by LJ Amodeo
Like a child, I giggled.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“Nothing. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m laughing.” I said, clearing my throat.
“How was the lake?” he asked.
“It was all right, I guess.”
“All right?”
“I mean it was, umm . . . ” I searched for the right word to make it seem, “Fun.”
“Fun. You were there with your friends?”
“Yes, Freddie and Sam picked me up, and Sophie, Annie, Matt, and others from school were there, too.”
“It’s too bad no one asked me to go. I’m sure I would have enjoyed another day with you.”
Fool!I thought to myself.I should have asked him, and instead of my day being all right, it could have been perfect.Then I thought about Sam. And Freddie. It wouldn’t have been a good idea, anyway, extinguishing the excitement that momentarily soared in my chest.
“I’m sorry I didn’t ask you, Michael. I figured you would have felt uncomfortable around my friends.” I tried to sound convincing.
“No problem. I get it. Thought it would have been a good way to meet some the other students. I’m the new guy in town, remember?” He chuckled.
“I feel terrible about it!” I frowned.
“I’m just joking. No worries. I was busy today, anyway with college applications. Maybe next time.”
“Of course, I promise.” I murmured, smiling to myself.
For several moments there was silence on the other end of the receiver. The only sound was a light tapping on my window pane from the drizzle outside. I lay across my bed, holding the receiver close to my ear.
“Can I ask you something?” His melodic voice chimed.
I whispered, “Yes.”
“Your friend—the one with the dark hair? What’s her story?”
An immediate wave of nausea whirled in the pit of my stomach. I sat up.Why is he asking about Sam? I knew it. It was too good to be true. Someone as perfect as Michael would never go for me. Sam was everything I was not. She exemplified the image of femininity. She had the graceful elegance of monarchs and the beauty and sex appeal of supermodels. She was worldly and knowledgeable, more than I’d ever be. Suddenly, I was insanely jealous. Sick to my stomach.
“What do you want to know?” I grunted, biting on my lip.
“Who is she? What’s she told you—about herself?” he paused.
“Really, Michael? You called to ask about Sam?” I scoffed, as my body began trembling.
“Yeah. I mean no! I know you guys are friends. I’m curious. That’s all.”
Against my will, I satisfied his need to know about Samantha.
“Coincidentally, like you, she’s lived in many places around the world. She has a brother who is away at graduate school. Her mom’s a professor, and Sam appreciates the finer things in life. What else would you like to know? How about this—I can give you her number and you can ask her yourself! Asshole!” I barked, slamming the phone down on its cradle. I fought hard to keep from crying. I was angry. Hurt. Disappointed. I hated them. Both of them for ruining my life more than ever. It was much easier when it was just me and Freddie. Life was good. Now they had to come and ruin everything. The phone rang. I stared at it like it were menacing. Three, four, five. I counted the rings, hesitating to answer it. I removed the phone from its holder.
“What.” I exhaled.
“Elizabeth. Why did you hang up on me? There’s no reason to get mad. The only reason I asked was because she doesn’t seem to likeme very much,” he stated defensively, as I listened.
Why is it so important to him that she likes him,I pondered with envy.
“Yeah, I kind of wanted to ask you about that, Michael. Do you know each other? Because I’m sensing that there’s a past here. Do you know her from somewhere else? Maybe from one of your luxurious holidays in Sri Lanka? Did you guys ever date, Michael? Please, don’t lie to me. I hate liars,” I insisted, finally finding the backbone I’d been missing all these years.
Wow. I thought.I did it. I stood up for myself. It’s about time! I will not be taken for granted anymore. I refuse to be bullied by (that bitch), Sophie. I will shun orders barked by Sam. And I will question Michael’s intentions, even if this breaks all ties with them.I thought about my new behavior, the one that sprung out of me like a bullet. Thoughts of my illness began seeping in my head like a varmint;bizarre behavior, argumentative, angry, restless. A few symptoms of mental disorder, as Dr. Bates blatantly put it.
“Elizabeth,” his defensive tone changed to worry, “We’ve never met before, and I have no reason to lie to you. I only wanted to know about—” He abruptly cut himself off. I’d had enough.
“Michael, did you call to speak to me or to find out details about Sam? If it’s Samantha you’re interested in, please, don’t waste my time,” I snarled at him, still trembling all over.
