by A. E. Rought
“What did you see?”
He turns, paces in the milky column of a moonbeam. The light plays on his hair when he takes his hood down and pushes a hand through the long strands. A new scar, pink skin and not a scab, cuts across his forehead.
“I’ve seen you in my dreams since I woke up from surgery,” he says. “And in a recurring nightmare. I thought that’s all they were, until I came to school and saw you. I saw you. Can you imagine? God, my heart started thumping, Em, thumping like it knew you. But I didn’t. I had no clue who you were.
“The dreams come every night, then I see you every day and the amazement is still there.” He heaves a breath, clenches his fists, then continues. “Then today, something happened, and the nightmare came back. Only I was awake through it and you were there, in my head and right in front of me.”
His bottom lip trembles and his eyes shine with moisture.
I know before I ask. I need to hear his answer. “What’s your nightmare?”
“I’m on the edge of something,” he says in a far away voice, and steps to the edge of the porch. He spins to face me and I’m not sure if he sees me now, or then. “I don’t feel right. Like drunk, or something, and mad. Then someone pushes me. I lose my balance as you come running, screaming my name. My last thought is “I love you” and then I hit bottom. Pain explodes, and is snuffed when blood streaks over my eyes and the lights go out.”
“That’s…impossible,” I whisper. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I do!” He paces back and forth. “Details are so clear. Your hair is down, blowing in the warm breeze. The white lace edge of your tank top peaks out above the zipper of my sweatshirt.” He grabs the sleeve of Daniel’s hoodie I’d picked from the closet on instinct. “This sweatshirt!”
Alex’s hand falls from the sleeve, then flies to his mouth and he shakes his head. A tear beads and rolls. “I told you not to wear that tank top because—”
“I’d be too cold when the sun went down,” I finish. Where is this knowledge coming from? Alex wasn’t there, those words weren’t his. “But, you didn’t say that. Daniel did.”
“Daniel?” Disbelief colors his tone, darkens his eyes.
“Yes. You just described—except his thoughts and someone pushing him—the night he died.”
“But it’s my nightmare,” Alex says, hand hitting his chest. “My dreams, and my feelings. They are in me.”
“That was Daniel’s death,” I insist. Damn his sad face for making me feel guilty for knowing the truth.
“It’s mine. I see it in here.” Alex places a finger atop the star-shaped scar on his temple. “And I feel things here,” he says, taking my hand and putting it over his heart. “It doesn’t beat for me, Emma. It was never mine. This heart has always been yours.”
Tears threaten, moisture fills my nose. I sniff, and swallow against the lump in my throat. “What are you saying?”
He exhales a strangled sob. He releases my hand, and unfurls both of his like he’s begging me for something. “That I love you, Emma Gentry. I have since I woke up.”
“You can’t,” I argue. He looks at me like I slapped him “You hardly know me.”
“But I feel like I’ve known you forever.”
“You can’t,” I repeat, desperate to put distance between me and the beautiful lie Alex Franks turned out to be. He was supposed to be new, and different, and capture my heart all on his own, but he’s tainted. He’s Daniel’s death in his left eye, Daniel’s dying emotion in his heart. I step back until my hand finds the door knob. “And I can’t.”
“Emma, please,” he begs.
“Go home, Alex. I need to think and I can’t do it if you’re here reminding me of Daniel.”
“Emma!”
I turn the knob, stumble in and shut the door.
Leave, please. Leave and take Daniel with you.
The door holds me up while I fall apart. I muffle my sobs in the sleeve of my hoodie, until I see the color and remember the night I got it. I rip the zipper down, peel off the sweatshirt and fling it into the closet. I grab Mom’s ratty old gardening jacket and bury my face in it, instead. It smells like roses and tears as I cry.
Why did I have to fall in love with a boy so broken?
Chapter Twenty-Two
There’s no relief. I can’t outpace the heartache and disbelief haunting my steps, my silent miserable companions in this house of shadows.
I thought I’d escaped the pain of losing Daniel. It just found a new way to break my heart. How will I ever be free of the pain if Alex is somehow reliving his death? My chest aches and breath shortens thinking about the look of confusion and pain in Alex’s eyes when I told him those memories weren’t his. He believes.
