by Rae, Nikki
“Here,” I say, pointing to a spot in between a map of white and pink lines—all the scars I've made.
Myles glances down. “What was it?” He asks when his eyes are on mine again.
“It was a star. A little black star.” I take in a breath and decide to tell him the rest. “I did it myself when I was about fifteen. A sewing needle and ink from a ballpoint pen. It was stupid.”
His hand moves around my arm, finally settling on top of my hand where it's safe. “What happened to it?”
“It kind of got lost.” My voice is quiet.
His mouth twitches in a sad, understanding smile. “Why did you choose a star?”
“It was stupid,” I repeat, looking away from him and the mass of scar tissue that is my upper leg.
Myles tilts my chin with his hand, but I don't move. He kisses my temple. “I want to know,” he says without sounding pushy.
I let out a breath. “At the time, my cutting was really bad.” I brave an obviously glance at him before turning my attention to somewhere in the middle of the cotton covering the center of his chest. “It was sort of a reminder. Like a Post-It note or a little piece of string around my pinky.” I shrug.
“To remind you not to do it,” he infers.
I nod. “It totally worked.” I smile because I don't want him to think I'm uncomfortable.
Slowly, thinking maybe he shouldn't, Myles starts to move his hand again. His fingertips lightly graze the puffy lines, some white, some, mainly the one long gash from last fall, a pale pink. He moves his index finger up, down, to the left, to the right, and up again. Over and over, mapping out a star on top of a galaxy of memories, lines, strokes, cuts, and scars.
I'm alright with this. I know what he's doing. Reminding me. Reminding me that people love me; that he loves me. It’s something a little bit of ink couldn't handle. The star eventually implodes, his fingers tracing the actual marks in jagged, bumpy detail.
My heart beats faster, my mind flashes to when I made them, how old I was, where I was. Sometimes there's a reason attached to it, more often, not. It's like he's pressing little buttons on my body, each one transporting me to a horrible place and time. Before I realize it, my hand is around his wrist, stopping him.
Alarm registers on his face when he glances up.
“I'm sorry,” I croak, moving slightly so we're not touching anymore as he retracts his arm.
“I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable,” he says. He’s not hurt, just concerned.
I swallow, blink. “It's not your fault,” I say. “It's just that. . .I never touch them. They're a bad part of me that I don't like thinking about.”
I'm pretty sure this is the line that leads to Myles saying, well, okay, I'll leave you alone. See you tomorrow, but his arm stretches back across the comforter, so I take it.
“Sophie,” he says as his body moves closer, until our faces a few inches apart. “I've seen these before.” His hand traces the long gone scars on my wrist from when I broke it when I was younger. “I can see them all.” His voice is just above a whisper. “I know all of your secret, bad parts, and I love them because they're a part of you.”
I snort. “That's cheesy.”
He smiles back, not offended in the least. “You've done the same for me.”
Myles isn’t wrong. We're quiet for a few minutes before he says, “I have scars too.”
I'm about to laugh and tell him to can it. Yeah, scars, emotional scars. I get it, but he interrupts my thoughts. “Would you like to see?”
Does he means real, touchable scars? “You don't have to show me.”
I know what he’s trying to do, but I doubt it'll make me feel any better about the awful things I've done to myself. “But you can if you want to.”
His hand leaves mine, wrapping around the collar of his t-shirt as he sits up. “I have to take my shirt off to show you,” he explains.
“Okay,” I say almost too quickly.
In one smooth motion, his shirt is off, and he's lying back down, leaning on his elbow. I try not to stare, but it's hard. Anyone’s eyes would linger on his pale skin, the small curves of subtle muscle underneath. I’m not uncomfortable; it’s just a weird thing for me, being in a room with a guy sans shirt. I break my mind away from how his hips stick out from his jeans in order to look at him.
When he’s sure he has my attention, he says, “You've already seen this one,” pointing to his wrist, the one he used to save my life. It's a gnarled mirror image of the one that's on my scalp, now covered with hair and barely visible. “But I don’t think you've noticed this one yet.” He leans his head back so I can get a better look, at a spot between his throat and right collar bone.
It’s in the shape of a circle that doesn’t connect; two half-moons that never touch. Inside the semi-circles are ripples of alternating lighter and darker skin.
Without looking, he grabs hold of my hand and lightly presses it to the raised white surface. It’s bumpy and surprisingly rough.
“I didn't know you could get scars,” I say. My fingers trace the indentations as his hand moves to rest on my wrist. His eyes have closed.
“We can,” he says. “This is the mark left by the one who changed me. That one always stays.”
I now realize what the light and dark indentations are from: teeth.
“Did it hurt?” I ask. That’s a dumb question. It had to. These are teeth marks.
“Yes.” He shakes his head like he's trying to shake the memory out. “That was what my—”
“What?”
He glances at me like he's weighing something in his mind. “That was what my nightmare was about.” He shifts, then sits up, so I do the same. “We can't dream—not our own dreams—so it was strange.” Myles blinks a few times.
“Only. . .” He stares at the blanket for a second. “It wasn't really a dream. I was remembering something. From. . .before.”
