by R.K. Ryals
~Peregrine Storke~
Foster’s agitation was growing. I could see it in the way he looked at me, in the way he looked at all of us.
“We died in that flash flood,” Foster mumbled, his fingers running through his hair.
I looked up at him. “You sound so convinced.”
His gaze met mine. “Admitting otherwise means acknowledging the rest of this tripe. Tripe. T-R-I-P-E. It means rubbish, garbage, nonsense, drivel, rot, and whatever else you want to call it.”
Foster’s face was different up close. I’d always thought he didn’t have freckles—like his sister had—but I was wrong. The ones he had were faint, disguised by tanned skin and wary expressions.
King Happenstance glanced between us. “You should get cleaned up and changed. We can talk more then,” the king said. Louisiana was full of stagnant, swampy water. It didn’t make good perfume.
Nimble hopped off of Elspeth’s shoulder, her unfortunate wings causing her to fly directly into Foster’s neck. To his credit, he didn’t blanch or attempt to swipe her away. She sneezed and a shower of violet dust spread outward around us. The taste of watermelon bloomed across my tongue. Foster’s fingers touched his mouth in bewilderment.
“Yes, a bath,” Nimble muttered, her fingers pinching the bridge of her nose. She flew backward, motioning for us to follow.
It was strange seeing the palace brought to life. It was as cluttered as I remembered it, the walls stone and painted ivory. Colorful tapestries hung from the ceiling, the woven threads full of discarded pictures I’d drawn growing up. The rest made me flinch.
Three floor-to-ceiling arched windows faced us, the glass overlooking fields of neon flowers and dancing fairies. I’d never focused much on the interior of the palace. I’d mostly used pictures from magazines pasted to fill in the space. It showed.
The palace had electricity because I’d drawn it that way, but where it came from was beyond me. At least a dozen chandeliers hung above us, all of them different, all of them replicas of lighting from home publications I’d found appealing. It was the same with the furniture. Two thick, brown leather sofas sat facing each other along the walls. A matching leather recliner was perched on a dais where a throne should have been. The castle wasn’t one of my shining artistic moments.
Foster stared as we followed Nimble, his gaze taking in the winding mahogany staircase she led us to. I had a thing for stairs, especially twisted ones. All staircases should wind, upward and far, so that you always wondered where it led.
Foster glanced at me. “I pity the man you marry, and the house he builds for you,” he uttered.
I winced. “I’m an artist, not an interior designer.”
“They’re not the same thing?” he asked.
My eyes stayed forward, my gaze tracking Nimble. She flew haphazardly up the stairs, her hands outstretched for balance. Guilt swamped me, the emotion warring with pity in my gut. Nimble’s wings were different because I’d drawn them that way.
The fairy glanced over her shoulder, her beautiful, bright eyes finding mine, a smile on her small face. She didn’t fly into anything, but this was familiar territory for her. Even with a bad wing, it was unlikely she would falter.
There were more stairs, more mismatched chandeliers, and paintings lining a well-lit corridor. Foster’s fingers brushed one of the drawings on the wall. It was a charcoal sketch of a girl sitting cross-legged on a simple bed in front of a full-length mirror. The reflection she saw was obviously different from her reality. Her reflection wasn’t sitting. In the mirror, she was standing, her body encased in a long, elegant gown. She was in a room, a school gym maybe, surrounded by dance partners.
“Your’s?” Foster asked.
The painting was titled Perception. I’d drawn it my sophomore year in high school.
When I didn’t answer him, Foster cleared his throat. “It’s good,” he murmured.
Nimble paused in front of another staircase. It was shorter than the one we’d climbed up before, but just as twisted.
“Your tower,” she chirped.
My breathing grew erratic, Foster’s presence behind me much heavier than it had been before. “There’s another one, right?”
Nimble’s brows creased. “You never drew more than two towers. Why would you need to? One for Elspeth, and one for …”
I cleared my throat. “So we’ll share then?”
Nimble glanced between us. “That’s not okay?”
My characters were innocent creations, drawn before I’d ever thought about sex. And once I had thought about sex … well, it just seemed wrong to draw anything pertaining to those fantasies in Awkward. Even if I had, it wouldn’t have been with Foster Evans.
