Fragile Darkness (17 page)

I gave Julian a few seconds before asking him to continue.

“We all went dark,” he said slowly, woodenly. “At the exact same time. There was a disturbance in the energy field, something so strong it blotted out everything else.”

He made a stark contrast kneeling in all black against a room of white. Even his eyes were spooky dark. Unseeing, I thought at first, but then realized they were seeing, seeing something
unimaginable
.

“Eight days later, two planes slammed into the Twin Towers.”

Everything inside me stilled.

“One into the Pentagon, and one into a quiet Pennsylvania field.”

The stillness became a rushing, sharp and cold, sweeping through me like the holocaust he described.

“Many of us felt them,” he said, “
every single soul
as they transitioned, like lights going out.”

“Julian,” I whispered, moving without thinking to reach for him. I didn't know what to do, so I took his hands, tears stinging my eyes as my fingers closed around tight fists of rage.

“It was the same with the Indonesian tsunami and Japanese earthquake,” he said, “when tens of thousands left us. It took weeks before the residue faded enough to allow things to get back to normal.”

“But that seems counterintuitive,” I pointed out. “Shouldn't there have been premonitions? Dreams? Shouldn't psychics have
seen
what was coming? Isn't that what it's about?”

The light blazed back into his eyes, bright and dark at the same time. “People did,” he said. “Thousands of them, for months and months leading up to nine-eleven.”

Months. Not days or hours. Because dreams didn't come with timestamps or places.

“Something of that scale,” he said quietly, “of that magnitude, when it happens, it's like a solar storm zapping satellites.”

That's
what he thought was happening to me.

“So…” I said, rocking back. “How do I get back to the way I was?”

*   *   *

Time. The trigger could be anything—
a scent or a picture, a feeling, place, person, event, even a simple word.
Or there could be no trigger at all. One day I might wake up like I'd been before, or maybe I wouldn't.

Julian's answer was not the one I wanted.

Long after I slipped into the alley behind Horizons and made my way to Fleurish!, his words lingered. Everything he said made sense, but if I was blocked, how could I warn Will? How would I figure out what the X-ray flash and grotesquely twisted shadows meant?

Customers flowed in and out all day, giving me little time to keep the cooler stocked, much less come up with ideas.
How was a blind person supposed to see what lurked in the shadows?

Placing another round of water on the shelf, I hesitated. Blind people didn't see. They
sensed
things, exactly like I'd been doing for days.

I closed the cooler and turned back to the crowd buzzing the shop. Aunt Sara had warned me today would be nuts, but I hadn't expected
zombies.
A group of five with thick Boston accents swarmed the T-shirt table, laughing at our newest addition, a black baby-doll tee with glittery purple writing emblazoned across the front:
DO IT WITH FLEURISH!

I couldn't stop the quick, silly grin or the memory of the February afternoon when Aunt Sara blurted out the phrase while cooking gumbo.

I missed the way things used to be.

“If you can't do it with fleurish, why do it at all?” one of the zombies laughed. Dancing, they twirled toward the cash register, taking their place with clumsy curtsies behind a fallen angel holding hands with a tall skinny Elvis.

The laugh just kinda happened. Despite the wild Mardi Gras stories I'd heard, no one had mentioned heavenly creatures partying with the undead. Or middle-aged ladies in cat masks and black body stockings, or drunk old men in diapers with saggy man-boobs.

Yeah.

Slipping to the back, I checked messages for the tenth time that hour, hoping to hear back from Kendall, who was waiting to hear from Will, who was at a doctor's appointment. Earlier Grace and I had compared notes, and Victoria texted about the fireworks. Thankfully, she'd gotten past the fact I'd gone out without telling her.

Knowing I needed to get back out front, I was looking up from the phone when a name toward the bottom of the screen made me do a quick double-take at the list of recent texts: Victoria and Kendall (both from today) and three names from yesterday: Sara, Grace, and … Dylan.

Everything whirred around me as I slid my finger to tap his name, and the green-and-white message bubbles flashed onto the screen. Actually they were all white, from him.

