by A. E. Rought
Josh lunges, hurling a punch into Alex’s stomach. He crumples a little, folding around Josh’s hand, and worry flares that he’s hurt. Then, the redhead pitches off balance, lurching toward and back, as Alex uses the fist he caught to manipulate him. Their bodies collide with the floor, Josh underneath and Alex sliding sideways. Rolling to his side, Josh kicks and misses, then smacks Alex in the face.
Red blossoms at the corner of Alex’s mouth, then his eyes harden to chips of stone. He drives a knee into Josh’s gut, catches the counter punch, too, wrenching the forearm across Josh’s throat. Kneeling on one arm, Alex pins the captured fist with one hand, and drives punch after punch into Josh’s face and ribs.
“Don’t you hurt her again!” A savage punch to the jaw and Josh’s body goes noodle limp.
Adults swarm Alex, yanking him off the guy on the ground. One teacher pins his arms behind him.
Alex stands there, shirt torn open and chest heaving, his eyes locked on mine. The teacher’s grip tightens when Alex struggles, calling my name. His expression, the emotion in his voice… it’s like the deer in the culvert. I can’t resist him. I’m drawn forward, only to be pulled back by Bree when Josh wakes with a jerk.
He lurches to his knees, spits blood at Alex and then hurtles across the space like a football player looking for a takedown. The tackle is incomplete. Alex manages to pivot to the side in the teacher’s grip, and meets Josh’s lunge with a knee driven up into the redhead’s chin. Teeth clack together loud enough to hear over the music, and Josh goes limp, slumps to the floor, a bag of bones and skin.
An empty ache tugs in my chest as the teacher drags Alex away. Someone somewhere mutters about calling 9-1-1. A hand brushes my arm, and Bree envelopes me in a hug. I don’t know I’m shaking until she tells me. Her hand skims my shoulder and pain throbs there. She leads me past Josh and I barely control the urge to kick him, too. I wish the teacher hadn’t pulled Alex away.
Josh once called Alex my guard dog.
I hope the bastard regrets it now.
Chapter Fourteen
People linger a few feet back, a shadowy costume store of blank-faced mannequins. The only face I see with clarity is Alex’s. Lip cut and bleeding, cheekbone and temple blackening, the faint scar on the left not affecting the wild light in his eyes.
Words jam in my mouth. Emotions tear at my insides. He’s hurt because of me. Acting on an impulse I shouldn’t have yet, I lift a napkin toward his chin to dab the blood shining there. Alex pushes my hand away.
“Don’t worry about me,” he says.
I do. He’s wormed his way beyond my defenses, taken up residence like he’s always been in my heart.
Leather and bloody knuckle scents catch in the back of my throat and itch like tears when he cups my face in his hands. His expression is so like Daniel’s angry, worried expression that my heart stutters: pinched eyebrows, pressed lips, nostrils huffing air. My lip trembles and I think the tears might be real. But are they for me, or Alex? He pours his gaze over my face, slides his fingers over my scalp then across my bare skin to my shoulder. His eyes darken. The corners of his lips pull down at the shadowy bruises rising beneath his touch.
“Josh hurt you.” His tenor is nearly a growl.
“Not really.”
I feel a completely separate anger snapping in the electric charge in Alex’s touch. Hair stands on my arms, and up the back of my neck.
Icy weight touches my palm, Bree appearing at my side and pressing a bag of ice in my hand. Her thumb brushes my cheek, and comes away wet. I guess the tears are real. She jerks her head toward Alex, mouths, “take care of him,” then steps back toward the crowd hemming us in. Her arms lift, creating a white curtain of sleeve as she herds them back, giving us room.
My heart patters, my skin tingles from his touch. With a hesitant smile, I dodge his next blocking motion and pull the black silk kerchief from the pocket of Alex’s costume. He sits mute, watching me wrap the frigid bag in it and lift it toward his face. Then he stops it, a firm grip on my wrist as it hovers inches from his skin.
“I didn’t intend the night to end like this,” he says.
“Me neither.” With a sigh a lot like defeat, he releases my hand. I drop a glance down to the lack of distance between us, my white skirts twined in the black of his costume. Ice crunches in the pack when I press it to his jaw. “Where’d you learn to fight like that?”
