by Sara Preucil
In the school parking lot, Emmy glanced at herself once more in the rearview mirror before heading into the building.
“Dude, when I said go goth, I was only kidding.” Mariah saddled up next to Emmy at her locker, noticing her makeup.
Emmy shrugged. “Just trying something new.”
“Well, I like it.” Mariah tossed her orange hair over her shoulder. She was wearing a slouchy gray sweatshirt and the new maroon leggings that she had picked out from her and Emmy’s last excursion to the mall.
“Those aren’t real pants, you know.” Emmy pointed at the leggings.
“As long as the top I’m wearing covers my butt, they totally work,” Mariah argued. “Besides, they are a million times more comfortable than jeans. I’m never wearing anything else ever again.”
“Good point.”
They continued to discuss the atrocity of the uncovered leggings-butt in public until the bell rang. A flutter of nerves went through Emmy’s stomach at the thought of seeing Austin in first period, but then she steeled herself; she was not going to let him make her feel uncomfortable. He was the one in the wrong. Not her.
So, head held high, she marched to the biology classroom. Plopping her things down on her desk with a little more vigor than intended, and drawing more than a few surprised looks from the students around her, she then slid into her seat, preparing to hold her own.
When Austin arrived, he cast her his famously adorable sheepish smile before sitting in the desk next to her.
Don’t waver, Emmy reminded herself, responding with a tight-lipped smile.
“I like the new look,” Austin swirled his finger around his eye, obviously talking about her eyeliner.
“Thanks.” Emmy pretended to look through her textbook.
“Look,” Austin whispered as Mrs. Pérez entered the classroom. “I’m sorry I was so distracted yesterday. A family thing came up.”
“Oh.” Emmy’s defense completely crumbled. “Is it serious?”
“Everything’s fine now, thanks for asking.” Austin smiled at her, and then turned his attention to the front of the class as Mrs. Pérez started her lecture.
Emmy felt derailed. She had been prepared to hold the high ground while Austin begged for her forgiveness, not to feel guilty that she had been angry over an unknown family situation.
Austin behaved perfectly normal for the rest of biology and even walked with her to Spanish.
Emmy settled herself at her desk, fighting against her nerves. She would not let Dylan know she was bothered the least bit from being stood up. In fact, she had spent the previous period concocting the story that she had been waiting for Brad to show up for some parent-teacher conference…just in case anyone asked. But then the bell rang, and still there was no sign of Dylan.
When lunch came around, it was apparent that Dylan was absent for the day, and Emmy’s spirits lifted considerably. She didn’t even mind that she and Austin had their weekly internship that afternoon.
The other intern, Tara, was already seated at the table in the back room of the large office space when Emmy and Austin arrived. Austin found the volunteer lanyards in the filing cabinet while Emmy signed them in on the clipboard.
Tara was staring intently at a laptop screen, and only offered them a quick, “Hello,” before returning to her work.
“I’ll go see what Krystal wants us to do,” Austin said to Emmy and then headed out toward her desk.
Emmy sat down at the table. Out of the corner of her eye, she could tell that Tara kept glancing up from her screen to look at her. Feeling self-conscious, Emmy peeked over her shoulder to look for Austin. He was standing at Krystal’s desk, talking with her and a tall platinum-blonde, severe looking woman in a navy pantsuit.
Perhaps he knows that woman through his father, Emmy thought, turning back around in her seat. She rested her chin in her hands and stared fixedly at the tabletop, ignoring Tara’s looks.
Fortunately, Austin returned soon, carrying another box of manila folders.
“More of the same today,” he said, setting the folders on the table and fetching the markers and blank labels from the filing cabinet.
Quietly, they set to work, the vastly different environment today perplexed Emmy, and was it her imagination or did Austin and Tara share more than one strange glance? Needless to say that, by the end of the two hours, Emmy was glad to be done.
