Valentine

by Jodi McAlister

  ‘I still can’t get over the fact that you and Finn are hooking up again,’ Tricia says to Holly. ‘And that you didn’t tell us.’

  ‘Seriously, I don’t remember this at all,’ Holly says. ‘Were we drinking? What was going on?’

  ‘Come off it, Holly,’ Tricia scoffs. ‘You were basically in each other’s laps. There’s no way you’ve forgotten that.’

  ‘Yeah, we’ve all listened to you talking about how amazing he is,’ Lili says. ‘For, like, years. Remember when you broke up last time and you were all, “You don’t understand, guys, I can’t just forget him, no other guy is ever going to be able to do stuff like that to me ever again”?’

  Tricia, Lili and Annabel all snicker. Holly shakes her head. ‘I don’t remember,’ she says. ‘I remember going to bed, and I remember waking up, and that’s all.’

  Well, one thing’s for certain. Whatever’s going on with Holly, she’s not the same as Finn. Because she is straight up lying right now.

  I cast a look at Julian out of the corner of my eye. His hands are on Phil’s waist and her arms are around his neck and their foreheads are touching as she smiles up at him. I’m still desperately unhappy about that whole situation, but I like a scenario where he’s evil-but-human a lot more than one where he’s evil and also has magic powers.

  ‘Maybe it’s the flu drugs still messing with my mind,’ Holly says. ‘They’re pretty trippy, and –’

  A black blur. A screech. And Holly-Anne falls to the ground in an explosion of feathers.

  She’s screaming and Tricia and Annabel and Lili are screaming and the birds attacking Holly are screaming and shrieking and the teachers are running and yelling at the birds to get away get away and someone else is screaming and it’s me.

  The birds are huge and black with wicked beaks and claws like talons, and they shriek like banshees as they fly away, beaten off by Mr Molloy and Ms Rao. They must be crows or magpies or something, but I’ve never seen any this big or this wicked looking –

  Pearl. Get with the program. There are no way these are everyday birds.

  ‘Oh my God, Holly, are you okay?’ Tricia asks.

  Annabel and Ms Rao help Holly-Anne to her feet. She’s covered in scratches and gashes and there is blood pouring out of her face. Ms Rao sends Mr Molloy and Cardy running for help as Holly sobs, gasping in hysterical breaths and sucking air like water.

  They are not going to be happy, I heard her saying last night.

  If this is what They do to people who screw up even a little, then WTF are they going to do to me?

  The Holly-Anne/bird-explosion situation means that we don’t leave Sydney until way later than we’re supposed to. It gets dark not long after we leave the city. I lean my head against the window watching the world rush by in shades of grey, as if it’s been switched onto black-and-white mode with the fall of night. Phil’s wearing her earphones in a pretty pointed I-can’t-even-talk-to-you-right-now way, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

  I don’t even know how to begin to process this. There’s a supernatural cabal of evil creatures out there that think I’m their long-lost child or something. They want to – actually, I don’t know what they want to do with me, other than keep me in my house, but I doubt it’s anything good. And if they happen to work out that I’m not their long-lost child, I can bet that what will happen to me is a lot worse than getting dive-bombed by thirteen birds at once.

  Why didn’t I just take Finn up on his offer to take all the – well, blame is the wrong word, but blame? Why?!

  I’m not even sure, to be honest. I keep telling myself it’s because he saved my life and I owe him for that, and if They find out I’m not valuable I’ll suddenly become very, very disposable. I think that’s part of it – especially the bit about me ending up like Marie if They find out I’m not who they’re looking for – but I don’t think that’s all of it. And it’s not even because of the stupid crush my subconscious has on Finn.

  It’s just . . . that when I try and picture a world without Finn in it, a world where he’s been whisked away to Hogwarts or Vampire Academy or wherever, I can’t.

  I can hear him and his friends talking about footy a few seats behind me on the bus. I have a disconcerting feeling for a moment that’s almost like an out of body experience. How did it come to this? When did me and Finn Blacklin, enemies from birth, suddenly become allies? Me, Pearl Linford, model student, and Finn Blacklin, class clown and Casanova?

