by Minkman, Jen
Shaking his head in disbelief, Michael hugged her tight. In his arms she couldn’t stop herself from sobbing again. At the same time, she calmed down in his embrace. “Please don’t worry so much,” he softly mumbled into her hair. “The only reason I want to stay here is because I don’t want to leave you all by yourself after a horrible day like this. That’s all. You can trust me.” His last few words sounded almost desperate. It was obvious how much she’d upset him.
“I know,” Julia replied hoarsely, stroking his cheek. “I do. I do trust you – I know I can. It’s just so weird, this whole thing.”
“Weird?” he repeated.
Her heart sped up. “Yeah. You being so different, I mean. The way you look at me so differently after the accident.” At last – she’d said what was bothering her. She was curious to hear his reaction.
Michael nodded pensively, staring off into the distance as if looking for the right words to say. “I understand you,” he said at last. “Julia… I’m not the same person anymore.”
She pulled him into the living room, sitting him down on the couch before taking a seat next to him. “So why not?” she persisted.
He cleared his throat. “When I woke up in the woods, I saw you. Everything around me felt so intense. I’ve never experienced the world as passionately as I do now. Colors, scents, music. Everything’s different. I can do more. I can see more. I sense more.”
Julia silently absorbed his words. Michael’s story reminded her of an old movie she’d seen a few years ago, featuring John Travolta. He’d been hit by lightning or blasted by a UFO – she couldn’t remember what it was exactly – and this had caused him to develop special abilities. Could it be something similar had happened to Michael? Was that the reason his personality had changed so much?
“You were reborn,” she whispered.
“Something like that.” He took her hands in his. “I know I hurt you before, but I won’t do that again. You couldn’t trust him, but you can trust me.”
He kissed her. Julia crawled into his embrace, felt the heat of his hands on her body, sensed the love he felt for her throughout her body. It felt completely natural to seek shelter with him, as if he’d been her refuge for years. When he lifted her in his arms and carried her up the stairs toward the bedrooms, her stomach fluttered nervously, though.
Once they got to the landing, he pulled his mouth away from hers, looking left and right into the corridor. “So, uhm… where’s your room, actually?” he inquired with a sheepish grin, sounding so genuinely innocent it made Julia crack up with laughter. She felt the anxiety drain from her body.
“Why don’t you put me down, and I’ll show you,” she suggested with a smile.
Her bedroom door was open. Michael hesitantly followed her in, gazing around in awe as if he had entered a majestic cathedral. His eyes drifted past the posters of natural parks and waterfalls on the wall, the multi-colored fairy lights she’d strung onto the wall and the ceiling in the left corner, her shelves crammed full of books, and the keyboard next to her desk before finally landing on her. “Yes, this is your room,” he simply said. With a smile he sat down in the lazy chair in the right corner. “No TV?”
Julia chuckled. “No. You think that chair should come with a TV set?”
“No, not really. It’s kind of a book-reader’s chair, don’t you think?”
“Anne actually has my TV in her room. I never watched it a lot anyway. And she wants to watch her DVDs every morning, so…”
Julia walked over to her bookcase to take out Gran’s storybook about the Prince of the Forest. Sadly, all it made her feel now was that her dreams had shattered beyond repair. This book had done too much damage – without it, Anne might have never fallen for Andreas Mittelmayer’s stupid stories about magical realms and secret doors. Abruptly, she felt sick with guilt – she should have read Anne stories from the Stop Child Molestation Handbook, not these useless fairytales.
“What’s that?” Michael asked, getting out of his chair and walking over to her.
Julia put the book back with a deep sigh. “Nothing.”
He rubbed her arm. “Is that the fairytale Anne started to believe in?”
She blushed with shame. “Repeated to her over and over by her big sister, who should have known better,” she replied bitterly.
“Don’t blame yourself.”
“But I am to blame.”
“You’re being unfair to yourself,” Michael insisted. “She’s got a vivid imagination, just like you. You couldn’t have known this would happen.”