As the three of them walked together down the hall and into the main lobby, the steel doors of a pair of elevators caught Emmy’s eye. Suddenly, she had a strong, illogical urge to visit the upper floors.
“So…what’s in the higher levels of this place?” Emmy asked Tara, coming to a halt in the middle of the lobby.
Both Tara and Austin were ahead of her and had to stop and turn around. Tara looked from the elevator doors to Emmy, a slight crease between her brown eyebrows. She shrugged.
“That’s where the labs are.”
“Can we go up?” Emmy took a subconscious step in the direction of the elevators.
“It’s restricted for those of us without clearance.” Tara answered.
The urge to go to the upper floors was growing stronger. Emmy took another step.
“Em?” Austin’s voice called to her, but it sounded far away. She took another step, staring transfixed at the elevators. Something wrapped around her wrist, and Emmy’s gaze snapped away from the elevators. She looked up to see Austin smiling oddly at her. The smile didn’t quite meet his eyes. “Let’s go, I’m starving.”
Emmy frowned. “Okay…”
Austin had to practically pull her out of the lobby by the wrist. Once they were outside, the urge started to abate, leaving Emmy feeling a little silly. Why had it mattered so much for her to go upstairs?
“Well, see you next week.” Tara waved goodbye to them, and before she headed down the sidewalk, she shot Austin another quick glance.
Emmy looked up at Austin, who was watching Tara’s retreating back with a peculiar expression. Then, like the flip of a switch, his demeanor returned to normal, and he smiled down at Emmy.
“Want to get some pizza or something?”
Emmy considered asking Austin about the shared looks between him and Tara, but decided it was probably nothing. Besides, they had only just resolved their previous misunderstanding, she didn’t want to get upset over another assumption. The last thing she wanted to become was one of those high-maintenance, crazy-jealous girlfriends. So, instead, she brushed it off.
“Sure, pizza sounds good.” She answered, letting him lead the way to a restaurant across the street.
Chapter 16
A week passed, and Dylan still hadn’t returned to school. Rumors were circulating now over his absence, each growing more absurd than the last. Still, some had Emmy thinking. The simplest one, and easiest to believe was that Dylan had just dropped out. Another was that he was an army brat, and his family had been relocated. The more ridiculous rumors involved various crimes and stories involving him being on the run.
Whatever the case, Emmy was somewhat relieved. She hadn’t yet figured out how she was going to face him after he ghosted her, and it was looking more likely that she wouldn’t have to. And then there was Austin, who had warmed up considerably to her over the past week, and things were finally feeling back to normal between them. In fact, they were never better.
During last Friday’s game, Austin’s field goal in the final seconds of the fourth quarter won their team its victory. Emmy convinced Austin—at Mariah’s insistence—to invite Tyler out after the game. The four of them enjoyed celebratory burgers and shakes before hitting up a late showing at the movie theater. Tyler bought a single popcorn for him and Mariah to share, and halfway through the movie, Emmy peeked over to see them holding hands (which Mariah then texted Emmy about in great detail once she got home). Austin hung out basically the entire weekend at Emmy’s, doing homework and watching television together, and even swung by her place during the week after he had finished practic
e. When Emmy asked him why, he just gave her that charming smile and said, “Guess I just missed you.”
At the end of the day on Thursday, Emmy received an email from Krystal at Modern Alchemy, informing her that internships were cancelled for the day due to corporate meetings.
“Thank goodness,” Emmy said, showing the email to Mariah. “I need as much time as possible to study for bio.” Their first test was scheduled for the following Monday.
“So, the usual spot?” Mariah asked, shutting her locker.
“Nah, sorry, but I actually have to study.”
Mariah stuck out her lip. “No fun.”
“I know, sorry,” Emmy repeated as Austin arrived.
“Did you get the email?” Austin leaned against the locker next to Emmy’s.
“Yeah.” Emmy smiled. “Good thing too, cuz I am not ready for that biology test.”
