“So tomorrow’s the big day,” he said.
I gagged on my roast. “What?” I asked between fits of coughing. “What did you say about tomorrow?”
“It’s your birthday,” he said, with a question in his voice and a quick glance at his wife. My mom only shrugged helplessly and swished her hand at my dad, prodding him forward. “What would you like to do? It’s your day.”
“Oh, I don’t know dad. Is there even anything to do here?” I said, pretending that my melancholy was still due to my previous dislike of the town.
“Of course there are things to do. There’s the beach, a movie, dinner, bowling, skating, hiking. Take your pick.”
I appreciated the effort. Actually Grainer seemed to have a surprising amount of things to do. Most of them required me to be outdoors, which I was not used to, but I would have been willing to try if I had more time. Grainer was just not that important anymore. Truly disappointed that I would miss the bonfire on Saturday, I coughed trying to cover up an unexpected sob. Too tired to continue the charade, I simply said, “Dinner and a movie sounds great, Dad.”
“What do you want to see?” my mom asked. “I’ll have to call and check the times of the theater here.” Always planning ahead. My mom made me smile.
“I think that show I wanted to see before we moved is still in theaters. You know, the one with that actor I like,” I said. I didn’t have a clue what movie I was even talking about but it seemed plausible that there would be something playing that fit that description. My mom nodded her head. Maybe she knew what movie I was talking about. My grandpa tried desperately to hide the pain in his eyes. Mom and dad seemed oblivious, but seeing his pain doubled mine and I had to look away before tears started falling.
“I’ll get tickets in the morning,” her mother said, calculating where to fit it into her schedule. “We can go to Willowby’s Steak House. I’ve heard it’s delicious.”
“That sounds great, Mom.” I smiled. Of course they would go there. It was the only real restaurant in town. Everything else was a diner or fast food. That might have bothered me greatly before, but now I truly wished I could survive long enough to spend the evening with my parents. I had spent so little time with them the past few days, and most of what we had spent together was filled with me complaining about everything in sight. A sniffling cough snapped me out of my musings. My grandpa was standing up.
“Well, I better head home. Thanks for dinner, Judy.” He patted my shoulder roughly.
“You’ll come tomorrow won’t you,” my mom asked.
Another stifled coughing sob.
“Of course. I wouldn’t miss it,” he agreed.
We all stood to walk him to the door. He gave hugs all around, holding me longer than the others. “We’ll get you through this. I won’t let them have you,” he whispered fiercely. “Don’t give up yet.” I smiled encouragingly and nodded. Watching him close the door, my hope dwindled to nothing.
“I’ll be in my room,” I muttered. “I’m still pretty tired.”
My parent’s voices followed me as I walked away. I could hear the deep concern in their voices. I could hear my mom complaining. What more could she do? she was asking. My eyes burned. If only it was a matter of making friends, of fitting in. They had no idea that tomorrow would be the last birthday I would ever see. Who could blame me for not wanting to celebrate that fact?
I fell into my bed to wait.
Chapter Twenty
8:45p.m.
The only way it would take me fifteen minutes to walk to the park was if I decided to do an impression of a snail on the way there, but I couldn’t stand to wait any longer. The last thing I wanted was for Tanner to show up first and think I wasn’t coming. He probably already thought I was a little weird. Kicking my blanket off, I crept over to the window.
I could hear the faint sounds of the television playing the living room. Hopefully they would stay there and not try to come in and cheer me up. Forcing the window open for the first time since moving in, I stuck my head out into the cool night air. Apparently this house was built before screens were invented and the previous owners had never bothered to update. That was fine by me. It made one less thing I had to do before sneaking out.
Pulling my head back in, I stuck my leg out instead and climbed through to the soft grass below. My sneakers were a little damp by the time I made it to the gate thanks to the sprinklers that had been on a few minutes earlier, but everything seemed just as quiet as before so I unlatched the gate and slipped through.
