by C. J. Valles
Come on, Josh. Figure it out, she thinks impatiently.
“Taylor?” he asks obtusely. “No way. She barely looks at me.”
“Um, yeah. Why do you think?” she says, still irritated with the boy for manhandling her.
“Huh. Really?” he asks uncertainly.
Wren smiles.
“Trust me. Go. Hurry up before someone else asks her.”
She gives him a weak shove before paying for her beverage. Walking slowly in her friends’ direction, she remains lost in thought. I look down. The fact that I feel such relief that she has rejected his advances is disconcerting at best.
Here I’ve been thinking Josh is the idiot for not having a clue, and I’ve been doing the exact same thing with Ever Casey—the person who ninety-nine percent of the time doesn’t care that I’m alive.
Her cheeks redden as she convinces herself that my motivation has been the same as hers—she believes I have been trying to dissuade her crush.
That is it! No more thinking about him, Wren. Get over it!
She begins walking faster across the cafeteria, her embarrassment and anger increasing with each step. Suddenly she stops and spins around, staring at me with such anger that I can barely resist looking upon her.
Get out of my head! she screams silently, confident that she is the only being here capable of reading minds.
Slowly raising my gaze to meet hers, I see her flinch as she registers the awareness in my eyes. Her heart races, and she turns and rushes to her friends’ table. When she sits down, Marcus White grabs her by the shoulders
“You look like you just saw your worst nightmare,” he laughs.
Smiling uneasily, she looks down at her hand, which is trembling. Then she sees a flash of the memory I involuntarily released into her mind. The memory is indistinct, faded—but she still feels the darkness and depravity deep in her being. From across the cafeteria, I see her shiver.
Something evil behind his eyes.
Looking over her shoulder, she sees me staring back at her, and suddenly she believes what she felt and saw was—she believes that I am the evil she encountered.
“Hey, I have to go to the office. I’ll see you guys later,” she says quickly.
Rising quickly, she walks across the cafeteria and disposes of the remainder of her lunch before rushing toward the closest exit. Her breathing is labored, and her mind is racing.
He doesn’t want me seeing what’s behind his eyes, which means … he knows about me. Maybe he can even hear what I’m thinking.
She is nearly hyperventilating by the time she reaches the outdoors. Her eyes track the concrete walkway, her thoughts repeating over and over.
He knows. He knows. He knows. He knows. He knows.
Rising from my seat, I walk slowly from the room. As soon as I reach the empty hallway, I shift to the rooftop of the school and watch as she walks to the periphery of campus and sits on a large rock. Wrapping her arms around her knees, she draws them up to her chest and scans her surroundings.
I watch Wren, her eyes flitting back and forth, and wonder if that is what I have been reduced to. Am I the product of my existence in Victor’s realm? Am I nothing more than a reflection of the darkness we have sought to escape? Am I the monster she sees, without redemption or hope?
Wren begins mentally reviewing her alternatives, and the first is to avoid me. The second, she thinks, is to pretend what she has seen is her imagination, which is growing increasingly impossible by the second.
Or option three: I can play by his rules and see how he likes it.
Frowning, I wonder if I have overexposed myself. Of course, she cannot possibly sense the magnitude of the world she has stumbled upon. Moreover, she has yet to contemplate the possibility that I am not human. However, any knowledge of my nature and origin would put her at risk.
When the bell rings, Wren rises from where she has been sitting and walks to her locker before rushing to her next class … one she shares with Tarabocchia. She takes the seat next to him, and fortunately—for his overall health and my state of mind—Wren’s gentle nudge in Taylor Nguyen’s direction has been moderately effective.
She left the cafeteria right before the space boy took off. Is it possible they’re hooking up? Nah, no way, he thinks, shaking his head in dismissal as she turns to face the front of the classroom.
