We skirt the edge of the gym, where the dance is in full swing, and head for the back locker rooms. Cate pulls me though the door. The automatic lights turn on.
“This is the girls’ locker room!” I keep my voice low and glance over my shoulder at the door I should be bolting through.
“Relax. I doubt anyone is here besides us.” Cate squelches to her locker along the back wall. A few spins of the combination, and the lock pops open. “I’ve got my lacrosse uniform I can change into, and, oh, here—” She tosses a pair of socks and a white towel at me. “For you.” She bundles her clothes in her arms and gives me a stern look. “I’ll be right back.”
“I’ll be right here,” I say, pointing to the ground.
She heads for the bathroom, and I slide down the bank of lockers. Draping the towel around my neck, I pull off my wet shoes and soaking-wet socks. I worry that Cate’s socks won’t fit me, but either she has larger feet than I suspected or they are magic socks because they fit just fine.
Except one sock is solid purple and the other is striped.
I pull off my T-shirt and use the towel to dry off as best I can. I’m rubbing the cloth over my face when I hear Cate’s indrawn breath. Then it sounds like she says, “Oh, wow.”
I look at her, and I have to swallow hard. She’s exchanged her costume for her lacrosse uniform. She’s taken her 1950s curls out and slicked back her wet hair into a ponytail. Her makeup is mostly gone. She looks good. Clean and comfortable and confident. She, too, is wearing one solid purple sock and one striped sock.
I wiggle my toes. “Looks like our socks got split up.”
She sits on the floor across from me, her back against a bank of lockers too. She stretches out her legs so her feet match up with mine, striped socks against solids.
“I’ve never understood the appeal of wearing matching socks.”
“Um, because everybody does it?” I offer. Her feet are smaller than mine, but not by much.
“Not little kids,” she fires back, folding her arms across her chest. “Kids wear whatever they want. They don’t care if their socks don’t match.”
“Maybe you should start an anti-matching-socks-club.”
“Why? You wanna join?”
“Sure,” I say, curling my toes over the tops of hers. Her feet are warm. “I’m open to all socks, whatever size or color they may be. I’m definitely pro-sock.”
She tilts her head and gives me a look that makes me suddenly aware that I never put my T-shirt back on.
“You know what I like about you, Oliver?”
“My stance on socks?” I joke, though my heart has kicked into high gear at her words. She likes me. I’ve liked her for as long as I can remember, laughed with her, longed for her, but I’ve never been brave enough to tell her.
She lowers her gaze and rocks her feet side to side. My feet follow her lead. She speaks to her toes, and her voice is low and serious. “I know I’m kind of … I know I’m not like other girls. I’ve never been able to wait around for someone else to want to be friends with me. I’ve always made my own way and done my own thing. But you’ve always been there for me. Ever since we met that Halloween when we were just kids.”
I sense she has more she wants to say, so I don’t interrupt her.
“You’re my best friend, Oliver. You know that, right?”
“Yeah,” I manage. My mouth is dry. I feel like the next thing she says will either break my heart— or bless it.
“We’re like these socks. You’re the solid to my stripe. Other people might not think we match, but we do.”
My heart fills with light. She thinks we match?
“I’m totally a striped sock, I admit that. I’m easily distracted, I like too many different things, I’m all over the place. But you’re the solid sock. Steady and reliable.” She shakes her head. “That sounds lame. That’s not what I mean.” She purses her lips, and all I can think about is how much I want to kiss her. “I mean, you’re honest and open. A what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of person. I can trust you.”
“Always,” I say. My chest feels hot even without a shirt on and with a cold, wet towel draped over me.
She continues as if she hasn’t heard me. “I like the kind of person I am when I’m with you.” She finally looks up and meets my gaze. Her eyes are as bright as a full moon. Her smile is somehow brave and shy at the same time. “The kind of person who can say ‘I love you’ and not be afraid.”