Alex can’t have them. He can’t know what Daniel said, or what I wore that night. They’re pieces of my private pain.
But he does.
And it’s impossible.
Wrapping my arms over my chest to keep from flying apart, I climb the stairs. Moonlight lies cold and uncaring across my quilt and floor. My room is filled with stuff, and empty as a tomb. I feel mausoleum hollow without Alex. It’s only been weeks, and I need him to hold on to, I want him to shelter me from this storm. Maybe the connection to Daniel is what wove us so tightly together—now it’s tearing us apart.
A short, tearless sob breaks free. Renfield regards me from his spot at the foot of my bed, eyes saying he thinks I’m crazy. I think he’s right.
“I’m losing it, Renfield.” Because I believe Alex.
“Alex is losing it, too.” Because he believes Daniel’s death is his.
The cat, in his wisdom, stands, fluffs my faeries with his paws, and then tramples them in a circle when he settles in the same spot, facing the other way. He has an excellent point.
I punch up my pillows, pull Alex’s sleeves down and hood up, and then climb into bed. The quiet is deafening, thundering in my ears. Or is it the drumming of my heart? Funny that it keeps beating after what happened to Daniel and how his death happened to Alex.
“Things are so messed up,” I tell Renfield.
He snores at me.
I curl on my side and watch the moonlight make its path across my floor. My mind runs over the same ground, never finding answers, and I’m so tired. I feel like my body is in the mattress, not on it. Eventually, exhaustion wins.
#
Morning hits like a freight train. Mom’s yelling my name from the kitchen and Renfield’s looking down at me where I lay on the floor. My brain has turned to rocks rubbing against each other. Sheets cocoon my legs, carpet nap stings my face where it’s ground into my wet cheeks.
After my last nightmare, I fear it’s blood. A cautious test with a fingertip proves it’s just tears.
“Emma Jane!” Mom yells, voice whacking into my head.
My mouth tastes like metal and cotton. I feel weighed down when I try to move. Standing unsettles everything, my brain clunks in my head, my body feels like it’s still on the floor. Okay, I think, No more painkillers for me. I’d rather hurt than feel like this.
Hangers rattle in my closet as I whip off my pajama pants and Alex’s shirt. I dig to the bottom of my pants pile and pull on my camouflage pants with all the pockets, a snug thermal shirt, and then a lightweight black hoodie, sleeves down, hood up. I don’t have scars to hide, but I like the security of it.
Mom holds out my backpack, beside her on the counter sits a big pretzel and a steaming to-go cup of coffee. She doesn’t question my choice of clothes—she does comment on my hot pink cast clashing with the woodland camo, however. I try to joke about sneaking into the library to return my overdue Gothic novel, but my heart isn’t in it. She shakes her head, slides my backpack on for me, then hooks the pretzel over my cast thumb and nestles the coffee in my other hand.
“A pretzel?”
“Bacon cheddar pretzel,” she says. “I thought it would pair well with the maple coffee.”
“Have I said lately that you�
��re awesome?”
“No.” She opens the door and nudges me out. “But I’m sure you’ve thought it often.”
Mom’s right, as usual: the thinking she’s awesome, and the savory pretzel and sweet coffee being a perfect ambulatory breakfast. I wish I could stop thinking about Daniel and Alex and enjoy the breakfast, the fresh cool air and scrubbed-clean look of the neighborhood after the storm. I can’t. I eat because I know I need to.
The sight of Bree on the Bree Bench tugs at my aching heart, and chips at my desire to keep everything bottled up.
“Hey you,” she says, “what’s up? You look awful.”
“Thanks.” I sling the coffee cup in the trash and relish the bang.
Josh Mason’s rusted Camaro announces his approach before anyone can see his car. Everything in me clenches, and after the dream I had I know I can’t handle school today.
“Bree, I need to get out of here.”
“What?” She blinks, scans the quad. “You mean ditch?”
“Yeah.” I cast a scathing glare at the battered hood when it turns the corner.
