Chosen

by Sarah Swan

  I veered off toward the side wall, where it was noticeably less crowded. And I was more than halfway there when, suddenly, through the cacophony of the crowd, I heard my name.

  “Tracy!”

  My heart froze. The voice was low and strong. It was powerful. I gulped. There was only one person who had a voice like that. Rob.

  Ever so slowly, I turned around, desperately trying to think of what to do. I had wanted to see Rob before, yes, and had even planned on what I was going to say to him. But, I wasn’t ready to do it now! Liz and the others could be anywhere among the people around me. If they saw me talking to him without their permission… it would end terribly for me.

  My eyes found Rob instantly. Even in the dark, he stood out. In fact, he did more than stand out. He dominated. As he walked toward me, the people in front of him seemed to flow out of the way. He towered over nearly everyone, and even if someone was taller, they could not match his sheer presence. Quickly, I scanned the room again, to see if I could spot Liz, or Madison, or any of the others anywhere. Thankfully, they were nowhere to be seen. And, even better, nobody that I could see was paying any attention.

  Rob smiled as he walked toward me. All I could do was stare dumbly at him. I knew I should move, or say something, or do anything. But neither my body nor my mind wanted to respond.

  “I’m happy you’re here,” Rob said in a way that almost made me feel he had been waiting for my arrival. But that couldn’t possibly be the case. Surely he had other, prettier girls he was interested in – and were interested in him. Liz came to mind, for one. Before I knew it, he bent down to pull me in for a hug.

  I wanted to resist, at first, lest any of the other girls see. But, that resolve quickly melted. His arms wrapped around me made me feel safe; sheltered, even. It was as if his presence could erase all my simple worries, and shield me from the evil and dangers of the outside world. Nothing could touch me. There was nothing to fear. The moment lasted a precious second, though. I instantly felt the loss as he straightened.

  “I…” I started to say, wanting to tell him that he shouldn’t be talking to me, that Liz was the one he should be around, but couldn’t find the words. Not with those eyes staring down at me. In the low light, he looked as good as ever. He had the same dark sweater on as when I’d met him earlier. Made of that paper-thin fabric, it clung to his body like a second skin. He felt good, too, as I knew from that split second when he embraced me.

  “Yes?” he asked, the corner of his mouth curving up in a knowing smirk. It’s like he knew of his effect on me, and knew of the trouble it had caused me, but did not care. I almost felt like he was daring me to tell him to go away, just so he could rebuff me by saying he wouldn’t do that. I knew that was ridiculous, of course – just a made-up fantasy created by my over-active imagination. I was just so struck by him, popping up completely out of the blue, that I couldn’t think straight.

  And his eyes were back on me. Even in the dark of the party, they seemed to soak up and reflect what little light there was. The effect of his strong gaze was strengthened by the fact that he hadn’t looked away once since calling out my name. He was looking at me expectantly now, waiting for an answer, but I couldn’t even begin to think of the proper thing to say. I could feel the heat rushing to my cheeks, and was glad that in the low light he wouldn’t be able to see me blush. I opened my mouth… and closed it again. I was completely frozen. This always happened when I was around a guy I liked, but with Rob the effect was magnified a hundredfold. I couldn’t look away. Those beautiful eyes had me mesmerized.

  Suddenly, Rob laughed, breaking my trance. He had a rich, deep laugh that echoed throughout the room. I only hoped Liz wouldn’t recognize it from wherever she was and come to investigate.

  “A ‘hello’ would be nice,” he said, eyes shining with mischief. “Aren’t you glad to see me?”

  “Yes,” I answered without thinking. Then, realizing what a horrible blunder I’d made, tried to correct myself. “I mean, it’s quite a surprise to see you here.” I looked away.

  “Is it?” He reached over to gently turn my head back toward him. I nearly died. The feel of his fingers on my chin made me even woozier than before. Whatever advantage I had recovered by tearing my head away from him was now lost. I was back at square one.

