Abandon

by Meg Cabot

  But if I were truthful with myself, I’d been trying to protect it, too. Because I loved it to a ridiculous degree, and had from the moment I’d first laid eyes on it, when he’d given it to me.

  But I also didn’t want any consequences. Not for me. Not for him. Not for anyone.

  I pulled the chain over my head, not caring when it tangled in my long hair. I was trying to do this as adroitly and sensitively as possible. Because at the Westport Academy for Girls — which, true, I’d been kicked out of, but so what? — they teach nothing if not adroitness and sensitivity when dealing with others or with difficult issues. That’s why my dad had insisted on my going there from kindergarten on up. He’d heard about the school from some of his clients and hoped it would keep me from ending up like him.

  So far, things weren’t looking promising.

  Do it.

  I thrust the necklace towards him, knot of hair and all.

  “It’s all right,” I said, silently cursing myself for still having a shake in my voice. And my fingers. Could he see this, as well as the tears in my eyes, in the moonlight? “You can have it back. I know I should never have taken it. I’m sorry for any…consequences this might have caused. But it all happened so fast. Well, you know that. Anyway,” I added, with an attempt at some humor to lighten the situation, “at least now you won’t have to follow me around anymore.”

  If I’d been looking for precisely the wrong thing to do and say, I’d found it. In an instant, the shutters that had swung open when he saw I still had the necklace came slamming back down over his face and his eyes.

  Snatching the pendant out of my hand, he demanded, ”Following you? Is that what you call it?”

  I blinked back at him, stunned by his reaction. So much for adroitness and sensitivity. Also humor.

  “I gave you this” — he shook the necklace in my face, his deep voice lashing out at me like the rain I could smell already beating the mangroves offshore — “because, as I thought I made clear, it affords its wearer protection from evil…something which, I might add, you seem to need more than most, since every time I see you, you’re in some kind of mortal peril or another. But since you obviously don’t want me — or it — in your life, here’s a thought. Stop coming here. And don’t wear it.“

  On the words don’t wear it, he turned and threw it — my beautiful necklace — as hard as he could. It went sailing through the night sky to land somewhere in the vast darkness of Isla Huesos Cemetery’s nineteen acres.

  It shouldn’t have been like watching him throw my heart away.

  But it was.

  He governs everywhere, and there he reigns;

  There is his city and his lofty throne;

  O happy he whom thereto he elects!

  DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto I

  The next time I saw him after that day in the cemetery with Grandma, I was dead.

  Of course I said the first thing everyone says when they open their eyes after hitting their head, sucking in a gallon of pool water, and then going flatline.

  “Where am I?”

  Because I wasn’t at the bottom of our pool anymore…though I was still wearing the clothes I’d had on when I fell into it. They were damp now, and clung to me like a chilly second skin. I wasn’t on a hospital gurney or in an ambulance, either.

  Instead, I was in a vast, subterranean cavern that seemed to go on forever, along the shore of a windy lake.

  I wasn’t alone, though.

  “Name?”

  A towering man in black, having heard my Where am I?, turned towards me, raising the glowing tablet he held in his palm.

  I was too dazed to do anything but reply, “Pierce Oliviera.”

  “You’re over there,” he said, after inputting my name.

  I looked in the direction he was pointing. We were standing, I realized, in a crowd of what looked like thousands of other people — mostly senior citizens, but some my own age, or even younger — all of whom seemed as miserable as I was.

  They just weren’t necessarily soaked to the skin or dazed from a violent blow to the head.

  But they were, like me, being ordered into two lines by huge men dressed all in black. The men looked the way the older girls from school who took the train into New York City to sneak into nightclubs described the bouncers who carded them — muscular, bald, black-leather-clad, and tattooed all over. In other words, super scary.

  Unlike my best friend, Hannah, I’d never had the courage to try to sneak, underage, into a club in the city. I didn’t have a fake ID. I could barely remember where I put my real one.

