Teardrop (Teardrop Trilogy 1)

by Lauren Kate

  Then she realized: They weren’t just pale. They were glowing. Light limned the edges of their bodies, blazed outward from their eyes. Their arms were locked like links in a chain. They walked closer, and as they did, it seemed like the whole world closed in on Eureka. The stars in the sky, the branches of the trees, her own trachea. She didn’t remember putting her car in park, but there it was. She couldn’t remember how to get it back in drive. Her hand shook on the gearshift. The least she could do was roll up the windows.

  Then, in the darkness behind Eureka, a truck rumbled around the bend. Its headlights were off, but when the driver punched the gas, the lights came on. It was a white Chevy, driving straight toward them, but at the last moment it swerved to miss Magda—

  And plowed into the Suzuki.

  The gray car caved around the fender of the truck, then slid backward, as if on ice. It rolled once, nearing Magda, Eureka, and the quartet of glowing people.

  Eureka ducked across the center console. Her body shook. She heard the thump of the car landing upside down, the smash of its windshield. She heard the screech of truck tires and then silence. The truck’s engine died. A door slammed. Footsteps crunched gravel on the shoulder of the road. Someone pounded on Eureka’s window.

  It was Ander.

  Her hand trembled as she rolled the window down.

  He used his fingers to force it down more quickly. “Get out of here.”

  “What are you doing here? You just hit those people’s car!”

  “You need to get out of here. I wasn’t lying to you earlier.” He glanced over his shoulder at the darkened road. The gray people were arguing near the car. They looked up at Ander with glowing eyes.

  “Leave us!” the woman from the station shouted.

  “Leave her!” Ander shouted back coldly. And when the women cackled, Ander reached into the pocket of his jeans. Eureka saw a flash of silver at his hip. At first she thought it was a gun, but then Ander pulled out a silver case about the size of a jewelry box. He thrust it toward the people in gray. “Stay back.”

  “What’s in his hand?” The elder of the two men asked, stepping closer to the car.

  Behind him, the other said, “Surely it’s not the—”

  “You will leave her alone,” Ander warned.

  Eureka heard Ander’s breath coming quickly, the tension straining his voice. As he fumbled with the clasp on the box, a gasp came from the foursome on the road. Eureka realized they knew exactly what the box held—and it terrified them.

  “Child,” one of the men warned venomously. “Do not abuse what you do not understand.”

  “Perhaps I do understand.” Slowly Ander flipped open the lid. An acid-green glow emanated from within the case, brightening his face and the dark space around him. Eureka tried to discern the box’s contents, but the green light inside was nearly blinding. A sharp, untraceable odor stung her nostrils, dissuading her from peering any deeper.

  The four people who had been advancing now took several quick steps away. They stared at the case and the shining green light with sick trepidation.

  “You can’t have her if we’re dead,” a woman’s voice called. “You know that.”

  “Who are these people?” Eureka said to Ander. “What is in that box?”

  With his free hand, he grabbed Eureka’s arm. “I’m begging you. Get out of here. You have to survive.” He reached into the car, where her hand was stiff and cold on the gearshift. He pressed down on her fingers and slid the lever to reverse. “Hit the gas.”

  She nodded, terrified, then reversed hard, wheeling back the way she’d come. She drove into the darkness and didn’t dare look back at the green light pulsing in her rearview mirror.

  From: savvyblavy@gmail.com

  To: reka96runs@gmail.com

  Cc: catatoniaestes@gmail.com

  Date: Friday, October 11, 2013, 12:40 a.m.

  Subject: second salvo

  Dear Eureka,

  Voilà! I am cooking with gas now and should have additional passages for you by tomorrow. I’m beginning to wonder if this is an ancient bodice-ripper. What do you think?

  The prince became the king. Tearfully, he pushed his father’s blazing funeral pyre into the sea. Then his tears dried and he begged me to remain.

  With a bow, I shook my head. “I must return to my mountains, resume my place among my family. It is where I belong.”

  “No,” Atlas said simply. “You belong here now. You will stay.”

