Gravity, a young adult paranormal romance (2 page)

She never handled emotions well,
preferring to pretend not to feel them at all.

I excused myself and went in the
living room to lie down on the couch. I felt more tired than I had
initially realized as I curled up on the puffy gray cushions.
Heaviness settling over me and my thoughts slowed down as I drifted
off.

A sharp sound jolted me awake in what
seemed like the next moment. I sat up, hitting the coffee table
with my shin as my legs swung out. The sound came from behind me,
outside the picture window. My brain still half asleep, I turned
and peered out of the curtains. A figure stood across the street.
Fear instantly seized me, though I didn't know why. There was
nothing obviously threatening about them, no weapon, but that
didn't stop my pulse from speeding up.

I rubbed my eyes, trying to focus
better. I realized that it wasn't my vision that was blurry; the
person looked hazy and out of focus. I got up and opened the front
door, walking out onto the porch.

The clothes were my first indication.
She still wore the same yellow hoodie, jean shorts, and purple flip
flops as the last time I saw her in June. I stopped on the grass,
not realizing I had continued walking off of the relative safety of
the porch. Jenna, who disappeared almost three months ago, now
stood a few yards away from me. For a moment, I felt nothing. Not
the shock I had imagined I would feel if I ever saw her again.
Neither of us moved, nor said a word as we looked at each other.
Her features were a flat mask. 
    

And then she ran. Without a second
thought, I started to run, too. My legs moved before my thoughts
caught up. Something inside me screamed for me to stay where I was,
but I paid no attention to the warning. No cars drove in the empty
street. The dark sky above looked purple, the clouds racing each
other across the horizon. I couldn't find the sun. I must have
slept longer than I thought.

I pictured the collection of medals
that decorated the wall of Jenna's room, declaring her the fastest
girl on the track team. I didn't have that kind of stamina, so I
struggled to keep up. My gaze remained locked on her as she sped
away from me. The sound of my frantic footsteps hitting the
pavement filled my ears, like drums.   

"Wait!" I shouted, but she didn't hear
me. Up ahead, the road dead-ended, but she didn't stop running.
Past that were the trees that bordered the woods. I was sure she
would stop, but again I was wrong. Like a colorful butterfly, she
flew in between the giant trunks of the shaggy hickory trees. I
didn't have a net, nothing to catch her. And so I followed
her.

Unseen dangers threatened me in the
dark of the woods. Sharp sticks scratched my bare arms below my
t-shirt sleeves. Branches whipped my cheeks, snagging in my long
hair. It was as if they were trying to stop me.

Jenna stood out as a bright spot,
flickering in the trees ahead. I felt like if I lost sight of her
for a moment, she would be gone forever. I was in the middle of my
only chance. That thought kept me going, even as every breath
burned, and my legs felt like they would give out. The sound of my
lungs expanding and contracting took over the tattoo my feet were
beating on the ground.   

The only two people in the world at
that moment were Jenna and I. She knew her destination, I could
tell, as I crashed through the foliage that slowed me down. But
whether she wanted me to follow her, or whether she was trying to
get away, I didn't know. I wanted to shout again, but I knew the
effort would be futile. I didn't have enough oxygen
anyway.

Picking up speed with every step, she
gracefully darted between trees and rocks. I stumbled over a low
stump, crying out in pain as I nearly fell. But I got up again and
kept moving, trying to ignore the throb in my shin. The woods
seemed never-ending, even though I knew better. I'd been there many
times, the dark green leaves hiding me like a secret. As little
girls Jenna and I played in these same woods, our laughter echoing
off the tree trunks. It seemed like a different world now.
 

A clearing appeared ahead, past an
archway of bowed branches, grasping each other like a
handshake.  She ducked through them and disappeared. Panic
seized me. I had lost her. I wasn't fast enough. Defeat threatened
to swallow me alive, a fish in the mouth of a whale.
 