An elegant shrug ripples his cape, like what he did was nothing special. “Martial arts classes at Sadony Academy.”
“Pretty impressive.” The deep blue-purple outside of his eye puddles under his lashes, too. I stop myself mid-thought of I bet he’s sexy with a black-- “You’re going to have quite a shiner.”
“Don’t care.” He winces when I shift the pack closer to his eye socket. “It was worth it.”
“To perpetuate your violent reputation?” I know different, but have to pry.
Hurt flashes over his face. “To protect you.” His fingers brush mine, where they peek from the brace. “And to punish him.”
The raw honesty in his voice, in his face leaves me speechless. It’s like a hit to my chest, the hollow collapsing inside. Or is it filling again? I’m not sure, but in one week Alex has changed me. He’s chased away the loneliness, loosened my grip on Daniel’s memory. My throat tightens. Instead of talk, which would lead to crying in front of him, I dab at the blood on his lip with a napkin from the nearby table.
“You didn’t have to.”
“Yes, I did,” he argues, voice gone soft, almost like he’s talking to himself. “I was driven. I’ve never been that angry. I didn’t just want to stop him. I wanted to hurt him so bad it hurt me.” He unfurls his hands, runs a glance across his palms and up one arm. “So bad it burned.”
“Because you’re a good guy,” I reason, “and he was hurting me.”
“It started because of that, Emma. But then it became something…I don’t know. It felt like so much…” he pauses, clenches a fist, “so much more than that.”
Alex opens his mouth to say more, I cut him off asking, “What did you mean by ‘it doesn’t beat for me’?”
An electric caress warms my hand when he threads his fingers through mine and pulls the ice pack away. By the look on his face, his answer may cut us both. He smiles, hesitantly, but it doesn’t make it to his eyes. A different light glows there. He inhales, with his free hand he pulls his bandana and mask off exposing the scars on his neck. His other fingers tighten on mine.
Then the principal arrives, all angry expressions and flapping coat, to lay down the law.
Alex detaches his grip on my hand and steps away like he may contaminate me.
It’s too late for that, I think. I’m poisoned. Bree was right, Alex and I are connected—deeply—and I don’t know how it happened. Days ago, I wished for a graveside to mourn Daniel, today I fret over Alex’s hurts, the external from Josh and the ones beneath the scars I’ve seen. He’s tried to perpetuate the rumors, but I know some of the truths Alex Franks hides.
The principal, and head of Shelley High’s PTA group, separate Alex and Josh, leading them to separate sections of the side hallway. Both guys watch me when the principal leads me down the hall, past Josh to his office near my locker.
Inside, it smells like old carpet and new cigars. He turns his narrow, rat-like face to me and says, “Have a seat, Emma.”
I try to dislodge my heart from my throat and sink to the leather chair opposite his desk. Why do I feel guilty? I didn’t do anything wrong. Josh started it all.
“I never expected to see you in this office,” the older man says, that patented tone of disappointment in full affect.
“Wasn’t in my plans,” I mutter after a hard swallow loosens the knot in my throat.
“Being flip won’t save you,” he says.
No. Alex did.
I sigh, hang my head and let the principal think I’m properly admonished. He rapid fires questions at me in a mildly accusatory tone.
Alex and what he might have answered to ‘it doesn’t beat for me’ are foremost in my mind, but I answer the Chief Inquisitor’s questions honestly. I stress repeatedly that Josh is drunk, and I did not in anyway aggravate or come on to him. I recount the fight, from Josh starting it by pushing first. After making me repeat it all, the principal makes some notes on a scratch pad and sends me to the backstage dressing rooms with the warning that my parents have been notified and asked to pick me up.
My stomach constricts into a nauseous, achy knot.
My mom already thinks nothing but bad of Alex—her “jump to judgment habit” as Dad calls it. She’s going to hate Alex now. Helping with a deer in the mud is one thing, being the reason two guys fought is something totally different.
