“You didn’t waste any time, that’s for sure,” Xander said, glowering at Neil.
“It’s been two years,” Peyton said, glaring at him. “Don’t you want Dad to be happy?”
“What’s the rush?” I asked Mom, not quite able to swallow this new development. It was one thing to go stay with people and get off the road for a few days. It was another thing entirely to learn that she was making something permanent. She’d have to sign documents, create a paper trail. I knew something had to be wrong, but I didn’t know how to get her out of it. She was the adult. How could I rescue her if she refused to let me?
She twisted her fingers around her napkin. “No rush. We just thought it would be easier to get it out of the way. You’ll be starting school on Monday, and this way you’ll have at least an address to give them.”
“Monday?” I asked, panic rising in my throat. But along with the sheer terror, a thrill of hope went through me. If this was real, I’d be going to school with the rest of the group sitting around the table. I could make friends, maybe have a boyfriend. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it would be like. I’d always wanted to go to school, to live like the girls in the books I read. But until now, I’d never believed it was possible.
“I’ll call up first thing Monday morning,” Neil said. “They’ll probably want to give you a few placement tests to get you in the right classes, but they’ll let you start right away.”
“This calls for a shopping trip,” Peyton said. “We can go to Boston today and get our bridesmaid’s dresses.”
I stared at her like she’d just sprouted tentacles. How could she be so blindly accepting, without a single qualm about this madness?
“I hope you aren’t expecting me to wear a tux to this charade,” Xander said, ripping a strip of bacon in half with his teeth. He chewed and glowered at his father, breathing hard like he was about to explode.
“A nice shirt will be fine,” Neil said.
I’d been starving, but my stomach was so knotted with nerves I could barely eat. I managed to swallow enough to satisfy my rumbling stomach, but when Mom rose from the table, I abandoned my plate and raced up the stairs after her.
“Mom?” I said, stepping into our bedroom behind her.
“Mmm,” she answered, crossing the room to stand at the window.
“Can we talk?” I asked, my voice tentative. I didn’t like to argue with my mom. Pushing her buttons could result in more ugly scenes. I went along, knowing we were doing what she needed to do. In some way, I’d understood her madness. Maybe that made me crazy, too.
I didn’t understand this.
Mom raised her eyes to mine. They were placid, not straining like a caged animal, not darting around. That freaked me out more. Even when we stopped for a few months in one town or another, when she settled down for a bit, she never looked peaceful. Wary, expectant, determined…not calm. Never that.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I just came up here to think,” she said. “This house is so busy.”
She turned as if to go, but I held out a hand to stop her. “No, Mom. Wait. I need to ask you why you’re doing this. This isn’t like you.” I dropped my voice to a whisper. “Is Neil threatening you somehow? I noticed neither of you mentioned love when you talked about getting married.”
“Gwen, sweetheart,” she said, looking almost pained with affection as she reached out and brushed my cheek with her fingers. “I hope one day you’ll marry for love. I married your father for that. But there are other things in this world, things bigger than love. There are things in other worlds, straining to break free, and we must do our duty to keep them from being unleashed into this world.”
I closed my eyes, calling on my patience. I wished I could understand her when she went off on her rambling tangents, but they never made sense to me.
“So we’re staying here forever?” I asked. “No more running?”
“There’s no reason to run,” she said. “He found us, didn’t he? And if marrying Neil forms the closest bond I can form to help our world, I’m happy to do it.”
“Wait,” I said, my heart stammering in my chest. “What do you mean? All those years of running…you were running from Neil? And now you’re marrying him, just like that?”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Neil has a lot of money.”
“Why does that matter? If he’s dangerous, we have to get away.”
“He’s not dangerous. But if he can find us on an anonymous login at the St. Louis library, he can find us anywhere. And so can the giants.”
My heart was racing so hard I had to sit down on the edge of the bed, afraid I’d pass out. “So he is threatening you.”
