Chapter 6
The following days came by as is.
Normal, flowing days. Josie and Aaron were still close…yet they felt distant. Josie once lashed out at me, then apologized and said her and Aaron were having their first big relationship fight. I talked to Aaron about it, but he only told me they were fine. ‘Fine’. I was beginning to feel the only reason they were together was because of that silver ring on Josie’s finger, but after a couple days later, even that was gone.
Damon and I…were complicated. We weren’t together. We weren’t not together. Yet he’d become one of my closest friends. He was so reliable. You could ask him to break your ex’s legs and he’d do it without getting caught. He was also so caring. He was also worried about Aaron and Jo’s relationship. How they’d built the bricks for four years, and now the wolf had blown it down. Each day they were falling apart…yet they’d walk the halls together. Silently, but together. Josie was drifting. Anyone could tell something was wrong, because she would apologize for every single little thing, she’d burst into sobs if she failed a test…
It was all because she wasn’t pregnant. She hadn’t lied to Damon and I – but the baby, which probably didn’t look like anything, had died. Everyone knew it was super hard on her and Aaron both.
And every single day I’d wake up and that’d the first thing I’d remember. I killed Josie’s baby. If it weren’t for me…if it weren’t for me saying those three simple letters to Logan, we’d be okay. Josie and Aaron wouldn’t have a thick scar on their stomach and on their shoulder. No one would have the memory of that night on their minds…except Damon and I.
We had told eachother so much. I’d told him things I couldn’t tell to either of the loviedovies. I’d told him about Terrence, he told me about his sister. Yet he hasn’t told me why he’s doing community service, and he understands that I don’t want to talk about why I’m forced with Fredrick.
That’s another reason why I like him. He understands. He doesn’t just go, “aw, I’m sorry!” He knows what I’m going through. Partly. And we’re so alike in so many ways…yet the complete opposite. He loves roller coasters, roller coasters are like monsters beneath my bed. He likes screamo music, I tried to listen to it but got a headache. He finds people who wear flip flops and knee-high socks annoying, I do it all the time. He thinks Ferris Wheels are boring, I do too. He thinks Cecelia Martin is an annoying bitch from the Red Sea, I do too. He thinks the color grey has actual meaning to it…I totally agree with him.
The library hours seemed to go slower. It was both good and bad. Good – the hours with Damon seemed to go slower, so I had more time with him. Bad – because his sudden silence every time we mention that night killed us both.
It was the Tuesday of the following week after that night Fredrick showed it to me. Damon wasn’t there – he’d ‘called in’ sick.
I yawned, stood up from the wooden table, and walked slowly to her. I slammed the paper down. “You say I can’t spell. It’s ‘u-n-k-n-o-w-n.’ Not unkown.” I rubbed my eyes, glancing at the clock. I usually spent two hours there – I had forty five more minutes before hell released me.
She ignored me. “Did you read the entire thing, Miss Eich?” I nodded. “Did you know your father investigated that case, but never found anything?”
That shook me awake. My dad was the Assistant Director of the Morganville Police Department. He told me once that he never had a case that was unsolved. What a liar.
“Dad hasn’t solved it yet?” I asked.
“No, he hasn’t. The family was missing all but one person – the son. Rumors have it he managed to escape. Others think he was buried in the basement, but that theory has been resolved – there was no skeleton.” Chills were running down my back.
“What year was this?”
“1943. The files were passed down. He reopened the investigation in around 1990, but all the evidence of possibly a homicide were gone.”
I froze. “Homicide?”
“You said you read it!”
“Well…”
“Doesn’t matter. Sacramento had around fifteen homicides in a month, Miss Eich. The month of August. Their family lived next to an apple orchard. For years that orchard wouldn’t produce a single bud – but after their death, it grew like babies.” She sighed. “The father was in the military. No one knows for certain, but he was said to have been taken to Germany. Possibly died in a gas chamber by the Nazis.”