  Uneasy as I was, I could not refuse my king’s demand. As the smoke from the sacrificial mourning fires cleared, word spread throughout the kingdom: the young King Atlas would take a bride.

  So it was: I learned I would be queen via a rumor. It occurred to me that the gossipwitches might have spoken the truth.

  Had true love entered into the story, I would gladly have exchanged my mountain life for it. Or, had I ever dreamed of power, perhaps I could have overlooked the absence of love. I had lavish chambers in the palace, where my every wish was granted. King Atlas was handsome—distant but not unkind. But when he became king, he spoke to me less, and the possibility of ever loving him began to flicker like a mirage.

  The wedding date was set. Atlas still had not proposed to me. I was confined to my chambers, a splendid prison whose iron bars were velvet-covered. Alone in my dressing room one dusk, I put on my wedding gown and the lustrous orichalcum crown I would wear when I was presented to the kingdom. Twin tears welled in my eyes.

  “Tears suit you even less than a vulgar crown,” a voice said from behind me.

  I turned to find a figure sitting in shadows. “I thought no one could enter.”

  “You’ll grow accustomed to being wrong,” the shadowed figure said. “Do you love him?”

  “Who are you?” I demanded. “Step into the light, where I can see you.”

  The figure rose from the chair. Candlelight caressed his features. He looked familiar, as if he were a fragment of a dream.

  “Do you love him?” he repeated.

  It was as if someone had stolen the breath from my lungs. The stranger’s eyes entranced me. They were the color of the cove where I swam in the morning as a girl. I could not help wanting to dive in.

  “Love?” I whispered.

  “Yes. Love. That which makes a life worth living. That which arrives to carry us where we need to go.”

  I shook my head, though I knew it was treason to the king, punishable by death. I began to regret everything. The boy before me smiled.

  “Then there’s hope.”

  Once I had crossed the blue boundary of his eyes, I never wanted to find my way back. But I soon realized I was trespassing in a dangerous realm.

  “You are Prince Leander,” I whispered, placing his fine features.

  He nodded stiffly. “Back from five years’ traveling in the name of the Crown—though my own brother would have had the kingdom think that I was lost at sea.” He smiled a smile I was sure I’d seen before. “Then you, Selene, had to go and discover me.”

  “Welcome home.”

  He stepped from the shadows, pulled me to him, and kissed me with matchless abandon. Until that moment, I had not known bliss. I would have stayed locked in his kiss forever, but a memory returned to me. I pulled away, remembering a piece of the gossipwitches’ timeworn chatter.

  “I thought you loved—”

  “I never loved until I found you.” He spoke sincerely from a soul I knew I could never doubt. From that moment into infinity, nothing would matter to us but each other.

  Only one thing stood between us and a universe of love …

  SWAK

  Madame B, Gilda, and Brunhilda

  19

  STORM CLOUDS

  On Friday morning, before the bell, Brooks was waiting at Eureka’s locker. “You weren’t at Latin Club.”

  His hands were stuffed in his pockets and he looked like he’d been waiting there awhile. He was blocking the locker next to Eureka’s, which belonged to Sarah
Picou, a girl so terribly shy she’d never tell Brooks to move even if it meant going to class without her books.

  Rhoda had insisted it would rain, and though the drive to school had been clear and bright, Eureka had her heather-gray slicker on. She liked hiding under its hood. She’d hardly slept and didn’t want to be at school. She didn’t want to talk to anyone.

  “Eureka”—Brooks watched her twirl the dial on her combination lock—“I was worried.”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “And late.”

  Brooks’s green sweater was too snug. He wore shiny new loafers. The hallway was choked with shouting kids, and the seed of a headache was splitting open and sprouting a razor-wire beanstalk in Eureka’s brain.

  Five minutes separated them from the bell, and her English class was two flights up and at the other end of the building. She opened her locker and threw in some binders. Brooks hovered over her like a hall monitor from an eighties teen movie.

  “Claire was sick last night,” she said, “and William threw up this morning. Rhoda was gone, so I had to …” She waved her hand, as if he should understand the scope of her responsibilities without being told.

