by Dela
Hardly disapproving, he lowered his chin to my ear and whispered, “Shh.”
I scanned the dark woods where he was looking, trying to figure out what he meant, and then realized we weren’t alone. As he watched for movement in the trees, he kept me tucked against his chest protectively. He waited, and when the trees were still, he took off.
An unexpected blast of wind whipped my face. The tree line rushed past in a black blur against the city’s glow. Icy wind froze my wet body. I squeezed my eyes tightly, nestled my cheek against his chest, and breathed in. His tropical scent was ecstasy, perfection. And then I noticed his breath was soft and easy as he sprinted.
Heavenly appeared in the distance across the street, barely visible under the moon’s glow. I felt the blood rushing through me now that we were safe. But Lucas stopped abruptly behind a tree.
“What are you doing? We have to get out of here!” I yelled as he peeked out at the dark street.
“No, not like this. Here she comes.”
My neck cranked stiffly in that direction. Gabriella and Dylan were running toward us, but it was hard to follow them when they moved at the same velocity as Lucas.
“Zara, you mustn’t say anything about what you saw to your friends. Do you understand?” Lucas asked.
My lip trembled. “How do you know about the shadows?”
“There will be time to talk later,” he rushed. “I need your word.”
“Okay. I won’t.”
It was easy to give in when his lips were so close to mine, but they moved farther away as he looked back up.
“All right . . .” his voice trailed off as his sister approached us.
“Zara!” Gabriella cried. She turned to Lucas angrily. “Where were you? You were supposed to be on her trail.”
“I was until one locked me down,” he argued back.
“What?” Gabriella gasped.
Dylan looked past our shoulders to the lake. “They know.”
“Know what? Who?” I asked.
“Nonsense,” Gabriella snorted. “All they know is that this is the third time we’ve impeded. Hijole!” She threw her hands up in the air in disbelief.
“Gabriella, we don’t have time for this, nor is this the place. You have to change clothes with her now; she’s freezing,” Lucas directed.
Before the initial shock of what he was saying settled in, Gabriella’s clothes were on the ground and she was in her bra and underwear. Lucas set me down and turned around, creating a false wall of privacy. Was he serious?
“Dylan,” Lucas yelled sideways. Oh, he is.
Dylan chuckled, then folded his arms as he gave us his back.
Gabriella peeled my clothes off in layers. I tried to help, but my numb fingers wouldn’t move properly. When the sweater came off, the wind bit at my skin. It didn’t stop until Gabriella’s long pants and sheer shirt were over me. She handed me a light jacket that smelled like roses.
She stood. “Now what?”
Lucas spun around, his gaze criminal enough to make me wonder how ridiculous I looked in Gabriella’s clothes, but his smile was dangerous. “Good.”
Before we could speak, headlights shone through the base of the trees. Loud, reckless laughter followed. We turned simultaneously.
“Gabriella, Dylan, go! Tell them I followed Zara to the edge of the lake, we started messing around, and she fell in,” Lucas schemed.
The height of their raised eyebrows implied their assumptions. I blushed.
Lucas only smiled a little though, half-serious. “Not like that. Tell them I will be bringing Zara home. Then go to Bri’s, get my car, and meet us here.”
“In my bra and underwear? You’re funny. Dylan, you do it. I’ll meet you at home,” Gabriella said.
Didn’t they live at Fallen Leaf Lake? Before I could say this was a highly impractical plan, Dylan nodded, and they ran back to the other side of the road. My head spun, wondering not only how long they would take, but also how Gabriella would make it back unnoticed in only a bra and underwear. We weren’t too far from home, but it was a good walk, farther if she was going to Fallen Leaf. Plus, I was still freezing with my wet hair. Gabriella had to be freezing too. I leaned back against a tree and looked to Lucas anew.
“How have you been keeping this from me?” I asked, overwhelmed.
