CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Friday night, Snow decided to eat dinner out on the office cabin porch. The cold lingering in the air pricked at his skin, but it didn't bother him. Kylie and Freddie had invited him to sit with them but he declined.
Not that he didn't feel rude about it, but it was hard to be in a room full of people who stared at him. Yup, Diego had told Freddie about Snow's healing power, and then Freddie told Perry, and... wouldn't you know it, news spread around like the sound of a gunshot. Not a single person didn't look his way when he walked in through the door, even though they looked away just as quickly.
"Your pattern's never changed, so they're getting bored," Freddie whispered to his ear in an apologetic tone.
That was irritating, too. He felt like the clown who failed to make his viewers laugh. And he didn't like the idea one bit. But the irritation couldn't compare to his... attraction. Yes, he admitted it. He was attracted to Diego. He didn't even look at him as a blood-sucking monster anymore, just a person who had a rough life and never had guidance or comfort until now. And that made it even harder to be around him.
Snow had evaded him since yesterday. He even stayed in his room until Diego left first. He had enough to worry about other than his attraction.
"How much longer do you think you can avoid me?" a deep, masculine voice sounded off the porch.
Snow knew who's voice it was, and was afraid to be right. He slowly looked up. Yup, he was right.
Diego settled down on the chair next to his.
"I... I'm just..." he trailed off.
"Disgusted?" His tone held accusation and hurt.
Disbelief and confusion swirled in his head. "Why would I be disgusted?" he asked.
"Because I'm a friggin' vampire. Because you're ashamed that you like me." Snow's jaw dropped. Diego continued, "Because you're scared to be with a vampire."
How could Diego think that way? He'd already learned to see past the exterior of the vampire.
"No, I'm not ashamed," Snow argued. "I'm just... I don't want this."
"Don't want what?"
Confusion swirled in his head. He thought hardly until a first thought came to mind. "I'm not gay, Diego." His tone sounder harsher than he wanted.
His heart skipped a beat, but he wasn't planning on admitting it. Even if Diego knew if was a lie.
"Did I say you were?" He said in a lighter tone as if trying to lighten the tension.
Except he wasn't feeling it. His mind mostly wound to Diego's sexy feature, and that made it even harder to focus.
Stop me!
He dropped his plate of sliced pineapple pizza and darted off the porch. Away from Diego. And that felt wrong.
"Is this how it's going to be from now on?" Diego asked loudly, enough for the students in the dining hall to hear him.
Snow turned around and shushed him. The last thing he wanted was for someone else to know about them. "They can hear you."
"They can smell you," Diego countered. "Vampires and werewolves can smell when you're attracted to somone. And faes can read your emotions. And I'm betting you're uncomfortable because you don't like the idea of being attracted to me."
"I'm not supposed to be attracted to you." Rage started rising in Snow's chest, though he wasn't sure if he was upset with his attraction or his recently messed up life. "I'm not even supposed to be here. I'm supposed to finish my high school years as a swimmer champion. I'm supposed to be with my friends. I'm supposed to be human!"
Diego's eyes flinched. "Is this what it's all about? You not wanting to be supernatural? You don't want to be at Shadow Falls and have to accept the fact that you're not human?" His voice grew harsher by the seconds. His eyes glowed a slight red. "You need a reality check, man! First of all, you're here now. Second, you're attracted to me, and it's time you face that. And third of all, you are supernatural whether you want to be or not." He pointed at his own chest. " I wasn't supposed to be supernatural. And yet I got pulled into this world, but at least I'm dealing. There are a whole lot of shit in the world, man. It's not supposed to be black and white. That's how I see it, and that is how I deal."
Snow's rage grew to the point that he wanted to scream and punch. "And I'm betting that your way of dealing has nothing to do with you wanting to leave behind your life at the foster program, where you never had the chance to even find out who your parents were." He flinched internally at those words.
Diego's eyes burned with a bright red color that made him look anything but human, but he didn't speak. He just stood there. Fangs elongated underneath his upper lips, and then he started growling like a beast.
Snow was way past being afraid at this point.
Diego walked forward until Snow felt his breath.
"You don't know anything," he spit through his fangs. He looked angry enough to kill.
Diego darted past him into the forest. Snow looked over his shoulder at where the branches wiggled by Diego's impacting speed, and felt guilty about it.
How he could like someone he didn't want? But the truth was, he couldn't worry about it for now. He had enough on the plate to wallow about. He still hadn't figured out who his birth parents were, how his powers worked. And most of all, he still hadn't figured out what he was or how he fit into this new world.
