by S. L. Naeole
He looked at me. I closed my eyes, prepared. I took a deep breath, and then…
“So we meet again.”
I opened my eyes and blinked.
Was this the only thing he knew how to say? A face so divine, a mouth so lethal, eyes so deep and mysterious, and when he speaks with that glorious voice that made my legs begin to tremble even harder—not from the bike ride, but from something else altogether—he has nothing new to say?
“Don’t you know anything else to say other than ‘so we meet again’?” I yelled. Why was I yelling? I was furious, that’s why! “You have no idea who I am. I certainly know a lot less about you, so tell me why would you follow me, tell me to ride with you on your-your-your death machine, and then choose that to say, with everything else that I’m sure you want to know?”
He folded his arms across his chest and smiled. He was amused!
“Why are you smiling? This isn’t funny. I’m in the middle of God knows where-” I eyed him up and down “-with God knows who, and I stink of beans and beef!”
For whatever reason, my mouth was moving on its own, the words falling out like the bottom had been torn out of a rusty old coffee can filled with secrets. “My best friend—well, he’s not my best friend anymore, and he probably never really was—hates me. My father is starting a new family without me with a woman I cannot stand. I just ditched my first day of school…for the first time…ever; and the only thing you can say to me is ‘so we meet again’, as if that is somehow the most important, most relevant phrase in the history of the spoken word?”
I was breathing hard; all of the angry feelings that I had dammed up within me were leaking, oozing out of every pore, slowly deflating the balloon I had felt growing inside of me, suffocating me. I had never really done it before—yell at someone for no reason other than because I was angry—it felt good. “I’m through being the damn punchline for everyone’s jokes, so you can wipe that stupid smirk off of your face. You’re new here so you’re seventeen years late for the joke anyway.”
He took a step forward, the slight motion causing me to take one back for some nameless reason. “I don’t recall you responding in a very pleasant manner when I said it the first time, and I received no response the second time, and now after saying it again this third time, you give me a response in the form of a little tantrum. You should be glad that I’m amused, rather than turned off,” he answered me, calmly, matter-of-factly. He reached for the seat of the motorcycle; lifting it, he removed a small bundle from within and handed it to me. “And, just in case I was rude by not introducing myself earlier, my name is Robert N’Uriel Bellegarde.”
Robert. Now I knew something that Erica did not. I knew his name. I felt the beginnings of a reluctant smile form on my lips, but I quickly squashed it. “So you do know more than four words of English. Good. That’ll make it easier to yell at you later—I hate yelling at people who can’t understand what I’m saying,” I joked nervously, grabbing the item in his hand. “What is this?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “You complained about smelling like beef and beans. That’s an extra shirt I carry with me in case I ever need a clean one, and it just so happens that today, I do. Or, at least, you do.”
I looked at the bundle of cloth in my hands. This was a shirt? But it felt so…nice! Soft, like an old t-shirt, but it wasn’t old, faded cotton with some cheesy screen print on it. I was a stranger to anything different. This shirt, if one could call it that, was a gunmetal gray, shimmery, and smelled…it smelled incredible. I looked up at him, wondering why he would give me his shirt when he didn’t even know me. What was I but a nobody to him? I looked around nervously and laughed; where was I going to change?
“I’m not a fan of chili—the smell offends me—so I would appreciate it if you would change; we’re completely alone here, so you can change right where you are. I’ll turn my back, if that will make you feel better.” He paused and looked at me, his expression bemused, contemplative. “And I do know you, Grace. You’re not the nobody you think you are.”
I didn’t even notice that he had answered the questions in my head before I had had the chance to ask it out loud until later.
SECRETS
He turned around so that I could remove my now crusty, chili-drenched clothing with some semblance of modesty. The shirt was probably impossibly stained now—there was no saving it—so I just balled it up and threw it into a nearby trashcan after using it to wipe up the chili that had leaked through onto my chest. I quickly slipped on his shirt, gasping at how silky it felt against my skin. It definitely was far more expensive than anything I owned. It hung like a sack on my body, though; trailing down to my thighs, the collar hung low over my chest. I looked down and sighed. There really was nothing there to cover anyway, so why try and be modest?
“Okay, you can turn around now,” I told him, confident that I was looking as decent as humanly possible.
He put his hands into his pockets and slowly turned to face me. The look on his face didn’t reveal to me anything as to how he felt about the way I looked in his shirt. Of course I would look hideous in it; the color was wrong for me, if I paid any attention to that sort of thing to begin with, and there was no shape to it—or me for that matter.
“Thank you for the shirt,” I said, not quite sure exactly what to make of his vacant expression. “And I’m sorry about your jacket and the…er…tantrum.”
Nothing.
“I do want to know where we are, though. I want to know why you picked me up. I want to know how you knew what I was going to ask before I asked it. And…I want to know why me. Why me of all people?” I rambled.
His smile returned. This looked promising. “So many questions from someone who couldn’t even say hello. Well let’s see if I can answer all of them to your liking. We’re at the Bellegarde family retreat, I picked you up because you shouldn’t be walking alone, I read your mind, and because you’re different. Very different.”
