Valentine

by Jodi McAlister

  Not that it needs to be. This is a fact-finding mission. Not a sex-finding mission.

  Oh my God, what am I doing?

  ‘Hi Finn, your hair has magical powers and it woke me up from a coma. There are strange black cats and birds wandering about everywhere and a random black horse which may or may not have lured your ex-girlfriend to her death, and I think you know something about all this. By the way, speaking of your ex-girlfriends, Holly-Anne was in my room the other night! With my best friend’s boyfriend! And they seem super invested in me staying there! And I think you know what’s going on, but there is a slight possibility that you’re totally messing with my mind. You’re in there waiting for me to come and knock on the door so you can laugh your head off at me, and I’ll be so embarrassed I’ll want to die, but guess what? I’m a paranoid psycho and think someone wants to kill me, so that’ll all work out fine! Oh, and additionally, I’ve been dreaming about you for years . . . just add that wood to the bonfire of humiliation while you’re at it . . .’

  I gulp. I can’t do this. None of this is real. I have an overactive imagination. I’ve made all this up.

  But I have to make a decision. Do I knock and risk losing my dignity, or not knock and risk losing my life?

  I knock.

  There’s a long pause of one, two, three seconds before he opens the door. I look at him. He looks at me.

  Then he sighs. ‘I suppose you’d better come in.’

  I follow him into the dragon’s lair.

  Cam and Finn’s room is exactly the same as mine and Phil’s, except ours is strewn with clothes and bags and schoolbooks, and theirs is super organised. ‘Um, nice room,’ I say nervously.

  ‘Thanks,’ he says.

  We’re standing awkwardly on opposite sides of the room. For a moment I seriously consider just bolting out and hoping he thinks it was some kind of crazy dream. ‘We have to talk,’ I say.

  He nods.

  He’s wearing tracksuit pants and a green singlet. His dark hair is loose, just brushing the tops of his shoulders. He has such nice shoulders. And arms. His biceps. OMG. There is a shadow of stubble around his jaw. He looks good enough to eat, and – oh God, Pearl, this is so not the time to be thinking about this.

  ‘Are we –’ I hesitate. ‘Is it safe? Are we safe here?’

  ‘I think so,’ he says. ‘But I can’t be sure. I’m never sure.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say.

  Awkward pause.

  ‘Um, I don’t really know how to start,’ I admit.

  ‘Want to sit down?’ he says.

  I shake my head and stay standing. I just have to say this. I just have to say it. I take a deep breath. ‘Finn,’ I say, looking him in the eye, ‘you saved my life.’

  ‘Yes,’ he says quietly.

  ‘You woke me up. And you took that rock out of my head.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’

  He pauses, exhales, runs his hand through his hair. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you mean you don’t know?!’ I say. ‘You don’t just save someone’s life by accident, Finn! That’s not how it works!’

  ‘If you know how it works, it’d be really awesome if you’d tell me, because I don’t have any idea,’ he shoots back. ‘And keep your voice down. This place has thin walls. You never know who might be listening.’

  ‘That’s the problem,’ I hiss back. ‘I don’t know who’s listening. I don’t have any freaking clue what’s going on and I need you to tell me.’

  He sits down heavily on the end of one of the twin beds, head in hands. ‘I don’t know what to tell you, Linford. I just – can’t you just trust me? You need to stay away from me. Seriously.’

  ‘No, I can’t just trust you,’ I snap. ‘What have you ever done for me that would make me want to trust you?’

  ‘I saved your life. Don’t I get any points for that?’

  ‘Fine, let’s talk about that.’ I hold up my left hand, littlest finger raised. ‘How is it that your hair is the only thing keeping me from falling back into a coma?’

  ‘I – what?’

  ‘Your hair. When you woke me up, you dropped a hair on me. And if I’m not touching it, I go back under.’

  He swears.

  ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ I say. ‘I have to be touching you – some part of you – or else I’m totally screwed.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ he says in a low voice, ‘but . . . yeah, probably.’

  I sit down beside him. ‘Why is that, Finn?’

