A striking woman approaches us. Beside me, Abel Porter stiffens. Curious, I study the woman carefully. She is old enough to be my mother. Her eyes are green; not as deep and clear as Abel Porter’s, but sharper and paler. Her hair is black. Knowing that his family live abroad I wonder at the similarities between him and the woman. Perhaps they are superficial only. Her features are thin with strong cheekbones that could make her look arrogant or beautiful depending on the stroke of her lips. At the moment those lips express nothing. She looks bored. I suspect that it is a practiced look.
“Who is your friend, Porter?” she asked as she drew near. She stood provocatively; like a model waiting for the click of a camera.
“A tourist,” Abel Porter said dismissively.
It very nearly made me cry.
“Are you going home, Arabella?”
Arabella, whose name was as unusual sounding to me as my own, studied me a moment before she answered. Her piercing gaze did what Abel Porter’s eyes never did. They looked right through me. I didn’t feel like I was real to her.
“Yes. Open the door, Porter,” she said, then flashed another look in my direction, “then you can come back to your tourist.” Her smile made her look like a vulture. The cheekbones that could have made her beautiful, look like gaunt lines.
I’m distracted from what is said next because Abel Porter leans forward and I catch his scent in the air. He smells like rain.
You know that scent when the rain first falls after a long dry day? In some places that smell is rarer than in others. I love the smell of rain. Even before Abel Porter. I’m mentally adding it to my list of all things wonderful about him when I realise that he’s talking to me.
Focusing on the words I find that he’s told me he’ll be back in a minute. They’re both looking at me. Abel Porter has a crease in his forehead. I think it’s concern. Arabella’s toothy grin is still predatory. Like she’s going to be blackmailing me in a minute. I dislike her intensely. Her smile grows like she’s reading my mind.
I nod and they leave.
Abel Porter almost always takes people in through the door that says 1810 above it. He follows this protocol with Arabella and in a moment I make my decision.
One more time, I tell myself. One final time I’ll stalk Abel Porter and see what happens inside the souvenir shop. Part of me argues that I shouldn’t but I can’t ask him what he’s doing so I follow instead.
My life is like that. I’ve followed, because somewhere in the back of my mind I know that there’s a road I should be taking. I think, maybe, if I follow where someone leads I will find it. Don’t we all follow someone or something, hoping to find the road we’re meant to be walking down?
Entering the Emporium I spot them headed towards the rear of the store. Arabella and Abel Porter don’t look back. They open a door and head through it. It closes quickly. I hurry after them, moving past shelves of knickknacks and postcard stands.
There’s a sign on the door. EMPLOYEES ONLY.
I stop. I’ve never broken a rule in my life. My hands clench into fists and I feel nausea building in my stomach as I contemplate doing just that. It’s a mental battle that barely lasts a second. When I open the door, nobody calls out to me, so I slip through it.
On the other side is a corridor leading to a hidden courtyard. I can see a garden with shrubs and roses and ivy on the walls. It’s a riot of colour and form which makes it difficult to spot the two I’d followed in. I head closer, heart beating in my chest so loud that I am sure they must hear it.
I pause in the arched opening to the secret garden. They’re standing by a pillar wrapped in green leaves and the reddest blooms I have ever seen. The plant, I think, is a clematis, but I’ve never seen one exactly like it before.
Arabella is holding a cupped hand towards Abel Porter and he’s reaching into it when quite suddenly she’s gone. Literally vanished into thin air. There one moment as real as anyone, then gone like she’d never been there at all.
“What the funk?” I say aloud without meaning to.
Abel Porter doesn’t spin around in surprise. Instead, he simply says, “Well, now you know,” like he’s always been aware of me. Since the beginning. Since the very first day I started to stalk him.
Which, in retrospect, maybe means that Abel Porter was a little freaked out and I was too obsessed to even notice. Just a side note in case you take up stalking.
Deep breathe, back into madness. Not literally…figuratively speaking, of course. It’s not that I hadn’t considered madness as a possibility. You don’t start stalking a boy without wondering, just for a minute, if you’re going nuts. Still, I had never hallucinated anything before. I was pretty sure wondering if you were insane meant that you weren’t but that could just be pop psychology 101. You Google it and tell me.
Still plenty confused, I stepped into the secret garden and towards Abel Porter. The garden seemed more alive than vegetation usually does. It moved in an unfelt breeze, it glowed under patchy blue skies like it didn’t need the sun to thrive. It didn’t have a voice, but I could imagine a theme tune and it wasn’t one I could put a name to.
“What,” I said, “the,” because no other words were coming to me, “funk?”
I don’t swear a lot, but sometimes there simply are no words to express how you’re feeling. Swearing doesn’t express them any better, but it’s pretty cathartic. Like screaming, only less out-of-control and more adult-ish.
“World,” Abel Porter said, “blown?” He’d used no swear words, mimicked my rhythm and been rather eloquent about it too.
If this were a horror story, and remember the bit where I said I was expecting doom, I’d be realising just about now that what Abel Porter had done to Arabella could just as easily happen to me. At the back of my mind, I was wondering if my long time summer crush was going to make me disappear for an encore, but it didn’t stop me moving towards him.
He wasn’t coming for me with a maniacal laugh. That probably helped.
Abel Porter is still waiting for an answer. I give him one when I stand in front of him. Perhaps I was daring him to do his worst.
“Wow,” I said.
If I’d known how he’d react to that single word, I’d have said it sooner.
He kissed me.
Want more? Demand more at www.jaimemunn.com/crow
—ABOUT THE AUTHOR—
Jaime Munn lives in a house with too many windows on the outskirts of Manchester, the city of immortal bees. He writes contemporary and urban fantasy stories. His novels blend the real world with his fascination for all things supernatural.
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That Moment When: An Anthology of Young Adult Fiction Page 68