Hidden Worlds

by Kristie Cook

  “I just don’t want you to get hurt!”

  “And how do you know Owen or whoever you choose wouldn’t hurt me?”

  “And how do you know Tristan isn’t just like James?”

  Ouch. That hurt and she knew it. She probably figured likening Tristan to James would be all it took to change my mind. It only made me angrier.

  “And I guess it’s impossible for Owen to be anything like James, since you know him soooo well.”

  She narrowed her eyes and kept her voice low but hard. “Owen is nothing like James. You can trust me on that one.”

  “But you can’t trust me with Tristan?”

  “No! I can’t!”

  I flinched. She dropped her head, pinching the bridge of her nose. After a long moment, she finally looked at me, concern filling her eyes.

  “It’s not you whom I don’t trust,” she said, her voice now soft. She took a few steps closer to me. “How well do you even know Tristan?”

  “Better than you do,” I spat. I groaned in frustration, though, because she had a point—after all this time, I really didn’t know Tristan at all.

  “I’m just worried about you.” The concern in her voice wiped my anger away.

  I sighed. “Do you want me to date or not?”

  “I think it’d be good for you to date. You need to come out of your shell. But I want you to date someone nice. Tristan . . .” She hesitated.

  “What?”

  She didn’t answer, but her meaning was obvious.

  “I just don’t want you to get hurt,” she said again. She wrapped her arms around my shoulders. I laid my head against her for a minute and then looked at her face, into her warm, brown eyes.

  “I’m willing to take the chance with Tristan,” I admitted and she frowned. “Mom, you know me. I don’t make friends easily because I don’t trust people—for very good reasons. James, for one. But I’m trusting my sense with Tristan and I feel that he’s different. I want to spend time with him . . . as long as he wants to spend time with me. I want to get to know him better.”

  “He’ll want to get to know you, too, honey. It’s not a one-way street.”

  “I will control who knows what about me . . . and you. It’s not like we’re going to get married or anything.” I chuckled at the thought of it ever getting that far.

  She didn’t find it funny. She stared at me for a long moment, pressing her lips into a hard line. Then she abruptly spun around and marched out of my room.

  “Even if he’s not like James, he will hurt you,” she said over her shoulder. Just before she ducked into her room, she added, “Just remember who you are, Alexis.”

  What the hell was that supposed to mean?

  “Why don’t you tell me who I am?” I yelled. I stared down the empty hallway, I guess expecting her to come back and explain. Or for the answer to magically appear. Of course, neither happened.

  I spun around and kicked my bag in frustration. A notebook slid out and several loose papers scattered across the floor, including my research notes. I picked them up and glared at them for a long moment, blaming them for everything—not them specifically, but the mystery of who I was. It seemed to be at the heart of everything wrong with my life.

  I finally balled up the stupid papers and stuffed them in my desk drawer. I didn’t need them anymore. The ideas were absurd and a waste of time. The research was only useful for my writing.

  ***

  I couldn’t sleep. Mom and I didn’t argue frequently and I hated it when we did. She was my best friend, the only person in the world I could trust. I stopped trying to make friends in middle school, when everyone turned on everyone else so easily. I was an easy target—the perennial new kid who just wasn’t quite normal. Even if they didn’t know my quirks yet, they knew there was something different and were quick to poke fun and spread rumors. But Mom was always there for me, with a comforting hug and a shoulder to cry on when the kids were especially hurtful. I could talk to her about anything. Well, almost anything. Our history was the only taboo subject. Until now.

  And I really wanted, no, needed, to talk to her about Tristan. It didn’t look likely that would happen any time soon, though. Especially after she’d brought up James—and compared Tristan to him! Not that I hadn’t thought about it before.

  James . . . I shivered under my comforter. Not with chills, but with renewed anger.

  It was the last time I’d shared anything with anyone besides Mom. I should have known better, but I was fifteen and naÏve. I’d experienced enough kids taunting me, but James was different . . . so I thought. He didn’t give any particular bad vibes, but I became more attuned to my sixth sense later . . . after him . . . because of him.