  ‘I . . . actually, wait. Have you tried that since I pulled that rock out of your head?’

  ‘Um, how exactly did you do that? I have a team of trained surgeons and they couldn’t even budge the thing, let alone –’

  ‘Forget about that for a minute,’ he says. His leg is brushing my leg and I’m completely embarrassed by the way that makes me feel. ‘Have you tried not touching me since then?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘There’s this thing wherein I hate being in a coma.’

  ‘Try it now.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Linford, I’m right here. You have access to all of me that you want.’

  This is so not the moment for it, but my mind takes that to such a dirty place.

  I stand up. Slowly, I uncoil the hair from my finger. My eyes locked on his eyes, I drop it to the floor.

  And wait.

  And nothing.

  ‘How do you feel?’ he asks me anxiously.

  I wait for the black ocean to swallow me up but it doesn’t. ‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘I think.’

  ‘Good,’ he says. ‘You’re safe, then.’

  Safe. Being here in this room right now with this boy looking the way he does . . . I have never felt less safe in my life.

  ‘So, what, the rock was, I don’t know, poisoning me or something? How did you know to take it out? How did you even know it was there?’

  ‘I just –’ he shrugs, and it makes the muscles in his arms ripple in the most edible way. ‘It was like I sensed it. It was like . . . there was you, and there was this nasty darkness that was just, like, sitting in you, and I couldn’t leave it there, Linford. I just couldn’t.’

  ‘So the rock put me in a coma,’ I say uncertainly. ‘Not the head injury. The rock.’

  He shrugs again. He has to stop doing that.

  ‘What about Cardy?’

  He looks at me funny. ‘What about Cardy?’

  ‘He got rocked too. In the foot. I was with him when it happened, and he went down hard and nearly passed out. Was that the same thing that happened to me?’

  ‘I don’t know. Could have been.’

  Why am I talking about Cardy right now? I really should have worked out what my questions were and written them down. That’s what Phil would have done.

  ‘Finn, there is so much I don’t understand,’ I say, sitting down back down next to him. ‘I’m just . . . I’m completely lost here. And I need you to unlose me. Fast.’

  ‘Pearl, it’s okay,’ he says, putting a hand on my arm. ‘You don’t have to worry any more. You’re safe.’

  I don’t even want to describe what the feel of his skin on my skin is like. It’s ridiculous. It’s like every cliché ever. Electricity runs so fast and hard through my body that if I had any hair left, it would have stood on end.

  ‘That’s not good enough,’ I say tightly. ‘I want answers.’

  ‘If I tell you,’ he says, ‘will you let it go? Will you leave me alone?’

  ‘You really hate me that much?’

  ‘God, Pearl, no, it’s just –’ He runs his hand through his hair again. ‘I don’t want you mixed up in this.’

  ‘How can I be mixed up in it if I don’t know what it is?’

  ‘Linford, I’m different, okay?’ There is something in his green eyes that looks like pain. ‘I’m not like you. I’m not like anyone around here. I’m different. I can . . . do stuff.’

  ‘Like waking people up from comas,’
I say.

  He nods. ‘I can heal people,’ he says. ‘One time, my brother broke his arm, and I put my hands on it, and it wasn’t broken any more. I don’t do it a lot, for obvious reasons, but . . . when I heard you were in hospital, I had to try.’

  My mind reels with the implications of that statement, but I can’t deal with that right now. ‘But mine wasn’t just any coma,’ I say. ‘Not if it was the rock that caused it.’

  I am sitting on the end of a bed with Finn Blacklin talking seriously about magic rocks and superpowers. That is a thing. That is happening. W. T. Effing. F.

  ‘And that’s why you need to stay away from me,’ he says. ‘Something is coming. Maybe it’s already here. And it’s looking for me.’

  ‘What something? And how do you know this?’

  ‘I can . . . sense it, kind of,’ he says. ‘It’s like when you hear thunder crash in the distance and you know a storm is on its way. Whatever it is, it’s bad, Pearl. And it wants me.’

