by Morgan Rae
I rush outside, jump off the patio, and make my way to the car. All the windows are open and my three roommates look like they’ve packed all of everything they’ve ever owned into the car . It’s a wonder how they all fit in there.
“Hey!” I greet them and lean in the passenger side where Maya is sitting. I dip my head in to take a look at the damage. “Holy cow, how is the car even moving right now? Are you sure you’ll make it to the airport in one piece?”
“As long as it gets us to the airport, we’ll be fine,” Maya says. She’s beautiful with coffee colored skin, hair that comes to her shoulder in perfect curls, and her giddy smile plumps out her cheeks.
“Arrrh, this is a mighty Honda ship,” Chelsea, roommate #2, growls from the driver’s seat. “She’ll fair well.”
I lean in Maya’s side window. “Where are you going, Ireland or Pirate land?”
“Come with us!” Keira, my third and final roommate, chirps from the back. Keira is trapped against suitcases and sleeping bags and I’m not sure how she’s ever going to get out. She’s got these big, begging eyes on, I know that trick. I practically wrote the book on that trick. It’s hard to say no to someone with wide, soft eyes.
“Would if I could,” I say. I shift my weight and tap a foot against the sidewalk distractedly. “You know that.”
Maya still looks reluctant. She takes my hands in hers and squeezes them. “Promise me you really have things to do and you’re not just bailing so you can lock yourself in your bedroom and read.” She’s my mom friend, the one I can trust to tell me when I don’t actually need another glass of wine. She doesn’t mince words around me, so I’m not surprised that she sees right through me.
“I promise,” I say. “Seriously. I’d claw my boss’s eyes out to come with you if I knew it wouldn’t land me right in jail.”
I’m lying, of course. My boss is the most easy-going human being on the face of this earth. Hell, if he knew this job was standing between me and the potential trip of a lifetime, he’d fire me on the spot just so I could go (and then promptly rehire me as soon as I got back, of course).
This “trip of a lifetime” is something my roommates have been planning for months. The plan was that we would all pool our money together and use it for a month-long trip to Ireland. Keira has family there, so the plan was to stay with them in Shannon, hop over around Southern Ireland, and then swing by Scotland for a week. They made plans to hike the Cliffs of Moher, get drunk in Dublin, and visit at least ten different castles.
Everyone made plans, cleared their schedules, and bought the plan tickets. Everyone but me.
I blamed it on my job, told them I couldn’t possibly get a month off. I even convinced myself for a while and trudged bitterly around the restaurant, as though it were a heavy ball and chain around my ankle. Truthfully, waitressing isn’t the reason I’m staying. I’m staying because bad things happen outside. I’m staying because it’s hard enough to leave my house in the morning, let alone leave the country.
I’m staying because experiencing the real world from the comfort of my 12-inch TV and my three hundred-page book is far safer than taking an adventure outside. You can’t put a price on safe.
As if she can read my mind Maya says “Bad things don’t happen to people just for leaving the house, Kennedy.”
I want to agree with her, but she’s wrong. Bad things happen to people who leave the house all the time. Bad things happened to my parents when they left the house, got mugged, got shot, left for dead. So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut would say. We lived in a good neighborhood, too. Nice people. Everyone knew each other. No one locked their car doors. That’s how I remember my childhood, a lot of unlocked doors. I don’t make that mistake any more. I lock all my doors, all my windows, and check them periodically through the night. I understand that that’s a little OCD of me, but it helps me sleep at night. Bothered my foster parents to no end when I was still living with them, though.
That’s foster parents. Plural. I bounced around a lot after my parents died. First lived with my aunt, then went into the system when she couldn’t take care of me, followed by Foster House #1, Foster House #2, and Foster House #3. It’s not that I was a bad kid. I didn’t get into fights, I didn’t lash out at my foster parents, I even did okay at school (all A’s in English Lit, at least). I was just spacy. Didn’t belong. Didn’t fit in. That’s how they put it. We just think you aren’t a right fit for this family. It seemed like I was a wrong fit for everything for a while. Wrong fit for a boyfriend, wrong fit for a steady job, just a wrong fit. I was like Cinderella’s wonky shoe on the ugly stepsister’s big, fat foot. If there was somewhere I belonged, it wasn’t there.