I smile a little. “You remembered something from when you were human?”
Silence.
A car honks somewhere outside. A cartoon character laughs on the TV behind him, telling us to eat some kind of cereal.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask after another moment.
Myles opens his mouth slightly, then shuts it. Finally, he nods.
“Okay.” I interlock our fingers. “You can tell me.”
His thumb grazes the top of my hand a few times before he speaks. “It was after I was attacked. Usually when I try to remember the night I was changed or anything before it, I come up empty.” He shrugs. “I only know what I've already told you.”
I think back to the night Myles told me everything he was hiding. A storm. Horses. He woke up alone in a field, not knowing how he got there.
He swallows. “I woke up on the wet grass. I could smell the mud. I felt like I was changing.” One of his fists curls in his chest, the other hand tightens around mine.
“It hurt.” Now his fingers touch the scar. He looks at me like he’s suddenly remembered I’m in the room. “Then the dream skipped ahead and I was walking home. My parents. . .” He pauses. His eyes are far away. “They were there, but they had no faces. I don't know what they looked like.” He doesn't sound saddened by this, it's just a fact. “I think they thought I caught a cold or something from being out in the rain. I spent the next few days in a bedroom in pain. . .dying.”
Taking in a deep breath, he continues. “The next thing I remember is trying to get up. I could barely stand. And then. . .” He blinks like he's replaying it all over again. “My fangs came in.”
I gulp, but I think I manage to keep it quiet enough so Myles doesn't notice.
“There was a lot of blood.” He pauses for a few seconds. “I was horrified. Then it gets a little fuzzy. I took something sharp. . .cut my arm. When it didn't bleed, I became even more frantic. I knew there was something wrong. I knew something was happening to me. I wanted to die. I thought I was supposed to be dead.”
“But you had alread
y changed?” I pipe up.
His eyes graze my face, momentarily broken from the memory. “No,” he whispers. “Not completely.” He shakes his head. “I didn't bleed because I had virtually no blood left.”
I nod like I understand, but this is obviously beyond my realm of comprehension.
“Finally, my arm started bleeding, but I didn't die. I passed out, woke up, and I was still alive—or so I thought.” Myles balls his fist under my palm. “No more than a few hours could have passed, but when I woke up, there was blood everywhere except my arms. There weren’t any marks at all.”
He untwists our hands to inspect his left wrist, like telling the story has raised the scars from the grave. He lowers his arm finally, placing it palm down on the comforter between us. “It's not the memory that's bothering me,” he says quietly. “It's what I felt.”
“Well, yeah.” I have to stabilize my voice before I can go on. “You were scared. The dream probably scared you.”
“It's not even that.” Myles glances at me, to the TV, then back to me. “Even if I hated what I was for the longest time, I never—not once—wished for death. I didn't think I was capable of feeling that way.”
We’re both quiet. He can’t say anything more about it because what use would it be, an immortal talking about killing himself? I don’t say anything because I can’t come up with any words that would make it feel better or hurt less.
I may not have words, but I have him, and he has me. I wrap my arm around Myles, using my free hand to cradle the arm he hasn’t looked away from since the conversation started.
And I can see them: a bunch of white, jagged, angry lines near the base of his hand, one long, desperate indent carved diagonally from wrist to elbow. They're barely visible, but I see them. I trace the long line slowly, then the other shorter ones.
“That's impossible,” he whispers.
I jump at his voice.
“You can see them?” he asks.
“I'm not supposed to be able to see them?”
Myles shrugs when I look up at him, obviously not as confused as I am. ”It could be something left over from when we exchanged blood,” he says. “Maybe you can sense certain things about me now.” He turns his head to the side like a thought's just occurred to him. “Scars are something you're already sensitive about. . .so maybe it isn't so crazy that you can now see mine.”
Great. Just what I needed to graduate Normal Academy. But I give Myles a small smile anyway.
He smiles back. “Thank you for letting me share that with you. I feel a lot better.”
“You don't have to thank me, Myles.” I'm guessing he doesn't share things like this very often by the look on his face.
“Can we. . .lie back down now? I'm tired.” He almost sounds surprised.
Scooting over, I replace my head on the pillow and he follows suit, taking one from the floor near him.
“That’s what telling secrets does to you,” I try to joke, and thankfully, he laughs a little when we’re both on our sides facing each other.
“Do you want me to put my shirt back on?” he asks after a moment.
I honestly hadn’t thought about it since he took it off. “It’s not bothering me.”
He smiles again as his eyes begin to close. I’m not far behind him.
My hand finds Myles’ and guides it over the blanket where the forest of scars lies on my leg beneath. My fingers rest on his own dark, secret parts. I stare at the ceiling of the fort, it’s patchwork of plain white sheets and tie dyed swirls. The light from the TV glints on the safety pins holding them together. Just before I let sleep take me away for the night, I trace a star on Myles’ wrist with my index finger, and he does the same over the blanket.
