I look at myself in the mirror once again. I smooth out a wayward strand of ink colored hair and tighten my ponytail. I take one last look at myself. I’m 5’4” without a curve in sight. I sigh, again.
I wash my hands and head out the door. The urge to ditch doesn’t last long. Besides, even if I had ditched class, where would I go? Everyone who cut class today had something fun and exciting to do. Their life had urgency and meaning. My life, on the other hand, is routine and ordinary.
So, no ditching, but I’m doing the next best thing; I head to the nurses office, my safe haven. The nurse’s name is Cora. She lets me crash on one of the cots when life at Livingston Academy has gotten to be too much. I run to the safety of the Lysol-scented office until I get enough nerve to face the world again.
As I head down the hallway I hear a moan coming from the janitor’s closet. I walk up and press my ear to the door. I turn the knob half expecting it to be locked, but it isn’t. The person moans even louder.
“Hello?”
“Help!” a male’s voice says weakly in the dark.
I gently drag him out of the closet and prop him up against the wall. I know I have seen him before. I can’t remember his name, but he works in the main office. He’s about fifty or so, balding with dark rimmed glasses and kind eyes.
“They’re coming for him. Must stop them...hurts so much,” he says in barely a whisper.
His face is pale and his lips are pressed together so tightly they form a thin white line. I put my hand on his shoulder to calm him. That’s when I first see the blood. It has seeped through his white shirt and tie and continues to spread its way across his abdomen. By the time I find the origin of the blood, it’s seeped down to the floor. I put my hand on the hole in his stomach but that does little to slow the bleeding.
“Help! Somebody help!” I cry out. The hallway answers back with staunch silence.
“Help me!” I call out again. Nothing.
He’s trying to say something. I lean in closer.
“Find him. Tell him to run.”
“Find who?”
He hands me a crumpled blue 5x7 index card. The kind all the students have to fill out detailing their address and other important information. It’s covered in blood.
“Find him,” the man insists again.
“Okay I will,” I promise, hoping that would get him to stay calm.
I call out for help once again but this time I don’t wait for the silence to mock me. I stuff the index card in my pocket and I run down the hallway as fast as I can. It doesn’t seem fast enough. Should I have left him alone? Can he hang on until I get back? How long does it take an ambulance to come? Stop thinking, just go! My heart is pounding so hard my chest hurts. I scan the hallways. Not a person in sight.
As I call out again, something hurls itself at me and throws me down to the ground with the force of a category five hurricane. I hit the floor. I would have thought I were dead save the acute pain traveling from my shoulders down to my ankle. I groan in agony as the thing that attacked me pins me down to the ground. I stare into the face of my attacker.
It’s Rio from my history class. But before I can be sure, he covers me with something. Everything goes dark. I don’t have time to pinpoint what it was because just then gunshots rang out.
I don’t know who is shooting because my attacker won’t let me up, so I fight him. I know in my head that it is a bad idea to stand up, what with a hail of bullets flying overhead, but panic steps in, and I just want to flee. I have to get up and run away. I punch him repeatedly. I kick and scream for him to let me go. It’s hard to tell if he can hear me over the sound of the gunshots. If he does, it in no way affects him. He holds me down effortlessly with his body and what I think must have been some kind of dark blanket. But where did it come from?
I make one last desperate attempt to free myself; I push past the pain running down my side and hurl myself forward to get out from underneath the boy holding me captive. He doesn’t even budge. How can he be so strong? He’s only 120 pounds or so.
Suddenly, I hear the most beautiful song ringing out into the hallways. It sounds like the kind of melody you’ve heard at a funeral. Sad. Haunting. Sorrowful. Tears sprang instantly from my eyes. I’m heartbroken but I don’t know why. It’s as if the melody has etched the saddest possible memories into my heart. The pain is worse than any physical thing I could have experienced. I want to die. My captor looks into my eyes.
“Don’t listen,” he begs as he holds me closer to his chest.
The blanket he has spread over us has somehow gotten darker and heavier. The song sounds far away now. And although I no longer feel the desire to die, I am so saddened by what little melody I can make out; I continue to weep, loudly, into his chest. Somewhere in between the sobs I think I hear groaning, but I can’t be sure.
The shots stop just as suddenly as they had started, and the hallway is silent again. The blanket is pulled off of me. I was right. It was Rio who held me down.
“What the hell is—.” My voice dies in my throat. Lying about ten yards away from us are three bodies. And standing a few feet away from them is Miku, Rio’s twin sister.
Horrified, I make my way over. Three men lie lifeless on the floor. I’ve never seen them before. They have on dark suits and ties. A trail of bloody tears has run down their faces. Each of them had torn their shirts open, exposing large blue and green bruises on their chests. I lean in closer and see several bloody self-inflicted gashes. It’s as if they were trying to rip their hearts out.
“What did you do?” My voice is filled with so much anguish, I barely recognize it. Before Miku has a chance to reply, Rio comes towards us shouting, “We have to go! They’re coming.”
No sooner had he gotten the words out than a group of men comes barreling down the stairs wearing suits and carrying guns. They begin shooting.
“Emmy, let’s go
!” She doesn’t wait for me to move. She grabs my hand and drags me down the hallway towards the exit. I fall in step with her for fear that if I don’t she’ll hurt me like she did the men on the floor. I knew it was her. She was the one singing. She had killed three people without putting a hand on them. And now I’m being dragged down the school hallway by a murderer and her brother. But I figure I’m better off with them than the “Wall Street” mafia back there, right?
The wonder twins and I dodge into the stairwell. Bullets whiz over our heads. The singer pulls the fire alarm. Kids quickly flood the stairwell. The PA system comes on. I can’t hear what the principal is saying as the brother and sister team and I run at breakneck speed past the student body and out the door. Once outside, a red sports car comes towards us at top speed, jumps the curb and stops just short of hitting us. The door flings open. The driver, whose face I can’t see, says, “Get in.”
They try to get me inside the car but I fight them off, kicking and screaming. I’d rather die here than get in this stranger’s car and end up bruised and broken in some dark alley.
“Get off me!” I shout back.
Had it not been New York City, the sight of a group of teenagers fighting would have been disturbing. But seeing as how the city is always full of strange characters and even stranger happenings, not one person even stopped. Although, there were a few who looked on as they walked by but dismissed it as juvenile horseplay.
Rio somehow gets both my arms behind my back and holds them there. I struggle, but it does no good. His grip is too tight.
“I got her. You clean up,” Rio instructs his sister.
“I cleaned up last time,” Miku replies.
“So you should be familiar with the process,” he retorts. She stares back at him coldly.
Rio lets his guard down for a half a second. That’s all I need. I shoot off down the street. They grabbed a hold of my shirt from behind. I scarcely manage to slip out of it. I thank myself for layering this morning because I didn’t trust the weather to stay this warm throughout the day. I’m half way down the block. My muscles beg me to stop or even slow down, but I don’t give in.