  He looked at me, and didn’t say anything. I could feel the seconds ticking by, but couldn’t figure out what to tell him. This was not a normal reaction I was having. There was no way a single guy could have such a strong effect on me. Nobody should ever be so helpless around a member of the opposite sex. And yet, no matter how hard I tried to rationalize, my emotions held me at their whim.

  “I mean no,” I said after the long pause. “I would have thought you’d be with Liz tonight, not by yourself. She is here, right?”

  “She’s off somewhere in the crowd,” he said dismissively, waving a hand toward the middle of the room.

  “But, uh… why aren’t you with her?”

  He chuckled, and took my free hand in his. Bringing it up so it was chest-high between us, he locked his fingers between mine. As much as I knew I shouldn’t let him do that, I was completely enthralled. “Listen,” he began strongly, “I don’t know what Liz told you, but there is nothing between us. Nothing.” He looked at me with brows furrowed, as if asking me if I understand. I nodded shyly. “Besides…” he said, taking a step toward me so that our hands were pressed against our bodies, “…I have my eye on somebody else.”

  I couldn’t look away. My heart was beating wildly in my chest, and I knew my palms were already sweaty. What was I to do? The warning Liz had given me seemed insignificant compared to the moment right now.

  “And,” he continued elegantly, “I was hoping that maybe she—”

  In the middle of his sentence, everything just stopped. Like a paused video. All the noise of the party was vanished. An eerie blue light showered the entire room.

  The moment lingered… and then fluttered back to normal. I was jolted into myself again. It felt as if… as if reality was catching up. The light was gone.

  Rob blinked and looked at me. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Did you see that?”

  “See what?”

  “The light!”

  “What light?” He looked around uncertainly. The strobe lights were flashing over the dance floor, but the effects of them weren’t strong enough to reach us. “What are you talking about?”

  I frowned. Maybe I had imagined it? “Never mi…” I started to say, but then it happened again. More strongly this time.

  The sounds of the party cut off as if I had turned deaf. The contrast left a strange ringing in my ears. But that wasn’t the scariest part. The neon light was back. I could see everybody coated in it. And, at the same time, I realized that everything simply stopped. Rob was in front of me, his mouth open in mid-sentence. He looked like a statue covered in the blue light.

  My eyes darted to the left.

  There, a girl who had jumped up at the moment the light came on was suspended in the air. Both her feet were frozen in space, her hair in wild disarray above her head.

  My eyes moved to the right.

  There, a group of guys stood in a circle. The one in the middle was holding a funnel above his mouth, and somebody else was pouring a beer into it. I could see the foamy pale liquid stream out of the can, except that it wasn’t moving. The beer had stopped in mid-air.

  I looked back at Rob standing in front of me. He hadn’t moved. That blue light had him completely enveloped. He was frozen. Everything was frozen. Time had stopped. The blue light covered everything.

  Behind Rob, at the far wall, I noticed a single door. It was closed, but through the cracks around the edges that blue light streamed out with more intensity than anywhere else. The room was the source of the light.

  I tried to move toward it, but found that my legs wouldn’t respond. That’s strange, I thought vaguely. Except I couldn’t say why it was strang
e. My thoughts were vague, fuzzy even. They felt like somebody else’s thoughts. I tried to move my head, to crane my neck around Rob, but it wouldn’t respond, either. I felt a very distant sort of panic bubble up inside. It wasn’t my panic. It was someone else’s. I tried moving my arms. But, they wouldn’t go anywhere, either. Focusing all my energy on the hand with the solo cup, I willed it to come up. It wouldn’t respond. Time had stopped, for everyone and everything – except my mind.

  Chapter Ten – Behind the Door

  As suddenly as the blue light had come on, it disappeared. Instantly, all the sounds of the party came roaring back.

  The hand I had been trying to move jerked up so strongly that it smashed into Rob’s elbow. The drink in the solo cup flew out, and spilled over the entire front of Rob’s sweater. Somehow, none of it got on me.

  “Hey!” Rob exclaimed, staring down at his shirt in shock. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Sorry,” I muttered quickly, not really knowing or caring what he thought. All I knew at that moment was that I had to find out what was behind that door. I pushed past Rob. I had eyes only for the mysterious doorway.

