Authors: Melanie Matthews
She held his hand against her cheek. “It’s okay to care, but you can’t go around starting fights with every guy who looks my way.”
“He was touching you, Eva,” he said in a sharp tone, but his hand never left her cheek, nor did he use force against her to demonstrate his point.
“Just my wrist,” she corrected. “He knows how I feel. He knows you’re the only one…” She trailed off, unable to finish her declaration, because she wasn’t quite sure if Lucas was her one-and-only.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized, and held her again.
She wrapped her arms around him in an attempt to reclaim his earlier tenderness.
“I’m going to miss this,” he continued. “Back at school, it’s going to be torture to be so near to you, but not touch you, hold you, kiss you.” He smiled at her. “But we can find time to be together.” He gestured at the schoolhouse around them. “We can come back here. We can be alone here.” He shook his head. “That’s if Colin doesn’t get around to bulldozing it down. I’ll have to talk him out of it...that piece of shit.”
She shook her head, ignoring his hatred of Colin. “Someone will notice when we’ve gone missing.” She gripped his upper arms, taut from defined muscles. “Let the headmaster call who he needs to call. Let him find out why you can break past my veil, my curse. And then, when he finds out that it’s totally harmless, he’ll allow us to be together.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because…it’s not bad what you can do. It’s…a sign.”
“A sign of what?”
“A sign of change. A sign of not accepting who we were born to be.” She shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe this curse isn’t meant to be forever. Maybe Banshees can live normal lives without seeing death. And Leprechauns can be just like all the other guys in the world.”
Lucas smirked. “I don’t know. Teleporting, entering people’s minds…it isn’t
that
bad.”
“That’s right,” she said, coming to a realization. “Leprechauns aren’t cursed, are they? Why are you allowed such freedom, while the Banshees have to suffer?”
He shook his head. “Eva, you don’t understand. Before I learned to control myself, whenever I got nervous or scared, I would disappear. I would find myself in a dark place with no way to get out. I was terrified. After some time, I don’t know how long, I
might
come back to where I vanished from, but often I would end up far away…scared…not knowing how to get back home.”
She held him tighter. “I didn’t know.”
He nodded. “And entering people’s minds?” He laughed without humor. “It’s not a party! The human mind is so jumbled and chaotic, even when they’re asleep. It takes a long time to find a way in, to see what someone sees, to stake a claim and manipulate.” He shook his head. “I’ve never done it on purpose. I’ve entered other minds only by accident. Believe me, it’s not enjoyable.”
“So you feel…cursed?”
“I never thought of it that way, but now I do, now that I can’t be with you, because the headmaster is scared of my power.” He furrowed his brow. “Can’t he see that I’m not trying to hurt you? I’m trying to
help
you. There’s something special between us, Eva.” He placed his hand over his heart, and then hers, gently pressing against her chest. “We’re meant to be together.”
He held her even tighter to him, with their hearts thumping wildly against the other. It seemed that they were destined for one another—soul mates. Was there such a thing? Two peopled destined to be together? And if that was the case, then why were there so many divorces? Why weren’t her mom and dad soul mates? What went wrong?
They used to have such a happy marriage, until one day it all ended. She was sure that there were warning signs before, fights she didn’t witness. But to her, at the age of thirteen when they got divorced, it seemed as if the floor had fallen out from underneath her, and she was the only one who didn’t notice that it had been slowly rotting away.
“Don’t you think we’re meant to be together?” he asked, hopeful, searching her eyes for a sign of agreement.
She nodded, smiling. “Soul mates.”
But she didn’t quite believe it. How could a cursed girl be allowed happiness?
“Let’s get back to the school,” she suggested.
She just needed some space from him, from everything crazy and cruel, and wonderful and magical. He pressed his lips to hers. The kiss started out sweet, then passionate, and finally ended bittersweet, as if it were their last.
“I love you, Eva.
No one
can keep us apart.
No one
,” he emphasized.
She nodded, but she worried at his tone. He seemed overprotective, as he had admitted to being. And dangerous, as witnessed with his altercation with Colin over a mere wrist holding.
“I know,” she said. “But for now, while at Green Clover, we’re…just friends. Remember that, okay? Just friends.”
He closed his eyes, breathing in and out, as if he were preparing for a journey of not a few thousand feet back to the school, but miles in distance—miles away from her, of how close he wanted to be with her, but was ordered to stay away.
When he opened his eyes, he repeated softly, “Just friends.”
15
The Loner’s Club
By mid-December, before the school went on Christmas break, everyone had gotten used to Eva and Lucas as being “just friends.”
The headmaster said that his contacts in Ireland still hadn’t discovered why Lucas could enter Eva’s mind, breaking through her black veil, her cursed darkness, easing her sorrow. She thought these so-called “experts” as Mr. Quinn had described them, were the lowest in their field if it took them close to three and half months of studying the matter, to only shrug and say, “We’re still working on it.”
That meant that Eva and Lucas had to remain apart. And they did, in public. But when the lights went out, they would meet outside her door, where he’d whisk her away to the only place they could be alone, the old schoolhouse. They would talk for hours, expressing how much they missed each other, kissing until their lips hurt. And Lucas never pressured her for sex. He genuinely seemed to enjoy just her company, fully clothed. But he made up for it with a lot of kissing. And groping.
But after a few weeks, Eva was tired—literally and figuratively—of sneaking out. She was losing sleep and the more time they spent apart, the more she desired her freedom. It was as if he had a hold over her before, and now that they were being kept apart, she could breathe. But she still loved him and needed him to ease her cursed sorrow.
