by H G Lynch
“Fine,” Ember grumbled and she saw them both pause for a moment.
Then Ricky started talking. “Reid likes you,” he said bluntly. “And I mean, really likes you. Ever since you started playing games with him, he’s barely shut up about you. He hated it to start with because it wasn’t like him to fall for a girl. He told me he kept kissing you because he couldn’t help it. You fascinate him and annoy him at the same time, but mainly he likes how feisty and cunning you are. And ever since you started acting like he was nothing to you, he’s been… almost depressed I’d say. You said something to him on Monday, didn’t you? I know he followed you out to the forest - he’d been thinking for ages with a confounded expression on his face, before he just leaped up and left the room, so I figured he’d gone to see you. Where else would he go? Anyway, what did you say to him that upset him so much?”
Ricky finally shut up and, after a few seconds, Ember burst into hysterical laughter. Ricky frowned and Sherry hit her with a pillow but it didn’t make a difference. She couldn’t stop laughing, even though her sides soon ached and she had to gasp for air.
“I think she’s loopy from caffeine withdrawal. That’s my fault,” Sherry said quietly to Ricky, grimacing.
“Yeah, that is your fault. But that’s not it. Is this some kind of idiotic plan to make me go running to Reid and finally admit that he’s the love of my life and I can’t stand not having him around?” Ember said with as much biting sarcasm as she could put in her shaky still-gasping voice, along with overdramatic hand gestures that showed she wasn’t impressed.
“No. That’s why I got Ricky to tell you. He knows all this because Reid told him. Most of it anyway. And I knew you wouldn’t believe it if it just came from me,” Sherry explained tiredly.
Ember slowly sobered enough to regard them with relative calmness. Well, it was more like barely concealed animosity but it wasn’t hysterical giggles at least. She examined them both for telltale signs they were lying or joking, but found none. Ricky’s eyes were sober and calm, but that meant nothing to Ember. What mattered was what Sherry’s face held. Sherry’s green eyes were as honest and kind as ever, willing her to believe them. Ember broke.
“You’re really serious,” she stated needlessly. Ember thought for a moment, confused and shocked. She really didn’t know what they expected her to do and she told them so. Sherry regarded Ricky questioningly, and Ricky was the one to answer.
“Tell him how you really feel.”
Ember gaped, open-mouthed, like an idiot. “And you think that’ll help him?” She let out an incredulous chuckle. But seeing the seriousness in both their faces, she stopped grinning.
“Ember, you know you don’t honestly hate him,” Sherry said softly. There was so much gentle certainty in her green eyes that Ember found herself wondering if she was right. Was there more than just physical attraction to Reid? Did she really feel something for him? She’d spent so much time ignoring what she might or might not feel for Reid, that it was hard, now, to really tell.
Ember, although happy for her friend, felt physically sick at the lovey-dovey air between Sherry and Ricky sometimes. Of course, Sherry did know that. That was just how much Ember hated romance. She couldn’t stand the idea of her and Reid like that. It was enough to make her feel queasy - queasier than she already did from the caffeine withdrawal.
But there had been some spark of emotion there the day he’d taken her horse riding, but every time it built, Reid had smashed it down with one of his typical comments. Maybe there was reason why she tingled whenever he touched her or kissed her? Only he could elicit those sensations from her.
“So will you give him a chance?” Ricky looked inquiring. Ember sighed.
“I don’t know. I just… I mean he’s physically attractive, there’s no denying that but emotionally, I don’t know what there is to work with.” She directed her words at Sherry, knowing she’d understand in a way Ricky obviously couldn’t.
Ricky must’ve sensed the girl-to-girl bond going on, so he gave himself an excuse to leave, and promptly left, giving Sherry a kiss on the forehead as he went. Ember sneered, but hid it from Sherry.
“I know you don’t like getting all romantic and stuff, but Reid really likes you and I wasn’t entirely kidding when I said you practically broke his heart,” Sherry said quietly, seeing the turmoil inside her friend. Ember groaned and wished she could dissolve into atoms right then and there. This was the kind of stuff she avoided at all costs because it was just too emotional. Sickly sweet and real.
