by Ann Aguirre
But I don’t like them well enough to warn them.
“Should we talk to them?” Jen asked.
I nodded. “I doubt they’d listen to me, but I hope they’ll take you or Davina seriously.”
“We’ll try,” Davina promised.
I had no idea if the Lit teacher had anything to do with this, but I couldn’t dump a supernatural conspiracy on them, especially with me at the center. If I mentioned sides and game pieces, immortal monsters, diabolical corporations, and faceless evil, they’d just point and laugh before leaving. Davina and Jen traded a look while I dug at my cuticles, aware how sketchy this sounded. But their prior response seemed encouraging.
“There is something going on,” Jen said softly.
Davina was nodding. “The school feels different this year.”
So I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. “I was so sure you’d both tell me I’ve been reading too much horror.”
“Then there was the thing you claimed you didn’t see at my house,” Jen went on. “By the way, you’re full of shit.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to say.”
Jen peeled a strip of bark from a nearby tree. “I can’t believe I’m even asking this, but … do you think Mr. Love is a brain limpet?”
I could almost resent how well their brains worked, considering how naturally pretty they were, too. “Yeah. It sounds crazy, I know.”
Davina shook her head. “Nothing has been right since school started. Russ changed as soon as we hit Blackbriar.”
“All I know is, I don’t want anything happening to the two of you” I said. “If there’s any way you can get out of Boston—”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Davina didn’t look hopeful, though. Given her scholarship, her parents would probably feel as if leaving would be the same as throwing away her future.
Jen said, “I might be able to convince my parents to let me visit my grandmother in Thailand, especially if I claim I had a dream about her. My mom’s a hardass but she’s really into signs and omens.”
“If you can’t get away, just … be careful, okay?”
“Definitely. I’ll keep an eye on Mr. Love, too.” Stepping out from the trees, Davina shaded her eyes with one hand. “It looks like we’ve got company.”
I saw him, too. The groundskeeper turned us over to the teacher in charge of miscreants, who then escorted us to see the headmaster. I couldn’t muster up a smidge of regret for missing class, however, as this had been a matter of life and death. We all listened to the lecture, but he went easy on us because it was a first offense, and he allowed that we were probably upset.
“Very,” Davina said with tearful eyes, and she wasn’t faking.
He dismissed us in time for last period, along with an admonishment not to let it happen again. I worried through my last class and practically sprinted to my locker to get my stuff. It felt like ages since Kian had picked me up after school last week, but there had been no date this weekend since I was grounded. The joint hug from my parents had been startling; my punishment was not. For good measure, they’d confiscated my computer and my phone, so I hadn’t heard from him either.
Today, Kian was waiting as close to the gate as he could without being on school property. Two strides carried him to my side and he pulled me into his arms. Burying my face in his chest, I breathed him in, lemons and spice from his soap. He kissed the top of my head and then we moved toward his car.
“Missed you,” he said.
“I’m still on restriction for another week,” I said.
His gaze ran over me like it had been much longer than a weekend. “I can take you straight home … or I can show you my new place.”
Temptation sashayed toward me and flashed a come-hither look. It was so easy to give in, such a relief from the relentless awful of my life otherwise. “I can realistically claim about an hour before my parents guess we took a detour. Will it take long?”
“Not if I leave the car here. We can swing by the condo and then I’ll take you home via Express Way.” The faint smile curving his mouth told me he was proud of that pun. Better yet, anyone who overheard us wouldn’t think it was a weird thing to say.
Luckily, showing me his new apartment fell under the heading of company business. I imagined Wedderburn rasping a cold chuckle as Kian charmed me according to instructions. But that’s exactly what’s happening. God, I hated myself for each little pinprick of doubt. Kian had taken so many risks for me over the past weeks and had never shown a hint that he was on anyone’s side but mine. I pushed all of the bad feelings out on a long breath.
“Let’s go.”