  This is too surreal. I think I’m past the denial stage now, but I still keep expecting myself to wake up – what the hell is that?

  I press my nose to the window, heart in my throat. The chatter of the bus is continuing apace around me, punctuated by the dim beat I can hear from Phil’s headphones, and I don’t know how anyone hasn’t noticed this.

  Galloping alongside the bus, hooves flicking up dust as it runs just off the road, is the black horse.

  I try to tell myself that it’s just a horse, not the horse, but that’s not going to fly. Like Finn, I know. This is the black horse, the bad one, the evil one – if black cats and birds are bad, it must be like some kind of uber-boss – and it’s keeping tabs on me. It’s following me.

  I have a flashback to the rainy night when Disey was arguing with Helena and I saw the horse. It’s hard to remember – it feels sort of like seeing underwater – but I force my mind to recall it. It had me completely hypnotised, just like all of us at Tillie’s party. I think I’m a pretty strong-minded person with a good sense of my own identity and all that stuff, but it sucked me in just like it sucked in everyone else. And it sucked Marie all the way to her death.

  Marie died because she wasn’t . . . whatever Finn is. I don’t think I can deny that. That black horse was at the party and then something ate her, and then it came for me.

  I can’t get hypnotised again. I have to be strong. I don’t want to – no, scratch that, I won’t end up like Marie.

  Okay. So you’re being pursued by evil forces keeping tabs on you via some kind of evil menagerie. You don’t know much about them except a vague outline given to you by a guy who, let’s face it, has never exactly been lauded for his intellectual prowess. Your life depends on you either a) defeating the evil forces or b) somehow protecting yourself and your loved ones from them, so where do you go for information?

  The answer is simple, of course.

  The internet.

  And I’m ninety-nine per cent sure the information I need will be on here somewhere. Everything is on the internet, right? There has to be some secret message board for teenagers who have been mistakenly ID’d as Chosen Ones somewhere. And there must be one for the teenagers that actually are Chosen Ones. But what search terms are you supposed to put in to find them?

  Healing powers, I type.

  That gets me a whole bunch of God stuff and angel stuff and some random stuff about crystals, all of which sounds like crap. Not that ‘my high-school nemesis healed me with his hair’ sounds any less dumb, but . . . ugh. I find a whole list of superheroes who have healing abilities, but there is a slight problem wherein they are fictional and Finn is very much real.

  I try a few permutations – supernatural healing powers, magical healing powers, paranormal healing powers – but I come up pretty much empty. I end up reading a lot of stuff about faith healing, but that doesn’t sound right. Finn didn’t even know it was his hair that healed me, so I doubt he healed me with the strength of his belief that he could. (I also find an article about the magical healing power of boobs. Go work that one out.)

  My friend healed me just by touching me, I try. Skimming the results of that one just gets me a lot of stuff about praying and saints and miracles. Dead end. No matter how weird things get, I am not willing to accept that Finn is a saint. I mean, come on. I’ve met him.

  I wish our high school library was like the one in Buffy. I also wish I had a librarian friend like Giles who would help me with this stuff. And some of Buffy’s mad fighting skills p
robably wouldn’t hurt either.

  Shapeshifting gets me a lot of werewolf stuff, and besides, I don’t think what Finn does is really shapeshifting anyway. Inducing hallucinations seems to be mostly stuff about inducing them in yourself, and inducing hallucinations in other people seems to be only possible using peyote. Making people see things that aren’t there also nets me a big fat nothing, and Googling hunches just gets me stuff about psychics and women’s intuition.

  I wonder what Phil would think if she knew what I was doing.

  I try searching black cats instead and this proves a little more fruitful. I spend time enough to consume two cups of tea and a third of a block of chocolate reading about the superstitions around black cats. Black cats are thought to be unlucky because they were the familiars of evil witches, one site tells me. Another one says that black cats were once thought to be demons blocking the passage of a soul to heaven. Yet another tells me that you can reverse the curse brought upon you by a black cat crossing your path by walking in a circle on the spot where it happened thirteen times and reciting a charm.

