Heart's Reflection (13 page)

In the midst of
the third dance, I saw something in his eyes. He stopped swaying and we stood
chest-to-chest, stomach-to-stomach.

The fizzy soda pop
in my stomach intensified into Alka Seltzer and exploded outward, filling my
entire body.

He was going to
kiss me. My very first kiss...ever.

I would have
licked my lips, but I was afraid he'd feel the slobber and get repulsed. What
should I do? Open my lips? Keep them shut? Pucker?

Damn I hadn't had
a breath mint since I got in the car with Quinn an hour ago. What if my breath
was bad? What if—

His head lowered
toward mine, his lids drifting shut. I leaned upward going on tiptoes, my own eyes
closing.

We were going to
kiss. Nothing could break us apart.

Nothing that is
except Quinn, Ronny and Lashonda.

"Where is
Eve?" Quinn's voice came from just inside the gym. "I saw her coming
this way."

"I thought
you said she was a crazy bitch," Ronny observed. "Why do you want to
find her?"

"She shoulda
been back with the proper attitude by now." Quinn huffed.

"Why don't
you just leave Eve alone," Lashonda piped in.

"Why don't
you leave Chase alone?" A petulant demand came out of left field.

"Petra Pie,"
a male voice—Chase—said. "It was just one dance. What are you
getting so mental about?"

Make that Quinn,
Lashonda, Ronny, Petra and Chase breaking us apart.

"C'mon."
Holden stepped back and pulled me with him a few steps down the hall where we
could take cover behind a bank of lockers.

Peeking around the
cool metal gave us a view of the bickering group. We could have just joined
them, but it made me giddy that Holden didn't want to. Hiding away with him was
like the two of us against the world. Besides, we were so new I didn't feel up
to sharing him with Lashonda just yet.

"Why the
freak are you following me, Petra?" Lashonda demanded.

"I'm
following you to warn you
and your weave
about trespassing on my guy."

"I'll have
you know this is all my own hair and you better not be touchin' it again or
you'll be wearin' your left nostril as a toe ring."

Petra turned on
Ronny. "Why don't you keep your girl in line? Don't you care that she's
running after my boyfriend?"

Ronny's gaze
darted to Quinn before going back to Petra. In that split second his face spoke
volumes about what was in his heart. Ronny loved Quinn. He was here for Quinn,
not Lashonda. If I hadn't been here, apart from the rest, I probably wouldn't
have noticed it. The needy expression was there and gone in a flash. Poor
Ronny. Quinn wouldn't be an easy object of unrequited affection.

"Lashonda's a
free agent," Ronny said. "I'm not threatened if she wants to dance
with another guy."

"Yeah,"
Quinn added. "Ronny's on the football team. He can get any girl he wants.
He doesn't have to settle for the friends of crazy whacked out bitches."

I almost laughed.
Holden held a finger to his lips, shushing me. He pulled me further down the
hall with him to a metal fire exit door, which I knew led to a staircase.

Once we'd escaped
through, we were up half of the first flight before I asked, "Where are we
going?"

"The
roof," Holden said, continuing up.

"The door to
the roof is probably locked." Stopping, I pulled at his hand.

He turned to smile
down at me from one step above. "I can get us through any locked
door."

"What are you
a lock-picking criminal?" I joked.

"Something
like that."

When we reached
the top, he fiddled briefly with the door before it swung wide. He turned back
to me, beaming.

"Success."
Holding the door open with one hand, he bowed and made a sweeping, ushering-in
gesture, with his other arm. "Your rooftop awaits, my lady."

"Thank you,
kind sir," I said, hoping the giggle at the end of my statement didn't
sound too ridiculous.

Fortunately, even
though it was fall, the South was so temperate that the night wasn't cold. In
fact, the cool breeze felt good against my overheated skin. A perpetual blush
had covered me since I first spoke to Holden.

I passed through
the open doorway and Holden followed. The metal door clanged shut. When I
turned towards him, he held out a beckoning hand. Going to him with my own hand
outstretched seemed the most natural thing I'd ever done.

