Brady’s first gasp for air broke into the moment, tearing me from the grip of pleasure just in time to see that he was succumbing to Lacey in a truly physical way. And she was happily, greedily taking all that he had to give.
When I realized what was happening, I spun around and leapt between Lacey and Brady, a reflexive effort to stop the process that seemed to be draining my brother of life. Facing Lacey, I reached forward, placing my hands on her arms as if to shake her back to reality. I could feel that my grip was weak and that I was nowhere near as strong as I had been moments before, but still I had to try to stop her.
Lacey’s eyes met mine, but it was obvious that she wasn’t really seeing me. It seemed as though she was looking through me, her entire mind and body still focused on Brady, who stood just behind me, fading by the moment.
I racked my brain trying to figure out what I had done the night before to stop both Trace and Brady from doing…whatever it was that they were doing, but I had no idea how I’d done it. I glanced back over my shoulder at Brady, but seeing his pale, sweaty face didn’t help me at all. It served only to make me a little more frantic, desperate to find a way to stop Lacey.
“Lacey, stop it! You’re hurting him,” I plead, shaking her lightly. Still, she was practically oblivious to my presence.
Spinning, I thought to just remove Brady from harm’s way. Roughly, I pushed at his chest.
“Get out of here, Brady! Go!”
As puny as he looked, I would’ve thought that he’d be easy to maneuver out of the small bathroom, but pushing against him was like pushing against a brick wall. It was as though he were rooted to the spot.
Panic beginning to scramble my brain, I stood between Lacey and my brother, completely at a loss, until I began to feel the same intoxicating sensation from Lacey overwhelming me again. I fought against it, instinctively aware that I needed to, that I must. It was in the midst of that struggle when Trace arrived.
Movement teased my peripheral vision, although I had no need of visual confirmation to know that it was Trace who stood behind Brady in the doorway. I
felt
his presence like a cool, calming breeze on a hot day. It blew quickly and peacefully through me, eradicating the last crippling effects of Lacey’s mutation. It was as though he gave me the strength I needed to resist being overtaken, as if he centered me, tied me to myself, to my humanity. Even in my own mind, I didn’t know how to explain it. But I felt it and I knew that it was real and it was essential, and that I would not have survived without it. Lacey would have inadvertently killed Brady
and
me.
Exhaling, I glanced toward a still-enthralled Lacey and slowly raised my arm toward her, placing my hand on her shoulder.
The instant I touched her, I saw the change. The feathers evaporated as if they’d never been and the dull, trance-like look in her eyes cleared immediately, leaving her looking a little confused and a little irritated.
“What’s your damage, Peyton?” she snapped, shrinking back from me.
Turning away from Lacey, I was relieved to see that Brady seemed to be bouncing back rather quickly. He was slowly shaking his head back and forth, as if he was a bit addled, but otherwise he seemed no worse for the wear.
My awe over what had transpired was interrupted by the magnetic pull of Trace’s presence. As if compelled by something outside my own will, my gaze rose past Brady to meet Trace’s eyes. He stood just outside the tiny bathroom, watching me. His brow was knit together in a frown, but he said nothing. He just watched.
Nothing in his expression gave away what he was thinking or feeling, whether or not he’d seen anything odd or unusual. Or alarming, like feathers sprouting from Lacey’s back that were sucking my brother’s life force. I could only assume that he had not.
Slowly, Trace’s frown disappeared, though his eyes remained locked on mine. I felt the intensity of his gaze ratchet up several notches, making me feel breathless and lightheaded. Heat blossomed in the space between us, steamy and stifling.
Even with Brady’s body like a physical barrier that separated us, I could feel a tug somewhere in the vicinity of my soul that urged me to push past my brother and close the distance. Carefully, almost experimentally, Trace took a step back. I saw the frown return then he moved forward again. Like a ghost, there one minute and gone the next, the frown disappeared when he drew nearer. Still watching me, he repeated the process as if he were testing the tensile strength of the nearly tangible bonds of attraction that stretched between us.
“Earth to Peyton,” Brady barked loudly.
Starting as if he’d slapped me, I pulled my eyes from the grip of Trace’s and focused with all my might on my brother instead.
“Sorry. What?”
I hadn’t even realized he’d spoken. In fact, it would’ve been all too easy to forget that Trace and I weren’t alone in the room, alone in the world. And I would’ve been fine with that, too. At that moment, I felt as though he was all I needed to survive, more than even water or air.
“Trace is gonna help me move the furniture in the living room. When we’re finished, will you vacuum in there while we go get the keg?”
“Keg? Brady, you said there wouldn’t be any drinking,” I reminded him, finally able to turn my full attention toward someone, anyone other than Trace.
“It’s just beer, Peyton. Calm down.”
Brady rolled his eyes in that degrading way that I hated and, as always, I wanted to slap the blue right out of them. It was infuriating.
“And just where do you think you’re gonna get a keg? You
do
realize that you’re only a twenty-one year old bullet-proof god in your mind, right?”
An uncharacteristic blush stole into Brady’s cheeks. He rarely ever reacted to my barbs, other than with a cheeky grin or snide comment. He never blushed or got angry. He didn’t give my opinions or commentary that much credit.
I saw his eyes flicker once to Lacey and quickly return to me, his lips thinning into an unhappy line.
