Romeo Redeemed

by Stacey Jay

  The door snicks shut behind us, sealing us into a silence more private than that of the rest of the museum. This is ours, not to be shared. It makes the air taste better.

  “See? Nothing to worry about.” Dylan keeps hold of my hand as we walk toward the first set of paintings, older works that resemble that of Schiele’s mentor, Gustav Klimt. There’s a beautiful woman with red hair and piercing eyes, and several moody twilight landscapes. I take them in, trying to act like this is normal, holding hands with a boy, being one of two.

  “And these are … very nice,” he says.

  I laugh at his disappointed tone. “They are.” I lead the way deeper into the room. The exhibit is arranged in chronological order, and I know Schiele’s darker work came later. I’m still nervous, but now that we’re inside, I’m also excited. Looking at art up close and personal is so much better than seeing it in a book. “But I think you’ll like his later work more.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  I shrug. “Just a hunch.”

  We stop in front of a series of portraits of women. One is holding her skirts bunched in her hands, revealing a long stretch of thigh. Another sits with her legs spread and chin propped on her knee, both provocative and innocent at the same time. The last is of two women—one nude, one in a red dress. They’re embracing, obviously lovers, but it isn’t sexy. It’s sad. Furtive and lonely. I can feel the ache the woman in the red dress feels. Her life has been hard, and now her heart is in danger. This could be the last time she ever holds the person she loves in her arms. I take a shaky breath, heaviness building behind my eyes.

  “Your hunch is right.” Dylan squeezes my hand. “They remind me of you.”

  “Really?” I turn to him, surprise banishing the rush of emotion. “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” He angles his body closer to mine. “Why are you afraid? Why are your eyes so old and sad, pretty girl?”

  My lips part, and for a second I think about lying. But I can’t, not when he’s gone to the trouble of really seeing me. I can’t remember the last time anyone did that, if anyone ever has. “I guess I’ve seen more than I should.” Or heard more, felt more. I swallow, trying not to think about the screaming things or my wrecked mind. I don’t want to be broken and strange today. I want to be happy, a girl holding hands with a boy.

  “This isn’t just about the accident when you were little, is it?” He looks down at me with concern, but not pity. I’m glad. Concern is hard enough to handle.

  I glance back at the paintings. “Not really, but it’s related, I guess. The other stuff started right after the accident, when I was in the hospital trying to get better.”

  “Other stuff.”

  “I started … hearing voices. That no one else could hear. The doctors thought I was having a bad reaction to the morphine, but even after they took me off the medicine, the voices didn’t go away.” I cross my arms and stare at the girl with her head on her knee. She can’t be more than fifteen, but she’s seen her share of bad things. I can tell. She knows how I feel and gives me the courage to say, “I still hear voices sometimes, if I get really angry.”

  “What do they say?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t understand them.” I’m uncomfortable—very—but I can’t seem to stop telling the truth now that I’ve started. “They just scream. They don’t sound human.”

  I risk a glance at him from the corner of my eye, expecting to see him backing away from the crazy girl. But he’s still close. Too close. I catch another whiff of his Dylan smell, and things begin to ache inside of me. I could get used to this. I could come to count on him being next to me, on having someone I can really talk to. I could come to care and need and maybe even love, and then, when he finds out how messed up I really am, the pain of losing him will be horrible. Unbearable.

  Better to clue him in to the fact that I’m the Freak the kids at school think I am, and get it over with.

  “I call them my episodes,” I say, voice brittle as I force myself to break this fragile thing I want to cling to so badly. “I had one last night. I thought I saw something on the playground, like a ghost or … something. And then I got cold the way I do before I start to hear the voices. So I ran. I made it to a vineyard before the screaming started. I fell down and passed out in the mud, and when I woke up …”

  My eyes slide closed. I feel like I’m going to throw up, but I’m not finished. I’ll tell it all, and then I can walk to the bus station and start trying to figure out how to get my stupid, freakish self home.