What's wrong? Where are you?

What's happening?

Tell me where you are. I'm in the car. I can be there.

Send me a blank message. Do anything. Just let me know you're okay.

Trinity?

I blinked, but the dark letters kept lashing at me. The texts were all from the night before, at the beginning of my missing two hours.

No, no, no,
I thought. Confused, I pulled the message trail down to reveal the beginning of the exchange, the green bubble of a sent message from
my
phone.

Sp,etjomg wrpmg///meed upi

“Oh, my God,”
I whispered, but barely any sound came. At some point between when the world had started to spin and I'd awoken at his father's house, I'd texted Dylan.

And never texted him back.

Looking down at the keypad, I quickly deciphered what I'd been trying to say.

Something wrong … need you.

With a hard kick of my heart, I switched from the texts to the phone, and found his name there, too: seventeen missed calls and four voice messages. I didn't want to listen. I wanted to simply delete them, like I wanted to delete everything that had happened after I'd opened my eyes to find him leaning over me and slipped back in time, before all the bad stuff happened.

But I couldn't delete what had happened, and I couldn't make myself delete the messages, either.

Moving deeper into the shadows of the back room, where it was quieter, I listened.

“Trinity, it's me. I got your text. Where are you? Are you okay? Call me back.”

“Come on, where are you? What's going on?
Answer me.
”

By the third his voice was really quiet. “It's okay if you don't want to talk to me. Text me. Let me know you're okay.”

There were no words in the fourth, only the rough sound of breathing.

My eyes flooded at the realization that I'd reached out to him, and he'd reached back. But I'd left him there, hanging, until I showed up at his father's house.

I'm not sure how long I stood there before Aunt Sara called back to me, because the bell on the door kept jangling and she needed help.

Hastily swiping my eyes, I gathered as much water as I could, hurried to the front, and restocked the cooler.

“So is this great, or what?” she laughed as the zombies blew her kisses on their way out. I think they were guys, but couldn't be sure.

Nor could I believe that beneath the coat Julian and I had seen her wearing, she'd hidden a gauzy poet's shirt and tight, laced corset, black leggings, and knee-high boots topped in gold trim. With a red bandana around her forehead and her crazy dark makeup, she looked like she belonged on the set of a pirate movie.

And she was smiling. And for a second there, when the zombies were flirting with her, something had glowed in her eyes, and I would have sworn it was the old Aunt Sara.

“Insane,” I agreed, closing the cooler.

“Just wait,” she said. “You haven't seen anything yet.”

Everyone kept saying that.

Straightening the T-shirt table, she looked up. “Where'd you go this morning, before coming here?”

I looked away, toward a man and woman with three small kids walking in, all dressed in New Orleans Saints jerseys complete with shoulder pads. Through the open door, the Horizons sign glowed.

“Oh, you know.” I didn't want to lie, but if by some chance her smile was real and not the robo-kind, I didn't want to take that from her. She'd been talking about Mardi Gras for months.

“I wanted to see what was going on,” I hedged.

With a T-shirt half-folded, she smiled. “Fresh air is good.”

Guilt flashed.

Across the street, a long line of people dressed in black waited outside Julian's shop. Mourners, I thought a little morbidly. That's what they looked like. But that made no sense.

“What's going on over there?” I asked.

She didn't answer.

Twisting toward her, I found her beside a wire dress form draped with gobs of gaudy beads, staring into space.

Her smile was gone.

“Aunt Sara?” I asked, crossing to her.

Not into space, I realized. She was looking out the glass panel of the door, toward Horizons.

“You okay?” She had the strangest look on her face, like regret or longing.

She blinked. “What?”

I hesitated, not sure if I should ask the question. But it was right there, right on the tip of my tongue, and I couldn't make myself bite it back like I had so many times.

“What's the deal with you and Julian?” Because there totally was one. The memory of his eyes, the dark, glassy swirl of hurt and longing, almost an exact mirror of hers, haunted me.