“Just let me worry about that, Debbie Downer,” he groused, turning on his heel and stalking past Trace, who still stood at the edge of the doorway, watching me silently.
After a few more seconds of wordlessly observing me, Trace turned and walked away, leaving me with Lacey. When I turned back to my task of cleaning the bathroom, I saw Lacey’s discombobulated expression and wondered if she had any idea what had transpired. It didn’t appear that she did, and her first words confirmed it.
“I have a headache and I feel weird,” she stated fuzzily.
“Maybe it’s the fumes. Why don’t you go supervise the boys and make sure they don’t do something stupid while I finish up in here, k?”
Nodding robotically, Lacey made her way from the room, leaving me alone with my confusing thoughts and bizarre blend of déjà vu and a brand new reality.
********
The rest of the day went smoothly. No one hulked out or sprouted strange new appendages or tried to kill or drain anyone else. It would’ve been far too easy to think I’d imagined it all, that Lacey, Brady and Trace were the exact same people I’d known the day before. Only they weren’t. And I hadn’t imagined it. I felt it in the air like a thick cloud of malevolence that surrounded me. Things had changed. Forever. Something was happening to the people around me. And something was happening to me.
Brady and Trace disappeared just after dinner, about the time that Lacey went home to get ready. I took the opportunity to do my own grooming, dressing in the clothes that I felt like I’d only shed a few hours before. But I hadn’t. They were hanging in my closet, clean, wrinkle-free, and unworn just as they had been when I’d dressed in them the day before.
As I dried my hair, I couldn’t help but wonder what new revelations the night might bring and how the fight between Trace and Brady would play out, if it would be any different. I wondered if I should take measures to try and stop it before it started, but I didn’t know how that might affect the outcome of other things. I mean, I’d seen dozens of movies that served as cautionary tales about messing with the fabric of time and destiny and all that. Of course, I never dreamed in a thousand years that it was actually
possible
to do any such thing. But now I wasn’t so sure.
Regardless, I felt that it was imperative that I keep things going as smoothly as possible between Trace and Brady, not only for their benefit, but for mine and everyone else’s, too. Maybe the universe was giving me a second chance to keep the peace between them. If that was the case, I didn’t intend to squander it.
Brady returned a couple hours later with the first of the party-goers. Somewhere along the way, he’d traded Trace for half the football team. They filed in behind him, through the front door, each carrying an armful of goodies. It wasn’t long after that when all the others started to arrive. It was as if the presence of Brady and his buddies served as an invisible beacon that beamed into the night sky like the bat signal. Only this indicator alerted the masses, drawing them in like moths to flame.
I found myself watching each person that arrived with a more critical eye. I wondered if some sort of monster lurked beneath the seemingly innocuous surface and, if so, what kind of creature it might be. Apparently my ability to see it was either like a flickering light bulb, only working in short bursts, or, more likely, it had to do with the person experiencing something that triggered their…inner beast. I found the anticipation nearly as thrilling as it was nerve-racking. For the first time in my teenage life, I didn’t mind being relegated to on-looker, to casual observer. My ability to blend in like a wallflower was proving to be very useful as I circumspectly watched my peers.
“Aren’t you ever gonna learn to mingle?” Lacey asked into my right ear, startling me so badly I jumped.
“Lacey,” I said, putting my hand to my chest. “You scared me half to death.”
I should’ve expected her surprise approach, as she’d done the same thing in the previous version of the night. I’d just been so absorbed in the replay, in analyzing every person and action, that I’d lost track of the time.
“Is that a ‘no’?” she asked.
“Yes, that’s a no. Apparently I will never learn to mingle,” I answered offhandedly. Lacey leaned back against the wall beside me, crossing her arms over her chest as she settled in to keep me company just like she always did at Brady’s parties.
She was a really good friend in that way. She stuck right with me, playing the shy recluse, completely out of her comfort zone, for the first couple hours of each one. Then, when she’d had enough of sitting on the sidelines, she’d start to chatter with the people around her a bit more, slowly expanding her reach until she eventually left me to flitter about like the social butterfly that she was. We couldn’t have been any more opposite in our nature, but I was convinced that’s why we worked so well together.
Quietly, we leaned against the wall and watched as people trickled through the door and then melted seamlessly into the growing crowd.
“Omigod! Can you believe she had the nerve to show up with him?” Lacey gasped. “The Amity-ville Whore and the Rip-off Rock star.”
I looked toward the door and saw Amity Ledger, shallow cheerleader extraordinaire, make her entrance with none other than Shane Gibson, rebellious rocker extraordinaire.
“What are they doing here?”
“Oh, I’m sure she’s still trying to make Trace jealous. Has to be. That’s the only explanation because there’s just no way the two of them could actually work. No way. You know as well as I do that the odds of her genuinely liking Ozzy-wannabe are roughly the same as me walking through my back yard and getting hit by a meteor. They’re a worse fit than she was with Trace.”
I prickled at the reminder that Amity had managed to grab and hold Trace’s attention for a very short while. The cheerleader had made all outward attempts to convince Trace she’d come back from the previous summer a changed person, a decent person. Trace, being the nice guy that he is, had given her a chance to prove it by finally going out with her. When the only thing she proved was that she was a scheming, conniving witch (albeit a fairly-decent actress), he dumped her.