  “When I woke up, I’d wet my pants.” I spit the words out like seeds. Swift. Efficient. “Just like in fourth grade. You remember that, right? Everyone knows the story of how the Freak became the Freak.”

  He doesn’t say anything. Not a word. Nothing, for so long that the nothing feels like a weight that will crush me into Ariel juice on the floor. I open my eyes, braced for a sneer or a laugh or words that will make me feel smaller than I do already. But he doesn’t say a thing. He just stares at me, a look on his face I can’t pin down. Maybe disbelief. Maybe fear. Maybe a really bad case of déjà vu.

  I’m having some of that again today. As wonderful as this morning has been, it has also been eerie. It’s like I’ve lived it all before, and a part of me knows that Dylan and I aren’t going to end well. That’s why I made myself say what I said. I know something’s going to go wrong, and better that it happens sooner than later.

  I wait for Dylan’s eyes to give me a better idea of what he’s thinking, but it’s like he’s a museum exhibit—frozen in time, never to change. Finally I have to break the silence. “So I guess you think I’m crazy for real now.”

  He flinches, runs his tongue between his lips, and then does the last thing I expect. He takes my hand again, and holds on tight. “I don’t think you’re crazy. I …”

  “You what?”

  “Screaming things.” He says the words like he’d say chair or car or donuts, like something he could point out in a picture, something he understands.

  I cling to his hand, the feeling that something is about to be born in the space between us making my heart race. What will he say? Is there any way that he could understand? No one ever has. I assumed no one ever could, but maybe … His eyes meet mine, and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, to celebrate that I’ve found a similar creature, or to mourn the fact that there’s a person alive with eyes sadder than mine.

  “I want to tell you something.” He licks his lips again. “But I …”

  “You can tell me.” I take his other hand, and wish I had the guts to put my arms around him the way I want to. “I won’t think less of you.”

  He shakes his head. “Yes, you will. You—”

  Before he can finish, the door to the exhibit squeaks open and an impatient voice demands, “What are you kids doing in here? This is a closed exhibit.”

  It’s a man with gray-streaked brown hair wearing a browner suit. He isn’t the museum guard we saw earlier, but he’s obviously someone official. And angry. I pull away from Dylan, dropping his hands, as if not touching him will somehow reduce the amount of trouble we’re about to get into.

  Dylan edges in front of me. “Sorry. We didn’t realize.”

  “The sign on the door says No Entry.” The man narrows his eyes and takes another step into the room. “Why aren’t you two in school?”

  “We go to the college?” The terror inspired by the possibility of getting caught ditching makes my lie come out as a question.

  The man snorts. “You look like you’re twelve years old.”

  “We’re freshmen,” Dylan says, his lie smoother than mine. “Art history majors. That’s why we wanted to see the exhibit.”

  “So you’re some of Professor King’s kids?”

  “Right.” Dylan nods. “The professor’s a big Schiele fan.”

  The man smiles, a smug, condescending, old-person grin that makes me feel about three years old. “There is no Professor King. And I’m ca
lling your parents.”

  My stomach turns to lead, and I think I hear Dylan cuss beneath his breath, but I can’t be sure. My heart is beating too loud in my ears. My mom is going to kill me. Really, kill me. She was cool last night and this morning, but she will not be cool with the fact that I lied to her and played sick so I could skip school and go to Santa Barbara.

  I’m a walking dead girl. All that’s left is for my mom to come retrieve my body.

  The man waves us toward the door. “Follow me to the office. We’ll call your parents and—”

  “Run!” Dylan grabs my arm and hauls me in the opposite direction. I trip, but he helps me along beside him until I find my balance. When I do, I don’t hesitate. I sprint, keeping pace with him as he dashes for the emergency exit on the other side of the room. Suit Man shouts for us to “Stop!” but we don’t. We dart around glass cases displaying some sculpture I wish I could have looked at—I didn’t know Schiele sculpted—and behind us I hear dress shoes begin to slap the wood floor. I have a split second to wonder what will happen if Suit Man catches us, and then Dylan is lunging for the door with the red and white stripes on the handle.