A roaring wind sweeps through me. I am drowning in relief and happiness. “I love you, too.” I hold my breath, waiting to hear what she will say next.
All she says is “Good,” but then she moves and kneels across me, straddling my legs. She leans into me, and I can smell her hair and feel her rain-softened skin and the mesh fabric of her lacrosse jersey as it brushes against my chest.
I’ve never kissed a girl before, but this is Cate. I know her better than I know myself, so my hands know exactly where to sit on her waist, and my mouth knows the exact moment to move forward and meet her lips.
She tastes like summertime breezes. Her lips are as hot as a fireplace in winter.
She places her hands on my shoulders, right where it curves into my neck, and electricity crackles over me, making the hairs on my arms lift. I tighten my grip on her waist, and she lets me tilt her forward, closer.
Cate— the girl who never follows when she can lead— has surrendered. She is pliable, willing.
The kiss grows exponentially— deeper, broader, all-consuming. The towel falls to the floor. I sit up straighter, needing to be as close to her as I can. Her hands move from my shoulders to my jaw.
Cate makes a sound low in her throat. It makes me think of her laugh trapped inside a firecracker. When it explodes, I feel the heat of it in my own body.
I can’t breathe— I don’t care.
I can’t stop— I don’t want to.
The automatic lights in the locker room click off.
Cate pulls back, and though every instinct in me screams to keep her close, I let her go.
“I’m not sorry,” she says, as if I had raised an objection.
“Me either.” I barely recognize my voice. My mouth tingles with the taste of Cate.
She rocks back on my legs, and I wince at the pressure of her body on mine. The heat that has raged through me is now localized.
We sit in the silent dark for a while, listening to each other breathe. I am acutely aware of exactly where her body is in relation to mine.
“I guess we should go to the dance,” I say, though it comes out more like question than a request.
“I’d rather stay here. With you.”
The fire in my body flares, and I reach for her; I can’t help it.
“Don’t move. I don’t want the lights to turn back on,” she says, but then she slowly slides off me, taking that exquisite heat with her, and I hear her sit beside me. She takes my hand, weaves her fingers with mine. “I know this will sound strange coming from me, but… I don’t want to rush it.”
I imagine I can feel her pulse in her wrist where it presses next to mine.
“I don’t want to ruin it,” she adds.
“Do you know how long I’ve wanted to kiss you?” I say. It’s easier to be bold in the dark.
“Your whole life.” She doesn’t say it like it’s a throwaway answer. Instead, there is amazed realization in her voice. It’s easier to hear in the dark, too.
She inhales, and then says quietly, “Me too.”
All my words fly away from me. I am left with only joy.
The music from the Halloween dance drifts down the hallway and into the locker room. I’m surprised I haven’t heard it before now.
But something is wrong. The song is too slow, a minor key of some kind. The notes warble like they are being played underwater. The sound grates on my nerves, and I clench my teeth. It shouldn’t hurt to listen to music, should it?
The vocals break into two parts, three. Three voices calling o
ut for me…
I turn my head to tell Cate to cover her ears, to protect herself from the sirens, but I’m too late.
The darkness cracks open, and the memory shatters into shards. Cate is gone. Glau is looking at me. She says my name.
Chapter Seven
“Oliver,” Glau said again, her voice cold and sharp. The edges of her wings fluttered with every shift of her shoulders. Her pale skin was another shade darker. Her eyes cut to the side, and Oliver looked where her gaze led.
Mol sprawled on the ground a few feet away, not in relief or with satiated ecstasy, but like a discarded rag doll. Oliver couldn’t tell if she was still breathing.
Thel had crumpled into a ball at Oliver’s feet, nothing more than a lump of scales and wings. She might have been crying, or it might have been the wind moaning through the trees.
“What happened?” Oliver asked Glau.
She bared her sharp teeth in a snarl. “You did this. My sisters—” She pointed at Mol and Thel. “They were not prepared for that. You fed them too much!”
