Kissing Midnight

by Rede, Laura Bradley

  Her expression softens, as I knew it would. “Yes, of course. I simply mean you seldom hit the same place twice.”

  I reach up and run my hand through my hair, sending down a flurry of snow. “It’s been over a century since I’ve been here, so it’s safe to say my trail has grown cold. It’s not like anyone will remember me. I told you, I want familiar hunting grounds, a home court advantage. Besides,” I smile, “I wanted to be close to you. I may need the restaurant as a setting. Can’t I ask an old friend for help?”

  She sighs, exasperated. “I’m trying to help you, Deveraux! I’m giving you good advice. Choose an easy girl!”

  I’m suddenly tired of this. I drop the smile. “And I’m trying to tell you that you have to let me work.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “No buts,” I say. “Stay out from under my feet.” I knew it might be a risk, involving An. Ironic though it may be, she has always been jealous of my “midnight girls,” as we call them, my special New Year’s dates. She’s always had a thing for me, in spite of the fact that she knows where we stand: Demons like her are fun in the off-season but no use to me when it counts, and I can’t let her jealousy cloud my vision.

  “Anathema, how many years have you known me?”

  She rolls her eyes. “Too many to count.”

  “And in all that time, have I ever judged wrong?”

  “No,” she admits slowly, “you haven’t.”

  “And in the centuries before we met? Did I ever choose the wrong girl?”

  “No, but—”

  “No. Because if I had, I wouldn’t be here, would I? Where would I be?”

  She lowers her gaze to the frozen ground. “Dead.”

  “Yes, dead, with my immortal soul in Hell. But I’m not in Hell, am I? I’m in New Hampshire. And that’s where I’m going to be when the sun rises on New Year’s Day. Why? Because I’m not stupid, Anathema. Because I’m not a total ass.”

  “Of course not.” She lowers her gaze and forces an apologetic smile. “Forgive me, Deveraux. Of course you know what you’re doing.”

  I wait a beat before I let the smile come back to my lips. “Thank you for your confidence.” I turn and keep walking toward the dorms that will be my home for the next few weeks.

  An glances over her shoulder to make sure no one’s watching. Then she flicks anxiously through each of her forms, the big black wolf and the raven and the snake flashing past before she settles again on the cat. “I’m a hunting animal, too,” she says, “I understand the need to trust your instincts.”

  “Exactly.” My gut is all I have to go on, right? Even if I can’t explain quite what it is that draws me to that particular girl. Even if I can’t explain exactly what it is about her that makes her stand out.

  I shake off An’s concerns. I can’t let her nerves infect me. I have to stay on my game, and it doesn’t pay to over think.

  I’ve never been wrong before, and I don’t intend to start now.

  Chapter 3

  Jesse

  Did that girl just actually make eye contact with me? I’m staring at her as if I’m the one who has seen a ghost. Man, she’s beautiful: petite, with warm brown skin and long black hair and big, deep-brown eyes.

  Eyes that looked right at me. Eyes that actually saw me.

  Just the thought is enough to make the hairs on the back of my neck tingle and my palms sweat. It happened, right? I replay the moment in my mind: She looked up and noticed me and our eyes met and she held my gaze for a full heartbeat before her friend interrupted us and she turned her attention to the guy.

  Is he her boyfriend, I wonder?

  Not that it matters.

  Okay, Jesse, get a grip. She might not have seen me. Maybe she just happened to look where I was. Maybe I imagined the way our eyes met. Maybe I’m finally going nuts after all this time.

  Or maybe…

  I try for the zillionth time to brush my bangs out of my eyes so I can see her better—and, I remind myself, so I look okay when she sees me. I mean if she sees me. The thought makes me so nervous, I actually look down at what I’m wearing to make sure I look okay, which is ridiculous because it’s not like what I’m wearing ever changes. It’s the same old sneakers, the same worn jeans, the same red-and white striped T-shirt under the same denim jacket with the pins I used to like before I got sick of them: Baby Dyke and Lesbian Avengers and Riot Grrl. My hair is the same choppy mess it has been since I cut it myself in a moment of half-drunk desperation, with the scissors I stole from the library. Man. It’s almost enough to make me wish the girl couldn’t see me at all.

