Note: Big thanks to everyone who reviewed: JLF, Rheia, and Falcon. Chocolates and the Hollywood hottie of your choice to all of you. ::grins:: And extra thanks to JLF to pointing it out: the quote from the last chapter (dance in the moonlight with the devil) is from Batman, the one where Jack Nicholson played Joker. All right… Here is Chapter One. Enjoy, guys!!
Chapter One: Breathe In
It hurts my heart to watch you,
Deep-shadow'd from the candle's guttering gold;
And you wonder why I shake you by the shoulder;
Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your head...
You are too young to go to sleep forever
And when you sleep, you remind me of the dead.
~ Siegfried Sassoon, The
Dugout
A dream. Just a dream.
I woke up on the night of the new moon madness with a scream on my tongue and no breath in my throat. In my chest, my heart was beating like the tattoo of a thousand wild war drums, but the rest of me was still, as unmoving and cold as a wax doll. My lungs were still, and I could feel my face flush from the exertion of trying to push air through them. I couldn't breathe. In, out. I took that first breath, sucking air like through a straw, and everything in me trembled.
In, out. I couldn't breathe.
I tried to remember how, how to breathe, because the air seemed stuck in my throat, sticking there as if it was lined with fly paper instead of flesh. Fly paper, and I couldn't breathe. Sucking air in and desperately trying to get it out, I willed myself to stop thinking, to stop being afraid, to, please, just stop. In, out. But the sweat that poured down my back was like a waterfall of ice, and the image of two…eyes- perfectly round and edged with silver in the darkness- stayed with me as I squeezed air through my lungs, each gasp like splinters of glass sliding through my chest. In, out. Just breathe. Breathe.
I didn't dare turn on the lights or make any sounds other than my rattle of breath, because then Ingrid would know. And she would come running down the hall with arms full of inhalers and air distillers and perfumed plug-ins, all designed to give me back breath and sleep and peace. But they didn't, none of them gave me anything but revulsion, and they made me sick inside, they coated me with their purity and their perfumes so that I wanted to die instead of breathe. Ingrid didn't understand, the hovering aunt who more often smothered than healed. She didn't understand that my breathing was my own, that it was mine whichever way the wind blew. For better or for worse.
In, out. I still couldn't breathe.
I sat in the darkness with my back propped up against the headboard and my hair dangling loose over my shoulders. I felt weighted down by the heavy cotton of my nightgown, and that was what my thoughts drifted to in the midnight hour. Sometimes I felt as if I could drown in a sea of cotton, and sometimes I felt like my hair- long as it was- could choke me, wound around my neck enough times. I let my thoughts wander to that and to skeletons with scraping bones for fingers and to blood so red and slick that women painted their mouths with it. I thought about change and the Devil and things that never stopped hunting. I thought about water, water and breath and the sound that rain made on a tin roof. I thought about the one person I shouldn't have and the way his hair fell across his forehead, the way his eyes looked in the fluorescent light of a classroom, in the light of a fire. In, out. Just breathe.
Minutes passed, but, slowly, a series of long, liquid pulls began to flex inside my chest, like puzzle pieces falling into place. The rasping slowed, and, finally, the sound of my breathing became even, rhythmic, normal. My heart settled in my chest, and my mind cleared enough for me to lay back down, to put my head on the pillow instead of resting it on the hard, wooden headboard.
It's another night, I thought as I settled into the feather bed, another night with another dream. It was always the same, that dream, and even when it wasn't, when it was day instead of night and there was pavement instead of grass, it was. The eyes kept it the same, It kept it the same. Wrapping the covers around myself, around my neck, I felt shivers wrack my body, the deep and painful kind that began at the base of the spine and worked up, cold and hurting so that every bone in the body shook from them. It. The shivers shook me and deepened, and just the memory of the feel of wind through hair made my heart bleed all over again, made my breath come up short.
It. Change. Eyes. Cold.
For a long, long time I lay in that darkness with the covers wrapped about me and my body trembling, listening to the sound of my shallow breathing and entertaining the wild thoughts racing around my head.
But I did not sleep.
My eyes stayed open until the dawn came and brought the red-tipped sun with it.
***
"You look...tired." Aunt Ingrid pitched her voice above the sizzle and crack of grease on the stove so that it sounded shrill and brittle in the warm kitchen. "Did you sleep?"
After the dream, I always took care to put on makeup, as much as I could find, and painted my face with reds and beiges and browns so that the worn look of me was hidden from prying eyes like Ingrid's. But she was never fooled. She had the eyes of a witch and the intuition of someone who was desperately trying to cheat fate. Her heart was soft for me, and every time I looked into her eyes I saw this worry, worry and love enough to last me forever and a day. Where I was concerned, she saw everything and at times I felt like a moth pinned under glass for the inspection of all, that nothing of mine was my own. Least of all, my self.
"I slept." I took a water from the refrigerator and sat down at the round, oak table in the middle of the room. "I'm not tired." I'm fine, I wanted to scream, just fine. Can't you see? Can't you?
