by Amele, Quinn
I'm not sure which I'll end up doing.
"Why're you here?" I ask, my voice guarded.
He tilts his head up. "Why do you suppose I'm here?" he asks.
It's ridiculously good timing, whyever he's here. I venture a guess, although I'm sure I'm right. It's no coincidence why he always shows up during inopportune moments. Like when he first became...whoever he is now, and Nate showed up. Like the night in the park. Like in the shower. And then just now. It's like he's been waiting for something to happen, or the cause of it. Either way, it only has to do with me because I'm Nate's assistant. It isn't because he has any feelings for me. "...Because of Nate?"
"Ding ding ding!" He cries and hops up onto the railing as if he's as light as a feather, like if a big gust of wind came, it'd blow him away. He swings around the banister gracefully, and looks down at me, "You know, I had a feeling this would happen."
"You know what's happening...?"
"Why, of course I do." He laughs, and then abruptly falls into silence. "The troubling thing is...why don't you?"
"I...because I..." I frown, and steel my shoulders. "What do you want?"
He tips himself over me, and I don't see how he can balance on the railing, but then I realize that he isn't at all. He hovers above me. "I want plenty of things...but most of all, I want what's rightfully mine."
A chill curls in my belly as he reaches a hand down and runs his fingers cross my cheek. They are so cold—colder than Nate's. Colder than anything I've ever felt before, and it makes me shiver away from him.
"Oh, don't be like that," he pouts. "It's not you I'm after."
"Nate? You're after Nate?"
"Maybe a little, maybe a lot. Maybe I'm just after what Nate has—or had, depending on your point of view. You see, he's really old, and he hardly ever takes a break. In fact, I can't remember the last time death took a holiday."
Something about the way he wraps his lips around the word holiday makes my skin crawl, as if holiday was just another word for execution.
"And now that he has, his job's on the market again, you see. For a little while, anyway. Just long enough for him to have his holiday, and for me to take his place."
My eyebrows furrow. "You want to be death?"
"I'm already cold. What goes better with death than that?"
"Jack... Frost." The realization hits me like a brick, and I gasp. "Oh my God, you're Jack Frost."
His smile curls maliciously. "Not for much longer. And the only thing standing in my way between me and my new job? You. Now please, let your poor ex-boyfriend through and maybe I'll come back and visit you."
My face hardens and I clench my fists. He talks about my missing him like it's some joke, something that doesn't mean a single thing. He makes it sound like a game, like it's my privilege to be near him. At one point, he would've done anything for me. My Jack would've jumped over the moon.
And this, I realize now, is not my Jack.
The kindling burning in my middle flickers as my temper begins to rise. I grit my teeth, clenching my fists, as I try to control it, but like three months ago it feels like a kettle about to boil over. My temperament becomes too big for my skin, not quite anger and not quite aggression. Power. It's power.
The moment I realize that, flames seep out of my palms and run up my arms, and the taste of ash fills my mouth.
"You will not hurt him," I say, and my voice sounds like crackling firewood.
Surprised, Jack lands on his heels a few feet away and pulls his arms up. "Whoa now, doll. You don't need to get all hot because of me."
"I am not your doll!"
The power inside of me is boiling over, taking root in my bones, commanding every fiber of my being. I can't stop it. It's like someone else is inside of me. Someone powerful, someone bold, and someone very, very dangerous. I've felt her often, whenever I was angry or upset, but she's never taken over. Not like now. Now she is all of me, fire rippling across her skin, her hair wisps of blue flames. She takes a step towards Jack, and then another. Her feet leave scorch marks on the porch.
There is fear in Jack's eyes. He glistens like he's beginning to melt, and backs away even more. "Now doll..." he hesitates, "I'm sure we can work something—"
She lunges forward and seizes him by the face. His eyebrows shoot up moments before she squeezes her fingers against his cheeks, and his face begins to crack like a melting glacier. It begins to fracture, and a chunk of his cheek falls off.
No! I try to stop her, but she's pushed me so far back all I can do is watch. Helplessly watch. Don't kill him!
