Riding The Wave: (Dragon Within Book Three)

by Kyra Dune

  I stepped back. “Is this how it’s going to be between us? Because if you don’t want to be friends anymore than I wish you’d come right out and say it to my face and lay off the ice queen act.” I really didn’t wish that at all. I wished we could go back to the way things used to be and erase the last few months so they never happened. But we couldn’t.

  Brandy swiveled her chair around to face me. “What do you want from me, Abigail? Only a short while ago I was mourning your death and struggling with the guilt of not being there for you. Now here you are, alive and well and standing right in front of me. How do you expect me to act?”

  “I don’t know.” I crossed my arms because I couldn’t think of what else to do with them. “You came for me, so I guess I thought you might act like you’re happy to see I’m still alive.”

  “Of course I’m happy you’re alive.” She was giving me one of those ‘I can’t believe you just said something so stupid’ kind of looks. You know what I’m talking about. “But happy is only one of the many emotions I’m trying to deal with here. I need some time to sort things out in my head before I make any kind of decision concerning our friendship. Time you owe me.”

  Her words stung, but she was right. After all I’d put her through I owed her whatever she might ask of me. “Okay, fine. Sorry I bothered you.” I turned away, pausing with my hand on the doorknob. “The guys were kind of hoping you’d fix dinner tonight, but if you don’t feel like it...”

  “I can make dinner. I’ll be down in a bit.”

  I looked over my shoulder, but she was already focused on the computer screen again. I knew I should be willing to give her as much time as she needed, but the idea scared me. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like if she decided she didn’t want to be my friend anymore. I didn’t even want to think about it.

  “Oh, come on,” I heard Hannah shout as I walked down the stairs. “He totally fumbled the ball. How could the ref not see it?”

  “No way,” Kyle said. “The ball slipped, but he caught it before it hit the ground. If you hadn’t been so busy checking out his package you would have noticed.”

  “Are you kidding me? The ball bounced. How did it bounce if it didn’t hit the ground?”

  I rolled my eyes. It was beyond me how two people could get so worked up over a football game. Zack was the only one in the kitchen and seeing him there brought me up short. I always felt so unsure of myself around him, as if you hadn’t noticed.

  “Hey,” I said, feeling more than a little lame. I was in a unique predicament with Zack. Or at least, it was unique for me. Sure I’d had crushes before, but nothing like this. My interest in guys tended to be passive. I kind of liked crushing on them from afar, I’d never really wanted to go out on a date with a guy or have him like me back. Not until Zack.

  “Hey.” He stood over the sink, drinking a glass of water and staring out the window.

  I leaned back against the counter. A thing you should probably know, so you can understand exactly how shaky things were with us, is Zack had kept secrets from me. And I’m talking major secrets. Like working with Alice, who purposely tried to sabotage my training because she wanted to be the one who killed Megara. Like knowing my brother was locked up in a corn cellar. Like having a kill order on me.

  I know I shouldn’t have trusted him. But I did. Maybe it was because of my feelings, or maybe it was something else, I’m not sure. But I did trust him. I was the only one in that house who trusted him. I wasn’t stupid, I knew I was placing us all at risk to have so much faith in someone like Zack. I just didn’t care.

  Silence stretched between us. I didn’t know how to talk to him. I was so scared of coming off like some stupid girl with a stupid crush, and that wasn’t what this was. I don’t know if I could have gone so far as to call it love, but it was something. Something big. Something I never felt before. It was real and it was powerful and I had no idea what to do with it.

  I tried to think of something to say, I really did. But after my confrontation with Brandy I was wiped. Zack knew how I felt about him, or at least he knew I was into him thanks to Hannah’s big mouth. But we hadn’t talked about it. We left it hanging in the air between us, invisible, but solid as a wall. How was I supposed to know what to do when I had no idea if he felt the same or not? Maybe I should have asked, but I was scared to know the answer. I was scared of a lot of things.

