Strange and Lovely (Part 1) (4 page)

“Why don’t you go back to your dorm, and find your purpose?” he said. “Try not to get murdered along the way.”

I stared at him, but he was busy looking through the newspaper. I walked out of the room, making sure to not open the door too much and release the scent of pot into the hallway. As I was walking out of the building, my cell phone vibrated. I looked at it, and a text was on the screen.

Meet me at The Legend tonight. Sometime between 8 and 9. —Declan

W
hen I walked into The Legend, I didn’t see Declan anywhere, so I sat down at the bar. A bartender walked over to me.

“What would you like?” he asked.

“I’m just waiting for someone,” I said. He nodded, and walked away. I glance at my cell phone. 7:59. I looked around the bar again. There was a group of college friends sitting at the table I had sat at last time. There were also a few older patrons who looked annoyed at the student’s loud laughter.

“Hey.” I turned around to see Declan behind the bar. He jumped over it, and sat on the stool beside me.

“Hey,” I echoed. I used to always know what to say to Declan. We never had awkward silences until now. I uncross and cross my legs. Declan avoids my eyes. “Um, I’m sorry if I made you feel that you weren’t good enough. You’re my best friend. I never saw you as anything other than that.”

“I noticed,” he said. I looked down at my hands. “You’ve always known I’ve wanted more than that.”

I looked over at him. I noticed the way the muscles in his biceps moved as he shifted his weight, and the way his eyes reminded me of the midnight sky. Dr. Federov had said that I compartmentalized. Had I defined Declan as a friend, and therefore, I had become incapable of seeing him as anything else?

“Maybe I was afraid,” I said.

“I am not that scary,” Declan said. “I clearly remember the first thing you did to me was push me down. I couldn’t look at any of the other third grade boys in the eye for a week.”

I laughed. “No, I wasn’t afraid of you. I was afraid...that I would mess up our friendship if we pursued a relationship. You know how I am. When relationships start getting deeper, I try to push the man away. And if we broke up, I would have nobody to turn to.”

Declan put his hand under my arm, his skin rough against mine. “Maybe your other relationships didn’t work out because they aren’t the kind of people you’re supposed to be with. And you could try to push me away as much as you want. I’ll always be there for you. If you wanted to bitch about me, I would nod and agree about what an asshole I am.”

I laughed again, and leaned toward him. His forehead brushed against my forehead. He lowered his head, so his mouth was right next to mine, and I could almost taste the spearmint scent of his breath.

I tipped my head, and our lips touched. A current of electricity shot through me. I felt his warm tongue slide between my teeth. His hands moved to my arms, and I could feel his nails grip my skin. I kissed him harder, standing up to be closer to him. He stood up as well, and one of his legs slipped between my legs. Our lips moved against each other with hungry vigor. I forgot that we were in a bar or even in New York City. I forgot that this was my best friend.

His nails sank deeper into my skin, and I could feel my skin starting to tear. I pulled away from him, rubbing my arms. He looked dazed for a couple of seconds, and then noticed the marks on my arms. He flushed.

“Rory, I’m so sorry,” he started.

“Don’t be,” I said. I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him, opening his mouth with mine. I could feel him smile underneath my lips. “It was incredible.”

I wanted to tell him how the pain was good in the beginning, but he pressed his lips against my mouth again and all of my thoughts scattered into the night.

***

I
walked up to the Omega Zeta house with Declan. I wore a little black dress, while Declan was in the same black clothes he wore at the bar.

“Do we have to go to this jerk’s party?” he asked.

“You don’t even know him,” I said.

“I know he’s a guy that wears expensive clothes, and touched you when he talked to you,” Declan said. “That’s enough to make me want to punch his face in.”

Before I left, Kaylee told me there’s usually a $5 charge for going into the frat parties, but a lot of girls go in for free. We walked up to the door. The guy standing there nodded at me, but Declan begrudgingly had to pay the five dollars.

The house is packed with people. Declan groaned. I grabbed his hand, and led him toward the keg.

“You know, we could have had drinks for free at the bar,” he said. “I mean, we would have to hide from my brother, but it’s still free.”

