Book of Love (7 page)

Then there was the fact of
their cars. As far as I knew, the other brother had no car at all.
In fact, I had no idea how he got around, and it perplexed me. This
brother, though, had a car. He drove a black Land Rover Defender
90. Now, this is where I really get hung up. I know for a fact that
those cars are rather rare, and that they’re not exactly
cheap,
no matter how
banged up they seem.

This is where I come up with my theory:
Perhaps the one brother chose to spend his allowance on clothes,
while this brother decided to blow it all on a hunk of steel.

I dropped my hands to my
sides and clenched my fists. No matter what the difference between
the two, I still didn’t trust him. There was something dark that
surrounded them both, an air of violence and death. He sat next to
Jane, and I tried as hard as I could to remain calm. Jane held a
similar darkness, and her thoughts were always filled with pain,
but that didn’t mean she should confide in this
creep.

I watched her eyes move to
his face, the pain she endured every moment she lived clearly
reflected in them. Her suffering was because of the accident, and
my somewhat unconventional attempts to make her get past it hadn’t
worked. I could
see
what she did, and admittedly it was strange, but when
compared with the fact that I could
see
them to begin with, made us both
strange. I hadn’t bothered to tell her I knew. I didn’t want her
knowing about
me
.
I knew she worried enough as it was.

I thought back to the remark I’d made this
morning in the car. I knew it was cruel to comment about our
father’s death as though it hadn’t affected me, but I thought that
if I made it seem like no big deal, she would snap out of this
dreary trance and be happy. I narrowed my eyes, watching him as he
spoke to her. Jane’s head was facing forward now, her eyes fixed on
the ground. Her cheeks began to flush then, and she laughed.

The laughter echoed in my
head like a far away and forgotten sound. I rarely saw her laugh,
even with Wes. I stared at her beauty in that moment, and it was as
though I was seeing her for the first time. My curiosity
grew.
Who was this stranger?
And how was it he could make her laugh? The dark
air around her seemed to change to a lighter shade of grey.
Confused, I tried to decide whether to rush over there and scare
him off, or wait here and allow the happiness in her to grow. God
knows she deserved it.

I grumbled, finding myself torn. I looked
away from them, seeing Mother’s car crest the hill. I pushed away
from the fence, planning to storm up to Jane and pull her away. As
I thought this, the boy stood, walking away from her before I even
got the chance.

He walked in my direction but my eyes
remained focused on Jane. Her face was filled with excitement, like
a girl falling in love for the first time. I gawked at her,
wondering why she would allow him to be in her company when she
knew so little about him. Besides, I knew our mother would never
approve, especially when it came to the tattoos.

He was close to me now, and just as he
passed, I finally allowed myself to look. He glanced down at me,
giving me a polite nod, followed by a confident yet friendly wink.
I glared at him, my mouth pursed with anger. Was that supposed to
make me trust him? Because it sure wasn’t working…

When he was safely out of earshot, I
crouched low.

“
Jane,”
I hissed. My attention
turned to her as she opened the car door.
“What are you doing?”

She rolled her eyes at me. “What are you on,
Em?” She demanded.

I was just trying to be nice, but she had to
hit me with that. I clammed up.

Jane snorted. “You’re pathetic.”

I felt my jaw grind. I was
just trying to protect her. “Nothing is more pathetic than
you.”
I spat bitterly,
the words forming on my lips before I could stop them. “You’re
hopeless. He just pities you. That’s the only reason he even talked
to you in the first place.”

My mouth continued to spew
things I didn’t want to say. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want to
hate her, but she didn’t understand what I went through, what
I
heard.

Nobody did.

Wes:

The light in her room flicked on, beaming
through the blinds and onto the wall of my room. I sat up in bed,
feeling better after lying in the dark for close to three hours. I
looked at the clock, seeing it was just past midnight. I’d been
sneaking around for the past few days, hiding out of fear that
someone would notice how sick I was. I left the house before the
sun came up—retreating back to the woods where I simply slept in my
car—and came home well after dark. My foster parents hadn’t cared,
but seeing they were elderly, they weren’t really all there as it
was.

