“And what do your parents do for a living?” Mark added.
Annie and Marie both dropped their forks and stared at him furiously, seemingly angry about his lack of respect for Liam’s troubled past. I glanced anxiously at Liam, wondering if his polite charade was about to end.
“They abandoned me once Damien’s family took me with them to Vegas,” Liam said, surprisingly calm.
The old Liam probably would have turned the table over and stormed out, but the new Liam seemed to welcome the chance to explain his life story to new people. Humility suited him surprisingly well and made him that much more attractive.
“Shame,” Mark said, shaking his head. “How did you make it through all of that?”
“It was hard at first, but fortunately Damien’s family had already taken me in and made sure I had somewhere to live. But, since I’ve been in school, I have been fortunate enough to meet great and generous people like you and your family,” Liam said. “The best we can do with life is to take what we’re given and move on, right?”
“That’s a nice attitude to have Liam,” Marie chimed in.
“Isn’t he great?” Annie squealed, grabbing Liam by the arm and pulling him close.
“Yes, he’s a very mature young man,” Mark said convincingly. “It sounds like you and Zoe actually have a lot in common!”
Liam’s eyes met mine in that moment. Instead of the normal intense gaze, he looked at me softly, even comfortingly. I could see Annie’s livid face off to the side, but for some reason, I couldn’t take my eyes away from Liam. At that moment, I couldn’t think of a single bad thing about him. He was the perfect man, everything I could possibly want.
“Wow, that was the best thanksgiving dinner I’ve ever had,” Liam added, breaking the link between the two of us. “Can I help with the dishes?”
“Oh, nonsense!” Marie said, standing up. “You are a guest in our home. Feel free to go into the living room and relax.”
“Can I go with him?” Annie asked hopefully.
“Actually, I’ll help you clear the table if that’s okay Marie? I really don’t mind at all,” I said, in a hopeful attempt at playing peacemaker.
Marie looked back and forth between me and Annie. After a moment, she sighed.
“Fine, fine,” Marie said. “Liam and Annie, off with you! Mark, you will help Zoe and me.”
We all stood up at the same time. Annie began intensely tugging at Liam’s arm to get him up the stairs, while the rest of us started picking up the dishes.
“Thank you Marie, dinner was outstanding,” Liam said faintly while being pulled around the corner to the stairs. I felt a twinge of jealousy as he and Annie disappeared. I couldn’t remember being more confused with someone in my life. My head kept sending out warning signals while my heart continued to do cart-wheels.
“What a wonderful boy, don’t you think?” Marie asked to Mark.
“Indeed, he’s very well put together,” Mark nodded in agreement, grabbing the turkey plate out of her hands. “You see him more than we do Zoe, what do you think?”
They both turned to me with expectant looks on their faces, which caused me to drop a handful of spoons.
“What? Oh, yeah, he definitely has his moments,” I said, trying to sound normal.
Mark and Marie glanced at one another with confused looks, which was my cue to get back to clearing the table.
After another fifteen minutes, the dining room table was finally cleared. It wasn’t until my last trip out to wipe everything down that the evening took a dramatic turn for the worse. Annie’s weeping suddenly filled the entire house and the sound of heavy boots came scurrying down the staircase.
“Liam, wait! Talk to me! Please tell me what’s wrong!” Annie cried invisibly from somewhere behind the wall.
It took a minute for reality to sink in. The night had been much more pleasant than anticipated, and Liam’s class made me forget that I was supposed to keep an eye on him. I quickly walked around the chairs and headed directly to the foyer, looking over to the closed kitchen door, wondering if Mark and Marie could hear anything. A feeling of déjà vu overtook me with each step.
Annie hadn’t even gotten to the top of the staircase when Liam streaked right past me towards the door. It was then that I knew exactly what was happening. I’d seen it before. Annie finally appeared at the top of the stairs and came bustling down faster than I’d ever seen. Her heartbreaking cries ignited a new fire inside me. I knew it was too good to be true. Liam had only put on a show for the Johnsons, and as soon as he got Annie alone, the old Liam reared his ugly head once more. Disgusted at the thought, I jumped towards the door.