  Almost.

  I really need to know if she can see me.

  Do I just go talk to her? How awkward would that be? “Hi, I know your friends probably can’t see me, but I wondered if you might want to chat? Maybe do coffee some time?” No. I can’t put her in that position. Does she even realize what I am? What if I freaked her out?

  I have to find a way to test it out, to see if she really can see me, and I have to do it when she’s alone.

  I come up with a dumb little plan, and I step outside the student union to wait.

  And wait. And wait. What’s taking her so long? I see the guy emerge and head toward the dorms, but the girl isn’t with him. (Does that mean he’s not her boyfriend? Not that it matters.) Then, a while later, her friend with the blond braids comes out and heads in the opposite direction. But what happened to my girl? (I mean, not my girl. The girl who saw me.) Is she still in there? Did I somehow miss her when she came out? I wish I had looked at the clock tower (even though I usually try to avoid looking at it) just so I would know how long she had been in there. Should I go back in and try to find her? Try to talk to her?

  I’m just about to when the door opens and the girl steps out.

  I stare at her like I’m trying to memorize her, like she’s the one who might suddenly disappear. She’s wearing a puffy blue jacket and jeans and boots and there’s a book bag slung over her shoulder. She’s walking right toward me, but her eyes are on the ground, and I can’t tell if she can’t see me or if she just isn’t looking.

  I smile.

  She doesn’t smile back.

  My heart sinks. Maybe I just imagined that she saw me before. Or maybe she saw me, but it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I mean, once in her lifetime, not mine. Obviously.

  But I’m not ready to give up yet.

  I take a deep breath and step directly into her path, bracing myself for the strange, warm rush that always happens when a living human steps through me.

  But that feeling never comes. Instead, the girl stops short, looking up suddenly so her dark eyes meet mine. She’s standing right in front of me, close enough to touch.

  But of course I don’t touch her. If I did, she would know what I am and that would screw up everything.

  So I just say, “Sorry.”

  “Oh,” she says, “No worries.”

  I’m afraid to move, afraid to even blink. Her breath rises between us like smoke in the cold air. I want to say something else—something, anything, just to keep her here for another second, just to bask in the light of being seen. Why did it never occur to me to plan for a moment like this?

  Because I had given up hope it would ever happen.

  And now I’ve let it go on too long. Reluctantly, I step to one side to let her pass, but she steps that way, too. I shift to the other side—just as she does, too. Like we’re dancing.

  We both laugh awkwardly, the way ordinary people do when they do stuff like that. Then I turn to the side and make what I hope is a gallant gesture like after you, my lady. She ducks her head with a shy smile and steps deliberately past. The wind whips her dark hair and she reaches up to push it out of her face and I catch a glimpse of something on the inside of her wrist: a tiny black heart.

  My own heart is pounding. The whole encounter has taken like five seconds, but it’s five seconds I’ve been wanting for the past twenty years.

  I watch he
r walk away. I like the way her long hair swishes when she walks. God, why am I such a sucker for femmy girls?

  Turn around, I think to her. Look at me one more time. Let me look at you. I’m high on her glance, giddy with eye contact. I walk a few steps in her direction, carefully putting my feet in the tracks she left in the snow. I wish she’d lie down and make a snow angel just so I could lie in her print.

  Now I’m just being ridiculous. Jesus, Jesse, don’t be a stalker.

  I just wish she would turn around and smile.

  But she just keeps walking, and in a second I’m glad she didn’t turn around because, if she did, she’d see the guy behind me walk right through me.

  Chapter 4

  Saintly

  “Saintly!” Someone grabs me by the shoulders and shakes me hard. I wake up with a gasp, shoving the hands off of me and sitting straight up in bed.

  Delia is standing over me, dressed in her nightshirt, the one with the cartoon owl. Her blond hair is sticking out in all directions, and her pink satin sleep mask is perched on the top of her head. She stares down at me, her face full of concern. “You were having a nightmare.”