Maybe if he figured things out, he could make other decisions. Like admitting to others that he was attracted to Diego, and telling everyone that the Whites were his adopted parents. Not that he would've looked forward to the admission.
Snow reeled from his conversation with Diego and the feelings that came with it, which were enough to keep him up for most of the night. He hardly slept at all.
He worried about seeing Diego in the cabin living room when he walked out. Not that he had to worry long. The vampire's bedroom door was wide open. Freddie and Michael had already occupied the living room.
That made him feel worse.
Oh, great, he thought. He was going to be in a gloomy mood for the entire day. And tomorrow was gonna be even worse. He didn't even want to think about it, so he got ready for school and tried to put his mind on the lessons.
But it didn't help that much. Every now and then, his mind disobeyed and wound back to Diego, who didn't even show up in class or Campmate Hour. When the teachers called Diego's name, Snow or some of his classmates came up with some excuse about running errands. Freddie joked about the vamp lacking some AB positive in his system. Not that Snow was in a good enough mood to appreciate the humor.
"Snow," Kylie called him around noon. "Holiday's asked me to run some errands in town, but my friends are busy and I need a few people to help me. So, I want to ask, are you free for the afternoon?"
He could use a reprieve from Diego and all his other issues, so he answered, "Sure, no problem."
The ones who accompanied them were Snow's roommate Michael, whom Kylie's boyfriend Lucas had asked to accompany them in his place, and Mandy, the giggly and friendly fae. Snow remembered her from Campmate hour, when she French kissed the warlock student she got paired up with. They got to town with a minivan borrowed from Holiday.
Michael and Mandy went to the store for teacher supplies while Kylie and Snow went to the bookstore.
"Mrs. James placed an order here last week," Kylie told the clerk when they walked in, and handed over a paper form. "She told us to come pick it up today."
The clerk held up an index finger and said, "One minute." He walked into the back of the store.
Snow used the time to take in the place. It was small for a bookshop. It looked large enough to make a sweet living room, but with three bookshelves placed in the center and two placed against the walls, it looked pretty tight. The open gap between the shelves was so little that it could only fit one person.
"I've never been to this town before," he told Kylie. "It sure is different from all the other towns I'd been to."
"What, you lived in big cities all your life?" Kylie asked jokingly.
"Well, my parents and I -" Thoughts about his parents brought back some of the ache of being absent from them, and the secret they'd been keeping from him. "- we lived in Florida until I was six. Then we moved to Texas. Every summer, Mom and Dad took two weeks off to take me traveling. I've been to places like Guam, Greece, Thailand, even Costa Rica. Nice places, nice people, but horrible smell. Especially some of the foods. It almost made me never want to go near those countries again." He realized that he was smiling.
Kylie chuckled.
"I've never been to many places," she admitted. "My dad takes me camping every year in the woods, and we mostly go as far as Lake Tahoe."
Different experiences, but just as important, Snow thought. Important because they had families who loved them. He will always be thankful to have them in his life. He didn't have to walk away from them. But he couldn't walk away from his new life, either. Not when it contained so much he didn't know about, and so much he wanted to learn.
Kylie gave a sympathetic look.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I know it must be hard. Finding out you're supernatural and having to hide it from the people you love."
Her sympathy took him in, and engulfed him like a safe bubble. He told this to Freddie and Diego, and even Holiday, but something about the girl's kind gaze made him want to open up even more. "The hardest part of it is... knowing that you can't ever tell them when you know that you can trust them. I used to tell them everything." Except about my homosexuality and now my species. "Not even my pal, Benny, knows as much. But now..." He sighed. "It's like a big part of me had to be kept hidden. And I don't even know what I am yet."
"Shh!" Kylie shushed and put a finger between her lips.
Snow sighed and spoke lower. "But if I am going to tell the truth, they didn't share everything with me, either." The grief and pain returned and pulled at his heart like they were trying to tear it in half. "All these years, I felt somehow that I was different from others, but being the way that I am was way off my list of imaginations." And I wasn't just referring to being gifted. Happy memories filled his mind, and that somehow strengthened the joy and gratitude enough to fight back the misery. "Not that I'm not grateful to have them as my family. They were the best thing that ever happened to me."
Kylie smiled. "I think they feel pretty lucky themselves."
The clerk returned with a large carbon box and two paperbags on top of it.
"Here you go," he said and placed the supplies on the desk before handing Kylie a form to sign.