The house next door to us was quiet and dark. I had heard my mom mention that an elderly woman lived there so I wasn’t surprised that there was no one awake. I passed by her carefully pruned yellow rose bushes. The aroma of the blooms radiated over the sidewalk. Normally I liked the smell of roses, but scents from the dreams crept into the air somehow and my steps quickened. The lights were blazing in the next house, but I hurried by and rounded the fence to the park.
I stepped off the sidewalk and caught movement at the back of the park. My heart stopped and so did my feet. The figure quickly stepped into the spreading light of the street lamp. Tanner’s features lit up under the pale light and I could see his nervous smile.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey, you’re early.” My relief had me shaking almost as badly as my fear had. I tried to shake it off as I stepped towards him.
“I, uh, didn’t want you to get worried I wasn’t coming so I came a little early,” Tanner said.
“How long have you been here?” I asked. If the sprinklers in the back yard hadn’t turned on, I probably would have been here twenty minutes ago.
“Just about ten minutes or so,” he said. His sheepish smile drew me in closer. “Besides, I really wanted to see you again anyway.”
“Me too. Seeing you that is, not me.” Now I was blushing from his compliment and my bumbling speech. Of course that’s what I meant. I didn’t need to explain it. Tanner just smile and offered me his hand. I took it and let him lead me over to an old wooden bench at the edge of the light.
At first we just sat quietly. It felt good to be near him. With Tanner I could pretend tomorrow would just be another day. Even though I’d told Tanner I needed to talk, he didn’t push me. He seemed content to let me get to what was troubling me when I was ready. I was thankful for that. When he did finally speak it was just an innocent question that hit the wrong nerve.
“So, are you excited for the bonfire on Saturday?”
Tears welled up in my eyes and I just couldn’t hold it in any longer. I started crying right there on the bench when all I had wanted to do was forget everything for a while. Tanner’s face froze in confusion, but his arm instantly came up around my shoulders and pulled me into a hug I desperately needed.
“Arra, are you okay? What did I say?” he asked. “I’m so sorry.”
I wanted to respond, but I couldn’t stop crying. He was never going to want to speak to me again. But after tomorrow event that wouldn’t matter. That thought did not help me stop crying. Gentle fingers reached up and brushed my tears away. His hands smoothed my hair out of my face and he told me it was okay over and over again.
Not sure how long I had been crying, I could only take deep cleansing breaths when the tears finally stopped. “Tanner, I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what you must think about me, now,” I said. I kept my head down, waiting for him to jump up and run.
“I’m thinking that you’re having a really hard time right now, that’s all,” he said. “And I don’t know if I can help, but I’ll do my best if you’ll let me.”
Tanner couldn’t possibly be so nice. I wanted to reach up and kiss his concerned lips until he forgot the last few minutes, but I resisted that urge. I asked him here to talk and he certainly deserved an explanation. I knew that what I really wanted to say sounded absolutely insane. Oh well, I thought, chances are I won’t be around for him to laugh at anyway.
“Tanner, this is going to sound really crazy,�
� I began.
“Your brother isn’t really in college, is he? He’s living in your basement chained to a wall because he eats little children,” Tanner said with a lopsided grin. I laughed and his smile widened. “I’m just kidding, Arra. Whatever it is though, just tell me. I promise I won’t laugh, or run off or anything.”
“Well, it all started with these weird dreams I’ve been having ever since we moved,” I said.
“What kind of dreams?” Tanner asked. “Nightmares?”
“Yeah, you could say that. In the dreams I see this girl who looks exactly like me being drug up an Aztec temple to be sacrificed to one of their gods. The first night I saw her kidnapped from her home, and every night after that I see more of what she went through,” I said.
“Human sacrifice, huh?” Tanner said. I could almost hear him thinking how cool that was in his mind. Boys. “That’s pretty grisly stuff, but…”
“But nothing to cry about, right?” I finished. He shrugged apologetically. “If it were only the dreams, I would have just passed them off as nothing, but then I started finding these pictures in my mom’s albums. There were all these girls that looked just like me, that all died on their sixteenth birthdays. I even found out I have a aunt I never knew about that died at sixteen.”
