It was one thing to be responsible for my own demise, but to be accountable for that of someone else?
“You’ll feel better once we get moving again, and your lungs adjust to their limited capacity in this realm. They’ve been working so hard for so long, just to keep you alive, and soon we can be where this body will feel at home. I promise.”
Declan’s eyes were close to mine, holding my gaze as if doing so would keep me grounded in his words and ultimately, his promise. If I hadn’t been wheezing as I stood up and began to take tiny steps towards the road, I might have wondered more about the words he said.
Answers could come after I got home and sat down, sure that I wouldn’t have to exert any more physically that day. I knew that Declan, although we had only just met, wouldn’t let anything happen to me. This death he used almost as a threat might have been a possibility, but he was certainly doing what he could to prevent it.
Suffocating in the woods was not the way I would have chosen for my life to end, so I hoped that Declan knew what he was doing, even if I had no idea why.
He hadn’t been lying when he assured me that breathing would become easier, which it did not long after we crossed the busy street and began the zigzag pattern through the streets of cookie cutter houses which led to my own home. I longed for those beautiful few moments when the sweet air had filled my lungs and my hair had been soft against my neck, silky and golden when it had always been dry and scratchy.
“Why are you here?” I asked him as we stepped off the curb across the street from my house, the familiar pale blue aluminum siding the only thing setting it apart from our neighbors, who had pale green, pale yellow, and pale gray distinctions instead.
Declan let me walk ahead of him down the concrete driveway, which was empty since my parents were both at work. Even if they were home, only one car would be in the single car garage, with the other parked outside. Since they both worked nine to five jobs, their schedules were similar, and if one was home, the other usually was as well, at least during the week.
“To show you who you really are, and to protect you on your journey home.”
I frowned as I fumbled through my messenger bag, searching for my house key. Declan still carried the bag over his shoulder, so my movements only brought us closer together, and I grew more and more flustered as the key eluded me.
“Home? Well, we’re here, so I guess you’re off the hook.”
As I found the key and slid it into the dead bolt lock, I heard him suck in a breath. Of course he wasn’t here at our school just to walk me home, either today or every day, so there had to be more to this. I didn’t have the clarity of thought to make sense of it, so I didn’t ask any more questions.
There had been a point today when I had so many, though, questions about what he had been saying and how he had been behaving. Now, all I could think of was crawling into bed and closing my eyes, even if drifting off into sleep meant wandering through another dark and disturbing landscape.
I realized that I was alone, at home, with a strange boy who had done something inexplicable to me in the woods, had kept me from banging my head on the floor in the cafeteria, and held a now understandable fascination with my hair. After seeing its shimmering beauty for myself only a short time ago, I completely understood.
Touching the ends of my hair now, the split ends sticking out like sagging yellow needles, I wondered what I needed to do to have that incredible experience again, even if it left me weaker than I had been before.
Was it truly weaker, or did it just seem so because I now had something to compare it to?
“Can you wait out here? I’ve never asked my parents if I could have a boy over before, and . . . well, it’s just that I don’t know you.”
Declan sat down on the wooden swing my parents had owned for years, its weather-beaten cushions offering him little comfort against the hard seat.
“I understand. Before you go in, however, I’d like to ask you one thing.”
I stood with the front door open a few inches and pulled the key from the lock, holding it tightly in my fist. Whatever he was going to ask, I was sure it was important. Declan, in my few hours of experience with him, was nothing if not to the point, and he wouldn’t waste time on small talk.
“We need a key to return, a key that only you have.”
The key in my hand was for the front door, and the only one I carried with me. Had I ever needed another key? I didn’t drive, and I didn’t go anywhere that required a key for entry. Heck, I didn’t go anywhere, period.
Declan must have noticed my confusion.
“You’ve had it tucked away safely, although you may not remember it. You used to play with it as a child, but it was put aside not too long ago. I’m not sure what your parents told you about it, but I can tell you what it truly is, and why it is so important.”
I blinked, wondering what he was talking about. It was hard enough to think about a key I was supposed to have, but the rest of what he was saying didn’t make it any easier.
A key. Where in the world would I have a key tucked away, and why?
“How do you know I played with it when I was little? Seriously, who are you and why did you just suddenly appear? You have to know how weird this is.”
His smile was full of patient consideration, like he had expected me to just come out with it, as blunt as I was.
“I suppose I do know this, although my primary thoughts have been for your safety and return to our home. I will do what I must to accomplish this, and if that includes explaining my purpose as well as the truth about your identity, I will gladly do both.”
A key. Somewhere on the edge of a memory I could see it, the swirls on the handle a pretty touch to the practical design. He was right, I had once used it as a toy, locking and unlocking my doll house in pretend fashion. Where I had left the key after the last time, though?
Declan had said that it wasn’t too long ago that I last held the key, but my last memory of it took place long ago, when I was still in elementary school. Perhaps I had put it away and then stumbled across it later when I was older, and that’s what he meant.