I rolled over, looking across the room and
through the blinds. I saw movement in Jane’s room. I sat up,
squinting through the slender openings as Jane looked into a mirror
on the back of her door.

I winced, trying to stretch my aching
muscles. I grabbed the almost-empty bottle of Aspirin off the side
table, wishing it were something stronger. I popped the top,
rolling the last four from inside. There was a stale glass of water
I’d gotten yesterday sitting beside it. I popped the remaining
pills in my mouth, drinking the musty water with my nose plugged. I
let out a contented sigh, placing the glass back on the side table
as water dripped from my chin. I looked back toward Jane.

Our rooms were across the alley from each
other, and since we were little, we would write notes and tape them
to the window. It had been a while since she’d left me anything,
and I attributed it to the dent in our now failing friendship—or
whatever it was. I watched her eyes, seeing her look through the
mirror toward my window, but she couldn’t see me through the
blinds. I often observed her, feeling drawn to her every move.

In this part of Glenwood Springs, each
townhouse was lined close to the other, trees and plants engulfing
most of the yards. The neighborhood was meant to house recreational
skiers during the winter months, but being that Jane and I didn’t
come from wealthy families, we lived here too. The upside was that
during summer, no one was around except those that also liked to
hike and explore the steam caves.

I slowly moved out of bed, hearing as every
joint in my body cracked. The owl outside chortled, the same owl
I’d heard for the past week. I shuddered. Owls were an omen of
death, and I couldn’t help but think it was warning me.

The shirt I was wearing fit tighter than it
ever had. I tried to pull the hem over the length of my stomach,
but it wouldn’t go. My body was growing at an alarming rate, like a
second growth spurt, though I really didn’t need one.

I looked sideways at myself in the mirror
that was tilted against the wall. Despite what was happening, I
enjoyed the way I was changing. I’d always been the runt throughout
middle school, though it was handy when it came to wrestling. Being
short had given me a bulked up advantage, as well as speed.

I stood as tall as my muscles would allow. I
had to be close to six feet now. I ducked to see my height in the
mirror. My stomach grumbled as I did. I was starving again, like I
hadn’t eaten in days though it seemed like it was all I was
doing.

I shuffled closer to the window, grabbing
the chair from my desk. I pulled it toward me and sat, hooking my
fist under my chin.

Jane pulled her long brown hair from her
face, her skin pale and her eyes drawn. She looked tired, like
she’d slept about as well as I had. She moved and sat on her bed,
staring into her hands. I watched as her chest rose and fell,
breathing steadily. I groaned with pain as another wave of soreness
pulsed through my muscles. I rubbed my arm, massaging the bruised
tissue beneath.

I looked down at a particularly tender spot
near my elbow, seeing the mauve of the bruise peaking through the
skin. Whatever was happening to me was getting worse. My foster
mother thought I was just growing, but at this point, I began to
wonder if it wasn’t something chronic, something I’d gotten from my
parents that I wouldn’t know about. I was due to see the doctor
next week, but I was beginning to question if I’d even make it that
long.

I saw Jane once again move from the corner
of my eye. I diverted my attention back to her, squinting through
the blinds. She grabbed something off the floor and brought it into
her lap. It was her drawing book. She had books and books of
drawings that she hid under her bed. Only I knew because I watched
her. She pushed herself against the headboard and began to sketch.
Her brows were fraught, her energy seeping through her hands and
onto the page.

I wanted to know what it
was that she drew, and what it was she
saw.
Though we were best friends, it
was something she’d never shared with me. It hurt to know that, but
I respected her privacy.

At least
sometimes.