“God, I thought you’d never ask!”
“You don’t need to come.” My best friend doesn’t deserve to be a passenger on my trip to Crazy Town.
“Are you kidding? Let my best friend incur the wrath of parents alone?”
She hops up, straightens her jacket, hooks her elbow in mine and then casually saunters toward Teacher Parking. We put the Z-28 and its driver behind us, and the Student Parking lot, where I’m betting by the gravitational pull I feel that Alex is parking his zippy hybrid car.
“So what’s the plan?” she asks.
“No clue. I can’t do school today…”
“Yesterday still bugging you?”
“You have no idea.”
“Well,” she says, digging her phone out of her purse, “I know the perfect place to go, and you can give me an idea, seeing as I’m lacking in that department.” She presses number 1 on her speed dial. “Hey, baby. Girl emergency. Emma and I need your truck. The keys still hidden under the bumper?”
A voice sounding a lot like Jason Weller comes through the teeny speaker.
“Thanks! I promise I’ll make it up to you.”
“Baby? You called Jason ‘baby’?”
“Yeah. We both have boyfriends now.” She winks and gives me a big smile before leading the way down the row of sensible teacher-type cars to Jason’s Ford Bronco. Once there, Bree feels around under the bumper. “Got it,” she mutters.
“When did this become official?”
“Since you’ve been grounded.”
I clamber into the passenger seat, and look at Bree, right at home in Jason’s big beater of a vehicle. Conversation isn’t an option once the vehicle starts. I tuck my hand and cast into the kangaroo pocket of my hoodie and stare blankly out the window as first Shelley High fades and then the town follows. She hits the highway, and then takes the Sternberg exit. A tangle of asphalt and jumble of cement buildings loom off to the right of the overpass.
The mall. People overload, and no place to talk seriously.
“Shopping?”
“Hell no,” she says. “The West Shore Café has the best peanut caramel sundaes. Nothing better to cure what ails you. Except maybe a cheeseburger… And I wouldn’t mind hitting Statham’s Pre-Christmas sale.”
“It isn’t even Thanksgiving yet.”
“Exactly.”
Outside the mall is boring, makes no structural sense, with stores sticking out like cancerous growths from a bone white lump. Curving arches stand one store down from a squared off entrance. Despite the industrial carpet and vaulted ceiling, the inside is crazier yet. Signs for Pre-Christmas sales accost us from the second we walk in the door. Even the sundaes Bree wants are discounted through the month of November.
“So,” she waves at girls walking in the opposite direction across the fountain in the middle of the mall, “I’m guessing this is about Lover Boy…”
“You’re right. And please don’t call him that.”
“Ah-ha. Then there’s trouble in new love paradise?”
“New love,” I echo when we walk into the West Shore Café, and skirt the stained glass dune divider behind the waitress station. “It doesn’t feel new at all.”
At the table, with sundaes and pops in front of us, Bree twirls a stringer of caramel above her dish. “What’s going on? I thought you and Alex were totally into each other.”
“That’s the problem.”
“What?” She licks the caramel off the spoon. “How is dating a guy like Alex Franks a problem?”
“Because something’s not right with him.” His visions of death, his similarities to Daniel. God, the way he makes me feel alive…
“Care to elaborate, because I’m not currently picking up what you’re trying to put down.”
“It’s hard to explain,” I tug on my sleeves, wishing they had thumb holes like Alex’s. “I’m not sure what’s going on. Let me put it this way: Do you believe in ghosts? Because I’m not sure I do.”
“Sure.” She eyes me, arches one eyebrow. “Do you believe in hate?”
Where did that come from? “Yeah.”
“Do you believe in love, then?”
“Of course.” It’s currently killing me, one heartbeat at a time.
“Ghosts are like that.” She smiles triumphantly and slurps a big spoon of ice cream. It’s my turn to arch eyebrows and give her a quizzical look. She sighs, and then says, “I see you’re not understanding. Love and hate are real, even if you don’t see them.”