“What happened to the family?”
“Like I said – possibly a murder. But the family had three children, and only two were found. The middle child, who was never identified, was gone. The youngest had a knife though the chest, the eldest had gunshot wounds to the middle back, and the mother was decapitated. No one heard their screams – not even their closest neighbor. That’s why there’s another rumor that they all went insane and killed eachother, but there aren’t many believers.” She met my eyes. “Your father investigated every single one – but there was no trace of anything. Nothing was proven.”
I swallowed really hard. “Is the orchard still there?”
She shook her head. “After the first picking, someone set it afire.”
I was still in shock by the father being put in a gas chamber, and hearing that the middle child was unknown…
I thought back to the second day of meeting Damon. What I had read in that book…it said the father was part of the government, also. Not just the military. Government conspiracy.
“Are you alright, Miss Eich?”
I nodded, completely lying. I had brown hair. I could put two and two together. The one two was that Damon’s father was part of a government conspiracy. The other two was that he didn’t mention any other siblings beside his dead sister…
Aaron had told me about this book he was reading. He told me how it said when you die, your soul either goes to Heaven or Hell. It never said anything about if you don’t make it…
“Where was this?” I whispered.
“About two miles away. A town called Francis, named after Sir Francis Drake. No one knows why, but it is.”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“Telling me this. I’ll have to share it with Damon.”
Telling Damon was the first thing I had to do. But I needed to talk to my father. Immediately.
I ran home, slammed the door shut, and charged into my Daddy’s study.
“Jesus, Zaylie!” He exclaimed, whirling around from the computer. “What is it?”
I took a seat on the couch. “Daddy, I need information on a case you had.”
He raised his eyebrows at me. “I would ask which one, but I couldn’t give you anything on it anyway.”
“Then…tell me a little about it. Please!”
“Alright, geez! What do you need it for?”
“Mrs. Fredrick.” I took a deep breath. “The case about that family in 194…3. Yeah, 1943. What happened?”
He narrowed his eyes. “How do you know about that case?”
“Because I do. Answer my question.”
He rolled his eyes, slouching back against his seat. “Okay, well…we never found the boy. No one knows what in the Lord’s name happened to him. The girl…the girl was never found, either.”
“What girl?”
“We think there was another girl that went missing. A cousin, or possibly a girlfriend.” My heart spun. “Anyway, the two, if there were two, were never found again. No evidence of there ever being two other people.”
“Then how did you know about the other girl?”
“They did have neighbors, Zaylie. One lady claims the mother was a witch. Others say she was schizophrenic.”
“But…why? Like, why did they think that?”
He took a deep breath. “They claimed every time she had a child, she’s performed her own c section.” My own stomach lurched. “Gossip, mostly. It’s not like it has to be true, and I bet you it isn’t.”
I shook my head. “Wouldn’t there be scars?”
“You’d think so.” He bit his lip. “Zaylie, that case was the most, I think, scariest and gruesome case I’ve ever laid eyes on. The intense...let me choose my words wisely here…the intense pressure of the horrifying mystery. This wasn’t a Scooby-Doo case by all means.” I’d never seen my dad so worked up! “The reason I had to drop it was because the Board of Directors forced me to. I wasn’t going to give up. So, after they thought I dropped it, I still investigated. It was dangerous, but I needed to know. I-”
“What was their last name?”
“Uh…let me think…I don’t know it off hand, sorry.” He swallowed. “The farthest I got was one thing, Zee. One simple word that fit that family perfectly.” He stitched his eyebrows together. “Loneliness.”
The way my father had said it made everything else in the world so colorful, while I suddenly felt grey and black and dull.
As I laid on my bed, thinking and not sleeping, I couldn’t help but feel that thing I feel when I’m with Damon grow stronger. Even after all the things I think I know…I was still falling for him? And I was hoping he wasn’t a heartless bastard.
