Fallen (20 page)

“
Achan
…
h
e’s definitely no
expert
.”

Hearing
his
name made my body
stiffen and
my breath
stop
.
Achan, the one who stared at me
,
with brazen hatred
,
in The Warden’s office and called me out
,
with
obvious delight
,
in Mr. Morow’s class
(
both for no apparent reason
)
had
shot
that arrow at me?

My guess was
,
Achan actually was an expert
and if Eran hadn’t been here to divert my body
,
Achan’s aim would h
ave
easily hit
its intended target.

“
Where is Achan?”
Coach Acer
furiously
called out
.

“
Probably ran off
…
e
mbarrassed,
”
someone heckled from the crowd.

Coach Acer grumbled something and then
he addressed
the rest of the team, “Okay, show’s over. Back to practice
!
”

The group turned and
began to
head
in the
same
direction they
came from
, but t
he
guy
who’d found the arrow stopped beside me and held
it up
for me to see. The razor-sharp edges of its blade
winked
eerily
at me in the sun.

“You’re lucky
,
you know. These were just sharpened today
,
for the first practice.
” He shook his head, stunned. “
Probably w
ould have killed you
,
if it had hit you.”

I nodded,
but truthfully, I was
more focused on
calming
the fear
,
still
trembl
ing
inside
me
,
than on formulating a response.

Whether intentional or not,
Achan’s action had certainly threatened my life
,
and
I couldn’t help the nervousness I felt at the prospect that there was more to Achan than I knew.

“Thank you, Eran,” I whispered
. E
ven if he couldn’t hear me,
just saying the words
pacified
the
regret swelling up inside
me;
the
lament
that Eran had warned me about.
I took a deep breath
,
trying
to steady my hammering heart
.
I knew
I would
never
confess
my feelings
to him
directly,
but
I was
still
glad he had been there.

On my way home
,
I
kept myself alert
;
relaxing only as I pulled
into
my driveway. Ezra was the only one home when I walked inside.

“Maggie?” she called out.

I walked down the hall
and
stopp
ed
at her office door, wondering if Coach Acer had called her about the incident.

“Yeah?”

She was sitting behind her desk,
centered between a stack of papers and a
steaming
mug of coffee. She was also smiling
,
so I guessed no call had been made.
Relief washed over me, because
r
ecounting
what happened at school
was not a welcom
ed
idea.

“How was your first day?” s
he
asked,
attentive yet untroubled.

No phone call had been made. I was now certain.

“Fine,” I said, repeating the same word I’d used on the field because it was the only one that came to mind.

“Good. Did you like your teachers?”

I could see she was hopeful
,
so to tell her the cold, hard truth would only be cruel. I opted for honest, yet vague. “I’m still getting to know them.”

“Hmm.” She nodded
,
thoughtfully. “Did they give you homework?”

“Lots
…
,
” I sighed. “Already
…
,
”

“Then I won’t keep you. I’ll call you down for dinner.”

“Okay, thanks.”

That meant
n
o prep work
for me
tonight
.
In light of my
discernable lack of culinary skills, I traditionally
performed
all cutting and measuring
in addition to
dish washing
. I
decided to
still pitch in
on the
dishes after
dinner,
but it was nice not to have the other responsibilit
ies
tonight
.

I headed upstairs to begin my homework
feeling a
dark cloud
settle
over me
.
I knew i
t
wasn’t from the
disappointment
of
having an
immense amount of
work awaiting me for the first time in months. What had me concerned was the
feeling that all was not right
.
After today’s events, I felt on edge.

I threw my backpack on the bed and
slid
down beside it, staring through the French doors
,
across the balcony
,
at nothing in particular.

With thoughts swimming through my mind,
I didn’t move for a very long time
. While
both curious and terrifying
,
they
all revolv
ed
around one single
notion
. I was
incapable
of
comprehend
ing
how
Achan
-
a pers
on I had just met and
barely spoken
to
-
wanted me dead.

The field incident was the third time that Eran
had intervened to save my life
,
and there were similarities between each
event
that I could not deny. He had appeared instantly a
nd disappeared just as fast
,
without making a single sound;
no one acknowledged his presence
or
gave the impression
of being able
to see
him
; and h
e
was
always
left unmarked and unharmed by the assailing weapon.

It didn’t take me long to determine what I needed to do. But first, I had to manage through
unavoidable
formalities. At dinner, my
rush
did not go unnoticed. I shoveled the food from my plate to my mouth at such speed it made Felix proud – and I wasn’t even sure what it was Felix had
prepared
. Before anyone else was finished, I had already started the dishes, scrubbing hard and rapidly
,
trying
to get them done. That
,
too
,
was not
overlooked
.