"You've the look of one who didn't sleep a wink. Lip paint and a bit of gray lash liner doesn't change it, love." She waved a meal spatula in front of her as if to emphasize her point. "And your face is too pale. Next time, try some bronzer or blusher." She turned back to the stove and flipped a pancake so that landed with a very peculiar and unappetizing 'splat' in the pan. Cooking had never been her strong suit. "And you've got a streak 'neath your chin."
She pried herself away from the stove set and knelt her slim, small body over to reach my level of sitting in the chair. She licked her index finger and dutifully rubbed the spot where the alleged streak was. "Sweeting, you know I worry about you. I only want the best for you, and for you...to be happy." She said the last words on a rush as if it were some impossible dream she could never hope for, but did all the same. "And yet, you've lost weight since you came here. You don't eat; you don't sleep; you don't *smile* anymore. Sweeting, I love you..."
Outside the sound of a car horn came from the driveway. I pushed her hand away and rose, putting my untouched water back in the fridge. "I'm fine, Aunt Ingrid." My voice sounded rusty, unused, but I pushed a thick layer of brown hair away from my face all the same and kissed her on the cheek. "I'll be...fine."
I didn't dare look at her eyes or her face as I gathered my backpack and left, and I couldn't seem to get myself to say anything other than the standard 'I'm fine.' It hurt her, I knew. And I was sorry for it.
"Have a nice day, Sydney." Her voice was soft and pulled at me as I walked out the door, but I didn't stop. I trampled through the parlor and out the front door- sans a coat- to the waiting hunk of metal in our driveway. And for the first time that morning, I felt something like a smile bloom over my face. The '83 Camaro in bad need of a paint job and a fix-up was the most welcome of sights, even in the dead of winter.
"Lindsay." I slid into the passenger seat and glanced over at the girl at the steering wheel. The long-legged wolf with red-brown hair and a penchant for lighting things on fire was like a breath of fresh air through the staleness of Langley, unique and vivid in her own silver-eyed, chain smoking way.
"S and M," she said, and smiled a toothy grin at my nickname. An odd and lewd nickname, it was a play on my initials, which were SM for Sydney Moxley. "What's new in the neighborhood?"
"Since I saw you yesterday?" I buckled the seatbelt and tossed my backpack in the backseat. "This is Langley, Linds. Nothing."
"And yet, you have that uncanny ability to suck the joy right out of any situation." She made a sucking sound as she put the car in reverse, and the wheels squealed in protest as she floored it- still in reverse, of course. "It wouldn't kill you to pretend once and a while. Mind the 'once and a while,' by the way. I'm not asking for a twenty-four hour smile and cheer."
"Well, then, what about you? What's happened with you since...3:30 yesterday?" I jerked along with the car as Lindsay ground it into gear and shot like a bat from hell down the street. Blank houses with dry, patched lawns all looked alike as we cruised along Walton Drive, my street, and the endless row of uniformity hurt my eyes, as it always did. Something from The Stepford Wives, I had thought when Ingrid had first driven me down the street. My opinion remained unchanged.
"Oh, you know, I called Terry last night and turns out he hasn't changed- like, not at all. Still the same old shit, but now he just hides it better. I mean, as if I would take him back after everything..."
Lindsay was big on idle chatter and gossip, so I let her have the stage as we drove to school. Since Langley was such a small town, though, it really wasn't much of a drive. If Aunt Ingrid didn't go into convulsions every time I brought the idea up, I could probably walk it's that close. I actually think I'd like to walk, sniffing the on-coming scent of snow in the wind, watching the stillness of the land, not having to talk at all...
"Jesus, I swear, Syd. Now that Tommy Haskins is going out with Whitley, he thinks he runs the damn school." She made an angry motion with her hand in front of her and I realized we had come to the school and were in the small, unpaved parking lot. "He parked in my *damn* spot again." She bared her teeth at me, and spun the car in a furious circle to scent out another decent spot. "I mean, it's like he's trying to get...revenge on me or shit like that. It was over, you know? He is so *not* boyfriend material."
I winced as she furiously pulled into an adjacent spot and my knee had one-on-one collision with the side of the door. Along with Lindsay's less then wholesome mouth, her large stack of ex-boyfriends (who sometimes met less than pretty endings) were infamous at Langley Memorial High School, where she had, it seemed, dated the entire male student body at one time or another. Tommy Haskins and Terry Divuli were just two in a very long, very distinguished line.
And speaking of Tommy Haskins, his older sister, Desiree Haskins queen of the Sugar Parade and every beauty contest ever devised by man, was walking right past our car, hand in hand with the other half of the equation, Ethan Bennington. In our small school where cow-tipping and getting drunk amongst the rows of corn was all the rage, "Desi" and Ethan were like the Britney 'n Justin of our small community- sans the ugly breakup and nasty innuendos but including all the nausea and disgust. In short, they were golden and perfect and blah, blah, blah... No one needed that much gorgeous perfection on a rainy Monday morning..