But as I came out on the other side, I
caught sight of her again. In front of me wound a dirt road, the
surface black as if wet with rain. The unnatural purple clouds
rolled by, like a strong thunderstorm pushed them in. Trees made a
wall on my side of the road, and I couldn't see the space I had
just come through.

Jenna didn't stop like I did, I
realized too late. A huge, wrought iron fence stood across the
road, with a tall gate. To my surprise, she pulled open the gate
and continued to run on the property beyond. The gate slammed shut
behind her with a deafening clunk.  

I ran across the street and slammed
into the closed gate, harder than I intended to. The bars struck my
chest, skin stinging beneath my shirt. Frustration rushed into my
throat, wanting to roar out. The gate rattled but didn't budge.
Wrapping my fingers around the solid bars, I tried to pull the
barrier open, but it seemed to be locked. A copper colored symbol
sat in the center, like a bundle of sticks.

The fence wrapped all the
way around the property as far as I could see. I stepped back and
walked from side to side, like a caged animal. Instead of wanting
to get out, I wanted inside. But there was no break in the endless
duplication of iron bars.
No way
in
.   

Jenna!
I tried to scream, but no sound came out of my mouth. My
tongue stuck behind my teeth. But she finally stopped running,
standing still. There was no slowing down; one moment she ran at
full speed and the next she was at a dead stop. I wondered if she
heard me, after all, when I didn't hear myself.  Only then did
I notice the tall building that stood before her. I recognized it
after a moment as the Dexter Orphanage, one of our town's
supposedly haunted sites. Haunted for tourism, since some long-ago
fool decided to name it Hell. Why would she bring me here? Maybe
she really was trying to escape me.

Jenna turned to look at me. Her curly
hair hung lank around her shoulders, as if ready to fall out at the
roots. She always took so much pride in her hair. Was she hurt?
Nothing seemed right or logical. I'd known her for as long as my
memory stretched back, yet she looked like a stranger to
me.

I leaned my face into the bars,
reaching my arm out so far it hurt, spreading my fingers. Her face
remained stoic, not even the smallest flicker of emotion or
acknowledgement that I could see. Standing as if rooted to the
spot, I couldn't tell if she saw me or not. Or if it mattered.
  

For a second, it looked as though
maybe she would come back. Walk towards me. Hope stirred inside my
chest. But then she turned, walking behind the split staircase that
led to the front door. I shook the gate again, pulling with every
ounce of strength I had, but it still wouldn't move. As Jenna
disappeared, I realized this was the moment I dreaded. The moment I
would remember for the rest of my life with a pang of regret in my
heart. The last time I would see her.

Thick smoke began to billow out of the
top windows. It took me a moment in my distraction to realize what
that meant. The building was on fire. My feelings of abandonment
became feelings of horror. Orange flames jumped out and licked the
sky. I opened my mouth to scream.

Chapter 2

I woke up on the couch in my living room. My
mouth still hung open. A dream. It was all a dream. The thought hit
me immediately, but I couldn't believe it. I felt the familiar
pressure rise in my chest that never made it to my eyes. I hadn't
cried since the day Jenna disappeared. But I had seen her...hadn't
I?

Claire leaned in from the kitchen.

"Are you okay?" she asked, her brow knit with
concern, reading glasses parked on top of her blonde hair. "You
were talking in your sleep."  

I nodded, still dazed.

"I'm fine," I muttered. I was miles away from
fine. The dream, if that's what it had been, felt so real. The way
dreams are in movies that they never are in real life.

The clock on the entertainment center said
5:30 pm. That meant I'd only been asleep for a half hour. Sunlight
still streamed in through the slit between the curtains. I pulled
them back, but no one was there. I waited, watching the street with
desperate eyes, but no one appeared. The perfectly ordinary blue
sky mocked me, the sun hitting the grass across the street and
making it glow.