“Why don’t you come over to my place to study? My dad will be at the meetings, and my mom has some event or another.” He waved his hand around indifferently. Emmy smirked.
Emmy had to work hard to ignore Mariah’s suggestive smile from behind her open locker door.
“Sure, sounds good.” Emmy slung her backpack over her shoulder and shut her locker. Mariah had graciously composed herself enough now that Austin could see her too.
That didn’t stop her from saying, “You two have fun,” in a not-so-innocent tone as they parted ways outside the main doors.
Emmy followed Austin into Fairhaven, her rusting Geo tailing his silver Audi through the tight hilly streets surrounding gorgeous, historical houses. The Whitlocks’ white, Victorian-style home sat on top of a hill just outside the historical downtown which was nestled against the bay. They parked their cars, Austin in the driveway and Emmy in the street, and headed inside.
The interior of the Whitlocks’ house was light, bright, and airy, bordering cold. As usual, Emmy felt like she was in a museum and shouldn’t touch anything. Carefully, she took off her boots and set them neatly together by the door, trying to get them to take up as little space as possible.
Austin led the way down the long hall to the kitchen and the connected “informal” dining room. The “formal” dining room was through a door on the other side of the kitchen. Emmy had never been in there, nor did she really care to be. The whole idea of a formal dining room that was only reserved for special occasions sounded like a complete waste of space.
They splayed out their textbooks and notes on the surface of the polished wood table, and then Austin went diving into the fridge for snacks. Emmy fished around in her backpack for a pencil, but couldn’t find one.
“Do you have an extra pencil?” She called over to Austin, who was pulling out a pizza from the freezer.
“Yeah, in my room,” he said absently, reading the instructions of the back of the cardboard box.
Emmy got up, headed back down the hall, and up the cherry wood staircase. Austin’s room was the second on the right down the hall. She opened the door and walked across the room to his desk. There was a Bellingham High School mug that he kept pens and pencils in on his desk. Just to be safe, Emmy grabbed a couple of pencils. She turned to head back downstairs, but accidentally bumped a book off the corner of Austin’s desk.
The book landed on the floor, splaying open its pages. Emmy set the pencils on the desk and hurried to pick up the book; some papers that had been folded within its pages had now fallen loose and were scattered around the floor. Emmy dropped to her knees and began snatching up the papers to put them back in the book, when she paused.
The neon yellow of a highlighter caught her attention, and Emmy took a quick glance to see what Austin was so meticulously studying.
According to the title, it was a translated section of Empedocles’s On Nature. Austin had highlighted the last sentence of the first paragraph. It read:
…in this respect they live forever in a stable cycle.
Next to it, Emmy recognized the cramped handwriting. In Austin’s untidy scrawl was the word—
Reincarnation.
Emmy frowned. This had nothing to do with Austin’s schoolwork. Perhaps this had been an old project from a previous class. Confused, Emmy flipped all the way to the last page. Austin had highlighted another portion of the text.
When once the tireless flame did chance upon all things, and caused their painful intermixture, then creatures too progenitive were born…
Again, Austin had written a short note in the margin.
Fire elementals.
Emmy felt something akin to a tugging in the back of her mind, like her brain was working hard to unlock something forgotten. She flipped back to the first page of the text. A passage had been circled in black pen; Emmy had missed it the first time through. It read:
…fire, water, earth and the unreached height of air, and cursèd Strife apart from them, their match in every way…
Something small was doodled in the margin next to this portion of text. Emmy had to bring the paper closer to her face to make it out. When she saw it, she gasped. Her reaction was so sudden, so instinctual, that it took her by surprise. She saw the papers floating to the floor across Austin’s room before she realized that she had thrown them.
The drawing was small, it looked like a six-pointed star, almost like the star of David, but the two triangles forming it were solid, not interlocking. Emmy knew she hadn’t seen that symbol before, that the image meant nothing to her waking memory. But that knowledge did nothing to quell the deep, almost primal, fear that clenched around her heart with its icy grip.