Freed from her touch, Oliver rolled to his feet and backed away. He only made it a few steps before the ground shifted beneath him and he fell back to the sand. The empty spot in his mind had grown larger, colder.
“I told you to give Mol something sad. All these memories filled with happiness and joy—” She spat on the sand beside the bonfire. “We cannot live on that. We need your sorrow, your grief. That is what sustains us. We need the meat of you.”
Crouching on her hands and knees, she looked feral. Oliver scrambled back a few more yards.
She threw something at him with a roar. It glittered in the firelight and landed next to his feet. “I heard your song across oceans, across time. But your song was a lie!”
Oliver’s wedding ring. His hand trembled as he picked it up and slipped it back on his finger. “How did you get this?” The coldness in his voice matched the coldness in his soul, the emptiness in his memories.
“I told you. I heard it enter the water. I heard the song it sang.”
“A song of me— and Cate.” He rubbed the ring with his thumb.
She shook her head. “A song of life lived— and lost.” She licked her lips and crawled closer to Oliver. “You are a dead man walking. You were supposed to be different.”
Dead man walking. That was how Oliver had felt since Cate’s death. Just marking time until it was his turn. Was this it? Would his death come at the hands of a siren bent on harvesting his memories?
“You think my life was nothing but happiness?” he said. He kept his gaze on his ring as a coughing laugh cut through him. He looked at Glau and smiled to see that it was her turn to flinch. “Your sisters couldn’t survive my joy. You think you can survive my sorrow?”
Glau shifted her weight back, her body poised to either fight or flee but uncertain which would be necessary.
Oliver wasn’t going to let her touch him, let her consume another memory, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t tell her one of his memories. Cate’s death was too new, too raw. He hadn’t survived it himself yet. Sharing it would likely kill them both. But he had plenty of others to choose from.
“She said no.”
Glau narrowed her eyes, but otherwise remained motionless.
“We were in college, and I was still blindly, stupidly in love with her. But somewhere along the way between high school and college, she…” He shook his head, spinning the ring around and around on his finger. “She changed. I changed. I should have seen it, I guess. But I was buried with my medical classes, and I thought she’d always be there. She always had been.”
Glau settled into the sand and wrapped her wings around her legs. Her eyes closed all the way, but Oliver could still feel her attention focused on him.
“It was Halloween.” He looked up at the moon and laughed, short and bitter. “It was always Halloween with us.”
Glau’s mouth parted as if inhaling Oliver’s words.
“We were on the bus. Cate liked to hop on a route and see where it went. We’d had a lot of great adventures that way. But that day something was different. Normally she talked to everyone on the bus, but she was really quiet. I kept trying to get her to talk to me, but she slumped against the window and wouldn’t look at me.”
Glau began rocking side to side, like seaweed caught in a drifting current. A low-level hum rose from her throat.
“I asked her why she was sad, and she just brushed me off.
“I asked her if I had done something wrong, and she just shrugged.
“I asked her what I could do to make her happy, and she just closed her eyes.
“I asked her—” His voice caught. Even though he knew what happened next, and how the story ultimately ended, Oliver still remembered exactly how he had felt at that moment.
“I asked her if she wanted to break up with me.”
Glau’s eyes slitted open, glowing with a rainbow-streaked black light, like raindrops on oil.
“I meant it as a joke— something to force her to talk to me. I didn’t start to panic until she didn’t say anything at all. Then she said… no.” He allowed the memory of relief to flood through him now as it had then, passing through him and into Glau.
Her hum faltered. She had expected agony, torment— not relief. Oliver had knocked her off balance. That was good. But his story wasn’t done, and his relief had been short-lived.
“‘Well,’ I said, ‘if you don’t want to break up with me, then marry me instead.’
“She finally looked at me, but not with the happiness I expected. It wasn’t terror, or disappointment, or anger, but some combination of all three. Her eyes were mean, I remember that.
“I must have spoken louder than I’d thought because the girl sitting behind us gasped. ‘Did you just propose to her?’ she said.
