Illusions

by Aprilynne Pike

  “You what?”

  “We took care of it,” Tamani said, putting his hands out to calm her. “I just don’t want you to think I’m hiding anything from you. Honestly, it’s probably better that we’ve found them now.”

  “Why?” Laurel asked, hesitant to believe that.

  “Because it means we’ve actually seen one. We hadn’t seen any in months.”

  “But everything’s okay?” Laurel said, almost sarcastically.

  “It really is. We’re still on high alert, but I don’t want you to worry. Anyway, that’s not what I came here to say,” Tamani said apologetically. “I just wanted to talk. It’s been a while.”

  That was true; Laurel had been avoiding him all week. Because he’d kissed her, and she didn’t want to talk about it. Because David didn’t like him. Because he was looking at Yuki the way he used to look at her.

  When she didn’t respond, Tamani shoved his hands in his pockets and kicked at the lawn. “So how did everything go today?”

  “Fine, I think I did well.”

  “Good.” He paused. “Have you done any more experiments? Maybe with the globe?”

  Laurel sighed. “No. I think you’re right that I should try the phosphorescent on my skin first. But I keep putting it off because then I won’t have any more excuses before I have to clip a bit off my blossom like I originally planned. You probably think I’m a wimp. I mean, you bit your tongue open and I’m scared of clipping my petals.”

  “No, you’re fine. You’ll figure something out,” Tamani said, sounding distracted.

  Laurel nodded. She didn’t know what to say. She was about to come right out and ask Tamani what he wanted when he blurted out, “There’s a dance at school next Friday.”

  A twisted sense of déjà vu descended; Laurel was surprised to discover she preferred the tense silence. “You may not know the tradition, but it’s girls’ choice,” she said quickly. “That means you really shouldn’t be asking me. The girl is supposed to do the asking.”

  “I know,” Tamani said bluntly. “I wasn’t trying to ask you.”

  “Oh,” Laurel said, half wishing the earth would just open up and swallow her whole. “Well, good.”

  “Yuki asked me.”

  Laurel couldn’t say anything. She shouldn’t have been surprised. In fact, Yuki probably only just beat a huge line of girls all waiting to pounce.

  “I just—” He was silent for a long moment and Laurel wondered if he would finish his sentence. “I wanted to come and ask you,” he finally continued, “if there was any reason I shouldn’t accept.” Then he looked up at her with pale green eyes that shone in the setting sun.

  No—the light in Tamani’s eyes was much more than a reflection. It was the fire that melted her anger and devastated her resolve, every single time she saw it. She blinked and forced herself to look away before it blinded her.

  “No, of course not,” she said, trying to keep her tone light. “You totally should go. I mean, this is what we’re supposed to be doing, right? Figuring out Yuki?”

  “Yeah, absolutely,” he said. The defeat in his voice nearly brought Laurel to tears. “Actually, I thought it would be great if me and Yuki and you and . . . and David . . . could all go together. Maybe finally bridge that gap between you and Yuki. And it’ll be night, so I’d feel better if I could be close to you. In case anything happened.” He smiled sadly. “It’s my job, you know.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Laurel said, suddenly desperate to get into her house. “Let’s all talk Monday. Maybe we can bring Chelsea and Ryan too,” she added, tacking on David’s original plan.

  “The more the merrier; that’s what you guys say, right?” Tamani said, laughing weakly.

  “That’s right,” Laurel said. “Hey, I have to go. My parents don’t even know I’m home yet,” she added with a smile.

  “Sure. You better go.”

  Laurel nodded and turned, heading back to the porch. She pushed the door open and had just stepped in when Tamani called out again.

  “Laurel?”

  She caught the door before it closed. “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry. About . . . when I came over. That thing I did. I was out of line.”

  “It’s okay,” Laurel said, swallowing back her emotions. “I learned something about . . . you know. So that was lucky. We’re still friends.” She smiled as best she could. “Have a good night, Tamani.”

  “You too.” Tamani smiled back at her. It was not a very convincing smile.