My current housing situation with Maya, Keira, and Chelsea is about the closest I’ve gotten to comfortable in a long time. They all get along. They all have interesting lives, interesting jobs, interesting boyfriends. I’m like the house ghost, a voyeur in their lives who occupies all the comfy corners with a book in hand, rarely venturing out and certainly never dating. It’s gotten to the point where, if I’m in a room reading, my roommates will walk in and out, make dinner, watch TV, or talk on the phone without ever realizing I was there. I do a lot of reading in my room now. Saves the embarrassing conversation when someone walks around the house naked because they think they’re alone.
Still. They’re good girls. To them, I’m an awkward duckling instead of a haggard nuisance. I’m truly, seriously flattered that Maya is trying so hard to get me to go on this trip with them.
“Are you sure?” Maya says, stretching out the word sure so she can sleep well knowing that she gave me every opportunity to say yes. “Last chance to change your mind and hop in the car with us. We’ll buy the ticket at the airport. We can share pajamas.”
Admittedly, part of me wants it. Who wouldn’t? Ireland! Rolling hills! Guinness! Hot Irish men! Kilts! I repeat! Hot Irish men in Kilts!
But then there’s that other part of me, that dark, nagging part of me, that wakes-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-to-check-all-the-lock part of me, that knows I won’t go. I can’t. I would get on the plane and have a full-blown panic attack. Or I would get to Ireland and miss my own door. A month without my bed and books. Unimaginable. My nerves wouldn’t survive.
It’s not like I want to be like this. I hate my fear. I hate how it constantly pushes me into the wings of life instead of giving me my chance to shine on the stage. Even now, when I know my response, my guilt is sharp and dagger-like in my heart. I’ve let down my friends. I’ve let down myself. Again.
But there’s nothing I can do about that now. I smile through the pain. I’ve gotten scary good at that.
“Bring back a hot Irish lad,” I say in my best, botched Irish accent. “I’m living vicariously through you, so. Do it. Do it for us.”
Maya grins and leans through the car window to hook her arms around my neck. It’s an awkward angle to hug, but we make it happen, and I squeeze her back tightly. “Take care of T-Bone for me,” Maya says.
Right. T-Bone. My little furry four-pound boyfriend for the month. That little Yorkshire Terrier is Maya’s pride and joy and she’d tar and feather me and drag me through Old Salem old-school style if anything ever happened to her precious fur-baby.
“I’ll take good care of him,” I say. “I promise.”
The packed Honda pulls away and Chelsea gives a few farewell honks on the horn. I linger outside for a moment, just until the bright blue car vanishes around the corner. I’m happy for them. Really. I’m thrilled for the adventure they’re about to embark on. They’re all going to have fun, and, if Maya really wants it, she’s going to come back with an Irish boyfriend, too. She’s just that suave. She can pull off anything.
Me? There’s a crushing sensation around my heart. I want to rip off my period-style apron and chase them down the street, screaming, “Wait! You forgot something!”
I sigh and pull myself together. I try to take my mind off of it. T-Bone will
need to be walked when I get home. I have the house to myself. I could finish reading my book tonight. I still have twenty-four chapters to go, but what’s life without a little challenge?
CHAPTER THREE: KENNEDY
I close up at The Tavern and Sean says something about the code of a Southern Gentleman and walks me to my car. By time I get home, my feet are sore and I’m beat. I’ve been standing all day, carting large plates of food back and forth from the kitchen and holding onto a too-wide smile the whole time. Everything aches. I could use a warmth bath, with bubbles. A glass or ten of champagne. A hot, muscular man to press his thumbs into my knotted muscles and melt all the tension from my body.
It’s a nice fantasy, but it’s not for me. I come home to a needy dog instead, who jumps around and nips my feet. The house is devoid of humans, and I maneuver my way through the freshly overturned piles of clothes and junk. It’s a disaster zone and I can only imagine my roommates going through each room, throwing their belongings on the floor and searching for that one thing that they knew they were going to forget to pack until it was too late. If I know them at all, Maya will have everything she needs, Chelsea will have left something at home but will learn to live without it for a month, and Keira will freak out when she realizes she’s missing her very specific brand of moisturizer and will Amazon Prime it all the way to Ireland.