Snow picked up the box while Kylie took the bags. They were about to walk out the door when Kylie suddenly froze.
"Wait," she muttered and looked over her shoulder.
Snow tried to see what she was seeing, but all he saw was a gray wall next to the desk.
"What is it?" he asked.
She held up her index finger without looking his way. Her exhaling breath released a small steam. That's when he felt cold crawling up to his skin. But unlike winter season, this kind of cold felt different. It engulfed him like a chair that chained his body to it.
"What do you mean?" Kylie muttered at nothing.
Snow remembered that she could talk to the dead.
Oh, shit!
He was seeing her talking to a ghost. Well, at least he thought that's what she was doing. It wasn't like he could see it. It gave him a little relief.
The cold faded away in a few short seconds. Did a ghost cause the temperature to drop, or was it merely his imagination?
The clerk eyed at them suspiciously.
Kylie sighed and turned back to him.
"Let's go."
He waited till they were outside to ask questions. "Were you... talking to a ghost in there?"
She nodded hesitantly and started walking toward the store where Michael and Mandy were. "You must be freaking out."
He admitted it. It was a little freaky seeing someone talk to a ghost, but since he didn't see it, it didn't bother him so much. In fact, it made him curious. "I think the others are more afraid than me. But I would like to ask, when they're hanging around, does it feel... cold?"
She confirmed his suspicions with another nod.
He was about to ask more questions when a new sound echoed in his ears. A playing instrument. He turned toward the sound and tried to recognize it. A key tone coming off a piano. Music that echoed from another part of the street. It seethed through the glass windows and took him in.
Snow didn't know he was standing outside the place until he saw the door in front of him. Music continued to echo through the hinges, like it was inviting him in.
He opened. The waves intensified at the huge hole. He walked toward the music and saw it. The source came from a black Victorian piano. Sitting at the front was a gray-haired middle-aged man. His fingers pressed the keys smoothly as they moved with the beat.
"Snow?" Kylie's voice broke through the music.
Snow looked over his shoulder at her.
"Is everything all right?" she asked.
He nodded and answered, "Yeah. Sorry, I just got carried away when I heard the music." Then he realized he wasn't hearing it anymore.
"Can I help you?" the owner asked right when Snow turned his head.
"No, I just... heard you play and..." And I got curious and had to follow it into your shop.
"Oh, I was testing the piano. It got here today from a diseased estate. I wanted to test the keys to see if it was well-preserved." He turned back to the piano and grinned. "And it looks like it was."
Snow remembered all the musical lessons his father gave him as a kid, and all the other extra lessons he willingly took when his dad couldn't teach him. It had been years since he practiced his skills, perhaps he should give it a shot to see if he hadn't gotten rusty.
"Mind if I give it a try for a little while?" he asked the owner.
"Sure," he allowed.
He sat down and stretched his hands and fingers, and then pressed the La-key. Well-preserved, indeed. Slowly, he pressed the keys to re-familiarize himself with the piano using the first melody his dad ever taught , when you stop doing something, your skills get rusty. Fade away, even.
He carefully pressed the keys. For the first few seconds, he focused with all his mind on recalling which key depicted which tone. The music echoed with his movements; he closed his eyes to listen deeper. He listened to the melody pouring in through his ears and into his mind. The soundwaves played perfectly like raindrops falling into water puddles. He ached to hear more of it and desired to play longer. Passion and inspiration teamed up like hot chocolate and whip cream as he changed the tune to something else. He wasn't sure where it came from, and he didn't care. It was too beautiful.
He didn't stop until an unfamiliar ticking sound cut through the music. He turned to the source, and found a large ancient grandfather clock placed against the wall. The long pointer pointed at twelve while the short one pointed at six.
Oh, no, he thought in panic. He was lost in his own playing that he didn't remember the time.
He stopped abruptly and stood up.
"I'm sorry, we gotta go," he told the owner. Then he turned around and saw Michael and Mandy behind a mesmerized Kylie. "Shouldn't we?"
"Um, yeah, we should go," she answered hesitantly.
Then he looked at Michael and Mandy, and saw the same look that Kylie had. Astonishment. He wasn't surprised. Anyone who heard him play liked his music. And yet, something inside said that it wasn't just a natural sense of music that captured their attention. He wasn't sure, but ever since he joined the supernatural world, he had been forced to look at things from a different angle. Like how a person could float in midair, or how someone could make water move with just a hand gesture.
Maybe this was another part of his supernatural side.
Urgh, great, I'll never be sure of anything ever again, he thought.