Starstruck
Page 27
Oh, how it burned.
Everything darkened, and I trembled. A shiver coursed through me from head to toe, but it wasn't from the cold. Quite the opposite. My body shook as if I had been plugged into an electrical socket: alive, hot, burning, melting.
My eyes flew open, the ceiling blinding white above me.
And I breathed through soft, new lips.
They let me go home within a week.
EPILOGUE
Where Some Things Finally Go Right
At precisely 2:05 am, there was a sharp buzz at the door. It rang out, loud, filling the entire apartment with electrical noise. But I was already awake, my heart spinning. I had been waiting. I knew this was it.
The sharp buzz trilled again. I felt my bones quivering as I hopped to my feet. I walked to the door, knowing that if I ran, I would lose control. I had to remain calm.
“I'm coming,” I shouted to no one in particular, seeing as how no one could hear me with the intercom closed. The person at the buzzer was downstairs, after all. I didn't even have to check the window to know who it was: I could feel them.
“Hello?” I asked, “Who is this?”
Please, please, please.
“I promised, didn't I?” he replied, and my heart fluttered. It was him—Zander was back. He was here. They were here. They had come back for me like they said they would.
My thumb held the buzzer down for longer than needed. My heart pounded, rushing faster than it had in months. Breathe in, breath out. I had to focus all my energy on just standing, just being. I would explode if I didn't contain my excitement.
I opened the door, and there they were. Blayde wore a skintight flight suit, all blue and striped down the sides, like a fighter pilot in the disco era. Zander wore his suit and tie, the same one, I noted, as he had worn the last time I saw him.
No white monk clothes for him. Just a tattered black suit with dust all over it.
“Sally,” he said, picking me up and squeezing me, pure joy and relief in his voice. He swung me around like I was lighter than air. Blayde smiled politely, the way one would smile at a friend's dog. I didn't care. I hugged Zander with the grasp of a thousand men. They were back. He was back.
“We just climbed out of that hole that used to be a power plant,” Zander said with a grin. “So, everything went well on your side?” he asked. That was all it took for my heart to sink. He looked around the apartment, his brows furrowing. “What's with the new couch?”
The slap hurt me more than it hurt him. I knew that before I swung my arm, but I did so anyway. Blayde's hands rose to her mouth, a real grin spreading on her porcelain face. She looked like she was going to laugh.
“What was that for?” Zander asked, rubbing his cheek. Not that he had felt the slap. For him, the last slap had been days away, and an immortal douche-canoe like him needed a slap from time to time, seeing as how he didn't feel the pain anyway.
“Two years, Zander!” I shouted, my hands on my hips and my lips on fire. “Two whole years. You said you would be right back, so what is this shit?”
“Two years?” Blayde laughed a hearty laugh where she had to slap her leg to calm herself down. “What a sloppy jump, Zander. I said you were out of practice.”
“But …” The shock on his face was real. He lifted a hand to my face, gently, then pulled it back without touching the skin. He dropped his hand, which had started trembling. “It's been four days since we left the plant.”
“Two years.”
“You’re pranking me, aren’t you?”
“I'll make the tea,” Blayde interjected, shaking her head, holding back laughter. There were tears in her eyes. “Two years … da-a-mn.”
“We didn't even stay long,” Zander muttered. He fell into the armchair, clutching his head in his hands. “I had one drink. One. Then I danced in a line. We left when I got proposed to. The third time.”
“It was hilarious, if that makes you feel any better,” Blayde called from the kitchen, where she was definitely not making tea. Instead, she had opened the cupboard, found herself a jar of olives, and was eating them with her fingers, wiping the water on my dishtowel.
“Two years, huh … wow,” Zander muttered. “Is everything … what's changed? How are you and Matt?”
“He's … all right, Zander. He's all right,” I said, giving him a nervous smile. “Our relationship blew up when the plant did. He moved out of state.”