We traversed the stairs in uncomfortable silence, the door to the tower opening on to a painfully beautiful scene. It was the only room I’d taken time to draw. It was my room. There were two towers in the castle. Two towers for two princesses, Elspeth and Peregrine Storke.
My room was a circular stone tower with an impressive chandelier hanging from the conical ceiling. A large, arched window overlooked mountains, fields, and waterfalls. It was the waterfalls that drew the eye. Their pounding cascade threw rainbows into the air, the spray visible even from the room. Huge, elaborate painted murals of trees with low hanging limbs and vines full of white roses climbed the tower walls. A gauzy, white lace canopy was draped over a massive bed with a mattress thick and soft enough to sink into. No less than eight satin-covered pillows leaned against the headboard.
A domed doorway to the side of the bed led to a grand claw-foot tub sitting within a recessed part of the tower. There was no door to hide the bath. Everything was overly large in my room because the idea of sleeping and bathing in something too large made me feel smaller.
Foster gaped, spinning slowly as he stepped into the room. “Well, you certainly had no delusions of grandeur.”
Nimble flew over his head, leaving a trail of violet sparkles falling over his mud speckled hair. Foster swiped at his mouth.
“All princesses should have a tower,” Nimble said. She gestured at a large whitewashed vanity and armoire. “There are clothes within. I even stowed a few of Prince Dash’s things in there once I became aware the boy was being brought into Awkward, too.”
Foster’s gaze grew sharp. “Boy?”
Nimble shrugged, more sparkles fanning out behind her as she exited the tower, her lips curling upward.
The closing door was too loud, the click final.
Foster faced me. “Have you ever considered therapy?”
His words mocked me, but his eyes were full of something different. Confusion, maybe. Pity. Guilt.
“Don’t,” I whispered.
It was all I said, my feet taking me to the arched doorway and claw-foot tub. Water rushed from the faucet, steam rising from the basin. Plumbing and light poles didn’t exist in Awkward, but it didn’t matter. Things still worked. Awkward wasn’t sensible. It was easy, comfortable, and different. It was my life’s easy button.
When I turned toward the armoire, I found Foster watching me, his brows creased.
“Who are you?” he asked.
I moved past him, opening the doors of the wardrobe to find what I’d always known was there—fancy, full gowns made of silk, satin, and velvet. I’d always wanted dresses like these, but I was older now, and they seemed less important. What once seemed beautiful appeared too heavy and uncomfortable now. I opted for one of the tunics left for Foster. It was a blue tunic, the fabric lightweight and long. It would reach my knees. Panties also lined the shelves. They were beautiful scraps of lace and cotton I’d found in Victoria’s Secret magazines. Awkward was a strange mix of modern, bizarre, and antiquity.
“You know who I am,” I mumbled, moving past him once more.
Foster’s voice followed me. “Do I?”
He gave me his back when I glanced at him, and I stripped out of my damp, muddy clothes before climbing in
to the tub. There was no time to enjoy the water. Rose-carved soap rested inside a groove in the basin, and I scrubbed with it, running the suds through my hair and down my skin before rinsing. There were pale stretch marks on my waist, too light to be visible from a distance. It was a myth that only pregnant women had stretched skin.
“This is unbelievable,” Foster remarked.
I was beginning to discover something about Camilla’s brother. He didn’t like silence.
“What?” I asked. “The fact that we’re alive or that we’re inside a series of drawings?”
Terry cloth towels engraved with a P hung on a rod behind the tub, and I wrapped one of them around myself. Bruises from the TrailBlazer marred my skin, the fabric pressing into them, and I winced as I lifted the tunic. I’d just managed to pull it over my head when Foster faced me again.
“It’s unbelievable you drew this world in the first place. What is this, Perri?”
There had been a belt in the wardrobe, and after cinching it around my waist, I slid on a pair of underwear and brown boots.
My gaze met Foster’s. “You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?”