  Chapter Fifteen

  WITH THAT, LAUREL WENT FROM AVOIDING TAMANI because she was mad at him to avoiding him because talking to him was awkward and confusing. But the plan for the dance was made, and Laurel had a job to do. She stopped by Chelsea’s house the next week, feeling guilty that she hadn’t been making enough time for her best friend lately. She apologized profusely and blamed the SATs.

  “So you think you did better?” Chelsea asked brightly.

  “I do,” Laurel said, still half in awe at just how much easier the test seemed after studying properly. “And I’m going to do it. I’m going to apply to some colleges.”

  “I think it’s really great, Laurel,” Chelsea said, her tone strangely off.

  “Really?” Laurel said, prodding a little.

  Chelsea looked up at her, a smiled pasted on her face. “I do. David’s totally right about the options thing.”

  “Options are good, but it would be easier if I just knew,” Laurel said. “You’ve known exactly what you wanted to do since you were, what, ten?”

  Chelsea nodded and then, to Laurel’s surprise, burst into tears.

  “Chelsea!” Laurel said, rushing over to the bed and hugging her friend, who was hiding her face in her hands as she gulped for air between sobs. “Chelsea,” Laurel said more gently. “What’s going on?” Empathetic tears sprang to Laurel’s own eyes as Chelsea continued to cry. After several minutes she took a deep breath and laughed as she began to scrub the heels of her hands across her eyes, trying to dry them.

  “Sorry,” she said. “It’s stupid.”

  “What is?”

  Chelsea waved aside Laurel’s concern. “Man, you have so much to deal with right now, you don’t need to hear about my little issues.”

  Laurel put both of her hands on Chelsea’s shoulders and waited for her to look up and meet Laurel’s eyes. “If the world was ending tomorrow there would be nothing more important than listening to your problems,” Laurel said, her voice steady and strong. “Tell me.”

  Chelsea’s eyes teared up a bit again. She took a deep breath and rubbed at her reddened lids. “Ryan got his SAT scores back a couple weeks ago.”

  “Oh no, do they suck?”

  Chelsea shook her head. “They’re pretty good, actually. Not as good as mine, but even David’s aren’t quite as high as mine.”

  Laurel smiled and rolled her eyes. “Then what’s the problem?”

  “I was in his room the other day—he had to go downstairs and talk to his mom—anyway, the printout of his scores was sitting on his desk. And I may have been snooping a little and I looked at his college profile and—” She hesitated. “He didn’t send his scores to Harvard.”

  Harvard was Chelsea’s first choice of schools—she’d wanted to go there since she was in grade school. Everyone knew that. Everyone. “Maybe there just weren’t enough slots,” Laurel said, trying to reassure her friend. “The SAT people only do like, four automatically, right?”

  “He put down two,” Chelsea said morosely. “UCLA and Berkeley. He didn’t even try and send them to Harvard—I mean, I always knew we might not go to the same school, but he said he’d at least apply!”

  Laurel wanted to offer some encouragement, but she didn’t know what to say. She remembered Chelsea telling her that she and Ryan had agreed that they would both apply to Harvard and UCLA, then wait and see what happened with acceptances. Ryan had apparently changed his mind. “Did you . . . ask him about it?” Laurel finally asked. “Maybe
he just didn’t want to let his parents know he was planning to apply to Harvard. You know how pushy his dad can be.”

  “Maybe,” she said, shrugging.

  “You should ask him,” Laurel said. “Come on, you guys have been dating for more than a year. You should be able to talk about stuff like this.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to know.” Chelsea refused to meet Laurel’s eyes.

  “Chelsea!” Laurel said with a grin. “You are the ultimate proponent of brutal honesty!” She paused and giggled. “Proponent. That’s an SAT word.”

  Chelsea raised one eyebrow. “Seriously. If our relationship is going to end soon anyway, maybe I’d rather not know how early he knew. And if he’s just doing it to appease his dad, maybe it’ll be a good surprise.”

  “Maybe,” Laurel said. “But is it going to eat you up inside if you don’t know?”

  Chelsea grimaced. “Apparently.”

  “So ask.”

  They sat in silence for a while and Laurel marveled at how effectively worrying about someone else’s problems stopped her from worrying about her own. Even if only for a little while.

  “Hey, Chelsea,” Laurel said softly as an idea began to form in her mind. “Are you busy tonight?”