  “This was my favorite shirt you ruined, you bitch!” Rob cursed behind me. Vaguely, I heard him yelling some other obscenities, but none of it registered. The only thing that mattered was reaching the door.

  I had to push my way through a throng of kids. This time I had no problems doing so. My mind was singularly focused on getting to that door. I didn’t know what was behind it, but I felt an unconditional… pull toward it. I felt no fear, although I knew that something inexplicable had just happened.

  It was even darker by the door than anywhere else. I fumbled blindly for the handle. When my hand finally caught it, I twisted it to one side, and pushed the door in.

  What I found inside was not at all what I expected.

  A single light bulb flickered off and on, giving off a pale yellow hue – not the blue light that I had seen before. And, illuminated by that flickering light, I found all the girls I had met that morning standing in a tight circle.

  None of them noticed me when I came in. I shut the door behind me.

  “What happened in here?” I asked. At once, five faces turned toward me. There was Madison and Zoe, Eve and Ann, and Jo. All the girls but Eve wore a look of pure terror on their faces, but even the tattooed girl looked quite distraught.

  “Oh my god, Tracy, I’m so glad you’re here!” Madison exclaimed, grabbing my hand. I yelped as she pulled me toward the others with such force that my arm nearly came out of its socket. Then I saw what she was so eager to show me.

  Past the row of girls, slumped over against the far wall, lay Liz. She was unconscious, and looked as ragged as a beat-up scarecrow. Her cheeks were hollow. The color had drained from her face. Even her beautiful, perfectly sleeked hair was disheveled and splayed out of position. I could see her chest rising and falling, thankfully, but even that looked weak.

  “What happened to her?”

  “She had too much to drink,” Eve told me coolly. “I warned her to watch her liquor, but she never listens to me.”

  “Is that all?” I asked, uncomprehending. At the small parties I’d gone to back home, I had seen some kids pass out from drinking too much. But Liz looked like she was on death row. This was no ordinary binge. “Did anything else happen?”

  “No,” Madison said, her blonde hair waving as she shook her head vigorously.

  “What about the light?” I asked. From the blank stares I received, I might as well have been asking if they’d ever been to the moon.

  “What light?” Madison asked with a frown.

  “Never mind,” I said. From the moment I saw Liz so helpless on the floor, my main concern shifted to helping her. From what little I knew about alcohol poisoning, I knew that getting Liz to a doctor as soon as possible was the top priority. “We need to get her to the clinic!”

  “No!” Madison gasped, her eyes going wide. “If anyone finds out what happened to her, we won’t be able to host anymore parties!”

  “Besides, it’s her own fault,” Eve said swiftly. “We told her she should slow down.”

  Zoe, the girl with hair the color of my own, looked the most frightened. “Tracy’s right,” she said in a tiny voice, “Liz needs to get some proper attention.”

  “She wouldn’t want that,” Eve put in, frowning at Zoe. “They’d stop funding the student council right away if they found out what happened.”

  “Are you really so vain as to care more about some stupid parties than your friend’s life?” I exploded. Their reactions weren’t making any sense. I couldn’t believe these girls actually thought that leaving Liz like this was the right thing to do.

  The girls all seemed shocked by my outburst, but Eve was the first to recover. “You don’t even know her,” she said disparagingly. “How can you tell us what she’d want?” Her short black hair made her look more intimidating than she really was.

  “I doubt she’d want to be passed out on the dirty floor!” I countered. Suddenly, a realization occurred to me. What were all these girls doing in here, away from the main party, anyway? The only answer I could see was that they wanted to hide what they were doing… which just made Liz’s situation more critical.

  “What else did she take?” I demanded of Zoe, who was the only one who seemed to agree with me. “There must have been something more!” Liz coughed weakly, and her entire thin frame shook disproportionately.

  “Nothing,” Eve said with a glare. “Do you think we’d hide it if she had?”