  So I didn’t dare disobey the orders of the man in front of me. The lines snaked towards the lake, into which two docks jutted. One line was extremely long. The other was a bit shorter. He was pointing towards the shorter one.

  “Stay in your own line,” he growled. It was an order.

  I hurried wordlessly to the end of the shorter line, too frightened to utter another sound.

  It was only when I found myself standing behind a tiny, sweet-looking old lady that I tapped her on the shoulder and asked, “Excuse me, ma’am?”

  She turned around. She had the wrinkliest face I’d ever seen. She had to have been a hundred if she were a day. “Yes, dear? Oh, look at you. You’re all wet!”

  “I’m all right,” I lied. I was shivering so badly, my teeth were chattering a little. “I was wondering. Do you know where we are?”

  “Oh, yes, dear,” she said with a huge smile. “We’re getting on the boat.”

  I didn’t even know how to respond to that. Was this a dream? But if it was, how was I able to wring the water from my scarf and actually feel the drops as they squeezed through my fingers?

  “Where is the boat going?” I asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” the old lady said, with another sweet smile. “No one will tell us anything. But I do think it must be somewhere wonderful. Because look how badly everyone over there seems to want to get into this line over here.”

  She pointed at the longer line, a few dozen yards from ours.

  It was true. The people in that line, apparently having heard the same thing the old lady had, were almost rioting in an attempt to escape their line and get into ours. Some of the bald, tattooed men in the black leather coats were having to hold them back, like bodyguards at a rock concert trying to contain unruly fans.

  “Hey,” the guy in line behind me said. He was older than me, but younger than the old lady. Maybe in his twenties. “Can you get any service?” He was holding up his cell phone. “I can’t get any service.”

  I patted my coat pockets. They were empty. Of course I didn’t have my phone. This was usually how my nightmares went.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t —”

  That’s when I saw him. The tall man dressed all in black — black boots, black leather gloves, black leather coat — cantering towards the riot on a huge black horse.

  I recognized him at once, even though it had been so many years. A rush of relief surged through me. Finally, a familiar face.

  Maybe that’s why I didn’t hesitate — not even when I saw that everyone else had scattered, giving him a wide berth — to duck out of the line and head towards him.

  “Oh, dear, I wouldn’t if I were you,” the old lady called after me.

  “It’s all right,” I said over my shoulder. “I know him!”

  “Crazy,” I heard the guy behind me mutter (I had no idea at the time how often I’d be hearing this later). “She must be trying to get herself killed.”

  They hadn’t put it together. Neither had I.

  Not then.

  Not everyone is comfortable around horses, I told myself as I ran towards him across the sand. That’s why they, unlike me, were so afraid.

  And this wasn’t a horse like my best friend Hannah’s, Double Dare, whose comfortable placidity — he was starting to balk at even the smallest jumps — might have been one reason Hannah now preferred spending time on the
school basketball team, hanging out at the mall in hopes of catching sight of some of her older brother’s friends, or even going to nightclubs instead of the stables. Double Dare’s name was starting to become a bit of a joke. There was nothing daring about him anymore, really.

  This horse, on the other hand, seemed to be daring you just to look at him, let alone to come close.

  Which was probably why my doing so spooked him.

  All I said was “Hey” in an attempt to get his rider’s attention…just as he was shouting at everyone in the other line to stay where they were — an order they seemed cowed by the harshness of his tone into obeying.

  I had no idea such a brutal tone could come from the sweet man I remembered — the one who’d made a bird come back alive — from my grandfather’s funeral. I stood there paralyzed with fright…

  …until the next thing I knew, charcoal black hooves were slashing the air just inches from my head as the horse reared, snorting in outrage.

  Then I ducked, afraid for my life, throwing my hands over my face to protect my eyes. A second later, those enormous hooves came exploding down again, spraying bits of sand everywhere, and I was diving for safety.