  I put the charm in my phone. I’m pretty sure it’s bull, but I’ll try anything once.

  No sites, however, conveniently tell me that black cats are in league with a race of evil beings who seem to be known only as Them. They also seem to have neglected to set up them.com.au, conveniently providing a Who We Are and a How to Outwit Us guide. Stupid Them letting an advertising agency steal their domain name.

  Finn’s healing powers seem to be the strongest clue I have to go on, so I go back to them. Magical touch, I type.

  Oh. Bad idea. Porn.

  Black birds gets me crows and aeroplanes, black horse golf, pubs and insurance policies; black horse dancing dressage and a clog-dancing club. I try a few more things. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

  Pearl Linford’s evil nemesis, I type in frustration. Believe it or not, there are results for this. But surprise, surprise, none of them are relevant. What is Finn Blacklin? also garners sweet FA.

  Why is it never this hard in stories? They flip through a few pages in a book or, if they’re really hip and modern, surf through some demon catalogue on the internet and presto! Nemesis, all packaged up with likes, dislikes and whether or not pina coladas turn them on. You know what that is? It is freaking cheating.

  This would be so much easier if there was an app for this.

  I take a couple of deep breaths and eat some more chocolate. Come on, Pearl. No use getting so frustrated at the first hurdle that you fall. Think. Think.

  Cannot lie, I type in.

  Hmmm. The lyrics to ‘Baby Got Back’ were not exactly what I was looking for there. I try can’t lie instead and get more song lyrics and a Q&A from someone asking how they can lie more convincingly. Perhaps I should send it to Finn.

  Maybe this aspect of being a superhero or whatever is not the easiest one to research. Let’s try – no, let’s skip researching Finn’s extreme attractiveness, because I can foresee huge amounts of pornography in the future of that one and I bet you any money Disey or Shad would walk into my room at the most inopportune moment possible. What else have I got to go on?

  He can heal. He can make people see things that aren’t there. He can’t lie. He’s stupidly attractive. He gets hunches that come true. He doesn’t get sick.

  Except that one time. After Tillie’s party. And he wasn’t just faking, because I distinctly remember him saying the words ‘I’m sick’ to me when I phoned to yell at him.

  I think back to that night, to wrapping his arm around my shoulder and dragging him to the car. Him taking his shirt off so I could bandage his hand.

  His hand. He threw a horseshoe at the black horse and his hand pretty much exploded with leprosy.

  Horseshoe burn, I try. And come up with 1,830,000 results, none of which say what I want.

  Well, maybe one does . . . on page 964,587. But there’s nothing in the first ten pages.

  Maybe I should just go back to reading about black cats. I was doing well with them. And I’ve got my little charm all saved in my phone. Maybe if I recite that enough times They will get so bored they’ll leave me alone.

  Horseshoe, I try.

  Oooh, okay, this looks promising! Finally, a result! Horseshoes are apparently good-luck charms – that can’t be a coincidence, can it? Sure, that horseshoe gave Finn a motherbitch of a burn, which wasn’t exactly good luck for him, but maybe it was good luck for someone else . . . like me! That burn was lucky for me because it led me here to Googling horseshoes so that I might find out –

  Whoa, whoa, whoa, Pearl. I don’t think anything that has happened in your life recently would exactly fall under the banner of ‘good luck’.

  Still, this is the closest strike I’ve had. Horseshoe good luck, I type in, hoping this will refine my search a little.

  I surf through a few sites. Horseshoes are considered lucky because St Dunstan once nailed one to the foot of Satan, who was in such pain that he promised never to enter a dwelling where a horseshoe was hung above the door, I read.

  I’m willing to believe a lot of things, but just as I am not prepared to believe Finn Blacklin is a saint, the notion that he is Satan is not one I’m really prepared to consider. Much as I might have avowed it in the past.

  Horseshoes are also used to ward off fairies, I read.

  Well, I haven’t spotted any fluttery gossamer wings on Finn’s back, so that one is pretty much ruled out as well.

