Before the Dawn (2 page)

"I bow down to your organizational powers,
Party Goddess," Aline replied with a smirk. And, because she was
feeling quite sentimental and grateful for her friends’
thoughtfulness, she added, "Thanks for going to all this trouble,
by the way. You guys didn’t have to make such a fuss for my
birthday."

"Are you kidding?" Cassie exclaimed. "After I
put you guys through all that torture for my birthday last summer,
the least I can do is to help you celebrate each of your birthdays
with the same style."

"What were you saying about style?" Meran
slid into the seat beside Cassie. She was a slim, elegant-looking
girl with a flawless cream complexion and dark brown hair.

"Oh, we were just talking about Ali’s
birthday party in the Ballroom," Cassie told her. "It’s going to be
awesome!"

"Hey, guys." Gracelyn and Sam were the last
ones to show up. They were cousins, but they could have been
sisters instead with the resemblance they shared. Both of them had
lovely straight black hair and golden skin. They sat down in their
usual places and Sam told the other girls about the limo service
she had arranged for the night of the dance and what she was
planning to wear. Soon, they were all talking about what they were
going to wear and rehashing topics that they had already discussed
to death a week before.

"… asked him?"

Aline, who had stopped paying attention to
the conversation a few minutes ago, suddenly realized that they
were all looking at her expectantly. "I’m sorry," she said, feeling
all flustered. "What’d you guys say?"

Meran sighed. "We wanted to know if you had
already invited the new guy to your party. So, have you asked him?"
she repeated.

And, just like that, Aline blushed. The new
guy Meran was referring to was Trevor, a transfer student. Ever
since he had showed up in homeroom at the beginning of term, Aline
had developed a major case of crush on him. He was really tall, a
bit gangly, and incredibly cute. Though Aline had had boyfriends
before, she could honestly say that she had never been attracted to
them in the same way she was attracted to Trevor. She sort of hated
the feeling, how vulnerable it made her feel, but she couldn’t seem
to stop herself from behaving like a total girl around him. She
would just find herself talking and laughing too loud so she could
get his attention. She even sometimes flipped her hair. It was kind
of humiliating how desperate she was to catch his eye, especially
since he didn’t seem to have a single clue that she existed. Of
course, her friends were all for helping her solve that particular
problem by insisting that she invite him to her birthday party. She
had promised them that she would do it, but so far she’d been too
chicken to actually keep her word.

"I’ll get around to it," she mumbled and
tried to change the subject. But her friends wouldn’t let her.

"Oh, come on, Ali!" Cassie whined. "You’ve
had the hugest crush on him for like forever. It’s time you do
something about it."

"Yeah," Meran seconded. "We’re getting tired
of you talking about how cute he is and how cute you’d be together,
but you’re not actually doing anything to make it happen."

"They’re right. It’s now or never," Sam
said.

"If you don’t invite him to your party, some
other girl is going to snap him up. And you’re going to have to
deal with how much of a wuss you were when you see him going out
with someone else," Gracelyn delivered the final blow.

"Whoa! Stop. Stop!" Aline held up her hands
in surrender. "Fine. Okay. I’ll ask him already."

"When?" Meran wanted to know.

"Today," she promised. "The very second I see
him."

"Okay." Cassie nodded, suddenly grinning.
"Look behind you then."

Aline glanced over her shoulder then almost
immediately whipped her head back to glare at her friends.
"You—You—!" she sputtered in indignation.

They only smirked at her. "Well, you’ve seen
him," Gracelyn said brightly. "Now go and ask him."

"Shoo." Sam waved her away.

She gave them the darkest look she could
manage and grumbled something very uncomplimentary about their
mothers under her breath. "You’re all gonna regret bullying me like
this someday," she swore out loud. Then she got up, squared her
shoulders, and turned to look at Trevor again.

He was sitting right behind their table,
looking intense as he sketched something in his notebook. His long
bangs fell over his eyes and Aline briefly wondered how he could
still manage to see what he was doing. She also wondered what it
would feel like to brush back his hair so she could see his face
clearly. Then she wondered what exactly it was about him that made
her feel so gooey on the inside since the very first time she saw
him.