  That’s when a noise like the loudest thunderclap I’d ever heard filled the cavern. I wasn’t sure if it was a real thunderclap or the sound of the horse’s body as it crashed onto the beach, one of its back legs having slipped in the sand beneath it.

  A male voice shouted something. When I looked up from where I’d crouched in an effort not to be killed, I realized the shout had come from the rider. He’d cried out the horse’s name — Alastor, as near as I could tell — and was kicking his boots from the stirrups as the horse scrambled back to its feet.

  It was only then that I realized — with a physical shock that jolted me nearly as much as the horse’s violent reaction had — that this was no nightmare. If it had been, I’d have woken by now. I wouldn’t be tasting sand in my mouth.

  And the man I’d met the day of my grandfather’s funeral wouldn’t have suddenly been standing over me, staring down at me with silver eyes that held not the slightest hint of recognition…or humanity.

  It was then that I noticed there was something — other than that awful voice — different about him. No, it wasn’t that he was different.…

  I was.

  I wasn’t seven anymore.

  But he was exactly the same as he’d been that day in the cemetery. The dark hair. The flashing eyes. The towering height — only he didn’t seem quite as much of a giant as he had then.

  How was any of it even possible, when so many years had gone by since the last time I’d seen him?

  “Are you all right?” he demanded in a voice that was somehow worse — louder and more authoritative — than the thunder that had torn through the cavern seconds earlier.

  “I — I guess,” I said, resisting the urge to jump up and run. My heart in my throat, I reached up to take his hand, allowing him to pull me to my feet. His skin felt tantalizingly warm and dry, considering my own was the exact opposite. “Are you all right?”

  He threw me an incredulous look, the glowing-eyed gaze seeming to rake me.

  “Am I all right?” he asked. “You could have been trampled. And you’re asking if I’m all right?”

  “Did he roll onto you?” I asked, nervously eyeing his horse, pawing the ground a few yards away, his bridle being held — barely — by one of the guards. The horse had to be at least part Clydesdale. And the rest devil.

  His owner did not appear to be the least bit interested in discussing any injuries he might have sustained during the accident I’d caused.

  “I’m fine,” he snapped. “But you need to learn to follow instructions. Do the words ‘stay in your own line’ mean nothing to you?” He released my hand to wrap his own around my upper arm instead.

  And the next thing I knew, he was dragging me back towards the line. Not the one I’d come from.

  The other one.

  I tried to say something. I did. But I think the shock of it all was finally beginning to take its toll. All I could do was stare. His eyes were the exact same color as the throwing stars a military client from Japan had given my father. When Dad first opened the box in front of me, the color of the blades had stirred a faint memory.

  It wasn’t until now I realized what that memory was.

  Him.

  “Don’t ever touch these,” Dad had warned. Like I’d even wanted to…until he said that.

  Then I’d had the strangest compulsion to pull one out from the special drawer in which Dad kept them, and throw it at the trunk of an old tree in our backyard. Dad had to use a pair of pliers to get it out, it was embedded so deeply. After that, he kept the blades locked in his office safe — except when he took them out to try throwing them at the tree himself, to see if he could make them stick the way I had. Which, to his consternation, he could not.

  Now, for the first time, I felt as if I knew where that compulsion to touch Dad’s throwing stars, despite his warning me not to, had come from.

  “Don’t bother looking up at me like that,” my captor warned me. “It won’t work. I’ve been doing this for a long time. I know all the tricks. And batting those big brown eyes at me won’t do a thing, I guarantee.”

  I blinked. Was he speaking to me? Obviously. I was the only person he was dragging around.

  Tricks? What was he talking about?

  I’m still not sure how I managed to formulate words, let alone a complete sentence, under that menacing gaze.

  But I suppose when you’re completely soaked, desperate, terrified, and alone, you realize you’ve got absolutely nothing else to lose.