  Zack sat his glass in the sink and walked out the back door without saying another word. I sighed, my shoulders slumped. It was all so hard, you know? I couldn’t figure out why one thing couldn’t be easy the way everything used to be.

  All these feelings twisted me up inside. Time was I would have went straight to Brandy with them, only I couldn’t with her so mad at me. It left me with nobody to talk to. Well, almost nobody. The only other person I would have felt comfortable talking about all this with was Curtis. He hadn’t treated me with the same open coldness as Brandy, but he had been avoiding me and I didn’t blame him. He should have hated me for what I did.

  Curtis was more than my cousin, he was like my brother. After his parent’s were killed, he came to live with my family and we’d gotten close. Me faking my death had to have been hardest on him of all my friends, after what he’d already lost. And he was the one I felt the most guilty for hurting.

  I went to look for Curtis in the media room. He was something of an amateur film maker, so I kind of figured he would be there. He didn’t have all of his equipment at the beach house, but Brandy had gone into town and bought him a few bare essentials. He’d tried to refuse the gift at first, but she wouldn’t let him. Brandy was like that. She thought of Curtis as a brother as much as I did.

  If you’re wondering why a beach house had a media room, well maybe beach house isn’t the best way to describe where we were staying. Beach mansion might be a little more accurate. It had twelve bedrooms, six bathrooms, a living room, the media room, the kitchen, a den, and a formal dining room. What? I told you Brandy was rich.

  I quietly opened the door without knocking. In case he was in the middle of working on something I didn’t want to make a loud noise and cause him to mess up. He was sitting in front of the projector screen, watching a video of Steve chasing Trudy across the beach. The sound of her laughter filled the room. In the background, Brandy was reading in a lounge chair while Kyle sat in the sand oiling his surfboard. It was all so normal it made my heart ache.

  I paused in the doorway, torn between leaving him alone to do whatever he was doing and dumping my problems on his head. In the end I did the selfish thing. “Curtis?”

  He looked over his shoulder. “Oh, hey.” He paused the projector and stood. “Something up?”

  “No, I just... I thought maybe we could talk.” I was gripping the door handle way too tight, afraid he was going to turn me away like Brandy. “But if you’re busy, I can go.”

  “I’m not busy.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “What do you want to talk about?”

  I stepped into the room and shut the door so we could have a little privacy. Before I started in with my problems, I thought maybe I should try apologizing. “I, um...” I swallowed and looked at the floor like maybe the carpet could help me figure out how to apologize for making him think I was dead for months.

  “It’s okay.”

  I looked up in surprise. “What?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not mad. I mean, I was at first. When Brandy called me and told me what was going on, the first thing I thought was, how could you? How could you fake your own death? It really tore me up inside, thinking you were dead. It was like losing my parents all over again.”

  My throat was so tight I could hardly breath, let alone speak. To say I’m sorry didn’t seem to be enough after hearing what he had to say. How do you make up for something like that? Where do you even start?

  I shook my head, my eyes filling up with tears. I knew I needed to say something, but I couldn’t. Even looking at him was hard, but I thoug
ht I owed it to him to not look away. I owed a lot of people so much.

  “But I wasn’t mad for long,” Curtis said, walking toward me. “Right after I thought ‘how could you’ my next immediate thought was, oh my god she’s alive. And no thought has ever made me happier.” He came to stop directly in front of me. “I’m sorry if I made you think I was mad.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re sorry? Really? You’re the one who's going to say they’re sorry first?”

  “Oops. You want me to take it back so you can go first?” He grinned.

  “No.” I smiled back, feeling way better than I had in a long time. “But I am sorry for hurting you. I didn’t mean to. I thought I was protecting you. Protecting everyone. I was wrong.”

  “It’s okay. I forgive you.”

  “You’re the best.” I grabbed him up in a hug. He was awesome, right? My cousin.

  He hugged me back without reservation. I even heard him sniffle a little. “Promise me you’ll never do anything even remotely like that again and we’ll be cool.”

