Infinite Days (13 page)

“So painting a portrait of me has to push the envelope in terms of your artistic ability?” I asked. Our gazes met, and Tony’s frustration eased into a smile. He rested his arm over my shoulder.

“When you put it that way and talk so fancy, yeah. Also, you’re easy on the eyes.”

We started walking toward anatomy class, but there was foot traffic. Students gathered together in a large group, so we had to walk slowly.

“The prince and princess are having a fight,” said a junior in front of Tony and me. I did not know her, but she had poor blood flow (dull blue veins—that color was always a clear indication).

Tracy and Justin were on the meadow in front of Quartz. Tracy was pointing at Justin so that one French-manicured nail was inches from his nose. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked at the ground. As we turned left toward the Madame Curie statue, I caught only a snippet of the fight.

“You’re always suggesting the library these days. Let me guess, Justin, to see the one girl on campus who doesn’t throw herself at you!”

“Tracy! That’s not it!”

“She’s really rich. I assume that has something to do with it. Sorry not everyone can buy their way into a private apartment, Justin. I know you have a single, but roommates are, like, part of the deal here.”

“What are you even talking about?”

“You never want to come to my room anymore. And don’t try to deny it! You think she’s pretty. I’ve seen the way you look at her in English class!”

“Whoa,” Tony whispered as we walked into the science building for anatomy. I couldn’t help feel a burn of satisfaction.

During class, my thoughts jumped back and forth between Justin and Tracy’s fight and Vicken’s voice echoing through the campus. After obsessing over Tracy’s accusations about Justin’s feelings for me, I would revert back to thoughts about Vicken. How and why did I hear him so clearly? I knew I wasn’t crazy and hearing voices. A vampire in love can communicate with his mate telepathically, though Vicken’s connection should have been severed with my transformation.

Vicken’s willpower and determination when he was alive were powerful forces; they were part of the reason I changed him into a vampire. These aspects of his personality would have exaggerated as the years went on—perhaps he
could’ve
reached me even though I was thousands of miles away.

“Sit,” Tony said after anatomy class. He interrupted my thoughts by the sharp sound of wood dragging across wood. He slid a stool from one side of the art tower to the other. After a few moments, I was sitting on the stool while Tony worked away. He abandoned the charcoals, deciding he couldn’t grasp my features well with it. He came from behind the easel and bent forward, close to my face. He took a pinkie finger, decorated by a silver band, and moved a strand of hair out of my eyes. He checked the accuracy of a paint color by dabbing it on his palm.

“You look great. This is gonna be perfect,” he said with a smile. I liked the smell of paint in the room and the fresh grass outside wafting with the breeze through the open windows. Tony smelled a little like a boy, musky but covered in paint. I looked into Tony’s eyes—he stared into mine. A smile crept across his face. Soon, before I knew it, I was lifting my chin toward his, and our lips were inches apart.

Then someone knocked on the doorway frame.

“Lenah?”

Tony jumped backward. He spun around to the doorway. Justin walked into the art studio. I smiled, completely unable to help it.

“I went to the library to look for you,” Justin said, striding across the floor toward me.

“First the greenhouse, now this?”

“The librarian said you’re usually up here with Tony.”

“Just for work,” I said, and stood up. Tony was already putting his paints away. I was smiling so much I felt giddy.

“Are you painting Lenah?” Justin asked, and craned his neck to peek at the easel.

“Yeah,” Tony said curtly, and gathered his paintbrushes in his hands.

“Cool. Can I see?”

Tony picked up the canvas. “No. Totally not even ready yet.” He moved the easel so it faced the wall.

“He’s a little sensitive,” I said, still smiling.

“What’s up, Enos?” Tony said. “You don’t usually come up here.”

“I’m here to see how brave you are,” Justin said, but he was talking to me.

“Brave?” I asked, turning to face Justin more directly.

“Saturday. We’re going bungee jumping.”

I looked from Justin to Tony. Tony shook his head quickly. “Don’t do it, Lenah. It’s suicide.”

“What’s bungee jumping?” I asked.

“Seriously?” Justin asked, and now leaned against a studio desk. He crossed one ankle over the other. A pose I had seen him do before. This was a comfort position, a way he stood so that he would feel as though he was in a position of power. I sighed—this ability to read positions was a vampire trait. A habit that thus far I could not turn off. “You jump from a bridge to a lake. It’s fun.”

