by Ramona Wray
“So I’m just going to say it, you know,” she professed. “Walk right up to him and say, ‘Hey! Why not go together? As friends, of course, no strings attached, no big deal. Just two people …’” She stopped, watching as my expression flopped into a frown. “You think he’ll say no,” she said, reading it.
My heart sank. In a white baby-doll dress, tied under her bust with a pink ribbon matching the one woven through her glossy black curls, in line with the Disney princess theme of the week, J had never looked younger. She reminded me of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. But her full lips pressed together in such a tight line, it made me want to bash my face into the table.
“I don’t know,” I answered quietly.
She perked up a bit. “He did say I looked good the other day. You know, when I was wearing that short blue dress.”
I nodded. I remembered. Sadly, I didn’t think Lucian did.
“And why wouldn’t he say yes? I mean, the boy saved my life. Actually saved my life! If that doesn’t spell ‘fate’ then I don’t know what does. Not to mention that I know he hasn’t asked anyone. And there are only three days left to prom.”
I nodded again, swallowing hard. I had a few ideas why he’d say no. But how could I tell J that whenever I turned around, there he was. At the florist, begging me to accept the bunch of roses he’d bought for me. At the hair salon, offering suggestions on my new haircut. At the grocery store, recommending the freshest loaves available. At the hardware store, trying to convince me that he was a capable handyman and happily offering his services for free. I shook my head and let out a hard breath.
“This blows.”
She agreed. “It really, really does.”
“But hey, haven’t you been asked by a million guys already? What about Mike Carter? Why not go with him?”
She pierced me with those deer-like brown eyes, so sad that my stomach churned.
“Look,” she said softly, “I know he has a thing for you. The whole school knows it! But you’ve got Ryder, right? You’re not interested. Are you?”
Her voice broke at the end and I hated that she doubted me. Because if she did, chances were someone else did, too, which meant I wasn’t making it clear enough that I didn’t care about Lucian like that.
“No, not the way you think.”
Her eyebrows arched right up to the hairline. “But there is a way?”
“Things are weird, J. With Ryder, I mean. There’s so much I don’t know and even more that I don’t get.”
“So where does Lucian fit in?” She was calm, patient, trying to understand.
My shoulders rose and fell again. “He’s part of it, somehow. I just think that if I could figure him out, then, I don’t know, maybe I’ll understand more about Ryder.”
She toyed with the red apple in front of her, spinning it around and around. Her long, ivory nails glittered in the sun.
“Why don’t you just ask?” she questioned softly.
“What, and watch him keel over again? Nooo, thank you. Besides …”
“What?” She eyed me uneasily.
“I think I’m afraid of the answers. For the first time in my life, I’m, you know, happy. I have a boyfriend I can kiss and touch and who loves me and wants me despite … everything.”
She nodded thoughtfully.
“You’re afraid of losing it.”
My mouth went dry. I forced some soda down.
“I don’t know what I’d do. I don’t think I could go back to being alone again.”
With a sigh, she cast me a tender, almost teary glance.
“You’re right. This blows big-time.”
“I’m sorry. But it’s not like I’m after Lucian in that way. It’s just that —”
“He’s totally after you exactly in that way,” she finished, smiling bitterly. “I guess it’s my own fault. Crushing on him when I knew the score.”
My chest tightened. “I’m sorry, J.”
“Bah!” She shrugged. “Not your fault. ’Sides, it ain’t over till it’s over,” she added, forcing a smile. “He’ll come around. No one can resist the Archer women’s charm for long.”
I actually agreed with that, but never got the chance to say it. The courtyard was suddenly stirring and everyone seemed to be running back inside the school. What the heck was going on?
Since she could do that, J grabbed some girl’s arm.
“Where’s the fire?”
“Ryder Kingscott is fighting the new guy in study hall! Up in the teachers’ gallery.”
“What?” J and I both cried out at the exact same time, bolting upward like puppets pulled by strings.