He had evaded my question about how he knew that the key was here, in my possession, and had been a plaything.
I looked down again at the key I held now, and rested my forehead against the glass of the door’s tiny rectangular window.
Three silver chains, each with a different charm, appeared in my thoughts, all three hanging from a spinning trio of hooks in the center of my jewelry box. I had no earrings, as I couldn’t have my ears pierced, and only a few bracelets.
What I did have, though, could be more valuable than any jewelry I owned, if what Declan said was true.
Even if I wasn’t sure why, I realized that the pretty key that rested among the sparse contents of the jewelry box my parents had given me on my tenth birthday held possibilities for my future, and my own actions years ago to keep it safe and close now left it up to me to decide how to use it today.
“I have it, but I only just remembered where. I’ll be right back, okay?”
I didn’t want to leave Declan now, and an irrational fear that I would go to my bedroom to get the key only to return to the front porch and find it empty nearly overpowered me. Instead of lingering, though, I fought against the urge and dropped my bag just inside the front door, moving as fast as my tired legs could take me to my room.
Chapter Seventeen
I flipped open the small wooden jewelry box, which was inlaid with a floral pattern made of lighter wood than the rest of the container. The necklace hooks that turned with the merest of finger taps still held those three chains, and to my relief, the key that I knew in my heart was the one Declan referred to was hanging from one of them.
But where had it come from? I remembered where all of the other pieces of my limited jewelry collection had come into my possession, from the bracelets (hand me downs from my mother) to the two chains with a single charm each.
&
nbsp; One was a tiny rubber duck, painted yellow and orange, which Corrie had gifted me after we went downtown to watch a rubber duck race for charity last year. My only friend had a matching charm of her own, to commemorate the fun we had that day.
The other was a silver crane in origami style, brought to me during one of my countless hospital stays by my father after he returned from a business trip. I was sure that he felt guilty because he wasn’t home when I collapsed and had been admitted, but I didn’t bear any grudge against him for being at work.
The key, though, with its delicate swirls and smooth, dull surface, was a mystery. I had always had it, and played with it so much that I didn’t remember it ever being shiny. Surely my parents knew where it came from, and how and why I was so fixated on it as a child.
I carefully removed the chain from the hook where it dangled and brought it, along with the key, with me as I retraced my steps, staring at the life-sized piece. It wasn’t small like my other charms, which indicated that it wasn’t a decorative item at all.
It was a true key, meant for a lock. Somewhere.
Declan had just said we needed it to return. Or he needed it to return. If I went with him, as he surely expected me to, it wouldn’t be a return, not for me.
My messenger bag thrummed loudly and I nearly tripped over my own feet in surprise as the noise pulled me from my thoughts. I dropped to my knees in front of the bag and flipped open the cover, shoving my hand in to fish around for my phone. The chain and key were in my other hand, pressed tightly into my palm with my fingers curled around them both.
“Oh, hey, Mom,” I slid my finger on the screen to answer the call, recognizing my mother’s number and hoping that she was still on the line.
Both of my parents worried about me, which only made me feel guilty about causing them so much difficulty. How often had they wished they had a normal kid, one who stayed out too late at parties, or dated boys they didn’t approve of? A kid who could go away to college, earn varsity sports letters, or go camping with them?
My mother sighed loudly, probably unaware that I could hear her, before she spoke.
“How was school? How do you feel? Have you changed your mind about finishing this year online?”
It was an argument we had been having since I started high school, bound closely to the terrible experiences I had in middle school. Once I had a handle on how everyone wanted to see me rather than how and who I really was, I knew that I wouldn’t have the same difficulties as I grew older.
Sure, I was bullied. Ignored. Coddled. But I couldn’t really blame the fear I had inspired in my classmates on anyone but me, although it wasn’t an excuse for them to be mean, only wary.
The teachers had passed along words and notes about my issues, as they called my behaviors and illnesses, so even before I had a chance to make an impression, every adult I came into contact with had already formed an opinion of me and the problems I could cause, simply by being in their class and school building.
“Everything was fine, Mom. I’m tired, but I usually am after walking around so much.”
I hesitated. There was a strange and gorgeous boy on our front porch, and I should tell her about him, I knew. Declan was my secret, though, and I was almost 18 years old. Wasn’t it time for me to have something, or someone, of my own?
“That’s good to hear. Not that you’re tired, of course, but that your day went well. I might be a little late, but your dad will be home by five-thirty.”
The usual time for both of them to arrive home, about two hours from now, I calculated. Whatever Declan wanted to tell me, and whatever answers I needed from him after this incredibly bizarre day, would have to be communicated within that time.
He needed to be gone before my parents saw him, because there would be no end to the questions and possibly embarrassing parental behavior I would have to endure.