A moment later, Wren’s thoughts disappear, and desperation courses through me. Then rage. How could the traitor—or any of Victor’s loyal minions—have slipped past me? It is not possible—I would have sensed something. Looking through Tarabocchia’s eyes, I see her. She is conscious, and there is no sign of possession.
Shifting to the doorway of the classroom, I watch her. Then, finally, I sense it. A wall. This young girl has erected a wall around her thoughts. I can see her physical form, but her thoughts are completely blocked by a brick wall. … She has imagined a brick wall around her thoughts—and she has succeeded.
As I can no longer see or hear her thoughts, I cannot be sure I have not lost her to the other side, unless I am staring at her physical form.
At the end of the day, I shadow her movements. When she steps onto the bus, my car already idles behind the vehicle. If anything happens in transit, I could shift onto the bus, take her, and shift back to the car. I follow her home and track her movements through the house, shifting from room to room as she moves, staying out of sight, but always near enough that I will be able to intervene.
Her Internet activity allows me access to her train of thought. She is searching for used vehicles, clearly in response to her interactions with me, coupled with her near escape from a drunken driver. Every few moments, her mind will wander, allowing me to intercept a thought before she refocuses. During her lapses in concentration, sometimes only my name will slip past her mental wall.
I watch as she collects dirty clothing for the laundry before pausing to look through the kitchen window into the fading light. When she returns upstairs, she puts in her earphones and turns up her music as she begins cleaning her room before moving on to the bathroom.
She finishes cleaning before working on her homework in silence. After more than two hours of near total mental silence, she rises and stretches before walking downstairs to cook her nightly meal. Her mental silence is unnerving, and I realize that I desperately miss hearing her thoughts.
When she has finished cooking, she looks up and smiles, her heart rate increasing as she hurries to the hall closet where she retrieves her coat and shoes. Watching from the upstairs landing as she rushes toward the front door, I frown, turning briefly to look at the antique mirror her mother has placed at the top of the stairs.
As soon as the front door closes behind her, I shift outside, waiting for her to reach the sidewalk. Wren stops and looks up at the sky before hurrying down the front steps toward the street. When she reaches the sidewalk, I hear her thoughts again as she stares up at the streetlamps.
One hundred. Ninety-nine. Ninety-eight. Ninety-seven. Ninety-six. Ninety-five …
She continues counting, keeping her thoughts hidden, as I follow behind her. If she has given any thought to her destination, I am unable to retrieve it from her mind. This girl has little idea of the danger she is in, yet I still feel a flash of anger as she walks through the darkness with little thought of her own safety. If the wrong person were to come upon her—such as the man from the grocery store parking lot—she would be at his mercy, and in my witnessing of human history, there are far too many individuals without mercy, including myself. If I had come upon her at another time, would I have spared her?
Stopping at the end of another street, Wren looks up at the giant evergreens that were once legion in this territory. I watch her, feeling a strange melancholy begin to fill me. She will never see this world as it was before human evolution. She never will know true solitude.
Suddenly an image flashes in her mind. The Grimm brothers’ fairy tale of Little Red Cap. She imagines herself in the red riding
bonnet as the wolf looks out upon her from the woods.
Coyotes? Bears? Wolves? she wonders.
Caroline Sullivan places a call to the mobile phone that lies forgotten on Wren’s bed. Unaware her mother is trying to reach her, Wren continues to imagine a talking wolf as she turns and begins walking more quickly in the direction of her house. When a Tyto alba, more commonly known as a barn owl, flies silently above her, its screech startles her into a crouched position. Standing to her full height, she shakes her head.
An owl. It was an owl, she tells herself.
Briefly envisioning its impressive wingspan as it flies above her on its way to an empty field, she picks up speed and begins jogging through the darkness.
Shouldn’t have stopped running. … Need to be able to run away from things.
As she reaches the house, her hands fly to her pockets, no doubt searching for her mobile phone. Her mother already has placed three additional calls, her latest panicked call placed just before Wren unlocks the front door. In her bedroom, Wren snatches up the phone—too distracted to attempt concealing her thoughts.