Suddenly, he looked up and their eyes met.
And,
okay
. She got exactly what it was about him that turned
her into mush. The boy was fine.

"Hi," she managed to squeak out when he just
gazed at her silently for several uncomfortable seconds. She then
took a deep breath and made herself walk towards his table and sit
across from him. "Hi," she repeated quite stupidly. "I’m Al—"

"Aline," he interrupted. "We’re in some
classes together." His voice was very deep and mature-sounding,
something which always unsettled her since he looked so young. It
wasn’t the first time she had heard him speak, but it was the first
time he had ever spoken to her. While he was talking, she couldn’t
help but notice his mouth and the fact that his two front teeth
were slightly bigger than the rest, giving him sort of an awkward,
boyish look. If he had been any other boy in their school, she
probably would have snickered about it and thought it was a flaw.
But, instead, she thought it was just adorable. Oh, she had it so
bad for this guy.

"Yeah." She nodded and smiled nervously.
"Well, I came here to talk to you. About something."

"Yeah?" He prompted. He didn’t look too
friendly.

"Well," she tried not to twitch too much, "I
was wondering if—you were going to the dance. Tomorrow."

"No." He shook his head. "I’m not."

Well, that was devastating. He just sat there
looking at her like he had no idea he had sucker punched her in the
gut. Jerk. "Oh." Somehow, she managed to keep her face
expressionless though she stood up rather quickly. "That’s too bad
then," she said as casually as she could. "Because if you were
going, then I would have wanted to invite you to my birthday party
afterwards. But, I guess, it’s no. Okay then. I’ll see you
around."

Her face was burning as she turned away from
him. The death glare she gave her friends clearly communicated to
them that everything had not gone well and they all looked
sympathetic and guilty at the same time. She went back to their
table, prepared to pretend that she was just fine and dandy because
there was no way she was going to let stupid Trevor see that he had
upset her. She would break down and become hysterical later when he
wasn’t around.

"Uhm, Ali," Cassie suddenly spoke in a tiny
voice and did something funny with her eyebrows. Aline thought she
was trying to waggle them or something.

"What?" She scowled at the other girl.

"Hey." Someone was standing behind her, and
she looked over her shoulder to see that it was the guy she
formerly adored. She stopped breathing for a moment. "Listen." He
squatted down so they would be more or less eye to eye. He seemed
somewhat nervous and she started breathing again. "I can’t go to
the dance because I gotta work a late shift at my job," he
explained, looking a bit sheepish. "But if I’m still invited to
your party after that, I’ll make sure to drop by. What about it?"
His eyes were very earnest, and very green. Aline told herself
quite sternly that she didn’t feel like she could drown in
them.

She shrugged. "Sure. Whatever works for you."
She was proud of how cool she sounded.

He grinned at her, and she thought a few of
her brain cells squeed and died. "Okay. See you then." He gave her
another grin before walking away.

When she was sure that he was nowhere within
sight or hearing of the cafeteria, she let out a little shriek and
banged her head against the table while her friends all giggled.
"Urgh!" She made retching noises. "Is this what being sixteen is
gonna be like? All the emotions and the insecurities and stupid
boys who can rip your heart out and get you high all at the same
time? I don’t think I’m ever gonna survive it!"

Cassie and Sam, who were the first two to
turn sixteen, only laughed. "Don’t worry. You’ll learn to adjust,"
Sam assured her while Meran and Gracelyn both looked worried. Their
birthdays were coming up in a few months.

Aline exhaled. "Okay. All right." She tried
to calm her racing heart. "I’m gonna get through this. I just have
to survive the dance, my birthday party, possible rejection by
Trevor, and being sixteen. Then I’ll never have to worry about
anything ever again. Right?"

"That’s the spirit." Meran patted her on the
head.

Her friends went back to talking about the
dance and her birthday party, laughing as they teased her about
Trevor. Aline blushed and laughed along with them, feeling
incredibly giddy at the thought that she would be seeing him during
her party. They would probably dance and talk, and who knew what
else might happen after that? The possibilities were quite
exciting. She couldn’t wait for tomorrow night!

