Jewel was still talking. “… I mean, the portraits are eerily…”
“Sorry, I dropped my phone, what were you saying?” Another door opened. The hallway was filling fast.
“I said there are a few portraits. Horrible copies of them, as if someone took a picture with a bad camera. But the figure in them looks so identical…”
“Maybe it’s just strong genes?” I ran a hand through my dark brown hair. “Everyone’s got dark hair in our family, Jules; you know Dad said it’s a French thing. Look at our noses, for God’s sake.
“Yeah, it’s a curse, really,” She chuckled. “But hey, I’ll be a doctor soon, and I can fix that for you—if you want.”
I felt the end of my sharp nose absently. “It’s a defining figure,” I finally said. The last two doors across the hall let students out, and they rushed in every direction to get to their next class.
“Anyways, you said yourself,” I offered, “that DNA replicates. There’s like, what, six other people on the planet that look like us?”
“Something like that,” she admitted. “But Gill, this picture, I mean, it just looks so much like you…”
“I’m sure it does,” I said half-heartedly.
“Well, I just thought you should know,” she said, although I could tell she really didn’t. “It’s a pretty interesting part of our history, and I know how much you love history.”
I nodded, knowing she couldn’t see it, and said, “Oh, I do, don’t get me wrong. The family stuff is just so boring at times, ya know?”
She chuckled again. “Look, I gotta get back to lab. These first-year students, I swear. Clumsy as a three-thumbed monkey.”
“What?” I laughed. Jules didn’t really do the metaphor thing too well.
“Let’s catch up with this later?” she said, and I heard the hurry in her voice.
“Sure.” We said our goodbyes, just as the door to my next class flew open, knocking into my bench as I stood up. Well, French, let’s do this shit.
The rest of my classes flew by, a long day of syllabi and assignments, a whirlwind of papers and information and textbooks and classroom introductions. My head was spinning with paperwork and papers, and a sucky pile of homework from the first week in most of my classes. What the hell was wrong with these professors? The least they could do was let us acclimate to college, first!
As I walked up to the residential hall at the end of the day, I couldn’t stop thinking about what Jules had said. “He apparently didn’t die,” she had told me. Of course, that was silly, right? I mean, only the Benedictine monks kept records back then, and the handwritten ones often had mistakes. It must have been a relative or a descendent that she was looking at. My name was common in our family tree, that’s what Mom had always said when I lamented about having such a unique identity. There was something like thirteen Guillaume’s in our family tree, the curse of passing on your name to your offspring.
Yet, the “what if” plagued me, late into the night. I stayed up longer than I should have, just thinking about it. The rational part of my brain kept telling me that I should dismiss it and get some sleep; I had an eight o’clock class tomorrow. But that drama side, the writing side, the one that I never let people see, it always asked: what if Compte Guillaume still walked the halls of Castle Duvall, all the way across the globe in France? Of course, ghosts and vampires and werewolves were a thing of fiction and didn’t exist in the real world. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself.
I finally gave in to sleep telling myself I’d give Jules a call tomorrow and talk about it more, if for no other reason than to shut up my brain. I realized I desperately wanted to get to the bottom of it, probably as much as she did. Damn, I hated when she was right.
I never realized that soon I’d come face to face with my namesake ancestor, and it would be in a way that I would never in a million years imagine.
It all started with a little pewter mirror.
God, my sister sucked.
Chapter Two: When Your Sister Uses Your Middle Name
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry!”
I managed to stop myself from falling, but the history book I’d been clinging to so tightly went flying. It landed spine down on the floor with a solid thunk. I was surprised that heavy bastard didn’t leave a dent in the concrete. I reached to snatch it up, ready to lay into the idiot that bumped me.
Instead, another form of bumping came to mind. Her wide blue eyes greeted me, tucked under long blond straight hair that fell just shy of her ample bosom. Okay, let’s be honest. My twenty-year-old brain screamed, “OMG TITS!” and I told it to shut up for the third time today. Fucking hormones. She reached for the book at the same time I did, and our heads collided. Excellent first impression, Gill! I said to myself. Meanwhile, brain responded: “OMG TITS!”
