Forks, Book Two

by A. E. Davis

  After that he had closed himself off. We didn’t stay there, in his special place, much longer after that happened. He made some excuse that he had to get home. I didn’t argue.

  Now however, once I processed everything it seemed he may have regretted showing me his special place and sharing his story with me. That somehow by telling me, he reopened up a wound that by all accounts was still festering and had never healed at all. I wasn’t sure what to think. But I couldn’t help wondering where his parents were when that was happening to him. Didn’t they try to help him? And what about Vincent and Viola? I had assumed they were close…but was that only for show? Or did something else happen? I didn’t get it.

  I rubbed my forehead and shut my eyes. It was only around seven but it seemed much later. My mind was fried from replaying last night over in it so many times. The conversation about Byron and Shelley really unsettled me because at times it seemed like he was recalling actual events that had happened to him, instead of merely a retelling of a story. Then the worst of all was that he had problems, ones that I could not even begin to figure out or help him with without the facts. I didn’t know if he was really passed that now, or was he merely saying that he was for my sake?

  “Amber,” Mom yelled, pulling my mind from my morbid thoughts.

  “Yeah?” I called back.

  “It’s pumpkin carving time.”

  “Be right down.” I didn’t really feel like carving pumpkins, especially not now, with everything, but I promised Ken and the last thing I wanted to do was hurt his feelings, too.

  Sitting up, I pulled on my slippers and headed downstairs. When I got to the kitchen, newspaper was all spread out on the table. Ken was sitting in my favorite chair, the one Vincent had been in, smiling from ear to ear.

  “How’s it going, Kiddo?” He seemed in good spirits.

  “Just peachy.”

  He frowned but didn’t press the issue, which I was glad for. I didn’t think I could deal with the Spanish Inquisition tonight.

  “Here’s the spoon,” Mom said cheerily, handing a long handled silver spoon to Ken. He took it from her and stood.

  “What’s the spoon for?”

  “It’s for the guts.” Ken beamed.

  “Guts?” My brows creased.

  “Yeah, once we open these beauties up…” He patted the pumpkin in front of him. “I’ll be digging out the guts.”

  A sickening feeling twisted in my stomach. “Oh.”

  “I’m going to bake the seeds,” Mom piped in. “Ken say’s they’re delicious.” She rubbed her belly.

  Another wave of nausea assailed me. “Great,” I fake enthused.

  Grabbing a glass of water, I pulled out a chair at the far end of the table and sat down. There was a little carving kit with directions on how to carve the perfect pumpkin on top of the newspaper. I didn’t bother reading it. Instead, I ripped open the package with little care and pulled out the bright orange handled tools.

  “We need some music.” Mom made her way across the room, a little slower than normal because of her ankle and hit the play button on the stereo on the counter. Elvis’ voice warbled out of the speakers with Jail House Rock.

  I stabbed my pumpkin with the jagged edged tool. It bent sideways in the orange flesh. I jerked on the handle but it was stuck. “Piece of crap!”

  “Here Amber, let me.”

  I glared up at Ken none too nicely.

  He frowned. “I was trying to help.”

  “I know,” I sighed, feeling bad. “Sorry.”

  “Are you feeling okay?” Ken asked and giving me a worried look.

  “Looks like someone needs an attitude adjustment,” Mom put in her two cents.

  “I just have a headache,” I complained and rubbed my head for emphasis.

  Mom limped back across the kitchen in a huff. Opening the cupboard door, she grabbed something out and stomped, well, limped stomped with her boot, back across the room. Slamming a bottle of Advil on the table, she gave me a reprimanding stare. “Take one of these.”

  “Gee, thanks.” Opening the bottle, I dumped out a pill and tossed it in my mouth, chasing it with water.

  “Better?” she asked as if daring me to say otherwise.

  “Yeah.” I rolled my eyes.

  Ken cleared his throat. “Okay girls, let’s get this contest going, shall we?”