The study hall was this half-moon space, fitted with comfy couches and functional tables, built around a big projection screen often used for showing the “instructional” documentaries that imparted all the sex education Rosemound High was ever going to impart. It was on the ground floor, but there was a second entry on the upper level, leading into the balcony, where the projector was set. It was also where teachers sometimes lounged, keeping an eye on the students poring over their books downstairs.
J and I ran like the wind. She pushed, and I followed, through the loud, excited kids, both of us painfully aware of the names Ryder and Lucian being on everyone’s lips. The close proximity was vertiginous. What was he even doing upstairs, for Pete’s sake? The cafeteria was on the ground floor.
The double doors giving access to the teachers’ gallery were completely blocked. Students crowded the hallway, either trying to get in or to at least hear better. The level of noise was something nightmarish. And above the racket, Ryder’s voice bellowed.
“… and follow her around like the dog that you are!”
“And why not?” Lucian returned. “She’s the one bloody thing in this world that’s worth following!”
“You keep your paws off her!”
“Or what? What are you going to do if I don’t?”
Judging by the general gasping sounds and all the yelping, punches were being exchanged inside.
“No way can I make it through all these bodies,” I shouted to J. “It will knock me out in seconds.”
She eyed the people blocking our way and then looked at me, a fierce expression on her childlike face.
“Hey! All o’ you gossip slaves!” she shouted, pushing and tugging at those closest to us. “Move out of Lil’s way or read all about your dirty little secrets in tomorrow’s Rosemound Gazette. Shift! Move it! Let her pass!”
I was shocked, and amazed. J never broke under pressure, because after seventeen years of living with Delilah, the girl’s nerves were absolute steel, but this was simply genius. Sure enough, a path was immediately cleared. Guess there were many dirty little secrets floating around out there and nobody felt like spilling them to me.
An eerie silence suddenly filled the gallery. People on both sides of me stared, carefully pulling back, avoiding my touch. Like I was a leper. Then I could see them. Actually, all I did see was Ryder’s bloodied face, a second before Lucian threw a punch that sent him flying over the railing. He fell.
“No!” I screamed, running over to the edge of the balcony.
Crying and shaking like a leaf, I peered down into the study hall. Ryder had landed on top of a table, in the middle of a close-packed circle of kids. The table was broken. Ryder was not.
Eyes readily popping out of my head, I watched him pick himself up from the pile of splintered wood. His face was a bloody mess and he was a little unsteady on his feet, but he was definitely standing.
His mouth twisted in a bloodstained baring of teeth.
“Is that it? Is that all you’ve got, mutt?”
My head whipped to the side, hand reaching to grab him, but I was too slow. With a snarl, Lucian mounted the banister and hopped it like there was nothing to it. He jumped into the empty space beneath and landed so gracefully, everyone gasped in one voice. It was like we’d ended up smack in the middle of a Smallville episode.
The stud
ents behind me pushed forward in one shrieking mass, trying to get closer to the railing and see what had happened to Lucian. In all the excitement they slammed into me, and because of the pain I lost my balance. They shoved, I screamed, and then I was falling.
Calling Ryder’s name.
Bracing for the impact, I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for a pain that never came. Something else did. Blue tendrils nested around me, wrapping my body in a soft cushion that vibrated lightly. It was like thousands of fingertips touched my bare skin all at the same time, sending wave after wave of electric shocks through my body. My skin tingled and wept with the richness of sensation. To feel so much, so suddenly, all at once was more than I could stand. Too much, but a good too much.
I opened my eyes and found myself in Lucian’s arms. The tendrils quivered harder, pulling me to him, urging me to wind my arms around his neck. To sink deeper into the sensation.
“Why can I touch you? Why is there no pain?” I asked numbly.
He cast me a wistful glance and his cupid-bow mouth twitched.