What the hell was happening to him? If he really was the boy who ran away…why is he still alive? He’d be sixty some. Maybe seventy. Eighty…
He’s eighteen now. He’s still in high school. He has abs. He looks twenty one. He said his dad worked for a conspiracy… Did they have pools back then with diving boards? Did they have camcorders? He never mentioned any other siblings. I’ve known Damon for two weeks now…two weeks and it seems as though we’ve known eachother since Pre K. Is it possible about what Aaron had read? Is reality real? Was it ever real?
*~*
I couldn’t have been more insane. Damon was not some weird ghost contraption. He was…well, Damon. He enjoyed getting headaches. He enjoyed mathematics. He enjoyed goofing off to get Fredrick pissed. He enjoyed my company…didn’t he?
I would’ve asked him about it. Would’ve asked him if he knew anything. I could’ve asked him if he was the boy who went missing.
I was rehearsing my lines over and over again, my umbrella protecting me from the downpour, when I ran face-first into him. He gripped my shoulder to keep me from tipping backward. I looked up at him. He wasn’t wearing anything to keep the rain from getting in his per…face. So water was running down, from his soaked hair. His shirt and jeans were already water-polluted. Then I noticed his expression. He was crying. Was he crying? His eyes were so sad. So filled with emotion. His grip on my arm lifted, and soon he was clutching his head.
“Damon!” I squealed as he collapsed to his knees. I wrapped my arm around his shoulders. “Damon, answer me! Are you alright?”
I suddenly realized what was happening. Well, I had no clue what the hell was happening, but I suddenly saw the blood running down from elsewhere. I couldn’t see where, but the dark liquid ran down his sides, his arms as he clutched his head. His face had blood running down…
“Damon!” I screamed. I looked all around me. No one was even looking at us. No one was noticing us. Hearing us. They drove and walked right by. No one cared…
I jolted awake. Sweat drenched my body. No, that wasn’t sweat…that was water.
I swallowed, sitting up. The sheets were drenched in water. I groaned, looking around. I moved to the edge, and suddenly I was being squirted at. I stood up, squealing. I whirled around. My waterbed had popped. Popped! It was Wednesday. Of all days. The middle of the week. A school day.
Once I finally got the squirting to stop, I took a quick shower, dressed, wolfed down a glass of milk because no such thing as ‘groceries’ seemed to exist in that madhouse, and charged to school.
I got there a bit late. I took my seat in homeroom next to the red-haired super-pale girl, Emilia.
“Hey, Zaylie!” She cheered, clutching her Breaking Dawn book. The Twilight series seemed to be the best thing that happened to everyone else but me. I’ve read them all. I think Jacob’s a hot bastard and Edward’s a sexy over-protective bastard and Bella’s just the bitch of them all. Emmett’s my monkey-man. Rosalie’s just plain whore. Alice seems to be normal. Jasper looks and sounds like he was shot in the butt during the Civil War, and he still has horrible convulsions of pain once in a while. Especially in Eclipse. Eek.
“Hey, Emily.” She preferred to be Emily, and said that was a nickname. I don’t see how it’s a nickname if it’s a real name. Just like most Bobs are actually Roberts.
She wiggled her eyebrows at me. “Did you see that really hot new kid? I think his name is Damon. He’s really hot. I’ve heard he’s a math whiz!”
I rolled my eyes, hiding the nausea of knowing Damon. Maybe, I should say. “Yeah. Damon’s one of my best friends.”
Her eyes widened. “You’re freaking kidding me!”
I shook my head. “I’ve known him for weeks now. He just moved here.”
“Whoa.” She clutched tighter to her book. “Is he a vampire?”
After the bell rang and I was seated in Art did I realize Damon was sitting and staring right across from me. I stared right back at him…even though the really horrible pain in my stomach told me he was dangerous.