Backstage is blessedly vacant when I arrive. Untying the corset isn’t easy one-handed and alone. Once managed, I pull on my jeans then work my way back into my bra and pull Alex’s shirt from my backpack. It doesn’t smell like him anymore, and the blood is out of the cuff. I want something of him with me when Mom blasts me for being “in trouble with that boy again.”
Josh sits in the hall, the sickly sweet smell of alcohol tainted with the metallic tang of his blood. An ice pack covers part of his face when I reach the intersection of the hall. The ice doesn’t deflect the heated glare he slings my way.
Alex didn’t beat you enough, I think at him.
I turn away, casting a glance through the frosted pane of the Principal’s Office door. The tall shadow on the other side freezes, and I imagine Alex’s head turning toward me. Knowing the looming conversation won’t be pretty, I hurry out the side door and to the incensed woman sitting behind the wheel of the sedan idling at the curb.
#
My ears sting, my cheeks burn in angry flush. Mom was as angry and narrow-minded as I thought she’d be, bitching at me from the school curb to our home garage, calling Alex “out to ruin me,” “a troublemaker,” bitch, bitch, bitch.
“He’s on a downward spiral and just going to pull you down with him, Emma,” she says when I shove the car door open. “I’d rather have you alone—”
“And what?” I snap. “Alone and pining for my dead boyfriend who I can never have back and won’t ever come between you and me again?”
Her mouth pops open, her brown eyes bug a little in obvious disbelief.
Yeah. I can’t believe I said it either.
Using her silence to make my getaway, I slam the car door, open and slam the garage door, too. Scooping up Renfield, I ignore his indignant cat glare and cradle him to my chest as I storm through the house toward the stairs. Dad stands in the basement doorway, a chunk of wood in one hand, a file in the other and a mask of confusion over his face.
“What in the hell is going on, Emma Jane?”
“Ask her!” I growl, and jerk my head in the direction of the garage door.
Clutching the cat, I weasel past Dad and pound up the stairs to my bedroom. With the door slammed and locked behind me, I collapse to the bed. Renfield launches from my arms, and scurries under the bed like he usually does when there’s a storm outside.
This time, the storm is inside.
Putting distance between us should help. It doesn’t. I’m mad, sad and everything in between. All I want is to rewind time to the moment in Alex’s arms.
Heated voices saw through the floorboards. Mom’s voice sharp, Dad’s loud enough to match hers. The tension and sound match my thoughts. Not so much thoughts, either, it’s boiled down to images, and feelings. Alex and that warm, familiarity we shouldn’t have. Mom and her stupid, jumped-to opinion. She never gives anyone a chance, just automatically doesn’t like someone she thinks isn’t good enough. She shouts loudly below me. Good, I think, you can be angry, too.
My cell phone buzzes, sounding like bees and chicken bones as it rattles against the pencils in the front pocket of my backpack.
Rolling to my stomach, I drag my backpack close and dig out my cell phone with my right hand because I want to feel the pain. It’s hot and cutting and mine, something Mom can’t control or keep from me.
Alex Franks, the display screen reads.
I catch my breath, not wanting to feel the hope that blossoms.
It doesn’t beat for me, he said.
Maybe he’ll tell me now. I slide the phone open and click through to his text message.
I still have so much to say. It’ll have to wait. The principal suspended me for a week for fighting. I’d do it again… (1/2)
My dad is pissed. I’m grounded the rest of the weekend, no phone after this text. Can I walk you home on Monday? (2/2)
He has to ask?
I type back, How can I say no? My fingers hover over the keys, the truth pressing against all of my nerves. Then I finish, Bree thinks we have some kind of connection. I can’t say no to her, either.
Closing my eyes, I click SEND.
#
I know I’m dreaming, and I can’t wrench myself out of it.
Moonlight splashes in white puddles over the cemetery. The gown from the Halloween Ball floats around me as I trail after a tall, hooded guy. Alex, my heart pounds. Alex! Like before, I can’t catch him. Crumbling headstones snag and tear my skirts. Bony hands claw my legs until they bleed.
Then suddenly, he turns around.
I skid to a stop, chest seizing in shock.