Tony stepped between us and put both hands up. One hand was still gripping all of his brushes. “You wear a strap around your ankle. It’s a really elastic cord and then you jump from a high bridge or a building—”

“It’ll be worth it,” Justin interrupted.

Tony placed his paintbrushes in a water basin inside the art tower sink. He washed off his paint palette and turned. “To who, Enos? Just because you have a death wish doesn’t mean Lenah does,” Tony said.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll go.” Justin’s face lit up immediately. “But only if Tony goes.”

“No. Nope. No way,” Tony said. “No,” he repeated with a kind of maniacal laughter. He stood in front of some of the student cubbies and pushed a red curtain aside. The curtain sectioned off Tony’s art cubby. All the art students had them. He threw his palette into a metal bin. “No,” he said, laughing again and shaking his head. He threw his black leather portfolio book under his arm and blasted past Justin and me. “No,” he said, stepping into the stairwell. “No. Ha. Ha. I mean, no.” He continued saying it all the way down the stairwell.

That night, I came home and collapsed onto the lounge chair. My eyes rested on the bureau across the room and I stared at the photo of my coven. My body just couldn’t run for endless hours anymore. There were blood and muscles now and my ever-present thumping heart.

It was so quiet. My eyes grew heavy. Outside, it was silent, but every once in a while I could hear chatter from people walking in the stairwell of my dorm. I listened to my breathing because it actually mattered if I had oxygen in my lungs. In and out. In and out…the rhythmic
whoosh
of the air was comforting. My eyelids slid down for the hundredth time and finally, I let them fall. Then, there, in my mind, coming out of the blackness, was the first-floor sitting parlor of my home in Hathersage, though it looked dramatically different.

One hundred years ago there were large Oriental rugs, deep red curtains, furniture upholstered in plush velvet. In this dream, the room remained the same but accessories had been added, like flat-screen televisions and computers.

In the corner, Vicken, dressed in a pair of black dress pants and a black button-down shirt, paced back and forth. He walked to the window and pressed a button on the right side of the wall. The shades mechanically rose. Outside, directly below the window, was the cemetery washed in a blood-orange glow. On a tombstone was my name, Lenah Beaudonte.

“Something is amiss,” Vicken said, though he spoke in Hebrew. “Rhode’s materials are gone. His bedroom stripped.”

“She will rise,” Gavin said, speaking in French from the doorway. “Patience.” Vicken did not turn to look at him. Their speech was a mishmash of languages, cultures, and accents.

“We’ve gone over this,” Heath said, joining Gavin in the doorway and of course only speaking in Latin.

“Yes, but every day as we come closer to
Nuit Rouge,
there is a rising doubt in my mind,” Vicken explained.

“Fear,” Song said, slipping past Gavin and Heath and sitting down in a brown leather lounger that faced the window. He spoke in English.

Vicken scoffed.

“Fear is what holds you to that window,” Song said.

Vicken’s fingers dug into the window frame. His nails cut a line of ridges in the wood. He turned from the window rapidly and collapsed into an empty armchair. On an end table was a dish filled with dried lilac. He picked them up by the tips of his fingers and let the purple petals fall like grains of sand back into the bowl.

“I need her. If in five weeks she does not rise, I will dig her up with my bare hands,” he said, and that’s when I opened my eyes in the living room, gasping for breath and smelling lilac in my hair.

Nickerson Summit is a bridge suspended 150 feet over a river. That Saturday we left in Justin’s SUV for Cape Cod Bungee, which was only half an hour from Wickham. Most people had to get parental consent to bungee jump—I just forged Rhode’s signature. After an hour tutorial and a bunch of papers in which we signed that if we died our parents wouldn’t sue, we took our lives into our own hands. We lined up to bungee off Nickerson Summit.

“I can’t believe you talked me into this.
Such
a bad idea,” Tony said, pacing back and forth in front of the bridge. He stopped every few paces and shook his shoulders. “You can
do
this,” he mumbled under his breath.

“Are you gonna jump with me?” Tracy asked Justin while hanging all over him.

“We’re all gonna jump alone, babe,” Justin said. Tracy leaned in for a kiss. I noticed that her mouth was open and that Justin kept his closed. It was an odd sort of kiss, not equal.

“I want to go first!” Tracy squealed and hugged each member of the Three-Piece.

“Thank God,” Tony said under his breath, and sat down on the curb of the bridge.

“Promise you’ll jump right after me?” Tracy asked Justin. Her eyes took a stab at me, then she kissed Justin on the cheek.

“Sure,” he said, and Tracy took her position on the bridge.