I filled a Dixie cup with beer, and handed it to him.

“You need this,” I said. “Drink and be happy.”

“Is that a college motto?” he asked, but he took a gulp of the beer. I filled another cup for myself, and took a sip. I heard laughter, and turned to look toward the living room. Sam was talking to a group of his friends, making elaborate hand motions that looked like he was either playing baseball or stirring a butter churn. Sam glanced over toward me, and grinned.

“Hey, Rory!” he called. Of course, the first time I have Declan with me, Sam remembered to use my name. Sam strode over to me. He looked at Declan for a second, and turned his back on him. “How are you, my little teacher’s pet?”

“Sam,” I said, grabbing Declan’s hand and pulling him toward me. “This is Declan. We’re...together.”

Sam raised one of his eyebrows. He took a sip of his beer, and looked Declan up and down. Declan gritted his teeth. “Okay...anyway, do you want some Jell-O shots, Rory? They should be solid enough by now.”

I looked over at Declan. He stared at the side of Sam’s face like he was aiming for where his fist was going to go. I wrapped my arm around his. His body relaxed. “No thanks, Sam. Declan and I are going to go dance.”

I pulled Declan to the living room, where people were either shifting their feet as a noncommittal way to dance or grinding against each other.

I let go of Declan’s hand and danced up against him. He put his hands on my hips and we moved together. I could smell when he began to sweat, but it smelled sweetly masculine. He set his drink down on a table. He put his hand on my arm, and turned me around. He cupped my face, and kissed me. I smiled up at him.

A man bumped into me. My beer spilled onto my shirt.

“Watch it!” Declan growled. I wiped beer droplets off my dress, but some of it had already soaked in. The man turned around to see what happened. The man gave me a dirty look.

“Maybe you should watch yourself, terrorist,” he spat. Declan grabbed him by his shirt, and rammed him into the wall.

“I dare you to call her that again, you ignorant piece of shit,” he snarled. “Say it again, and we’ll see how fast you can go through this wall.”

Everyone in the living room had turned to see what the commotion is. I touched Declan’s arm.

“It’s fine, Declan, I’m used to it,” I said.

“You shouldn’t have to get used it,” Declan snapped, He raised the man higher. The man’s feet dangled in the air.

“Declan, stop,” I said.

“You better listen to her before she blows up the house,” the man hissed. Declan punched him across the face. The man fell to the ground, clutching his cheek. Declan wrapped his arm around me, and we rushed out of the house. It had begun to rain. My hair and dress began to immediately get soaked. As soon as we’re at the sidewalk, I turned toward him.

“You can’t do that,” I said to Declan. “You can’t attack people like that.”

Declan exhaled loudly, as if he was trying to blow away the last few minutes.

“You’ve told me before about how people call you towelhead and terrorist, and I’ve never been there to defend you. This time I was. He’ll think twice before saying shit like that again,” Declan said. I grabbed Declan’s arm and it felt so hot the sting singed my fingers.

“No. He won’t. Trust me, I’ve met enough prejudicial people. Violence doesn’t change them,” I said. Declan threw his hands up, and began walking down the sidewalk. I ran to catch up to him.

“I just hate it when people are like that,” he said. “They see someone that’s different from them, and they make these quick judgments. It’s lazy. It pisses me off.”

He seemed to be getting angrier by the second. I grabbed his hand. He turned to look at me, fire still in his eyes. I pulled him toward me, and kissed him. I could taste the rain on his lips. He pressed his mouth hard against my mouth, pouring his anger out into me. He pushed my saturated hair away from my face and held my head in his hands. He moved his mouth down to my neck, and sucked on my skin. His hands travelled down to my wet dress, and he squeezed my ass. I kissed his jawline, and pressed my body against his. I looked over his shoulder as I kissed his neck. I stopped.

“Declan,” I said.

“Mmm?” he moaned. I turned him around to look at what I was seeing. It had stopped raining within a block of where we were, but everywhere else it was pouring. His eyes widened. “Wow. Talk about isolated showers.”

“That isn’t isolated showers,” I said. “This is isolated dryness.”