“Wait! You son of a bitch!” I spat, grabbing his shoulder from behind.
The same electric feeling pulsated through my body once again when we touched. Shaking it off, I pulled his shoulder and turned him around.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
I gasped the moment he turned. Instead of his pure olive colored skin, his face was ghostly, pale. I’d never seen him look so sickly before. His eyes were wide in horror and a blank expression was plastered on his face. He didn’t appear to even know what was going on. He took a deep breath and his tortured eyes gazed briefly into mine. For a moment, his mouth began to open but instead of speaking, he twisted the door knob and bolted out the door.
Nighttime had fallen upon Seattle and the lights on the Johnsons porch had yet to be turned on. The front of the house was fully dark, with the only lights coming from the street lamps that led out of the neighborhood. I could barely see the steps that led me down towards the fence of their yard.
When my feet landed at the bottom step, I froze on the spot. Liam was gone. The lights on the street were lit, but there was absolutely no trace of him.
“What’s going on Zoe?” Mark demanded from somewhere behind me.
“Are you alright?” Marie added. “Where is Liam?”
“I’m fine,” I responded briskly, not surrendering my search.
“He’s gone,” Annie said suddenly, making the three of us jump in surprise. Nobody heard her emerge from the house, but she was sitting on the swinging bench and staring into the darkness.
“Why? What happened? Where’d he go?” Mark said, sounding even angrier than before.
“Home,” she sighed, as tears started to flow down her cheeks.
“Oh honey,” Marie said as she sat down next to Annie and put a consoling arm around her shoulders.
Annie leaned her head into Marie’s shoulder and wept. Mark started pacing back and forth on the porch, staring into the darkness in a vain attempt to find any trace of Liam. But, I knew he was gone. He always seemed to appear and disappear at will, especially in the darkness. That was all the proof I needed to know that Liam really was a demon. The mugging incident, Simi’s warning and his ability to disappear at will was enough for me to finally accept it. My dream had come true once more.
Annie’s soft weeping and Marie’s consoling words were painful reminders of my failure. It was my job to watch out for Annie, but Liam’s deception had caught me off guard. If it wasn’t for my moment of weakness, none of it would have happened. I pulled myself together and dragged my feet back to the porch, where I slumped down right next to Annie.
“I’m so sorry hon,” I said, patting her knee.
I knew he was gone and they were over, but it didn’t make me happy. I’d been waiting weeks to get my best friend back, but I felt no satisfaction. Suddenly, Annie’s head shifted from Marie’s shoulder onto mine and she let out an even bigger cry. As though it flipped a switch inside, tears started to flow down my cheeks too. The weeks that led up to Thanksgiving had been an absolute drain on our relationship, but the tears we shed that night washed away all traces of a battered relationship.
Chapter 14: Anonymous Package
Having Annie back didn’t come without a cost.
Liam’s abrupt and unexplained departure left the Johnson household in sha
mbles for the rest of our vacation. Very few words were spoken over the course of the weekend and neither Mark and Marie, nor I, knew exactly what to do. None of us had ever seen Annie so attached to someone before and it was heartbreaking to watch the aftermath unfold.
“Anything?” Marie stood up when I walked into the kitchen the morning Annie and I were supposed to go back to school.
I nodded once. “She fell asleep a few hours ago and was still sleeping when I woke up.”
“At least that’s something,” she exhaled. “I’ve never seen her like this before. She’s always been so strong. I’m worried Mark, what are we going to do?”
Mark looked up from his newspaper, sporting the same look he’d had since Liam’s disappearance. “She’ll make it through this Marie. My baby girl won’t be taken down by some little…”
“Mark!” Marie quipped.