Shut up, brain.
“Ow,” I said, straightening. I let her pick up the monster of a textbook.
She laughed nervously. “I, uh, I’m so sorry!” she said. “I didn’t really watch where I was going. I was reading this thing on my phone, and…” She just smiled at me, and I saw her tuck her phone into the outside of the blue satchel slung over her shoulder.
I grinned back at her and took the textbook, slipping it under my arm. I couldn’t be angry at her slender, pixie-like face. “It’s okay, really.”
“What’s your name?” she blurted out.
Forward, I liked that. Gone were the shy high school girls of last year, that’s for sure. “Gill,” I said, sticking out my hand. “And you?”
“Selena,” she said, that huge grin on her face lighting her eyes.
My traitor brain, thankfully disengaged from her breasts, and I looked at the stack of books in her arm. “Drama 101, huh?”
“Yeah,” she said, blushing. “I’m a bit of a theater nerd.”
“You too?” Damn it, Gill, you don’t tell girls that! I inwardly groaned.
“That’s kind of hot,” she said, much to my surprise.
Tell her you’re in glee club, asshole brain said.
No, brain.
TELL HER.
Fuck off, brain!
“I was in Glee club in high school,” I said, feeling like an idiot.
“Tenor or bass?”
“High tenor.”
She winked. “Looks like it.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means your jeans are too tight to suggest any type of baritone,” she said. She pushed past me, ending the conversation.
“What…”
“Glee club meets at five on Thursdays in Grant four-oh-one, by the way,” she shouted over her shoulder as she disappeared around the corner.
I looked down at my attire. I mean, sure, I wasn’t dressed like a dumb jock in sweats and a hoodie. But my jeans fit like a second skin over black suede dress shoes, my t-shirt was clean and almost nearly wrinkle free – thanks, Mom, for ironing everything before I moved! – And my blue vest was unbuttoned and stylish. I ditched the tie from day one at the last minute this morning. Didn’t want to look too anxious, after all.
Then it hit me.
I’m pretty sure she’d been staring at my dick.
Yeah, I smiled as I pushed into history. Hell yeah, Guillaume, Bay City University student and pimp extraordinaire. When was Glee club again? Because that just went to the top of my priority list.
Right after homework.
***
So much for the homework.
My last class of the day ended at one, and I crashed on the tiny twin bed in my dorm, falling asleep almost immediately. I woke with a start at four, slightly pissed I’d slept for four straight hours. My work schedule had been crazy and the first couple of days of school must have been more stressful than I realized.
Since I worked the late shift that night, from eight at night until nearly dawn the next morning, I decided to don my uniform before stopping at Glee club to see what was up. No, that was a lie. I wanted to see Selena again
. The things we do for women.
Here I stood in front of the skinny mirror inside my tiny closet door, tucking the blue dress shirt into my slacks, and then running my hand over the red EMT patch on my left shoulder. It was my last hurrah at the station before I started my swing shift this weekend with a new group of guys. I was expecting the pranks to run rampant. It was bad enough I was the youngest EMT there, even worse that I’d decided to leave the crew to attend college. I worried if I’d made a mistake getting my certification when I was sixteen. It seemed like a good idea at the time, through a free program at my local community college. The money I made wasn’t bad, either.
The mirror showed my lanky frame draped in emergency personnel uniform, layers of dark blue that hung tightly to my thin but muscular legs and arms. Even my scourge of red curls was tamed under layers of hair gel, and my freckles didn’t look as bright as normal. I learned long ago girls tended to focus on confidence instead of looks. Thank God I had enough of both. I smiled at that handsome reflection and flexed my right arm. Yeah, Selena would love it. What girl wouldn’t love a guy in uniform?