“True, but maybe I should have just kept dreaming on my own, instead of infecting my sister with all my fantasies.”
He remained quiet for a moment. “Do you still like to dream?” he asked her curiously.
Julia sat down on her bed. “Yes, of course I do. I mean, I’m trying to be a responsible grown-up, but I kind of suck at it. The other night, I even dreamed about the forest being magical. In my dream, the trees were talking to me. They were looking for you.”
Michael stared at her. “They were? Why?”
“No idea. My phone rang and it woke me up.” Julia observed him closely. He somehow seemed shocked she’d dreamed about him. Was that so strange?
“Do you ever dream about me?” she wanted to know.
He sat down next to her. “Yes. A lot,” he admitted, his cheeks light-pink. “I wrote you that poem because of a dream I had about you.”
Julia’s heart was hammering against her ribs when she bent over to grab her scrapbook from underneath the bed. “Look, I stuck it in here,” she said softly, her hands clammy when she opened the book. She had never shown this book to anyone, not even to Gaby. Michael took it from her. He stared at his poem in her book, then flipped a few pages back and smiled. He was so clearly admiring her handiwork that just for a moment, she felt like a true princess of the forest, sitting next to her royal suitor.
“This is what I pictured your dreams to be like,” he gently mumbled. “This is beautiful, Julia. I hope you never stop dreaming.”
She scooted closer to him, touched by his words. “Thanks. You’re so sweet to me.” She closed her eyes and stifled a yawn.
He kissed her on the cheek. “You want to go to sleep now?”
Julia looked up at the clock above her door. Half past nine – it wasn’t anywhere near her normal bedtime, but it was probably a good idea to get some extra sleep. “Yes, maybe I should,” she replied.
“You got some blankets for me? I’ll sleep on the couch downstairs.”
“No, don’t.” Julia grabbed his hand. Only now did she realize how badly she didn’t want to be alone. “You can sleep here.”
Michael looked at the single bed, blinking his eyes nervously. “With you? Well, I don’t know… I, uhm…”
“We have a spare mattress,” she interrupted his rambling. “I can put it in my room.”
“Ah.” He raked a hand through his hair. “Okay. I guess we can do that.” He shot her an apologetic look, blushing a little. “Sorry. I promised to be a gentleman, but I’d be having a really hard time with that if we slept in the same bed.”
Julia’s face reddened too. “You would, huh?”
“Uhm, yes. Obviously.” He shrugged and looked away. “Okay, so – let me get that spare mattress. Where do you guys store it?”
Julia bit her lip to stop herself from laughing out loud. She’d embarrassed Michael – never in a million years would she have thought that were possible. “In the hall closet,” she replied, getting up to help him carry the mattress to her room.
A few minutes later, they were each in their separate beds in her room, illuminated only by the fairy lights in the far corner. In the soft, dreamy light, Michael looked at her, curled up in his makeshift bed. “Good night,” he said with a smile. “You’re safe with me. If you have any nightmares, you can wake me up, okay?”
“I will.” Julia pulled up the blankets all the way to her chin. “I’ll be fine, though. I feel ca
lm now. Thanks to you.”
“I feel good when I’m with you.” Michael got up to switch off the light in the corner. It wasn’t quite dark outside yet. In the half-light of dusk, Julia observed him walking back to his bed to crawl under the covers. “My heart longed to be with you,” he whispered softly. “And now I’ve found you.”
Julia sighed in satisfaction, closing her eyes. Michael’s words seemed familiar. Had he told her this before? She couldn’t remember, but it wasn’t important right now. Slowly, she felt herself drifting off into a deep, dreamless sleep.
The next morning, Julia’s grandmother turned up at nine o’clock sharp. Ignaz, her neighbor, loudly honked several times to alert Julia to their arrival.
“Is that idiot trying to get the whole street to come with us to the hospital?” Julia grumbled. Quickly, she handed Michael a mug of hot coffee and ran to the door. “I’m not done having breakfast yet,” she shouted at Gran, who was just getting out of the car. “Why don’t you come inside for a few minutes?”