I knew I was exaggerating when I thought Damon had anything to do with the case. I was just thinking, and usually when I think, it’s wrong. So that’s why I was able to stare at him back. Because I had no idea if it was actually true or not. Did Damon Slade die in 1943? Was he born is 1926? Would he lie if I asked him?
It took me a while, but I realized Damon wasn’t smiling. He hadn’t been smiling. Lord…what if he was Edward Cullen?! What if he was some kind of evil demon that could read me like an essay? That way he’d know what I thought…what I was thinking of.
“Miss Eich.” There goes my name. My name is Zaylie, but every other grownup calls me Miss Eich. It’s really annoying.
“Yes?” I said, forcing my gaze to rotate toward the teacher.
“What paper are you supposed to you for your pastel drawing?”
I swallowed. “The…um…fuzzy paper.” I glanced at Damon, who would usually be laughing like the rest of the class. But he wasn’t cracking anything. He was doodling on his hand. I noticed like a snap of the fingers he was tracing over something. And he had that same look that he had in my dream.
After class, I fell over everyone trying to get out the door. Once I managed, I spotted Damon walking quite quickly down the hall. He wasn’t paying attention to the girls that tried to crawl all over him. He was just swiftly walking down the hall.
I ran after him, through the crowds, ignoring the cheerleaders, ignoring the Goths, the gays, the lesbians…
“Damon!” I walked right in front of him, making sure he couldn’t pass through. “Are you okay?”
He wasn’t meeting my eyes anymore. Dammit, I hated it when people didn’t do that when they made it a game to try and catch your gaze all the time. I lightly nudged his side. I didn’t care about feeling his abs. “Tell me.”
“No, you tell me.” Finally, his gaze was on me. But he was staring at me with cold eyes. No happiness was in those eyes. Only one word fit the emotion in his eyes…
I decided to play. “Well…I’m not okay. I’m worried.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re depressed about something.”
“Am I?” His jaw was clenched. “I think you can explain why.”
I wanted to start bawling. And not because it might’ve been my time of the month. “Look, Damon…I don’t know what you’re talking about. But I desperately want to help.”
“You know what I’m talking about, Zaylie! I can see it! The way you weren’t smiling in Art like you always do. The way I wasn’t there yesterday at the library. The way I know Tuesdays are when you edit the documents for Fredrick.” I really was starting to cry. “I’m amazed at the way you can just stand there talking to me.” Suddenly he was gripping his head, his eyes squeezed shut, his books sprawled on the floor. Just like my dream – though there was no blood, no rain. Except it was raining outside.
“Damon!” I squealed. Everyone was in classes. Teachers always closed their doors. Not knowing what else I could do in a panic-situation like that, I simply hugged him. I wrapped my arms around his neck and hugged him. After a moment or so, I felt arms wrap around my back.
After the embrace, he took a step back. He was staring at me now, not the walls or the floor or his shoes. “Zaylie…”
“All I need to know is…is if…everything is true.”
He sighed. “What all do you know?”
I swallowed, more like gulped. “Well…the fact Fredrick and my dad both said about the middle child going missing in 1943 at an orchard farm. And how the father was taken to the military, and possibly killed in a Nazi camp. How they found the mother and the other two children all dead. How the neighbors claimed the mother was completely insane.” I looked up at him. “I wouldn’t have known….known if Fredrick hadn’t said about the government. How your father was part of the government.” I shook my head. “And how you just appeared here!”
“First of all, I did just appear here. My father was apart of the government conspiracy. My mother was insane. I did run away. My family all died on me. I was the only Slade left living. I am, technically, eighty four years old. But I’m not if you think about it. People don’t age when they die, do they?”
I felt small compared to him. He was towering over me. He could probably hear my heart beating. I knew he knew I was crying. Because I was. My heart was heavy. My entire body felt numb. He answered every single question I’d managed to ask him in about four breaths. No stuttering. I wondered if he could cry. The one word that fit the emotion in his eyes was still there. Plain and simple.
Loneliness.
Emptiness.
