by S. L. Naeole
“After all that talk about loss and suffering, I was the one who suffered. I was the one who had to listen to your lie and believe it. It wasn’t your heart breaking that night, it was mine! I was the one who watched you die, thinking I’d never see you, never hear you tell me that you loved me again. I was the one who lost then, not you. You don’t know anything about loss or suffering. You’ve never lost a damn thing in your life!”
“Wait a second—dude, you’re…dead?” Graham asked, his voice a strange and unwelcome interruption.
“Now is not the time to start catching on, Graham,” I lashed out.
“Sorry.”
“Sam came after me, made up that stupid sob story about his precious Miki, who I find out later is the mother of all vampires, and he tells me it’s because if he’s not happy, you can’t be either, and like some stupid sap, I believed it all. It’s like you guys lied about the lying; you lie all the time and don’t care who it hurts. And now you tell me the real reason why he came after me was because he was simply trying to finish what he started eleven years ago.”
“Did you say vampires?”
“Shut-up, Graham,” four voices shouted simultaneously.
“Grace, you don’t know that he remembered who you were that night. He was crazed, you saw that. There were a lot of things going on with Sam that I have yet to understand, but I fully believe that our friendship meant enough to him to keep him from killing you solely to finish what he started,” Robert argued.
“But the fact remains that he did try to kill me, Robert. He did try to finish what he started and he would have succeeded, too. You made sure of that.”
Robert shook his head in denial, his voice steely and determined. “No. He wouldn’t have succeeded. I wouldn’t have let him.”
“You put me on a silver platter for him when you introduced us at the wedding. You left me alone, knowing who he was and what he had tried to do. You weren’t there to stop him when he finally had me. And then…after everything, you had Lark take me home so you could take care of Sam. You could have left him there to rot after everything he’d done, not just to me but to you and your family as well, and instead you made the choice that you had been making from the moment we met. You chose Sam. You were more concerned with him, even after he tried to kill me, to kill us.”
I felt my eyes start to sting as those words hit me like a brick to the chest. “You never did tell me what happened to him.”
“I told you, he’s gone.”
I looked at him, the tears still clinging desperately to my lids. “Yes, but what did you mean by that? Gone as in dead, or gone as in not here?”
He turned away, refusing to speak the words out loud. I turned to look at Lark and I could see it in her face as well. I nodded in understanding and allowed my tears to finally flow freely down my face, watching in blurred waves as they fell to my feet.
“He was never punished, was he? He hadn’t done anything wrong; he was just finishing the job he started.”
When no arguments came I nodded in mute understanding once more. I felt my heart burn as I continued. “I guess there’s no real point then, is there? He wants me dead, I’m supposed to be dead…it’s only fair that he get his shot.”
“No!” Lark and Robert both cried out, their voices cutting off as they each heard the other, their anger towards each other causing their wings to ruffle and bristle with tension.
“I won’t let him harm you, Grace,” Lark vowed, her eyes boring holes into Robert.
I laughed mockingly. “You won’t let him harm me? No one can protect me. Even Robert knows I’m supposed to die. It’s a sure thing now that everyone knows I was supposed to die eleven years ago and didn’t. It’s why Robert’s been bugging me to accept being turned.. And you said it yourself that it was selfish of me to deny him this, knowing how much it would hurt him to see me die, Lark.”
Her eyes grew wide, her mouth forming an “o” of surprise at my words as she nodded hesitantly.
“Yeah, I heard every single word of your conversation, Lark. And just so you know, there can be no greater example of selfishness than your brother demanding that I turn for him simply so he could escape ever having to deal with me finding out the truth. That’s the reason, isn’t it? The entire reason for wanting me to become one of those who-knows-what out there? If I became one of them, Sam couldn’t kill me, and the secret would be safe, right?”
Lark looked over at Robert, her eyes still wide. He shared the same surprised look, their thoughts shared quickly between the two before they both turned to look at me.
“Grace, how did you know that I said those things?” Lark asked nervously.
“I was here. When I was passed out, I saw my mother. She brought me here to listen to you guys all argue and talk. She said that I needed to hear something important. She was right.”
Lark and Robert once again stared at each other, their eyes flickering so rapidly as they shared a private conversation, I felt dizzy just watching them.
“Stop it!” I shouted. “If you have something to say, say it. I’m done with all of this secrecy, mind reading crap. I’m sick of it.”
Lark shared one last apprehensive look with Robert and frowned. “We weren’t speaking when we said those things, Grace. No one uttered a single word during the conversation you’re talking about. Everything that was spoken was done in our thoughts—we didn’t want to disturb you or draw any more attention to our location than we already have.”
Stacy and Graham both nodded their heads, while Robert looked on, pleadingly.
“I heard you speaking,” I countered, but bit back the rest of my words as Lark shook her head.
“You know that I cannot lie, not even a little, and I’m telling you that no one was talking, Grace.”