Ignaz and Gran followed Julia to the kitchen. They both gazed questioningly at Michael, who turned slightly red under her grandmother’s scrutinizing look.
“Good morning,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry we’re running late. I just couldn’t seem to wake up. Julia knocked on the guest room door like, three times, but I slept right through it.”
Gran cocked an eyebrow and refrained from commenting. Julia tried her very best not to giggle. Poor Michael – he was trying so hard not to embarrass her in front of her grandmother, who clearly didn’t buy his story. “More like four times,” she supplied, nodding vigorously before nudging her gran in the side when the old woman started to grin mischievously.
“I wouldn’t mind some coffee, actually,” Ignaz piped up, glancing at the coffee pot on the kitchen top.
In the end, they left for the hospital at ten past nine, dropping Michael off at the bus stop before turning onto the main road leading downtown.
Ignaz let them off at the front entrance before turning into the car park. Julia entered the hospital together with her gran, a smell of antiseptic and bleach hitting her full force. She hated this odor, associating it with illness, pain and death – the death of her grandfather. She hadn’t been back ever since he’d died in this hospital, and she hoped this would be the last time.
Ms. Gunther was waiting for them at the reception desk. The dark rings under her eyes made her skin look even paler than it was, but her smile brightened her whole face. “I’m so happy you’re both here,” she enthused. “Anne has been asking for you all morning. She had a good night’s sleep.”
“You didn’t, I take it?” Gran rubbed her daughter’s pale cheeks. “You look crumpled.”
“I couldn’t sleep.” Ms. Gunther shook her head as though she was trying to rid herself of nightmarish images. “I kept thinking about what might have happened to Anne, over and over again. How this Andreas must have touched her – defiled her.”
“He was a creep,” Julia said flatly. “He was stunningly beautiful, but he had this dead look in his eyes. It was as if something inside of him had withered away.”
The three of them walked over to the bank of elevators. “Last night, when Anne was asleep, I went over to the police station,” Julia’s mother told them quietly. “I wanted to look him in the eye; the boy who’d dared to touch and abduct my beautiful child. But once I got closer to that prison cell, I couldn’t go in. I was allowed, but something stopped me. He didn’t see me, but I did get a look at him.”
“Why did he do it?” Gran asked just as quietly. “Did he say anything about his reasons in the confession?”
Ms. Gunther sighed. “Detective Spitzer told me he talked to Andreas’s mother. He didn’t exactly grow up in a stable family environment before they moved to Salzburg. She was married to a man who didn’t just beat her up on a regular basis but also turned out to have abused her daughter. She only found out after the abuse had stopped, but it was enough for her to file for divorce. That’s why she moved here.”
“And nobody thought of sending Andreas to a shrink to cope with the entire trauma from his childhood?” Julia asked in astonishment.
“No, apparently not. His mother did send her daughter to Child Care Services and had her apply for counseling. Now that Andreas is in jail, it seems likely the boy was as much a victim of abuse as his sister was.”
“That might explain his need to escape to a fantasy world filled with portals to magical realms,” Gran said. “Or why he has such a distorted image of sexuality.”
It was strange, but all of a sudden, Julia could almost feel sorry for the guy who’d abused and tricked her sister. He must have escaped into a dream world to cope with his life, just as she had done so often – the only difference being she had never harmed anyone in doing so. In all likelihood, he didn’t even know right from wrong.
“So, is he gonna get professional help now?” she asked timidly. “Or will they just sentence him to years in prison without any counseling?”
“Look, that’s not for you to worry about,” her mother replied in a soothing voice. “Let the police handle it, honey.”
Julia still felt overwhelmed by her mother’s story by the time they entered Anne’s room. She had a room of her own, and her little sister looked so fragile and vulnerable in the big hospital bed that Julia couldn’t stop herself from storming forward and pulling her into a warm embrace. “I’m so grateful you’re still alive,” she whispered.
Anne pressed her tiny body against Julia’s, a stifled sob escaping from her throat. They wordlessly clung to each other for a moment that seemed to last forever.