“Elizabeth, calm down. I am not interested in Sam. Believe me! She is the epitome of everything I loathe in a girl. I see how she reacts around me, and I don’t want it to upset you, honestly.”
“Then what is it that you’d like to know?” I muttered, fighting back tears.
“We can drop the subject. We don’t have to discuss it.” His voice softened.
“It’s fine. Really. Ask away!” I rolled my eyes, exhaling a long shallow sigh.
“Her brother. What’s his name?”
“I think Lucas, Luca or something. Why?”
“Well, don’t take this the wrong way—”
“Try me!” I snapped, heated up by our earlier conversation wasted on Samantha.
“Elizabeth, you’re still upset with me, I can tell,” he stated calmly.
“Shit, Michael! Just say it!” I yelled, impatiently.
“Look, if I’m bothering you, Elizabeth, let me know. We can end this conversation now! I’m only looking out for you.” He shouted back. My heart jolted at the sound of his angry voice and of the idea of losing him. If I pleaded with him, I’d sound desperate. If I begged, I’d be a fool, like my mother who begged my father to stay, and look how her life turned out. I simply waited to compose my anger before I spoke again.
“What is it you’d like me to tell you about the Gavens, Michael.” I said to him with a calmer tone of voice. No point in fighting this. Let it be. Today it seemed like everyone wanted me to trust them or hate them.
“All I wanted to say to you is to watch out for her. Don’t trust her. Limit your time alone with Sam. She’s nothing but bad news. Your friendship worries me, Elizabeth. I told you earlier that I didn’t know her, and I don’t! So no freaking out on me, all right? Okay?” he said after some silence on my end of the receiver.
“Yes.” I whispered almost catatonic.
“I may know them. Her brother. Father. They are not good people, Beth,” he muttered sincerely. Relief quashed my concerns cognizant that his interest wasn’t for the beautiful blackbird after all. He spoke of trust, but who could be trusted?God?A voice laughed at the idea. As my mind shouted words foreign to me, all but one caught my attention:fiducia.That was the problem. Trust. The single word that pricked my soul regularly, wondering why everyone fought for my trust lately. I fiddled with thoughts about Sam, and how Michael urged me to question our friendship. Yet, something inside me begged to differ.
“She may seem harsh, Michael, but Sam is a friend. She’s a girl who has been hurt herself. She has experienced trauma, especially with the murder of her father. Have some compassion for her. Besides, I don’t know her brother. He’s not my friend, she is. Anyway, how bad can she be? Honestly Michael, her father’s dead, her mother’s an educated woman, and her brother’s going to be a surgeon. Does that make them bad or different from anyone else?”
“Beth,” Michael interrupted, but I didn’t give up my stand on the issue too easily.
“Look, whatever your problem is with her brother, let it go. Put it in the past.” I whispered.
Michael did not say a w
ord. At first I thought our call ended, until I heard him take a deep breath. Relieved that he hadn’t hung up, I took a deeper breath.
“Michael, I’m sure Luca’s matured since. . . whenever. Don’t judge Sam over something that happened with her family years ago. You don’t know her. Play nice. Do it for me.” I said, listening to his uneven breaths through the receiver. He exhaled. What was I asking of him. A boy I met only weeks ago. Would he succumb to pleasing me? Ordinary me? Invisible me? I finally found my own voice, me?
“Please, tell me you’ll never let your guard down around that girl. Just promise me that!” he insisted.
“Guard? Like a superpower that’s going to protect me from all evil things in the world?” I teased smiling broadly at the ceiling as I laid in bed.
“Yep. And like all heroines, you’ll need a hero. The one that will protect you from monsters.” I sensed by the tone of his voice, he smiled, too. I pictured his beautiful dimples marking his cheeks.
“You mean monsters like Sam?” I teased him.
“You said it, not me!” He chuckled.
A sea of emotions sputtered through my body. He worried about me, and that alone meant everything. His words gave me hope. Hope that love had finally swaddled my lonely heart. “I promise, Michael. That one day I’ll find my superpower.” I paused, grinning to myself, “But she is still my friend.”
“I know Elizabeth, I know. Would you like to sleep now?”