I turned my gaze angrily towards Robert, waving off Lark’s denial. “It doesn’t matter who said or didn’t say anything. The fact remains that I know what was being discussed, and I know that you’ve got it wrong; I’m not being selfish for not wanting to change who I am. If I could, I’d give any and all chances I had at immortality to Graham and Stacy because they have have a genuine reason to want to live forever, they have someone who deserves to have them around forever, who wants to have them around forever.”
I felt the burn in my heart and the ache in my throat as I let the final words slip past my lips, my eyes fixed on Robert’s as I uttered them, feeling that fissure in my chest blow wide open as I did so. “I don’t.”
I grabbed the hem of my dress and began walking towards the twinkling lights at the edge of the woods. Robert grabbed my arm, but I yanked free. “Don’t touch me,” I hissed.
“Grace, please. I did this to keep you safe, to keep us safe because I love you,” he pleaded.
“Don’t. Talk. To. Me. About. Love!” I growled. “You don’t have a clue what love is. You view love like it’s a toy you can play with, and I’m merely the stupid box that it comes in. You don’t view me as an equal—you never did. I’ve always known it, but I just haven’t accepted it until now. It’s why you waxed poetic about virtue and patience—I’m simply not good enough, not for that and certainly not for the truth.
“And you can go ahead and blame all of that on you being a naive angel who’s never experienced what love truly is until you met me, and that you’re still trying to understand it. But I’ll know it’s just another lie because I’ve never before experienced a single ounce of what I feel for you with anyone else. Not with Graham, not with anyone, but that not knowing has never caused me to keep from you anything that would have changed our relationship the way you just did.
“I never asked you to change who you were, despite all of your differences. I didn’t care that you could read my mind, or could fly. My God, I even looked past all of the death stuff because I love you! But you couldn’t accept me the way that I am—you kept trying to get me to agree to turn, and you couldn’t even be honest about why.
“You brought me here to frighte
n me into turning, to try and scare me with my mortality by having monsters threaten my life, yet the danger is far more closer to home—Sam is still alive, he hates me more than ever, and it’s all because of you.”
I could hear my voice shaking and stuttering as my tears brought on hiccups. “You know the worst part about this? You did all of that to try to convince me to turn when you didn’t really need to. I would have agreed to it, Robert. I was ready to tell you before all of this started, ready to tell you that I wanted to spend forever with you because I knew that if it took forever for you to finally want to be with me the way that I wanted to be with you, I would have gladly waited that long. But now that’ll never happen because I can’t trust you; you—an angel. And if I can’t trust you then I can’t be with you. Not now, not ever.”
I started to walk away, but Robert’s hand once again grabbed my arm.
“Grace, don’t do this.”
“I’m not, Robert,” I replied simply through a thick curtain of tears and hurt. “You did it all on your own. Congratulations. You’ve finally learned how to be human.” I jerked my arm free of his grip once more using my entire body weight and stormed away from him, each step feeling heavier and heavier, a complete contradiction to the exaggerated feeling of emptiness that was inside of me as I approached the ever brightening glow of the mocking lights that encircled the tent of merrymakers.
I quickly brought my hand to my face to wipe away any residual blood and tears before running into anyone that might recognize me. I heard the sound of footsteps nearing me from behind and I turned around, ready to sound off on Robert once more, but instead I saw the comforting face of Graham and I collapsed in his arms with a pitiful wail of sobs pouring out of me.
“Shh, it’s alright,” he cooed as he held me tightly against him. He did not move, did not stir as my body was racked with seemingly endless sobs. Instead, he smoothed my hair that had fallen out of its pins, stroked the nape of my neck, and allowed the slow beat of his heart to seep in to steady the erratic beat of my own until everything had calmed down.
When my violent sobs made way for the soft tick of hiccups, he finally spoke. “Stacy’s gone to tell your dad and Janice that you’re not feeling well and we’ll take you home, okay?”
I nodded beneath his now impossibly dampened shirt, thankful for his presence. I muffled my gratitude into the soggy mess that I had created and felt him chuckle.
“You can thank me later by washing this shirt. Come on, I’ll walk you to the car.”
With one arm around my waist and the other one cradling my hand, we walked towards his green Buick, him gently patting my hip as I renewed the sobbing, though it was silent now. He pulled his keys out from his pocket and fiddled with them until he found the right one, then proceeded to unlock my door, pulling it open and helping me inside. He waited outside for Stacy to return, and when she did, she motioned for me to roll down the window.
“Okay, so I told your dad that you weren’t feeling too well and that Graham was going to take you home. He said that he’d call you from the car when they were heading off to that resort place they’re going to for their honeymoon. I’m going to call my mom from your house and tell her that I’m staying over with you, is that alright?”
I nodded mutely, the words making sense…and then not.
“So what are we waiting for then?” Graham asked as he walked over to his side of the car. He opened the door and pulled back the seat to allow Stacy to climb in but she remained on my side of the car.
“Lark. She doesn’t want Grace going home alone.”
“She’s going to be with us. How can she be alone?”
I couldn’t see Stacy’s face, but I could tell by her tone as she responded that she was annoyed. “You don’t really listen too well, do you? She’s not going to have Robert there to watch her, not willingly anyway, and that’s not safe for her.”
“Because of that Sam guy?”
