Wake for Me (Life or Death Series) (26 page)

“Oh, crap.” Sam said. How could he have forgotten? His mom had been planning a ‘girls only’ retreat with her teacher friends for months. They were driving to Connecticut to spend a few days at their district superintendent’s timeshare. She must’ve left hours ago.

“What, is your mother out of town?” Viola raised an eyebrow. “Doesn’t that mean you’re supposed to throw a kegger and invite all of your friends from school?”

“No, it’s not a problem,” he said. “I just…didn’t think I’d be leaving you alone up here.”

“Oh,” she said. Her smile faded. “I didn’t realize you were planning on leaving me so soon.”

Sam suddenly felt like he was back in high school again. Standing in his kitchen with the captain of the cheerleading squad, who was so totally out of his league it wasn’t even funny. Like that had ever happened.

“It’s okay,” he said, moving toward the living room to get her shopping bags. “We’ll figure everything out in the morning. Why don’t we try to get some sleep? Like I said before, you can take my room. I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“No, I couldn’t possibly go to bed now.” He turned, just in time to see Viola kick off her shoes and stretch her arms above her head. “I feel like I’ve done nothing but sleep for months.”

“How about some early breakfast, then?” Sam was already headed back to the kitchen. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

He didn’t think either of them had consumed anything but coffee the night before. Unless, of course, Viola had bought something to snack on when she’d been at the mall. He tried to imagine her noshing on a corndog or a soft pretzel, but couldn’t. For that matter, he wondered, had she ever even eaten at a McDonalds?

“Sure,” she said. “Do you mind if I get settled and change into something more comfortable first?”

“Go for it.” He showed her to his old room, schlepping her bags down the hall. Once he’d pointed out the important geographical items—like the bed, the closet, and the bathroom at the end of the hall—he closed the door and went back to the kitchen.

After a few minutes of rummaging through the well-stocked fridge and pantry, Sam had assembled enough ingredients on the counter in front of him to feed a small army of extremely hungry lumberjacks. Halfway through the planning phase, he realized: he’d never asked Viola what her favorite breakfast food was.

Trudging back down the hallway, Sam hollered at her through his bedroom door, which was still closed.

“Hey Viola, are you more of an eggs and bacon person, or a pancakes person?”

There was no answer. Reaching for the door knob, Sam knocked. “Viola?”

He slowly, carefully turned the knob and inched the door open, only to find Viola sprawled across his bed, dead asleep. Her limbs were indeed stretched out across the mattress to each corner of the double-sized bed, her bare arms and legs resembling the outstretched limbs of a starfish.

She was also wearing one of his t-shirts from high school, Sam realized. Her hair was spread out over the pillow in a wavy brown fan, and with the oversized shirt tenting over her as big as a cotton potato sack, she looked incredibly helpless and unassuming. Almost childlike. Forcing himself to breathe past the painful clenching in his chest, Sam grabbed a blanket from the closet and covered her with it. At the added warmth, she made a soft sighing sound and stretched, poking her fingers out to clutch at the blanket’s edge like a lifeline.

Sam’s heart nearly exploded right then and there. For a few seconds, he just stood there, unable to breathe. In a million years, he could not have imagined feeling like this. About anyone.

He slowly backed away from the bed, trying not to make a sound as he retreated from the room. He closed the door softly, creating a barrier between him and the girl he’d sworn to take care of. If he was as smart as people believed him to be, he would leave now.

Before, when she’d been lying in a hospital bed and wearing silk pajamas, it had been easy to tell himself that his obsession stemmed from curiosity, or natural human compassion, combined with a tiny bit of lingering lust from their kiss that night. Or, at its worst, had been fueled by some twisted form of guilt. But now, seeing her curled up in his own bed, wearing his old math team t-shirt? It was impossible to deny the truth.

Viola might have confessed to dreaming about him while she was in a coma, but Sam had been secretly dreaming about a girl like her his entire life.

And just like his other lifelong dreams, now that he’d finally found her, he was terrified of screwing it up.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“Love in the form of longing and deprivation lowers the self regard.” –Sigmund Freud

I’m falling. The ground comes up to meet me, greeting me like the arms of a waiting lover. I close my eyes, too afraid to see myself hit the ground.