“Mom?” Wren says breathlessly when her mother answers.
“Are you all right?” Caroline Sullivan gasps.
“Me? You called five times!” Wren laughs.
When her mother begins rattling on nervously about earthquakes, I think of Victor’s royal guard. If they breach this dimension again, we will know it. The Earth will grow unstable at their point of entry, and they will announce themselves in the form of an earthquake.
Once the royal guard was five strong, surpassed in their brutality only by Victor himself and the princess, whose talent for cruelty I never shall forget. Then one of them betrayed the others. Iago, or Alexandre—whatever he chooses to call himself now. Once, he was my brother, playing an instrumental role in our escape into the outlands, where I discovered the portal to this dimension.
Then he became frightened or greedy or both—and he betrayed us.
For an eternity, using our individual gifts, we have sought out these humans like Wren. Where I have sought to save this world from Victor’s rule, Iago has made deals, curried favor, and manipulated each exchange to his advantage. He once said to me that he would pay any cost to win, and I suppose I should have taken him at his word. The difference between us was simple, yet marked. He was a vassal, a knight of Victor’s guard, and I a slave. He knows nothing of true servitude.
When Wren ends the call with her mother, she returns to the kitchen to prepare the remainder of her solitary meal. As she completes her night’s activities, her ability to block her thoughts from my view slowly diminishes. She gathers her nightclothes and walks down the hall to the small bathroom, at which point I shift into her bedroom and wait, listening to the water run as I walk around her bedroom, stopping to look at the small calendar tacked to a corkboard.
Taking the calendar from the wall, I look through months. There is nothing written, save for July. Beneath a picture of a single palm tree dipping toward aquamarine waters of the Indian Ocean, she has written: “I want to see this before I die.” The statement, most likely innocent hyperbole in her young mind, causes my chest to seize with dread at the thought of her demise.
When I hear the water stop running, I listen as she changes into nightclothes and brushes her teeth before opening the bathroom door. Before she reaches the bedroom, I shift to the living room, listening to her keystrokes as she sits in front of her computer.
Oregon, earthquake, the big one, she types.
Opening an article, she scans the information, her heart rate increasing as she reads. She spent her childhood in Southern California, so she is familiar with earthquakes. However, the next time the earth quakes, it most likely will announce the presence of those who have come to claim her mind and body. Turning off her computer, she packs her belongings for the coming morning and then climbs into her bed, staring up at the ceiling.
Am I being overly paranoid? Am I trying to make him more interesting than he really is? Villain or hero is more interesting than nothing, right? she wonders.
When her eyes close and her breathing becomes rhythmic and even, I shift to the foot of her bed and watch her. She sleeps peacefully until just before two-thirty.
“Michael?” she whispers questioningly, her heart rate increasing.
Her eyes suddenly open and she sits up, memories of her dream echoing through her conscious mind, giving me a crisp picture of what plagued her sleep. She sees the Irish author’s tragic literary character, Michael Furey, standing in the rain staring up at her. Then, before her eyes, his image transforms into me.
My likeness grins madly at her, my eyes as black as Victor’s are in this realm. Now I can be certain that deep down, she is afraid of me. As she falls asleep once more, her rest is chaotic at best. Finally, in the hours before dawn, I shift to the house on the coast. Instead of the sense of sanctuary I typically find there, I continue to feel restless, even as I listen to her breathing in my mind.
Wren sleeps through the din of her alarm clock, only to be awakened by her mother. She remains groggy and listless as her mother makes her breakfast, followed by a burst of energy when she reaches school. I follow her across campus, watching as she stops at her locker. I easily reach Gideon’s classroom before she arrives, concentrating on her footfalls toward the classroom as her thoughts disappear completely.