New Friends
Chapter 4
“Everybody I know has got fangs.”—He is Legend
I manage to sleep the whole night through without having a single nightmare or memory—mine or someone else’s. I don’t have to be anywhere until twelve, but I wake up early, not even tired. Myles, once his shirt is back on, helps me take down the fort and fold up blankets. I want to do nothing more than just hang out with him today, but that’s not an option. Boo and Trei are counting on me to practice with them, then I have to meet Honus for rehearsing their songs with them, and then I’m working at Midnight until one AM again. It’s going to be a long day, but one filled with music, so it can’t be half-bad.
So Boo, Trei, and I go through the Radiohead covers we decided on over a week ago, but can’t quite grasp playing. Well, I know my parts as if they were ingrained in the backs of my eyelids. It’s Boo and Trei that can’t follow me. It’s not like I can get mad at them for it. They know how to read music and I don’t. It’s like they’re speaking English and I’m speaking in some strange dead language that few people even learn anymore.
But. We get a rough skeleton of what we want for each song, and that takes long enough. We part ways, agreeing that a break would be a really amazing idea for tomorrow even if it might come back to bite us in the ass.
As I’m leaving our practice room to go to Honus’, Jamie stops me. Boo and Trei are still hanging out in the hallway when they left before me, and they’re smiling.
“What?” I ask.
“We just got paid,” Trei says.
“Already?” I ask Jamie.
He pushes his useless glasses up on the bridge of his nose. He produces a white envelope. “Congratulations.”
My finger is just under the flap when Boo says, “It’s a lot.”
I glance back up, Trei nods.
I’ve gotten many checks in my life. I worked since I was old enough because I always thought it was important to earn my own money and not mooch off of my parents. But I’ve never seen a number like this on any of my checks. “Five hundred dollars?”
“Each.” Jamie doesn’t even try to conceal his bitter tone.
“Isn’t it awesome?” Boo says.
“Uh,” is all that leaves my mouth.
“Well,” Trei says, not seeming to notice the way my jaw has become agape and my motor functions have ceased to work. “We have to get going.”
They’re just going to leave when this is going on? “Uh,” I repeat.
“We’ll call you when we’re back from our dad’s?” Boo asks.
I nod, almost unaware that he’s asked a question.
I hear their footsteps climb the stairs, but I don’t snap out of it until Jamie speaks again.
“What’s your schedule looking like for today?” he asks.
“Uh,” I say. I fold up the piece of paper with the ridiculous amount of money on in and slip it into my messenger bag. “I’m off to rehearse with Honus now, then I’m free for a little bit before I have to be at the club. Why?”
“Evan wanted to see you.”
“Oh?” I ask. “Is it about a typo on our checks?” I try to joke to diffuse the stank face he’s doing a horrible job at hiding.
He shrugs. “I was just told to make an appointment for you with him. How about seven?”
I check the time on my phone. Four thirty. “Sure.” I try to sound casual. “I have to be at the club by seven thirty anyway.”
Jamie’s all business. “Do you know where his office is?”
“Vaguely,” I admit. I’ve never been there before, but I’ve heard of it. “Somewhere near the dressing rooms, right?
My reflection bounces off of his black frames. “You’ll be able to find it.”
“Okay. Well,” I say awkwardly. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” Jamie begins to head back to the stairs and I turn to head further down the hall to practice space number five, where Honus told me they’d be meeting at four fifteen.
Manny’s already poking his head out of the room when I turn the corner. “I was beginning to think you stood us up.” He opens to door for me all the way and I step inside.
“Sorry.”
Everyone’s already got instruments in hand by the time I’m sitting down
at the piano. I think for a fleeting second that maybe I could ask them about the whole check situation—if it’s normal to get so much after the first show—but I decide against it. Judging Jamie’s less than excited reaction, I’m guessing not, and I don’t want to bug out my new friends’ eyeballs. I let the music float over me, sinking into it and forgetting about the check completely.
I get to Midnight early for my “appointment” with Evan. Kelly and Dana, a duo that play electronic music, are on stage sound checking, speaking into the microphone to tell the engineer “higher” or “lower” after strumming, or testing out how loud their voices sound in the mics. They wave to me as I make my way backstage to the dressing rooms and Evan’s office. I don’t know Kelly and Dana too well, but if you sell someone’s T-shirts and CDs, I guess the least you can do is act like you know them when you see them.
Evan’s office is at the very end of the long hall of dressing rooms. I knock three times, aware of how far away from the stage I am by how the sound check slowly becomes muffled and then entirely absent.
“Come in,” I hear Evan say from within.
I twist the golden doorknob and step inside, letting the door shut gently behind me. The room is small, but large enough to have three bookcases and a good sized desk, which Evan is sitting behind, hunched over and concentrating on some paperwork he has spread out in front of him. He looks up at me when I take a step forward.
“Hello, Sophie,” he says. “It is good to see you.” His tone is light, with a hint of an accent I can’t place in it. “Please,” he gestures to the very comfortable looking, brown leather sofa in front of the desk.
I shrug off my trench before sitting down.
“How are you?” I ask, not sure of what else I’m supposed to say.
Evan ‘s eyes are on the papers in front of him. I notice there are three picture frames on the desk, but they’re not facing me, so I can’t see who’s in them.
“I am alright,” he says after a minute. ”And you? Are you settling in?”