Seconds Before Sunrise (The Timely Death Trilogy), page 17
“You’re running the water too hot,” my father said, cranking the sink’s knobs until the rushing water chilled my burning hands. I hadn’t noticed the pain. “You don’t have to wash the dishes like that.”
I laid a cleaned plate on the countertop. “Just helping out.”
“Or avoiding the tree.” He started scrubbing plates. “Did you do what you wanted to?”
The spell was different, I replied telepathically.
He didn’t twitch as he responded, It was designed for only a few people to be able to see.
Me?
He chuckled. “From the beginning, Eric.”
I struggled to imagine a time before I existed, before the Dark was preparing for the end of an era − the Light’s era. It seemed impossible for shades to be able to live their double lives without worry, and it was even harder to imagine what life would be like after the final battle. I was born into chaos. I didn’t know what peace felt like.
“Jonathon is here,” Noah shouted, and my father looked over the balcony.
“Hey, kid,” Jonathon said, rushing to get upstairs. When he met my eyes, I tensed. He didn’t have his glasses on, but he wasn’t stumbling. He was using his shade vision. “Sorry for interrupting the holiday, Mr. Welborn.”
My father didn’t care about Thanksgiving any more than I did. “Go to my office,” he said, but Jonathon was already walking down the hallway. I’ll distract Mindy.
When I caught up to my friend in the office, he was already facing me. “We need to talk.”
“We do,” I agreed, thinking of the night Robb attacked Jessica. “Why weren’t you with Jessica—”
“We have worse problems,” Jonathon interrupted, shoving a letter against my chest.
I grabbed it. “What’s this about?”
“Open it.”
I stared at my best friend as he jumped up and down. “Just do it,” he ordered, and I slipped my fingers into the envelope. The letter came out easily, already crumbled by someone else’s hands. When I unfolded it, I couldn’t breathe. The words consumed me.
It was signed by the Light, and it was a list of five boys’ names.
Mine was at the bottom.
Jessica
The day after Thanksgiving made it hard to move. I remained full, and I was glad I was sitting as I handed my mother tools to fix the kitchen sink. “Wrench.” She stuck her arm out, and I handed it over, and her torso disappeared beneath the counter. As pathetic as it was, I enjoyed the sight.
When it came to stereotypes, my parents had a backwards marriage. My father cooked and cleaned, and my mother fixed everything that broke. I loved that about their parenting style. It was one of the reasons we were close − or used to be close.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, and a bang rattled behind the small door separating us.
“Ouch.” She cursed as she ducked out of the cranny and rubbed her head. The blue bandana holding her hair back shifted, and blond threads poked out. “What are you sorry about?”
“About how I’ve been acting.”
She patted my leg. “You’re a teenager.” She dismissed it like she had dismissed my drunken escapades. “I know you’ll tell me what’s bothering you eventually, even if it’s when you’re thirty.”
But I wanted to tell her now. “Mom?”
“What’s wrong, Jessie?”
“Where’s my prom dress?”
“Your prom dress?” Her forehead crinkled. “Why are you looking for that old thing?”
“It isn’t that old.” It had only been seven months.
“But it’s destroyed,” she said, and I gripped the counter. “I told your father to throw it out, but he insisted on keeping the fabric around the house just in case − you know him, he’s such a packrat.”
“Where is it?” I asked, but my mother tilted her head at my tone. “I wanted to use the fabric for a school project.”
“I can get it for you later.”
“It’s due tomorrow.”
“Jessie.” Her lecture would follow soon.
“I’m supposed to meet up with Jonathon later to finish it,” I continued the lie, using Jonathon of all people. “We decided to add extra credit.”
She returned to the sink. “It’s in my closet,” she said. “But your father will have to get it. I’m busy.”
“I can still help you.”
“It’s okay, Jessie.” Her voice was soft. “Go do what you need to. You know where my car keys are.”
I had to force myself to stand up. “Thanks, Mom,” I said. “I won’t be back late.”
I ran upstairs, almost tripping when I stumbled into her bedroom. “Jessie.” My father put down his book on a stack of newspapers and magazines. “How’s the sink coming along?”
“Great,” I said. “Where’s my prom dress? I need it for a project.”
He lit up. “I told your mother something like this would happen,” he said, stretching his arms as he stood up. “But I don’t know where she put it in her closet.”
“I got it,” I said, knowing my mother’s closet.
She kept all of her favorite cloths − mainly her pajamas − at the front, and she placed all of her heels on the shelves. Her pants hung next to her unused business clothes and her winter sweaters. My father’s clothes were in a corner. When I twisted around the right-angle leading to the room, I knew exactly where to look.
At the top of the last countertop, a bag sat on top of my father’s high school sport jacket. I reached up, pulling it down. I could see the black cloth through the white plastic.
My heart skipped as I clutched it to my chest. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see it.
I paused, standing in their closet as if I were contemplating entering a haunted house. I was a girl, afraid of her own dress. My fingernails ripped open the plastic, and I sat down, letting it fall into my lap. When I lifted it, I heard myself gasp. It was worse than I was expecting.