For the sake of appearances, he moved the car away from the school and parked on a residential street a few blocks away. Then he took my hand and pressed a button on his watch. We ported immediately, the world zooming out of focus in a stutter-skip that always unbalanced me. I stumbled a few steps, my head spinning as I took in pale walls and hardwood floors. A glance out the window told me I wasn’t far from Fenway.
“You got a place in my neighborhood?”
“I want to be nearby.” The ache in his voice made me want to kiss him.
Kian walked me through; it was a two bedrooms with a galley kitchen—nothing remarkable, but less isolated than the cabin. The furniture looked as if he’d bought someone’s rental property, including all contents. I supposed that made sense. But the result was another impersonal place, nothing unique to Kian.
“It needs some color. And some clutter. You need to set out your trophies and hang up your certificates. Put your books on the shelves. Dump your poetry journal on the end table. Start writing again. In other words, stop hiding who you are in a storage unit.”
He went to the window and leaned his head against the glass. I could taste the sadness in him, heavy and rolling like the sea. “If I do, then the next time something awful happens, I lose everything. I’m not as strong as you seem to think.”
Neither of us is unbreakable. We shattered, but we put the pieces back together, and I love the way your fractures shine. I came up behind him and put my palm between his shoulder blades. A quiver ran through him at my touch; sometimes I felt as if he were a piano tuned to my hands.
“I don’t think you’re a superhero or anything. But … sometimes you have to draw the line and fight for your ground. Fight, Kian. Take something for your own.”
He whirled then, lightning in his eyes. “You’re the only ground I won’t yield, Edie. Everything else is dust, and each time I walk away from you, I’m afraid it’s the last. You don’t know the deals I’ve made, the—” Swallowing hard, he clenched a fist. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“I think you’d better tell me exactly what you mean.”
He stepped into my space and tangled his hands in my hair, tipping my face up. I should’ve insisted on an answer, but when he looked at me like that it was impossible for me to think. “You’re mine. How’s that?”
“It’s good,” I whispered.
“I’ll fight for you. I’ll draw all the lines around you. I’ve”—he brushed his lips teasingly, delicately, across mine—“never felt this way before.”
When I went up on tiptoe to kiss him back, kiss him more, he spun me and pressed me against the window. I twined my arms around his neck and held on; the longing was honey sweet and ferocious like a storm. He tasted me and I ran my hands over his shoulders and down his back, digging in with my fingers, because this feeling just couldn’t be real. Kian made a soft sound against my mouth, a growl or a whimper, and I shivered against him.
“I should take you home,” he whispered. “Or I won’t at all. I want you to stay.”
“I can’t. Not yet.”
“I know. Your life is complicated enough.”
Shaky nod, as I reached for him. He claimed my hand and whooshed us to the alley we’d used to depart for the SSP. “I’ll never get used to that.”
“And I’ll never get enough of you.”
Kian devoured another kiss and another, until my knees went weak. Until meeting him, I hadn’t known longing for another person could come as a physical ache.
“Wow.” I swallowed hard and then hurried away before I begged him to take me back to his apartment.
It was crazy that I had to weigh everything now in terms of cause and effect. A night with Kian would be amazing, but I had enough stress in my life. When we slept together, I wanted the timing to be right. After waiting this long, sex shouldn’t be one of my regrets.
NORMAL IS ANOTHER COUNTRY
Blackbriar might be under a cloud, but for the rest of my imprisonment, it didn’t storm. The silence made me uneasy, however, and things were lonely at school, as Davina and Jen were MIA. I hoped that meant they’d persuaded their parents to send them elsewhere, at least for a while. I checked my messages, but there was nothing in my inbox.
Vi was still around, at least. Tuesday night, we talked on Skype. “How are the dreams?” I asked.
“After I sent off my college applications, they totally stopped. Must’ve been stress.”
I suspected it had more to do with burning my second favor, but relief cascaded through me so hard, I got a headrush. “I need to send my stuff in, deadlines are approaching.”