  “Now?” Chelsea asked.

  Laurel glanced out the window. “We’ve got an hour if we hurry,” she said, slipping into her sandals.

  “Um, okay . . .”

  They headed down the stairs and Chelsea yelled to her mom that she was leaving for an hour. Her mom yelled back that it was spaghetti night and to please be back in time for dinner. Laurel had rarely seen a conversation take place in Chelsea’s house that didn’t involve yelling. Not angry yelling, but the kind of yelling that happens when everyone is rushing around and can’t take the ten seconds that would be required to stop what they are doing and get close enough to hear the other person talk in a normal tone of voice. Then again, in a household with three boys under the age of twelve, yelling probably was a normal tone of voice.

  “So where are we going?” Chelsea asked as she pulled her seat belt across her chest.

  “Yuki’s,” Laurel said.

  “Yuki’s?” And after a pause, “Are we going to spy on her?”

  “No!” Laurel said, although she knew the question was entirely rational. “I thought we could go pick her up and take her to Vera’s.”

  “For . . . smoothies?” Chelsea asked. Vera’s blessedly nondairy blended fruit drinks had made it Laurel’s favorite whole foods store.

  “Yeah, sure,” Laurel said, flipping on her turn signal as she approached Yuki’s street. “Klea wants me to keep an eye on her, Tamani wants me to keep an eye on her. I was thinking we could all go to that autumn dance together.”

  “So we show up on her porch out of the blue, kidnap her, feed her frozen fruit, and ask her on a date. Genius,” Chelsea said sarcastically.

  “I’ll buy you one of those carob chocolate truffles you like so much,” Laurel said with a grin as they pulled up in front of Yuki’s house.

  Chelsea clapped her hand over her heart, melodramatically. “Using my love of chocolate against me. I have no choice but to crumble like a . . . chocolate cookie. Or whatever,” she said when Laurel eyed her. “My metaphors suck. Let’s go.”

  Yuki’s house was about the size of Laurel’s garage. It was set back from the road and mostly hidden by two shaggy elm trees growing at the front of the walk. According to Aaron, Yuki was almost always there alone, but so far nobody in the neighborhood had made a fuss. It was possible they simply hadn’t noticed.

  If so, they were a lot less nosy than Laurel’s neighbors.

  They rang Yuki’s doorbell, which could be heard clearly through the flimsy front door and single-pane windows. Despite Klea’s claims that Yuki was here for her own protection, security didn’t seem to be a major priority.

  “I don’t think she’s home,” Chelsea said in a whisper.

  Laurel nodded toward the bike Yuki sometimes rode to school. “Her bike’s here. And I don’t think she has a car.”

  “That doesn’t mean she didn’t go for a walk,” Chelsea countered. “She is . . . like you.”

  Laurel sucked in a breath and held it for a moment. “Okay,” she said. “Obviously this isn’t going to work.”

  “Do I still have to go to Vera’s?” Chelsea asked as they turned.

  The click of a deadbolt made Laurel look back. She suppressed the urge to smooth her khaki skirt and straighten her hair. Yuki’s face appeared in a narrow crack in the doorway and she stared in obvious surprise for a moment before opening it all the way.

  “Hi,” Laurel said, trying to not sound too chipper. “Are you busy?”

  “Not really,” Yuki said warily.

  “We were going to Vera’s and thought you might like to come along,” Laurel said with what she hoped was a welcoming smile.

  “The grocery place?” She didn’t look any less nervous. If anything, she looked more suspicious.

  “They make really great fruit smoothies. Nothing but frozen fruit and fruit juice.” Laurel wondered if describing the smoothies in detail was too weird. “They’re so good! You should come.”

  “Um.” Yuki hesitated and Laurel could tell she was looking for a way to say no.

  “I’ll drive,” Laurel said helpfully.

  “Yeah, okay, I guess,” Yuki said, mustering a smile that didn’t look entirely fake. Laurel could only imagine how lonely it must be for Yuki, staying here all by herself. Laurel had seen her talking to a lot of different people in the hallways at school, but Aaron assured Laurel that no one ever came to Yuki’s house.

  “My treat,” Laurel said, stretching her arm out toward her car.