  “Sounds good,” Mom chirped happily and shot me one of her staple hairy eyeball looks.

  “Yep. Sounds good,” I begrudgingly added.

  “I’m going to grab my camera. I’ll be right back,” Mom said.

  “Good thinking, Eileen,” Ken added as Mom made her way out of the room. Ken lifted up an old battered wooden case off the floor and set it on the table, gently.

  “What’s that?” I took a sip of my water.

  “It’s my secret weapon,” Ken boasted as he pulled a skeleton key from his pocket and inserted it into the box. The lid made an eerie creaking sound as he lifted it. Taking special care, he pulled out a knife. It wasn’t very big. And then quickly shut the box again. I had to wonder what else was inside, because the box was much larger than the knife.

  “What do you think?” He held it out so I could see the intricate carvings on the handle.

  “Wow. That’s really pretty. What’s it made of?”

  “The handle is a whale’s tooth.”

  “Awesome. Can I hold it.”

  “Sure. But be careful. It’s really sharp.” He handed it out to me.

  I took it in my grasp. It was a lot heavier than it looked and on closer inspection, I could see the detail of the carvings. There was a word in the center of a crucifix and other trailing designs like leafs and flowers. I stared at the word, trying to make it out. It looked like Venator but I couldn’t be sure if it was a name or if it meant something else. At the very bottom there were two small black birds…. or were those bats? Whatever it was, it reminded me a lot of Glinda’s tattoo. “This looks really old.”

  “It was my Dad’s,” he said wistfully. “His father gave it to him and he then gave it to me.”

  “It’s really beautiful.” I would have asked more about it, and the writing but I didn’t want to make him sad by bringing up his dad since Mom had already told me he passed. I handed the knife back to him.

  “It’s a labor of love and a work in progress.”

  I gave him a questioning look, not sure what he was saying.

  “Each owner has added to the Scrimshaw,” he explained, stroking the handle absently with something akin to reverence.

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh,” he chuckled. “It’s just a fancy word for carving. Back in the day sailors would take the bone or teeth from Whales and carve pictures to pass the time while out to sea.

  “Wow. That’s amazing. I never heard of that before.”

  “Well, it’s no wonder. It’s an extraordinary art form that has been lost over time.”

  “How old is it?”

  “My best guess would be around the eighteen hundreds.”

  “It looks like it should be in a museum.”

  “I am sure some would want it but I’m afraid I couldn’t bear to part with it. Besides, it’s not quite finished,” he added the last, almost as an afterthought as he again slid his hand over the handle.

  “I can see why, especially since it’s a family heirloom.”

  “Yes, it holds a lot of sentimentality for me,” Ken’s voice trailed off as he continued to stare at the knife.

  Mom came back into the kitchen, dragging her booted foot, looking frazzled. “I got the camera.”

  “Great.” Ken gave her a lingering look and then set to work. With the precision of a surgeon he decapitated the three pumpkins in a matter of minutes. I couldn’t help but wonder when and where he practiced with it because the way he was using the knife, he obviously was skilled with it.

  Mom was in charge of digging out the “guts” per Ken and I was instructed to scrape the bottoms of each makesh
ift hat he fashioned for them all.

  After I helped clean up, Mom put the seeds on a cookie sheet and shoved them into the oven with some salt on top to roast while Ken put lights in the bottoms of each pumpkin and set them on the porch steps. After he finished, we all went back outside to look at them. They gave the house a very festive Halloween look.

  Ken’s pumpkin was definitely the best. Hands down, his pumpkin could have won Sunshine’s annual carving contest. Mom’s was surprisingly good too. She did a face of a witch with a stencil from her Martha Stewart Magazine, which turned out looking great.

  Mine, however, in comparison was pretty lame looking. I accidentally cut off all the teeth so it had a big gaping hole for a mouth.

  The two pumpkins Vincent brought over were on the opposite side of the porch and a pang of guilt settled over me as I looked at them. Ken asked if I wanted to carve them too, but it didn’t seem right to carve them without Vincent, so I told him no.