I shatter, like skin-colored glass.

A pair of weathered hands collects me, and puts me back together. I can hear her cackling as she glues each of my pieces, the witch in the little stone cottage. I watch from somewhere unseen, suspended above her shoulder as she hums a familiar tune.
Au claire de la lune
….

When I’m mostly back together, she puts me into a closet and locks the door. I scream, but no one can hear me. I’m trapped, alone in the dark.

I’m lying in the field. The one with the purple flowers. Violets, I think.

“Enlightenment,” says the distinguished German man with the snowy white beard. He’s never been here before, and somehow that small detail seems terribly important. He points to the flowers—Sigmund, that’s his name—and looks at me, licking his lips. His teeth are sharp, like the teeth of a wolf. “People say you’re shy, but they’re wrong. The violets are a lie.”

I shake my head, wanting to laugh at him. “No one ever calls me shy.”

But he’s gone. I stand up and walk carefully toward the weeping willows, waiting for the birds to fall. But they never appear. Instead, thunder rolls across the sky.

For some reason, this scares me more than the birds.

I plunge into the willows, fighting to push the blonde leaves out of my face. When I arrive in the woods, the cabin is gone. In its place sits Our Lady of Mercy. It looks abandoned.

Tentatively, I move through the woods. Before I know it, I’m inside. The long white hallway stretches in front of me. Behind me, something howls. I start to walk faster toward the elevator, trying to get to my room.

Somewhere along the way, I get lost. The walls twist and change around me, until I find myself standing in front of Julia’s desk. She’s sitting behind a gigantic wall of books, their pages yellowed and curling like dead leaves.

“Julia, can you help me?” I try to climb over the books, but they fall, and I fall with them. “There’s a monster. He’s after me. I need to get back to my room. I need to find Sam, so I’ll be safe.”
Suddenly, Julia is my mother. She stands up and walks around the desk, taking me gently by the shoulders. Her fingernails dig into my skin. It hurts.

“Don’t worry,” she says, in the same soft, sickeningly sweet tone she would use on me as a child. “If you go back to sleep, everything will be better. Just close your eyes, and you’ll be safe.”

But I don’t want to close my eyes. I don’t want to go back to sleep.

“No!” I shout, pulling away from her. “Where is Papa? He won’t stand for this!”

With a sad smile, my mother stands and points to the door behind the desk. Without hesitating, I leap over it and shove the door open. The moment I do, everything around me goes dark.

But I don’t let that stop me, I’m used to the darkness. I’m used to finding my own way, with no supervision. “Papa? Papa, where are you?”

I stumble forward, and in front of me, a dim circle of yellow light appears. A hospital bed sits in the middle, cradling the blanket-draped form of my sleeping father. His breathing sounds labored and shaky, like the rattle of a snake. But he is breathing.

“Papa, you’re alive!” I throw myself onto the bed, holding him and crying from joy. My heart feels like it might burst. “I knew it was a lie. I knew you couldn’t be gone.”

As I look up at my father’s face, a hand reaches out of the darkness, clad in a starchy white coat. Thick, tan fingers cover my father’s face, smothering him. His body jerks, as I scream and try to fight off the disembodied hand of my father’s murderer.

“You shouldn’t be here,” says a voice from behind me. Sam’s voice.

***

Viola woke up in a strange place, feeling disoriented by an urgency that pulsed through her, even though she’d clearly been resting only a few seconds ago.

The clock on the bedside table blinked 10:00. Because it was light out, she assumed it was late morning. From another room came the smell of something cooking. It was probably their maid, Francesca. Any minute now, her father would be calling her to come down to breakfast.

No. Wait. That wasn’t right.

Sitting up, Viola took a closer look at her surroundings. The bed she lay on was soft, covered in plaid flannel sheets. The walls of the tiny room were dark wood. A small desk sat empty in the corner, and a bookshelf was piled high with disorganized paperback science fiction novels. She didn’t recognize any of the authors—romance was more her style.

Looking down, she realized that she was wearing an oversized cotton shirt. The front of the shirt read ‘Syracuse High Matheletes.’ Well, that was just absurd.