He focused on the ground and paced, two fingers rubbing a circle on his temple. “When I heard that you girls were going to Reno, I had Gabriella go to make sure you would not be alone.”
“No,” I corrected. “Bri invited Gabriela. She didn’t come because you planned it.”
He looked down at me, a clear expression of confidence in his version. My mouth dropped.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I am . . . the good guy.” He smiled and gave a light chuckle. “For lack of a better word.”
“Compared to who?” I asked, grabbing my head, which was now hurting badly.
“My life, it’s complicated, Zara. I am the good guy compared to those shadows, all right?” he said, frustration coloring his words.
I laughed. “You’re comparing yourself to shadows? Seriously?”
“They aren’t what you think. I’m not what you think.”
His head snapped in my direction as I muttered under my breath, and yet he still knelt easily by my side.
“Look, I like you. But I don’t want you to get involved with me because of this,” he said.
“You could have had me fooled,” I said, turning my face away.
“I’m serious, Zara. You shouldn’t joke.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. I was talking about the shadows.”
Lucas seemed stumped for the first time. It felt nice.
“They were chasing me tonight, not you. But you already knew that, didn’t you?” The evidence was clear in his frozen face. “Why are they chasing me, Lucas?”
A line of white light blazed through the dense trunks. Lucas shot up, ignoring my question.
“They’re here,” he said as his car and Dylan’s convertible spun around the corner.
“Great,” I groused, trying to figure out how they got here so fast. I tried to mask my disappointment. I was angry, but suddenly I didn’t know what I wanted. I felt safe with Lucas and wanted to stay. As I stood up and brushed the dirt off, Lucas held a hand out to stop me.
“No, we’re staying,” he said. It almost sounded like a command. Chills ran down my spine, and yet I loved the thrill.
“Did you have any problems?” Lucas asked as Gabriella handed him the keys. She had changed into a skirt and short top that showed off her midriff. How was she not cold?
“Nothing, brother. But we can’t be sure you’re safe tonight. Mother said to come home soon,” she replied.
She gracefully slid into the orange convertible, and they sped away in screeches and smoke as Lucas opened the door of his car. There was a dry set of clothes folded on the passenger seat. He pulled shorts and a T-shirt out and set them on the hood before briefly looking back up with a grin.
“Turn around, please,” he said.
I obeyed, trying not to think too much about the fact that Lucas was changing out of his clothes, and at very close range. When he finished, he stuck the keys in his pocket and headed down the unmarked path toward the lake a few steps before he turned. “You coming?”
Adrenaline spiked through me, and I jogged after him. “Where are we going?”
“I need to show you something.”
He walked fast. It was impossible to see anything in the dark without a flashlight. My ankles were weak on the uneven ground, and I knew I was slowing him down, but he was patient and even gentlemanly, pausing to hold branches out of my way. My fear receded when there was humanity visible in him.
“Has Gabriella seen those shadow things before?” I asked Luc
as’s back.
“Yup.” I could practically see his smile as he popped the p.
He held the last green curtain out of my path, revealing lake before us, clouded by fog. He reached for my hand, and I jumped at the familiar rush of tingles.
“Relax. As long as you’re with me, you’re safe. I would never let anything happen to you,” he said, lowering his thumb over the back of my hand. A beat of warmth swirled inside me suddenly, and I felt weaker.
As he led me to the shore through the wall of opaque cloud, I saw fireflies flying above the water, glowing in the fog like twinkling fiber-optic stars. My heart started racing. He was taking me to a place where, if anything happened, no one would see.
“I’m sorry. It’s been a really long night, and I have a terrible headache, and I . . .” I began to explain dizzily, slowly resisting his pull toward the water.
“ . . . have plenty of excuses,” he finished, pulling me with more effort.
His blunt response took me aback, and I wondered if I could trust him. I mean, I wanted to, as enticing as his handsome Latin features were. But there was something inside me, something dark, that lurked in anger.