To Be Continued
The following days came by as is.
Normal, flowing days. Josie and Aaron were still close…yet they felt distant. Josie once lashed out at me, then apologized and said her and Aaron were having their first big relationship fight. I talked to Aaron about it, but he only told me they were fine. ‘Fine’. I was beginning to feel the only reason they were together was because of that silver ring on Josie’s finger, but after a couple days later, even that was gone.
Damon and I…were complicated. We weren’t together. We weren’t not together. Yet he’d become one of my closest friends. He was so reliable. You could ask him to break your ex’s legs and he’d do it without getting caught. He was also so caring. He was also worried about Aaron and Jo’s relationship. How they’d built the bricks for four years, and now the wolf had blown it down. Each day they were falling apart…yet they’d walk the halls together. Silently, but together. Josie was drifting. Anyone could tell something was wrong, because she would apologize for every single little thing, she’d burst into sobs if she failed a test…
It was all because she wasn’t pregnant. She hadn’t lied to Damon and I – but the baby, which probably didn’t look like anything, had died. Everyone knew it was super hard on her and Aaron both.
And every single day I’d wake up and that’d the first thing I’d remember. I killed Josie’s baby. If it weren’t for me…if it weren’t for me saying those three simple letters to Logan, we’d be okay. Josie and Aaron wouldn’t have a thick scar on their stomach and on their shoulder. No one would have the memory of that night on their minds…except Damon and I.
We had told eachother so much. I’d told him things I couldn’t tell to either of the loviedovies. I’d told him about Terrence, he told me about his sister. Yet he hasn’t told me why he’s doing community service, and he understands that I don’t want to talk about why I’m forced with Fredrick.
That’s another reason why I like him. He understands. He doesn’t just go, “aw, I’m sorry!” He knows what I’m going through. Partly. And we’re so alike in so many ways…yet the complete opposite. He loves roller coasters, roller coasters are like monsters beneath my bed. He likes screamo music, I tried to listen to it but got a headache. He finds people who wear flip flops and knee-high socks annoying, I do it all the time. He thinks Ferris Wheels are boring, I do too. He thinks Cecelia Martin is an annoying bitch from the Red Sea, I do too. He thinks the color grey has actual meaning to it…I totally agree with him.
The library hours seemed to go slower. It was both good and bad. Good – the hours with Damon seemed to go slower, so I had more time with him. Bad – because his sudden silence every time we mention that night killed us both.
It was the Tuesday of the following week after that night Fredrick showed it to me. Damon wasn’t there – he’d ‘called in’ sick.
I yawned, stood up from the wooden table, and walked slowly to her. I slammed the paper down. “You say I can’t spell. It’s ‘u-n-k-n-o-w-n.’ Not unkown.” I rubbed my eyes, glancing at the clock. I usually spent two hours there – I had forty five more minutes before hell released me.
She ignored me. “Did you read the entire thing, Miss Eich?” I nodded. “Did you know your father investigated that case, but never found anything?”
That shook me awake. My dad was the Assistant Director of the Morganville Police Department. He told me once that he never had a case that was unsolved. What a liar.
“Dad hasn’t solved it yet?” I asked.
“No, he hasn’t. The family was missing all but one person – the son. Rumors have it he managed to escape. Others think he was buried in the basement, but that theory has been resolved – there was no skeleton.” Chills were running down my back.
“What year was this?”
“1943. The files were passed down. He reopened the investigation in around 1990, but all the evidence of possibly a homicide were gone.”
I froze. “Homicide?”
“You said you read it!”
“Well…”
“Doesn’t matter. Sacramento had around fifteen homicides in a month, Miss Eich. The month of August. Their family lived next to an apple orchard. For years that orchard wouldn’t produce a single bud – but after their death, it grew like babies.” She sighed. “The father was in the military. No one knows for certain, but he was said to have been taken to Germany. Possibly died in a gas chamber by the Nazis.”