Did he just say he read my mind? “Wait a minute. You read my mind-” saying it out loud didn’t make it any more believable “-you actually read my mind?” Didn’t convince me that second time either. “And what do you mean, I’m ‘different’?”
“Very different,” he corrected.
“I heard you the first time,” I snapped. “What exactly do you mean by that? And answer me about the mind reading thing!” I was glaring at him, annoyed that he had me sounding like a parrot. I didn’t like these up and down emotions that he was causing in me, either. One minute I was ready to melt into a puddle at his feet. The next, I wanted to rip his eyes out of their sockets. This wasn’t me at all, and I didn’t like it.
He started walking towards a bench, motioning for me to follow, and then sat down. “I can hear your thoughts just as clearly as if you spoke them aloud, Grace. And,” he paused for effect, “you are very different. You’re not like the other girls in school at all. Actually, you’re not like any girl, period.”
Well that was no surprise. “Everyone knows that I’m not like the other girls in school. It’s called being ostracized, Robert.” How weird that felt—saying his name so casually, like we had been friends for ages…it came out so naturally, I felt giddy and embarrassed all at once. I turned my face away as I sat down, not wanting to see the reaction to my use of his name. Of course I feared the likely rejection of my assumed familiarity, but more than that, I feared that I might see the opposite…and hated myself for even thinking such a possibility could exist.
I continued talking while staring at my shoes, “How can you hear my thoughts? Can you hear what I’m thinking right now?”
I looked at him and focused, my eyebrows drawing together with deep concentration. Is this coming in loud and clear to you, breaker-breaker?
He laughed. It was a very rich sound—vibrant and multi-faceted, like an audible prism—I marveled at the way it seemed to fill my head with its resonant tone. “I hear you loud and clear,” he replied to my silent question.
Gape mouthed, I stared at him.
What’s four plus four?
“Eight.”
Who wrote the Star Spangled Banner?
“Frances Scott Key.”
Why did the rooster cross the road?
“Because it was stuck in the chicken.”
How are you doing this?
“I was born with this ability.”
My mouth was gaping so widely, I felt like an open back door. You were born with it?
He nodded. And then I heard a voice inside my head. It sounded tinny…strange…faint. Slowly it grew louder. Stronger, until it was, as Robert had described, as clear as it if were spoken aloud.
And now, Grace, you can hear my thoughts.
I fell off the bench. A loud “umph” came out of my mouth as I landed on the hard ground in complete shock. He laughed at me again, only this time I heard it twice, like an echo both outside and inside of my mind.
“You…you’re in m-my-my head!” I gasped.
So I am.
“Stop it!” I shouted. I grabbed my ears with my hands, as though that would work to keep him out, as if he were merely throwing his voice, rather than his thoughts. And then, just to make sure, I started la-la-la-ing. It wasn’t my finest moment to be sure, but this wasn’t exactly the time to be wowing a judging panel.
Why is it easy for you to accept that I can read your thoughts, but not that you can also hear mine?
“Who said that I accepted you reading my thoughts? For goodness sake, people aren’t supposed to read other people’s thoughts! And I wasn’t born with this…this…thing! Why should I accept hearing your thoughts?” I shouted, exasperated, annoyed…frightened.
“Grace, I told you that you were different. Most girls would be trying to think dirty thoughts around me—most girls do no matter what—but not you.” He knelt beside me on the ground. He put his hand under my chin and lifted my face so that I could look at him. Or that he could look at me. Secretly, I hoped it was the latter.
“It is,” he reassured me, grinning when he saw me grimace—a reaction to him hearing what I didn’t say. “I don’t want to scare you, Grace. I cannot explain to you how, but I just knew—deep inside of me—that you’d be able to learn of my secret, and keep it. The way a friend is supposed to.”
Was it really that simple? All he wanted was a friend? If that was it, why did I feel so disappointed?
“I want you as my friend,” he said, smiling as he offered me his hand.
“Okay, look. That’s really going to annoy the crap out of me,” I told him, taking it and pulling myself up to a standing position. “My thoughts are my own. I’m sure you wouldn’t like someone always digging around in your private thoughts, would you?”
He shrugged, his expression stoic. “My sister is always in my thoughts, needling her way to find out bits of gossip, or secrets she can blab to one of her girlfriends. It’s no big thing. If there’s something I don’t want her to know, it’s not that difficult to keep hidden.” He looked down at my hand, still enclosed in his, and smiled again.
I forgot what I was going to say because I, too, was staring down at our hands joined together. I didn’t realize that I had never let go…and that he hadn’t either. I also didn’t know that when touching like this, skin to skin, I couldn’t stop the influx of thoughts that passed between the two of us.
It flowed like water into my head—filling up crevices that had been empty for longer than I had been alive—as my mind seemed to drain of everything it had ever contained to make room. His voice filled my head, roaming around in my mind, echoing, calling, searching…searching for what? I was starting to feel full, stretched too tight. I felt my face pinch, wincing as the pain was beginning. It was throbbing, merciless…the pressure was increasing at an enormous rate and it didn’t seem close to abating any time soon. I could see his face, his wide, fear filled eyes; he was hearing my inner cries of pain, and they were hurting him.