“I knew this day would come,” she said with a sigh, sinking down beside me. “I was ready to stop running. I’m so tired, Gwen.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to marry the Fenrir, or one of the giants you’re always talking about. Is that what Neil is? I mean, he’s obviously not a giant, but is he a monster?”
She shook her head. “Neil’s just a man, honey. A very determined one, maybe, but just a man. And giants aren’t twenty feet tall, like in fairytales. They can be any size, even as small as you.” She smiled a little, as if this was all slightly amusing.
“But Mom,” I said. “Why was he looking for you? Why does he want to marry you?” Maybe that sounded mean, but I was done playing nice. I wanted a family, and I wanted to be normal, but none of this felt right. When I was with them, it felt perfect, but when they weren’t there to reassure me, I couldn’t seem to shed the defenses I’d been building for the past ten years. We didn’t let in outsiders. They weren’t safe. Mom had taught me that. She couldn’t just say it was all okay now and think it would all be erased.
“Neil knows the dangers of this world, too,” she said. “If marrying him brings us closer, makes us all a family, and that will save this world from the giants, don’t you want to do it?”
I wanted to scream and shake her until she really heard how crazy she sounded. For some reason, Neil had her convinced that he saw the same things she did. I didn’t know why he was playing along with her hallucinations to gain her trust, but I wasn’t falling for it. He had the money, the house, the name. We had nothing. It didn’t make sense. Mom’s nonsense reasoning was as sound as anything I could come up with.
I had nothing to lose. This was real, and it was really happening. So I voiced the one concern that I hadn’t spoken aloud yet. It took all the courage I had to spit the words out, and even then, I only managed a whisper. “What if he marries you and then has you committed?”
She turned and took my face between her hands. “Gwen, stop worrying. Please.”
I snorted, halfway between a sob and a laugh. “Seriously, Mom?”
“You know how hard I’ve tried to protect you. That’s my job. All your life, we’ve run from danger. I would never lead you right into it. Can you just try to relax and trust me a little tiny bit?”
“Okay,” I said, nodding. My throat was tight, but I couldn’t argue with that. She had always been there for me. She had never led me into danger. Maybe for once I could relax and have the life I should have had all along.
“Promise you’re with me?” she said. “I need you on my side. We’re still a team of two, like we’ve always been. Don’t make me do this alone.”
“I won’t,” I said, leaning in to hug her. “I promise.”
“Good,” she said, pulling away. “Because if you make me go shopping alone with Peyton, I might explode with good cheer.”
I laughed and shook my head. “She’s so bubbly I think she’s half human, half soap.”
“It really can’t be healthy,” Mom agreed.
An hour later, Peyton and I climbed into Mom’s old beat-up car and headed toward Boston. Peyton chattered away about the boutiques she liked in Boston, Walden Pond, and Harvard Square. I suddenly felt guilty for saying she was too much. She was exactly the distraction I n
eeded from worrying about Mom. I’d never been in a car with a friend, but for a moment, I felt like a normal teenager going shopping with her friend.
Still, I kept glancing at Mom, wondering what was going on in that head of hers. I could only hope she wouldn’t get cold feet and decide not to go back, kidnapping Peyton in the process. In a way, it was a relief to stare out the window at the road rushing by beneath the wheels, to be moving again. It was all I’d ever known. There had been days when I was so sick of driving I literally puked, and I’d never have imagined I could miss it. But today, the familiarity comforted me.
When we got to Boston, Peyton gave Mom directions, looking at her phone the whole time. At last we parked, put some coins in the meter, and headed down the sidewalk. It was Saturday afternoon, and people were out shopping, but it didn’t feel busy. We were in a nice part of town with shops under every awning. I’d been to tons of cities, and each one had its own personality. Boston was no different.
“I love Boston,” Peyton sang, spinning around with her arms out. “Don’t you love it, Gwen?”
My name coming from her lips sounded different than I’d ever heard it before, like someone who was loved and trusted by default. It was the name of a best friend who had shared secrets since childhood, painted her toenails while confessing her first crush, and giggled in the dark at a slumber party. I wanted to be that person so much my chest nearly turned inside out.