“What happened to the family?”
“Like I said – possibly a murder. But the family had three children, and only two were found. The middle child, who was never identified, was gone. The youngest had a knife though the chest, the eldest had gunshot wounds to the middle back, and the mother was decapitated. No one heard their screams – not even their closest neighbor. That’s why there’s another rumor that they all went insane and killed eachother, but there aren’t many believers.” She met my eyes. “Your father investigated every single one – but there was no trace of anything. Nothing was proven.”
I swallowed really hard. “Is the orchard still there?”
She shook her head. “After the first picking, someone set it afire.”
I was still in shock by the father being put in a gas chamber, and hearing that the middle child was unknown…
I thought back to the second day of meeting Damon. What I had read in that book…it said the father was part of the government, also. Not just the military. Government conspiracy.
“Are you alright, Miss Eich?”
I nodded, completely lying. I had brown hair. I could put two and two together. The one two was that Damon’s father was part of a government conspiracy. The other two was that he didn’t mention any other siblings beside his dead sister…
Aaron had told me about this book he was reading. He told me how it said when you die, your soul either goes to Heaven or Hell. It never said anything about if you don’t make it…
“Where was this?” I whispered.
“About two miles away. A town called Francis, named after Sir Francis Drake. No one knows why, but it is.”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“Telling me this. I’ll have to share it with Damon.”
Telling Damon was the first thing I had to do. But I needed to talk to my father. Immediately.
I ran home, slammed the door shut, and charged into my Daddy’s study.
“Jesus, Zaylie!” He exclaimed, whirling around from the computer. “What is it?”
I took a seat on the couch. “Daddy, I need information on a case you had.”
He raised his eyebrows at me. “I would ask which one, but I couldn’t give you anything on it anyway.”
“Then…tell me a little about it. Please!”
“Alright, geez! What do you need it for?”
“Mrs. Fredrick.” I took a deep breath. “The case about that family in 194…3. Yeah, 1943. What happened?”
He narrowed his eyes. “How do you know about that case?”
“Because I do. Answer my question.”
He rolled his eyes, slouching back against his seat. “Okay, well…we never found the boy. No one knows what in the Lord’s name happened to him. The girl…the girl was never found, either.”
“What girl?”
“We think there was another girl that went missing. A cousin, or possibly a girlfriend.” My heart spun. “Anyway, the two, if there were two, were never found again. No evidence of there ever being two other people.”
“Then how did you know about the other girl?”
“They did have neighbors, Zaylie. One lady claims the mother was a witch. Others say she was schizophrenic.”
“But…why? Like, why did they think that?”
He took a deep breath. “They claimed every time she had a child, she’s performed her own c section.” My own stomach lurched. “Gossip, mostly. It’s not like it has to be true, and I bet you it isn’t.”
I shook my head. “Wouldn’t there be scars?”
“You’d think so.” He bit his lip. “Zaylie, that case was the most, I think, scariest and gruesome case I’ve ever laid eyes on. The intense...let me choose my words wisely here…the intense pressure of the horrifying mystery. This wasn’t a Scooby-Doo case by all means.” I’d never seen my dad so worked up! “The reason I had to drop it was because the Board of Directors forced me to. I wasn’t going to give up. So, after they thought I dropped it, I still investigated. It was dangerous, but I needed to know. I-”
“What was their last name?”
“Uh…let me think…I don’t know it off hand, sorry.” He swallowed. “The farthest I got was one thing, Zee. One simple word that fit that family perfectly.” He stitched his eyebrows together. “Loneliness.”
The way my father had said it made everything else in the world so colorful, while I suddenly felt grey and black and dull.
As I laid on my bed, thinking and not sleeping, I couldn’t help but feel that thing I feel when I’m with Damon grow stronger. Even after all the things I think I know…I was still falling for him? And I was hoping he wasn’t a heartless bastard.
