Perigee Moon (21 page)

My heart did a dance in my chest and I took a deep breath.

“Okay. It shouldn’t be long.” I started to walk away but he grabbed my hand and kissed my palm. He smiled and released me before disappearing into the shadows.

I lay in bed staring at the Starry Night painting hanging above the headboard. The swirls of golden stars dominated the picture from this upside down angle and it was beautiful. I’d been shifting my focus from the painting to my half-open widow for the past thirty minutes. I could still hear Grams shuffling around downstairs, which meant Alex was still somewhere out there waiting for his chance to come in. I glanced at the clock across the room. 8:45. It wouldn’t be much longer. My grandparents rarely made it past nine. My fingers twitched and my legs felt jittery. I needed something to distract myself. At that moment my gaze settled on the nightstand drawer beside my bed, and before I could make sense of what I was doing I had pulled the book from its hiding place and laid it across my bed. It was like another set of hands were guiding mine, urging me on.

I already knew what I was searching for. I flipped to the back of the book, nervously glancing up to the window in the process. If Alex caught me he wouldn’t be happy. Finally I stopped when the pages with sketches came into view. The faded image I’d stared at before lay in front of me but I didn’t settle on it. Instead I turned the page to look at another set of drawings. This one was of a girl; I assumed the same one, looking at the elegant line of her neck. It was of her bare back, her side profile barely visible through a sheet of long dark hair. Whoever she was the artist had done her justice. She was beautiful, vague. Like a dream. It was all done in a faded charcoal, but everything from the wisps of dark hair that clung to the side of her face to the sharp lines of her shoulder blades were etched perfectly into the paper. I jumped and my breath caught in my throat as a cold breeze drifted over me and, like an invisible set of fingers, turned the page. I turned my attention to the picture there and gasped. The image was clear. Her face was tilted towards the horizon as she stared wistfully into the distance. Her long dark hair framed her face and her lips were drawn into a pout, her expression sad. But it wasn’t one of those things that caught me off guard; it was all of them together. She looked like…me.

The sound of lattice scraping against the house broke my concentration as I flipped the book shut, shoving it back into the drawer in one fluid movement. By the time I hopped back into bed, Alex was at the window. He grinned at me once before he slipped through so quietly I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t been watching him.

“Do you have a secret life as a cat burglar or something? Because that was impressive.”  I pulled my legs up to my chest and rested my chin on my knees to mask the way my chest was heaving.

“No. I’ve just had a lot of practice sneaking out. My room’s on the second story too.” He plopped down onto the bed and smiled. It was infectious and I found myself beaming back at him. I wanted so badly to show him the book and the picture of the girl that looked like me. I was desperate to understand. But as I sat there looking at him it all faded away. This was something I’d have to do on my own. Alex would never hear of it. I remembered his reaction to the book all too well. Besides, I had other things to worry about right now.

“So…are you staying all night?” I asked as innocently as I could. I had ulterior motives for him staying, but he didn’t need to know that. I already had my plan. When Alex crept out of bed in the morning. I’d follow him. I’d stay up all night and wait if I had to. Whatever he was into was dangerous and I had to know what it was. Because if I didn’t find out, then I didn’t know how to help him. And one thing I was sure of–Alex needed help. He might not belong in my world, but he didn’t belong wherever he was either.

“I’ll stay until you fall asleep,” he said. I panicked. It wouldn’t work like that. I wasn’t comfortable enough in those woods to go hiking around in the dark. I’d get lost for sure.

I slid across the bed until I could reach out and grab his hand. “Please stay all night. I sleep so much better when you’re here.” It wasn’t a lie. I did. And I still didn’t want to be alone either.

He smiled hesitantly but didn’t agree. I knew it wouldn’t take much to get him to.

He pushed the hair back from my face and sighed. It was almost strange for him to be so quiet now. We’d done nothing but talk all day. I’d told him everything about myself. Everything I had to give. I showed him the scar on my right palm where I’d burned myself on my easy bake oven when I was seven. I told him about my sloppy first kiss and my ridiculous obsession with vampire novels. I spilled all my secrets about Bevin and my old school back in Denver. I described how beautiful it was there. How the sun would glisten from the snow capped mountains and it was the most beautiful blinding thing I’d ever seen. And how if you spent enough time hiking you’d uncover hidden treasures like old forgotten rope bridges and frozen waterfalls in the winter. I told him about my mom. How her stories had captivated me and molded me. And I told him how she died. Every gruesome detail that I’d forced myself to forget I relived to tell him until I collapsed sobbing into his arms. He was there waiting when I resurfaced with a reassuring smile.

And to satisfy my curiosity he told me about himself. About his father who was a fisherman. About his mother who was Irish unlike his English father, which was apparently some kind of scandal in the village where he was raised before moving here. How she was eccentric and kind, with a heart of gold that no one understood. He liked to hunt only because his father had taken him, but his true love was painting, sketching. He was an artist. He quoted lines from favorite books and admitted he was deathly afraid of spiders. How his favorite sound was thunder and his favorite smell was fresh mint leaves.

“Rowan…” he trailed off like he didn’t want to interrupt my memories and his hand slid up behind my neck and knotted itself in my hair to pull me forward. I closed my eyes and drifted closer.

“Please,” I whispered, almost forgetting exactly what it was that I was asking him to do. I couldn’t think about anything when he was this close. I didn’t want to think about anything else. My plan was slowly fading into the background of my thoughts. “Please,” I said again, but I knew that I was asking for something else now. I couldn’t even remember the stupid plan anymore. There was an energy between us that was almost palpable. It glowed warm within me and I knew he could feel it too.