And yet…in spite of the fact that everything looked, felt and smelled unfamiliar, Viola wasn’t afraid. In fact, she felt safe, almost at home here. Standing up—and blushing slightly over the fact that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath the shirt—she walked over to a tall dresser that stood by the door. On top of the dresser, there were some books and framed pictures.

Viola ran a finger lightly over the stack of yearbooks, from middle school through high school. A framed report card from eighth grade, with all A’s, of course. She smiled, as recognition took hold. There was a framed picture of Sam with his parents, and another boy—probably an older brother, from the looks of it. Even a portrait of Sam at his high school prom, in which he nervously palmed the waist of a cute blonde girl with glasses.

With a sad smile, Viola thought of all the ‘normal’ childhood experiences Sam had lived through. Experiences she’d never allowed herself to have, because she’d been too busy trying to grow up too fast. By the time she’d been old enough for co-ed dances, she’d already moved on to full-out parties. At seventeen, when she was supposedly old enough to start sneaking out and going to parties, she’d been dating Aiden long enough that watching his fellow wannabe rock stars snort coke or shoot up after every show seemed like no big deal.

Aiden—the guy she’d only brought home for the first time because she thought it would upset her mother. In the end, though, it had been Papa who’d hated Aiden. Her mother had secretly adored him. What in the world had her parents been thinking, anyway, letting her wander around Croatian clubs by herself at seventeen, the summer right after she’d been expelled from Catholic school? Looking back, she tried to remember what it had been about Aiden she’d thought she could love. Then again, standing there in Sam’s bedroom, wearing Sam’s clothes and looking at pictures from his comparatively boring, normal life, Viola honestly couldn’t remember a single thing she’d even
liked
about her ex-boyfriend of two years.

It was funny, she thought, how a near-death experience could lend so much perspective.

As she reached for the door handle, Viola caught sight of herself in the full-length mirror on the inside of Sam’s closet door. Goodness. She was starting to look a bit greasy around the edges. Opening the door as quietly as possible, she poked her head out through the crack.

From where she stood, she could just see a small wedge of the kitchen. Sam moved around quietly, his back to her, chopping things into a bowl next to the stove. Soft music played from a stereo, and Viola thought she remembered the tune from somewhere. It was a raunchy song, something about sex and booze. Maybe he’d played it for her before, back when she was asleep. For some reason, though, the song made her want to see Sam without his clothes on. Then again, a lot of things seemed to trigger that impulse, these days. Breathing, for example.

Smiling wickedly to herself, Viola slipped out of Sam’s room and tiptoed quietly down the hallway.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“The ego is not master in its own house.” –Sigmund Freud

Sam waited until everything was perfect before chancing a look into his bedroom.

After several hours of tossing and turning on the couch, he’d finally decided to get up and take a run around the neighborhood. He’d ended up back at his old high school, about five miles away, watching the sun rise from the bleachers that surrounded the football stadium. It was amazing how much smaller his past seemed now, when faced with his current problems.

With renewed vigor, Sam had set about making breakfast. After finally deciding on a menu of what his mom called ‘fancy omelets’—spinach, mushrooms and ricotta cheese—and pancakes with chocolate chips, he’d used almost a dozen eggs and finally come up with a pretty good selection of things that would be acceptable to someone with Viola’s undoubtedly picky tastes. Not that he was trying to impress her. Honestly—oh, who was he kidding? He was totally trying to impress her.

But when he went to get her, Viola wasn’t in his room.

Frowning, Sam walked down the hall to the bathroom. The door was slightly ajar, and when he tentatively pushed it open, a wave of steam hit him in the face. Although he found his math team shirt crumpled up on the floor, the shower was disappointingly empty.

“Viola?”

Sam tracked back down the hallway, thinking that maybe she’d gone into his mom’s room, but when he passed Ben’s door, he stopped. Feeling his chest tighten with a familiar uneasiness, he turned the knob.

She was standing with her back to him, staring up at the football jersey that hung above Ben’s dresser, right above the small shrine of trophies and photos that stood in lasting tribute to his older brother’s too short, but accolade-filled life.