“Just give me some time and maybe… maybe I’ll figure it out. Just don’t bet on it being a good answer.” Ember hung her head and almost asked where Sherry was going when she left the room abruptly.
Her unspoken question was answered when Sherry returned, holding - mercy of all mercies - her coke. She grabbed it, gulped some of it down, and felt instantly so much better. Her mind was still buzzing in confusion but at least her headache was clearing.
She stopped feeling nauseous soon after, and decided it was late enough to go to bed. Her dreams had been talking to her lately and she just hoped they might be less vague tonight.
***
She was dreaming, but she wasn’t in Reid’s room this time. She was in the forest, standing by her tree, and Reid was facing her. He looked awful, or as awful as a boy who usually looks like a vengeful blond angel can look; tired, pale and rigid, as well as completely miserable.
“Reid,” Ember whispered, not knowing what she was supposed to say. Did he know she knew how he felt about her? Was this her chance to ask questions or her chance to practice what to say to him?
His blue eyes were dark and shadowed, his soft mouth turned down. He didn’t look like the infamous, arrogant Reid Ashton anymore; he looked like a little lost Labrador puppy. He didn’t seem inclined to say anything though, and Ember simply sighed.
She looked around, at the dark night sky clouded with grey mist and at the swaying trees around them. It was peaceful and beautiful, if only a little eerie. Ember had always appreciated eeriness.
“Ember.” Reid’s voice came to her in a broken whisper, but it was still his voice. She felt something in her heart twitch painfully as she heard his defeated, dejected tone. It was almost painful to hear. She looked at him and noticed for the first time that tears were rolling down her face. She wiped them away hastily, unsure why she was crying.
“Sorry. I think my emotions are in overdrive.” She smiled weakly at the dream-Reid. He gazed back solemnly, blue eyes fixed on her face, unblinking.
“Follow me,” he said simply, but with conviction. It was a cool command that expected to be obeyed. Normally, Ember would’ve bristled at it - she hated being told what to do - but now, with Reid gazing at her as if she were causing him pain just by being here, she felt no anger.
“What?” Ember asked, confused more than anything else.
“Follow me,” he repeated, yet he didn’t move. She just looked at him blankly, waiting. And then he did move. He vanished into thin air.
“What the-” she gasped. That hadn’t happened in her dreams before.
Four seconds later, she saw him walking toward her, coming through the trees, out of the blackness of the creeping shadows. “Wh-what was that?” she asked hesitantly.
“I told you to follow me.” Reid almost smiled, but it seemed to take him a lot of effort. She opened her mouth to ask again what that had been about, but she decided not to bother, confused as she was. It was something in his eyes that made her think he wouldn’t tell her anyway. And why should he? It was clear to her now, impossible not to see, that she’d hurt him. She’d done this to him without even knowing it.
Guiltily, she swallowed and tried to speak, her voice coming out hoarse with choked-back tears. “Reid, look, I didn’t mean to- I mean, I didn’t realise that… I don’t even know how to…” She was aware her tears had started up again but she couldn’t stop them. Reid seemed to defrost just a little, something bright flashin
g in his blue eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she choked, bowing her head and letting her tears fall into the dirt.
This was why she pushed these emotions back, ignored them, hid them away in the back of her mind and pretended they didn’t exist; once she’d let them loose, they took over and she had to fight for control again. They hurt. It hurt to care for someone the way that she was starting to realise, she cared for Reid.
Reid still didn’t say anything and he didn’t move. He was a pale, haunted statue in the milky moonlight.
Ember slowly got a hold of herself, and breathed deeply. She leaned her back against her tree and gazed up at the night sky. She wiped the tears off her face, not entirely sure why she’d broken down like that. She was going to chalk it up to emotional overload, stress and lack of caffeine.