In reality, I would never be that person. I wasn’t a kid anymore. I’d never have a best friend who had been there my whole life, unless Mom counted. And she’d certainly never done any best friend things with me. The closest she’d come to trying new hairstyles was when she had me braid sections of my hair as she combed lice out of it after buying used pillows at a garage sale.
A dried leaf skittered along the sidewalk, and I stomped my ratty Converse on it, crushing it like a bug. Undeterred, it tumbled away when I lifted my foot. It reminded me of the gum wrapper tumbling across the rest stop the day my mother had told me she’d met Neil online.
Only three days ago. It seemed like an eternity.
“But first, Starbucks,” Peyton said, linking her arm through mine like she didn’t care that I didn’t know how to be her best friend.
“But first?” I asked.
“Yeah, you know,” she said. “Like, but first, coffee?”
“I don’t get it.”
She laughed and bumped our shoulders together as we walked down the sidewalk ahead of Mom. “You’ll learn. My girlfriend says I’m the most basic white girl ever.”
“You seem pretty interesting to me.” I glanced back at Mom, making sure she was okay by herself.
“I love pumpkin spice everything, fall is my favorite season, and Uggs are my spirit animal,” Peyton said, pulling her arm from mine to count off on her fingers.
“Okay…”
“Oh, and I totally rock sweaters with scarves and yoga pants.”
I surveyed her outfit. She’d described exactly what she was wearing. I was a little less fancy in my standard jeans and hoodie.
“And you’re a cheerleader,” I offered.
She gave me a funny look. “That’s not basic white girl.”
“I guess I don’t know what that is,” I mumbled.
“Don’t you ever get on the internet?”
“I have before,” I said, not wanting to explain the situation with the internet, and how we couldn’t reveal our identities. Sometimes, libraries would let us use their computers under a guest login, but usually they wanted us to have a card first. Logging on with a card left a digital footprint, and those were trackable, according to Mom. Besides, in order to get a card, we had to have an address.
“Where’s your phone?” Peyton asked. “I’ll show you the memes.”
“The what?” Mom asked.
“I don’t have a phone,” I said to the sidewalk.
“What? How do you live without a phone? Oh my god, I would die. Seriously, Olivia. You should get her a phone. It’s practically neglect not to.”
“It’s not neglect. I don’t want one,” I said quickly, my heart speeding at the words I’d dreaded hearing for years. The words that could take me away from Mom. I pulled my sleeves over my hands and tried not to squirm at Peyton’s attention as we stepped into the coffee shop.
“We’ll get you a phone,” Mom said, sounding perfectly normal for once, like there was a logical reason she’d never gotten me a phone.
“What do you want?” Peyton asked. “My treat. Well, Dad’s treat, actually. He sent the credit card for today’s shopping festivities. And that starts with fuel.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never had Starbucks.”
Instead of laughing at me, Peyton looked up at the menu. “Normally, I’d say we should start you out with a safe choice, like a latte, but since you can only get pumpkin spice in the fall, we’ll start you off at the pinnacle of coffee drinks.”
Her confidence made me feel a little better. A few minutes later, the three of us left Starbucks, armed with sweet coffee drinks. The awkwardness quickly faded as Peyton looked on her phone for dress shops. Soon, we were trying on everything we could find that didn’t require alterations, and I forgot about being out of place.
Peyton wanted to come in the dressing room with me, but I quickly shut down that idea. I wasn’t about to have her gawking or asking questions. Not when she had the absolute perfect body. She looked a little insulted when I told her I wanted to change alone, but by the time I came out to model the dress, she seemed to have forgotten any hard feelings.
I’d never shopped at a new clothing store in my life, and to my surprise, I got almost as into it as Peyton. Really, we were just there to be accessories to Mom. I’d never seen Mom in a dress before. It completely transformed her, and tears sprang to my eyes when she came out of the dressing room wearing the first one. After that, the afternoon passed in a blur of dresses and shoes, hair and nail salons, more dress shops, and finally, a makeup store. I didn’t even know such a thing existed—a store just for makeup.
