Velvet (21 page)

“Thanks,” I mumbled, and opened the door.

“Oh, and Caitlin?”

I turned back to look at him. He grinned at me.

“Tell the girls I said ‘thank you.’”

11

’TWAS THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS

Someone was playing the drums. The slow, constant rhythm echoed in my head, beating along to the blood rushing through my veins. My brain felt sluggish, I couldn’t figure out where I was, and my limbs were like magnets weighted to the ground.

No—to the bed.

I was in a bed. The drums were in my head, behind my eyes. But it wasn’t a beat, it was a …

Beep.

Beep.

Beep
.

It was my pulse.

I wasn’t groggy anymore, I was wide-awake and somehow completely paralyzed.

The
beep
accelerated, sharp and high. I finally wrenched my eyes open.

“Ah, there’s our patient,” a familiar voice called from far away. But the voice was wrong, distorted. The darkness peeled back just enough for me to make out two figures coming toward me, one with burning white eyes.

It was Adrian—and my mother.

She wore a starched white nurse’s uniform from another era, and hung limply from Adrian’s arms, her eyes milky and dead.

“You wanted your mother back,” he explained. But it wasn’t Adrian’s voice. It was deeper, and echoed as if it were coming from far away. “Here she is.”

“I love you, Caitlin,” my mom whispered as the Adrian-thing laid her on my hospital bed, tucking her face gently against my neck.

I lay completely immobile, but the screams inside my head echoed the screams of my heart monitor.

“I want to come home, sweet pea.” I could feel her cold, slimy lips against my cheek. “Don’t you want me to come home?”

The shriek of the heart monitor abruptly stopped.

“I just need to build my strength, Caitlin. I need a way to come back. A little … snack.”

My lungs unlocked and I screamed just as her inhuman teeth ripped into my neck. She tore into my windpipe until I was breathing my own blood, drowning in it, watching her filmy eyes roll like marbles in her head.

Adrian observed, passive.

It felt like hours later when I finally opened my eyes. I didn’t just snap awake out of the nightmare, it was like I had to drag myself up through layers of heavy, damp curtains. When I could, I sat up quickly and ripped the covers off, feeling my neck.

It was whole, just like it should be.

I reached over to my nightstand and snatched my phone, searching through the contacts with shaking hands until I found the number I was looking for, actually dropping the phone once before getting it successfully to my ear. It picked up on the third ring.

“Hello?” Adrian answered, sounding groggy.

“Adrian?” I was shaking too badly to get anything else out.

“What’s wrong?” he asked immediately. “Are you all right?”

I tried to collect myself. “I’m sorry,” I said, voice trembling. “I had to make sure.”

“Make sure of what? Caitlin, did something happen?
Are you okay?
”

“No,” I managed to get out. “I just … I had a nightmare.”

“A nightmare?”

“Yeah,” I said, already feeling stupid for calling. “But I’ve never had one like that before.”

I heard him let out a breath on the other end of the line. “You sure that’s all? You’re not hurt?”

I let out a breath of my own and tried to suck the next one in slowly. “No, I’m not hurt. I thought I was. I had to call you to make sure it wasn’t real.”

“Okay. Tell me what you saw.” His voice had settled back down to its usual low rumble.

I drew the covers up again, suddenly cold, afraid to be exposed to the darkness.

“You were there,” I said, my voice breaking as the first wave of tears hit. “And you were carrying my m-mom in your arms.”

I pressed my eyes into the back of my hand and clenched my teeth. Finally, I put the phone back up to my ear, trying to breathe. “She said she wanted to come back.”

I couldn’t go on. Adrian let a couple seconds pass in silence.

“Where did she want to come back to?”

My whole body trembled. “Here. She wanted to be alive again. And then she bit me.”

“She—
what
?”

“I had to make sure it was a dream.”

“Damn it,” I heard Adrian say, but he wasn’t talking into the phone. “Okay. Caitlin?”

“Yeah?” I whispered, trembling uncontrollably as I turned my face into my pillow to hide my eyes from the dark room.

“I want you to turn on your light.”

“No,” I whispered, horrified, curling into a tighter ball underneath my covers. There was no way I was moving.