I flop down on our beaten up navy blue couch in the living room and let out a groan as the lumpy cushions push and prod my sore muscles. T-Bone does a couple happy circles around my feet and then scrambles up onto the couch beside me and licks my hand frantically.
“Hey, little pal,” I say and give his soft head a rub, which makes him fall to his back and expose his tummy for more pets. He’s incredibly spoiled with four women to one dog, so I give him a little extra attention. A post-it note on the table catches my eye. It’s attached to my sketchpad, which is filled with elaborate, fantastical drawings. The post-it notes has Maya’s handwriting and the words: NO MORE EXCUSES!!!
A grin tugs the corner of my mouth. She’s referring to what was supposed to be our passion project. Maya, the writer, was going to write a children’s book that I would illustrate. Then we’d send it off to some big publishing house in New York and see what happened. That was the idea, anyway. Maya, of course, finished writing in three days flat. Me? Well. I have too much work. I have no time. I have no peace and quiet at the house. I have no inspiration. I have a million and one excuses.
Maya’s right, of course. I have the house to myself for a full month. No more excuses. I have to get this done.
You know. Eventually. I let my head fall back and close my eyes for a second. I’ll clean the house, I’ll get all my primary sketches for the book, I’ll conquer the world, just after I have one second…
I don’t mean to fall asleep, but I do. When I sleep, I dream. For the first time in a long time, however, it’s not a nightmare about the man who killed my parents coming to get me and finish the job. As paranoid as I know that sounds, especially since the man is question is currently behind bars for life, it’s a reoccurring nightmare, one I wake up sweating from pretty frequently.
But this is different. In my dream, I’m in a wide, open field. Blue sky curves above me like the top of a snow globe. I’m not alone. The man with me is tall, broad shouldered, built like a quarterback. Not my type, even though I can’t help but appreciate the muscles that ripple down his abdomen like the swells of a sea. His hair is long, longer than mine, streaked and sun-kissed and it flows down his shoulder blades in one flawless sweep. His skin is toffee brown, probably equally as sweet, and it makes my mouth water to think about trailing each mark with my tongue. Marks. At first I think it’s a tribal tattoo that licks up his body like white flames, like war paint, but then I realize that the white marks are glowing, pulsing with an energy wholly their own.
This doesn’t scare me. Somehow, I find myself drawn to him. I’m memorized by the energy, the life, inside of him. I’m memorized by his eyes; they’re dark, a deep brown that seems to go on forever, like the bottom of a well.
He grips my arm, pulls me in close, and closes his mouth over mine. I feel his kiss throughout my whole body. It vibrates through me like one long note. My toes tingle, my face gets flushed, and I feel myself opening up like a rosebud at daybreak, dewy and sun-warm. I cling to his warm chest, where he’s strong and dappled with hair, and I part my lips for him. When his tongue intrudes, prodding the inside of my mouth, I feel it as though it’s down there, too. He draws a slow, languid lick over my tongue and I feel the friction on my swollen, wanting labia. When his teeth nibble the swollen curve of my bottom lip, I feel that, too, in my most sensitive places and my little pleasure-bud is close to bursting.
I’m aching, a full-body hunger, and when he puts his hands on my shoulders and draws back, putting space between us, I want to cry. I’m vibrating on some precipice and push myself forward, hunting for some kind of relief.
But those eyes are on me now, deep and intense. “My Goddess,” he says. His voice is a low, thunderous sound. “Wake up.”
“Please,” I beg him. “Don’t go.”
“You have to wake up. You have so much to do.”
“I don’t want to. Please.”
I feel him fading. I reach for him and my hand catches nothing but air. Out of the abyss, he finds me, and catches my face in his hands to pull me in for one last kiss. The press of his lips hooks me in and reels me tight. I’m a live wire of humming, tightening, throbbing sensations and I fall into his mouth.