“I figured you’d be done already.”
“No, I’m still putting the package together. I can’t get my essay right.” Truth was, I hadn’t even tried to write one.
“Don’t let it paralyze you. Just pick a theme and run with it.”
“Thanks. I’ll see if I can get everything out next week.”
We chatted a little longer, then I disconnected to get ready for bed. When I went to the bathroom, I left my bedroom door cracked, but when I came back, it was closed. My heart skittered in my chest like it was full of mice. For a few seconds, I stood in the hall, staring.
“Something wrong?”
I spun to find my mother standing behind me. “No, I was just thinking.”
“About how ill-considered your behavior has been lately, I hope.”
“Obviously.”
Normally she wasn’t good at picking up sarcasm, but both brows went up. “Edith, you haven’t been yourself this fall. Do you want to talk to a specialist?”
I had no idea what she meant by that. “A psychologist or a brain doctor?”
“Whichever you think would be most helpful.”
The secrets I had locked in my head would only land me in the psych ward, if the shrink pried them out of me, and an MRI couldn’t solve these problems. So I shook my head. “Sorry, Mom. I think the college admission process is getting to me.”
Any mention of university usually diverted Mom into a lecture, but she didn’t take the bait this time. “Do you have a minute to talk?” She sounded oddly tentative.
“Sure.” Bemused, I followed her into the living room. Before sitting down, she made us both a cup of tea.
“I feel like I don’t know what to do with you anymore.”
“That’s an ominous beginning. I’ve been more trouble than usual lately, but—”
“I don’t mean we’re on the verge of shipping you off to boarding school.” She fiddled with the fringe on the afghan dangling from the back of the couch. “It’s hard for me to say this, but I perceive I haven’t been what you need, emotionally, as a mother.”
Oh Jesus. A year ago, I would’ve loved to have this conversation with her. Now it was too late, though not for the reasons she feared. I fidgeted, picking up a pillow and clutching it to my chest, as if stuffing and fabric was a shield for awkwardness.
“You’re fine,” I mumbled.
“That’s nice of you, but it’s not true. I thought if we sent you to a good school and let you form your own emotional attachments while giving you space that would be enough. I can see now that it wasn’t.”
Part of me wanted to ask where this epiphany was before I ended up on the bridge, but I swallowed it along with a sudden ache in my throat. “I’m not sure where you’re going with this.”
Her face fell, but she soldiered gamely on. “I want us to have a better relationship, a closer one. We have science in common, at least. I don’t know much about your new interests, but I could stand to be more physically fit. Maybe we could work out together? There’s a nice facility at the university…” She bit her lip, sad and hopeful at the same time.
Nice olive branch, Mom. I could either accept it or set it on fire. Since I hadn’t run in the morning since the creepiness started, I nodded. “We could go a couple of times in the afternoon and then maybe on Saturdays?”
“I’d like that. And … I wouldn’t hate it if you have time to teach me some things about doing my face. For parties?”
No more fugly red lipstick, Mom.
“That would be fun.” Not a word I typically used to describe anything related to my mother. “You’re an autumn, you know.”
Her unshaped brows shot up. “I’m a what now?”
“One step at a time.”
She wore a tentative smile, and I studied her. Her hair was a frazzled russet, badly in need of a good cut and some deep conditioning. For as long as I could remember, she had worn it in a messy knot. She was round, but not seriously overweight; she had the body of someone who didn’t move around a lot, understandable given how much of her time she spent writing on whiteboards and poring over legal pads.
“Would it be all right if I hugged you?”
For some reason, that choked me up. Tears rose to my eyes as I set aside the throw pillow. “You don’t have to ask. You can, anytime you want.”
I wish you did it more.
She smelled like lilac talcum powder when she reached over and squeezed me around the shoulders. “Your father and I love you very much. And we’re so proud of you, Edith.”