  “Was I?” My mind is fuzzy. My pulse is racing. I try to untangle myself from the blankets wound around my legs like a trap. “Sorry I woke you.”

  “No, I’m sorry I shook you, but I heard you whimpering and you sounded really upset and you wouldn’t wake up when I called your name.” She pushes my feet out of the way so she can sit down on the foot of my bed. I tuck my knees under my chin to give her room. She lowers her voice. “Was it about your brother?”

  “No,” I say quickly. “It had nothing to do with him. I followed this woman. She wanted to show me a door…” I shake my head. My memory of the dream is confused. I grab at details like threads, but the more I tug at the memory the faster it unravels.

  And maybe that’s okay. Maybe I don’t want to remember. The feeling of the dream still hangs around me, like a damp fog, heavy and foreboding. I tug the covers up higher and try to stop the shivering.

  Delia bites her lip. “I know it’s none of my business, Saint, but do you think you’re having nightmares because they took you off the meds? Maybe you should talk to Dr. Sterling about it.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” I say quickly. “I have an appointment this morning.” I look away from Delia, hoping she’s too tired to read the guilt on my face. The truth is, I have no intention of suggesting Dr. Sterling put me back on the meds, not after it took me so long to persuade him to take me off them. And I had to go off them, I remind myself. I couldn’t go into finals week wrapped in a haze of medication. I had to be sharp for the sake of my grades.

  “You promise?” she says. “You’ll talk to him?” Delia looks exhausted. It’s partly the fact that it’s six a.m. on a Saturday, but I know it’s more than that, too, and it makes me feel even more guilty. Delia isn’t really made for worrying about other people. For most of our friendship, I was the one who worried about her.

  “It’s no big deal,” I lie. “Go back to sleep.”

  She watches me, her head tilted to the side. “Are you sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure.” I fake a smile. “It was just a stress dream. Anxiety left over from exams. No big deal.”

  She nods slowly. “If you’re sure.” She stifles a yawn as she stands. “I’m going back to bed.” She pads across our tiny dorm room and crawls back under her covers. She starts to pull her sleep mask down but hesitates when she sees me swing my feet over the side of the bed. “Where are you going? It’s the butt-crack of dawn.”

  “My appointment with Sterling is early.” I don’t bother to point out that by “early” I mean about three whole hours from now. I know there’s no use trying to go back to sleep. “I want to get a shower and breakfast first.”

  Delia nods sleepily. “I’ll see you at lunch, then.” She tugs her sleep mask over her eyes and is already drifting off again as I gather my clothes and towel and slip out into the silent hall. “Sweet dreams,” I whisper over my shoulder as I ease the door shut behind me. At least one of us should have them.

  I spend the next twenty minutes trying to scrub the dream off of me. Instead, it comes drifting back in fragments, and by the time I get out of the shower, it has more or less reassembled itself in my mind. In spite of the hot water, the memory of the dream makes me cold. I try my best to ignore it as I throw on my sweater and jeans, dry my hair quickly and tug it into a ponytail. The cafeteria is the only place on campus open this early on a Saturday, so my feet take me there automatically.

  But I can’t quite make myself eat. My mind is on my meds. I knew it was a risk going off them, particularly so close to the holidays with all their emotional stress, but they were screwing up my concentration, and I couldn’t afford to blow an exam. But what if going off them was a mistake? I can’t risk going back to the way things were.

  No, I decide, it’s too soon to panic. By the time I’ve finished my coffee, I’ve decided to forget the nightmare. After all, it would hardly even sound scary to anyone else, and it was only a dream. It’s not like it’s leaking into my waking life.

  Not this time.

  I dawdle over my uneaten breakfast and by the time I leave the cafeteria, groups of students have started to trickle in. I know better than to look for Delia—she’d never get up so early on a Saturday—but I can’t help looking for Dev.

  Which is silly, of course, because it’s not like I’m into him. He’s clearly a player, and I have no interest in being played. Besides, Delia’s into him, and she always gets what she wants.

  No, I’m just making sure he has someone to sit with, you know, being new here and all.