This late in September, the sun was almost gone by the time I set out for Grant. It was across campus from the dorm, according to the blurry little map in my student handbook. It was also one of the smallest buildings, with only four classrooms. I wondered if it was here before the rest of the massive halls were built.
Indeed, Grant was separated by a huge field with a fountain in the center, on the badly lit part of the campus that led to the fraternity and sorority houses just across the street. I wondered if this Glee club would have populations from both. I hadn’t thought about joining a fraternity, but I supposed I wouldn’t be opposed to it. Girls, keggers, and scholarships sounded like hella fun. I felt a skip to my step. Nerd or not, this could be my chance to get ‘in’ here at Bay City.
I threw open the door to Grant a little after five. It opened into a long hallway with two doors on each side, reminding me a little of the module I survived fourth grade in. The first door was a computer lab, the second some kind of science room with tables full of beakers and burners. Just across the hall, I heard a couple of laughs, and I finally found the door marked four-oh-one.
I pushed through the door, and a group of a dozen students all turned and locked eyes with me. The tables in the room, I saw, were moved against the corner, and crowded around one table. Selena sat on the table, dressed in a red skirt and black halter top, one long leg crossed over the other. Dismayed, I immediately noticed this was a bit of a sausagefest. The other girl in the room wasn’t much to look at, with one long braid down the back of her head and pock marks on her chubby cheeks that told me she probably knew, intimately, what the inside of a high school locker looked like. The rest of the students were a mix of random jocks, nerds, and a couple of guys in those hipster beret hats, the kind that people pretending to be smart usually wore.
Selena motioned me over, smiling and waving vigorously. Her boobs jiggled, much to my delight. I nearly forgot there were other people in the room.
It was the worst time for the curse to strike, but strike it did.
As a kid, I’d taken ballet, even dance, completely a secret from everyone but my mother. I was nimble, calculated, and precise. I could leap across a stage during Midsummer Night’s Dream and tap while playing Yankee Doodle on the harmonica. But all of that had nothing on the curse. My foot hooked on a leg of one of the chairs, and I went flying face first to the white linoleum of the classroom.
It still wasn’t as bad as the time I fell off the stage in third grade, shattering my collarbone, but the embarrassment in front of the hot piece of ass in the room made it feel much, much worse.
“Gill!”
I heard Selena jump off the table, and a pair of small, smooth hands slid under my arm and helped me stand. I felt another stronger set helping me up, and looking down there was a small skinny student with thick black eyebrows and a beret tucked sideways over curly hair.
“I’m sorry I’m an idiot,” I said, trying to save face.
Selena laughed. “Nonsense, it’s okay! Happens to everyone!” She dropped my arm and slid into a chair, patting the one next to her.
“But…” I tried to protest, as Beret let go and took that seat next to Selena. I pulled out a chair across the narrow aisle and sat down.
“So,” Selena said, propping her chin on her hand and looking past Beret. “Do you know ‘You’re the one that I want’?”
“Grease, classic,” I said to her with a smile.
“You do Travolta’s part,” she said.
“Nice costume,” Beret mumbled, his lips curled in a sarcastic sneer.
“I’m actually an EMT,” I told him, turning to look into the group.
He frowned, but raised his eyebrows. “Really? That’s pretty cool, man.”
“Play nice, Sam,” Selena said to Beret. She turned to the group. “Guys, this is Gill, he has history right after me. Gill, this is Sam.”
Sam nodded at me, the mutual ‘guy code’ that said fourteen things, including but not limited to: What’s up, You’re cool, Yeah, I’d like a beer, and I’d definitely fuck that girl over there even if she has kids. I nodded back.
“What do you sing?” the girl with the braid asked.
“Tenor,” I answered.
“Sweet,” she responded.
“Let’s get this party started,” Sam said.
So, we sang a round of Grease. We covered a few contemporary songs. We even did a round of I Will Survive. Selena danced, and so did Sam. They danced together, and she danced with me. I learned more names, the other girl, Helen, was a history major like me. Sam was into chemistry, and Roger, other beret guy, was Sam’s cousin who studied art.