He’s Alex and Daniel. Curly hair and straight hair war in a wild shock on his head, one hazel eye isn’t just similar to Daniel’s, it is Daniel’s. His eyes are fixed on me, wonder in Alex’s, knowing in Daniel’s. His clothes are a mix of the villain costume and the clothes that Daniel wore the day he fell to his death. The black and red patchwork shirt hangs open, exposing his pale chest. Seeping incisions line his skin and a red hole gapes beneath his breast bone.
He extends a gloved hand. His heart thumps on his palm, blood drips between his fingers and stains my dress.
Both voices come from one mouth. “It doesn’t beat for me, Emma.”
I jerk awake, Renfield crouching at the end of my bed watching me with wide eyes. A gutted, hollowed feeling burns in me. I place my hand on my pounding chest. I can’t tell which hurts worse, the air rasping up and down my throat or my slamming heart.
Groaning, I collapse on my pillows and cast a look at my clock. 2:03 AM Moonlight pours through my curtains, soft and white, not chopped and poisonous like in my dream.
Renfield creeps across the bed, a cautious shifting of weight from one end to the other. His paws touch my arm first, the he crawls atop me, eyes luminous while he watches me, probably questioning his safety and my sanity. I stroke his ears, head and neck until his purrs and my heart rate calms.
“These boys are gonna be the death of me, Renfield.”
He sneezes. A perfect response.
Chapter Fifteen
Mom’s answer to my “outburst” is grounding me—for Sunday. She bangs on my door at a rudely early hour, demands my cell phone and informs me I’m going “nowhere.”
My answer? Rolling over, pulling the pillow over my head. She pads into my room, mumbling the entire time. “I swear, Emma Jane Gentry, if you were awake…” She unplugs my cell phone then stands by my bed. “That boy is going to bring you nothing but trouble…” I clench, my fingers curling to fists in my faery print quilt, but don’t acknowledge her. “Mark my words, young lady. I knew boys like that at your age, and they were…”
Hypocrite, I think.
Mom wants to punish me for doing nothing wrong? Fine. I’ll punish her right back.
I refuse to speak to her the rest of the day. If I’m lucky, I can avoid her Monday morning, too. Hours into the morning, and three-fourths done with my Gothic novel reading, Dad mutters something about sulking from his side of my door. He can call it what he wants. It’s effective—Mom hates it. Dad’s always in the basement tinkering with something. It will be just Mom, her soap operas and her romance novels all day.
After the back door slams and the car roars to life, I cree
p downstairs, grab food and a couple of water battles. The scent of sawed wood and smoke drift under the basement door, the ghost-colored air curling around my toes when I sneak past, arms loaded with munchies. I retreat up the steps and leave the cat behind on the way to my room. He follows, grumbling at me, then leaps onto the bed and eyes me from his spot on the end.
Bleak November sky greets me when I pull open my curtains. I can’t help thinking it’s one less barrier between me and Alex. Dressed in his hoodie, my flannel pj pants and cushy socks, I prop the door open a crack for Renfield, then take my laptop to the bed.
My thoughts drift to Alex and the emotions I wonder if he only shows me.
Sunday afternoon swills down the drain of researching Alex Franks on the internet. A little stalkerish, sure, but things about him aren’t adding up to anything normal. The odd tingle in his touch, Daniel’s eye looking out of his face, all of his scars… Beyond the physical, and way more disturbing, the way he feels so familiar to me. How can I feel like I’ve known him for years? How can he open that damn locker just like Daniel?
What answers I find apply to few of my questions. He’s eighteen, a senior, was on the martial arts team and long distance track team at Sadony Academy before a horrendous accident. According to an article in The Visionary, Sadony Academy’s school paper, Alex’s grades had him on the fast track to any Ivy League college of his choice, where his potential was limitless, though most expected him to study medicine and become a doctor like his father.
So what’s he really doing at Shelley High, a public school with nothing more special than AP courses? And why does he seem so caught up in me?
Hell, why am I so caught up in him?
I don’t know him, even if my heart insists I always have.
It doesn’t beat for me.
Sitting back, I can see how last night’s nightmare makes a sick kind of sense. I’ve been missing Daniel so badly, for so long, that when someone came along the least bit like him I squashed Daniel and Alex into one person.