“No . . . ” My voice trailed slightly, “ . . .just stay on the phone with me.”
“Goodnight, my sweet, Elizabeth.Bonne nuit, my Princess,” was the last verse I heard before floating away.
~
My heart pounded through my chest. My mouth parched and burning. I knelt at the lake’s edge. My reflection sketched on the surface of the frigid water. A voice from behind begged me not to drink the water from the lake. I coughed, choking on the inferno that ignited in the back of my throat. The same inferno that gripped my neck in the presence of the pale face. My fingers stroked my inflamed throat. A small oval medallion hung from my neck on a thin chain of white gold. I looked at its reflection on the black waters of the lake, but could not make out its engravings. My cravings for the icy water intensified, wanting desperately to sooth my blistering esophagus. I cupped my hands. The waft of the water strengthened beneath my bare feet, making my balance unsteady, slippery. A voice from the depths of the darkness around me, shrieked in distress. The black water below continued to haul in my focus. Deeper and deeper, my interest in the eerie depth, climaxed. I wanted to know who called for me. What was it that was pulling me in? My head spun. I needed to know. A yearning I couldn’t resist, didn’t want to fight, drew me closer. My hands lowered toward the rampant water. Voices echoed all around me—fierce and powerful in discord. The force was overwhelming. My chest heaved rapidly, as I lowered my hands. I could feel the frozen lake numbing them, as my mind struggled with the voices calling out to me. Like a temptress, the lake refused to release its grip on me. Still, I lowered my hands, cupping the frosty liquid that dripped through my fingers, down my arms, making me tremble. I raised the water to my quivering lips, and like a chalice, drank from it, swallowing the icy liquid down my scorched throat. It felt wonderful. Inviting. Arousing my senses. Heightening the brilliance of sounds and visions. Animating the lake with vibrant, clear detail. A sharp, loud growl riveted across the waters, creating a phantasmic ripple. Nothing was visible through the blackness of the night, except the moon’s ghostly reflection on the ice-covered lake. I focused passed the trees, listening to the agonizing cries that echoed through them. I heard their pleas, distinguishing their familiar voices, as if someone had delivered me from silence. They moved about, deep in the desolate forest. Listening to the sounds of twigs and dried leaves snapping beneath their feet. I turned my head, searching, shivering, and waiting to be liberated.
“Elizabeth . . .” A voice reverberated. A voice I trusted, a voice I loved.
“Michael...l...l...l” my voice resounded back in faint echoes.
Still kneeling with my hands cupped in front me, I waited for him to come to me. But a forceful grip reached out and dragged me under the frozen, murky waters. I struggled to swim to the top of the lake, but something held my foot, pulling me under, deeper still. With great effort, I kicked at the force, trying to swim back up for air. Limb by limb, my muscles tightened in the frozen water. My mind crippled until it went numb. In the dark depths of the freezing lake, a doomed village appeared broken and empty, except for the serpent that slithered toward me. Its malevolent jade eyes focused on my vulnerability. The slinking demon, flicked its forked tongue, confirming that I was its sole enemy. My eyes widened with horror as lifeless corpses floated, one by one, held in place by a cord tied to their ankles, as the slithering beast waded toward me. In a panic, I gulped the frozen poison filling my lungs and struggling to breathe, but it was no use. All I could do was squeeze my eyes shut, hoping for it to end. The intense pressure in my skull burned, until everything dark and cold. I knew death was imminent. There was no way out but to surrender, and like a great force, I was sucked under into a death-like stillness until a fiendish voice whispered.
Laguz.
~
The sound of my chattering teeth awoke me from my lurid dream at half past three in the morning. My room was cold. I pulled the comforter over my aching head as the rapid thumping of my heartbeat quieted in my chest. “Nightmare,” I shuddered, in hopes of ridding the vial image of jade eyes from my mind and praying for the pulsing twinge in my temple to stop. I still held the phone in my hand as I thought about our earlier conversation about Sam:I fear she has bad intentions—promise you’ll never let your guard down around that girl. Promise!’I shut out the bad thoughts of her in my head, shivering as I placed the phone back on the receiver. In my journal entry, I’d record the dream that troubled me before surrendering once again to the silence of the darkness.
