The Keeper's Vow (15 page)

“I can make you forget your
family
,”
he spat.

In his eyes she saw a monster who’d take her
memories away—in his eyes she saw Glock.

She turned and ran.

Katie smacked into Tristan as she flew out
of the house. She didn’t stop to access the damage. She couldn’t
stop. She had to keep running, her book-bag slapping against her
back. It was amazing how much farther she could run when it wasn’t
around a track and when her legs pumped with rage. Rage she didn’t
know she still had about things that didn’t matter anymore.

When she finally stopped Tristan wasn’t far
behind her. What was she going to do? She had just officially ran
away from home. She laughed trying to release whatever was making
her shake, but stopped when it almost turned into a sob.

She sat down on a bus bench. She was still
clenching her book-bag. “I take it you know what happened?” she
said. There was a girl with blue hair walking down the street.
There were a lot of cars out. Rush hour maybe. She looked for other
things to focus on.

“Don’t have to read your mind to know how
that went.” Tristan stood next to her.

She fidgeted on the bench. There was so much
anger swirling in her body she thought she was going to explode.
She gripped the wood, it was making her hand gritty and dirty.

“Come on,” Tristan said. He grabbed her
book-bag and started to jog. She followed.

Her legs pounded on the concrete. Her feet
hurt but the pain was better than the one unpacking all of her
childhood memories. Calling Lucinda once in the middle of the night
because her dad never came home. Who did that to a ten-year
old?

Tristan jogged into Findley Park and sat her
bag down. “Come at me, like I showed you yesterday,” he said,
unbuttoning his shirt. He threw it on the tall grass and untucked
his undershirt.

“I’m not in the mood to practice,” she said.
Her dad had never even apologized. All the years she’d spent
growing up with the Anderson’s. One day he picked her up and
pretended like she hadn’t been there for an entire month. He never
mentioned where he’d gone, no one had bothered to tell her her
father was probably on a bender. She had to figure that one out on
her own.

Tristan kicked her leg and pushed her off
balance. She caught herself before she hit the ground.

“Don’t,” she yelled. “I’m so not in the
mood.” Katie ground her teeth and dug her fingernails into the palm
of her hand.

He did it again. She swung to slap him and
he pushed her arm away. She tried to shove him and he slapped her
arms out. She could feel her throat burning again. She swung at him
and landed a punch on his arm.

He laughed.

“Asshole,” she yelled and swung again, and
again and again. Each time he blocked and tried to push her off
balance.

With out thinking she faked a punch and went
for an uppercut. It landed on his chin.

Tristan cursed and rubbed his chin. “I
didn’t teach you that one,” he smiled. “Try it again.”

Tears fell from her eyes, but she didn’t
care if he saw them. Not while she was punching at his face and
everything she’d keep bottled up for years.

They fought in the park until they couldn’t
see each other. Sweaty and tired, she laid out on the grass and
stared at the stars between the trees. A weight was lifted and she
could breathe. It didn’t matter that she was laying in the middle
of a park and homeless.

Tristan sat down next to her.

“You stayed at my house that entire time?”
she said.

Silence.

“You’re such a creeper,” Katie laughed.

“If I hadn’t been there where would you be
now?”

She couldn’t tell if that question was
directed at her or himself.

“Where did you come from?” Katie said it
before she thought it. She couldn’t imagine what his life was like,
who he was, or
is
.

“I left from Idaho after my parents died.
Since then I lived in New York.”

“With other family members?” Lucinda did
have a big family.

“No.”

She couldn’t see his face, but she imagined
that blank mask he wore. “When did they—how old were you?”

“Seven.”

Katie felt a deep unease slowly slide into
her. “Sorry,” she whispered. She wanted to know more, but she
couldn’t say it. Not out-loud.

They listened to crickets and the wind
rustle the black leaves.

“Do you hear all of my thoughts?”

“I try not to.”

“When did you start hearing them?”

He was quiet for a long time. She figure he
didn’t want to talk about it.

“I had just turned seven—when it
happened.”

Katie’s eyes widen. A thousand questions
flew through her mind. How? Why? Did it have something to do with
his parent’s death? Could he hear her this whole time? All these
years?

His breath quickened. “It depends on how
close you are,” he said, answering only one of them.

“What?”

“I hear your thoughts better when we are
closer. The farther you are the less I hear. But the last week has
been like listening to talk radio nonstop.”

Katie thought about what Allison said, that
night, after her first training session. He probably didn’t get a
kick out of it like she thought.

Tristan laughed, “You can be really
annoying.”

Katie grunted.

He laughed harder when she hit him. It
struck her that she’d never heard him laugh like that before. It
was light and unguarded.

He stopped.

Silence passed between them. Katie smiled.
She couldn’t help it. “You’re so awkward. Oh my god. You really
are. You make everything so much weirder than it has to be.”

“Maybe if you didn’t scrutinize everything I
did,” Tristan said, defensively.

“That’s what people do. That’s how you—I
don’t know—learn about a person.”

“You’re
learning
me?”

She could hear him smile. “See, you just
made the most natural thing sound weird.”

She laid there and he sat there for hours.
Like two homeless vagabonds. They spent most of the time arguing
about movies, songs, and video games. Everything with him was an
argument. She liked cowboy space operas and he thought they came
from a special place in hell. She liked art, he thought it was a
waste of time and energy. She thought it was perfectly normal to
want to smack politeness into him and he thought she was a lunatic
for trying. Nonetheless, he talked more in those hours than he had
since she met him.