Foster watched me, his hands reaching for the hem of his T-shirt. He pulled it over his head, letting the dirt-streaked material fall to the floor. He had broad shoulders, his muscled chest smooth. The skin there was lighter than the skin on his arms. Faint freckles stained his shoulders, mingling with an inked Celtic wolf on his bicep.
My gaze followed the design as Foster pulled the remaining tunic from the wardrobe. The white, folded fabric rested on top of fawn-colored breeches. If Foster seemed reluctant to wear the clothes, he gave no sign of it.
The sound of running water filled my ears, steam rising once more from the tub. I gave Foster my back.
“It’s a fantasy,” I said. “Awkward is a fantasy.”
Water splashed. “A fantasy where I’m a smelly poet called a bullygog?” Foster asked.
His words forced a laugh from me. “You were always good with rhymes after all.”
Silence.
“Perri—” he began.
“Don’t,” I pleaded.
More splashing. “We were children.”
I whirled, my eyes flashing. He remained sitting in the tub, the lower half of his body hidden by the porcelain. Even as large as the bath was, he still filled it.
“I was fourteen,” I snapped. “And seventeen-year-old boys aren’t children.”
His eyes lowered, the wolf on his arm howling at me as he gripped the tub.
My gaze dropped to the floor as he stood. “Don’t attempt to validate your behavior or mine,” I told him. “Awkward is a fairytale. It was my fairytale. My world. It was never meant for anyone else to see. Don’t make this place more than it is.”
More silence.
“And yet,” he said finally, “we’re here, and there’s something wrong in your awkward world. Was your childhood that bad? You had friends, Perri. You had Camilla, a friend you could trust.”
My gaze followed his bare feet as he stepped from the tub and pulled on the breeches, the hem of the tunic falling over the fawn-colored pants. He left it untucked.
“It must have been a strong fantasy,” he continued, “if you were able to bring it to life. A kingdom threatened now by perfection. You fear it so much?”
My gaze slid to his. “You’re wrong,” I pointed out. “This is perfect. This world has always been perfect to me. Perfection is how you perceive it.”
“Is it?” Foster asked. “Then why create a world where nothing is perfect?” He approached me, his fingers rolling up the tunic’s long sleeves, leaving the fabric bunched around his elbows. “It was a rhyme, Perri. A stupid rhyme made up to tease my sister’s friend.”
My gaze held his. “Words take on a life of their own. What started as a stupid rhyme for you became a weapon for an entire school. Your words were sung to me while I was cornered in empty classrooms. It was hummed behind my back as empty candy wrappers fell from my locker taped to notes that read, ‘Starve, bitch, starve’. I’m not that fourteen-year-old girl anymore, but don’t play off something that once scarred the girl I left behind.”
I attempted to brush past him, but his hand gripped my arm, his eyes scanning the room. There was something familiar about this tower, and he knew it. I’d often envied Camilla her home, her room. Foster and Camilla’s parents weren’t wealthy, but they’d managed where my parents hadn’t. There weren’t piles of empty liquor bottles stacked inside of their kitchen sink or prescription pain killers lining their cabinets.
The Evans’ bedrooms were havens. Camilla’s had been full of sunshine, her walls covered in decals of bright sunflowers, her bed covered in a gauzy, yellow canopy. My real bedroom, the one outside Awkward, was nothing more than hand drawn sketches and a mattress with a broken box spring. But when I closed my eyes …
“Perri—”
Foster’s words were drowned out by the sound of something exploding, a scream echoing through the palace.
“Fudgepucket!” someone yelled.
I couldn’t breathe; my chest was covered by Foster’s heavy weight. He’d flown into me, his body knocking mine to the ground at the sound of the explosion. His arms were shaking, and his eyes were wild and distant. It was several moments before he looked at me, his breathing slowing. His arms kept his weight from crushing me.
There was something in his gaze, something marring his beautiful brows. I’d always thought of Foster as perfect, his rhyme having cemented him in my memory not only as a villain, but a devastatingly beautiful one. The horror on his face now sent niggling doubt vibrating down my spine.
He ruined the moment before it even began. “Fudgepucket?” he sneered.
I cleared my throat. “That,” I said slowly, “would be Herman.”
Chapter 7
“That awkward moment when you meet a worm more intelligent than you are.”