“Isn’t this just like old times?” he asked Ryder, his voice hard, the smile vanishing as he spoke. “She falls, crying out your name.”
“Take your hands off her!” Ryder hissed.
Lucian put me down, very slowly, very carefully, as though he was afraid of breaking me. I swayed on my feet as the blue tendrils between us withdrew. They left a hole behind.
“Face it, man,” Lucian went on, the two of them almost nose to nose in front of me. “You can’t bring her anything but pain. Can’t do anything but hurt her.”
Ryder’s hands fisted at his sides, his body quaking with fury. “You’ve got some nerve. You’re the one to talk?”
“Just let her go! She’s not yours. She never was.”
“Let her go so she can be with you?”
“She belongs with me. She always has!” Lucian growled.
“Like hell she has,” Ryder countered, tensing.
The punching started again.
“Stop! Stop this! Stop it!”
They both ignored me.
“You can give her back her life,” Lucian shouted, wiping his bloody mouth on his sleeve. “Leave. Let her go!”
“Why don’t you leave?” Ryder shot back, picking himself off the fl oor and barreling into Lucian again. “She’ll never have you, don’t you get it? Go away!”
“Like I could go anywhere! I never had a choice, you bloody idiot. You do. You always did. Choose her life for once!”
“Wouldn’t be much of a life with you in it.”
They stopped, spearing each other with their eyes, both tense and bleeding. I inched toward them, intent on putting myself in between if that’s what it took, when Lucian added in an undertone, “She feels the cold already, did you know that? I know because I do, too. We’re running out of time.”
Ryder turned to me, his silver eyes wide in fear. I dropped mine guiltily, and by the time I recovered Lucian was already walking away. Ryder looked like he could barely stand. I moved closer, still wary of his eyes.
“Is he right? You’ve felt cold lately?” he rasped.
I nodded, staring down at the tips of his boots.
“Oh, baby!” He inhaled a ragged breath. “I’m so sorry.”
He dropped to his knees, wrapping his arms around my thighs, his head resting on my stomach. My fi ngers tangled in his soft hair.
All around us and up in the gallery, faces watched, every single one frozen. Ryder stayed kneeling. Nobody said a word. The scene was right out of Hamlet.
“The rest is silence.”
Chapter: Twelve
The rest was silence, alright, at least until classes were over. Ryder and Lucian both got suspended for a week. It wasn’t clear if either of them would be allowed to show up at prom. J screeched her just-in-case dismay.The school roared with the fresh batch of hot gossip. And me, well, mostly I tried to do what I did best and make myself scarce.
When the study hall had emptied, leaving Ryder and me to our own devices, I asked about what had happened. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he snapped. “I-I can’t,” he added, somewhat softer.
Principal Turner had shown up then, all hot under the collar, and taken Ryder to his office. Later, I heard that he had Coach Billoughy escort both him and Lucian off the premises.
It was impossible to come up with something that could explain the whole shebang. But it looked like one, my cold spells equaled major bad news, and two, I had some kind of gruesome history with both Ryder and Lucian, one in which things didn’t end up too well for me. Lucian’s words had been: Choose her life for once. As if, at some other time, Ryder hadn’t. As if he’d let me … die? Even worse, as if history was about to repeat itself.
“But that’s just crazy,” J argued.
I was beginning to suspect she was in shock. She’d repeated the exact same words a billion times already. The end of our last period, history with Mrs. Flint, was fast approaching, and she still hadn’t managed to change the tune.
“What, you mean crazy like seeing-into-people’s-heads-through-a-simpletouch crazy?” With her fingers pressing on her temples, she squeezed her eyes tightly. “But wouldn’t you remember dying?”
“Not if I, you know, died. You think you’ll remember your own death?”
“Oh! Yeah, I see your point.”
“Good, ’cause I don’t. I mean, if I died, what am I doing here?”
J’s arms flapped in the air, her brown eyes bulging.
“Holy cow! Do you think you’re dead?”