“I don’t know why I’m even here,” she muttered, mainly to herself. She choked on a noise halfway between a scoff and a chuckle, put a hand to her head tiredly.
“Follow me. Find me,” Reid said softly, his voice carried on the breeze. Ember frowned, tipped her head down a bit to look at him. His pale skin seemed to shimmer in the silvery moonlight, but his expression was taut with strain and worry.
Ember shook her head. “What does that even mean?” she wailed in frustration, her head beginning to pound, “You keep giving me cryptic remarks that I can’t make any damn sense of.” She almost broke down again, his comments just making her more bewildered than ever.
“I can’t tell you. I can’t have you. It’s dangerous. But you have to find me, follow me and find me,” he repeated dully, like a chant. She caught a glimpse of that inhuman glint in his eyes, and something almost… predatory about his soft mouth. She was used to strange morphing flashes in her dreams, even if they didn’t mean anything to her.
She clutched her head in her hands, resisting the urge to rip her hair out by the roots. “Stop telling me that! Say something that… that makes sense, for a start! Maybe something that lets me know whether or not you really care about me, huh? Because I don’t know what to believe! If you really care, then maybe I have feelings for you. I don’t know. If not, if you don’t really feel like that about me, then… then whether or not I’ve got feelings for you will be irrelevant and I can keep on ignoring them!” Ember sprang to her feet placing herself right in front of him, close enough to kiss him if she just leaned in. She didn’t.
Reid hesitated. He met her furious gaze evenly, his face abruptly wiped clean of emotion. But slowly, his eyes softened, and then he spoke in a soft, lovely voice. “I do care. I do care about you. But I shouldn’t. It could put you in danger, because of what I am,” he murmured. OK, so half of it was great to hear and the other half was frustrating and, admittedly, a little creepy.
“And what are you?” she asked, following the logical path instead of melting into the sound of his voice.
He frowned and backed away. “Follow me. Find me,” he repeated and Ember sighed. She was getting more irritated by the second, but her heart was leaping over the previous words he’d said; ‘I do care about you’. Her head was hurting, and she felt dizzy with bafflement and too many conflicting emotions. “You need to find me. Then you’ll know what I am. Then everything will be OK. I promise.”
She almost wanted to believe that for a moment, suddenly struck with a longing she’d never felt before; a longing to be held and kissed, a longing for... a relationship. To have a boyfriend, like every other teenage girl wanted. But at the same time, the idea made her queasy again. Knots formed in her stomach and a dizzy haze suddenly blurred her mind, merging all her emotions into one, big, headache-inducing pain. She wanted to scream, she was so stressed out, so confused, so angry, so… claustrophobic. Like all her churning emotions were trapped behind her ribs, thrashing to get free.
Then Reid reached out to her, his hand brushing her arm - or it should’ve. But his fingers vanished where he touched her, melting into her like a ghostly hand. A strange, strong gut-deep feeling washed over her, nearly knocking her back on her heels with its strength.
“You’re not real,” she said quietly. She didn’t know where the words came from, but some inexplicable instinct inside her knew it with certainty. Reid smiled a little and bent to kiss her, but all she felt was cool fresh air on her cheeks and lips.
When she opened her eyes, he was gone. She was alone in the forest, except for the words ‘Find me’ written in the air, fluorescent and glowing, like they were written there with sparklers.
Irrational hurt and anger and horror and shock swept over her all at once, mingling with her bewilderment and tiredness and frustration and there was another feeling muddled beneath the crashing waves of her tidal emotions, a gentler, warmer one that made her chest ache a little. She locked that one away just before another wave of anxious, loud emotions drowned her. She screamed as a sudden, sharp pain lanced through her skull.
***
Ember was in her bed, sweating and shaking and gasping. She could feel her heart racing, and vertigo swept over her as she sat up quickly. Letting out her breath slowly, she lifted her hand to brush the lank, damp strands of hair off her face, and realised her hand was trembling violently. The claustrophobia from the dream had followed her into reality, and the inky darkness of the small room felt oppressive, smothering her.
