Falling Under (33 page)
“You shouldn’t have come,” she said finally. Though her words sank into my gut like a fist, the sound of her voice was magic, awakening every cell in my body.
“You’re Theia,” I said lamely. I wished I could recall some of the previous swagger they’d told me I used to have. I knew I sounded simple. Foolish.
She smiled wryly at my awkwardness. “Aye.”
I took a step towards her and she shook her head.
“Please,” I said.
“No, Haden. Not another step.”
Why?
“You should come back with me.”
“You should come back with me.”
Her voice cracked. “I can’t. Please, you have to leave.”
“I can’t leave you here. I just found you.”
“It’s not safe,” she warned.
I shook my head. “I know that. That’s why you need to come with me.”
She stood slowly, setting her instrument and bow on the seat of the chair. She turned to face me head-on. I wanted to touch her more than I wanted to breathe.
“I can’t leave. But don’t worry, I’m perfectly fine here.” She smiled with her mouth, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I’m not the one in danger anymore.” She licked her lips, her tongue darting out in a suggestion that I felt in my weakening knees. “It’s not safe for you, lamb.” She tilted her head and regarded me with a hunter’s gaze. “After all, the darkness in me wants you the way a black hole eats stars.”
When the alarm shrilled loudly, I thought maybe my heart had stopped. I shot off the low bed and tried to catch up. A dream. It had been a dream.
A bad, yet oddly erotic one.
I stumbled into the kitchen where Varnie was pouring coffee, already dressed except for his turban. “You look like shit,” he said and handed me a cup of steaming French roast.
This coming from the world’s most awkward female impersonator. “Thanks. You’re the ugliest girl I’ve ever seen, by the way,” I answered back.
“No, seriously. What the hell happened to you?” He gestured to my bare chest.
I looked down and saw that I was covered in scratches and dried blood from the brambles. My hand fumbled on my cup and I dribbled hot coffee onto my already raw skin. “Christ,” I yelled and grabbed a towel. I met Varnie’s eyes. Not a dream then. “I saw her.”
Varnie stared back at me for a few long seconds. His eyes were wild with excitement and a little terror, and they clashed with the blue eye shadow that tried to make him look matronly. “Theia? You went to Under?”
“I think so.”
“She’s alive, then? Is she okay?”
“She’s beautiful,” I blurted. God, I hated it when stuff just flew out of my mouth like that. It was almost always something stupid. “She looked healthy. She said she wasn’t in danger.”
Varnie set down his mug and started pacing. “Did you try to bring her back with you? What happened? The girls are going to be pissed when they find out you saw her and left her there.”
“I didn’t have much choice. She told me she couldn’t leave. I don’t think she was quite … the same … as you guys described her.” That was as diplomatic as I could get before my first cup.
“She’s been living in a hell realm.” Varnie looked at me like I was an idiot. “It’s going to affect a person.”
I thought of the look in her eye and the way she licked her lips. Theia wasn’t the shy ingénue they’d told me about. She was sexy as hell, though. Literally. “Varn, I think something more is going on. She … I guess you could say
warned me
. She said I wasn’t safe … from her.”
warned me
. She said I wasn’t safe … from her.”
Varnie put his turban on, completing the disturbing transformation to Madame Varnie. “I need to take this next appointment. Bring the girls here after school. We’ll figure out what it all means.”
I nodded. “Thanks, man.” I meant thank you for everything he’d done for me, was continuing to do for me. I wondered if he knew that.
Varnie had taken me in shortly after I woke up in the circle on the floor and it became apparent that I’d never make it on my own. Not yet. I didn’t have the right skills to survive in their world—or any other realm.
On top of the memory loss, I had no money. I was able to get my clothes out of the expensive penthouse suite I’d been living in but could no longer afford. I also had a truck. That was it. I sold it after the first week to help Varnie with rent and expenses.
I think Varnie felt guilty for everything that happened that night. As much as he wanted to get out of Serendipity Falls, he wanted to make amends more. So he moved back into the house he’d just left and put a roof over my head. I owed him more than I could say.
Donny picked me up for school, like she had every day for the last month. Gabe didn’t like it. He wasn’t exactly my biggest fan.
Varnie blamed himself for losing Theia.
Gabe blamed me.
“Did you remember anything?” she asked as we pulled away from the curb. She asked every day. It was sort of her version of “Good morning, Haden.”
“No. I still have amnesia,” I answered. I wasn’t sure if I should tell her about going to Under last night. It was probably better to tell everyone at once, after school. Donny wasn’t exactly levelheaded and telling her now would mean she’d be unreasonable all day. I wasn’t technically lying when I told her no, I didn’t remember anything.
But it felt like lying.
Ame would be trickier. It would be in my best interest to avoid spending too much time with her. It was spooky, the way she knew things. Varnie called it her “raw talent.” Whatever she had, it still wasn’t enough for them to get their friend back. They wouldn’t stop trying, though. They were nothing if not tenacious.
I escaped to the library at lunch, mostly to avoid Ame. That wasn’t the only reason, though. Sometimes they were too nice to me. Not a thing to complain about for most people, but I didn’t deserve their kindness. Theia was gone because of me. Until today, nobody even knew if she was still alive.
I knew I was letting them down because I couldn’t remember. I had a head full of knowledge—things most seventeen-year-old kids don’t know, but no memories that would help. It hurt them that I couldn’t remember Theia.