  If he wondered why, he didn’t voice it to me.

  Once back inside, Ken announced he was making warm cider, his mother’s special recipe. I lied and told them I had a lot of homework to do and went to take a hot shower. It didn’t help my mood in the least.

  Now I was up in my room, in bed, with E by my side feeling out of sorts, I replayed the entire conversation with Viktor over and over in my mind.

  Something he told me kept niggling at me but I couldn’t seem to grasp the ever-elusive thing that lingered just out of my reach. Irritated, I got up from bed and turned on my computer. I did another search on the Roth family and still came up with nothing new.

  I couldn’t help but wonder why there wasn’t anything on the bear attack. I mean, since it happened here, wouldn’t there be something on it? The only thing I found that was remotely close was an old article in the archives on the history of Forks that happened back in the eighteen hundreds, when people were first settling here and timbering the land. It didn’t say much though—only that someone had been attacked. It had a link to the library where I assumed the rest of the story was—probably on microfiche that had yet to be switched over to digital. I jotted down the information on a post-it and stuck it to my computer.

  For about another hour, I searched random things and even did some research on Byron’s earlier works and Mary Shelley, but I couldn’t even find the story Viktor had relayed to me, which was just weird.

  It was after eleven when I finally logged off my computer. Rubbing the soreness from my neck, I pushed back from my chair, stood up and stretched.

  Cool evening air blew through my window, making the sheer curtains flutter outward. The sounds of the night echoed in from outside and a dog howled in the distance. Walking over to my bed, I sat down and kicked off my slippers. I got under the covers and turned on the television to distract me from my thoughts. I finally fell into a fitful sleep during another rerun of “I Love Lucy.”

  fifty

  The following week at school sucked. Not only because I had a lot of make-up work to do and tests to take but also because I didn’t see Viktor or Vincent. Even Viola, who I didn’t like in the least or care about was absent from school. To top it off, Cressida was being way too friendly and I kept thinking about old sayings like “keep your friends close but your enemies closer” and couldn’t help but wonder if that was what she was doing.

  She even asked me how the pumpkin carving went with Vincent (so he wasn’t lying) and I had to tell her that we didn’t do it. She seemed genuinely surprised too, so I guess Vincent hadn’t filled her in on our fight, which made me happier than it probably should.

  Glinda was her usual bubbly self and was constantly talking about going to La Push this weekend to see Peter. They apparently had been talking and texting with each other all week. I couldn’t help being a little jealous that her love interest was working out really well, where as mine had pretty much came to a screeching halt and had turned stagnate.

  “So did you get your costume all picked out?” Glinda asked, her cherubic face flushed with excitement.

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Amber!” She smacked my arm lightly. “Why not?”

  “I’m not sure I’m going.”

  “What?” she screeched. The sound made me tense. “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. I just ….” Oh, who was I kidding? The only reason I didn’t want to go was because I was depressed about Viktor and Vincent, which of course wasn’t very fair.

  “Pleeease….” Glinda gave me a puppy-dog look, poking her lip out. It was hard to say no to that face—she looked so darn cute.

  I exhaled. “Fine. I guess I can go for a little while.”

  “Thank you!” Glinda threw her arms around me and hugged me tightly.

  “Okay, you can let go now. You’re cutting off my circulation.”

  “Sorry.” Glinda gave me one last squeeze and released me.

  “What time is it tomorrow?”

  “Eight o’clock but since you’re always late you should be ready by seven.”

  Seriously? “Yeah, okay. What are you going to be?”

  She gave me a sly look. “It’s a surprise.”

  “Well, what should I be?”

  “Anything you want. It’s a costume party, after all.”

  Well that helped. Not.

  “What’s Peter going to be?”

  “He says it’s going to be….”

  “Let me guess. His costume is a surprise too.”

  She giggled and slapped my arm. “How’d you know?”

  “Lucky guess, I suppose.” I rubbed my arm. For a small person she could certainly hit hard.