  He seemed genuinely interested and unusually friendly and somehow finagled out of me nearly all of my secrets. Although all the girls talked about him and would do anything for him, I wasn’t ready for anything more than friendship. But that’s not what he had in mind. On the last day of school, I let him take me to a party and learned that he only saw me as an insecure girl who would respond to the first guy who paid her any attention. His mood—his whole demeanor—changed as if, by pushing his hand away when he made his first move, I had hit some kind of switch.

  “You’re really rejecting me, Alexis?” he seethed. “After I accepted you, you’re rejecting me?”

  I felt like I’d been slapped. I had misunderstood every single kind gesture from the very first smile. He just wanted in my pants. Blood rushed to my face with a mix of embarrassment and anger. I stormed through the house, looking for an escape.

  “You thought I’d sleep with you?” he shouted as he followed me out of the house, dozens of people following him to witness my shame. “Did you think I’d feel sorry for you because you’re such a damn freak?”

  I’d heard that one before. I could even get over whatever damage his twisted words had done to my insignificant reputation. But he continued and I spun around in disbelief as he aired everything I’d confided. My body trembled. My hands balled into fists. I could barely breathe. He ranted, sauntering closer to me as he did.

  “Your own dad didn’t want you! Ditched you before you were even born. Probably knew you’d be a freak. And your mom . . . well, she’s hot, but she must have been thirteen when she had you. And with all the boyfriends . . . she’s just a fucking whore!”

  The next thing I knew, my right arm pulled back and, like a slingshot, flew forward. My fist jammed into James’s nose with a crunch.

  We moved the next day. Not because we ran away from my humiliation or a potential lawsuit or battery charge, but because when I hit James, he sort of flew about fifteen feet backwards, bowling over a group of witnesses—I had more power in my punch than was normal for a fifteen-year-old girl. Actually, more power than a grown man. I wasn’t usually so strong, not like Mom. But I had never been so raging mad either.

  That last betrayed trust set the final layer of blocks in the emotional wall I built around myself. There had been others like James, but I’d learned my lesson and shut them down without ever giving them a chance. I just couldn’t take the risk of that humiliation again. But now here I was, with another interested guy. There was a difference, though: the feeling was mutual. I just didn’t know how smart that was.

  ***

  I awoke at 8:04. Crap! Class started in less than an hour.

  Thank God it was Friday. I had the whole weekend to study for mid-terms, get them over with on Monday and then, since I had no Tuesday classes, I had the rest of the week off for fall break. That meant lots of time to write.

  I rushed around the house, relieved Mom had already left. I had nothing to say to her and no time to say it. I rushed to school and to women’s studies. I finally relaxed when I saw Tristan and his warm smile waiting for me. All of my worries and hurriedness washed away into peace as soon as I sat down next to him. With the mind-nudge gone, he now had some kind of calming effect on me. So I was surprised at what Carlie had to say that aft
ernoon. We ran into each other in the bathroom, right before our team was meeting to prepare for Monday’s mid-term.

  “Tell me if it’s none of my business, but are you and Tristan going out or something?” she asked while I washed my hands and she primped.

  “Um . . . no.” I watched her reflection in the mirror, trying to understand where she was going with it. Does she like him?

  “Okay, good.” Her deep-blue eyes showed relief.

  So that was a yes. A tinge of jealousy pricked my heart. But then she shocked me.

  “Because he’s kind of creepy, don’t you think?”

  “What?” I suppressed a surprised chuckle. Tristan creepy?!

  “I don’t know what it is. I mean, yeah, he’s really hot. Drop-dead gorgeous, actually. But he’s just . . . I don’t know . . . different, somehow.”

  I wanted to laugh. I was so concerned about how unusual I was and she thought he was different.

  “Something just bothers me about him,” she continued. “I think it’s something about his eyes, in his eyes.”

  Like the sparkle? I like that sparkle!

  “He’s always been really nice,” I said in a lame attempt to defend him.