  Yuki stayed quiet on the drive over as Laurel and Chelsea tried to keep the conversation going, talking about the psychology class they had together—which proved duller than actually sitting through the class. At least once they got to Vera’s they would have food to put in their mouths to excuse the silence.

  After everyone selected a dessert, they sat outside at a table with an umbrella that did nothing to block the setting sun—just the way Laurel liked it.

  “This is really good,” Yuki finally said, with a hint of a smile.

  “I thought you’d like it,” Laurel said, scooping up a small spoonful of her mango-strawberry slush.

  “So,” Chelsea said, obviously trying to be conversational, “what’s school like in Japan?”

  Yuki looked suddenly bored. “Pretty much like here, but with uniforms.”

  “I hear you guys have cram schools and super-long hours and stuff. Your friend, um, June? He’s really smart.”

  “Jun,” Yuki corrected, softening the “J” and making Chelsea blush. “I don’t really know him. And I never went to juku. A lot of us never do.”

  “Tell us about you, then,” Laurel interjected.

  Yuki shrugged, glancing away. “Not much to tell. I like to read, I drink way too much green tea, I do ikebana, and I listen to music from the seventies that no one has ever heard of.”

  Laurel laughed. She and Chelsea both knew there was so much more to Yuki than that, and Yuki knew it too. But Yuki didn’t know how much Laurel knew, and she didn’t know that Chelsea knew anything at all. It was like a supernatural “Who’s on First?”

  “What’s ikebana?” Chelsea asked, pronouncing each syllable carefully.

  “Flower arrangement. Artistic. You’d probably find it dull.”

  Flower arranging? Laurel thought, sitting up straight. She wondered if that could possibly be a euphemism for some kind of faerie magic—but it could just as easily have been a sign that Yuki was as drawn to nature as any other faerie.

  “No, it sounds interesting,” Chelsea said, but it was clear that she had no idea what to say next.

  All three busied themselves with their food.

  “Oh, hey,” Laurel started. It was now or never. “Tama . . . uh . . . said you asked him to the Sadie Hawkins? Or Autumn Hop? W
hatever they decided to call it.” The posters going up around campus were confusing, to say the least. Laurel got the impression that someone in student government had looked up Sadie Hawkins on Wikipedia after half the posters were printed.

  Yuki nodded. “I did. How do you know Tam?” she asked, gazing intently at Laurel.

  “He, um, sits near me in Government,” Laurel said. “I was telling him how Chelsea and I usually double to stuff like this, and he seemed pretty interested. Maybe we could all go together?”

  “Absolutely,” Chelsea said, a touch of sarcasm in her voice that Laurel hoped Yuki didn’t catch. “I think that would be fascinating.”

  Fascinating? “Great. It’s a date, then!” Laurel said. “If that’s okay with you, I mean,” Laurel added, turning her attention back to Yuki.

  “Sure,” Yuki said, smiling at Chelsea now. She sounded totally sincere. Enough that it pricked at Laurel’s conscience. “I think it would be fun to do a group thing. Less pressure, you know. I mean, I don’t even really know Tam very well yet so . . . yeah.” Her voice trailed away.

  With a pointed glance in Laurel’s direction, Chelsea picked up her spoon, licked it, and said, “Well, I think he’s hot.”

  Both faeries looked studiously away.

  “Okay, seriously, what was that?” Laurel said, after dropping Yuki off following the rather painfully awkward half hour they’d all just spent together.

  “What?”

  “The ‘Tamani is hot’ thing?”

  Chelsea shrugged. “He is.”

  “The last thing I want to talk to Yuki about is Tamani.”

  “Why?” Chelsea asked, smirking.

  “Because she’s a faerie and I don’t want her getting suspicious,” Laurel said, almost nonchalantly.

  “Suuure,” Chelsea drawled. “What is up with you and Tam, anyway?”

  “Please don’t call him that,” Laurel snapped, knowing it was completely unwarranted. “His name is Tamani, and I know you have to call him Tam at school, but could you please use his whole name when it’s just us?”

  Chelsea sat silently, looking at Laurel.

  “What?” Laurel finally asked, exasperated.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Chelsea said seriously. “What is up with you and Tamani?” she said, stressing his full name.