It hurt me too.
Theia had risked everything to save me. They said she loved me. And I repaid her sacrifice by not remembering her.
“There you are.” I thought I’d been pretty clever in finding the small table hidden in the stacks of the library, but my fortress of solitude was no challenge for Brittany. She sashayed over. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
“Here I am,” I answered, lamely, of course.
All the kids at school knew I had “amnesia,” but they still treated me like I was the same Haden as I was before the “accident.” Donny told me that was because the sneetches swam in shallow water. She always looked directly at Gabe whenever she made comments like that. To his credit, he ignored her.
There were murmurs up and down the halls that I pretended I couldn’t hear. Theia’s disappearance and my amnesia fed the gossip mill until it churned out all kinds of torrid tales. Another sore spot with the so-called sneetches was the apparent defection of Gabe and me to the “dark side.” They pretended it didn’t bother them, but they spent a lot of time trying to lure me back to the in-crowd. I didn’t especially want to be part of the in-crowd. I didn’t fit in there or anywhere else.
Brittany perched on the corner of the table, her short skirt riding too high for a guy with a pulse not to notice. I swallowed hard and tried not to anyway.
“We should talk about prom, Haden.”
“We should?”
She nodded. Her hair didn’t move when her head did. It was the oddest thing. Hairspray, I guessed. “It’s coming up.”
I knew that, of course. Donny spent a lot of time telling Gabe they weren’t going together, and Ame spent a lot of time trying to coax an invitation from Mike. I had no intention of going to the dance. It felt like a betrayal to think about having fun or spending time with another girl. A betrayal to the girl I didn’t know, couldn’t remember, and who was possibly never coming back.
Brittany drew my chin up with her finger. “Ask me.”
“Ask you what?”
“To the dance.” Brittany’s hand coasted along my cheek and into the hair around my ear. “We’ll have fun.”
She was tender, playful. Nobody had touched me recently. And before recently I couldn’t remember anyway—so it was overwhelming how good it felt. Brittany smelled sweet, like cotton candy. I was tempted. God, was I tempted.
I looked into her eyes, and she smiled shyly. It might have been an act, her shyness. The way Donny and Ame went on about the cheerleaders, they were supposedly in the same class as the demon they exorcised from my body that night in the cabin.
Maybe Brittany and Noelle were shallow, but maybe they were just girls who hid behind their popularity the way Donny hid behind her sarcasm. Brittany seemed genuinely nervous about asking me to the dance, but what did I know about genuine feelings? Especially girls’ feelings.
I didn’t get any of it, and hanging out with Gabe and Varnie had taught me that my ignorance had nothing to do with the amnesia. Girls were just difficult to understand. It was one of the things that made them girls.
Brittany bit her lip. “You’re not going to ask me, are you?”
I brought one hand to her hand, the one touching me, and held it gently in mine. “I really can’t.”
“Before you got amnesia, I thought maybe you and I would …” Her voice trailed off.
“I’m really sorry, Brittany.”
“It’s because of the English girl, isn’t it?”
“Theia?” I asked.
She nodded. “The thing is, Haden. She’s not here, but I am.”
No, the thing of it was that I was here and Theia wasn’t, but Brittany wouldn’t understand that. “It’s not going to work out. I’m sorry.”
We sat like that for a minute, quiet in our mutual regret. She sighed and placed a kiss on top of my head, allowing me a glance down the V of her top. “You’ll be even sorrier when you see me in my dress.”
She said it good-naturedly, and I had a feeling she was right. It was then I felt the heated stare.
Amelia.
I don’t know how long she’d been there. I know it must have looked bad from where she stood. The shock of my betrayal was clear in her expressive eyes.
“Ame,” I said.
She set her jaw and glared at me before turning on her heel. I knew better than to follow her. I’d straighten it out later. I hoped.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“
W
ell,” Varnie said, raking a hand through his hair. “This is going well.”
W
ell,” Varnie said, raking a hand through his hair. “This is going well.”
I was blistered. From the inside out.
Ame and Donny were taking turns. There was no good cop, bad cop. Just bad cop and worse cop. They railed at me endlessly. It all jumbled together—sneetches, pond scum, no morals, demon ways, betrayer.
Even Gabe tried to step in on my behalf. “Ladies, let the man at least try to defend himself.”
“No, it’s okay. Let them get it out,” I replied. We all needed it. I was all those things, even when I wasn’t trying to be, even when I wanted desperately to be something else.
The night I appeared in that cabin, they lost something, someone, very important. The girls were always so careful to make sure I knew they didn’t blame me. But they should have. They would tiptoe around my feelings; make excuses for my lack of anything at all helpful. When they finally let go of that anger on me, it felt like the first real human interaction I’d had with them. I think it purged us all.
After the last harsh word, we all stared at one another, the room filling up with silence. Varnie looked at me like he felt sorry for me because he knew we weren’t done.
No point in putting it off. “I saw Theia last night.”
“What?” Ame clutched Donny’s wrist. “Where? How? I thought you said you didn’t—”
“Miss Amelia, let the man talk,” Varnie interjected.
“I dreamt … except it wasn’t a dream. I went to Under, the place you told me she talked about, last night. She’s still there.” I held my hands up to ward off the oncoming barrage of questions. “She wouldn’t come back with me. She said she can’t.”
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