The Year of the Great Seventh

by Orts, Teresa

  It only took one look at his beautiful face to make me realize that even if it was Nate and me against the world, it was all worth it. It didn’t matter what his family thought. No one could take away from me the special bond I had with him.

  “It’s kind of wild that we’re in New York together.” Nate half-grinned, making me feel like the most special person in the universe.

  No matter how much time we spent by each other’s side, his piercing dark eyes had the same hypnotizing effect on me as that first day.

  I thought the way Nate made butterflies race around my stomach every time he touched me would wear off, but it only exacerbated with time. Now it was more along the lines of a butterfly stampede.

  They say an addiction is a dependency on an external substance. If that was the definition of an addiction, I could confirm I had one, and Nate was mine. And it wasn’t going to be an easy one to kick.

  Nate hailed a cab that was turning the corner before the girls down the street saw it.

  “Hey, you! That was our taxi!” a drunken girl shouted as she turned around and saw us.

  We quickly got into the taxi, laughing, and waved at them as we drove away.

  CHAPTER XV

  THAT NIGHT WHEN I got to the hotel, I couldn’t fall asleep. Every time I closed my eyes, a siren resonated in the background and I wasn’t able to get the sound out of my head. I didn’t know how New Yorkers lived like this. I guess you probably got used to the noise after a while.

  And then there were the lights of the city shining through the window. It was a magnificent idea, the panoramic view of the skyscrapers from the bed, but it was just too bright to sleep.

  There were curtains, but of course, they were controlled by that diabolical digital panel that I didn’t dare touch. If I turned the music on full volume by mistake at this time of the night, we were going to get kicked out of the hotel.

  I tried hiding under the covers to block the light and to fantasize that Nate and I were in New York strictly to attend an NYU tour. In my parallel under-the-covers world, Nate and I had decided to come to college together. In this world, there wasn’t a stain growing on Nate’s body, and he didn’t make things explode with his mind. We were just two normal teenagers. Nate had decided to go for a double major in biology and environmental studies, and I’d got into the history program with a full scholarship. After visiting the dorms, we’d been put off by the lack of privacy and had rented a three-bedroom apartment in Williamsburg, which we also shared with Megan. Yes, in this world Megan had confronted her mom and put her acting career on hold for four years to complete an undergraduate degree in sociology, specializing in pop culture and the obsession with celebrities. The three of us loved living in New York City and sharing our college experiences.

  Frustration took hold of me when I realized that no matter how long I stayed under the covers, none of this was ever going to come true. All I wanted was a normal and boring life with Nate and my friends.

  Whatever that stain on Nate’s back was, it was starting to really hurt him. I couldn’t express how excruciating it was to observe the person I cared for the most in this world slowly disintegrate in front of me and not know how to save him.

  Maybe it was time to turn for help, but I quickly disregarded that idea. How were we going to explain to anyone what was happening to Nate? Or how was any adult going to believe us?

  I felt so sad, and I missed Nate so much. I didn’t understand why I had to stick to his orders and stay in a separate room. All I wanted was to be with him, and knowing he was on the other side of the wall, probably going through the same grief, just made me feel so powerless. I told myself to stay strong and forced myself to stop complaining. If I was going to help Nate, I had to be courageous.

  Lately, life seemed to be conspiring against me. Tonight, I’d finally met a member of the Werner clan and, confirming my suspicions, Nate was the family exception. His cousin was a pretentious classist with little respect for anyone who wasn’t rolling in cash. Only the fact that my parents couldn’t afford a private school made me worthless. To make matters worse, I suspected that the rest of the members of Nate’s family were going to think just like Preston.

  In the big scheme of things, that subject wasn’t my main concern. We had more critical problems to resolve. If dealing with a bunch of snobs was what it took to be with Nate, I was willing to teach them you couldn’t judge a book by its cover.