  “I d-don’t know what you’re talking about,” I stammered. I couldn’t keep my voice any steadier than I could my shaking fingers. “I d-don’t know any tricks. I didn’t mean to upset your horse. And I’m sorry if you got hurt. But I needed to speak to you —”

  “It’s too late,” he said woodenly, looking straight ahead. “And I’ve heard all the excuses I can take today. Once my decision is made, it’s final. I don’t make exceptions…not even for girls who look like you.”

  “I understand,” I said, even though I had no idea what he was talking about. What decision? And girls who looked like me? I imagined I looked totally pathetic, in my soaking-wet clothes. My hair was probably hanging in rat’s tails. Was that what he meant? “But that’s not what I wanted to —”

  The other line — the rowdy one — was growing closer. I didn’t like the look of it one bit. There weren’t any sweet old ladies in that line. No one there was trying to get their cell phone to work.

  Instead, people were throwing punches and pulling hair, trying to break past the guards to get into the other line.

  Things got even worse when, a second later, a horn sounded. A ferry — as big as the one my parents and I had taken to Martha’s Vineyard one summer, huge enough to fit hundreds of people and their cars — was chugging through the water towards the dock closest to the line in which I used to be standing.

  A ripple of anticipation spread across the cavern. The din grew almost unbearable. Someone from the rowdy line managed to break free, then darted directly across our path, causing me to lose my already unsteady balance. My captor had to throw a protective arm around me to keep me from falling.

  “I’ll take her place,” the man from the line was yelling, “if she’s coming over here!”

  One of the guards caught him before he got very far and dragged him, screaming, back.

  “But it’s not fair,” he shouted. “Why can’t I take her spot?”

  The stranger from the cemetery, having watched all this, looked down at me.

  “Where did you come from?” he asked suspiciously.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” I said, my eyes filling with tears. “Don’t you remember me?”

  He shook his head. But his grip on me had begun to loosen.

  “It’s me,” I said. I
hated the fact that every time we met, I was crying. Still, maybe it would help jog his memory. “From the cemetery on Isla Huesos, the day of my grandfather’s funeral. You made a dead bird come back to life —”

  His entire demeanor changed. The hardened glint disappeared from those gray eyes. Suddenly, they were as gentle as they’d seemed the first time I met him.

  “That was you?” Even his voice had changed. It sounded almost human.

  “Yes,” I said, smiling despite my tears. I could see I’d gotten through to him at last. Maybe — just maybe — everything was going to be all right after all. “That was me.”

  “Pierce,” he said. I could practically see the memory flooding back. “Your name was…Pierce.”

  I nodded, the tears coming so fast I had to reach up and wipe them away. “Pierce Oliviera.”

  My name on his lips sounded so nice in that horrible place. The fact anything at all seemed familiar when around me, everything was so awful, was more wonderful than I could describe. I had to restrain myself from throwing my arms around him. After all, I wasn’t seven anymore.

  And he was no longer the kindly uncle he’d once seemed, doing magic tricks with doves.

  Which was why I was keeping my distance.

  “I think there’s been a mistake,” I said when he let go of me to reach into his coat pocket and pull out one of the palm tablets all the guards had. He was looking up my name, I could tell. “That’s why I’m so glad I found you. I really don’t think I’m supposed to be here. No offense, but this place…” — the words tumbled out before I could stop them — “whatever it is, it’s horrible. Do you run it or something?”

  I had the feeling he did, but that didn’t stop me from insulting his management skills to his face, a bad habit I’d picked up from my dad, who’d never had any compunction about sending back a steak or a bottle of wine he didn’t like.

  “Because it could really use some updating,” I went on while he was still reading whatever it said on his tablet. “There aren’t any signs or anything saying where we are or when the next boat is leaving, and I don’t think all of us are going to fit on that one over there, and it’s really cold in here, and no one can get any cell reception, and” — I took a step nearer to him so the guards wouldn’t overhear what I said next, even though I was pretty sure, what with all the loud protesting going on behind us and the clanging of the anchor chain as the boat docked on the other side, I was safe — “those guys organizing the lines? They’re very rude.”