  “So you do like him?” She peered at me, and then made a face. I didn’t know what to make of it.

  “Just as a friend,” I lied.

  “Oh, okay. Personally, I would stay away. He just seems a little . . . dangerous. And you seem so nice.” She smiled at my reflection, then fluffed her short, blond curls with her hands.

  “Thanks for the, uh . . . heads up.” I didn’t know what else to say, so I left for the group.

  I had a hard time focusing on our studies because I paid more attention to the interactions among our team members. Everyone’s body language seemed cool toward Tristan. They didn’t sit too close to him and held their bodies turned slightly away. They talked to him and laughed at his jokes, but not quite as warmly as they did with each other. Do the others feel the same way Carlie does?

  I studied Tristan, trying to look at him with a fresh perspective, trying to see what they might see. But I saw and felt nothing . . . except his beauty, his laughter, the lovely sound of his voice, the kind tone it held when he spoke to any of us, the intelligent remarks he made when we actually discussed the exam, the sparkle in his eyes when he smiled . . . . He caught me looking at him and winked. And, yeah, there’s that—the way my brain went pleasantly woozy when he winked.

  I barely remembered leaving the study group and driving home, still pondering Carlie’s remarks and everyone’s behavior toward Tristan. Carlie thought there was something dangerous about him and she hardly knew him. Mom took one look at him and didn’t like him. Am I missing something?

  Knowing I couldn’t concentrate on studying or writing when I arrived home, I went for a walk. I meandered along the streets without paying attention to where I went, wondering why I just couldn’t sense what everyone else seemed to notice. Are my alarms broken? Or is everyone else just wrong about him? And if they’re right, why do I feel pulled to him, like a magnet to its opposite?

  A familiar voice brought me out of my internal wanderings. I looked up and, with mild shock, found myself at the city park, bordering the north end of the Cape’s beach. It was a small park, with a playground to my left and the beach just a few yards beyond it, a parking lot that could hold about twenty cars to my right and basketball and tennis courts straight ahead. An old banyan tree, pines and palms shaded the area where I stood, sunlight filtering through their leaves. A group of guys played basketball, talking smack to each other, and Tristan was in the group.

  I snorted. I thought I’d been walking aimlessly. So how, of all places I could wind up in Cape Heron—Fifth Street, my usual beach, the library, the ice cream shop, all within four blocks of our cottage—did I end up here, nearly a mile away from home? Right where Tristan was? Talk about a magnet being pulled . . . .

  I told myself I was being ridiculous. I told myself to turn around and go home. To listen to my mother. To trust her sense of truth. But how could our senses be at such odds? Of course, she never said she felt the truth about Tristan hurting me. Not so specifically, as she usually did when she was relying on her sixth sense. And I did know what my sense told me: his intentions were good.

  With that thought, I did what any sensible young woman would do. I hid behind the banyan tree and watched the basketball game.

  I quickly realized there was only one other person on Tristan’s team and, to my surprise, it was Owen. I shouldn’t have been too surprised—this was a retirement town and half of the Cape’s young set was probably on that court. Although the teams weren’t even, two against five, it was obvious Tristan and Owen were winning. They were good. Really good.

  I watched for about five minutes and the game ended. When no one on the other team wanted to play another game, Tristan and Owen decided to play each other. Before they started, Tristan took off his shirt and tossed it to the side of the court. Oh. My! Naturally, I continued watching.

  It said a lot about Tristan’s playing ability that it drew my attention away from his chiseled chest and six-pack abs. Now that no one else was around—or so they thought, they still hadn’t noticed me—Tristan and Owen really got into the game. They seemed to be trying to one-up each other as they sped up and down the court, now talking smack to each other, and they were even better than they let on while playing the other team. And Tristan was noticeably better than Owen. It was unreal watching him. He was always at the other end of the court faster than seemed possible. His shots often made the ball a blur. And when he jumped . . . how could anyone jump so high or so far? Sometimes Owen did something nearly as incredible.

