To be such a small school, Breakstone Academy seemed to have all the major cliques and issues of a much larger institution. We had nerds, potheads, preppies, jocks and rednecks just like every other school in America. The thing I found most odd about our little pack, however, was the unifying force that was my brother. He and Trace seemed to bring all the diverse walks of life together in peace and harmony.
In my living room, I could identify at least one representative of every clique and social grouping that I knew of. They had all come together to attend my brother’s birthday party. Yes, it was my birthday party, too, but Trace and Brady were the focus of the entire event. There was just no arguing that point.
As I thought of Brady, I wondered at how different we were. People were drawn to Brady, in a way they never had been to me. He was my polar opposite in every way, including popularity and mass appeal. I got none of his looks, none of his talent, none of his personality and none of his charm. He was everything one could hope for in a brother, a friend, a football player, a boyfriend, a student, a son. And I was everything but. Before birth, he must’ve taken a long swim in the perfect end of the gene pool, whereas I didn’t even have directions on how to get there.
Although we were fraternal twins, we looked absolutely nothing alike. In fact, we didn’t even look distantly related. Brady was blessed with light brown hair, blue eyes and classic features—the typical Californian surfer dude. I, on the other hand, was anything but the typical Californian girl. Rather than the highly-coveted tall, tan, leggy build and blonde hair, I was cursed with a thin 5’4” frame, stick-straight inky black hair, the fairest skin on the planet and eyes so dark a blue, they appeared to be almost violet. Nondescript is what I called them.
I always joked about my looks. Brady, although always amused by my hyperbole, was always his sweet, supportive, loving self. He continually found something kind to say, some way to argue against my self-deprecation.
“I’m hideous!” I’d say. “Wednesday Addams hideous.”
“No, you’re not. Stop saying that! You’re beautiful, P. Just because you don’t look like all the other Barbies around here doesn’t mean you’re any less pretty than they are. One day you’ll find someone who sees what I see. Just hang in there.”
See? What a guy! Obviously, I didn’t get his way with words either.
Shaking myself back to the present, I saw Brady making his way into the packed living room. He stopped to flirt with a couple of pretty cheerleaders. He flashed his perfect teeth in a smile that would make even grandmothers stop in their tracks. The cheerleaders practically swooned.
As if looking for me, he glanced up at just that moment, his eyes meeting mine through the glass, and he winked one sparkling blue eye. I couldn’t help but grin. He knew what effect he was having on those two girls. He was an incorrigible cad!
Only he wasn’t.
Brady was actually a really nice guy. While he was admittedly enjoying the thrall of the two hot girls, he never let adulation change or affect him in any way. He was always the gentleman, always considerate of others’ feelings, never conceited or arrogant. Yep, Brady was just a great guy. Perfect, some would say. For me, though, I could only agree with that assessment if Trace was taken out of the running. He was the one person who I thought exceeded my brother’s perfection. Funny, smart, considerate, kind to a fault, flirtatious, complimentary, and handsome to the Nth degree—yep, Trace was truly perfect.
As my thoughts drifted once more in his direction, the sigh in my chest died on my lips when I saw him appear behind Brady. I found it odd how often that happened. I’d be thinking about Trace and, as if my wayward thoughts had somehow summoned him, he would appear, usually coming to sit with my brother at lunch, tracking him down at his locker, or stopping by to hang out with him at our house.
My stomach flipped over when his eyes rose above my brother’s head and met mine across the distance. He held my gaze briefly before he looked quickly away.
Feeling a bit wounded for some reason, I turned my back on the house, facing the woods that hugged the deck on three sides. I stood staring blankly out into the night for what seemed like an eternity before I heard the cuckoo clock chime, the unique sound just barely discernible over the loud music that drifted through the kitchen’s open window. Twelve cuckoos. It was midnight, officially the eighteenth anniversary of my birth. And Trace’s. And Brady’s. How crazy was it that we three shared the same birthday?
At that very moment, something drew my eye heavenward, just in time to see the clouds part to reveal the silvery globe of the moon. I was admiring the simple beauty of the scene when a voice whispered near my right ear, startling me.
I couldn’t make out the words and when I whirled around, I saw that no one was near. As I had been only seconds before, I was alone on the deck.
I heard the voice again, this time able to distinguish that it wasn’t a single voice, but a collection of voices. All were speaking the same words. All were speaking simultaneously. All were unfamiliar.
A rash of cold chills spread down my arms and raised the hairs at the back of my neck. I turned 360 degrees, looking frantically about for bodies to go along with the voices. I scanned the shadows of the trees, the dips and hollows of the lawn, even the dark corners of the deck, but I spotted no one. I was totally and completely alone.
Suddenly, the indecipherable whispers seemed to erupt from the air all around me, pummeling me from every direction. Voices I’d never heard, words I couldn’t understand, males and females I didn’t know. Fear crept up from the pit of my stomach and lodged like a stone in my throat.
As my eyes continued to scan the landscape around me, I saw the ethereal glow of the full moon begin to dissipate, degree by slow degree. Looking back up into the night sky, I saw the bright globe fade into a thin sliver as the earth passed between it and the sun, darkening the shiny ball until it was eclipsed completely.