  It was surprising how different Nate had turned out compared to Preston. Nate was so mature and down-to-earth. He seemed to have a special skill to see right past the mist of wealth. After all, money comes and goes, but nothing can change who you are. As I got to know Nate better, I could tell he didn’t care that my family didn’t enjoy the wealth his family did.

  I wasn’t suggesting Nate didn’t enjoy luxury. That was how he’d been raised and probably where he felt most comfortable. But what impressed me the most was—unlike his cousin Preston—he could adapt to any type of situation. He fit in perfectly when he was around my friends, and believe me, Megan, Emma, Chase, and Tyson were anything but the Beverly Hills type.

  Nate was probably so different from his family because of the estranged relationship he had with his parents. Sometimes they say you can only appreciate something when it’s been taken away from you. Maybe he knew happiness is about connecting with other people.

  I could tell Nate was still suffering the aftereffects of his parents’ alienation. Sometimes he shut down, refusing to share his feelings with anyone else, as if he believed he deserved what was happening to him. His parents had put too much pressure on their only son, and as Nate hadn’t been able to live up to their standards, he thought all of this was his fault.

  His parents probably wanted their beautiful boy to climb up the Beverly Hills social ladder to become the crown prince. They probably expected him to go to an Ivy League school, become an architect, continuing the Werner legacy, and marry the daughter of someone important.

  Instead, Nate was a troubled kid with a history of violence that no shrink had been able to tame. After a long struggle to turn the frog into a prince, his ashamed parents surrendered and decided to send him to a public school where his troubles wouldn’t be known to their Beverly Hills friends.

  Admitting I wasn’t going to fall asleep, I emerged from under the bed covers, went over to the windows, and sat on the floor. They say if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Well, if the city lights were going to keep me awake, I might as well enjoy the view.

  Crossing my legs, I admired the city skyline. The other glass tower across from us seemed to be private apartments. Most of the floors had their lights on. The energy of this city was captivating. Life continued on through the night in the city that never slept.

  It was starting to snow. The frosty flakes resembled white cotton candy. They seemed to be defying the laws of gravity as they were suspended on the air and then swirled up into the sky. It was probably due to the air current caused by the tall buildings. But as things stood in my life at the moment, anything seemed possible.

  The traffic was as dense as rush hour in downtown L.A. Cars jammed around Columbus Circle, and no one thought twice about leaning on the horn, even though it was past midnight.

  In one of the apartments opposite, a man was sitting by the window, typing on a laptop. The room was dark, but the reflection of the computer screen lit up his face. I could see him clearly. It was as though we were sitting across from each other. I was sure he could see me, too. We were so close, but at the same time, so far. This must be the big city syndrome where you can feel so alone amongst so many people. And knowing that Nate was just across the wall only enhanced the feeling.

  I had to start blocking any thoughts of Nate. I had to give myself a break or I was going to start losing my mind. Unfortunately, I was aware that ignoring a problem wasn’t likely to make it go away. I couldn’t believe Nate had planned to hide the stain on his back from me. How long did he think he could pretend ev
erything was going to be fine?

  Dad taught me to only believe what could be proved by science, but this lulled me into a state of denial. Nate was vanishing with the tick of the clock, and I had to help him. I wasn’t sure how yet, but I couldn’t fail him. I wanted to slap myself to throw myself into action. How could I be so passive when I was losing the only thing I wanted?

  The man in the apartment across from me was drinking from a cup and flicking through the pages of a book that he had next to the laptop. After scanning a few more pages, he continued to type. I wondered what he was doing. I wanted to think he was writing a detective novel based in 1950s Manhattan.

  The man stopped typing and stared openly at me, as if he also needed to share his secrets with a stranger. It was snowing hard, and thousands of snowflakes playfully spiraled up into the sky, proving reality had many dimensions. The simple stare from a distant stranger was appeasing that loneliness that was taking hold of me.

  I couldn’t stop staring back. Here, sitting on the floor of this grandiose room, in the epicenter of the madness of this city, I just felt so small. How was I, this tiny, fragile girl, going to make the world change its course?

