The Illusion of Annabella (29 page)

“
Seriously
?” I ask right as I get a good view of the half singed pine tree leaning against the living room wall.

“Yeah, my dad was trying to light some candles close to the tree, and the tree was too dry and, well, one thing led to another.” He drapes his jacket on the coatrack then nudges some toys out of the way with his foot. “You’d think a grown man would know better, but surprisingly, he seemed pretty confused as to why it happened.”

“My dad almost burned down his store once, with fireworks he always kept stashed in the office closet,” I tell him. “My mom flipped out and yelled, even though she always joked about wishing he’d get rid of the store.”

“My mom was pretty upset, too, but my dad usually just laughs her off.”

“My dad does, too . . . or, I mean, did.” I pretend to have something in my eye and duck my head so he won’t see my eyes bubbling with tears.

He threads his fingers through mine, our palms conforming, and he sketches his finger across the back of my hand. “You think you’re ready to hear about my magical mind reading gift?

Sucking back the tears, I meet his gaze again. “If you could mind read, you wouldn’t be hanging out with me. Trust me. One look into my thoughts, and you’d be running the other way.”

He brushes a strand of hair out of my eyes, his knuckles grazing my temple as he tucks it behind my ear. “I doubt that. I find you fascinating. Always have.”

I shiver from his touch and cross my fingers that he doesn’t notice. “There you go again, talking like you’ve known me forever.” But the intense, butterfly-inducing look on his face has me worried that he somehow has.

He leads me up the stairs toward the second floor.

“Where is everyone?” I ask.

“At the store,” he says.

So it’s just him and me?

My stomach does a double back flip but I shake off the feeling and focus on walking up the stairs, taking in the family portraits lining the wall. One in particular captures my attention; a younger Luca sits with a girl around my age wearing baggy clothes and a stud in her nose. She looks thin, her frail arm is around Luca’s shoulder, and the sunlight beaming down on them highlights the shadows under her eyes.

“Is this Rowan?” I ask, pointing at the picture.

“Yeah. It was taken a few years ago.” His voice grows thick with emotion. “My mom thinks it’s one of the better pictures of Rowan when she wasn’t high . . . I don’t know why she can’t see it.”

“Sometimes people only see what they want to.” Like I did with my mom.

Looking back, I see it now, in the way she decided she didn’t want to cook anymore, how she never was a fan of my dad’s store, how she drove to the antique shop on my birthday, to do God knows what with Dennis. The woman, who I thought had been the perfect mother and wife, had her flaws—everyone does, I guess.

We silently finish climbing the stairs then step into a room with an unmade twin bed, a pile of clothes on the floor, and a cluster of snapshots tacked to the dark blue accent wall. The air smells like sugar and cologne with a splash of charred pine needles.

Luca slips his fingers from mine to turn on the lamp and tug off his beanie.

“Did you take all of these?” I turn in a circle, looking at all the photos of him, of the mountains, the beach, trees, people I’ve never met. Some are in black and white, others in color, but the one thing they have in common is they all tell a story of the life Luca’s lived, where he’s been, what he’s seen.

“Yeah. I pretty much started taking pictures since I was old enough to work a camera. But I took a lot of my best photos during the year Bria was missing, when my parents were pretty much nonexistent.” He scoots a pile of clothes aside and sits down on his bed. “I was actually kind of a pain in the ass back then.”

“You were, huh?” I find the idea of him being a pain in the ass amusing for some reason.

“I spent a lot of time being . . . well, depressed.” He grabs an album from his nightstand and places it on his lap. “You remember how I told you my parents were caught up in finding Bria?”

Nodding, I examine a photo he took of himself. He’s leaning against a chain-link fence with a hood pulled over his head, his glasses off, and he looks so miserable. “This one looks familiar,” I say. “Where’d you take it?”

“Here actually.” He opens the album. “Last summer when we came to visit.”

I look at him. “You were here last summer?”

“We’ve spent summers here almost every year for last ten years or so.”

“Were you here on June sixth?” I have no idea why I ask, or why it matters. It really doesn’t. That’s the past. This is the now.

I need to start focusing more on the now
.

“I was.” His head’s tipped down as he examines the photos taped to the pages.

“I’m guessing you heard about the accident, then?”

He bobs his head up and down with his gaze glued on the photos. “I was actually in town that day with my mom, and we drove right by it on our way back to the house we rented . . . I saw you being lifted into an ambulance.”

My chest constricts at the moment in my life that I can’t remember. Days were lost as I drifted in and out of consciousness. “How did you know it was me?” I take a seat on the bed beside him and straighten my injured leg to ease some of the tightness in the muscles. “I don’t even look like the same person anymore.”

“Yeah, you do. You just wear more makeup and have crazy purple hair.” He gently tugs on a strand of my hair. “I saw you before that, though, lighting off a sparkler in the parking lot of the grocery store.”

“Oh, my God.” I don’t know whether to frown or laugh that he saw me that day, before the dyed hair, thick eyeliner, and scars. It’s overwhelming to know that all this time he recognized me and I had no idea. That he knew my don’t-gives-a-shit-attitude was a fraud. “That’s how you knew what candy I’d pick. Because I was eating Snickers and M&Ms right before I decided to light the sparkler.”

He chuckles, a deep husky sound. “It was pretty funny watching everyone stare at you like you were crazy.”