“I looked from Cate to the girl and back. ‘Yeah, I guess I did. I am.’ I reached for Cate’s hand. She let me take it, but her skin was cold, and I could tell she didn’t want me to touch her.
“The girl grabbed the handrail and pulled herself into the aisle. ‘Hey, these guys just got engaged!’
“Everyone on the bus began clapping and cheering and whistling. The driver even honked the horn in celebration. Everyone was happy— except Cate. Everyone thought she had said yes— but she hadn’t.
“‘C’mon, Cate,’ I said, pleading, begging. ‘What do you say? Marry me?’
“What had started kind of as a joke suddenly became the best idea I’d ever had. I’d loved her my whole life. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. We were both in college. I was going to be a doctor. I’d be able to provide for her, take care of her, protect her.”
Glau crawled toward Oliver as if his words were hooks and he was reeling her in.
“Instead of answering, Cate started to cry. Silent, endless tears that rolled down her face. She didn’t even bother wiping them away.
“I should have dropped it. I should have taken her into my arms and held her while she cried. I should have said, ‘I love you, no matter what’ and left it at that. I almost did. But I didn’t.”
Glau was at Oliver’s feet, her hum repeating the same melody over and over. New silver scales appeared on her upper thighs, reaching for her hips and her stomach.
“What I said instead was, ‘Marry me, or else I’ll get off the bus. Your choice.’
“And that’s when Cate pulled the cord to stop the bus. The bell cut through the celebrations, and everyone got really quiet.
“‘Marriage isn’t an ultimatum, Oliver,’ she said. ‘No. My answer is no.’ Her voice echoed in the bus, and the silence got awkward. Bad.
“The bus pulled over, like it was supposed to, and the doors folded open. I didn’t know what to do, what to say.
“Cate said it a third time— ‘No’— and it was like she cast a magic spell over me. I got up from my seat, walked down the aisle, and stepped down and out of the bus. I didn’t say anything. I just stood on the cur
b and watched as the doors closed, and the bus pulled away and took Cate with it.”
Glau crouched in the sand, her eyes fixed on Oliver’s ring. “Good,” she murmured. “Yes. I understand your song now. You never saw her again, did you? You loved Cate, but when she didn’t love you back, you married someone else. Yet the ring carries all your memories of Cate— good and bad, joyful and sorrowful. She is gone, and you want her back. That is a memory I can sink my teeth into.”
Oliver looked at Glau in amazement. “That’s not what happened at all. Cate and I didn’t marry— then. But we did later. And yes, Cate is gone, but not because I pushed her away, not because we stopped loving each other. She died.” He shook his head. “You don’t understand anything at all. Not sorrow or joy or love. You’re like a child.”
Glau reared back, fire flashing in her eyes. “We are the Sirens, daughters of the River God Achelous and Melpomene, the Muse of Song— we are not children! We have lived more thousands of years than you know. We have brought countless sailors here, either by force or by persuasion, and consumed more memories than you can imagine. I don’t need to understand you to devour you.”
“Then it’s no wonder you’re starving,” he said.
Glau’s mouth clicked shut, and a ripple moved in the muscle of her jaw. She wouldn’t meet Oliver’s eye.
“You take and take, but everything has left you feeling hollow. You focus on the pain because you think pain is more powerful than love, but it isn’t.” He nodded to her sisters, who were still unconscious on the sand. “Love is both good and bad. So is life. If you are only taking the bitter or the sweet, you’ll never get to the heart of a man— to the meat, as you put it.”
Glau measured him with her gaze. Her wings were eerily still against her back. The moonlight cast a silver glow on her body. “We have taken your sweet. You have told me of the bitter. You say I do not understand, then make me understand. If you give me the best of your life— the truth of the bitter and the sweet— I will let you go.”
Chapter Eight
It felt like a trap.
Offer up one more memory, and Glau will let me go?
All Hallows' Eve Collection Page 17