Hand-in-hand we
walked to the center of the roof. Holden removed his gray sport coat, revealing
a navy blue, open-collared shirt he wore over his jeans. Like a knight of old,
he spread the coat on the flat, tar roof and invited me to sit.

When I had settled
on it with arms wrapped around my knees, he sat beside me. We must have stared
at the sky together for at least five minutes before the tension of being alone
with a cute guy really got to me and I had to break the silence.

"So what is
that star constellation up there?" I asked pointing to a clump of bright
lights in the sky.

"I don't know,"
Holden answered with a smirk. "I never really learned anything about
astronomy."

Neither had I. My
knowledge was limited to how to activate the stargazing app on my cell phone
and the phone was downstairs in the gym at the bottom of my purse.

Arching an
eyebrow, I adopted the same teasing tone he had. "So you don't know
whether that really bright one over there is a planet or a star."

"Well...."
His compressed lips told me he was suppressing a smile. "I do know enough
to recognize the lights on a passenger jet."

"Oh yeah.
Right," I said, trying to hold back a snicker.

My effort didn't
work and when the laugh broke from me, he joined in.

"So why are
we up here if you didn't want to show me the stars?"

The smile slipped
off his face and his gaze became serious and intent. "I'm here for
you." Holden took my hand from where it rested against the roof, lifted it
and touched his lips to the back. "I'm always here for you."

I didn't
understand exactly what he meant but the kiss had sent more soda fizzing through
my veins and somehow I couldn't really care to analyze every word.

"I brought
you up here to talk to you," he said.

"What
about?" The question came automatically, but my real attention was on the
curve of his lips. I just wanted him to speak some more so that I could watch
them move.

"It's—"
He hesitated, staring down at our still clasped hands, he then continued.
"I'm not sure how to begin."

"Why don't
you tell me a little about you? Did you just start coming to school here? Where
did you go to school before?"

"I went to
school in Miami until...two days ago, almost three."

"You're
family moved so soon after the start of the school year? That had to be
hard."

His eyes went back
to our joined hands. "Yeah."

"So you
probably don't know much about Savannah."

"Nothing,"
he said.

"I wasn't
that thrilled about moving here either so my dad forced me to take a walking
tour. It was actually pretty interesting.

He smiled.
"Tell me something."

"Okay."
I cleared my throat and made my tone as professorial and pompous as I could.
"Founded in 1733, Savannah was the thirteenth colony. General James
Oglethorpe and about a hundred and twenty settlers arrived on a ship called the
'Anne'. He laid out the city with twenty-four park-like squares at the center
of each ward. Most of the architecture dates back to the eighteen hundreds
since Savannah was one of the few cities not burned by Sherman in his march to
the sea during the war of Northern aggression."

When I glanced at
Holden I could see his smile had widened to a grin.

"Are you sure
you want to hear this?"

"Maybe
not."

We fell silent as
we gazed up at the sky again.

Soon, my mind was
turning over the question of how Holden could be so familiar.

"I've never
been to Miami," I said, breaking the silence. "Where did we meet before?"

"Don't you
remember anything?" he asked.

"No," I
said. But even as the "o" hung in the air, sudden prickling tingles
radiated from the contact point of our hands. The tingles reminded of the pain
of a limb awakening after I'd slept on it all night. Nice but painful at the
same time.

Memory flashed,
ricocheting against the interior walls of my brain. I saw and felt myself being
kissed by Holden. His lips on mine, gently moving. His arms wrapping me in an
embrace I never wanted to leave. At the same time, the pain of the moment took
my breath away. As I recognized the sorrow in my heart, the memory changed and
I saw myself gazing down at a grave with eyes so full of tears I couldn't see
the name on the headstone. I was gulping down so many sobs I could taste the
morning fog.

Jerking my hand
out of his as if scalded, I shouted, "What was that?" Before he could
answer I scrambled up and stepped away from him.

Holden rose and
took a step towards me with hand outstretched. "Eve, please don't be
afraid."