“He’s not just that Sam guy, Graham.”
I heard Graham’s fist pound the roof of the car and I winced. “I know he’s not just that Sam guy. I could kill Robert for bringing a guy like that into Grace’s life. What was he thinking?”
“He didn’t bring Sam into Grace’s life, Graham. Sam was a part of her life before Robert was. Robert is the reason she’s still alive—as heinous as his actions were, we have to at least acknowledge that.”
I heard Graham sigh, followed by a muffled “I know” before he straightened his body. I turned to look out of my window and saw the silhouette of Lark standing just outside of the perimeter of the woods.
Grace, you know that he loves you.
I turned away from the window. “How utterly unfair, to not be able to avoid a conversation even this far away,” I mumbled to myself.
He was stupid, he was wrong, he knows it. Please, give it some time and think things through before you go writing him out of your life forever. You don’t know what he’s gone through.
I stared at the gear shift and tried to ignore the musical notes that echoed with each word. I snorted as the last one seemed to echo in my head. “Forever isn’t a term that exists with humans, remember? And you saw this happening. You knew it was going to happen…it’s too late to stop it now,” I whispered, knowing that she would hear me.
Whatever your decision, you must know that he’s never going to leave you alone, right? He might have been foolish enough to trust you with Sam once, but he knows much better now. He has been actively trying to keep you safe, especially now. Whatever his faults, he loves you, Grace, and would gladly give up his life to keep you safe. Please, if nothing else, at least remember that.
I turned to scowl at her, but she was gone.
“Okay, Lark’s going to meet us at the house. Let’s get going,” Stacy said as she slapped the car’s roof.
“Hey, watch it, that’s my car!”
“Oh please, you just punched it just a few seconds ago, you big baby.”
“Well yeah, because it’s my car.”
“Well, I’m the fairer sex—what more damage can I do to it that you haven’t done?”
“Fairer sex my—”
His response was muffled as Stacy climbed into the back seat and pulled the driver’s side seat down. She scooted behind my seat and wrapped her arms around me.
“I’m sorry. I…I’m just…sorry.”
I patted her hands and stifled a sniffle. Graham reached over and placed his hand on mine.
“I’m here for you, Rocky.”
I smiled through my tears.
“Thanks, Frank.”
Stacy’s head popped between the seats and she looked at the two of us as though we had lost our minds.
“Did you guys snort something while I was gone? Rocky? Frank?”
Graham pointed to the ornament that hung beneath his rearview mirror—a cluster of different key chains, all bearing logos or images from our favorite movie.
“Oh. God, why didn’t I notice that before; you guys really are weird, aren’t you?” Stacy commented as she reached her hand forward to examine the odd collection that Graham had gathered over the years.
“We must be if we’re hanging out with you,” Graham quipped as he started the car.
“So says the guy dating the angel,” Stacy laughed sadly.
Graham said nothing as he pulled out of his stall. He put the car in drive and the silence in the car followed us as we headed towards my house, the dark streets hiding what I knew the others couldn’t know, couldn’t feel.
Leave me alone, Robert. Stop following me and just go away.
The air around us turned cold and I watched as Graham flipped the heater on, his breath coming out in puffs of vapor despite the sudden blast of hot air.
I stared out of the window and pressed my head against the glass, watching the reflection of my tears trail down my face as my body slowly began to shiver from the sudden chill.
I love you, Grace Anne Shelley.
I rubbed the tears
with the back of my hand, knowing that it was a futile gesture, but not caring. I closed my eyes and the warmth started to slowly return as we neared my home.
The lights were on, a familiar figure stood in the doorway, waiting for us.
“She’s fast,” Graham muttered, his tone flat.
“Yeah. If you thought it was bad with me, you’re in for a rude awakening,” Stacy quipped. “Now hurry up and get out—I have to pee.”
Graham quickly opened his door and climbed out of his seat, pulling the lever to release the chair’s back to allow Stacy to exit the back. He left and came around to the passenger side, opening the door and offering me a hand.
I took it and stepped out, realizing for the first time that my arm was throbbing. I apparently wasn’t the only person who had noticed that my arm was injured when I heard three equally shocked gasps as the extent of the damage to my arm was revealed in the porch light of the house.
“Oh goodness, look at your arm,” Stacy said, her fingers shaking as she reached out to gently touch the odd peacock-hued pattern on my bicep.
“What the hell did that? Did that come from Robert?” Graham asked, shocked by what he saw.
I looked down at my arm and frowned. The same, strange honeycomb-patterned bruising that had covered my hand after I had hit Lark last year now filled up half of my arm. I looked at Lark’s surprised face and she shook her head in confusion.
“I don’t think he intended to do that,” she said quickly when she saw the anger in Graham begin to grow exponentially.
“I don’t care if he intended to do it or not. He’s hurt her and he’s allowed others to hurt her.” He turned to face her, a sudden thought coming to him. “How long did you know about all of this?”
Lark bit her lip and shook her head, unwilling to answer, but knowing that she couldn’t help it. She fought against the instinct to tell the truth, finally giving up just before her voice turned into a scream.