This was beyond insane!
“Do I look dead?”
She calmed down. It was like watching snow melting.
“So, what are we talking about, then? Reincarnation?”
“Still doesn’t explain why Ryder and Lucian both seem to remember things I don’t. Like this whole history between us that no one’s talking to me about.”
She grunted unhappily. “It’s got to be something magical, though, right? Unless … do you think they’re vampires or something? You know, live-forever dudes?”
“They’re not vampires, J,” I snorted.
“What, then?”
My head hurt, as though an army of evil drumsticks had taken over my neurons, diabolically using them as drums.
“I don’t know. Don’t know what they are, what I am, what the deal is; I don’t know a single thing! And the idea that Ryder may have hurt me sometime in the past, an alternate reality or whatever —”
It was her turn to snort. “Please! Ryder would never do that. He’s mad about you.”
She fell silent and I heard her wrestling a broken breath.
“They both are,” she added quietly.
I frowned. “How do you figure? Just because they almost killed each other in study hall?”
“Well …”
“But they did it while accusing each other of hurting me in the past and screaming how they’re about to do it again! That’s not being mad about someone, that’s just plain mad.”
In response to the noise I was creating, Mrs. Flint cast me a sideways glance. With my self-control wearing a tad thin by now, I ended up almost snarling at her, which apparently was just the thing to get her to reroute the scrutiny. What a strange effect I seemed to have on people, of late.
J insisted, “But you trust Ryder, don’t you?”
“With my life. Which is why I can’t figure out any of it.”
“You need to talk to him.”
“I’m planning on it.”
Of course, I’d tried that already, with squat to show for it. I thought back on our first date, the beach house and that weird speech he’d given me then, the one I had tried long and hard to decipher and failed. Some of it sounded more rational now. In a very irrational way, obviously.
I rushed out of the classroom and down the stairs like a tornado and everyone got out of my way. Whatever. I couldn’t find it in me to care at the moment. Let them talk.
; “If it isn’t Little Miss Popular. What a waste!” Rosalie Miller called after me from the middle of the lobby, where she stood with her hands on her hips. “The hottest guys in Rosemound High fighting over you?” She spat out the pronoun in disgust. “I swear, there’s something seriously wrong with the world.”
I stopped in my tracks, despite J’s begging me not to, and turned around slowly. Everyone was watching.
“You know, Rosalie, Lucian said that even if you lost twenty pounds he’d still not take you to prom. Something about you giving him flashes of pigs and bacon.”
I smiled angelically. Her delicate Nordic complexion turned cranberry-red.
“Freak!” she hissed.
“Whatever.” I turned on my heel, pulse booming in my ears.
“If you weren’t a witch, Ryder wouldn’t look twice at you. Everyone knows you put the whammy on him.”
My blood ran cold. I faced her again, and when I opened my mouth, what came out of it startled even me. It sounded like a litter of snakes.
“But I am a witch, Rosalie. Want a demonstration?”
She blanched, dropping her eyes and stumbling away without another word. The rest of the crowd scattered with impressive quickness as well.
“Smooth, Lil, real smooth,” J scolded.
I didn’t answer, too shaken up to summon any words. Never in my life had I done such a stupid thing! Why, in the name of all things sane, would I publicly label myself the very thing I dreaded being viewed as? Given the level of anxiety and various phobias my mere presence caused among the nice townsfolk, there was a distinct possibility that after this I was going to be chased out of town. With torches and pitchforks. Fantastic!
With my ride famously thrown out of school, the chore of driving me home fell on J. Our plans for the day, involving modeling prom attire for each other, had been kicked out of the realm of possibility about the same time Ryder got kicked out of school. My poor BFF! Her dress had only just arrived and she’d been dying to show it to me.
“Er … I guess I’ll take a rain check on that whole me giving you a ride thing,” J told me as we approached her cherry-red Pontiac Vibe.
“What? Why?”