Chapter 10: Lost
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Kahlil Gibran
Ring . . . ring . . . ring . . .I tried blocking out the loud and irritating shriek of chimes. It felt as though minutes had passed when I fell back asleep after my dreadful nightmare. My eyes fluttered open as I noted the annoying sound was coming from the phone. I reached over to answer it.
“Yeah,” I moaned sleepily.
An angel’s voice roused me. “Did I wake you?”
Instantly, I sat up trying to sound more alert as I responded, “No, I was already up.” My stomach fluttered uncontrollably with the same tingling feeling as before.
“What have you decided?” he asked. I tried to desperately to remember what decision he expected me to make, but found I was too exhausted to think at all.
“Decided . . ?” I said hinting for a clue.
“This weekend? Skiing in Tremblant? Have you forgotten?”
“Oh! Umm? I haven’t exactly asked my mom yet,” I responded, feeling ashamed that nearly at eighteen, I still needed my mom’s permission to go away with him.
“I see. Then, I guess you leave me no choice but to do the dirty work myself,” he teased.
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” he said buoyantly, when suddenly the steady drone of a dial-tone buzzed on the other end of the receiver.
“Shit!” I leapt out of bed. Fifteen minutes did not leave me enough time to ask Mom for permission to go skiing for the weekend and make myself presentable when he rang the doorbell.
I was tying the laces of my sneakers when Mom called my name from the bottom of the stairs. “Beth, come down. Michael brought over some fresh bagels and coffee.” She sang in herhappyvoice.
From my bedroom door, I could hear the two of them in deep conversation, but couldn’t make out the muttered words they exchanged at the bottom of the stairs. I wondered what they were talking about, hoping it wasn’t any more of my embarrassin
g moments as an adolescent. This made me quicken my step toward the kitchen.
As I entered the room, Michael’s eyes were already focused on the doorway that led into the kitchen. His full lips slightly turned upward in anticipation of my arrival. He sat gallantly with one leg crossed over his knee and one hand on my mom’s favoriteElviscoffee mug. Her prized possession mug. A mug shenever allowed me to touch, let alone use.
Michael sat there relaxed and startlingly gorgeous. He made my head spin, euphoric that he was mine.
“Hey, Sweetie.” Mom smiled, curtly, her eyes gazing at my awkward silence. She touched my shoulder, excused herself to go make the beds.
My hands tugged at my brown cotton Henley. A nervous habit I needed to tame.
“Morning.” Michael strolled toward me, placing a kiss on my flushed cheek.
For the love of Pete,I thought, as I tried to control the spasms stirring in my body as he touched me. His head tilted down, resting his chin on my forehead. The rhythm of his breathing only intensified my own short, quick breaths.
“Hope you have a ski suit,” he said, as he inhaled the fresh scent of my hair.
I stepped away wide eyed, opening the gap between us. “I haven’t asked her yet,” I informed him.
From the second floor, Mom hollered that my ski jacket and pants were in the attic.
“She said yes?” I squealed, lurching my body forward at his. I wrapped my arms around his neck, uninhibitedly. His powerful arms lifted me, pulling me firm against his chest, locking me inside his strong grip.
“You are beautiful,” he whispered, as if he were looking at me for the first time. We remained embraced for a solid minute without space between us. Cradled with his arms wrapped around my waist, I lowered my heels to the floor, loosening my clasp around his neck, all the while sliding my fingers over his shoulders. Outlining the taut muscles that shaped his arms. I toyed with the weaves of his fitted sweater, as my hands glided over the swells of his chest. His hand cupped my chin while gently lifting my head. His heart beat loudly against mine. The resistance to be as respectable as my mother had raised me, was suddenly crippled. Without opposition, I made the first move, again, pressing my quivering lips to his. The soft, balmy fragrance of his breath riveted deep in my core. He responded with urgency and as much fervency as I, his tongue parting my lips. My arms tightened around his neck, while my fingers played with his hair. He lifted me with ease wrapping my legs around his waist. He held me firm against his body. My fingers pulled hungrily through his silky hair, griping it anxiously and feverishly. I could feel his hands stroking the small of my back, delicately. My heart pounded through my skin. My stomach ached. I wanted him, all of him. No more waiting. No more guessing. No games or boundaries. Just me and him together blissfully.