She leaped out of bed, hardly knowing what she was doing, and pulled on jeans and a jumper. Hastily, quietly, she tugged on her boots, and riffled in the drawer of the bedside table. Her fingers closed on a cool cylinder of plastic. She pulled out the little torch, and shut the drawer. Carefully, she slipped out the door - without realising Sherry wasn’t even there.
Thoughtlessly, she headed straight for the forest, torch in hand. A cold wind tore at her clothes and hair, unusually harsh for a summer night. The sky overhead was chalky with clouds, the stars fighting to peek through the fog. It was silent except for the scratching rattle of the trees.
Ember didn’t care that it was the middle of the night, she didn’t care that there could well be dangerous animals out there. She just needed to get to her tree - she didn’t even care that she had no idea why she needed to get there. She just kept going, stumbling over raised tree roots, sometimes falling so her hands slid on the muddy carpet of dead pine needles. She wiped her hands on her jeans and continued, ducking and dodging branches and bushes. She ignored the rustles around her, forgot the idiocy of what she was doing. She let the night surround her, and let it absorb her. But she didn’t lose focus. She had one destination in mind, and she felt that if she could just get to her tree, all the confusion, all these whirling emotions inside her, could be eradicated. Tonight she was on a mission of sorts.
By the time she reached her tree, she was feeling ridiculous for having come out here like this. She didn’t usually let dreams get to her, but this one had driven her to the forest in the middle of the night, and now she felt like an idiot for it. What did she expect to find? Reid propped against the tree with a doting expression, dying to spill his heart to her? Or maybe Reid, smug as ever, taunting her and telling her how he’d messed with her dreams somehow? Reid wasn’t here, though. Well, she thought bitterly, Of course not. Why would he be? You are quite clearly losing your mind.
Ember sighed and yawned, looking around her at the dark trees and smoky night sky. The trees, as they stretched deeper into the forest beyond her, melted into endless darkness and she couldn’t see anything past maybe twenty feet away. It was creepy but Ember wasn’t really scared. The darkness didn’t scare her, not even the things lurking in the darkness scared her - Unless they were people. People could do a lot of harm. A fox, for example, couldn’t follow her up the tree like a person could.
With that thought, Ember swung up onto the lowest branch of her tree and sat there. It meant that her feet hung only a short distance above the ground, but it was enough to comfort her. Exhausted, she leaned her back against the trunk and clasped her hands around one knee while her other leg dangled.
Her claustropho
bia, the buzzing feeling of her emotions trying to escape from under her skin, began to fade. So maybe it wasn’t completely pointless, her coming out here. She could think more clearly with the cold air blowing on her face and the rustling of the leaves around her.
Sighing, Ember closed her eyes, and thought. She thought about Reid. She thought about everything he’d said and done to her since she’d met him. It wasn’t fun, replaying the memories of every prank and smirk and arrogant comment he’d made to her; each memory evoked the same emotions they had when they’d first occurred; anger, embarrassment…and a slight thrill. Reid was somehow dangerous, unpredictable and wild. The wildness in him seemed to call to the wildness inside herself. She’d never been exactly docile. She’d always been a little rebellious, always enjoyed doing things she shouldn’t, like sneaking into the forbidden part of her last school when the teachers weren’t looking. Like climbing out her bedroom window when she was grounded, so that she could go skateboarding with her friends. Like picking a fight with someone purely so she could get a kick out of arguing with them.
When she replayed other memories, of how Reid had saved her from Joseph and how he’d been nice to her, almost vulnerable, when they’d gone horse riding, how he’d been funny and light-hearted at the skate park. Those memories dug up less harsh emotions in her, like amusement and contentment and a little bit of fondness. But she felt all that toward Sherry too, because she was her best friend. Perhaps Reid had been right when he’d said they were friends. Maybe that was all they could be? Maybe she didn’t feel anything deeper for him? But, somehow, she knew that was a lie.