  “I promise. The next time I fake my own death, I’ll be sure to give you a head’s up.” We both laughed and everything was okay. Maybe not a hundred per cent, I mean I couldn’t take back what I’d done and he couldn’t unfeel what he’d felt, but it was okay.

  Even though I’d gone to him wanting to talk about Brandy and Zack, I decided not to say anything. He didn’t need my stupid relationship problems on his head and I didn’t want to ruin the moment with more depressing stuff. I wanted to stay happy.

  “So,” I wiped my hands across my eyes. “Can I see your movie?”

  “Uh...” He glanced over at the scene frozen on the projection screen. “Yeah, okay. Sure. It’s not done, though.”

  “So I get to be your first audience.” I squeezed his shoulder. “I’m sure it’s great.”

  He gave me a half smile. “It’s kind of boring.”

  “Hey, my life has been way too exciting lately.” I sat. “Bring on the boring.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  So all of us were sitting around the kitchen table like a big happy family, except for the silence. All you could hear was the sound of spoons and forks scrapping against plates. Things tended to get tense every time we all sat down together and I hate to point fingers, especially at somebody I loved like a sister, but it was mostly Brandy’s fault. We were all tense, but at least the rest of us were trying to act like everything was normal.

  I pushed my garlic mashed potatoes into a pile at the center of my plate and tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t sound totally lame. I wasn’t having much luck. What was I supposed to talk about? My faked death? How I didn’t have any real control over my potentially dangerous powers? The woman I killed? Not topics which were really suited to the dinner table.

  “These pork chops are great.” Trudy smiled at Brandy. “You’re a really good cook.”

  Brandy smiled tightly at her, then more silence. I hate silence like that. You know, the awkward kind where, for whatever reason, it’s not okay to joke and laugh and act like you normally would. Regular silence is okay, but that kind is torture.

  “Hey, Curtis,” I said, injecting way too much fake cheer into my voice, “what was the thing you were telling me about earlier in the media room? You know, the thing you want to videotape tomorrow?”

  My cousin swallowed a mouthful of food, his cheeks going red at finding himself suddenly the center of attention. Maybe it wasn’t fair of me to force him into talking to fill the silence, but if anybody could get Brandy to act like a normal human being again I figured it would be him.

  “Uh... you mean the tidal pool?”

  “Yeah, with the fish and stuff.” I smiled forcefully. “Tell everybody about it. It sounded really cool.”

  “It’s, uh,” he cleared his throat. “A tidal pool filled with fish...” he lowered his gaze to his plate, “...and stuff.”

  “It does sound cool.” Trudy smiled at him. Sometimes her bubbly personality would get on my nerves, but I can’t deny she was one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. And I’m talking genuinely nice, not the kind where a person is nice to your face and talks bad about you behind your back.

  “Maybe I could come with you when you film it,” she said. “If it’s okay with you.”

  Curtis raised his eyes, looking at her like he wasn’t sure whether or not she was being serious. “Okay.” His gaze darted to Steve. “If you really want to.”

  “Yeah, you guys should totally go,” Steve said. “I’m sure Trudy could use a break from basking in my awesome surfing skills.”

  A small smile spread across Curtis’ lips. I could almost have kissed Steve for being so sweet. I didn’t know him real well, I’d only started hanging out with him when Brandy and Kyle got together, but I could definitely see why Trudy was so into him.

  “Kyle should go too,” Steve said. “So he can avoid getting shown up in front of his girl.”

  “Dude, please.” Kyle scoffed. “You, show me up in anything sports related? Not a chance. Now, if you want to go head to head to see who can run their mouth the most, that one you might have a chance at.”

  “Well, then,” Trudy said, “it’ll be just me and Curtis. I don’t think Kyle would appreciate a tidal pool anyway.”

  “Does Kyle even know what a tidal pool is?” Steve asked.

  “See,” Kyle jabbed his fork in Steve’s direction, “there you go with the mouth again. You know, you might want to watch letting your girl go off alone with the squirt. He might be planning on making a move.”