"Hey, Syd... Ethan's looking really *fine* this morning." Lindsay pressed her face next to mine, and we both watched the retreat of the miracle couple as they walked across the parking lot, sickeningly gorgeous in the gloom. "Look at that ass. How much do you think he works out a night? 'Cuz I *guarantee* you that has to be hours. Hours, Syd." She opened her mouth in an almost feral expression and laughed, the sound reminding me of the howl of a wolf. "You really should do something about that, you know. I mean, it's Desi, for the sake of Jesus. She's practically one step away from...making fire with two goddamned sticks. Neanderthal, Syd. You'd have so much on her if you just smile once in a while. Turn that fucking frown upside down."
Only Lindsay could turn something as sweet and innocuous as the 'ol 'frown upside down' saying into something R-rated. I tried not to sigh, but it was a near miss. "We're going to be late." I hauled the backpack out of the backseat. "I think the bell's already rung." At Lindsay's blank-look, I rolled my eyes. God, there were days… "I mean, as in, Ingrid will kill me if I get another tardy because of you. I've been late to Banning's class eight times this semester. I think he might write me up. Ingrid would be scandalized."
Lindsay rolled out of the car with the exuberance of a puppy and slammed the door shut with enough force to rock the whole car. "Need I remind you that none of those incidents were even remotely my fault? You've got free will, don't you?" She shot me a look over my head, and her eyes widened three-fold. "And...free-will... It's a *very* good thing."
"Right." I climbed out of the car and wondered why I had thought it such a hot idea to get out of the house without wearing a coat. Brilliant, Syd. As usual. "Well, I'm leaving for class..."
Though I might have been wasting my breath. The lovely Lindsay was already tangled up with one of her current boyfriends, practically one step away from- harder, baby, harder- being on the pavement. Which was all very well and good, as I needed an exit cue, badly.
Tucking my hair behind my ear, I began to walk up to the school- a hick, country affair had I ever seen one. Coming from Los Angeles and the city of huge buildings and slick people, the sight of the small campus and people dressed in- dear, God- plaid always made me cringe a little, even though I'd had to live with the eye assault for these past two years now. Believe me, when you were already wallowing in the pain of teenage angst, hearing people talk about the tractor pull they were going to next weekend didn't make it any better. At all.
"Hey there, stranger. Going for the unapproachable look today, I see." I felt a hand glide along the back of my head, and looked over to see the cool, Queen of Unapproachable herself, Topaz Allcraft. Tall, slim, and with the poise of a queen, Topaz had been gifted with one of those purely nightworld names that had the humans gossiping about "hippie" parents and the nightworlders flashing their black flowers left and right. "You look lovely today, by the way. The lip-stick...perfect shade, hon."
She gave me a cool kiss on the cheek, and fingered the lapel of my shirt. "Like the shirt too. Going for a massive slayage of boys today?" She gave one of those small, secret frowns, and slipped her arm through mine as we entered the building. "Or did you not sleep at all last night? Come on, tell the truth and shame the devil..."
It was nice sometimes, almost painfully so, to have someone who knew you almost as well as yourself. Topaz was one of the few.
"Definitely massive slayage of boys. It's all I think about." We entered the school building, and the lights from the ceiling- hideous fluorescent, as I'd heard Desi herself say once- played off the diamond stud in Topaz's nose and the chin-length sable hair that curved to a gleam around her face. "Because I'm just such a boy crazed fanatic, damn me."
She was laughing by the time we pulled up to my lockers- thankfully; the bell had yet to ring. With the finesse of a porn model, she arranged herself on a locker next to mine, leaning on it like she was posing for a Playboy spread. She was completely impervious to the catcalls and whistles from boys who walked by and instead, throwing me a smile that said 'cold bitch,' all over it, started talking away in a low, zero-temperature voice.
"Vivyon called me last night- God knows I take pity on her, Syd. She and Alexsei had a knock-down-drag-'em-out again. Which, is what they get for trying to make *that* relationship work, right? It was a doomed thing from the start, and if they didn't love each other, they'd probably be dead right now, you think?"
Alexsei and Vivyon, the two lovebirds (but more often violent gladiators at each other's throats) who were the topic of our conversation, had an...odd relationship. It odd was because Viviyon was human and Alexsei was a lamia from a Russian crime family. Now, I don't know about you, but I'd heard all kinds of crazy sounding love stories between humans and nightworlders, all full of courtly love and chivalrous exploits and happily-ever-after endings. But Alexsei and Vivyon were the reality, the hard and cold type, of what *really* happened when humans and the supernatural melded one on one. To a cripple a long story, it was painful, bloody, violent, and occasionally someone nearly lost their life, limb, eye, or all of the above. In short, the faint of heart needed not apply.
"I don't think love has anything to do with it, Topaz." I got out my government book and notebook, and looked up as the bell rang, long and loud in the corridor. Whether or not love had anything to do with it, the day had officially been rung in. Alexsei and Viviyon be damned; Lindsay and Ethan too, for the best of measures.
I had to get to class. Had to, had to, had to.
Another tardy and Ingrid might well kill me herself.
***