Chapter 17
What all this meant—the text, Austin’s notes, the symbol, and her reaction—Emmy had no time to process, because at that moment she heard footsteps against the wood floor in the hall, and Austin called out from the bottom of the stairs.
“Babe?”
Emmy jumped up, gathered the papers, shoved them unceremoniously back into the book, returned it to his desk, and grabbed the forgotten pencils. She hastened out of Austin’s room, pencils clenched tightly in her fist, closed the door, and hurried down the stairs.
Austin stood waiting, a can of soda in each hand. “Which do you want: lime or grape?”
Emmy could barely meet his eyes as she answered automatically, “Lime, please.”
Later that night, Emmy—having claimed an upset stomach and went home early—was curled up in her bed with her phone in hand. She had spent the previous hour searching through the internet, starting with Empedocles, and followed the rabbit hole of clicking on link after link of information of varying relevance. She was now reading about the early philosophers’ view of the four elements, and how they believed that everything consisted of fire, water, air, and earth. It all sounded similar to what she had read in Austin’s room.
How are you feeling?
Austin’s text interrupted her browsing, surprising Emmy. She stared at her phone, feeling almost like he could sense what she was doing.
That’s idiotic, she rolled her eyes at the thought and typed back:
Still not great.
She lied. She knew she was acting cowardly by avoiding Austin, but she had no idea how to confront him about this. Each time she thought about summoning the courage to ask Austin about the papers, an uneasy feeling came over her, warning her against it. Besides, she wasn’t even sure if there was anything to confront.
Hope it passes soon. :(
His response made Emmy wonder if she was being irrational. This is Austin, she reminded herself. Why are you being so weird about this? She texted back.
Thanks, xo.
Emmy frowned, experiencing a churning in her gut at the endearment, and not wanting to see his reply, put her phone face down on her nightstand.
Chapter 18
The next morning, Emmy woke suddenly with an overwhelming feeling that she needed to be somewhere else. The feeling lingered as she made her way through her morning routine, nagging at the back of her mind as she drove to school. The feeling wa
s so distracting, that it wasn’t until she saw Austin at his locker that Emmy remembered the odd notes about elements that she had found in his room. And that unusual symbol he had drawn. Last night, she had been unable to find anything online regarding the two overlapping triangles, but the thought of it still triggered an unpleasant sensation in her gut.
For some reason, she found herself unable to approach Austin. She was rooted to the spot in the middle of the hallway, students brushing past her from all directions. When Austin closed his locker, looking around (presumably for Emmy), she ducked into the girl’s bathroom, and locked herself into a stall. The bell rang, but Emmy couldn’t bring herself to go to class, couldn’t bring herself to sit next to Austin and pretend that everything was normal.
It wasn’t as though she had any concrete proof that everything wasn’t normal. Only a feeling.
That’s it, Emmy thought. I need proof.
Resolved, she pulled her phone out of her bag, texting both Austin and Mariah.
Sick today :(
An answering message appeared on her screen, but she didn’t read it; she was already shoving her phone back into her backpack. She waited a few more minutes for the hallway to clear before leaving the bathroom. She quickly headed down the hall and out of the front entrance, luckily not running into any staff. Tossing her things into her Geo, she pulled out of the parking lot, and, before she could talk herself out of it, took the turn for the southbound freeway entrance.
She took the off-ramp a couple of exits south, and drove into Fairhaven. Taking the familiar turns up into the neighborhood, she soon pulled up next to Austin’s house. Both Reed’s and Fiona’s car were gone. There was a moment when Emmy hesitated, sitting in her parked car, realizing how crazy she would be acting if there was nothing out of the ordinary actually going on. But then, guided by the unsettled feeling in her stomach, she took a deep breath, got out of her car, and headed up the walkway.