“But it isn’t like that…” I heave a sigh, wondering if choosing my metaphysical-leaning girlfriend was the right person to confide in. I’ve started now, though, and Bree is the most tenacious person I know—except my mother. I lean across the table and tell her everything: Alex winking and opening my locker like Daniel; his breakdown on the catwalk; his confessions last night. I finish with, “He was even talking like Daniel, called me by Daniel’s nickname, said exactly what Daniel said the night he died.”
“Wo-o-ow. Okay. One, weird. And I stress the weird part. And, two, it’s just like I was saying. True love is like ghosts…it’s a famous quote by some old guy.”
My dubious expression prods Bree to explain.
“You see love in someone, right? And you see hate in them, too. Somehow, you’re seeing Daniel in Alex.”
“But why?”
“You’re going to have to figure that one out for yourself. That was my moment of brilliance. One flash and it’s gone.”
I’ve seen Daniel’s ghost. I’ve talked to his echo. They were separate, outside of Alex.
“Don’t you think it’s crazy, though? They didn’t know each other… And, God, Bree it was awful. Alex was so confused, totally convinced it was part of him.”
She makes a dismissive gesture with her spoon. “What about you? How do you feel?”
I lean back in the booth, and cross my arms. “I don’t know what I think.”
“I didn’t ask what you think. I asked what you feel.”
What do I feel? I close my eyes, try to shut down the screaming denials in my rational brain. I picture Alex, his long brown hair shot through with copper highlights and his mismatched hazel eyes. The look of wonder every time he sees me. The way I felt with him. My heart races, and a melancholy kind of yearning lightnings through me.
“The sad smile on your face says it enough.” Bree slurps her melted sundae. “I think you need to talk to him, now. And don’t worry…” She tips her dish and drinks what’s left. “I won’t tell a soul. This is crazier than you hanging out at the cemetery.”
“So…Statham’s, eh?” I spoon my sloppy ice cream to watch the peanuts swirl and drown. “You buying lingerie for your boyfriend?”
Red blush ravages her cheeks. She drops her gaze to her hands, and meddles with things in her purse. “Boys don’t wear lingerie,” she says. “Besides, I like their perfume.”
Af
ter not eating my sundae, and an hour’s worth of my butt going numb on the bench outside Statham’s while Bree shopped for everything but perfume, we finally climb back into Jason’s Bronco.
“You and Jason, huh?” I tease.
“You and Alex, huh?” She shoots back.
“Well-played, my friend. Well-played.”
Key in the ignition, she says, “Home then?”
I nod, then settle into the seat when the engine roars to life. The Ford shimmies a little as Bree drives along the snaking two-lane road circling the mall and giving access to restaurants, a hearing aid clinic, and a pie shop Mom once wanted to buy. At the traffic light, she splutters above the engine growl, “Shit! You’re going to be late. School must be out.”
The evidence passes under the light in front of us. Josh Mason in his crappy, rusted Camaro.
“Where do you think he’s going?” she asks.
“No clue. I’m already late. Let’s follow him and find out.” Stalkerish, sure, but Josh hates the mall and all those “prissy stores on Sternberg.” His being out here is suspicious enough to warrant a nosy reaction.
Once the light changes, Bree enters the flow of traffic a few cars behind the Z-28. He sticks to back roads away from the mall, toward the Spring Lake Industrial Park.
“Think Josh got a job?” Bree asks over the Bronco’s idling at a corner.
“Doubtful.”
Then Josh turns down a dirt service road and jounces toward a little building with a big sign reading ASCENSION EXPERIMENTAL LABS.
“Hey!” I say, sit straight and fling an arm across Bree. “Slow down. I recognize that SUV.”
Bree backs off on the gas, the beast of a vehicle shuddering as she turns down a side drive so Josh and the owner of the shiny black Suburban won’t see us. I crane my neck to watch as Josh steps out of the Camaro, then I lose sight of him. An antsy energy builds in me as Bree turns behind the building and creeps up behind the dumpster. We ease open the doors and sneak to the corner of the reeking garbage bin.
Choking on the stink, I crouch to watch. They are too far away to hear clearly. But when the SUV’s driver steps out my heart leaps into my throat.