What the hell was happening to him? If he really was the boy who ran away…why is he still alive? He’d be sixty some. Maybe seventy. Eighty…
He’s eighteen now. He’s still in high school. He has abs. He looks twenty one. He said his dad worked for a conspiracy… Did they have pools back then with diving boards? Did they have camcorders? He never mentioned any other siblings. I’ve known Damon for two weeks now…two weeks and it seems as though we’ve known eachother since Pre K. Is it possible about what Aaron had read? Is reality real? Was it ever real?
*~*
I couldn’t have been more insane. Damon was not some weird ghost contraption. He was…well, Damon. He enjoyed getting headaches. He enjoyed mathematics. He enjoyed goofing off to get Fredrick pissed. He enjoyed my company…didn’t he?
I would’ve asked him about it. Would’ve asked him if he knew anything. I could’ve asked him if he was the boy who went missing.
I was rehearsing my lines over and over again, my umbrella protecting me from the downpour, when I ran face-first into him. He gripped my shoulder to keep me from tipping backward. I looked up at him. He wasn’t wearing anything to keep the rain from getting in his per…face. So water was running down, from his soaked hair. His shirt and jeans were already water-polluted. Then I noticed his expression. He was crying. Was he crying? His eyes were so sad. So filled with emotion. His grip on my arm lifted, and soon he was clutching his head.
“Damon!” I squealed as he collapsed to his knees. I wrapped my arm around his shoulders. “Damon, answer me! Are you alright?”
I suddenly realized what was happening. Well, I had no clue what the hell was happening, but I suddenly saw the blood running down from elsewhere. I couldn’t see where, but the dark liquid ran down his sides, his arms as he clutched his head. His face had blood running down…
“Damon!” I screamed. I looked all around me. No one was even looking at us. No one was noticing us. Hearing us. They drove and walked right by. No one cared…
I jolted awake. Sweat drenched my body. No, that wasn’t sweat…that was water.
I swallowed, sitting up. The sheets were drenched in water. I groaned, looking around. I moved to the edge, and suddenly I was being squirted at. I stood up, squealing. I whirled around. My waterbed had popped. Popped! It was Wednesday. Of all days. The middle of the week. A school day.
Once I finally got the squirting to stop, I took a quick shower, dressed, wolfed down a glass of milk because no such thing as ‘groceries’ seemed to exist in that madhouse, and charged to school.
I got there a bit late. I took my seat in homeroom next to the red-haired super-pale girl, Emilia.
“Hey, Zaylie!” She cheered, clutching her Breaking Dawn book. The Twilight series seemed to be the best thing that happened to everyone else but me. I’ve read them all. I think Jacob’s a hot bastard and Edward’s a sexy over-protective bastard and Bella’s just the bitch of them all. Emmett’s my monkey-man. Rosalie’s just plain whore. Alice seems to be normal. Jasper looks and sounds like he was shot in the butt during the Civil War, and he still has horrible convulsions of pain once in a while. Especially in Eclipse. Eek.
“Hey, Emily.” She preferred to be Emily, and said that was a nickname. I don’t see how it’s a nickname if it’s a real name. Just like most Bobs are actually Roberts.
She wiggled her eyebrows at me. “Did you see that really hot new kid? I think his name is Damon. He’s really hot. I’ve heard he’s a math whiz!”
I rolled my eyes, hiding the nausea of knowing Damon. Maybe, I should say. “Yeah. Damon’s one of my best friends.”
Her eyes widened. “You’re freaking kidding me!”
I shook my head. “I’ve known him for weeks now. He just moved here.”
“Whoa.” She clutched tighter to her book. “Is he a vampire?”
After the bell rang and I was seated in Art did I realize Damon was sitting and staring right across from me. I stared right back at him…even though the really horrible pain in my stomach told me he was dangerous.