  The man with the computer—as if he could hear my thoughts—smiled at me and nodded. Without uttering a word, and with the power of our surroundings, this stranger confirmed that, yes, I could do whatever I gave myself to. It was probably a coincidence, but there were moments like this when the universe conspired to prove that life was full of magic moments. You just needed to learn to see past what was in front of you.

  The man went back to typing on his computer, unconscious that with just one stare he’d provided me with the courage I lacked. I was beginning to fall in love, but in this case, with New York City. There was something about the anonymity of this city that brought us closer as humans.

  Inspired, I reached up to the desk and grabbed my laptop. There, with New York City at my feet, I was going to fight for what I wanted. I was going to discover how to help Nate. I opened a Word document and decided to write down all the events since I’d met Nate.

  Going back to the beginning, it all started when Nate maniacally attacked Ethan at his party. For some reason, my sixth sense warned me there was something that didn’t add up. The hatred with which Nate had assaulted Ethan was something I’d never seen before, in anyone. As a result of that, I became obsessed with discovering what had driven Nate to commit such an atrocity. Well, now I was willing to admit that my real obsession after the fight might have been to discover the mysterious world of Nate Werner.

  After stalking Nate and trying unsuccessfully to force him to confess the real reason he’d beaten Ethan, he told me to leave him alone and stay away from him and his entourage. Nate had been as cruel as anyone had ever been to me because he knew that was the only way he was going to make me abort my mission.

  After our chance encounter at the movie theater, Nate finally unveiled his secret world to me and took me into the privacy of his home in Beverly Hills. He then confessed that he thought he was losing his mind like his grandfather.

  Once Nate satisfied my curiosity, he pleaded for me to stay away from him. He confessed that I had a strange effect on him. He found it more difficult to control his violent episodes when I was around. He was afraid of hurting me, and we didn’t have any future together due to his mental illness. Even though I agreed to his demand, his plea to stay away only fuelled my obsession with him. Now that I’d crossed the line to his fascinating world, I couldn’t live without him.

  By chance, the very next day I went to the Getty to pick up my recommendation letter and I came across an Egyptian prophecy that contained the word that Nate mumbled when he was having one of his episodes: “Ammateus.” The text was written at the time of Cleopatra and spoke about a night spirit feared by the Egyptians.

  That’s when I started to believe in this crazy idea that there was a connection between the text and whatever was happening to Nate. I made him rush to the Getty to tell him about my discovery. I crossed the line. Nate told me to stop contacting him because he didn’t want to live with the guilt of hurting me. After that, we stayed away from each other.

  It was unbearable to be ignored by him at school, and I started to realize there was a possibility that putting distance between us was tough on Nate as well. I felt really depressed; even my friends noticed my change of mood, and my grades were starting to suffer, too.

  One day I decided I didn’t want to live like a corpse anymore, and I was willing to risk it all. I asked Nate to a movie premiere, as there wasn’t anything else in the world that I wanted more than to be with him. To my surprise, Nate accepted my offer and confessed that when we’d been at the Getty together, there was something different about me. He felt fine around me. In fact, he felt a peace inside that he’d never felt before.

  At the premiere after party at the Onyx bar, someone ripped the Egyptian necklace that Dad had given me from my neck, and everything went wrong after that. Nate went into one of his trances. I managed to make it out of the bar safely, but somehow, Nate’s episode caused the gigantic fish tanks inside to explode and several people were injured. That night I heard him clearly speak the word “Ammateus.”

  When I got home, I discovered from Dad’s history book that Cleopatra, like other Egyptians, was terrified by the night spirits and Ammateus in particular. She reerected two obelisks in front of a temple she built called the Caesareum, which she claimed could protect her people from the night spirits.