“Okay, that’s a little creepy,” Tanner agreed. “You didn’t know you had an aunt?”
“My dad never told me about her because he was with her the day she died and he blames himself for what happened,” I said.
“So what happened to her?” Tanner asked.
Quickly, I doled out the details of both Katie’s and Maera’s deaths. Tanner listened to every word with rapt attention. I even pointed out how every girl looked just like me, even handing over the pictures from my back pocket to prove it. His expression went back and forth between bewildered and disbelieving to worried more times than I could keep track of.
“And if all that doesn’t freak you out enough,” I said, “when I asked my grandpa about all of this he told me an old family story about a woman who was supposed to be made a human sacrifice, but made some kind of deal with the gods to save herself and curse her daughters to die in her place.”
“Your grandpa believes all of this?” Tanner asked, back to disbelief. I nodded. “Do you?” he asked.
Of course I did. Anyone in my place would, but I felt like an idiot actually saying it. “I’m starting to,” I said weakly. “I mean, maybe if it was just the story or just the dead relatives, I could just laugh at it, but, Tanner, the dreams are so real. I wake up at night crying, too scared to go back to sleep.”
“Well, I guess I just don’t know what to say, Arra. It’s pretty hard to wrap my head around curses and stuff, but I can see that you’re really worried about this,” he said. “Do you really think this curse, or whatever, is coming after you?”
“I turn sixteen tomorrow, Tanner.”
“Oh. I can see why you’re so freaked out then. I guess I would be too,” he said. “Are you scared?”
“Terrified.”
“What can I do?”
“Just stay with me. I don’t want to be alone tonight,” I said. “I feel safe with you. I feel like everything might actually be okay when I’m with you.”
Tanner stood up from the bench suddenly and I worried that I had finally pushed him too far. Instead of running away as fast as he could, he grabbed my hand and pulled me up beside him. “Come with me,” he said. I followed him past the swing sets and out of the pale circle of light from the street lamp to a grassy hill behind the park.
Stopping at the top of the hill, Tanner down on the grass and motioned for me to lay down next to him. The cool grass tickled the back of my legs and arms, but Tanner’s arm behind my head protected my neck. He cradled me against him and stared up at the sky. Following his gaze I looked up and was filled with amazement. I had never seen so many stars at once. I couldn’t even see the stars from our old apartment and even if I was outside after dark the city lights usually overpowered everything else.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered.
“This is my favorite place to come when I need a break from everything,” Tanner said.
“Thank you for bringing me here.”
We lay silent for a while, I wasn’t sure how long, but I tried to let the peaceful night seep into me and carry away my fear. It worked for a while. As time passed, though, I wondered what Tanner was thinking. Figuring that since he was still here he might be up to answering another question, I decided to ask.
“Tanner, do you believe any of what I told you?”
“Yeah, I mean, most of it,” he said. “It’s kind of hard to argue with the fact that so many girls have died at sixteen in your family or that they all look just like you. And your grandpa certainly believes in the story about the sacrifice.” He paused.
“So what don’t you believe?” I asked.
“That you’ll die tomorrow.”
“How can that be the one thing you don’t believe?” I asked. “Everything else leads up to it.”
Tanner shifted and was suddenly up on his elbow looking down at me. “I don’t believe it because I don’t want to.”
I wasn’t sure if he was actually leaning closer as he spoke or if it just seemed like that to me because I wanted him to so badly.
“I’ve only had three days with you. I simply refuse to believe that this will be my last night with you.” His face was serious and he was definitely moving closer to me. “Besides, you still have too much work do to on your shooting.” His attempt to lighten the mood did not work on me any more than it did on him. He was only inches away from me now.
“Tanner, I’m serious. I’m scared.”