Her features are impressively indifferent as she steps into the classroom, and I must wonder if this is a lesson she has learned from me. She collects her supplies before taking the seat next to me. When her eyes dart in my direction for a moment, I capture her thoughts.
The seat to my left is empty. There’s no one there. Pretend he doesn’t exist.
Smiling slightly, she redirects her attention to the front of the classroom, and her thoughts disappear again. I wait for a thought or image to break through, but her mind remains silent, walled off. This continues with only brief lapses in the moments when she interacts with her friends or teachers.
By the lunch period, I am at a loss. I have grown accustomed to hearing this girl’s thoughts. Watching her, listening to her wry internal monologue—in these moments I have been able to lose myself in a way I never have before. Now, locked out of her mind, I become restless, careless. From across the cafeteria, I have been watching her face—for too long. Ashley Stewart, who has been watching me with avid interest, pokes Wren with her elbow.
“Wren, don’t look, but Ever Casey is staring at you.”
The others in her group turn as well, all of them staring unabashedly.
“Whoa,” Marcus White utters. “Death stare. What’d you do to him?”
I see myself in Marcus White’s mind, and though my image is not as clear as it is in Wren’s mind, I understand his response. The graveness in my expression has led her companions to believe I harbor ill intent when I am merely frustrated by my sudden, acute, and quite unfamiliar sense of loneliness.
“What’s with that?” Lindsay Gallo demands of Wren.
“I have no idea,” Wren lies.
When her friends resume their separate conversations, she turns and looks directly into my eyes, her expression as deadly serious as my own.
I don’t hear you; you don’t hear me, she thinks as she continues to stare at me.
6: Hurt
Wren Sullivan believes me to be her enemy, and I cannot blame her. What else is she to think of me—a creature capable of reading her mind, who tracks her every move without explanation and appears indifferent at best, hostile at worst?
Logic dictates that she should regard me with caution. And as the only living human with powers like ours who has not been taken by the other side, she should fear me. It is my obligation, my purpose, to destroy her.
When she arrives early to school, even if I cannot read her thoughts, I know the cause. Dread. First, she was curious, fascinated, possibly enamored. Now she sees me as a threat.
I allow her to arrive in Gideon’s classro
om ahead of me, and when I walk in, I am unsurprised to find she has taken the seat of the abrasive girl next to her. When Mandy Simmons enters the classroom, she smirks, her thoughts instantaneously possessive despite my continued indifference. Wren continues to look forward, her mental wall growing stronger with practice.
She appears more at peace in her pretense that I do not exist, while I become increasingly uneasy. After a few hours, I realize that I feel very human. Time passes slowly when I can neither see nor hear her, and I wonder with grim amusement if this is what humans mean by the phrase to have a crush.
Another lunch hour, and I find myself in luck. Her friends’ frenetic energy is making it difficult for her to maintain her wall of silence. Today, I have restrained myself from looking upon her, and now I am rewarded for my patience.
Really, Wren? You can’t go more than a minute without staring at his face? she thinks as her eyes dart in my direction.
“Did you get sick of sitting next to the god of hotness, or what?” Ashley Stewart asks her.
Wren smiles and shrugs, her expression tightening. She risks another look at me.
They would think I was beyond nuts. ‘Hey, I can read minds—and so can he!’ Yeah, that would go over well.
“So, Wren. You never said if you’re coming with us tomorrow,” Lindsay Gallo says.
As Wren studies the table in front of her, I struggle to read her thoughts.
Three couples and me. Yay! Instead of worrying about someone whose toes I would step on, I get to be the token single person at the dance.
“I definitely want to go with you guys,” she says, looking up. “But I’m not … I can’t go to the dance.”
“You’re not going?” Ashley Stewart asks with bemusement.
“I promised my dad I’d fly down to Southern California.”
I frown. Based on the phone conversation I overheard, visiting her father and stepmother is, perhaps, the last act she would want to take. Suddenly she glances at Tarabocchia, a look of panic crossing her features.