“Caitlin,” he said in his reasonable voice, “nobody is in your room. I’m not in your room. Your mother is not in your room. Your mother loved you, and she would never, ever hurt you. Now, I need you to turn your light on.”

“Please don’t make me do this,” I whispered into the phone, clutching it so hard my hand hurt.

“I need you to turn on your light,” he repeated.

My heart was beating so fast I thought it might explode.

“I can feel your fear all the way from my house, but I can’t take it away over the phone. I can’t come over there. You have to do it. Turn on your light.”

I stopped breathing. Just held the air inside my lungs until it hurt. And then I let it out slowly. “Keep talking.”

“All right. Did you study for your history midterm?”

I took another breath and let some of my muscles relax. “Not really.”

“You going to wear my Christmas present to the exam?”

“What?”

“My Christmas present. The Green Thing?”

“Why would I wear that to an exam?”

“Well,” he replied in a smug tone, “it looked pretty effective.”

I sat up. “Just what is that supposed to mean?”

“All I’m saying is if you want to pass, you might want to wear it to the exam. Are you sitting up yet?”

“Yes, but—” Then I got it.

“Turn on the light before you lose your nerve.”

I reached out and switched on the bedside lamp before I could think about it too hard. The room flooded with a soft, gold glow.

“Anybody there?” Adrian asked.

I looked around, even peeking over the sides of my bed before I admitted, “No.”

“Good,” he said brightly. “Oh, and by the way, I don’t actually think you should wear it to school. People might think you were trying to make me jealous.”

I smiled wearily. “Yeah, well, they also might think I’m a hooker.”

“Nah. Stripper, maybe.”

I smiled. “What time is it, anyway?”

“About four thirty.”

“Wow, well, my bad for calling at the buttcrack of dawn.”

“Don’t be. I was about to wake up anyway.”

I frowned. “Why?”

“I usually wake up at five and do a few laps in the pool.”

There was no way. No one in Stony Creek had a pool, not this high up in the mountains. But it was Adrian. Adrian defied most of the laws of physics. He could certainly have a pool in the mountains. He could have a pool in space, for all I knew.

“Right. And where, exactly, do you store this pool?”

“The east wing.”

“Your house is absurd.”

He laughed. “I’ll pick you up in a couple hours. Call me if you need anything.”

“Will do.”

Wouldn’t
do, actually—now that the last dregs of the dream had been shaken off, I felt really stupid. I was seventeen years old. That was a decade too old to be having nightmares. I was fine. Nothing had happened.

A few minutes later, my eyes were heavy. I leaned my head back and drifted off to sleep.

This time, I did snap awake, to the sound of my alarm going off. My lamp was still glowing softly. No dead nurse moms or crazy-eyed Adrians. Probably safe to get out of bed.

A half hour later, I headed downstairs having showered and dressed. Snow was still falling outside, peacefully.

“So,” Rachel said when she saw me, “which is it today? Are you going to Adrian’s, or is Adrian coming here?”

I reached for a mug. “I’m not sure yet.”

Her lips pursed. “You two spend an awful lot of time together.”

“I hear that’s what couples do.”

“I know,” Rachel said as Norah stumbled tiredly down the stairs. “Just keep in mind that there’s more to life than boys.”

Dual flames of irritation and amusement coursed through my stomach. Part of me wanted to say
back off
and the other part of me wanted to tease her for being worried. I compromised with “Duly noted.”

“Joe and I just wished we saw more of you. Sometimes you leave for school and then we won’t see you until dinner.”

“We can come here today. After school, I mean.”

Rachel smiled at me. “That’d be nice.”

Twenty minutes later I was brushing my teeth when I heard Norah call out, “Adrian’s here!” She’d taken it upon herself to announce his arrival every morning. Very loudly.

I shrugged into my coat, threw my bag over my shoulder, and headed downstairs. I felt a nervous tug in my stomach as I opened the door. Adrian was sitting in his truck, as usual, but facing away, probably on his phone or adjusting the heater vents. When he looked at me, it was him. Real, non-nightmare him.

“Your heart rate’s up,” he said as I climbed into the truck. It still unnerved me that he could tell that kind of stuff from fifteen feet away.