Her look washed so blank you would have thought I'd asked her to explain quantum physics. “What do you mean? There is no deal.”

Yeah, just like there was no deal between me and—

I tried to break that thought, but the memory squeezed in anyway, of the forsaken, silver glow from the night before. I should never have let fantasy override reality.

There were a lot of should-never-haves when it came to Dylan.

For a flickering second, I would have sworn I saw all that I felt reflected in the soft brown sheen of my aunt's eyes.

“He cares about you,” I said.

She looked away.

“A lot.” It was so obvious. “I don't get why you keep pushing him away.” It's like she had herself so focused in one direction she couldn't see any others.

“You can tell me,” I said as the door jingled. “Did y'all use to date? Did he say or do something that hurt you?”

Her smile bloomed. Her eyes lit up. And the pirate-Sara swept back in. “Welcome, welcome!” Overly animated, she whirred toward a group of miniature fairy princesses.

“Please tell me you have water,” begged the frazzled mom pushing in behind them.

“Of course!” Aunt Sara bustled to the cooler as the bell jingled again, and Victoria finally blew in.

“Omigod, it's crazy out there!” she said, dropping her camo-print duffle bag to the floor. “I didn't think I'd ever get here! Are the guys here yet?”

That was the only way her parents were letting her out of the house and into the madness, if Trey was with her.

“Not yet.” Eyeing the bag, I asked, “What's that?”

She grinned. “Costumes.”

“Costumes?”

“You know,” she said, her eyes all glowy.
“For tonight.”

My heart beat a little faster.

“Ohhhh,” Aunt Sara gushed, hurrying over. “What do you have?”

Victoria, with Cleopatra-straight hair and little black wings sweeping from the corners of her eyes, brightened.

“
Wow,
you look amazing!” she gushed to my aunt, who dropped into a low curtsy.

“Thank you.”

I blinked, my eyes darting from one to the other, and for the second time in twenty-four hours couldn't help but think I'd fallen down some bizarre rabbit hole.

“Well,” Victoria was saying, “I have these amazing costumes my cousin wore a few years ago.” Dropping to kneel by the T-shirt display, she tugged at the zipper. “But um…”

I spun around. But ums weren't good. “But um, what?”

“Well…” With a silky pink streak sliding against her face, she flashed a guilty smile. “They're, um, kinda voodoo queens.”

I felt my eyes widen. It shouldn't have been funny. But it was.

“Oh, I can just see that,” I said, laughing. Inevitably a picture of me dressed as the infamous mistress of the night, Marie Laveau, would end up splashed all over the Internet and probably the yearbook.

Victoria made one of her funny, scrunched-up faces. “I know.” From her bag, she pulled out something black and silky, but before I could tell the full damage, my phone beeped.

It was from Kendall.

Everything's set. Can you meet us in front of the cathedral before the fireworks?

“Ohhhh, the fireworks are so fantastic,” Aunt Sara said from behind me, and too late I realized she stood over my shoulder, reading every word.

Thankfully there was nothing about Will or my nonvision.

“The King of Rex arrives on a Coast Guard cutter,” she was explaining, “and meets up with the King of Zulu.” Those were both majorly famous parades. “And the mayor is there, and he hands over the keys to the city, and there's tons of music and dancing and—”

Will. Will would be there.

That was all I needed to know. I could talk to him, warn him. Maybe something miraculous would happen.

After sending a quick text to Kendall, telling her I'd meet her, I shot Victoria a look. “So … where's my voodoo doll?”

 

SEVENTEEN

We changed in the back room, my jeans and hoodie tossed aside in favor of a long, black gown with bell-shaped sleeves longer than my arms, and a pin cushion at my wrist. Victoria wriggled into an outfit that looked more like a black corset with a short skirt in front and long train in back.

“Now your hair,” she said, coming at me with a flatiron.

Twenty minutes later, my hair hung like a curtain of dark silk, white powder muted my olive skin, heavy goth-black lined my eyes, and bloodred stained my lips.