  Fairies are traditionally said to be repelled by iron, and so horseshoes nailed above a door warded off any otherworldly guests.

  Hang on just a minute.

  The horse liked that horseshoe about as much as Finn did. If I’m a supernatural horse creature, I’m not exactly going to be scared of one drunk kid throwing a random thing at me. Maybe it was the fact that it was a horseshoe specifically is what scared it away. That could definitely be classified as repelling via iron.

  We have to test this. If we sneak into the science labs at school we can find some iron filings and see if –

  Wait. Am I seriously considering the possibility that Finn Blacklin is a fairy?

  Oh man, he’s really going to love that.

  I open up Wikipedia and type in fairies.

  I scan through the article quickly. I go to take a sip of my tea and discover that it’s gone cold, so I eat some more chocolate instead. I was sort of hoping there’d be a list that I could just check against – tick tick tick, yes, Finn, I diagnose you with the condition of fairydom – but it doesn’t seem to be so easy.

  According to Wikipedia (the only place that knows more than Google) fairies are depicted in many different ways. Sometimes they’re radiant luminescent beings, but sometimes little troll things and sometimes Tinkerbell types. Some can shapeshift (tick, kind of?), but I can’t see anything about them not being able to lie or about healing people (cross, possible cross).

  I sigh. I guess it was a bit of a stretch thinking that I could type a few terms into a search engine and come out with a battle plan to defeat Them. I mean, Finn has to have tried this, yeah? Maybe he found this exact Wikipedia page and read this exact stuff, and . . .

  Who am I kidding? Research isn’t Finn’s style. And even if it was, the supernatural world is probably not up to date with modern technology.

  I open up Facebook and have a quick poke around, scrolling down my newsfeed. Annabel is whinging about all the punishment she’s copped for being out of her room on the excursion. Tillie’s posted a bunch of photos. I’m tagged in some of them. Phil’s updated her status to say ‘best boyfriend ever – luv u Jules xoxo’, which makes me grimace.

  James Cardigan and Jenny Greene are now in a relationship.

  I look at the words. I feel like they’re looking back at me. And I don’t feel anything.

  I click through to Cardy’s page. There are a few congrats posts on his wall, but he hasn’t weighed in on the debate himself – no status updates or posted love poems or gross photos or an
ything. Jenny’s page is much the same – her status says ‘setting events in motion’, updated a few days before the excursion. I guess we know which events they were.

  There’s a little ping sound. I have a friend request. It’s from Finn.

  I accept.

  ‘You look tired,’ Phil tells me when she brings my homework round on Friday afternoon.

  Yeah, well, I’ve been researching fairies for three days straight, I’m too scared to sleep, and when I finally do pass out, I either have nightmares or really intense erotic dreams, I think about telling her.

  ‘So do you,’ I say instead, which is true. She has big dark circles under her eyes and her hair is falling out of its ponytail. ‘Are you sleeping okay?’

  ‘Nope,’ she says. ‘I’m worried. All the time. About school and you and Julian and –’

  ‘You don’t need to worry about me,’ I say. ‘And I’m so, so sorry about what I did at the excursion. I didn’t think. It was so dumb of me.’

  She shakes her head. ‘I get it, Pearl. Really, I do. I wasn’t even angry at you. I was angry at myself for falling asleep and losing you.’

  Why is it that you can be lying to someone for the best of reasons and still feel horribly, awfully guilty?

  I wonder how Finn has managed to last seventeen years in the world without telling a single lie. I don’t think I can go seventeen seconds.

  ‘And don’t worry about school,’ I say. ‘I know exams are coming up, but you’ll kill it. You always do. And I can help if you want. I know I don’t have to do exams but I need to know all this stuff for next year too, so I can help you study.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be over-exerting yourself.’

  ‘Please, I don’t think even Disey can complain about flashcards.’

  That brings a half-smile to Phil’s face. ‘She’s still not letting you out of the house, huh?’

  I shake my head. ‘Nope. I haven’t been allowed to set a foot outside the ivory tower since we got back from Sydney.’