  “Have you talked to Cressida?”

  My stomach twisted. “No. Why?”

  “Never mind.” Glinda averted her eyes.

  “Just spit it out.”

  “Well…” she hedged.

  “If you don’t tell me, I’m not going.” Fine. That was pretty low, but I didn’t need any more surprises. I had already filled Glinda in on the Vincent conversation. When I told her she gave me a sympathetic look, which kind of irritated me because she obviously already knew, which also meant Vincent had to have told her. She did however, ask me about Viktor, which made me happy because she obviously hadn’t talked to him. But since I didn’t know where we were at, per se, there wasn’t anything to tell, anyway.

  “Fine,” she groaned. “But don’t kill the messenger.”

  “Yeah, I hear you. Now spill.”

  “She’s going with Vincent.”

  Even though that didn’t surprise me, my chest still tightened. “What are they dressing up as? Beowulf and Grendal?” I asked meanly and then immediately felt like a jerk. Well… only a little one because I still didn’t like Cressida.

  “That would be awesome!” Glinda laughed hysterically and slapped my arm again.

  I didn’t think it was that funny and it was my joke.

  “No,” she said when she finally wheeled down from her laughing fit. “I heard her say they were going as Adam and Eve.”

  “Adam and Eve,” I repeated, feeling sick and slightly repulsed. “So… they aren’t going to be wearing clothes?”

  Glinda snorted. “Silly, err, I mean… ah…”

  “It’s fine.” I was sure Glinda was freaking because I told her not to say silly to me again.

  “I think it’s after Eve ate the apple.”

  My brow creased. “So instead of their birthday suits they’re wearing fig leaves?”

  “Maaybee,” she singsonged, which immediately set my nerves on edge.

  “I don’t care.”

  “Hmmm…” Glinda’s eyes narrowed and her lips pursed as she study me. “If you don’t care then why do you seem so upset?”

  “I’m not,” I lied.

  “Yeah, if you say so.” She gave me one of her looks like she didn’t believe me, and she was right. I was upset. Not because of Cressida and Vincent exactly, although Vincent was part of it but also because I had somehow ruined thin
gs up with Viktor, too.

  The rest of the day slugged by and even though I still didn’t know what to think about Viktor, I pushed him from my mind and instead, tried to figure out what I was going to be for the party. Each idea I had, I discarded just as quickly because each costume would require a counterpart, like Bonnie and Clyde or Romeo and Juliet. By the end of the day, I was no closer to figuring out what to be. I even sifted through my memories of all the times I dressed up when I was younger. I even still had one of the costumes stored away in my closet but there was no way I was going to be Ursula the Sea Witch. So, as I left school, I decided to stop by Dazzled by Twilight to see if they had any costumes.

  Opening the door, a bell jangled over my head, alerting the clerks inside another customer had crossed the threshold into the world of Twilight. A cardboard cutout of Edward was propped beside the door with Twilight paraphernalia, like postcards, bumper stickers, and pictures. Over on the other side of the room was another bunch of cardboard cutouts of other characters in the movie to take pictures with. There were Team Edward t-shirts, posters, and even jars filled with plastic Vampire teeth. I was officially in sparkly Vampire hell. There was even a tree with Edward’s and Bella’s name carved into it. They really went all out. It was a Twihardaholics dream come true. Too bad I wasn’t one of them. I wished I was, suddenly. As I walked by the books, I grabbed New Moon and tossed it into my hand basket. If you can’t beat em…

  A pretty girl was behind the register, she glanced up at me as I passed but resumed reading her magazine after a cursory glance. I guessed she was used to people browsing. Costumes lined the back wall of the store. I walked over to see what they had. There was a sexy devil, a sexy witch, and of course, a sexy Vampire—none would work for me though, since I wasn’t sexy. Viktor’s words came back to me… “Do you know how special you are…?” My face heated with the memory. I shook my head and turned around to see what else there was to choose from.