The clock on the wall told me it was six, and it was hard to believe we’d been at it for a few hours. My stomach rumbled, but I ignored it. I’d get something at the station.
My phone rang at half past six, just after we started a round of Gilligan’s Island. I was surprised I remembered the lyrics. It was Jules, who never failed, always interrupting something important. I silenced the call and went back to the group. My phone rang three more times, but no voicemail, so I knew it wasn’t an emergency. That was our code. I’d have to call her soon.
At seven, I had to leave to get to the station. I thanked everyone for their time, and they all invited me back next week.
“I’ll walk you out,” Selena said, draping her arm inside my elbow.
I wanted to protest, but fourteen-year-old Guillaume brain spoke up again and giggled about her awesome boobs in that very tight top. Goddamn it, brain, you suck. I smiled at her, hoping I didn’t look creepy. My personal rule was never fuck on the first date, but Lord, I wished I didn’t have to get to work. Sam was staring at us with his mouth open and a frown, but I dismissed it.
Like an idiot.
Why are men so oblivious? I mean, girls can smell jealousy, fear, and money on a man. But guys? Oh, fuck no. Our brains cannot operate both thought processes and dicks at the same time. And just now, with this beautiful girl on my arm, I wasn’t thinking about Sam’s expression anymore.
“Where are you parked?” Selena was saying, the heat of her arm still pressing into mine.
“Lot D,” I told her. ‘D’ literally stood for dorm, the college mission officer had told me on day one. It was also across campus. I’d probably be late for work. But I didn’t care.
“You live in the dorms?” she asked.
“Yup,” I answered. “You?”
“With my sister.”
“I have a sister, too.”
“Yeah? Older or younger?”
“Older, nineteen months exactly.”
“Mine is older,” Selena said with a sigh. “And she’s actually my step-sister. My dad’s, from his first marriage. She’s a single mom now with two kids. I help her out.”
“That’s rough,” I said. Kids scared me a little – dirty, filthy things. No, thank you. Luckily, Sel
ena saved me.
“Does your sister go to school here?”
“No, she’s a senior at George Franklin.”
“The medical school, near the border?” Selena whistled. “Wow. That’s a long way away.”
“Yeah, she got most of her college done in high school, and next year she’s starting her residency. She’s a firefighter.”
“Seriously? A girl firefighter?”
I stifled a laugh so Selena wouldn’t get upset. I could imagine Jules’ face if someone said, ‘But you’re just a girl!’ and how her right hook would come out of nowhere. “She’d probably punch you if you said that. She’s tough as nails.”
“So why are you studying history, if you’re both into medicine?”
I shrugged. “Change of pace, I guess.”
“I bet.”
“It’s not always fun to respond to calls when you can’t save a patient,” I said, surprised I said it out loud. I’d never told anyone that before.
“What do you mean?”
“We had an elderly lady last week, heart attack, she was gone before we got there.”
“So you’ve seen a lot of dead people?” she said, and I felt her shiver.
I patted her hand, as we passed the main great hall with admissions and registration offices. It loomed over us in the darkness like a great, old building. Of course, it was, erected in 1898, as the oldest college in the state. Why did I bother reading those boring pamphlets they gave me when I registered? “It’s not the dead people that worry me,” I told her, “it’s that I didn’t do enough to save them.”
“I suppose everyone would worry about that,” Selena said. “Look, we’re here.”
We stopped at the edge of the huge parking lot, the dorm just up the hill looming over us. “Yeah, so we are,” I said.
“You’re on the boy's side, huh?” she said wistfully. She pulled her shirt down in front, and her breasts peeked over the edge.
I nodded. She was still wrapped up in my arm. I was pretty sure I was going to kiss her. At least, that’s what my brain wanted. It had done a pretty bad job of control center today, so what was one more mistake. I decided to play it cool, but my brain had other ideas.
Mirrors (Curse of Lanval Book 1) Page 2