“Someone has a bit o’ the fear
in
‘em
…
,
” Rufus pointed out, coming up behind me and taking the sponge from my hand.

“Are those teachers already loading you down with work?” asked Felix, incredulous
ly
.

I sighed, thinking of the Calculus questions that would
undoubtedly
take me several hours alone
to finish
. Rufus, who must have seen my reaction, stepped between me and the sink
,
slowly
push
ing
me out of the way. “
Git on with it then
.”

“Are you sure?”

“Git,” he repeated
,
more firmly, already dipping his hands in the wash basin’s soapy water.

I
breathed a sigh of relief. “You are wonderful.”

“I know it,” he replied
,
simply.

I was still chuckling at him
,
as I
closed the door
to my bedroom
and sat dow
n on my bed.
It was enormous and amazingly soft
,
so I laid back, sinking d
own until the covers encased me
.

My Calculus homework lay directly next to me
;
the edges of the paper tickl
ing
my forearm, teasing me. I was torn. Homework should have been my first priority, especially since what I
was about
to do w
ould
very likely be a complete waste of time
,
anyways.

There was no possible way I
could conjure someone to my bedroom.
It was an irrational expectation.
Eran was human, flesh and blood
,
incapable of knowing
my unspoken desires.
I was going to end up exhausted from my attempt, embarrassed at myself for
trying
, and feeling r
ejected by Eran –
all this
and he wouldn’t even kno
w I was attempting to reach him!
The idea was so ludicrous
;
I almost gave up before
I started
.
Despite how crazy it seemed,
I
still
laid there debating whether to
take the
sane
approach
and delve
into
the mountain of homework
that awaited
me
or
choose the alternative and
follow my curious desire
.

I groaned, knowing that eventually my
desire
to
see
Eran would win
;
so
I finally gave in.

Five minutes
,
no longer.

I
wiggled deeper
into
the fluff
of covers
and got
comfortable.
I
was going to need uninterrupted c
oncentration to pull
this
off
, t
he kind that’s very difficult to achieve
after
a long,
trying
,
tiring day. Still, the thought of seeing Eran again helped me overcome my
anxi
ety
.

Memories
of him flashed
through
my subconscious
.
H
is beautiful
,
scintillating face
was so clearly
defined in my mind
,
I felt like
I could
easily
sketch him.
The presence of his conceit was undeniable, always there, barely submerged beneath the surface…annoying me.
A
s
these
memor
ies
broke apart and
dissipated
, I wanted to reach out and keep him with me.

I could not understand why he had such a strong pull, so much command
,
over my emotions. It wasn’t fair,
even if
it kept me intrigued. There was so
mething about Eran that I could not
figure out.
Eran
…
who
did not live in my n
eighborhood or attend my school
…
had
the uncanny ability to
suddenly
appear
when
ever
I needed him
.

As ridiculous as it made me feel to admit, n
one of this made
any
sense
. This
is
precisely why I was call
ing
him here.

T
he real question
, however,
was…
how
? How did one
summon
somebody
to their bedroom?

Think, I told myself.

Eran appeared only when I was in trouble, or
more precisely, when I was
about to be in trouble.
What pl
agued
my mind was how he
knew.
There was the possibility that he followed me, but I discarded
that
thought almost immediately. I was observant enough t
hat
I would
have seen him
. It could have been dumb luck, but t
hat
seemed out of the question. T
oo
improbable
. Regardless, being in trouble seemed to be the key.
So I
concentrated on how best to create
trouble for myself
.
This would be difficult,
especially in the comfo
rt and safety of my own bedroom.

Think…
t
hink…
.

I
laid
like that for several minutes
,
trying desperate
ly
to
come up with
something, anything
,
that
w
ould put me in danger
,
but short of burning the house down, I came up blank.

I was sure my
five
-
minute time limit had passed long ago
,
so despite my disappointment,
I
resigned
myself
to
the
failure,
opened my eyes
,
and
sat up in a huff.

And there he was.

Eran stood
directly in front of me
-
at the foot of my bed -
smirking.

“I was beginning to think you weren’t going to sit up again,” he stated in his captivating accent.

We were inches away without a sing
le part of our bodies touching,
invisible
currents
of excitement
charged
between us.
If he was breathing, I didn’t notice, but my breath
was trapped
in my lungs for a
punctuated
minute
,
as we
continued staring,
at each other
, silently, hesitantly
.

I recognized that my head was beginning to swim from lack of oxygen
, which
he must have noticed too.