My mind racing
with wonderings, I stepped back again like an automaton.

"No,
Eve," Holden warned. "You're getting too close to the edge."

Over my shoulder,
I saw that the back of my foot was barely six inches from a drop of at least
fifty feet. My eyes flew to meet Holden's. He must have realized I was frozen
because he rushed to my side and pulled me to a safe distance from the edge.

Wrapped in his
hug, I felt his hands caressing my back and I pressed myself to him. For a
moment I rested my cheek against his chest. The familiarity of the moment both
pleased and stunned me at the same time. Why?

But while I didn't
know the answer to that question, I knew what I wanted to do next. Raising my
head, I stared into his beloved eyes before lifting myself on tiptoes to press
my open mouth to his.

Our lips touched.

In an instant, the
touch became more insistent as our mouths pressed together in a seemingly
seamless blending. Our arms wrapped around each other, the embrace was a
wordless reunion. A first kiss and yet not a first kiss. Mouths moving together
as if we'd kissed dozens of times before.

Too soon, the kiss
ended, as Holden lifted his head.

His arms remained
loosely around me. Gazing down into my eyes, he lifted one hand and brushed my
hair back with a caress across my face.

"What's
happening?" I asked.

"It's hard to
explain." His smile was half frown.

"Try," I
said, shaking him a little.

"I will but
give me a little more time."

Nodding, I stepped
back and out of his arms even though all my instincts said to never leave their
shelter. The enormity of feeling had overwhelmed me and I had to put a distance
between us.

This time I didn't
get too close to the edge of the roof but just close enough to see the school
lawn below where a familiar figure stood.

"Isn't that
Mrs. Gazardi?" I muttered.

"Where?"
Holden asked.

She seemed to be
staring into the sky, not in our direction but off into the distance.

Glancing up, I
noticed a movement. If it had been water I would have said it was a whirlpool.
A whirlpool with bolts of lightning illuminating it. The swirling and turning
of the clouds mesmerized me almost so much that I almost didn't notice the
figure—a bird? If so, it must be a heck of a big one —flying toward
its center. The turning and whirling increased.

"What is that?
A tornado?" The night had been so clear and there'd been no warning siren.
Even so, maybe we should take cover.

"It's just a
strange cloud formation," Holden assured me, but there was something
guarded in his expression and tone as he said it.

Maybe Mrs. Gazardi
would know what the peculiar whirlpool was. I searched the lawn with my eyes
and found her. Would she run back into the school screaming in fear? No. She
remained still but the inner illumination was back. Mrs. Gazardi's skeleton
glowed. This time there was no lighting I could blame for an optical illusion.
An involuntary shiver ran through me.

The whirlpool in
the sky closed up and faded away. The cloud separated into wisps that drifted
apart until the night was completely clear again.

Mrs. Gazardi's
inner light faded as the sky returned to normal.

"Something's
weird about her tonight
." Or else
about me
, I thought.

As if she heard
me, Mrs. Gazardi's head whipped around. Her eyes blazed up at me, burning with
their red glow until a sudden faintness overwhelmed me. I swayed, hovering on
the brink of falling over into nothingness.

Chapter Three

Holden grabbed my
shoulders from behind and pulled me from the edge for the second time that
night.

"Let's get
inside," he said.

We were off the
roof and back down the stairs before I could make any sense of my thoughts.
Mumbling something about being right back, I escaped into the girls' restroom.

The fluorescent
light fixture buzzed audibly, winking twice, as I stumbled over to the bank of
sinks under the mirror. No one else was in there, giving it a surreal
atmosphere. I twisted the faucet handles and the water burst out in a sputter
before slowing to a trickle as it ran over my hands.

My reflection
didn't seem like my own, as I stared into the mirror. Talk about
deer-in-the-headlights expression.

What the heck was
happening tonight? There'd never been any insanity in my family, but I was
starting to suspect something was wrong with me. Strange psychic connection
with a guy I just met? A tornado that's there and gone in less than a minute?
My guidance counselor lighting up like a glow stick?