  The twins were not sick. Eureka was the one who’d had a cramp across her entire being, the kind she used to get before cross-country meets when she was a freshman. She couldn’t stop reliving the encounter with Ander and his truck, the four pedestrians from hell glowing in the darkness—and the mysterious green light Ander had turned on them like a weapon. She’d picked up her phone three times the night before to call Cat. She’d wanted to set the story free, to unburden herself.

  But she couldn’t tell anyone. After she drove home, Eureka had spent ten minutes pulling sugarcane from Magda’s grille. Then she ran up to her room, shouting down to Rhoda that she was too swamped with homework to eat. “Swamped in the swamp” was a joke she had with Brooks, but nothing seemed funny anymore. She’d stared out the window, imagining every headlight was a pale psychopath searching for her.

  When she heard Rhoda’s footsteps on the stairs, Eureka had grabbed her Earth Science book and opened it just in time before Rhoda carried in a plate of flank steak and mashed potatoes.

  “You’d better not be messing around in here,” Rhoda said. “You’re still on thin ice after that Dr. Landry stunt.”

  Eureka flashed her textbook. “It’s called homework. They say it’s highly addictive, but I think I can handle it if I only try it at parties.”

  She hadn’t been able to eat. At midnight she’d surprised Squat with the kind of meal a dog on death row might request. At two, she heard Dad come home. She got as far as her door before she stopped herself from rushing into his arms. There was nothing he could do about her troubles, and he didn’t need another weight to drag him down. That was when she checked her email and found the second translation from Madame Blavatsky.

  This time, when Eureka read from The Book of Love, she forgot to wonder how its story might apply to Diana. She found too much strange symmetry between Selene’s predicament and her own. She knew what it was like to have a boy burst into your life out of nowhere, leaving you haunted and wanting more. The two boys even had similar names. But unlike the boy in the story, the boy on Eureka’s mind didn’t sweep her off her feet and kiss her. He slammed into her car, followed her around, and said she was in danger.

  As sun rays tentatively fingered her window that morning, Eureka had realized that the only person she could turn to about all of her questions was Ander. And it wasn’t up to her when she saw him.

  Brooks leaned casually into Eureka’s locker. “Did it freak you out?”

  “What?”

  “The twins’ being sick.”

  Eureka stared at him. His eyes wouldn’t hold hers for more than a moment. They’d made up—but had they really? It was like they’d slipped into an eternal war, one you could retreat from but never actually end, a war where you did your best not to see the whites of your opponent’s eyes. It was like they’d become strangers.

  Eureka ducked behind her locker door, separating herself from Brooks. Why were lockers always gray? Wasn’t school already enough like a prison without the trimmings?

  Brooks pushed the locker door flush against Sarah Picou’s locker. There was no barrier between them. “I know you saw Ander.”

  “And now you’re mad that I possess eyesight?”

  “This isn’t funny.”

  Eureka was amazed he hadn’t chuckled. They couldn’t even joke now?

  “You know, if you miss two more Latin Club meetings,” Brooks said, “they won’t put your name in the yearbook on the club page, and then you won’t be able to put it on your college applications.”

  Eureka shook her head as if she’d misheard him. “Uhhh … what?”

  “Sorry.” He sighed, and his face relaxed, and for a moment nothing was weird. “Who cares about Latin Club, right?” Then a glimmer came into his eye, a smugness that was new. He unzipped his backpack and pulled out a Ziploc bag of cookies. “My mom is on a mad baking spree recently. Want one?” He opened the bag and held it out to her. The smell of oatmeal and butter made her stomach turn. She wondered what had kept Aileen up baking the night before.

  “I’m not hungry.” Eureka glanced at her watch. Four minutes until the bell. When she reached into her locker for her English book, an orange flyer fluttered to the ground. Someone must have slipped it through the slats.

  SHOW YOUR FACE.

  TREJEAN’S FIFTH ANNUAL MAZE DAZE.

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11, AT 7 P.M.

  DRESS TO SCARE THE CROWS.