“I was protected,” Anne then said almost inaudibly.
“Protected? By whom?” Julia blinked at Anne in bewilderment.
Anne smiled. “When I was asleep, I could hear voices. I think they were coming from the woods. They told me help was on the way. They said you would find me. That’s why I wasn’t scared.”
Julia cast a glance over her shoulder, but her mom and grandma were still in conversation. They hadn’t heard Anne’s story. “Did you hear Michael’s voice as well?” she inquired curiously.
Her sister shook her head. “Well, I don’t know what Michael sounds like, exactly, but it couldn’t have been him. It was a different kind of voice. I think it belonged to someone who lived in the forest for centuries. Someone old, but his voice sounded young. It was the strangest thing.”
Julia frowned. It seemed as if Anne still believed in her fairytales about the Prince of the Forest, and it had to stop. It was dangerous to hold on to silly fantasies any longer.
“The Prince of the Forest doesn’t exist, okay?” she snapped. “It’s just make-believe, Anne.”
Anne’s eyes welled up with tears. And then she smiled, looking old and wise and ageless. “I know that boy wasn’t him. I know that now. But I was protected by something in the woods, Jules. I felt love all around me.”
Julia decided to give up. Anne sounded like she’d had a near-death experience, including all the requisite sensations of unbounded love and voices from beyond. The only thing missing was a light at the end of a tunnel. But maybe it was a good thing Anne had experienced the ordeal like this. She had almost died in that horrible hole in the ground. In the elevator, her mom had told them about Andreas’s heavy sedatives almost killing Anne. Thank God there hadn’t been any signs of sexual abuse – thanks to Julia, Andreas had been arrested before he’d had the chance.
It was time to try and get things out of her head. Her hand tenderly caressing Anne’s forehead, Julia whispered: “I’m happy someone protected you, darling. And now you’re safe with us.”
Gran joined her by the hospital bed to give her youngest granddaughter a cuddle. “Are you allowed to go home today?” she asked.
“Late afternoon,” Anne nodded. “They wanted to keep me here for a few more hours to see how I’m doing, that doctor said.”
“That’s very good news, sweetheart.”
As Julia absently listened to her mother, sister and grandmother chatting to each other, she typed out a text message about how Anne was doing and sent it to all her friends, including Thorsten. He’d helped her and supported her so well before the others had arrived at her house; she couldn’t have managed without him. Michael would probably read the message during his coffee break; he was working this morning. She’d asked him to tell their boss why she wasn’t there today. Martin would have to schedule her on one of her free days to catch up on working hours later.
‘so good 2 hear she’s doin well!! CU at flo’s l8r? he invited us 4 a terrace get-together! xx’ Gaby texted back after a few minutes.
‘sure! what time?’ she replied.
It didn’t take long for other messages to start pouring in. Everybody said yes to meeting up on Florian’s roof terrace at four o’clock. It was time to catch up with her best friend! Gaby and Axel were suddenly an item, and Julia hadn’t even been able to talk about it with her.
She smiled. Now that Anne turned out to be okay, her summer was looking bright. She had a wonderful boyfriend, Gaby had hooked up with her cousin, she had a cool job, and they’d all be off to visit England next month. ‘hey, u gotta tell me ALL abt Axel ;)’ she typed out to Gaby.
‘sleepover tonight? everybody’s gonna be there today eavesdroppin & stuff… or has michael taken my place?? :p’
Crap. Gran knew Michael had spent the night at her house. Her mother would not be amused if she found out. If only Gran would shut up about it. Nervously, her gaze darted between her mother and her grandmother. She wished she was telepathically gifted so she could beg her grandmother to not tell her mom.
“Do you think Ignaz could drop me off at the bookstore later?” she asked. “I want to talk to Michael and apologize to Martin for bailing on him today.”
Gran smiled warmly at her. “Of course. You must be eager to tell him how everything went. I wonder what he told his parents when he got home last night. That must have been quite a story, don’t you think?”