The thin fabric was tearing through the silky designs that once decorated it, and the color had faded. Grass stains littered the bottom, but the worst stain was on top − where the strap of my dress should’ve been. It was too dark to be water, and I knew Crystal wasn’t lying when she said I had a scar on my shoulder. The bloodstain was undeniable, and I ran my fingers over it, hoping to recall a memory from the mysterious night, but nothing came.
There was only one person who could explain it, and I threw it over my shoulder as I ran out of the house. “I’m leaving,” I shouted backwards as I ducked out, running to the car. I knew I had to talk to him, and I wasn’t going to wait another day to do so.
Eric
I was one of five the Light suspected of being Shoman, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they would kill all of us just to guarantee their future. But I wasn’t as worried as my father was.
“I’ll fight him if he shows up,” I said, looking at my father from across the kitchen table. He hadn’t stopped talking about it since yesterday. In fact, the letter remained in his pocket.
“I don’t think you should return to school.” This had become his mantra.
“Then they will know, and they’ll come here to get me,” I pointed out. “I don’t want Mindy or Noah to get hurt because of this.”
His upper lip twitched. “I thought you didn’t care about humans.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t make me admit it out loud,” I said. Of course I cared. “Either way, they don’t deserve to be war victims.”
“You’re right,” he said. “Maybe not just about this.”
“What about?”
“Marrying a human.”
“Dad.” My tone was sharp. “You can’t change it now, and you shouldn’t want to.” I wanted to continue, but the door rattled with an assortment of rushed knocking.
“It’s probably Jonathon,” my dad said, standing, but I stopped him.
“I got it,” I said, walking downstairs to get it myself. My aggravation grew as Jonathon continued to knock. He knew Mindy and Noah wouldn’t be home. He could’ve transported in.
“You don’t have to knock—” I silenced when I opened the door and saw the person in front of me. Her hand hung in the air, ready to knock again, and her brown hair frizzed around her scowl. “Jessica—”
“We need to talk,” she said, barging into my house.
“Wha—what?” She was the last person I needed around me. “You can’t be here.”
“I don’t care,” she said, chucking a piece of cloth at me.
If it weren’t for my enhanced reflexes, I wouldn’t have caught it.
She was pointing at it. “I figured out what was confusing me,” she said. “And I need an explanation.”
I lifted the cloth up, and the bottom tumbled down, stretching out to reveal what it was. “Your prom dress?” For once, I was the confused one.
“Right.”
“So?” I handed it back to her. “What’s the point of this?”
She fumed. “You tell me why you can remember this, and I can’t.”
Her words might as well have been Urte’s torture machine. “You—you don’t remember prom?”
“Not a second of it.” She tugged her shirt collar, revealing her shoulder. “And I can’t see an injury everyone else can.”
I stared at the bruises Robb gave her. They were fading, but it didn’t make my frustration dissipate. “You could see them last week.”
“Not the bruises, Eric,” she exasperated, pointing at her shoulder. Unlike her bruises, her pink scar hadn’t faded. “My shoulder. There’s a scar, isn’t there?”
My eyes darted between her exposed skin and her expression. I didn’t know what to say. I could see it, and I knew exactly why she couldn’t. Luthicer’s memory wipe affected more than he had planned.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I managed. “I can take you home if you need me to—” I was too focused on getting her out of my house.
“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what happened that night,” she said. “I know I left with you.”
She had left after me, not with me. “I thought you didn’t remember anything.”
“Crystal told me.”
Of course she did.
“Did you hit me?” she asked.
“Hit you?” I stepped backwards, feeling as if she had punched me across the face. “Did I hit you?” My words strained against my throat. “Are you crazy?”
“How else do you explain this?” She was shaking, but so was I.
“I didn’t hurt you,” I said. Darthon did, but I couldn’t tell her that. “I saved you from your own friend. Why would I have done that if I hit you myself?”
The reminder flashed across her face, and she turned away as if I hadn’t already seen her expression.
“You know I wouldn’t do that,” I said, quieter this time. “But I can’t tell you what happened.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know.”
Her frustration turned to tears. “Why don’t I believe you?”
I had to remind myself that she had a knack for predicting liars. After she got to know me, even I wasn’t immune to her talent.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered.
She lifted her face, her blue eyes shifting over my expression. In seconds, her confusion fluttered away, and it was replaced with emptiness I never imagined I would see on her face when she looked at me.
“I hate you,” she said it like it was a fact, emotionless and undeniable.
My heart dropping was the only part of me that moved. Jessica, on the other hand, was out the door, leaving like it was the last time I would ever see her. I couldn’t allow it to happen.
I ran after her, barely containing my human form as I shot into the darkness. She opened her car door, but I slammed it shut. Breath hissed between her teeth, and I heard the air shift as she lifted her hand to hit me.
I grabbed her wrist in midair, and the blood in her veins shook beneath my grasp. I wrapped my arms around her before she could move again. “I’d never hurt you, Jessica,” I whispered. “Never. Even if you hurt me, I’d never consider laying a hand on you.”
I loosened my embrace, half-expecting her to smack me, but she curled her fingers against my shirt. “Do you know why I kissed you?” she asked.