The whispers grew louder, more frantic, even less intelligible and I thought for a second to run inside, to escape, but I felt as though I should stay. For some reason, I felt like something was happening to me, something that transcended every other moment and event in my life. So I stood on the back deck, staring up at the dark moon, listening to voices I couldn’t understand, trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.
Suddenly, a nearly-painful blast of heat hit me between the shoulder blades. It felt as though it melted through my skin and bone and tissue and exploded inside my chest where it burned like a hot, heavy ball of fire. It pulsed there, seeming to radiate into my stomach and then out into my extremities, throbbing at the ends of my fingers and toes.
Breathless and confused, I turned around, not really expecting to see that anything tangible was causing the intense warmth.
But I was wrong.
Standing directly behind me, staring at me as though I’d grown a second head, was Trace. His brow was creased and he wore a confused expression I knew mirrored my own. His lips parted a tiny bit, as if he thought to speak, but then he changed his mind. His eyes left mine for a moment, flickering down to his hands, hands that he raised to eye level. He turned them over to stare in wonder at the palms. He flexed his fingers, shook them gingerly, and then let them fall limply to his sides again.
I felt a painful yearning spring to life deep inside me as I stood watching him. It clawed savagely at the inside wall of my chest, as if it were a wild animal trapped within me, desperate to get out and satisfy its hunger. And then it found freedom, bursting forth from me in a physical presence that I felt as much as I saw.
Looking down at my body, I saw dozens of wispy red threads emerge from the center of my being and move like curls of smoke across the space between us. They danced delicately in the air, as if swayed by the wind. Only there wasn’t any wind. The night was perfectly still around us, as if the earth itself had stopped its rotation to stare in wonder at what was transpiring on the deck behind my house.
Mesmerized by the tendrils of smoke, I followed them as they wound their way lazily toward Trace. It was then that I noticed the wisps streaming from his body. They were similar to mine, only thick and black, easily winding their gossamer fingers around my threads and pulling them toward him.
As the strange essences comingled and intertwined, as Trace inadvertently drew me further toward himself, I felt the inexplicable and overwhelming urge to run to him, not to resist. I felt compelled to close the distance between us and touch him. Anywhere. Everywhere.
My lips ached to feel the brush of his. My body trembled with the need to feel his arms wrapped around me. My heart throbbed with the desire to be held close to him, to feel his strength and comfort permeating my very skin.
Although I’d admittedly had a crush on him for what seemed like an eternity, I had never felt such an intense desire to be close to him, to be part of him. I felt it as profoundly and as instinctively as I felt the need to breathe.
The muscles in my legs bunched as if preparing to take me closer to Trace, but before I could move, he took a step toward me. And then another. And another. He drifted forward, as if he was aware of nothing in the world other than me, other than finding his way to me. I wondered if he felt the same yearning to be close to me as I felt to be close to him, a burning need that eclipsed everything else just as the earth had eclipsed the moon.
When he was only inches from me, our eyes locked, clicking together so tightly that it seemed as though no force on the planet could tear them apart. From the corner of my eye, I saw his hand rise toward my face as if he meant to touch me. But before he could, all hell broke loose.
CHAPTER TWO
A loud crash sounded behind Trace. With reflexes so fast I could barely track them, he spun away from me, putting his back to my chest and stretching his arms out as if he was prepared to shield me from whatever was coming. The protective gesture was not lost on me, although I was a bit surprised by it. He’d never shown such instincts toward me before.
Because my mind was consumed with thoughts of Trace’s odd behavior, I missed seeing Brady making his way toward us until he was already on the deck. He launched himself across the aged boards and grabbed Trace by the front of his shirt to wrestle him away from me. At first I thought it was simply more of their typical guy-type roughhousing, but once I got a glimpse of Brady’s face, I realized that this was no laughing matter. He looked livid.
“If you ever come near her again, I’ll kill you with my bare hands,” Brady growled at Trace as he tried ineffectively to throw his larger opponent to the ground.
“You can’t keep her under you thumb forever, Brady. You can’t keep her from falling in love. You can’t keep her from me. No one can,” Trace responded, sounding much more calm and rational than my brother did.
Intense pleasure over his words battled with deepening confusion and rising concern, and the emotions ebbed and flowed dynamically inside me.
Brady let out a primal snarl as he rallied and, with one sharp yank, managed to unbalance Trace causing him to lose his footing. When Trace went down beneath Brady, my heart lurched inside my chest and I rushed to the grappling duo.
“Brady, stop it!” I cried frantically. “What is wrong with you? He’s your best friend.”
“Not anymore,” Brady ground out, his teeth visibly gritted behind his curled upper lip.
Straddling Trace, Brady straightened and leaned back. I’d seen enough of their horseplay to know what was coming next. He was going to hit Trace, only this time he wasn’t joking around. He was all too serious.
Although I doubted that Brady could actually hurt Trace very badly, the mere thought of him
attempting
it made me feel like a crazy person. With little effort on my part, my focus zeroed in on Brady and my entire life seemed to center around one single thought:
I have to stop him
.
As if taken over by another force, my body was in motion before I could even think about what I was going to do. Unfortunately, I launched myself at Brady just as he drew back his fist to punch Trace. In the strong grip of inertia, I couldn’t stop myself in time to avoid Brady’s elbow before it slammed into the side of my head, causing an explosion of light behind my eyes. Pain rocketed through my skull and the wind left my lungs in a
whoosh
as I landed on the deck with a dull thud.