They were quiet for a while before she said
aloud what she was thinking. “I heard you, the other day. In my
mind.”

“I know.”

“So it works both ways?”

“Yeah,” he breathed.

“Then why can’t I hear you now?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you forgot how—” He
clipped the last word.

More questions rushed to her mind.

“Katalina,” he begged.

Katie could make out his silhouette. He held
his head in his hands. “Sorry,” she said, trying to still her mind.
It was the hardest thing—trying to not think.

“You can think. It’s just I can’t focus on
what you’re saying without hearing your thoughts too. Then, throw
in your acute ability to think fifteen things at once…”

Katie sat up. “Maybe that’s it.”

“No,” Tristan said at the same time.

“Why not? I only want to try.” She stared at
him. If she thought about hearing him, maybe she would.

“What if I don’t want you in my head.”

She didn’t have to voice how much of a
double standard that was. She ignored his protest and stared at
him. His dark eyes glinted in the moonlight.

“You call me creepy? You should see your
face right now.” He turned away

Katie scowled. “I’m concentrating.”

Tristan blurted out a laugh. “Don’t ever do
it again.”

Katie pushed him but he didn’t budge. “Is
that a vampire thing?” She had noticed how solid he was. He was
like a wall most of the time. She watched the way he made an effort
to relax his body.

“Sort of. Stop watching me.” He turned away
from her and played with the grass between his fingers.

“You know, you were right,” Katie said. “In
the grand scheme of things, Sports Day really doesn’t matter.”
Katie reached for her bag and pulled out her cellphone. It was past
four in the morning. She had no missed calls or messages. “So much
for being concerned about my safety. He didn’t even call.” The way
her dad said he’d make her forget, set her on fire again.

“He knows you’d go to Lucinda’s.”

“How do you know that?”

“Wouldn’t you?” Tristan turned to face
her.

“Am I there now?” Katie said, realizing she
could in fact be dead in a park and her dad would never know
it.

“Touché.”

She laid back on the grass and stared at the
patches of deep blue and stars—until she was waking up. The sky was
morning-blue and hazy. She sat up and Tristan’s button-down shirt
fell off her. He was sitting in the same spot. She checked her
phone. It was half-past six.

“Thanks,” she said, stretching. She handed
his shirt to him.

“Actually, you just took it,” he said,
brushing loose dirt and grass off it. “What time does your dad go
to work?” he asked, pointing at a bit of grass stuck to her
face.

Katie wiped off the grass and drool. Under
normal circumstances she would have been mortified, but she had
just spent the night in a park after running away from home. She
was over having shame.

Tristan laughed under his breath.

“He has an early morning shift on
Saturday’s. He’s already gone.” Katie wondered if he had been
looking forward to going to the zoo with her after work.
I think
it’s fair to say that’s no longer on the agenda
. She stood up
and grabbed her bag.

“I’m going to go home and grab some
stuff—wanna’ come?” Katie half-expected him to pass.

He shrugged. “Sure.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

She slipped into
her house to pack a bag. Tristan followed her up to her room and
analyzed it like an art gallery.

“I wouldn’t exactly describe it as an
art
gallery
,” he said, touching the robot stickers on her dresser.
He touched her giant green bean bag and stared at her purple-fur
rug. “Nothing matches. It’s like a whole bunch of crap thrown
together. It suits you,” he said, giving the room another survey.
He stopped at the orange cat-shaped lamp.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Katie
said, trying to figure out what else to take. What did people take
when they ran away? How long was she supposed to run away? Almost
none of her clothes were clean, she’d neglected laundry all week.
She grabbed the only clean tank-top left and went to the
bathroom.

She took a quick shower and washed her hair.
She hated dressing in a steamy bathroom but she had no choice. When
she went back into her room, she caught him looking through her
book collection.

“Is this what you buy at that weird
bookstore?”

She nodded, looking for a pair of socks. For
some reason she always forgot socks. It was a little nerve-racking
having him in her room. She tried to pretend like it was fine, but
it was odd how he studied her stuff.

“I’m ‘
learning
’ you,” he said. Even
though she knew he was mocking her, she blushed. She turned from
him to hide her face, knowing that it was pointless.

Katie rummaged through her dresser drawers
for her old middle school gym clothes. She was going to do laundry
last night—

“We could always skip the Preliminaries,”
she said, finding the old shirt. She pulled it over her head. It
was a little tight, but she
was
wearing the tank top
too.

Tristan was staring at her, she could feel
his eyes burning into her. “Something tells me it would be tight
even if you took off the other shirt.”

“What is
that
supposed to mean?”

He blinked.

“Stop calling me fat! I’m not fat.”

“I never said fat.” He shook his head as if
to get rid of a buzzing fly. “That shirt looks like it belongs to a
six-year-old.”

Katie looked at herself in the mirror. Her
old shirt was faded and clinging to her. To be fair, she was the
size of a blade of grass in middle school. It wasn’t until the last
two years that she actually grew anything…

Tristan’s eyes grew wide.

“EW!” Katie yelled. Had she been thinking
about what she looked like naked? Had she thought about it clearly
enough for him to see. Thinking about what she could have been
thinking made images flash in her mind. She was just in the shower.
He probably heard her in there washing herself….She smacked her
head. “Get out! Get out!”

“It doesn’t work that way.”