Tracy stood at the ledge of the bridge, held both arms out, and then leaned forward. She shrieked and then she was gone. All of us ran to the ledge of the bridge. The ends of Tracy’s hair just barely touched the river. She held her arms above her head, and her body flowed with the movements of the cord. She rose up, almost back up to the height of the bridge, and then back down. The way her body was so limp, I could tell she completely trusted the technology. How on earth would I do that? As the cord started to slow, she soared through the air more languidly, side to side, so her hair swayed and flew in the wind.

As the bungee company people came in their dinghy to untie her from the bungee cord, Claudia and Kate grasped hands and jumped next. They shrieked the entire way down. Followed by Curtis, then Roy; soon, the only people left to bungee were Justin, Tony, and me.

“Come on, Tony, you can do it!” Tracy yelled from the river’s edge.

I peered over the edge, surprised that Tracy actually said something nice to Tony. When I looked, I saw that the girls were sunbathing. Underneath their clothes they were wearing matching red bikinis. All I had was my bra and underwear.

Tony stepped up to the bridge. He clenched and unclenched his hands.

“My hands are sweating. My back is sweating. I’m nasty.” He turned and tossed me his baseball hat. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. I wanna puke.”

The bungee guy, standing next to Tony, handed a blue bucket to him out of nowhere. Tony took a deep breath. “I am an artist. I can
do this
.”

“Are you ready, yet?” the bungee guy snarled. He was squat with a beard and a T-shirt that read,
FAT GUYS LOVE MEAT.

“Nice shirt,” Tony said to the bungee guy and then looked back at me. “I can hear my mother, Len. ‘Tony, why you wanna kill yourself?’” I laughed so hard my chest hurt.

Tony placed his arms out at his side, closed his eyes, and screamed so that his voice cracked the entire way down. I heard a splash and then the Three-Piece whooped and cheered.

Justin and I were the only ones left. The bungee man snapped and tied me into the harness. Behind me, on the ground, I could feel Justin watching me.

“You did this on purpose,” I said to Justin as the man continued to strap me in.

“Maybe,” he said.

“What is it you’re playing at? Your girlfriend is down there at the river.”

“Let’s jump together.”

“Come on, Lenah!” Tony called from below.

“If you jump with me, Tracy will know.”

Justin stood up. “Know what?”

“I mean, she’ll think you did it on purpose.”

“I did do it on purpose,” he said.

“You two,” the bungee man said. “Keep your eyes open if you’re jumping together. Don’t bash heads or anything. I hate cleaning up blood.”

“If you jump with me—” I started to say.

“I don’t care anymore.”

Justin grasped my hand into his, and we stepped onto the bridge ledge. I didn’t look at Tracy and the Three-Piece because they were utterly silent below. Justin had waited to jump with me and now everyone knew it. I saw him lift his right foot. “No—wait,” I said, feeling the enormity of the distance from the bridge to the river. Then Justin squeezed my hand, and I refocused on the river below. The way the little waves swept together and moved. I watched the curl of the whitecaps from the dinghy’s motors. It came into my mind at that moment—the dream of the coven. It wasn’t real, though it had
felt
real. I suddenly imagined Rhode’s enraged face. He sacrificed his life for me and I was going to throw myself off a bridge?

“I feel like you’ve never gone outside your house,” Justin said, and he broke the spell of my thoughts. With my hand grasped in his, I looked at him. “That’s how you’re looking at the river.”

“I’m not sure I did before now,” I said.

“You can’t hide under a boat cabin for the rest of your life. Right?” I looked down at Tony, who pumped his fist in the air. “You gotta let go…,” Justin said.

I looked back at Justin and pushed the image of the coven out of my mind. I was ready. With my right hand in his left…we both broke into the smallest of smiles.

“Ready?” he asked.

We jumped.

My body was…free. My hands broke with Justin’s when we jumped. I felt my torso rising and falling, and the air rushed by my ears and between my fingers. Through all the cheers it was Tony’s I could hear the clearest. My hips were pulled by the elastic bungee up and then down. The wind rushed over my cheeks and over my scalp. I looked to my right and saw that Justin’s eyes were closed, his arms above his head. I mimicked him by closing my eyes and a chill rushed over me. I smiled, unable to help it. When the elasticity of the bungee slowed, I looked over at Justin, upside down. He was smiling at me.

“Sad anymore?” he asked.

As they helped us into the boats and drove us to the riverbank, Justin wouldn’t break my gaze. No, in that moment, sadness was not possible.