  That’s when I realized the Syenite stone from the Egyptian necklace had changed the course of the evening. It explained why he felt at ease around me at the Getty and why everything had been fine at the premiere. For some reason, the Syenite stone had an effect on Nate.

  The necklace and the obelisks Cleopatra claimed protected her people from the night spirits were made of the same stone. It must be the divine stone from the prophecy, so I came to the conclusion that the obelisks—known as Cleopatra’s Needles—could give us a solution to our problems. To our luck, one of the obelisks now resided in the United States, here in New York. On top of that, we discovered that the prophecy from the Getty had originally been engraved by Cleopatra at the entrance to the Caesareum next to where the obelisks had been reerected.

  The prophecy said that Ammateus, the night spirit, would be marked by the legend of Orion—which matches the mark I saw on Nate’s back. It also said that Ammateus will bring the sons of Satan back from death and that Ammateus’s salvation, and that of the life that guides him, lies beneath. That last phrase could refer to the crabs nested at the bottom of the obelisk, but we can’t be sure if we were the only ones to have reached that conclusion. Two of the crabs were stolen in 1980 when the obelisk was transported to New York.

  It seemed indisputable that the text referred to Nate, but the woman in the text wasn’t necessarily me. It was true that I had the miniature Syenite mummy replica with me at all times, and that seemed to make Nate feel at ease with me. However, I wanted to consider the hypothesis that the Syenite stone could have the same effect on anyone else.

  When we thought we had all the time in the world to solve an undecipherable prophecy, a gray stain appeared on Nate’s back and started extending throughout his body, warning us that time was slipping away—and with it, Nate’s life.

  The man with the laptop switched it off, and after glancing at me one last time as if wishing me a good night, he disappeared through the door. I needed some sleep also. I was going to need energy for the next day.

  Before going to bed, I decided to answer my emails, including two from Mom asking about the NYU tour. When I was about to switch off my computer, one last email came in. It was Professor Silverman replying to my earlier email. Why was he up at this time of the night?

  Dear Sophie,

  I’m looking forward to meeting you tomorrow. You father has spoken so much about you and about the passion for history you share with him. Unfortunately I won’t be able to meet y
ou at 1 p.m. as previously agreed since I won’t get to be my office until 3 p.m. Please come and see me then. About the crabs from Cleopatra’s Needles, I think I can help you with that. I’m glad you are interested in the prophecy of the Caesareum. You remind me of myself when I was your age.

  Let’s catch up tomorrow.

  Pr. Silverman

  How did he know I was interested in the Caesareum’s prophecy? I’d simply asked him about the crabs. Was it that obvious? Have I been driving Nate in circles when I could’ve turned to Professor Silverman right away?

  How had I been such a fool? I’d wasted all this time when Professor Silverman knew right away that the prophecy referred to the crabs. I certainly couldn’t wait until 3:00 p.m. to see him. We’d already wasted too much time. I could tell we were getting close to a solution for Nate. Maybe someone had already deciphered the entire prophecy and we could get an answer earlier than we expected.

  I quickly typed an email back to Professor Silverman to see whether he could see me in the morning. I didn’t care about the NYU tour anymore. The decision turned me into the worst daughter in the world, but I think I could live with that. By skipping the tour, this trip turned into a complete lie to my parents, but I knew for sure that if they understood what was at stake, they would want me to help my friend.

  A minute later, another email from Professor Silverman came back. Still awake at this time at night? What was with historians and insomnia? I suspected Professor Silverman was in my dad’s club. Dad loved to work through the night. If I got up in the middle of the night to get water or use the bathroom, the light in Dad’s office would always be on. If I ever asked him why he often worked so late, he always said that the quietness of the night made him think clearer. He called himself a creature of the darkness.

  To my dismay, Professor Silverman couldn’t meet me at 1 p.m. as agreed. He wasn’t going to be at his office until 3:00 p.m., and sadly, there was nothing else I could do about it. I felt so powerless. How were we supposed to waste the entire morning waiting around when we knew we were working against time?