  Steve shot Kyle a look he seemed completely oblivious of as he started to laugh. Curtis turned bright red again. It made me want to smack Kyle in the back of the head for being so stupid. I mean, it was obvious a remark like that was going to embarrass my shy and withdrawn cousin. Brandy must have read my mind because smacking Kyle was exactly what she did. And none too gently judging by the look on Kyle’s face.

  “What?” Kyle rubbed the back of his head. “What did I do?”

  “Opened your mouth,” Brandy said. “Next time, try thinking before you speak.” She lifted her brows and tilted her head in the direction of Curtis, who looked as if he wished the floor would open up and swallow him whole.

  “Jeeze, woman. It was a joke.” Kyle looked as if he actually didn’t realize he’d said the wrong thing. And knowing him, he probably didn’t. “It’s not like Curtis could actually steal someone’s girl. He’s like a little kid.”

  Curtis jumped out of his seat and ran up the stairs, his footsteps echoing in the following silence. Somewhere on the second floor, a door slammed shut. I gave Kyle a dirty look filled with as much venom as I could muster.

  “Real smooth.” I tossed my napkin down on the table.

  “What is the big deal?” Kyle looked around the table for help he was not going to get. “It’s not my fault the kid is so sensitive.”

  I shook my head in disgust as I headed upstairs. On my way up I could hear Hannah telling Kyle exactly what the big deal was in words even he would have to understand. I appreciated her sticking up for my cousin, especially since we barely knew each other. But then something about Curtis seemed to bring out the protectiveness in most people. Except Kyle.

  I took my time going down the hall to Curtis’ room, trying to give myself a chance to think of something to say to make him feel better. By the time I knocked on his door I still hadn’t thought of anything. But I still felt like I should try to talk to him anyway.

  “Hey, Curtis, it’s Abby. Can we talk?” I waited but got no reply. Maybe I should have left him alone if it was what he really wanted, but I didn’t like the idea of him in there all alone if he was upset. So, I opened the door and peeked my head in.

  Curtis was laying on his stomach on the bed with a pillow over his head.

  “Can I come in?” I asked.

  “No,” was his muffled reply.

  I went in anyway. “I know Kyle can be kind of a jerk sometim
es, but he doesn’t mean to be. I don’t think.”

  “Whatever.”

  “No, really, he didn’t mean to embarrass you.” I sat on the edge of the bed. “Or to accuse you of doing something you would never do.”

  “Whatever.”

  I sighed. This was getting a little silly. Curtis could be a little overly sensitive sometimes, but he wasn’t the dramatic sort. The way he was acting seemed a little too much of a reaction to what Kyle had said. Something else had to be going on.

  “What is this?” I asked. “It’s not only because of what Kyle said about you trying to put the moves on Trudy, is it? He shouldn’t have said it, but it was only meant to be a joke.” I waited. Nothing. “Come on, Curtis. Talk to me. We’re family. You know you can tell me anything.”

  Curtis huffed into the sheets. “I’m almost fifteen. I’m not a little kid. Everybody tries to treat me like I’m their little brother, but I’m not. I’m not anybody’s little brother.”

  Whoa, what was that? “I don’t get it. You’re mad because Kyle called you a little kid, not because of the Trudy thing?”

  “I’m not stupid, I knew he was joking. Everybody knew he was joking. I was embarrassed, so what? Nothing new about that. But you guys couldn’t let it go like it was no big deal, even though it wasn’t. You had to protect me, like I’m a five year old.”

  Since Brandy was the one who smacked Kyle, I had to think this had something to do with her. I knew she thought of Curtis like a brother, but it had never occurred to me wonder how he might feel about her.

  “Is this about Brandy?” I asked. “Do you... do you like her? Because if you do, it’s okay. You can tell me.”

  “I’m not into Brandy.”

  “Trudy, then?” She didn’t really seem like the kind of girl he’d go for, but then I’d never known of him going for any girl, so what did I know?