  An alarm blares, but I don’t hesitate. Who cares about the alarm? We’re already caught. We can’t get into any worse trouble, and we might just get away. These stairs have to lead somewhere.

  Dylan grabs the black railing and swings around the first landing, looking over his shoulder to make sure I’m close behind before pounding down the concrete steps with a bum-bum-bum-bum that echoes in the stairwell. I follow him, letting my feet fly without thinking about the next step, carried along by adrenaline and the delicious rush of running from something I actually have a chance of escaping. It’s exhilarating, a high that makes me want more, more, faster, faster.

  I catch up with Dylan and pass him on the second landing. He laughs as I beat him to the main level, and I giggle like a madwoman as I lead the race down a shiny, tiled hallway, toward a set of glass double doors with sunshine and green grass on the other side.

  Dimly I hear Suit Man shout again, but his voice is far away, and we are nearly, nearly, almost—

  “Free!” I shout as I burst into the light, another laugh bubbling up as I spin to see Dylan dashing through the door behind me. He grabs me around the waist and swings me in a circle, pressing a breathless kiss to my cheek. My feet hit the ground again, but on the inside I’m still floating.

  “Come on.” He pulls me toward State Street. “Before he sends someone in better shape.”

  I jog after him, holding tight to his hand, his kiss burning through my skin and setting me on fire as I realize that—for the first time in my life—I’m not running alone.

  NINE

  Romeo

  “And a Coke, please,” I tell the man working the snack shack by the beach.

  He passes over the drink and four fish tacos with extra salsa, and I press the last of my money into his hand, happy that I’ve spent all of Dylan’s cash on pleasures of the soul and the flesh.

  Food and art and a beautiful girl. It is … good.

  I scan the beach, and find Ariel spreading out the sleeping bag we pulled from Dylan’s trunk. She looks up at me and smiles, and I have to pause to catch my breath. She is … She just … She shines. Her blue eyes are bright and clear, and the late afternoon sun catches her hair and spins it into gold. The tip of her nose and her mouth are pink from our walk down to the pier and back, and when we kissed with our feet in the water, I could taste the sun on her lips.

  She is also … good. More than good. And I am wooing her, winning her.

  Barely one day down, and she’s already so close to loving me. I can feel it when she holds my hand, when she watches my face when she thinks I’m watching the road, when she reaches up to take the box of tacos and our fingers brush and she smiles that easy smile that looks so good on her. I swear I can practically feel the love bubbling up inside of her.

  “Thanks.” She scoots over, making room for me on the slick green fabric.

  “Welcome.” I settle beside her, close enough that our knees touch. Even that small contact is enough to make my blood rush faster. Sometime between this morning and our early dinner on the beach, I’ve gone from the seducer to the seduced. I don’t know if it’s because hers are the first lips to touch mine in seven hundred years, or if she’s the idiot savant of kissing, but Ariel’s allegedly unskilled lips are quickly becoming an addiction. A compulsion.

  I steal a kiss as I grab a taco from the box, surprised to feel electricity jolt through my core in response. I keep thinking I’ve imagined it, the way she affects me. “I only had enough money for one drink,” I say as I pass the Coke over. “Hope you don’t mind my germs.”

  “I don’t mind,” she says. “I think I have your germs by now.”

  My smile slips, and I almost drop my taco into my lap. Juliet said something so similar when she was wearing this body. And then she kissed me like we were young and in love and there was nothing in the world but the two of us and more raw feeling than two bodies could hold. In that moment, the misery of my dead flesh cut deeper than it had in centuries. I would have sold my soul for lips that could feel. Even if the kiss was a lie to protect the boy Juliet really loved. Even if I had no soul left to sell.

  “Dylan?” Ariel touches my wrist, her fingers cool despite the warmth of the day. “You okay?”

  “Wonderful.” I glance up, and try to look it.

  She lifts her chin, squinting against the sun as she considers me. “No.”

  “No?”

  “No.” She unwraps my taco, rewraps it so only one end is exposed, and places it back in my hand, and I suddenly want to cry all over again. I duck my head and laugh instead, but my laughter sounds desperate, sad.