Before I could even begin to understand it, Alex jerked me forward in one swift movement and I gasped. He kissed my open mouth, silencing me in an instant. I slipped my hands around his neck and pulled him closer, feeling the adrenaline surge mercilessly through my all-too-eager body. My head was swirling as he pushed me down onto the bed and an indescribable heat swept through me like wildfire. His lips tore away from my mouth just long enough to explore the length of my neck and back up to my jawline, his tongue flicking against my skin like flames.

“Rowan I love you. Oh God… I love you.” His fervent whispers curled around me like soft satin threads, caressing every part of me. “You’re amazing. You have no idea how truly incredible you are.”

I grabbed his face and kissed him slow and hard, opening my mouth wide to take more of him in, the intensity burning me up inside. It wasn’t enough. I wanted more of him and I knew that he wanted the same from me. Our kisses were growing more desperate by the second, driven by a need that neither of us really understood. I couldn’t take much more. My mind was just a useless haze of desire.

As if he could read my thoughts, Alex slipped his hands under my tank top, my skin tingling from the heat of his touch, and I raised my arms to help him shrug it off. I tossed it to the floor and he quickly covered me with his body, infusing me with heat. His hands were so warm, running along my stomach, my sides. I gasped as they ran lightly over my breasts. I was shivering. I was…freezing? My eyes flew open. The room was cloaked in a dense, consuming fog. It settled, silvery and thick, over the furniture making it hard to see. An unnaturally cold breath slipped through the threads of my hair and whispered against my ear. “
A leanbh mo chroi.”

My heart was pounding. Cold, unimaginable fear swept through me like a wave of icy water extinguishing the heat.

A leanbh mo chroi.
I repeated the strange words in my head as I glanced around for the source of the whisper. The fog still hung heavily in the air and frost crackled as it spread across the window.

I grabbed Alex’s hands and it took a moment for him to register that I wanted him to stop. He leaned back to look at me, panting. 

“Wait.” I squeezed my eyes shut trying to make the frightening illusion disappear. I opened my eyes and scanned the room. The fog was gone. The crackling frost on the window nonexistent. Had I imagined the whole thing? I pressed my fist to my eyes and shook my head.

“Rowan what’s wrong?” Alex pulled my hands away from my face and forced me to look at him.

“Nothing. I just thought I saw something, or heard something. I don’t know.” Could that have actually been real? I couldn’t get the strange words out of my head.

“What did you see?” He leaned in close and rubbed his thumb across my palm to comfort me. It did. Each swirl of his thumb sent a ripple of warmth drizzling through my body. I took a deep breath.

“I heard it just now. Like a whisper.” I shivered like I could still feel the cold against my ear.

“What did it say?” He was serious now, his thumb freezing into place as it pressed deep into my palm.

I glanced to the window half expecting it to glaze over with ice as I tried to recall the words.

“What? Rowan what did it say?” He jerked my hand to get my attention.

“A leanbh mo chroi.”

“Where did you learn that?” He sounded afraid.

“I didn’t. I don’t even know what it means. Do you know?”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. “It’s Gaelic. It means child of my heart,” he said as he opened his eyes.

“How do you know that?” I asked, bewildered.

“Because it’s what my mother used to call me.” His voice was barely audible, but before I could question him any further about it, he was moving away from me.

He dropped my hand and backed away, his eyes darting around the room like he was looking for something.

“Where’s the book?” he said in a low, hushed voice.

I pointed to the nightstand.

“Have you been reading it?”

I shook my head. It wasn’t a lie. I’d only looked at the sketches.

“Rowan?” His eyes narrowed and I cursed myself for being such a horrible liar.

“I didn’t read it. I just looked at the sketches.”

He shot up from the bed, his eyes flashing with anger.

“I told you not to look at it Rowan. Do you have any idea what you might’ve awakened? Do you want to ruin everything?” he said, his voice breaking into a thousand pieces.

“Alex you don’t understand. There’s something strange about that book. There are drawings of a girl.” He held his hand up like he didn’t want to hear it.

“Alex she looks just like me,” I said. He didn’t react. Instead he held his hand out.

“Give it to me Rowan. I’m getting rid of it.”

I shook my head and my arm shot out protectively to shield the drawer. “No.”

“Rowan there are things inside of you that you can’t begin to understand. Without the proper knowledge, you could cause real damage with that book. And the things you might find inside of it…I don’t think you’re ready to know any of it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I was shaking. No one was telling me the truth. I couldn’t stand this anymore. 

“Rowan–”

“You know something,” I said. I couldn’t make sense of it but I knew it was true. What I’d seen. What I’d heard. It was all real and he knew something. Something that he desperately didn’t want me to find out.

He shook his head. “I’m begging you Rowan.”

“Tell me what’s going on. You know. I know you do.”

He was facing the window now. “You’re not ready.”

“What?”

He turned slowly to face me and continued. “If I tell you everything…that will be the end for us. Is that what you want?”

I shook my head. Of course that wasn’t what I wanted, but I was so tired of thinking I was crazy.

“I can take it. We’ll survive this.”

“We won’t,” he said. And somehow I believed him. Whatever he was hiding was dark. I could feel it.

“At least tell me why I’m different. You’re not the first person to tell me that and I deserve to know why.”