She gives her hand more pressure, and he cries out in pain, grappling onto her arm to try and shove himself away, but she has a tight hold. His hands steam and scorch when he touches her, and his screams become high-pitched wails, not even human anymore.
The sound of a dying animal.
Please, stop! Don't kill him! Please don't kill him! I beg, shaking against my own mind.
She doesn't even hear me, or if she does she doesn't care. I am about to kill my ex-boyfriend, and it's not even me doing it. I'm just a spectator, watching, sobbing in the back of my own head, unable to take control.
Someone stop me, I pray, unable to look away as his face fractures in half, and a whole side of his face falls away, leaving a jagged, empty hole. He's not screaming anymore. I don't know if he's even still alive, if Jack was ever alive to begin with. His remaining eye is vacant, like Nate's was, open and yet unseeing.
Half of his lips move slowly, as if to say something, but all that comes out is a wheeze.
I can feel her grin with my lips, waiting for the final moment to crush his head in.
"Estella, stop."
That halts her. She pauses, and looks over her shoulder. Relief floods through me like a waterfall.
Nate leans against the doorway, one hand on his side, looking both weary and in pain. She cocks her head, and releases Jack. He falls to the ground with a whimper, and doesn't stir.
"Ah, so the lord of the dead has arisen at last," she says.
He raises himself to his full height, and looks straight into her—my—eyes. "Estella, come back."
"She can't hear you, Thanatos."
But I can, and I want to tell her how much of a liar she is—I can see him and hear him, but I can't for the life of me come back. I'm too far back. She's too powerful, and too full.
He disembarks from the doorway and makes his way down the steps, one careful foot at a time. He isn't the Nate I know, taller than he was, broader, somehow so much more full than the wisp I remember. Could this be all of him, together? Could this be what he looks like as a whole?
She seems to answer the question for me. "You should have given her heed to your holiday. How much longer before you're whole? One hour? Two? Before you stop becoming yourself and become human. Do you think you'll even remember her then?"
He levels her—me—directly in the eyes. His are the most beautiful shade of gold, like honey, and in them I can see eons. I wonder if those are his real eyes. They must be, if he's turning human. "Estella, come back to me."
She hisses. "Fool!"
I watch as he outstretches his hand.
"Estella, we don't have much time."
"No time."
"Please, trust me."
"How can she trust you when you have never told her anything?"
"Estella."
"When you have done naught but ridicule her and frighten her? Why should she trust you? Why shouldn't she just kill you, and take your job?"
But I don't want his job, and I couldn't imagine anyone doing it as well as he. There's something in his face that's familiar, like a fingerprint, as if I've known him my entire life, but only just now realized from where.
He has to leave for a while.
That's the reason for all of those cryptic conversations, and why he's been acting so strange. He's been coming back together, like pieces in a puzzle, fitting back into who he must've once been centuries—maybe eve
n eons—ago.
He'll become like Jack was the first day I met him. Strange and unaccustomed to living, and all of those holes in his head filled with fake memories. He won't even be Death.
He'll be somebody else entirely.
I find myself outstretching my hand toward his.
"Wha—What are you doing?!"
The flames along my fingertips dwindle and die as I fold my hand around his, and suddenly I'm staring at him in her stead, and the grass is singed around my feet. I give a sob and fold myself against him, wrapping my arms around his middle.
"I'm so sorry," I cry into his chest. "I'm so, so sorry."
He pulls his arms around me and kisses my forehead. "Help me remember when I forget, Estella Rome."
"Like Jack did?" At the mention of his name, my voice cracks. I killed him. I killed Jack.
"Yes, and there will be others who will want to kill me, too."
"B-but why?" I unfold myself just enough to look up into his face. "Why me? Why now? Why didn't you tell me?"
He opens his mouth to respond, but suddenly, I feel every muscle in his body stiffen. The world seems to heave a breath and sigh.
I blink, and look up.
We're no longer standing in my driveway. Twenty-five faces stare back at me, sitting in desks lined in rows. I glance around at the other faces, all young people, and a dapper-looking professor leaning against the wall near the back. He nods, as if he approves, and claps his hands.