  Although, who am kidding? A guy who looks like that will always find someone.

  Eventually, I decide I’ve lingered long enough, so I pull on my hat and coat and head out into the cold. Campus is the quietest I’ve seen it: Everyone is either gone for the holidays or still in bed. Dr. Sterling’s office is just outside of campus—one of the only things that made my mother agree to me going to Fitzgarren—but I take a round-about route, wandering past the shops with their holiday sales signs posted in the windows and the Christmas lights strung on their awnings. I hoped that seeing the decorations would lift my spirits, but I’m jittery with something more than the coffee and the December cold is starting to sink into my bones. I’m relieved when I look up at the clock tower shining above the rooftops and find it’s almost nine. Time to head to Dr. Sterling’s.

  “Mariana Santos?” The receptionist smiles at me from behind the clean lines of her glass-topped desk.

  “Yes,” I say, “For Dr. Sterling.” Why do I always talk so quietly here, as if I think I’m in church?

  She checks my name off on her computer. “Make yourself comfortable, Mariana, and Dr. Sterling will be with you shortly.”

  I nod and go to hang my coat on the silver coat rack and take a seat on the sleek black couch. This isn’t one of those awful waiting rooms like the one at Westgate, with the cracked chairs made of molded plastic that make you feel like you’re in a bus station. Dr. Sterling’s waiting room looks like it has been scientifically designed to induce relaxation, although it never has that effect on me. The furniture is sleek and minimalist, the walls painted a color that’s probably called “Serene Sea” or “Calm After the Storm.” The magazines fanned across the glass coffee table are all The New England Journal of Medicine and Art and Design and Antique America. I have a feeling I am the youngest person who ever comes here.

  I bet I am also the craziest. I think most of Dr. Sterling’s clients are what my psych professor calls “the worried well.” I, on the other hand, have problems.

  The door to the therapy room opens and Dr. Sterling steps out. Reflexively, I stand, as if he’s the judge at my trial—although Dr. Sterling could not look less judgmental if he tried. He’s dressed casually, a black suit jacket over a grey T-shirt and expensive-looking jeans, his tanned skin setting off the silver of his ha
ir and the blazing white of his teeth. Dr. Sterling’s name fits him so well, I have to wonder if he made it up. Do therapists have noms de psych, I wonder, like writers have noms de plume? I can just picturing him free-associating to come up with it: sterling, silver, born with a silver spoon, sterling reputation…Maybe he did make it up himself. Maybe he needed it so crazies like me couldn’t stalk him.

  “Mariana, how are we?” He shakes my hand as he always does when I arrive. He has a confident handshake, warm and firm, and he keeps maximum eye contact. I bet he studied handshakes at a conference. Probably in Hawaii.

  Why do I always over-analyze everything when I come here?

  “I’m fine,” I say in a tiny voice.

  “Good, good.” He steps back and gestures me through the door. “Shall we?”

  What would happen, I wonder, if I said, “No we shalln’t” and walked out the door? Would he call my mother in Mexico City? Probably. I’m here under doctor’s orders, after all. My mother let me come to Fitzgarren only because Dr. Sterling agreed to take me as a client. That and the fact she really needed to get away from me.

  So I follow Dr. Sterling into his office. It’s painted in the same soothing colors as the waiting room—pale grey carpets, shiny black desk. The only thing that breaks with the pattern is the couch, which is round and deep red and squashy. I can imagine Dr. Sterling advising the decorators. “I’d like the walls done in Tabula Rasa and the couch in Return the Womb—and put it in the center of the room so all the focus is on the client.” I wonder if rounded edges are meant to be less confrontational, if they’ve removed all the corners the way they take sharp things away from you at Westgate. Aside from the couch, the room is furnished mostly in books, lined up neatly by height on the built-in shelves. Artfully interspersed are the artifacts of Dr. Sterling’s travels. Although he doesn’t actually believe in the supernatural (he has made that very clear) the doctor appreciates the symbolic significance of ritual statues and ceremonial vases. The empty eyes of three ebony masks watch me from the nearest shelf.