He took a long, deep breath before speaking again. “What I was trying to say is that this will all blow over soon. Annie has always made it through situations like this before. Besides, she’s got Zoe around. When things calm down, she’ll tell Zoe everything and then we can all move on from this. Then, we won’t have to worry about her dating again until she’s 40.”
Marie rolled her eyes. “You’re impossible.”
Then she turned back to me. “He’s right though. I’ll feel a lot better knowing you’re there with her. Promise me you’ll look after my little girl?”
I nodded and smiled. “I always will. But try not to worry too much; we only have another three weeks until we’re back for Christmas. My guess is that she’ll at least be talking and eating again by then.”
“And how about you hon? Have you been able to get any sleep this weekend? You look pretty refreshed, but I know you’ve been up with her this whole time.”
Truth was I’d never been so refreshed with such little sleep. Every tear that flowed down Annie’s face was the fuel for the raging fire that had exploded inside me, making sleep the last thing on my mind that weekend.
“Yeah, a couple hours here and there, pretty usual stuff,” I lied.
She eyed me for another few seconds before going back to her cup of coffee.
The next hour went by in relative silence. Mark continued to stay hidden behind his newspaper while Marie wandered aimlessly in the kitchen, cleaning things two or three times over. I sat and stared out at the overcast morning, thinking about everything I was going to do to Liam if I ever saw him again. Once Mark put down the paper and excused himself to his office, I decided to head up and get Annie going for the day.
The bleak and depressing darkness that had encumbered our room all weekend was stronger than ever. I crept into the bedroom and walked over to Annie’s bed, drifting through the forest of used tissues lying all over the floor. She lied there looking peaceful, which made waking her harder than expected.
“Ann, hon, it’s me,” I whispered, carefully rubbing her shoulder. “I need you to start getting up. Our flight is in a couple hours and you need to shower before we go.”
She rustled around briefly before her raw eyes slowly opened. “What’s the point?”
I looked at her thoughtfully. “It’ll help you feel better, I promise. There’s nothing like a nice, hot shower to get you up and ready for the day. That’s what I do!”
“Good, then you go shower and I’ll stay here,” she said, looking up at the ceiling.
“Why don’t we do this one step at a time? How about that? Let’s just get you out of bed for starters and we’ll go from there.”
With no response, I stood up and pulled the rumpled sheets off of her. It took a minute before she finally sat up and looked around, which got my spirits to lift a little. After days in the same place, lying in the same position, she had gotten herself out of bed. It was our first victory.
From there, I helped her towards the bathroom and left her to take what came to be the shortest shower of her life. Once she finished cleaning herself up in a pitiful attempt that challenged my normal effort, I led her down into the kitchen, where Marie overdid her motherly love.
“Hon, you really should eat something. You haven’t eaten a bite since Thursday night,” Marie said cautiously.
“No,” Annie mumbled almost inaudibly, her look matching the gloom outside.
“Were you at least able to get some sleep?”
Annie’s puffy eyes glared uncomfortably at her mother. It was pretty obvious from Annie’s look she hadn’t slept much at all. Her normally perfect hair was disheveled. Her skin was dry and pale. The bags and redness that covered her eyes wouldn’t be remedied with makeup. I’d never seen her so beat up.
“Well,” Marie coughed. “I guess you two should go get your things then, we need to leave soon.”
“You stay here Ann,” I said, standing up before her. “I’ll get your stuff.”
The silence continued through the ride to the airport. While we drove, my gaze traveled between the three Johnsons. Marie’s eyes kept glancing back in the rearview mirror, while Mark had a look that could have burned through metal. Annie stared blankly out the window, not saying a word. It was depressing to watch. Each one of them was in a different kind of pain, but there was one thing they all had in common. Every emotion they all felt was flowing through my body. I was angry, worried and sad, all rolled into one. I’d spent my entire life being looked out for and now, people were expecting me to be the strong one.