  Ariel turns back to her supper, carefully peeling the silver wrapping, giving me a moment before she says, “You never told me what you were going to say in the museum.”

  “No, I didn’t.” I take a bite, focusing on the burst of lime and the earthy taste of smoky fish. I don’t want to think about things that scream and scream without ever being heard.

  Well, the Mercenaries assume they can’t be heard. But Ariel hears … something. Maybe she’s right and the voices in her head are a product of madness. Or maybe the lost souls have found an ear that can hear. According to the friar, I wasn’t the first Mercenary outcast to be banished to the specter of his soul. There have been others throughout the ages. Many of their bodies must have turned to dust by now, leaving nothing but their spirit behind. The friar assured me that to become a lost soul was to be without any way to interact with the world. But what if he’s wrong? What if …

  “Are you going to tell me?”

  “Maybe.” I take another bite, savoring the taste. “If you’ll play too.”

  “Play what?” she asks, caution edging into her tone for the first time in hours.

  “Tell Me True. We take turns telling each other things we’ve never told anyone else,” I say, inventing the game as I go along. Nothing brings people together like a good secret. “And the last person to run out of secrets is the winner.”

  “What will I win?”

  I laugh as I pluck my second taco from the box. “I wouldn’t be so sure of yourself. I have a lot of secrets.”

  “Okay. Then you go first,” she says. “I already told you a secret at the museum.”

  “You’ve never told anyone about the … screaming?”

  She shakes her head. “No. Not if you don’t count my mom. Or my psychiatrist.”

  “Moms and psychiatrists never count.” I lick a drop of salsa off my thumb, and wonder which of Dylan’s secrets I should share. I pick one at random that I think will suit the occasion, but when I open my mouth, something unexpected comes out. “I used to have a brother.”

  I blink. Where did that come from? Until this morning, I hadn’t thought of Nicolo in … centuries. If you’d asked my Mercenary self if I ever had a brother, I don’t think I would ha
ve known for sure. I certainly wouldn’t have cared. But now … Thinking of that lost boy makes my food stick in my throat.

  “Really?” Ariel asks. “I didn’t know that.”

  I take a moment, checking Dylan’s memories, making sure my story won’t disagree with any history Ariel might be aware of. No. Dylan and his father didn’t move to Solvang until Dylan was in first grade, and since then Dylan and Ariel haven’t spoken more than a few times. They certainly haven’t shared any family secrets. It’s safe for me to tell Ariel about Nicolo, though I have no idea why I want to.

  I guess I simply want to tell someone. Before it’s too late. I’ve never spoken about my brother to anyone, not even Juliet. By the time I met her, Nicolo had been dead ten years, and I’d learned to pretend that I didn’t miss him like some necessary part of me that had been cut away.

  “Really.” I stare out at the frothy sea, not sure I can look in Ariel’s eyes while telling this ancient story that suddenly feels so fresh. “He was my twin brother. He died when we were five years old.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Her cool hand finds mine. “What happened?”

  “He had a fever.” I close my eyes, and I swear I can see him, the way he looked at the end, red-faced and glassy-eyed and rambling about monsters no one else could see. “Nothing could bring it down. He was dead in two days.”

  She squeezes my hand. “What was his name?”

  “Nicolo.” I pull in a shaky breath. It’s so wonderfully awful to say his name out loud. How could I have forgotten him, how could I have betrayed his memory for so long?

  “What was he like?” she asks, as if sensing how much I need to talk about him.

  “He was wonderful, my father’s favorite. We were both so little, but it was already clear who the better brother was going to be. Nicolo was brilliant and good. Even when no one was watching.” I bite the inside of my cheek, refusing to lose control. I don’t deserve to. “He would give me his dessert anytime I asked for it, and let me ride the pony we shared first even though the animal hated me. I dug my heels in too hard and tugged at Nissi’s mane. She only tolerated me out of love for Nicolo.” I pause before adding, in the closest thing to a joking tone as I can manage, “My father had a lot in common with that horse.”