  Something clicks together. ‘Our birthday,’ I say. ‘Valentine’s Day. You. Me. Cardy. And Marie. We’re all born on the same day. And if Cardy got rocked, and I got rocked, and Marie got . . .’

  Killed. The word hangs between us, unspoken, but heavy.

  ‘Then they must know it’s me they’re looking for now,’ Finn says. ‘So you don’t need to worry any more, Pearl. It’s only a matter of time. Soon I’ll be out of your hair for good.’

  ‘No,’ I say.

  He shakes his head. ‘There’s nothing we can do,’ he says hoarsely.

  There’s a moment of silence while I try to deal with the weight of those words before he stands and starts pacing. ‘Honestly, I don’t know what more I can tell you,’ he says. ‘I’m just . . . I don’t know what’s wrong with me, why I can do the things that I can. Because it’s a really random set of things, let me tell you. I can heal people and I can sometimes make them see things that aren’t there and –’

  ‘You can what?’

  ‘Make them see things that aren’t there,’ Cardy says.

  Finn is gone. In front of me is Cardy – short hair, dark skin, lanky limbs and all. He’s a perfect replica, even down to the mole on his neck. ‘See what I mean?’ he says. ‘Things that aren’t there. I can make you see them.’

  ‘How do you do it?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Finn says, turning back into himself. It’s not like a metamorphosis process or anything – there’s no subtle changing of Cardy into Finn. It’s like you blink and one moment Cardy is there, and the next moment Finn has taken his place. ‘I’ve been able to do it ever since I was a kid. I was great at hide and seek – ‘

  ‘You could make yourself invisible?’

  ‘No, not exactly – but I could sort of make myself disappear into the background. If you were looking right at me, you’d see me, or if someone pointed me out –’

  ‘You did that to me at the restaurant the other night,’ I guess.

  He nods. ‘I’m sorry. But I’ve just been trying to keep you safe. Honest. You being around me is dangerous, Pearl. It’s like I’m a time bomb, and I don’t want anyone around when I go off.’

  ‘Because they’re onto you,’ I say.

  ‘Well, if your theory is right and it’s something to do with us being born on the same day, then yeah,’ he says, sitting back down beside me on the end of the bed. ‘They’ve eliminated Cardy. They’ve eliminated you. And they’ve really seriously eliminated Marie. So that leaves me. Checkmate.’ He gestures helplessly.

  I bite my lip, thinking. ‘Did you take the rock out of Cardy’s foot?’

  He shakes his head. ‘No. I don’t know how he managed to get out of that one.’

  ‘Is there a chance –’ I can’t even believe I’m saying this, ‘– he’s like you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. But you’d think whoever it is that’s looking for me would have swooped in and taken him away if he was, you know. Different.’

  I put my head in my hands. ‘God, this is such an info dump.’

  ‘I’m glad you feel like that,’ he says. ‘Because I don’t feel like I have that much info to dump at all. I’m in the dark here, Linford. I’m working off hunches and lucky chances. All I know is that I’m different and something is coming for me, something bad, and I’m scared out of my mind, and I feel awful, because Marie is dead and I’m pretty sure it’s because she wasn’t . . . me.’

  This time, I’m the one that puts a hand on his arm. ‘Thank you,’ I say. I omit the in case I never get another chance to say this, but I’m sure he can read it underneath my words. ‘For saving my life. You didn’t need to do that, but you did. So thanks.’

  He covers my hand with his. ‘You don’t need to thank me, Pearl.’

  There’s something molten in his eyes, and I spend at least ten seconds wondering what would happen if I kissed this boy right now.

  ‘Of course, none of this explains why something still seems to want to kill me,’ I say. Murder and mayhem. That’ll be a good way to break this uncomfortable, tense, erotic . . . whatever is going on in this moment.

  He shakes his head. ‘You’re fine now, Linford. They’re not coming for you. They’re coming for –’

  ‘Um, yes, they are so still coming for me,’ I say. ‘Unless your girlfriend is writing lies across my mirror in lipstick just for kicks.’