“I’m sorry,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “I know it’s stupid, but dream-you scared the shit out of me.”

“Are you okay?”

For some reason, the look of concern on his face—the way he was turned to me, like I was a frightened animal—irritated me. A lot.

“I’m fine,” I snapped. Why was I snapping?

He smiled at me a little, but for some reason it came across as patronizing. “How can I make this better?”

“It’s all good,” I said, sitting on my half of the cab rather than snuggling up under his arm like usual. “Just a dream. Not your problem.”

He started the truck frowning, both of us very aware of the physical space between us. “Your problems
are
my problems.”

“Look,” I said, feeling the old, familiar anger starting to creep back in. “I’m sorry I called you last night. It was just a stupid nightmare; I’ll get over it.”

That definitely came out bitter.

He threw the truck in gear and pulled out of the driveway. “You are my responsibility. If you aren’t well, that lands on me.”

I laughed sharply. “I’m sorry I’m such an inconvenience.”

He gripped the steering wheel. “That’s not what I meant.”

I turned to him and cocked my head to the side. “What did you mean, exactly? Ever since I got here, I’ve been somebody’s
responsibility
—”

“Yeah,” Adrian interrupted. “The state assigned you to Rachel and Joe, the Council assigned you to me—”

“I am not a fucking five-year-old!”

“No, you’re not,” he agreed. “But when people are willing and able to
help
, you don’t act like they’re trying to ruin your life.”

“I didn’t
ask
for your help!” I sputtered, instantly enraged by his condescension. “And I sure as
hell
didn’t ask for Joe and Rachel’s help, either.”

He shrugged, and it pissed me off even more. “Pretending like you can take on the world on your own isn’t brave, it’s stupid.”

“I didn’t want
any
of this.” I’d meant to yell that, but it came out as a whisper. My throat was hoarse with a wave of tears there was no way in hell I’d let show in front of Adrian. “I didn’t ask to move here, I didn’t ask to be targeted by your dad. And maybe I do need help, but don’t you dare think for a second that my life or my choices are yours to
approve
. I don’t need your permission. You are
not
my boyfriend, and you don’t have any say over what I do or how I feel or how I deal with what I’m going through.”

I sat back in my seat, crossing my arms over my chest as I stared out the window, trying to reel my anger back in. We didn’t say anything the rest of the drive. When we parked at school I slammed my door and walked straight to homeroom.

“What was that?” Trish asked as we both sat down. “Looks like you and the Incredible Hunk just had a fight.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I muttered, getting out my books.

“Well, it’s nothing that his Christmas present won’t fix,” she said with a wink.

“Not everything can be fixed by having sex!” I yelled, so outraged that I actually stood up. Everyone stared at me.

“What’d I miss?” Meghan asked, strolling through the door. “I heard yelling and the word ‘sex.’”

I slunk back down into my chair; embarrassed, but still pissed off.

“Caitlin’s having trouble with the mister,” Trish whispered loudly as she sat down.

“Has she tried using his Christmas present yet?” Meghan whispered back, also loudly.

“She says it can’t be fixed by sex.”

She looked astonished. “Really?”

Trish nodded.

“That must’ve been a big fight.”

Mr. Warren walked in then. It was probably the only time I’d been grateful for class to start.

“Caitlin,” Trish whispered to me. “You know we’re just giving you a hard time, right? If you don’t want to do the down-and-dirty with de la Mara, it’s none of our business.”

I nodded in her direction, but was still too angry to actually respond.

“Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.”

We said the pledge and sat back down, and Mr. Warren began teaching, so there wasn’t time for Trish or Meghan to comment anymore on my love life. The day dragged by slowly and I waited in a sort of anxious, angry tension for lunch. Fourth period rolled around, but Mrs. Leckenby was just giving a lecture about the history of modern art, so I didn’t even have a project to keep my hands busy. When the bell finally rang, I loaded my bag slowly, feeling the beginning of a headache building behind my eyes. I wasn’t angry anymore, but I was still frustrated with Adrian (and Trish and Meghan for that matter) and tired from my sleepless night. I walked out of the art room straight into Adrian’s arms.