“You take care of her Zoe,” Marie whispered in my ear, pulling me into a hug. She slipped something that sounded like crumpled paper into my pocket.
“I will,” I said, resting a comforting hand on her shoulder. “She’s going to be fine. “ My hands pulled out a wrinkled twenty dollar bill from my coat pocket, and I stared at Marie with wide eyes. “What’s this for?”
“Tissues,” she smiled.
I smiled back at her and turned to Mark, who gave me a brief, half hearted hug. He didn’t need to say it, but I could see it in the intense look he gave me when he pushed away from our hug. My job was not to look out for Annie, but to keep an eye on the source of all the pain. After one last hug and a round of goodbyes, Mark and Marie got into the car and drove off. My head turned towards Annie who stood frozen on the spot. I grabbed her hand softly and motioned towards the ticketing booth inside. An encouraging smile spread across my lips while her hand clasped mine tightly. We walked into the overcrowded terminal and headed back towards a brand new life at school, a future that was going to have more questions than answers.
After an uneventful and quiet trip home, we finally pulled into our driveway in Annie’s clunker. Before I could even turn the car off, she was out of the door and heading towards the staircase, leaving her bags behind. I was able to grab her bags and mine with relative ease and followed her up the stairs. When I approached the top, Annie was standing frozen in front of our door, staring down at a strange box that rested on the doormat.
Annie continued to stare curiously at the box, but didn’t bend down to pick it up. Looking from the package, to Annie, back to the package, I dropped the luggage and picked up the surprisingly light box. I turned it over in my hands and didn’t notice any postage, addresses or markings of any kind, outside of the addressee.
“Annie Johnson”
“Oh, it’s for you,” I said surprised, handing it to her.
Annie eyed it again and suddenly, for the first time in days, a smile crossed her cracked lips. She grabbed the box out of my hands and eagerly waited for me to open the door. Once the door opened, she ran into the living room and flew onto the futon. She put her knees together and rested the box on top of them.
“Are you coming?” she asked in an agitated voice.
“In a sec,” I yelled back patiently. My hands clasped around our bags and I slid into the condo, kicking the door closed behind me.
Annie’s legs were bouncing up and down and she looked just like a kid on Christmas morning. Her smile was refreshing to see after a weekend full of frowns and tea
rs. I could only assume that she expected the package to be from Liam. In an attempt to be supportive, I sat down next to her and smiled.
She tore the box open in a heartbeat. Once she flipped the cardboard edges open, we both leaned over the box at the same time and at first glance, it appeared empty. There was no extra packaging or even a letter telling us who sent it. The only thing I saw was a round, black disc that leaned against one of the corners of the box. Annie reached in and pulled it out with care.
Annie turned what looked like a smooth black coin over in her hand just once then looked back into the box, trying to find any trace of a note. After a minute, she smacked the box off of her knees and tossed the coin into my hands.
“I’m going to bed,” she said forcefully before she stormed into her room and threw the door closed.
On any other occasion, I would have gotten up and gone to comfort Annie. But, the combination of her needing space and the intrigue of the black medallion kept me glued to the futon.
I mimicked Annie’s actions and turned the medallion over in my hand. It was heavier than it looked and was made of what appeared to be smooth and polished granite. The back side of the coin was clear of any markings or words. But when I turned it over to the front, my eyes opened wide with wonder. Its edge was bordered by a thin, silver band and a scary looking bird was carved into the middle. The bird had a sharp, pointed beak and smooth, unruffled feathers. At first, I thought it was a raven or crow, but the coloring was off. A slight crack ran down the middle, splitting it into two separate halves. One side was a lighter, silvery color while the other half was pitch black. To finish it off, a pair of blazing red eyes stared back at me, which made me shudder.
No words could be found anywhere on the coin, nothing to explain its origin. I picked up the box and my eyes ran over it again and again, looking for any trace of a sender. Frustrated, I took the medallion with me to my room and sat on the bed, while my mind tried to work through all possible scenarios.
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