  “I don’t know! But this—” I motioned to Liz’s unconscious body, “—is not normal! Zoe, tell me: Did any of you use any drugs?”

  All five of the girls looked absolutely scandalized at the suggestion. “No!” Zoe exclaimed, and Eve stared at me challengingly.

  “Then why were you in here?”

  “Liz called us in,” Madison offered. “She wanted to tell us something, I think.”

  “Which was…?”

  “I don’t know! When I got here, she was already on the floor, drifting in and out of consciousness.”

  “Was that when you brought me here?” I asked.

  Madison nodded. “Yeah.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. I must have gotten here a good ten, fifteen minutes ago. If Liz was in bad condition then, how much worse was she now? And, even more importantly, how was it that none of these girls considered getting her to a doctor? At the back of my mind, something told me that I should press them about the light. The uniform blank stares were suspicious. But, for the moment, my priority was helping Liz.

  “Madison, come help me with her,” I said, kneeling down beside Liz. I put a hand on her forehead, and instantly ripped it away. Her skin felt hot enough to scald me.

  “What are you going to do?” Madison asked, not moving from her spot.

  “Oh, for crying out loud! Zoe, come help.”

  Zoe looked around at the others, wordlessly working her mouth. Then, as if spurred onward by a sudden burst of confidence, ran to my side. Together, we hefted Liz’s arms onto our shoulders, and stood her up between us. She groaned weakly, and her head fell forward.

  Together Zoe and I took a step toward the door. It was awkward, because Zoe was a good inch or two shorter. This meant I had to slouch to keep Liz level. The other girls moved to the sides, whispering amongst themselves. Every once in a while, I saw one of them shoot me a baleful glare, but I ignored it. Getting Liz the proper attention was all that mattered.

  “You shouldn’t be doing this,” Eve warned as I walked past her. The flickering light cast shadows on her face, making her look particularly menacing. I brushed her warning off. Just what kind of people were these girls, when they wouldn’t help their friend when she so obviously needed it?

  “Madison,” I asked, “can you at least help with the door?”

  The blonde girl looked like she was ready to have a fit from indecision, but at last nodded and
ran up to open the door for us. Zoe and I walked Liz forward. Just as we crossed the threshold, something small and glass-like fell from Liz’s clenched fist. I looked back, but Eve snatched it from the floor before I could get a second look.

  “There’s another door up ahead,” I told Madison, who shot a remorseful look behind her before coming over and helping us carry Liz. We inched forward slowly. I took one more look behind me. The last thing I saw was Eve conferring with the others before the view of the open doorway was swallowed up by the crowd.

  Chapter Eleven – A Watcher

  He watched from his usual spot as the first guests arrived. The lights were already low. There was music playing through the speakers. Soon, the lighting effects would come on, perfectly synchronized to the beat of the song, and the real party would start. It would be a spectacular show to start the year. That was simply to be expected.

  Tonight, he had eyes for only one person: the new girl. She was the key, the final playing piece to set everything in motion. He had waited many years to find one suitable for the job – no, the honor – that he and his father would bestow upon her. It was their expectation that she would cooperate. If not? Well, if not, he knew his father had ways of getting people to do what was needed.

  Who could reject the offer? He was prepared to offer her near limitless power over anyone and anything she desired. Everyone except him, that is. She would answer to him, and he, in turn, to his father. That would be the hierarchy, with all the vermin of the world far below them. Who could reject such a precious gift?

  He noticed someone approach, dangerously close to him, and froze. There was a special nook in the wall where the light fell just so, and prevented anyone from seeing him. Unless they actually felt out with their hands, they would not find him. Still, he did not want to take any chances.

  The person turned away, beckoned by her friends, and the danger passed. She was a pretty little thing, he thought, the same age as him and already possessing a luscious shape. But, he had learned to push aside temptations of the flesh in recent years. He had a much higher calling, the potential of which sang out to him clearly. Once his plans materialized, he could have anyone his heart desired. That was what he really lusted for: the freedom, the power, and the self-satisfaction of knowing he was superior to all his peers.