The room was basked in silence. No one quite knew what to say, so we stared at our hands, our laps, and in Blayde's case, at each olive as she slowly halved them.
I'm quite sure she swallowed the pits whole.
“So, you're immortal, huh?”
“Yup.”
“Like, can't die, ever?”
“Nope.”
“That's impressive.”
“Somewhat.” He smiled, though I didn't feel reassured.
“Anything else I should know about you?”
“Well, I have no pulse, though I’m not sure if that counts as interesting.”
“So, are there a lot of people who are like you? Immortal, I mean?”
“I haven't met any, other than Blayde.” He stared awkwardly at his thumbs now, as if they were going to tell him something nice. “And that's probably reason numero uno that so many people are after us.”
“That, and our keen sense of fashion,” Blayde insisted from the kitchen.
It got quiet again, after that.
“Thank you,” I said, trying to calm the storm of conflicting emotions within me.
Zander's head snapped up. “For what?”
“For coming back.”
“I promised, didn't I?” he replied. “I just wish I hadn't … screwed up.”
“You didn't.” My mouth was dry as I said the words. “You came back.”
“I promised,” Zander repeated, “and part of the promise was that I was going to take you on a trip. Somewhere, anywhere. And Blayde is all right with this, so long as it's just the one—”
“Try to stay longer, and your head will be the only part of you that makes it home,” she chided, closing the now-empty olive jar.
“We jump there,” Zander continued. “Explore, discover the local cuisine. A completely random jump, anywhere in the universe. When we're done, we jump right back, to the here and hopefully the now. One visit, with one return trip. Are you still up for it?”
“Hell, yes.” My smile grew. “What do I need?”
“Coat, toothbrush, maybe some clothes,” he said as I raced through the apartment. “You'll need a towel of course. You always have to know where your towel is.”
I grabbed the old duffel bag from my closet and tossed everything in sight into it. Clothes, iPod, socks, underwear, and anything else that came to mind. I wanted to grab my laptop and camera, but thought against it. There was a good chance I could lose my things on another planet, and I didn't want to have to deal with that.
“You may want to leave a note with your neighbor,” he offered. “I obviously have a few issues with time dilation. You don't want people asking too many questions about where you disappeared to if this trip takes longer than expected.”
“On it,” I replied, scrawling a few words on some scratch paper. But Jules didn’t need to be bothered. My roommate would catch the note when she got back.
Taylor. It’s happened. Will be incommunicado for a little while. Please let people looking for me know I'm all right. — Sally
“That'll do.” Zander grinned.
“My pointer,” Blayde screeched, flying into the room and grabbing it off my desk. “You left this out for anyone to see?”
“I haven't really had company over, Blayde,” I replied sullenly. “It was safe, no worries.”
“You'd better hope it still works,” she growled, but she was all softness and love to her cherished killer laser.
“Ahem?” Zander cleared his throat in her direction.
“Ah, yes.” Blayde shook her head slowly. “Thank
you, Sally, for taking good care of the item I entrusted you with. You have no idea how much it means to me that I can trust someone with my shit. Right, ready to go?”
I nodded and slipped my hand into Zander's. He smiled.
My heart raced. And then stopped.
And we jumped.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
S.E. Anderson can’t ever tell you where she’s from. Not because she doesn’t want to, but because it inevitably leads to a confusing conversation where she goes over where she was born (England) where she grew up (France) and where her family is from (USA) and it tends to make things very complicated.
She’s lived pretty much her entire life in the South of France, except for a brief stint where she moved to Washington DC, or the eighty years she spent as a queen of Narnia before coming back home five minutes after she had left. Currently, she goes to university in Marseille, where she’s studying Physics and aiming for a career in Astrophysics.
When she’s not writing, or trying to science, she’s either reading, designing, crafting, or attempting to speak with various woodland creatures in an attempt to get them to do household chores for her. She could also be gaming, or pretending she’s not watching anything on Netflix.
Website: http://seandersonauthor.com/
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