CHAPTER FOUR: KENNEDY
T-Bone wakes me with a few slobbery licks. I groan, shove him off the couch, and shove my hands between my legs. I’m pulsing and aching. I clamp my thighs together and whimper as a shudder runs up and down my body and I try to will it calm. Some dream. I nearly came in my dream, but now I just feel feverishly achy and wound tight, like a spring.
I’m not the only one who needs relief. T-Bone hops off the couch, runs to his leash, and then runs back and looks at me. He stomps all four feet, impatiently. He’s less than five pounds and fully aware that he runs this house.
I comply. I pull myself together, catch my breath, and put on some loose sweatpants with small yellow ducks on them. I snap on T-Bone’s harness and snatch up my house keys. We go clattering outside and T-Bone’s nails scrape across the cement walkway as he makes a mad dash for the green bushes in my front yard and squats.
My place is in a gated community outside Salem, part of a small, cozy neighborhood of stone-build and high arched houses. It’s far above my pay grade, but between the four of us women, we manage to pull it off.
T-Bone stops to sniff every dandelion and growls at a grasshopper. “Be nice,” I chastise and tug at his leash. It’s barely a pull, the smallest of yanks, but as soon as I tug, the leash snaps off the collar. T-Bone decides he needs to attack something in the distance and before I can stop him, he goes running down the street, barking and yapping the whole way.
“T-Bone!” I shout. “Stop!”
This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening. Panic cinches in my chest and I run after the little dog. I shout his name again, but he doesn’t listen. The stubborn dog is so single-minded, he darts through people’s yards and down the street.
I chase him down a side street trying desperately to close the gap. I can hear his tiny nails clicking against the pavement and his collar jingling. Fear thickens the lining of my throat and speeds the pulse of my heart. I can’t lose him, even if it would be so typical of me.
Typical Kennedy, I hear my subconscious chastising. That dog was the only thing you had to take care of, and you couldn’t even do that right.
I see the bundle of fur bounding down the dark alley, as long as I hold him in my sights, I’m okay. As soon as the thought runs through my head, T-Bone, the troublemaker, turns and vanishes behind a garbage can.
By time I catch up, I’m panting. I’m woefully out of shape. Foster Mom
#3 used to call me “skinny fat.” I could never seem to gain weight, but I never toned myself out, either, leaving me in an awkward in between. Unable to outrun a four-pound dog.
I expect to see him behind the garbage can, but he’s not there. There’s something else entirely.
Logically, I know the building in front of me is made up entirely of brown and red bricks. However, when I look behind the trash can, I see a rectangle of pure white light, glowing from the wall. I should be surprised, shocked, even, paralyzed with fear. But I feel strangely calm. The out of the ordinary never seemed very out of the ordinary to me. Books always felt more real than reality anyway and this looks like something straight out of a J. K. Rowling novel. I try to put my hand on the glowing light, but my hand goes straight through. There’s nothing solid there. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t feel warm or cold. It doesn’t feel like anything.
It suddenly occurs to me that T-Bone is in there. The little fur-ball tumbled right through this…what? Light door? I’m now faced with two options. I can go back to my house, hang my head, and admit that I lost the dog and I am incapable of taking care of anything and everything. Or, I can walk through the light-door and find the little brat.
This is insane, I think to myself as I push my hand through again. I watch my fingers disappear first, then my hand, and then my wrist. I’m losing my mind. I’m dreaming. This is an incredibly vivid, strange dream…
I stick my foot through the light and lose my balance, falling straight through, falling, falling through vast emptiness.
CHAPTER FIVE: GAROCK
Leyana returns to camp to keep an eye on our tribe and set watch for any Selith. I walk with her, but turn off the main road as we get closer to the highlands. My feet follow a familiar path over the lolling hills and the thick grass grazes my ankles as I move forward.
The Wylah Spirit Tree glistens in the pre-dawn sunlight. A low, heavy midst hangs over the mountain lands, dampening everything it touches. Morning dewdrops laces the wide tree with golden reflections of sun. The Wylah tree is old, its trunk thick and knotted, and its branches span out wide before they drip down, low enough for the tips of its leaves to graze the ground.