Jane:

The nightmare—I had to get it out. I sat up
in bed and turned on the light. I looked out my window and across
the alley toward Wes’s room. The blinds were shut. I slid from
under the covers, my feet touching the cold wood floor. I inspected
my skin out of habit. The blood I’d seen coating my face in the
dream was now gone. I relished the breath in my lungs, my heart
racing to force oxygen to my limbs.

I was alive.

It was just a dream.

I leaned my weight onto my feet and stood as
my sleep shirt fell around me. I walked to the mirror, inspecting
my hollow reflection. Max had been in the dream tonight. I’d never
seen him there before, but for some reason, having him there made
the horror of the whole scene easier to digest. I attributed his
presence to the fact that my mind was still buzzing from earlier,
his blue eyes like a beacon guiding me home.

I looked in the mirror and back at Wes’s
window. Sometimes at night he would notice my light on and we’d
pass notes for a while until I could fall asleep. But we hadn’t
done that in a long time. I wanted desperately to talk to someone,
but perhaps Wes wasn’t the right person anymore. I shut my eyes,
regretting the choices I’d made. I had no one. All that could
console me now was my drawing.

I went back to my bed and sat down, staring
for a moment before reaching for my drawing book and pencil. I
pulled it out from under the bed and sat back, pulling my legs to
my chest. I drew Max’s face as it remained in my mind like a
shadow, every feature clear as day, and every silver fleck of his
eyes as sharp as they were when we were sitting on the curb.

I drew the death around
us, the bodies and the blood. The only thing that brought me any
comfort within that world was his face—his
undead
face.

These were things I should not see, but for
whatever reason, I did.

Max:

I saw Jane through the trees in the forest
of her dream. She wore a blue spring dress that contrasted sharply
with the blood on her hands. My gaze fell to the nape of her neck,
following the gentle arch of her back and down the long luxurious
locks of her perfectly tousled brown hair. I felt a tightening in
my chest at the sight, every inch of my being aching to be near
her.

Though I’d always remained in the shadows, I
wanted her to see me. I wanted her to know who I was. She needed to
understand that she wasn’t alone—that she never had been. I walked
into the clearing, exposing myself for the first time. I placed one
foot before the other, my hands clasped behind my back and my wings
hidden. She saw me immediately, stunned to see another living
face.

At first her brown eyes glittered with fear,
but after a while the fear began to subside. The freckles on her
cheek stood out against the pale rose of her skin, and it was here
that I noticed how much she resembled her father. I stopped,
watching her casually, the gentlest smile touching my lips. She
watched me in return, her features relaxing as time passed. The
bodies lay around us, the bodies of lost souls she didn’t know.
They were not dead as she expected, but rather dying, as they would
here for all eternity—lost in the in-between.

I knew that when I saved
her, I’d made a mistake. She was stuck on Earth, but her heart was
here in the in-between. I cheated the rules of death to save her,
but if she had gone, I would have never seen her again. I couldn’t
risk losing what I’d longed to find. After all,
I
was stuck in the in-between, and
now she was too.

She stepped toward me, and I stood tall. The
grass in the field filled the air with a soft rustle. She drew
close, drawn by curiosity and her own insatiable need to be near
me. Now standing a foot apart, she stopped. I tilted my head
slightly, my eyes scanning her face. She reached up to touch my
cheek, but her hand halted as she saw her fingers drip with blood.
Looking away from me, I saw the sting of shame in her eyes. I tried
to grab her hand before she began to disappear, but there was
little I could do to stop her from running.

I’d lost her.

Emily:

I lay awake in the dark. A light came on
outside my window, the light from my sister’s room. I stood,
walking to the window, looking at the light as it hit Wes’s house
across the alley. I drew in a slow breath, sensing Jane. She was as
restless as I was.

I bit my lip, the burden
of my secret weighing on my shoulders. I wanted to tell her about
the things I’d heard today, but I couldn’t. I never told Jane
anything. I saw movement behind Wes’s blinds. He was watching her,
like he always did. He thought no one could see him—that no one
knew how in love he was. But I could—I could
hear
him.