It was evening by the time we piled into Mom’s old car, the trunk stuffed with bags and boxes, shoes, dresses, sashes, and even a tiara.
Peyton exclaimed over our collection of CDs, which she called “so retro,” not knowing that we didn’t listen to the radio because the antennae could be used to track us. I didn’t share that detail with her.
“Listen, I know it probably seems like I’m crazy for wanting a sister so bad, but it’s not just that,” she said ejecting a Lana Del Rey CD. “Dad would never admit it, but I know he’s been lonely since Mom died. I honestly didn’t think he’d ever meet someone. I mean, my girlfriend’s mom got divorced, and she got married like three months later. And Dad hasn’t even looked for a date—in two years. I was afraid he’d gotten all complacent and set in his ways and he’d never put any effort into meeting someone new. So I’m just happy for him.”
“That’s nice of you,” Mom said.
“Not really,” Peyton said. “I mean, not that I have anything against you. You both seem cool. It’s just that mostly I think it would be a tragedy for my dad not to be happy again. He went through so much when Mom was sick. He needs someone to take care of him for a change. And he’s a catch, so you’re getting a good deal. It would be a tragedy for him to end up old and alone in that big house. We’re all graduating in the next few years, so I was getting really worried about him. And then you came along.”
She beamed, and I tried not to feel guilty about the fact that Mom had already told me this wasn’t a marriage for love. But whatever Neil’s intentions, I could tell Peyton wanted only the best for him. Unlike the cheerleaders I’d read about, she wasn’t fake or mean at all. She obviously worshipped her dad and wanted him to be happy. If only I could so blindly go along with Mom’s decisions, trusting that they were for the best.
Soon, we were crossing the Sagamore Bridge again, the one between the mainland and the Cape. I realized when
we hit the Cape side that I’d been on edge the whole day, nervously awaiting the moment when Mom would declare that we weren’t going back. A silent sigh spread over my entire body, from my toes to the crown of my head. Mom was right. It was time to relax. We weren’t going to run. We were going home.
Chapter Thirteen
Gwen
That night we unpacked the car, sneaking the boxes in with lots of giggling from Peyton, who was determined that the guys didn’t see any of our stuff. I thought it was just the groom who wasn’t supposed to see the bride, but what did I know about real weddings? Plus, it was fun dashing up and down the stairs with my sister-to-be. Being around Peyton infected me with a strange high, and I couldn’t help but join in her scheme.
When we’d finished unpacking and eating dinner, Mom said she was going to turn in early, so she’d be rested for the big day. The idea of a wedding still felt strange to me, but I tried to adopt Peyton’s attitude. I read for a bit, then wandered out of our room. The house was dark—I must have read longer than I’d meant to—and quiet except for the sound of the wind moaning through the pines outside. The eerie sound put me on edge, and I crept along the hallway, feeling as if I were being watched.
Light was coming from under one of the doors, but the others were dark. I knew which room was Peyton’s, since we’d put the dresses in there, and I’d seen Zeke’s room the other day. I debated knocking on the door with the light under it. Maybe it was Finn, up late drawing. But maybe it was Xander, up late devising evil plans to be more evil. So I passed the door without knocking.
Tiptoeing down the stairs, I froze on the second floor landing. Like the last time, I felt a breath on the back of my neck. Goosebumps exploded up my spine, and a shiver of dread settled in my belly. Summoning my inner Buffy, I turned slowly.
No one was there.
My first instinct was to bolt headlong down the stairs. But I took a few deep breaths instead. I wasn’t going to wake Mom in the night, or Neil, whose room was downstairs, just because a breeze had tickled my neck. It was probably just the heater kicking on, blowing warm air out all of the vents. Besides, I knew way too much about running from imaginary demons to think it actually worked.
Emerge: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance Page 8