“Look, I’ll take you home in a moment, but please, I am running out of time. Give me five minutes?” he asked.
I shook with the rush of different emotions, but mostly fear as my heartbeat intensified. What if I don’t like what he tells me? I folded an arm across the hard pounding and bit nervously at my fingernails. He left me and walked toward the water.
“Can I trust you?” he asked, stepping onto the light film of cold, black water covering the river rock. I watched him in the haze as he crouched down.
“Yes,” I hiccupped nervously.
“Very well then, come here.”
His voice magnetized me, flattening my fear as I walked to him through the swirling fog. My heart beat erratically as he waited, calm, his elbows on his knees.
When I was close enough, he checked that I was watching, then touched the lake. He raised his dripping fingertips and ran them gently over the black markings on his left arm. The hieroglyphic tattoo glowed turquoise. It was extraordinary, but scary, and left my body tingling with strange excitement.
“Lucas, why is your tattoo glowing?” I asked, freaked out.
He watched me steadily. “It does this to remind me of where I come from and who I am.”
I backed away when he stood.
“Who are you?”
His intimate eyes were cautious when he took another step closer to me. I looked down, unable to remove my eyes from the neon glow rising from his arm. “Those shadows and I are from similar realms.” He paused. “There are things in this world that aren’t what you would call normal.”
“Things? Others besides those shadows?” My lips moved, though I was unsure of what I was saying, much less believing. My blackout was only a blackout. It couldn’t be real—that girl couldn’t be dead.
“Yes.”
“Are you human?” I blurted out, steadying a foot behind me.
He chuckled, taking another careful step toward me. “Hardly. But would it count if I said I was human—well, sort of—at one point in my life?”
“Why are those things after me?” I rushed, taking another blind step back. His tattoo was dimming, or his arm was drying.
“I’m curious.” His eyes squinted in speculation as he continued to close on me. “I am going to try and say this as politely as possible: have you been with anyone before?”
“Excuse me?” I asked, offended.
“Have you ever been with a guy before?” His feet finally stopped, and his jaw went hard as he gulped. “Intimately?”
I was suddenly glad for the fog to cover the rush of color to my cheeks, though it seemed he was blushing too.
“What does that have to do with anything?” I asked, recalling as I did that one night I’d made it to second base with my friend Adam.
All I heard was a sigh of relief. “Good.”
“I didn’t answer you!”
He grinned tolerantly. “You said enough.”
Whatever he was, he was clever. But it scared me that I might actually have feelings for him. I looked away to mask my feelings, upset with myself.
“So what now?” I muttered. But it was only a moment before I found myself goggling at him once more.
“I haven’t figured it out yet,” he said, his face void of any expression. He picked up a rock and skipped it far over the water, too distant for me to see where it finally sank. “But we should probably take you home.”
I nodded.
When we got in the car, my breath stuttered as Lucas leaned over toward my door. He looked up with a naughty smile as if he fully knew the effect he had on me. “Seatbelt.”
“Right,” I said stupidly.
I had a bazillion questions to ask, but did I dare ask? Should I wait? I couldn’t get over my nerves or the knots in my stomach, so I kept quiet and stared out the dark window. When we pulled into my neighborhood, I expected him to start shedding some light on the evening’s events, but when he pulled up to my house, the only thing he said was, “Are you going to be okay?”
The deep-rooted anger erupted.
“Define okay. If okay means bumps and bruises, yes, I will be fine. But it’s more than that. You know things that I think I deserve to know,” I said, overwrought with exhaustion. “And what did you mean when you said you were running out of time?”
“You shouldn’t know this much. It’s not safe.”
I ignored him. “You said you were from the same realm as the shadows. Are you an alien or something?”
He chuckled. “No, I am from Earth.”
“Can I trust you?”
Sadness took over his eyes. “You probably shouldn’t.”
“And Gabriella and Dylan—can I trust them?”
