Blood Ties (4 page)

“Shiiiiit.”

A freshmen weed out course. As if suffering through a semester with an 8:00 a.m. class wasn’t bad enough. My neighbors glanced at me. I looked around with wide eyes and pretended innocence. Pretend, pretend. I was good at that.

I sank down into my desk
chair and began scribbling notes on the lecture. There was a high probability that I wouldn’t be able to read them later. Not only was I half blind from the glare of the screen in front of me, but my cursive was horrendous. Chicken scratches mostly, full of missing vowels and consonants. I needed a cryptologist to read my own writing.

I looked down into the pit to gaze at the professor with the amazing voice. In the dim light, he seemed to be young, well over six feet, very well proportioned. He certainly wasn’t what I had expected.

The lights came on, signaling the lecture had ended. With his back to us, he moved towards a large wooden desk. His black dress pants fit him like a glove. A white sweater clung to his upper body showing off his muscular back. The bright lights overhead reflected silver highlights off his thick dark hair that fell just past his shoulders. It was a very, very nice view. No doubt the flip side would be just as nice.

He picked up a stack of papers, tapping its edge on the table in preparation for a handout. I glanced back down at my syllabus. Oh fabulous, a quiz.

He walked to my side of the theatre and looked up to survey the rows of students.

I froze
.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. His gaze slowly made its way across my row and stopped. The handouts fell from his hands. He stared, meeting my wide eyes. His brown eyes mirrored my shock. In that instant, it was as if time stood still
. The sounds of the students around me faded to a distant white noise.

Jesus, I was dreaming again. Why in the hell did my hot fantasy have to crop up in a dream about my art history class? Wait a minute, I was dreaming about having a dream. Was that even possible?
Without looking away, I reached over and pinched the guy sitting next to me.

He jerked and I looked at him.
He scowled, rubbing his arm. “Whadda do that for?” he hissed.

“Pinch me.”

“What?”

“Pinch me back.”

An incredulous look came over his face. “You are one weird chick.” He turned to his buddy and whispered. I turned away just as I saw his friend lean around him to take a look.

Shit. I wasn’t dreaming. Nausea washed over me and I took in deep breaths, afraid of a quick ride into full-blown hysteria. Normal, look normal. My next reaction was to hide. Hide the crazy. Not an option, I was stranded in a sea of students. Besides embarrassing, there wasn’t enough cover to hide under that joke of a hinged desk. So I did the next best thing, I hunched over my desk and shaded my eyes using my hand as a shield. I counted to ten then spread my fingers to take a tiny peek. Students were helping him pick up the fallen quizzes. Then without a glance in my direction, he lithely stepped up the aisle and began to hand them out to the end of the rows. I hunched deeper into my chair like the coward I was, hiding behind my hand and veil of hair. Hair was a great camouflage; it was like sticking your head in a toilet, puking your guts out and hoping nobody would recognize the body attached to it, only a hundred times not as gross.

I looked down at the quiz. The words seemed to dance across the page. I read, then re-read the first question. I filled out my name in the squares and colored in an answer on the pink computer page. Shuffling paper and the movements of two hundred students shifting in their seats began to echo through the theatre. I filled in another circle on the paper.

Hinged desk tops began to bang. I filled in another circle. I moved my legs out of the way to let my neighbors pass by me. I glanced around. Three
-fourths of the class had already left. It wouldn’t be long before I would be the last one and by God, I wasn’t going to face him alone. I whipped through the rest of the quiz, guessing on most of them.

I grabbed my backpack and
kept my head down as I made my way to the bottom of the pit. I placed my quiz on the desk. I tried not to look up, but couldn’t do it. He was watching me. His eyes began to darken to a deep chocolate brown and I felt a slow warmth crawl over my skin. Behind it came a trickle of fear. The floor swelled underneath me.

A jarring bump to my shoulder threw me off balance. A student grabbed my arm as I staggered back. I looked directly at her. I couldn’t hear what she was saying. I moved my gaze past her to Dr. Marcheon. The barest touch of a smile played across his face. Embarrassed that I had been staring, I turned and ran up the aisle. I rammed my body against the heavy doors and fled down the hall. Once outside the building, I turned a corner and plastered myself up against the side of it, behind an oversized bush.

God Almighty, what had just happened? He had looked at me, no, he had really looked at me. Those eyes … I knew those eyes.

I knew it. My mind had started playing tricks on me, warped from last night’s dream. I took a deep breath and blew out my cheeks. My unconscious was fighting back, not wanting me to let him go.

I pulled off the wall and straightened my shoulders. I could do this, I was in control. I wasn’t going to spend the rest of the day, or the semester for that matter, obsessing about one of my professors, who looked obscenely like a pale version of Michel.

I headed off to my next class –
Statistics 104. Yeah, I definitely wasn’t dreaming. Nothing I could dream up would ever be so heinous.

***

I met Jen for lunch at the Hub, the combination cafeteria, bookstore and student recreational center. I’d never been too big on anything slopped out from behind a counter but according to other foodie sources, it was the only place to catch lunch on campus if you couldn’t stomach a burrito from a vending machine. I’m a bit of a food snob, or so they tell me. I knew it wouldn’t last long, but I vowed to go down to the very last, whining about the injustice of it all.

The smell of fried food and canned vegetables, as appetizing as pureed baby food hovered like a haze in the cafeteria. The noisy din of a hundred voices echoed off the walls. Reverberating underneath was the sound of chairs scraping along the floor and metal clangs coming from the kitchen. It was a classic scene. Students happily ate from beige trays on beige laminated tables, sitting on beige plastic and metal chairs. The perfection of it all made me want to go for a burrito.

I dumped my backpack on the chair next to Jen, my face screwed up in disgust. “You sure you want to eat this?” I waved my hand towards the array of aproned food servers with their deadpan faces and fashionable hairnets.