"Excelling story, Estella," he commends, and the rest of the classroom gives a half-hearted applause.
I glance around for Nate, but he's nowhere to be found.
Chapter Nine
Endings
"That was an awesome story, Stells!" A girl with bright pink hair cheerfully skips up to me, holding a hand up in a high-five, when the professor dismisses us from the class. "Except for the whole super-kissy parts. I hate it when a girl goes for more than one guy at a time. It's so cliché. I mean, she can't be that desirable." She then pauses and cocks her head thoughtfully. "I thought you had decided on that modern-day Romeo and Juliet story."
I hesitate, trying to recognize her. She doesn't even look familiar, her hair spiked up in a short pixie. She's beautiful, nevertheless, with a sharp face and thin eyebrows. Her eyes are a brilliant jade, and when she talks her snakebites glint in the florescent lights. "Um..."
She slings her arm around my shoulder, and begins to steer me out of the classroom. "Mine is going to be nothing like that. I was thinking of writing a retelling of Clueless but in jail. Or maybe Legally Blonde instead?"
"Um, I..." I frown. What in the world is going on here? I skim over the story I just read, and to my utter horror, it's...my story. "I just thought I'd..."
"Whatever. I know it sucks. How did you think that up? I mean, Jack Frost and Death? And who is the main character? Some Heat Miser or something?" she jokes.
"Something like that," I murmur, following her out of the building. The moment I walk out into the courtyard, I recognize the place from brochures. I'm at NC State. My heart skips a beat. "Where's Nate?"
Her face screws. "Who?"
"Nate—tall, black hair..."
"Yeah, the guy in your story."
The guy in your story.
I shiver unconsciously, and begin to tell her that it isn't just a story, that it's real and I really am dead, but she sees one of her—our?—other friends and waves her over.
"Like, you seriously need to have Tanya read your story," she says as the long-haired brunette comes over.
"'Sup, Willow!" she greets, and they hug each other.
Yeah, I definitely don't know anyone named Willow. This must be a dream. The girl, Tanya, turns to face me with an appraising look. "Oh, you finally want me to read your stuff?"
"Only if you want to," I reply defensively. The way she says it, it's almost mockingly, as if I've never given her anything of mine to read since that one Yu-Gi-Oh! fanfiction ten years ago.
Oh my God, how the hell did I know that?
"Of course I want to read it." Tanya rolls her eyes and flips back her curly brown hair. "I love reading your stuff."
"And picking it apart," Willow adds, earning an elbow in the side. "Ow! Hey, it's true."
"Not totally true. I give some good critique." Tanya sniffs indignantly. She checks her watch and asks if we have anything planned for lunch. I don't, because my Intro into Philosophy isn't until two—and it scares me that I know that. It feels like I'm making it up, but I know if I walk into that class at two my name will be on the roster. And that I'll have to turn in an assignment I didn't complete last night because I was at a house party until dawn.
But I wasn't. I was walking with Nate, I remind myself.
I need to find Nate soon, wherever the hell he could be. I don't even know where to start. He isn't in the cafeteria when we walk in and get salads. We're all on New Years diets, apparently, and that's when I notice myself.
I'm skinnier. Like, much skinner. Rose skinny. When I remark on it, Willow just rolls her eyes and says, "Yeah, like, we know everyone else gained their freshman fifteen and you lost yours. Stop rubbing it in. Must be all the crazy sex you've had."
"Crazy sex?" I ask, incredulously.
"Yeah, with your boyfriend."
"Boyfriend?" I squawk.
Both Willow and Tanya give me these no-bullshit looks. Finally, after Tanya picks at a roman tomato and squishes it between her teeth, she says, "Yeah, your boyfriend. Jack."
I drop my fork. "Jack," I repeat, because it can't be possible.
Willow rolls her eyes. "Maybe today you'll finally dump his sorry ass. How about just hand him that story, tell him you killed him off. Maybe he'll be so flattered he'll dump you."
"...You...don't like him?"