I figured Declan would charm my parents as he had everyone else he had come into contact with, excepting the vice principal, but I couldn’t deal with any sort of references to their joy over my having a new friend, or worse, a boyfriend. They had been so exuberant over Corrie’s interest in me that I was too horrified to talk to her for days after I had introduced her to them at our school’s open house.
“Okay. I think I’ll take a nap and then start doing homework.”
It was my usual routine on school days, and it only made sense for her to think it would continue for my senior year. I suspected I wouldn’t get much rest or complete any homework before my parents returned, not with Declan only a few feet away from me, separated by the screen door, and the key clutched in my hand.
“Take it easy, honey. I’ll see you later tonight.”
I ended the call after she finished speaking and dropped the phone on the floor before standing up slowly. A small table with a lamp and a few books stacked on it was close by, just inside the door near a window, and I used it to get some leverage as I pulled myself off the floor.
The overwhelming fatigue that had followed my stunning experience in the woods earlier had lessened, and I was now returning to a state that was normal for me. Tired from walking around at school all day, along with getting my head smacked with a book and being shoved backwards while getting smeared with ice cream.
“Is everything okay? Do you need help?”
Declan’s voice came through the screen door, and by the time I looked up, planning to reassure him, he was inside the house, allowing the door to click closed behind him.
“Why don’t you sit down? We can talk in here, if you’re comfortable with that.”
His eyes darted around the room, taking in the furniture and the walls, and finally, the mantel above our brick fireplace. He glanced at me as I took a step back and allowed myself to sit in the recliner by the table, then stepped closer to the mantel, where several pictures stood in matching frames, side by side.
“Those are mostly me, from when I was a baby, and then just a few years older. I guess most parents take a lot of pictures when their kids are little, you know.”
I offered an explanation, not sure why I felt the need to do so. Maybe it was just to fill the quiet, which had grown uncomfortable. He had been so excited about this key when we were on the front porch together, and now these ordinary baby photos were capturing his attention?
“It’s weird, because you can see how fat I was at the hospital when I was born. Then, poof, before I even got to come home I was sick. I couldn’t even go home with my mom for a few months.”
On the word poof I lifted my right hand and snapped my fingers for emphasis, but Declan didn’t move. I decided to stop running my mouth, because even though he had been strangely devoted to me all day, he had to have his limits.
“This isn’t you.”
I opened my mouth to respond but stopped, frowning. What had he just said?
“Uh, yeah, it is. All of those are pictures of me. I don’t have any brothers or sisters, so it couldn’t be anyone else.”
My hand was still hanging in the air from when I had snapped my fingers, and I brought it down to rest in my lap with my other one as I waited for him to explain what he meant. Of course all of those were me, from the traditional newborn in a hospital bassinet to my toddler years, including one of me in a small wheelchair from when I fell down the concrete steps in front of our house, breaking one leg and one ankle.
Holding a Strawberry Shortcake plushie in my lap, my smile was tired but true, and I remembered how my dad told me that he bought the doll for me because it was the only way I could have strawberry shortcake, since strawberries caused my windpipe to swell, impairing my breathing.
“This infant is the natural child of the adults who have raised you as their own, your counterpart now living in Faerie.”
Chapter Eighteen
Declan had said something weird about humans earlier, but in my dazed state, I couldn’t quite place the context or exactly what he had said. Not that it mattered, because now I could see that he was abou
t to tell me what he meant.
I stared at him as he looked more closely at the photo.
“Hasn’t anyone ever wondered why this baby, who is so plump and rosy, healthy in every possible way, suddenly became sickly, with a variety of illnesses and conditions, allergies?”
When he turned his head to face me, I was stunned, unsure how to respond. He was absolutely serious, his question not remotely rhetorical.
“Yeah, I mean, of course they did. My parents said there were a lot of tests, but no real explanation. I’ve been on different diets, taken supplements, been to more doctors than I can count . . .”
I stopped talking when Declan began to walk towards me, his forehead creased to indicate that he was thinking. Was he even listening, or were his thoughts elsewhere?
“The key. It’s here now, correct?”
The abrupt change of subject had my own mind reeling. I was still somewhere back on his declaration about a counterpart in Faerie, muddled in with my explanation of how the doctors had tried to find out why I was always sick.
Opening my hand, I held out my palm, where the key on its chain rested. Declan’s breath hitched loudly, and I resisted the urge to reach out to him.
“Home. After so long away, we’ll both finally be able to go home.”
My confusion mounted, but I was more curious than afraid. Did he mean that I had been away for a long time, or we both had? His tone was wistful, his voice soft and dreamy, as if he missed the home he was talking about, so I figured that he was at least speaking about himself.
But how did I fit into this? I was already home, in my own living room in the house where I had grown up. Soon, I would turn eighteen, finish high school, and deal with an unpredictable future.
“Do you want it?” I asked, stepping closer to him and nodding towards my hand. He stumbled backwards in the first awkward movement I’d seen him make since we met that morning. First he had seemed in awe of the key, but now he was afraid of it?
The Shadow of a Dream Page 8