It was the last question I was prepared to answer, and my silence grew when she pressed her ear to my chest. “You have this heartbeat − and I know it. I’ve dreamt about it.”
I already knew about her dreams. But I couldn’t talk about it. Not now. Not when Darthon was watching me.
“I think you need sleep,” I said, barely able to push her away. I had to close my eyes to say the rest. “But you can’t come here anymore. Understand me?”
The sound of her holding her breath was worse than her hateful words. I knew what she would do before she even grabbed her car door and opened it. “I wasn’t going to come back anyway,” she said, climbing inside.
I didn’t stop her this time. I had said everything I had to say to keep the secrets that guarded her life. It was the only reason I didn’t lose my control when she drove out of my driveway, screeching the tires as she did so. I was no better than the devil in her eyes. She didn’t need to know the real Satan was after her until Darthon was dead.
“You should’ve told her.” My father’s words didn’t faze me as they usually did. “It’d be easier.”
“Easier could also lead to the Dark’s death,” I retorted, but my voice wasn’t as confident as I planned to sound.
“Eric—”
“I don’t want to talk about this,” I said, drifting away into the dark. “I’ll be at the shelter.”
Jessica
I wasn’t sure what was worse − rejecting Eric, or the fact that he rejected me seconds later.
I was wrong from the beginning, and my guilt was more overwhelming than my confusion. Eric hadn’t attacked me, but someone had, and he knew what happened. His tone never sounded stilted when he talked to me. But I didn’t know why he would keep anything from me either. I was there for him when he was in the hospital, and he was there for me when Robb was drunk. His sudden shift in personality didn’t calculate. And it was the only reason I could stand at his locker and wait for his arrival.
Crystal had told me Robb was back from his suspension, so Eric must have been, too. I had yet to see either one of them, and classes were about to start. I would wait until classes started if that’s what it took to apologize to Eric. If I didn’t do it now, I was afraid I wouldn’t have an opportunity in homeroom.
“What are you doing here?”
I spun around, ready to face the boy I had accused. “Eric—” I stopped when I realized it wasn’t him. “Zac?”
“That’s what I prefer to be called,” he said, glancing from me to the locker I was leaned against. “You waiting for Welborn?”
I didn’t want to answer. “What are you doing here?”
His eyes lingered on the lockers. “I asked you that first.”
“It’s more appropriate for me to ask that question.”
He waved a piece of paper in the air. “I’m transferring, remember?”
I wished I didn’t, but I couldn’t deny it. Considering Eric’s locker was next to the office, Zac’s presence made sense, but mine didn’t. My locker was two yards away. I was about to excuse myself when his hand landed on the wall, inches from my face.
“Actually,” his voice lingered. “I was hoping to run into you.”
Zac always said the last thing I wanted to hear.
“Why?”
“I heard what Robb did.”
“I don’t want to talk to him − or you − about it,” I snapped, but he didn’t move away. In fact, he leaned closer.
“I thought you’d want to talk to someone.”
I stepped away. “I have Crystal, thanks.”
His lips slid into a smirk. “Interesting girl,” he said, but his focus remained on me. “I’ve been talking to her more.”
“Good for you.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“I’ve gotten closer to her.”
He was lying. Crystal was ignoring him, too. “And?”
“And she’s your friend,” he added.
Crystal was right. Everyone had lost their minds.
“That doesn’t mean I know everything about her,” I managed, glancing down the hallway, but Zac maneuvered into my vision.
“You seem to know a lot about other people,” he said, lowering his face so that his black hair swung in front of his eyes. He lifted his hand and tapped Eric’s locker. “Like Welborn.”
I crossed my arms, fighting the urge to leave. I wouldn’t let Zac scare me out of talking to Eric. I was staying. “He stood up for me—”
“Are you friends?”
I doubted Eric considered me one.
His face was glistening. “More than friends?”
Someone else answered for me. “Definitely not.”
I turned around to see Eric standing less than a foot away. His backpack was hanging off one shoulder, and he flipped his keys over his hands.
“Mind if you two have your meeting someplace else?” Eric slid his eyes to me. “Your locker doesn’t look occupied.”
Zac was between us. “So, you’re the guy who hit Robb,” he said it like it was a delightful thing.
Eric’s shoulders were squared. “Don’t tell me he sent someone else to get his revenge.”
Zac chuckled, but he rolled up his white sleeves. “I could care less about that,” he said, and Eric’s stern expression wavered for a millisecond. It was the first time I had seen it happen.
“So, we have nothing to talk about,” Eric said, brushing past Zac to his locker.
Zac stepped aside, and I sighed in relief too early. Zac laid a hand on Eric’s shoulder, and a burst of static electricity sizzled through the air. Both of them leapt back.
“Ouch.” Zac waved his fingers through the air. “Didn’t mean to—”
“What?” Eric snapped. “Touch me for no reason?”
Zac was grinning. “Didn’t think your bubble would be so small when you’re always getting into everyone else’s,” he said, laying his hand on my shoulder. I shook him off, but Zac didn’t seem to care. “Have a good day, Jess.”