"Hello, we hate him," Tanya remarks.
"He's an asshole," Willow adds. "And he treats you like shit, ever since he got that recording contract and moved to Nashville. He barely calls you anymore."
I downturn my eyes to my salad, trying to think. In the back of my head, there is this nagging, as if it's true. After I went to NC State in the fall, he moved to Nashville and started husking on the streets. That's when a record exec found him, and swept him up. He visited a few times since then, and we've stayed in bed for the majority of those weekends.
But that can't be right. Because he's Jack Frost, and I squashed his face in.
Or was that a story?
And if it was a story, what was Nate? Was he not even that? Was he anything at all, other than a figment of my imagination? I don't know how I could've come up with him, because he feels too real for a story. He's in my head, he's in my memories. He's real, he has to be, and I have to find him.
Suddenly, I stand and grab up my half-eaten salad. "Sorry guys, just forgot—" I wrack my brain "—an assignment."
With the way Willow sighs, it seems I forget assignments often. "Just don't be late to Philo again. Mr. Cormack will skin you alive."
"Right."
I dump my tray and hurry out of the cafeteria, pulling my satchel over my head. I don't even know where to begin to find Nate. I don't know where he could've gone. My feet, however, lead me to the theater, and I duck into the back exit. There isn't a class here for another hour, and I don't know why, but I find myself drawn to the stage.
I pause.
Someone is on the stage, his voice a quiet murmur. I dump my satchel down in the back and creep up to the curtain. It feels like I've done this a hundred times over, the movement ingrained in my muscle memory.
Pulling back the curtain, I stifle a gasp.
It's Nate. Black, shaggy hair and tanned skin. But he's dressed weirdly, in a plaid button-down and skinny jeans, wearing Buddy Holly glasses like a hipster. My heart does a flip nonetheless, and not because I found him either.
He's reciting Much Ado About Nothing by memory. The scene where Benedict is talking to himself about loving Beatrice, and why he should. One of my favorites, remembering tha
t I'd read it last semester in English lit.
But you haven't, Estella, I remind myself.
This isn't my life.
Or maybe it is. Maybe it's a version of my life, if I hadn't lost my temper. But then why is Jack here? And Nate? And if I lose my temper again, will that other girl come out?
This is wrong. This is all so very wrong.
Standing, suddenly, I whirl around to leave the theater when my foot gets tangled in the curtain and I fall, hard, on my face. Half of the curtain falls down with me, and buries me underneath. I inhale dust, and choke out a cough.
Nate stops in mid-sentence, and there are footsteps. No, no, no, I think frantically, trying to claw my way out of the curtain, but the stuffy old fabric won't let go of me. I flail, trying to find an end, when hands grab a part of the curtain and pull it up over my head.
"My, you make an entrance."
I stare at him like a deer in headlights. He looks so much...younger, as if all of those stories and memories weighed him down before. This can't be Nate. I begin to blush before I can stop myself. Thank God it's too dark under this fucking curtain for him to notice.
"Are you hurt?" he asks.
"I—ah—um, no. I don't think so." Way to be smooth, Estella.
"Good. I wouldn't want my only audience member to be seriously injured before my first show." His voice is light with good humor. No, he definitely can't be death. He helps disentangle me from the curtains, and helps me up. His hand is warm against mine, and I feel a little sad when he takes his away.
"I'm Estella," I blurt, hoping that there will be some spark of remembrance, or maybe hoping that I'll wake up. "Estella Rome."
But he doesn't remember, and the name doesn't ring any bells. He smiles, though, and that is definitely something Nate wouldn't do. "Pleasure, Estella. I'm Nathaniel, but everyone calls me Nate. No one calls me Natty, and if you do I'll kill you."
I perk a little, because maybe that's a sign, maybe he does remember.
"Just kidding," he adds quickly, and then, as a thought strikes him, he snaps his fingers and exclaims, "Oh wait! I do know you. You're Willow's friend, right? Willow, pink hair? I was in A Christmas Carol with her last semester. I was The Ghost of Christmas Past."