You…need…to…let…go…Grace.
And then he was gone.
Everything was gone.
***
I was lying on a bench, something hard beneath my throbbing head. I felt something dripping from my face—it being wiped up by something cool and wet. I could smell the rusty tang of blood, and the syrupy sweet smell of something unfamiliar. My eyes opened to two big pools of liquid mercury staring worriedly into my face.
“Are you okay?”
I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t move—something was holding me down. I looked back at those liquid pools and realized that at the way they were angled, I had to be lying down in his lap. My eyes flicked down to my chest, and saw his hand was pressing down on my abdomen. I turned my head and saw his other hand was holding down my left shoulder. I couldn’t get up because he was holding me down.
I looked up into his face once more and said in a shaky voice, “I’m fine. I just need to sit up.”
He looked reluctant to let me go, but eased his grip on me and slowly helped me into a sitting position. The dizziness that engulfed me was troubling. I felt like I had been drained of all my strength and energy—not unlike how one feels after not eating all day. I looked at Robert’s hand, the one that I had been holding when my mind started suffocating—that’s what it was, my mind had suffocated—underneath the rush of his every thought. In it was a cloth that appeared to be stained with blood…but whose?
“It’s yours. Your nose started bleeding right after you fainted,” Robert answered guiltily. He seemed very pale, his voice just as shaky as mine. Of course he would. He’d been in my head, shared the same fear, saw everything in my head go black…and he’d shared my pain. That would be enough to scare anyone out of their wits.
I reached for the cloth he was holding and looked into his face. I decided to try something. I needed to focus on something. I looked at his lips—too distracting—his nose, yes, his nose would work. It was a mighty fine looking nose, but when I blocked out everything else, it was just a nose, and I could concentrate. Is it still bleeding?
Not anymore. It stopped just before you woke up. And thank you about my nose.
I was so amazed, I actually blushed. Where once I might have been terrified—even mortified—now I was in utter and complete awe; he could hear my thoughts, and I could hear his. This was a genuine connection. With someone I didn’t know at all.
“What do you want to know?” he asked me, turning so that he could face me more comfortably, gearing up for a long discussion it appeared.
“Um…well…you said that you were born with the ability to read minds. Why? And why can I now hear yours? Can I hear anyone else’s? This would have helped me out a great deal a few months ago if so. And what was that—when I passed out—why did that happen?” I rambled quickly as the questions rushed out one after the other. I felt unable to stop it as I looked at him and waited for him to answer before the inquisition could continue.
“You can hear my thoughts, Grace, because I allow you to. You can only hear the thoughts that I allow you to. As for the other…I can’t tell you that now. You already know more than I was willing to reveal,” he whispered, looking past me at some unseen thing with such sadness in his eyes, my fingers itched with an unfamiliar longing to hold his, to comfort him in some way. “I will tell you that I am your friend, Grace. You now know a secret about me that no one else outside of my family knows, and I’m trusting you not to share it with anyone.”
He was trusting me… Who trusted me? Not even Graham had done that, and he knew me better than anyone.
“It’s not my secret to share, Robert.”
Cautiously, I held out my hand, scared that what had happened earlier would happen again if he did, but more afraid that he wouldn’t accept it at all. Why should he take my hand? He had just met me—what did he know about me? And what if what had happened to me frightened him, proved just how much of a freak I was? Could he really trust someone like me?
I know everything I need to know to trust
you. His voice filled my head and he took my hand, as if to confirm, to acknowledge our fast formed friendship. You can trust me, too. I will not betray you. I am nothing if not a loyal friend and guardian.
“Um…thank you,” I said to him, my voice tinged with disbelief, and looked around us, needing a distraction from his hypnotizing stare. Hadn’t he said this was the Bellegarde family retreat? “Does this place belong to your family?” I asked aloud, knowing he had heard my thoughts before they had reached my lips, but feeling a need to fill the silence, I uttered them anyway.
“Yes. This area has been in my family’s hands for centuries,” he confirmed. “My mother’s family inherited it, as well as the surrounding forest and waterways, so this is pretty much all ours.” His swung his arm out in an arcing motion, referring to all of the greenery that lay before us.
I glanced over at the playground and raised an eyebrow. “What’s with the swing set and see-saw?”
He laughed softly, “Well, we rent this area out a lot for large corporate gatherings, family reunions, weddings, etc… My mother realized that there’d be children who would be playing here too, so she had the playground built for them. She loves children. She’d have had a small army of them if she could.” He motioned to a gazebo that seemed to be nestled between a pair of tall trees, almost invisible from where we were sitting, despite its size. “That is where most of the weddings are performed, and then the receptions are held right over there.” He pointed to a wide open space to the right of the gazebo that seemed to stretch on forever. “It’s nice and flat; perfect for dancing.”
I could picture it, the extravagant weddings that were held here in such a vast and open space. I could see the tents pitched up, twinkling Christmas lights strewn up everywhere, the tables and chairs covered in yards and yards of white silk, and everything scented with flowers of varying shades and blooms. It took me a few minutes to realize that the images were too crisp; it was all too clean to just be my imagination. These were memories.