“Well, not that dry,” he teased, tugging on my wet dress. I smiled, but I couldn’t stop staring at where the rain suddenly started. I looked up at the sky. The sky was clear above us, but where it was raining, there were dark clouds. Declan looked up to notice it too. He wrapped his arm around my waist. “Hmm. Maybe the man in the sky wanted to see us go at it.”

I shoved him. We began walk down the sidewalk again. As we walked, the rain began to pour down around us. Something shivered inside me. This wasn’t normal. If the man from the party taught me anything, it’s that abnormal brought the worst out in people.

A
fter The Physics of Stars and Stellar Systems, I walked up to Dr. Federov. He glanced up at me as he wrote down who was absent.

“Do you know what a dark star is, Aurora?” he asked without preamble. I shook my head. “It’s a kind of invisible star that astronomers believed we had before modern stars existed. They are different from the stars we have today because they had a high amount of dark matter. The dark matter would create heat by the particles destroying themselves. This heat actually made the star massively larger than the sun because it stopped nuclear fusion.”

“That’s...interesting,” I said. He picked up a newspaper from his podium and handed it to me. On the front page, in large print, was the title
Three More Beheadings, May Be Serial Killer
. I skimmed through the article, and then looked back at him. “What do dark stars have to do with this?”

“There has always been something dark in the universe,” he said. “Invisible to the naked eye, sustaining and flourishing through destruction. We have tried to combat against it, but it’s larger than our biggest source of light. Our only hope is that we can create enough small pieces of light to annihilate it.”

I set the newspaper back on the podium. He tilted his head.

“So, what?” I asked. “Are you saying we can make up for these murders through small acts of kindness? Because I don’t think that’s what the family members of these murder victims think.”

“No,” Dr. Federov said. “That’s not what I’m saying, but that’s very philosophical of you to think. Have you heard of the myth about the daughter of the stars?”

“No,” I said. I glanced behind me, and saw the lecture hall was empty now. It made the room feel foreboding.

“The myth starts at a time when only night existed. They say that the guardian of the sky saw a woman one night. He fell in love with her, as powerful beings in myths often do. He wanted to impress her, so he arranged the stars into different formations—Ursa Major, Aquarius, Phoenix. She was amused, but she told him she was depressed by the darkness. She wanted the stars to shine brighter. The guardian could only move them, he couldn’t make them brighter, so he pushed a thousand stars together to create the moon. The woman became a little happier, but she was still sad that there was more darkness than light.

The guardian knew he would do anything to please her. So, after making love to her, his ecstasy and his need to please her made the stars explode, and the explosion destroyed the darkness. Unfortunately, the guardian died from using so much energy, but his love for this woman transformed into the sun. The darkness began to fight back, and the guardian’s love—the sun—could only hold it off for half the day. Later, the woman found out she was pregnant. They say that a female child, born under the sign of Aquarius with a celestial name, with hair the color of night and eyes the color of the sky...will be able to destroy the darkness again.”

I stared at him. “And...you think because I match the requirements of this daughter that I can catch this murderer?”

He smirked. “It’s just a myth. I just find it interesting that you match it so well. I can only hope that if there was someone who could make the sky do whatever she wanted, she wouldn’t be hanging around at a college.”

Rain, rain go away. Come again another day.

I took a few steps back. “I have to go. I have another class to get to.”

He nodded. “Of course, you do. You have ungodly errands to run.”

I ran out of the classroom and out of the building. As soon as I was outside, the sun pierced down on me, burning my skin with light.

***

W
hen I took Declan to my dorm room, it’s nighttime. Kaylee had returned home to her parent’s house for the weekend. Declan couldn’t stop staring at the mass amount of pink on her side of the room.

“I feel like I’m in a Pepto-Bismol bottle,” he said. “Except that I feel more sick looking at it instead of feeling better.”

“Be nice,” I said. “She’s harmless.”

He shrugged and sat on my bed. “Your side is better.”

“What does my side look like?” I asked. My room still looked pretty plain, but I had put up a poster of a star chart, and a picture of a black hole.

“It looks like you,” he shrugged, and then smiled. “Rory Villanova, the girl with her head in outer space.”