  Owen made a three-pointer and Tristan grabbed the ball and shot it from under Owen’s basket, the one closest to me. I watched with amazement as the ball sailed across the court and swished into the opposite net.

  Then they both froze with their backs to me.

  The ball bounced toward the side of the court. They ignored it as they turned in my direction, both in a guarded stance. Oops. I hadn’t realized I’d been creeping closer, watching them in awe, and now I was caught. When they saw me, they both looked like they’d been caught doing something wrong.

  Tristan was the first to relax. A warm grin lit his face.

  “Alexis,” he said, walking over to the chain-link fence surrounding the court.

  I felt myself relax, too. I had frozen when they had. Since they knew I was there now, I took a few steps closer.

  “Hey,” I said stupidly.

  “What’s up?” Owen asked, now at the fence, too.

  “Um, nothing. I was just taking a walk and saw you guys playing.” I felt like an idiot now, like I’d been caught spying or stalking. Why had I stayed?

  “Been watching long?” Owen asked. He glanced sideways at Tristan. Something in his tone made me feel even guiltier.

  “No, not really.”

  “Oh, too bad. ’Cause I was just smokin’ Tristan here,” he said with a laugh, his tone suddenly lighter now.

  “Ha! In your dreams, ya scrawny scarecrow,” Tristan teased. I couldn’t help my smile. Although his sleeveless shirt proved Owen wasn’t exactly scrawny, his blond hair stuck out everywhere, so he did look somewhat like a scarecrow.

  “C’mon, moose!” Owen ran for the ball and dribbled it between his legs. “We got a game to finish.”

  “You’ll stay?” Tristan asked me.

  “I should be heading home. It’s a long way back . . . .”

  “Please?” He smiled. “You can watch me make hay of the scarecrow.”

  I laughed. “All right, for a while, I guess.”

  I sat on a small stand of bleachers and watched as they finished their game. It wasn’t nearly as fascinating as it had been earlier; they seemed to be holding back now. By the time Tristan hit forty points, their cut-off, I’d convinced myself of what a fool I’d been, thinking there was even a chance to be more than just frie
nds with him. So I hopped off the bleachers, waved at them and headed for the beach, the quicker way home. As I stepped onto the sand, I glanced over my shoulder. They both walked in the opposite direction, toward the parking lot, confirming my doubts. After all, if he had any interest, wouldn’t he have called me back over? Yep, I’m such a fool.

  “You filthy slut!” a gruff voice snarled, catching my attention.

  A man dressed in grease-stained jeans and a t-shirt, a younger woman in a bikini and a small girl, also in a swimsuit, were coming off the beach. His hand gripped the woman’s upper arm as he dragged her toward the parking lot. Loaded with a bag and beach chair, she obviously had a hard time keeping his pace. The girl, maybe six or seven, ran after them, stopping frequently to pick up the plastic sand toys she kept dropping.

  “Please, honey,” the woman begged, “you’re hurting me.”

  “Good! You deserve it. You need to get some damn clothes on.”

  “But we’re at the beach.”

  “Doesn’t mean you need to be flauntin’ all ya got! You’re a married woman!”

  I watched the ground as they crossed my path. Though they were in public, I felt like an intruder. I pretended not to notice the squabble as it heated up behind me and picked up my pace to distance myself, but the voices only became louder.

  “Shut the hell up, bitch!” the man yelled.

  “Daddy, no!”

  I automatically turned at the girl’s scream. The woman lay on the ground, staring wide-eyed at the man, who held his fist in the air as she held her hand over her jaw. The little girl dropped her toys and ran at the man. And as soon as she was within arm’s reach of her dad, the woman was suddenly between them, taking another blow.

  The anger built inside me as I watched with horror.

  “Daddy, stop it!” The little girl tried to grab her dad’s thick arm.

  “Don’t hurt her, Phil,” the woman begged from the ground. “Please don’t hurt her.”

  Phil raised his hand again. I don’t know who he meant it for, but his intentions didn’t matter. As he swung, his daughter threw herself at him, taking the smack in the shoulder. She crumpled to the ground next to her mother.