  ‘Back up. What are you talking about?’

  I give him a brief rundown on the Holly/Julian/hair-tying/creepy-teen-horror-movie lipstick incidents. ‘What I don’t get is why they want me to stay in my house,’ I say. ‘I mean, there’s a lot of things I don’t get, like how on earth Julian and Holly got mixed up in this, but you’d think that they’d want me out and about, easier for the kidnapping or whatever.’

  ‘No,’ Finn says. ‘No no no no. I saved you. I saved you. You should be safe. I don’t understand. They should be leaving you alone.’

  And then something truly horrible dawns on me.

  ‘Finn,’ I say. ‘Since you saved me. Since then. Has anything come after you? The . . . I don’t know what they are. The wizards. The bad guys. Have you had any close shaves?’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘But I’m a marked man, Pearl. I can’t avoid them forever.’

  I feel like someone has just reached into my body, wrapped their fingers around my heart, and started to squeeze.

  ‘No, you’re not,’ I say. ‘You’re not a marked man at all.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘That coma I was in,’ I say. Puzzle pieces are falling into place and the picture they are making is horrible, horrible, horrible. ‘I don’t think I was supposed to wake up. I think maybe the rock thing was a test. They tried Cardy first, and . . . well, I don’t know what happened there. But he clearly didn’t pass the test, because they moved on. To me. And I woke up.’

  ‘Because I woke you up.’

  ‘But they don’t know that,’ I say. ‘All they know is that I woke up. And I don’t think I was supposed to.’

  I see the moment the realisation dawns in his eyes. ‘They still think it’s you,’ he whispers.

  I nod.

  As Finn launches in on one of the most spectacular swearing rampages I’ve ever heard, I’m gripped with so much panic I feel like I’m floating outside my body. This is ridiculous. This is absurd. I’m sitting here after midnight with Finn Blacklin talking about an evil something that’s looking for him but is coming after me because we happened to be born on the same stupid day.

  Something really is coming after me.

  Something is coming.

  I let out a long, shaking breath.

  ‘– hell, Pearl,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll fix it. I’ll work it out.’

  ‘Slow your roll, Blacklin,’ I say. ‘Let’s think about this.’

  ‘What’s there to think about?’ he says. He starts pacing again. ‘I thought I saved your life, but instead I ruined it. So now I have to fix things.’
>
  ‘Well, you did still save my life,’ I say. ‘I don’t know what Cardy did, or who took that rock out of him, but I seriously don’t think anyone was coming to set me free from that coma. If it wasn’t for you, I’d still be there.’

  ‘But now you have God-knows-what after you, and –’ He slams both hands against the wall and stands there for a moment, breathing heavily. ‘It’s okay. I don’t want you to worry. I’ll work it out. I’ll just –’

  ‘You seriously think I’m going to let you face this on your own?’ I demand, marching over to him. ‘Because if you think that’s true, then you don’t know me at all.’

  ‘Pearl, this is not your problem,’ he says raggedly. ‘This is all my fault. Mine.’

  ‘You couldn’t help being born – however this is,’ I say, gesturing to his ridiculously perfect body. ‘You had my back. Now let me have yours.’

  ‘No,’ he says, pushing away from the wall and away from me. ‘I’ll go to them. I’ll tell them it’s me. Then they’ll leave you alone.’

  ‘Um, yeah, that’s not happening.’

  ‘Um, yes it is.’

  ‘Um, no it’s not.’ I shove him in the chest and he falls back onto the bed. ‘You think I’m going to let you save my life and then throw yours away?’

  ‘You think I’m going to let you take the blame for my freaky powers?’ he demands, standing up again.

  ‘Point number one,’ I say, ticking it off on my fingers, ‘how are you going to find these supernatural wizard people to tell them that you’re the Harry Potter they’ve been looking for? Point number two, look at what happened to Marie. If they find out that I’m not who they want, do you really think they’re just going to let me go?’

  ‘I’ll say I healed you. That you had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘And I’m sure they’ll totally believe you.’

  ‘I can’t lie. I bet they know that.’