I knew I was exaggerating when I thought Damon had anything to do with the case. I was just thinking, and usually when I think, it’s wrong. So that’s why I was able to stare at him back. Because I had no idea if it was actually true or not. Did Damon Slade die in 1943? Was he born is 1926? Would he lie if I asked him?
It took me a while, but I realized Damon wasn’t smiling. He hadn’t been smiling. Lord…what if he was Edward Cullen?! What if he was some kind of evil demon that could read me like an essay? That way he’d know what I thought…what I was thinking of.
“Miss Eich.” There goes my name. My name is Zaylie, but every other grownup calls me Miss Eich. It’s really annoying.
“Yes?” I said, forcing my gaze to rotate toward the teacher.
“What paper are you supposed to you for your pastel drawing?”
I swallowed. “The…um…fuzzy paper.” I glanced at Damon, who would usually be laughing like the rest of the class. But he wasn’t cracking anything. He was doodling on his hand. I noticed like a snap of the fingers he was tracing over something. And he had that same look that he had in my dream.
After class, I fell over everyone trying to get out the door. Once I managed, I spotted Damon walking quite quickly down the hall. He wasn’t paying attention to the girls that tried to crawl all over him. He was just swiftly walking down the hall.
I ran after him, through the crowds, ignoring the cheerleaders, ignoring the Goths, the gays, the lesbians…
“Damon!” I walked right in front of him, making sure he couldn’t pass through. “Are you okay?”
He wasn’t meeting my eyes anymore. Dammit, I hated it when people didn’t do that when they made it a game to try and catch your gaze all the time. I lightly nudged his side. I didn’t care about feeling his abs. “Tell me.”
“No, you tell me.” Finally, his gaze was on me. But he was staring at me with cold eyes. No happiness was in those eyes. Only one word fit the emotion in his eyes…
I decided to play. “Well…I’m not okay. I’m worried.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re depressed about something.”
“Am I?” His jaw was clenched. “I think you can explain why.”
I wanted to start bawling. And not because it might’ve been my time of the month. “Look, Damon…I don’t know what you’re talking about. But I desperately want to help.”
“You know what I’m talking about, Zaylie! I can see it! The way you weren’t smiling in Art like you always do. The way I wasn’t there yesterday at the library. The way I know Tuesdays are when you edit the documents for Fredrick.” I really was starting to cry. “I’m amazed at the way you can just stand there talking to me.” Suddenly he was gripping his head, his eyes squeezed shut, his books sprawled on the floor. Just like my dream – though there was no blood, no rain. Except it was raining outside.
“Damon!” I squealed. Everyone was in classes. Teachers always closed their doors. Not knowing what else I could do in a panic-situation like that, I simply hugged him. I wrapped my arms around his neck and hugged him. After a moment or so, I felt arms wrap around my back.
After the embrace, he took a step back. He was staring at me now, not the walls or the floor or his shoes. “Zaylie…”
“All I need to know is…is if…everything is true.”
He sighed. “What all do you know?”
I swallowed, more like gulped. “Well…the fact Fredrick and my dad both said about the middle child going missing in 1943 at an orchard farm. And how the father was taken to the military, and possibly killed in a Nazi camp. How they found the mother and the other two children all dead. How the neighbors claimed the mother was completely insane.” I looked up at him. “I wouldn’t have known….known if Fredrick hadn’t said about the government. How your father was part of the government.” I shook my head. “And how you just appeared here!”
“First of all, I did just appear here. My father was apart of the government conspiracy. My mother was insane. I did run away. My family all died on me. I was the only Slade left living. I am, technically, eighty four years old. But I’m not if you think about it. People don’t age when they die, do they?”
I felt small compared to him. He was towering over me. He could probably hear my heart beating. I knew he knew I was crying. Because I was. My heart was heavy. My entire body felt numb. He answered every single question I’d managed to ask him in about four breaths. No stuttering. I wondered if he could cry. The one word that fit the emotion in his eyes was still there. Plain and simple.
Loneliness.
Emptiness.
To Be Continued