Any attempt at hiding his true thoughts faded away. “So am I,” he whispered. Pain and fear edged his features. His hand reached up to my face as his lips came down to mine. It was just a light brush at first, but when we met again it was with more force.
I wanted to lose myself in Tanner’s touch, but all too soon Tanner pulled away.
“I should get you back home,” he said quietly.
I wanted to stay under the stars with him forever, but I let him pull me up. He held me close as we walked past the busy house that still had a few lights on and the shut-in’s house with the yellow roses. Instead of heading to my front door he turned toward the backyard and silently opened the gate for me. I looked up at him with a question.
“I figured you didn’t tell your parents you were going out in the middle of the night to hang out alone with a guy you barely know,” he said. There was no judgment in his words, but there was an almost guilty edge.
“What did you tell your mom?” I asked.
“I told her I was staying over at Evan’s,” he said.
Back at my window by then, Tanner pulled the window open as soundlessly as he could. We waited for the creaking to settle before he helped me climb through. Standing on either side of the window we held onto each other. I didn’t want to let go. I was scared of letting go. Tonight was a night of risks.
“Tanner, will Evan say anything if you don’t show up at his house tonight?” I asked.
Tanner shook his head. It was barely noticeable, but the way his fingers tightened around mine was answer enough.
“Will you stay?” I asked. “Not to…” I really hoped he wasn’t thinking that. “I just don’t want to be alone.”
“Of course I’ll stay.”
He didn’t let go of me as he climbed through my window, or when I led him to the bed. And he only wrapped his arms around me more tightly as we lay side by side. Safely snuggled up against his body I closed my eyes and focused every ounce of my mind on the rise and fall of Tanner’s chest. His breathing slowed eventually and fell into the pattern of deep sleep long before mine did.
Hope and dread danced around in my mind. Dread for what I would soon have to face was easily winning. There was no hope left in me that my grandpa would find the hidden solution, the way to fool fate. C
hilled, but not by the temperature, I pulled a quilt my mother had made for me when I was little over our bodies. It should have been too warm for the heavy blanket, but the mish mash of creamy colors was soothing to my mind. I barely even registered that someone had assembled my bed for me. I cried as I laid in Tanner’s arms, knowing what a wasted effort it would turn out to be.
Tears seeped out of my tightly sealed lids as reality slipped away and a different, ancient reality slowly crept in.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Stop your crying,” he hissed, disgust thick on his lips. “It is an honor to be chosen as a sacrifice. Your death will bring saving rains this dry season.”
The word death sent her into hysterical sobs. “I…don’t…want to …die!” she screamed between sobs.
The guards surrounding her hated her for her cowardice. One was making a great effort not to hit her. The priest’s face twisted in anger behind his mask, then suddenly changed, perplexed.
“Then why,” he asked with a restrained voice, “did you volunteer yourself as a sacrifice to Tlaloc. It is a great honor and privilege to be chosen, especially this year with the New Fire Ceremony, but only the willing should submit to the gods. Only slaves and prisoners are sacrificed against their will.”
“I am not here by choice,” she snapped. Burning tears had already streaked the carefully painted makeup. She wiped the remaining wetness away with the back of her hand.
“What?” the priest demanded. Fury lined his face. “What do you mean, it was not your choice? An unwilling sacrifice will not please Tlaloc as a humble servant would. It may anger him and cause him to withhold the life giving rain.” His eyes flitted rapidly around the mesa. “Who has done this?”
“My village leaders hoped to gain Tlaloc’s favor above other villages. There has been sickness and drought there for several summers. They knew I was born on the day of Tlaloc. They seemed to think that it was fitting I should be given back to him on his blessed day,” Kivera said. Vile anger filled the last statement. “I was unwilling to go, but I turn sixteen today. Next year I would be too old to sacrifice to Tlaloc. My father had kept them from taking me in the past, but with this year also being the year of the New Fire, the village elders would wait no longer.”
Escaping Fate Page 12