His smile twisted as he shook his head, contemplating. Then he grinned widely, knowing already that I’d hate his response. “Probably not them either.”
I threw open the car door.
“I get it,” I said, bending over to see his face.
He rested his elbow on the steering wheel casually and looked at me. “You do?”
“Yes. You are trouble, and Gabriella is trouble. Wherever you are, those things will be. Just leave me alone, Lucas. Stop following me . . . I don’t need your protection . . . and . . . I don’t need you to pretend to care.”
I slammed his door closed before he could reply and stormed to the porch. Once I was on the other side of the front door, I leaned against it for strength. What did I just do? I wasn’t sure what had just happened, but now I was more scared than ever.
CHAPTER TEN
Abandoned
I hid in my room all weekend like a lunatic hermit, afraid to leave as theories of who or what Lucas could be rained down in my head. Eventually my confusion drove me to pure madness. I felt weak and vulnerable until, abruptly, as I got ready for school Monday morning, one idea began a constant ticking: Staying away from Lucas might not be in my best interests.
The frost on the grass didn’t really surprise me, not in early October, but the rumors at school did. People were saying that Lucas had moved.
“What?” I blurted, almost choking on my carrot at lunch.
“Yeah, their dad got another offer back in Mexico,” Ashley said, combing her fingers through her red hair. “Heard all about it in English when Gabriella didn’t show up.”
“But what does his dad even do?” I asked.
“No one knows at the Tahoe Review Journal, and they know everything,” Tyson said, popping a tater tot into his mouth.
The news tightened the knots in my stomach. Within an hour, they were so big that I had to make bathroom runs throughout class to wet my face. As I leaned over the porcelain sink and splashed the cold water on
my cheeks, I looked at myself in the mirror. A pale face, almost green, stared back when I realized I had been wrong. Without Lucas, I feared for my life.
Every day without Lucas I was more on edge, believing that the rumors were actually true. After school on Friday, as I drove home past the pumpkin patch, watching the pickers get wet in the light drizzle, I suddenly remembered the book Mae had given me. My gut told me it was a good place to start investigating my suspicions—whatever those were. When I got home, though, Max and Casey’s car was not what I wanted to see.
“Hey, sis. Miss us?” Max said, leaning back on the breakfast bar as I walked through the door. His hair had grown shaggier, and he was chomping repulsively over a large plate of nachos.
It was disgusting. Imagining his stomach as a bottomless pit, I looked away and started for the stairs.
“Is Jett going out with you tonight?” Max yelled. I ignored him and kept ascending. “What is that kid doing tonight, Case?”
“I don’t know. I’ll call him,” Casey said.
I closed my bedroom door and crossed to my desk. I picked up the burgundy book, wiped off the collected dust, and opened it slowly. The hardbound cover creaked as I turned to the title page, Legends of the New World.
A couple of pages in, I knew this wasn’t a mass-produced book. Blotches of ink spattered the pages as if cast off a quill, and the fine paper was filled with drawings and tiny notes underneath that looked handwritten. It was scribbled cursive, as if the author was in a hurry, making it look more like a journal than a book. I skipped to the back cover to search for sources or an author, but there was nothing.
I flipped back through the book until one picture caught my eye. It was a set of twins. The caption read, “The Hero Twins.” I leaned in closer, focusing on the small drawing. The artist’s notes called these twins gods, but they looked like savages in breechcloths, one with a Mohawk and the other with long hair in a ponytail. The Mohawk twin held a ball the size of a grapefruit, while the other held a tomahawk.
Something about their broad physique and the way they stood seemed familiar. The boy on the left I was almost positive I recognized. Then suddenly my breath cut short and I choked. My eyes widened with bewilderment. It couldn’t be. I pushed the thought out and pressed my fingers hard into the book to read the names underneath the drawing: “Hunahpu and Xibalanque.” I looked back into the eyes of the boy on the left, unbelieving, and determined that his face belonged to someone I knew . . . Dylan Castillo.