Then, suddenly, the strangest feeling came
over her, like a cold hand had reached out and touched the back of
her head. She looked around the cafeteria curiously. Things seemed
really odd for some reason. She
felt
odd, as if the world
had tilted to one side without any warning. As her eyes searched
for whatever it was that might have slipped out of place in reality
on an otherwise great day, she noticed a black bird perched on the
windowsill nearest to their table.

It looked like a raven, but it was larger
than any raven she had ever seen, even in pictures. Though a light
breeze ruffled its inky feathers, it never moved and instead seemed
to be staring right at her with its brilliant amber eyes. It was
all quite unnerving. For a moment, she thought that she was back in
the strange dream she had had the night before.

She turned to her friends. "Hey, guys, do you
see that bird—?" She stopped. In the second that she had taken her
eyes away from it, the raven had flown off.

"Huh? What is it?" Meran looked to where she
was pointing, but saw nothing except an open window.

Aline frowned. "Never mind." She shrugged.
"It was nothing, I guess."

But she couldn’t shake the strange feeling of
foreboding that had come over her and cast a cloud over the rest of
the day.

***

Chapter 3

"Hey, Dad!" Aline called out in her loudest,
most annoying voice. "Stop working so hard for my trust fund for a
few minutes and come in here and eat!"

"Fine! Fine!" he shouted back. "You’ll regret
the time you spent feeding me when you have to settle for student
housing instead of your own apartment!" He showed up in the kitchen
with a grin. She blew him a kiss and they both sat down to a lovely
dinner of their usual Friday night pizza. It wasn’t a very healthy
way to live, eating takeout all the time, they both knew that, but
since neither of them could cook something more complicated than
scrambled eggs, they really didn’t have much of a choice. So if all
the restaurants in town suddenly closed up shop, they knew they’d
starve in a day.

A normal home life—the kind that had a Papa
Bear, a Mama Bear, and a Baby Bear, as Aline always thought of it
in her head—stopped being an option for the two of them five years
ago when Aline’s mother had died in a crash. A really bad time had
followed after that, with her going through therapy and her dad
trying to keep things together so she wouldn’t realize just how
crappy everything had really become. But, somehow, they had made it
through and, though they would always be incomplete in that secret
place they both hid from each other, they knew that nothing worse
could possibly happen to their little family anymore. What else
could fate dish out when they had already gone through their own
version of hell?

So, yes, Aline didn’t exactly have the kind
of family that other kids had, and she didn’t have a mom she could
run to whenever she experienced the usual dramas of growing up. But
she had her dad. And one thing about being raised by a guy with no
real clue on how to handle a little girl as she turns into a young
woman is that you learn not to stress the little stuff. Like
healthy home-cooked meals, for example.

"So," her dad said as he chewed on the big
mouthful of pizza he had bitten off, "how was school today?"

She rolled her eyes at his appalling lack of
manners. "It was okay," she replied through her own mouthful of
cheesy pizza goodness then grinned at him. This was an old joke
between them that never seemed to get old. "Today, I invited this
boy I like to my party after the school dance."

He pretended to choke. "Gah! I don’t think I
wanna hear this!"

Aline put on a dreamy expression on her face.
"He’s amazing. He’s tall with longish dark brown hair, amazing
green eyes, luscious lips, a kissable neck, and a nice pac-"

"Finish that sentence and I will ground you
for life," he threatened.

She chuckled in the most evil way she could
manage and stuck her tongue out at her father. He just laughed and
went on eating. After a few minutes of silent chewing, he then
asked, "So, what’s the name of this new Prince Charming that has
taken the place of that last amazing guy you liked?"

"Trevor," she told him with a little sigh.
"He’s a transferee from somewhere down south. I’m not exactly sure
if he is actually Prince Charming, though. That’s why I wanna hang
out with him, find out if he’s royalty or a frog in disguise.
That’s okay, right, Your Majesty?"