She laughed and wrapped her arm around my shoulder. “Well, suffering is the lot of us college students
. How was your first day of classes? Hate it or love it?”

I shrugged. “Okay I guess.” I dropped into
a chair and put my feet up on another, slouching, looking normal, pretending I was like everyone else. Nope, nothing at all happened today, boring boring. My professor wasn’t a hot dream, wasn’t anything at all. I took in a deep breath of the foul air and suddenly felt grounded. Maybe I should live in the cafeteria.

“So, did you meet any cute boys? I have this gorgeous Latino in English. I’m thinking I just might need some extra tutoring this semester. Should be, oh, so convenient since I’m living off campus, all alone, in a quiet one bedroom.” She smirked and then smiled broadly.

“No doubt.” I snickered at the thought of her living next door and being awakened at night by one of their study sessions.

***

I reached the front steps of my apartment building a little after three o’clock. I’d spent the afternoon hanging out at the Hub with students who lived on our floor. It was a plethora of species and the Hunter-Gatherers asked if I’d go off-roading with them. They apparently thought I’d bring them luck and bag a deer. If they gifted me with one of those Bambi t-shirts, Bambi was going to learn to fly right over the cliffs outside of town.

I raced up the stairs, taking two at a time. Throwing my keys and backpack on the couch, I rummaged through my unpacked suitcases, searching for a pair of shorts and
a t-shirt. By the time I found them, clothing littered the floor. I did a quick change then headed out, locking the door behind me.

I spent a few minutes stretching then started
my run down a small path. I quickly lost sight of the apartment complex. The further I ventured into the forest, the darker and more silent it became. Call me jittery, but I kept expecting something to jump out at me and snarl a growly “boo”. It was an extra incentive to push myself and not think of anything other than the pattern of my breathing and movements in the damp, heavy air.

The trees cleared and the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean spread out before me, sparkling in the sunlight, seagulls skipping across the waves. It was breathtaking, almost unreal. I moved close to the cliff’s edge and looked down. Surf gently washed the rocks at
its base. Light foam danced on its green grey waters and seagulls, a chorus of off-key sopranos, dived and floated in the drafts coming off the ocean.

I took a deep breath of the salty air
and closed my eyes, drinking it in. My body swayed with the sound of the ocean, pulling me back and forward like the waves. I threw my arms in the air, screamed out my happiness and did a wild happy dance. It just felt too wonderful standing on the edge of the universe. I was finally here. This is exactly where I was supposed to be.

I walked along the edge of the cliffs then crawled up onto some rocks. I perched myself at the very top, pulling my knees to my chest. The sun beat down hot and I shaded my eyes. To my immediate left and right, as far as I could see, steep cliffs ran along the ocean’s edge with sheer drops to the rocky beaches below. About three miles north of me there was a huge white house on an outcrop of black rock that jutted out into the ocean. There were no other residences along the coast.

I wondered who owned it. Maybe it was one of the college professors. From what I’d seen on the college website, most of them were elderly and didn’t look like the sort that would sit out on the deck trying to catch a tan. It was more likely they would be pouring over some dusty old books in a dark library. Dr. Marcheon was young enough but I ruled him out. He probably locked himself away to a basement somewhere, having a jolly time doing restorations, cataloging art for some museums, or studying for his next PhD. Besides, he looked as if he hadn’t seen the sun for a long time.

Curious, I decided to investigate. After an hour of hoofing it, I stopped to catch my breath. The house was massive. It was more like a mansion with the side facing the ocean covered completely in glass. There was a large white deck with a smaller one below it that thrust out towards the ocean. Attached to the lower deck was a stairway that zigzagged down the face of the cliff
to disappear into the rock.

The light began to sink behind the trees and I went back the way I came
, rushing back to beat the sun. I certainly didn’t need to end up stumbling through the forest, lost and panicked with God knows what roaming through them, or God forbid, another deer. No need to chance another psychotic episode with a kissing deer with a British accent.

I reached the complex just as darkness fell. Lights were on in the apartments, music blaring with echoes of laughter bouncing off the trees. Several students were gathered on balconies, beers in hand. They looked down in my direction and waved. One of them yelled down. “Hey, you must be one of the newbies from down below. Why don’t you come up and join us? We’re celebrating the first day of a very long year.” They burst into laughter and yelled out their apartment number, making me promise I’d come up.

I grabbed a frozen gourmet dinner from the freezer and watched impatiently as it rotated in the microwave. I wolfed it down and took a quick shower. I slipped into my standard jeans and t-shirt and headed up to the third floor.

A friendly face with a shock of dark hair and a quirky grin met me at the door. “Come on in, my name is Parker, welcome to our humble abode.” He shook my hand. “You must be Liz
, or do you go by Elizabeth? Jen’s here ... somewhere. Go ahead and help yourself to some beer, it’s on the balcony.” He yelled out, “Hey everyone, Liz the Deer Killer is here.” He waved his hand with a flourish. “Liz this is everyone.”

Lovely introduction. I was met with a sea of faces, some of which I’d met before. They tried not to blatantly stare. I smiled and did a little wave with my fingers. It was girly. So what, I was a girl.

Jennifer came off the balcony and rushed to my side with a broad smile. “Hey there, how was your run? Was it creepy?” she asked as she shoved a couple of guys away from us.

“Mmmmm, a tiny bit, but I kept to the trail, no critters tried to carry me off.”

“Snag any deer?” she quipped.

“Ha ha
… you are sooo funny.” She gave me a toothy grin and stuffed a beer in my hand. I followed her to the counter that split up the living room and kitchen. She ripped open some bags of chips and dumped them into bowls. I listened to a conversation behind me as I pushed around some Cheetos on the counter with my finger.