Sitting back down, I tried to catch my breath.
Jenna and the orphanage began to fade as my waking senses took
hold. I urgently tried to cling to my thoughts, the effort
fruitless. Even as I tried to analyze the details of the dream,
they disappeared.

I stood up to get a drink of water, and my
legs ached. Probably from being squashed on the couch. I stretched
my toes through my socks. I padded across the room into the dining
room.

Our house has a relatively open floor plan;
the kitchen only separated by the wall of neat, glass-front
cupboards, inside which Claire's good china was displayed. Claire
herself sat at the now completely cleaned dining room table. One
would never know cake had been smashed onto its glistening surface
merely a short time ago. The dishwasher hummed with comforting
familiarity. Everything felt too real to be right, like an
elaborate ruse. I brushed off my mental paranoia. 
 

"I'm sorry if I woke you," Claire said. She
sounded distracted as she sipped coffee from her metal travel mug.
She refused to use the chipped ones that Hugh normally did — he was
the big coffee drinker in our family and required over ten cups a
day. Her laptop sat ready to be opened for business next to
her.

"I'm sure your friends were just
busy, Ariel," she said, unprompted.
What
friends?
I automatically
thought.

"I didn't have time to get organized
beforehand, so I gave late notice," she continued. The details of
the party had been the farthest worry from my mind, but her comment
brought them back. To Claire, lack of organization felt like a
mortal sin. If she didn't get things perfect, she might as well
have completely failed.   

"I'm not upset about it, Claire," I assured
her. "It went fine. I didn't want a big revelry, I told you
that."

In light of the situation the very idea had
sounded disrespectful and more stressful than it was worth.
Thankfully, it was only my fifteenth birthday and not my sixteenth,
or she may have hired people to come as my guests. She didn't seem
convinced. I changed the subject.

"I wondered if I could ride my bike for a
little while," I said, testing out the waters of her approval. It
was always safest to only dip a toe in. 

"By yourself?" she asked, looking up at me.
Her lips were frozen on the rim of her mug. I ignored the urge to
roll my eyes. I wasn't defenseless. I wished she would stop
treating me as though I were.  

"It's still day time. Nothing is going to
happen to me, and I'll stay on the street," I offered patiently,
running my hands back and forth over the headrest of the dining
room chair.   

"I just want you to be safe," she said,
leaning back and shutting her pale eyes. My parents barely let me
go out to check the mail since Jenna disappeared, based on the idea
that someone lurked behind the bushes, ready to snatch me if I took
two steps out the door.  

"I'm always safe. I will take my phone with me
and be back within an hour, I promise." I was getting restless. I
couldn't stand still, my feet shifting back and forth.
  

"Is your phone charged?" she grilled
me.

"Oh, come on," I scoffed. "My phone is always
charged. It lives on the charger." I gestured to where it sat
plugged into the wall.  

She still looked doubtful, so I played my only
card.

"It's my birthday," I pleaded. I hated making
her feel bad. But I just needed to get out for a while. And
something important required my investigation.  

After a moment, she said, "Fine. You can go.
But you have to be back within the hour. Not a second later. Not a
millisecond later." She looked down her nose at me to make sure I
got the point. Her glasses started falling off her head and snagged
in her hair.  

I thanked her, and sped over to the door,
snatching the phone. I escaped outside into the afternoon,
breathing the fresh air in deeply. Pathetically, I couldn't
remember the last time I set foot outside.

Summer had been blisteringly hot, but autumn
was swiftly descending. Though the sun shone brightly, the dark
blue of the sky interrupted only by a few errant, puffy clouds, the
shadows were growing longer. They made everything look underlined.
The faintest of cool breezes blew through, ruffling the
trees.

I got my bike out of the shed where it had
been vacationing, untouched for months. I rode the easier way,
instead of through the woods, sticking to the street as I had
promised. The dense traffic on the main road was due to the nice
weather, since it could change so quickly in Michigan.