A month into their separation, when the whole school had been in the cafeteria for dinner, she had a vision. It’d taken her longer to overcome it, weeping horribly, since Lucas had always been there to block out the death, and console her. Instead Meg and Corrine had come to her aid. When she’d felt well, the girls helped up from the floor where she’d fallen, and back to her chair. She’d glanced over at Lucas. Liam and Finn had been holding him back—he had desperately wanted to come to her. Devin had sat alone, staring at her, looking…worried?
He still kept disappearing in her presence, and hadn’t said one word to her in three and a half months. He and Bree were still together, but Eva noticed neither of them seemed happy, wondering what that meant. Liam was still with Corrine, and they seemed more in love than ever. Finn and Meg couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Everywhere, it seemed that Banshee and Leprechaun were engaged in tight embraces, kissing each other, while she and Lucas were the only ones without a companion—forced by the headmaster’s decree to part ways—while the other students had free reign over their emotions.
“Don’t worry,” Meg had said to Eva.
They had been sitting on Eva’s bed, after class, a day after her and Lucas’ separation, to which the whole school already knew.
“If you’re meant to be together, you will be,” she continued. “Think of this as starting from scratch. You’re friends. Then as you learn more about each other—”
“And lay off the kissing,” Corrine interjected with a smile, sitting at the foot of Eva’s bed.
“You’re one to talk,” Meg said, but not rudely. “You and Liam kiss so much I’m surprised you don’t have a Texan accent by now.”
“And freckles,” Eva joked.
“Don’t be makin’ fun ’bout me and my man,” Corrine joked in a southern accent. They’d laughed and Eva felt better. She had her friends, even Bree whose only worthless advice was: “Get over it. There are plenty of fish in the sea.”
She had been in a bad mood during October, and it’d gotten worse going into November, and by the beginning of December, she was in full bitch mode.
“Where are my boots?!”
She was shouting at Sara Brogan, thirty and petite, with strawberry-blond hair, who was the school’s launderer and seamstress, as well as the nurse. Eva admired the woman for her many talents, but one of them wasn’t self-confidence, especially when it came to Bree, who had to have her way—in everything.
“We-we ran out. Harry-Harry’s gone to get more,” she stammered nervously, standing in the doorframe, wearing a long black sweater over green jeans. Winter had quickly arrived and since the girls wore skirts, Sara brought heavy supplies of black tights, along with sweaters that replaced the white tees, and green wool coats. The guys received black ones.
Harry Gleeson, the other launderer was a nice man in his mid-forties with long brown hair that he kept in a ponytail and a green shamrock earring in both ears. He was out in the snow of Boston buying black leather boots for Eva, Meg, Corrine, and Bree. It had been tough wearing just their clogs over tights, and Eva hoped Harry would return soon, so Sara could get some peace from Bree.
“Well?! What is he doing?! Skinning cows?! What’s taking so long?!”
But Sara didn’t respond, just shrugging and shaking her head. Bree threw her hand up, and then paced back and forth. She finally threw herself on her bed, wrapped the green comforter over her legs, and frantically typed away on her laptop.
Eva had no doubt who she was writing to—Devin. They were still together, but he didn’t hang around her as much, and they didn’t talk on the phone. Bree had resorted to pestering him with emails and text messages from her pink smart phone when they weren’t in class.
“Ugh! Why doesn’t he respond?!” She let out a scream, and Sara quickly left the room.
Eva wondered why Devin was acting that way too. Before the whole school found out about Eva and Lucas’ forced separation, Devin and Bree seemed to be going full steam. Now the brakes had been slammed. Still, there was no change in his attitude to Eva. He still was as silent and mysterious as ever, running away from her at every opportunity.
Lucas, on the other hand, was being forced to stay away from her. But after some time, she started to cope with the distance between them. Of course, she still worried about him, worried what would happen when the headmaster’s contacts in Dublin made a decision. And then she had school. And her parents who called her, emailed her, and wanted to know if she was “doing any better.” She told them everything was fine, and she couldn’t wait to see them for Christmas break. They were supposed to fly up from Miami and take her back for a week.
She wasn’t sure if she wanted to see them. She knew they were living apart, and her recovery was doing nothing for the rekindling of their relationship. She also didn’t know how she’d cope with being away from Green Clover Academy for seven whole days. Meg and Corrine had told her that they’d miss her. They’d decided to stay at the school, as they had the previous year, since both their parents worked full time, and couldn’t get off until the summer. Bree had plans to go to New York to visit her aunt, who was a fashion magazine editor.
“We’re going to have so much fun!” She’d told them excitedly one night, while they studied in their room for end of semester exams.
Eva, Meg, and Corrine had been busily typing away on their laptops. Eva had studied a lot over the past few months, since she was absent all last year from being in a mental asylum, where state education requirements were put on the backburner. But she was improving in her studies, catching up, now that she and Lucas weren’t caught up in each other all the time.
Meg sighed, but kept on typing. “We’ve heard about New York like twenty million times!”
Bree halted her fingernail brush in the air above her pink toes. “You’re just jealous!”
Meg turned in her seat, spit-fire mad. “We’re not jealous, Bree! We’re just so sick of hearing about it!
And
we’re trying to work here.” She motioned at Corrine and Eva.
Eva quickly turned away to face her laptop, nervous of Bree’s stare down. Corrine didn’t seem to be paying attention, flipping through a textbook. Eva didn’t particularly desire to hear Bree brag, but she needed a break from her English term paper about Emily Dickinson, who was a Banshee. Go figure.