“I was bored, and it was my birthday, so I thought, what the hell.” I scrape at the pink nail polish Zhara put on me the other night. “My dad gave me sparklers every birthday.” Another thought dawns on me. “Is that why you got me some for Christmas?”

He nods, his fingers curling around the corner of the page. “You looked so happy that day. I wanted to see you that happy again.”

“I was happy.” An uneven breath falters from my lips as I remember what it felt like to be that freely happy.

Like standing on the edge of a cliff with the wind in my hair and my arms spanned to the side, something I did with my dad once after a hike. Or right after an extremely hard dance practice, when my toes were numb, blisters covered my feet, and every one of my limbs ached; all that pain represented every ounce of what I had into dancing my best.

“I was kind of jealous when I saw you,” he says. “Of how happy you were. I was sulking on the hood of the car, waiting for my mom to stop talking to some random stranger she cornered at the store. I had my hoodie up because I knew it’d piss her off.”

I bite down on my tongue to stop myself from laughing at the memory. “I remember her yelling at you. I think you even looked at me while she was.”

“I did look at you. A lot, actually.”

He looks down, and when I follow his gaze, my heart nearly stops.

There are a few pictures of me on the page. Some were taken recently while some were older, taken a couple of years ago, when my parents were alive. There’s one of me reading on the bench in front of my dad’s store. Another of me sitting in the shade of that ridiculous gnome statue. There’s even a photo of me dancing underneath the fireworks at the park, with my arms stretched out to the side and a huge ass grin on my face, as if every single second was perfect.

“The first time I saw you, you were fourteen.” He looks at the photo of me dancing under a shower of sparks. “I was pissed off at my dad because he forgot to play baseball with me, or something stupid like that. It was the Fourth of July and I had wandered down to the park. I swear, almost the entire town was there. It was crazy.”

“They probably were. It’s a thing around Honeyton, something you’ll soon learn.”

“You were there, too, you know . . . And your family.” His smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “You all went so crazy when the fireworks started going off. You took off running, yelling something about fireflies.”

“It was something we did every year . . .” I find myself smiling, yet wanting to cry over what’ll never be again. “It was one of my favorite holidays.”

“I wanted to have that,” he says softly. “That’s what kind of caught my attention. How happy your family was. Mine was so messed up all the time. My mom with her meltdowns, my dad with his grumpy, you-need-to-grow-up-and-be-responsible-don’t-be-like-Rowan attitude, and Rowan . . . well, she’d been doing drugs for a couple of years by then. I thought about joining you, but just sat back and took pictures instead.”

“You should have. Joined us, I mean.” The idea makes me smile just a bit. I would’ve been so stoked if a guy as cute as Luca would’ve wanted to hang out. “I was super nice back then.”

“I know you were. I saw you a couple of times after that, and a few times over the next couple of summers. I thought about talking to you, but you looked too nice and sweet. You were always smiling, and it was a little intimidating when I felt so depressed all the time.”

I feel like I’m seeing an entirely new side of him, just like he’s seen an entirely different side of me. But maybe that’s how everyone is, carrying around so many layers, and you never fully get to see all of them unless you get close enough that they let you.

“It’s hard to believe you were sad,” I say. “You seem so happy all the time.”

He closes the album and sets it aside on the nightstand before turning to me. “I had a revelation about seven months ago that kind of changed my life.”

Seven months ago?
“The day of the accident?”

He nods, intertwining our fingers, and I can feel his pulse racing through his grip. “When I saw you on that stretcher, being put into the ambulance, all I could think was I might have lost my chance at ever meeting you. Then, a week later, I heard that you were okay, and that’s when I decided that I needed to stop watching life and actually live it. I went back home and started doing more of the things I wanted to do. Hanging out with friends, going to parties, biking in the mountains, hiking, seeing places I never knew existed. And I also made myself a promise that when we came back for our next summer trip that I’d finally talk to you.” His lips tilt to a lopsided smile as he struggles to conceal his nerves. “But then we ended up moving right next door to you. I swear, I seriously about lost it when I found out.”

I think back to that day I first met him and how stunned he appeared when he saw me. I thought it was because of my purple hair. The idea that he knew me, knew the real me, this entire time is mind-blowing.

“I can’t believe you even recognized me. I look so different.”

“I know you don’t want to hear this, but you still look like you.” His grin broadens, pretty much taking over his entire face. “Well, a crazy, rainbow version of you.”

I roll my eyes but a tiny raindrop of a smile sneaks through. “This is so weird. All this time you’ve known me and I didn’t even know it.”

“I didn’t really know you. I just took pictures of you sometimes.”

“When you put it that way, you kind of sound like a stalker.”

He scrunches his nose. “Wow, I kind of do. It wasn’t in a weird way, though. I just like taking pictures of people, and you take really good pictures, and I—”

I put my hand over his mouth to stop him from rambling. “I don’t really think you’re a stalker. Trust me. I used to watch people all the time, especially tourists. That’s how I notice you.” I lower my hand. “I just didn’t take pictures. But I did dance around in parking lots with sparklers in the middle of the day, so I’ve got the crazy thing going for me.”

The stiffness in his body alleviates. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right away. At first it was because I was worried you’d think I was too weird, and then I didn’t because . . .” He rakes his fingers through his hair with his free hand. “Well, because it seems as if you don’t like to be reminded of the past.” He traces the folds of my fingers. “If you ever want to talk about anything, just know that I’m here.”