  Brad Trejean had been the most popular senior at Evangeline the year before. He was loud and wild, redheaded, flirtatious. Most girls, including Eureka, had crushed on him at some point. It was like a job they worked in shifts, though Eureka had quit the first time Brad, who knew about LSU football and nothing else, actually spoke to her.

  Every October, Brad’s parents went to California and he threw the best party of the year. His friends constructed a maze out of haystacks and spray-painted poster board and set it up in the Trejeans’ sprawling backyard on the bayou. People swam and, as the party went on, skinny-dipped. Brad mixed his signature drink, the Trejean Colada, which was horrible and strong enough to guarantee an epic party. Late in the night, there was always a seniors-only game of Never-Ever, exaggerated details of which were slowly leaked to the rest of the school.

  Eureka realized Brad’s younger sister Laura was carrying on the tradition. She was a sophomore, less notorious than Brad. But she was nice and not a label-whore, unlike most of the other sophomores. She started on the volleyball team, so she and Eureka used to see each other in the locker room after school.

  For the past three years, Eureka had heard about this party on Facebook a month in advance. She and Cat would go shopping for their outfits the weekend before. She hadn’t logged in to Facebook in forever, and now that she thought about it, she remembered a text from Cat that proposed shopping last Sunday after church. Eureka had been too preoccupied with her fight with Brooks to consider fashion.

  She held up the flyer and tried a smile. Last year she and Brooks had had one of their most fun nights at that party. He’d brought black sheets from home, and they’d turned invisible to haunt what was known as the Maze. They’d terrified some seniors in some compromising positions.

  “I’m the ghost of your father’s eyesight,” Brooks had warbled heavily to a girl in a half-unbuttoned blouse. “Tomorrow you’re off to the convent.”

  “Not cool!” her companion had shouted, but he’d sounded scared. It was a miracle no one ever figured out who was behind the Maze haunting.

  “Shall the spiritus interruptus return again this year?” Eureka waved the flyer.

  He took it from her hand. He didn’t look at it. It was like being slapped.

  “You’re too cavalier,” he said. “That psycho wants to hurt you.”

  Eureka groaned, then inhaled a whiff of patchouli, which only meant one thin
g:

  Maya Cayce was approaching. Her hair was woven in a long, intricate fishtail that draped down her side, and her eyes were lined with heavy kohl. She’d pierced her nasal septum since the last time Eureka saw her. A tiny black ring looped through her nose.

  “Is that the psycho you’re talking about?” Eureka asked Brooks. “Why don’t you protect me? Go kick her ass.”

  Maya stopped at the door to the bathroom. She flicked her braid to the other side and looked over her shoulder at them. She made the bathroom look like the sexiest spot on earth. “Did you get my message, B?”

  “Yeah.” Brooks nodded, but he didn’t seem interested. His gaze kept moving toward Eureka. Did he want to make Eureka jealous? It wasn’t working. Not really.

  Maya blinked heavily, and when her eyes opened, they were on Eureka. She stared for a moment, sniffed, then slipped inside the bathroom. Eureka was watching her disappear when she heard a tearing sound.

  Brooks had ripped the flyer. “You’re not going to this party.”

  “Don’t be such a drama queen.” Eureka slammed her locker door and spun away—right toward Cat, who’d rounded the corner, hair wild and makeup smudged, like she’d just been interrupted in the Maze. But knowing Cat, she might have spent an hour perfecting that look this morning.

  Brooks grabbed Eureka’s wrist. She twisted to glare at him ferociously, and it was nothing like wrestling when they were kids. Her eyes were exclamation points of anger. Neither of them spoke.

  Slowly he let go of her wrist, but as she walked away he called, “Eureka, trust me. Don’t go to that party.”

  Across the hall, Cat extended her elbow to Eureka, who slipped her arm through. “What’s he yapping about? Hopefully something lame, because the bell rings in two and I would much rather gossip about Madame Blavatsky’s latest email. Hot.” She fanned herself and dragged Eureka into the bathroom.

  “Cat, wait.” Eureka looked around the bathroom. She didn’t have to kneel down and search to know Maya Cayce was in one of the stalls. Patchouli was pungent.