Exhaling in a shaky rush, I put my head on her shoulder. Her lumpy cardigan scratched my cheek, but it was a good five minutes before I moved. “Let’s hit the gym Thursday afternoon, okay?”
Mom actually looked misty when she nodded. “I’ll meet you there. We can swing by and grab takeout for dinner afterward, give your dad a break from cooking.”
If I was teaching her about hair and makeup, then I should ask to trade. “Maybe, if you have time, you could show me something about electrical sockets? And plumbing?”
“I’d be glad to. A woman should never—”
“Depend on a man if she’s capable of learning how to do something herself.”
She looked so surprised when I finished her sentence, then she burst out laughing. “It’s good to know I haven’t been shouting my wisdom down a well all these years.”
“Nope. Night, Mom.”
Wednesday was a good day, maybe because I was happy, and I just … didn’t think about the problems squatting on the horizon. Even pawns on a chessboard needed a day off now and then. I pretended I had Pandora’s box inside and shoved all the horrible feelings into it. On Thursday morning, Davina came back to school, and it astonished me how relieved I was. I wove through the crowd toward her.
“You back?”
Glumly she nodded. “I talked my mom into letting me see a therapist, but the traitorous bastard said the best thing for me was to get back on the horse that threw me.”
“Huh?”
“Coming back to school will prevent me from forming some kind of aversive phobia.” She yanked down a pink sign-up sheet with more than a hint of violence. “Oh, look. Allison’s gone wheels-up with her coup d’état and tryouts are tomorrow afternoon. I haven’t practiced at all, so I’ll be lucky to be mascot, after three years of taking their shit. God, sometimes I hate them so much.”
“Why didn’t you just make new friends?” I asked.
“Russ,” she said miserably. “God, I’d liked him since I was a freshman and he barely knew I was alive.”
“You don’t have to go out for the squad. Let Allison have it.”
She shook her head, wearing a ferocious frown. “Screw that. If I don’t ma
ke it, then it’s like I wasted all of that time and she wins.”
“What can I do to help?”
“Try out with me.”
I cackled, until I realized she was serious. “Why, to make you look better by comparison when I fall on my butt?”
“Partly,” she admitted. “But also for moral support. Please, Edie.”
“What the hell.” I liked Davina, apparently well enough to make an ass of myself in solidarity. “How long does it last? I need to tell Kian I’ll be late tomorrow.”
“Depends on when they call you to perform, but allow an hour.”
“Awesome.”
“You need an original cheer and then you’ll also be scored on how fast you learn the routine, along with the rest of your group. I don’t suppose you can do a backflip?”
“I can walk backward. Sort of.”
Davina smiled and slung an arm around my shoulders. “I would not be okay if you weren’t around this year. I’m glad we’re friends.”
She had no idea how much those four words meant to me … or how scared I was that something evil might be listening. I was like some kind of disaster demon, one touch, and the contagion spread, inky tendrils of malevolence creeping toward those I cared about. Still, I didn’t shift away because Davina needed the contact as much as I did; it took all of her bravado to pretend the stories about Russ weren’t breaking her heart, mostly because none of them included a whisper of what they’d been to each other for one sweet, short summer.
“My mom and I are hitting the gym this afternoon,” I said. “Maybe you could come along and afterward, you and I can work on something for the tryout?”
“Let me ask,” she said. “I’ll get back to you at lunch.”
Company at the table was thin: just Cameron, Davina, Allison, and me. Russ’s lacrosse pals sat elsewhere, as if they sensed the dark cloud hovering over the Teflon crew. Since Russ had bound them together, now they’d separated into sub-cliques. Everyone was quiet, and after eating, I left, disturbed by the wreck Cameron had become. I understood his grief; in a short time he’d lost both his girlfriend and the person he’d thought was his best friend. A pang went through me at how I’d used Allison to deliver Russ’s barb about why they hung around with Cam.
