“No,” Michael said. He couldn't take any more; he was too filled with emotion. He didn't want to listen to anything, he didn't want to hear about any more secrets, all he wanted to hear was the sound of Ronan kissing him, the sounds of the two of them making love. But just as they embraced, the door flung open.
“Ronan! Just how long did you think you were going to be able to hide this secret?!”
Neither boy knew what Saoirse was talking about. “Yeah right,” she said, not believing their baffled expressions. “Well, follow me and I'll show you.”
Downstairs they were as shocked as everyone else to see a car parked on the lawn in front of St. Florian's with a huge, black bow on its roof, but shocked for different reasons. Ronan because he genuinely didn't know who would leave such a gift and Michael because he couldn't believe Ronan would buy him a car on top of all the other presents he had given him. “Oh my God, Ronan!” Michael squealed. “I love it!”
In complete amazement, Michael walked around the red Mercedes Benz SUV. He had wanted a car ever since he passed his driver's test and got his license, but he never thought Ronan would be the one to fulfill his wish. He was right. “Sorry, love,” Ronan said. “It's not from me.”
“You're just being coy, mate,” Fritz said, “ 'Cause you wanted it to be a private surprise.”
Even Ciaran thought Ronan was lying. “How did you ever convince Mum to spend so much money on someone other than herself?”
Michael noticed that a card was tucked under the windshield wiper. He ripped open the envelope, read the handwritten message inside the card, and every beautiful birthday memory was wiped away, every happy moment that he had just shared with Ronan and his friends was erased. He felt like he had been punched in the stomach. “To my son. Ad infinitum! Happy Birthday. Love, Dad.” Michael spat out the words as if they were poison, and in his mind he was transported far from Double A to a padded room where he saw his father kill his mother, brutally and cleverly so that everyone would believe the body left behind was a suicide. The same father who now sent his love attached to a bright red car. He tore the card in two, flung the pieces into the air, and stormed upstairs with Ronan close behind him.
“Why the hell would he do such a thing?” Fritz asked.
Picking up the pieces of the torn card and placing them together so she could read the note herself, Saoirse remarked, “He's got some issues with his dad.”
“So bloody what! The bloke gave him a Benz! In red! It doesn't even come in red, it had to be specially ordered!”
Ciaran understood Fritz's confusion, but he also understood Michael's pain at receiving a gift from his father, whom he had completely written off. He knew that he couldn't share their history with Fritz so he tried to channel his friend's energy and make light of the situation. “Look at it this way, Fritz,” Ciaran said. “Since Michael doesn't want it, maybe he'll let you drive it.”
That was all Fritz needed to hear to make him forget about Michael's fury and abrupt departure.
Â
Unfortunately, Michael couldn't forget. He couldn't forget witnessing his parents at their defining moments: his father committing an act of unconscionable violence and his mother begging God to save her son seconds before she died. Sitting on his bed next to Ronan in thick silence, it was with an unwanted sense of maturity that he realized no matter how hard he tried to move forward he could never fully escape his past.
chapter 3
Summer was no longer the same.
Deep within The Forest, Michael sat on the bank of a stream that led somewhere, nowhere, and watched the water glide over his submerged feet. Even though it was July the water felt cool, and Michael wasn't sure if it was because the thick shade blocked out much of the sun's rays, because the weather in this part of the world didn't get too hot, or because as a vampire, temperature, like age, was an irrelevant concept. Watching the water trip over and through his toes, he had to admit it: he was confused. And it was all because of that stupid car.
Well, the car wasn't stupidâit was pretty amazing actually. It was everything Michael had ever hoped for. It was like somebody reached into his brain, picked out the car of his dreams and made it materialize. But why did that somebody have to be his father?
It couldn't have been a gift from Ronan? Or Edwige? Or even his grandfather? No, it had to come from the one person he wanted nothing to do with, the one person he wanted out of his life for good. “Oh my God!” Michael groaned out loud. “What if that'll never happen?”
Collapsing backward onto the dirt, Michael looked up at the pieces of sky he could see through the lush foliage and called out to the universe, “Thanks a lot, guys!” For the first time it hit him, no matter how long he lived, no matter how many birthdays he celebratedâ100, 200, 362!âhe would always be his father's son instead of his own man. Most children outlive their parents, escape them, but not Michael, no, he was lucky enough to have been given the gift of immortality, but guess what? So was his father! For as long as Michael walked the earth, somewhere on the planet his father would be walking as well. “That totally sucks,” Michael moaned.
Sitting up, Michael noticed two leaves floating on the current. One was vibrant green with dark, almost black veins, the other much lighter in color, its veins, translucent. Visibly different, yet connected, the leaves touched and never separated as they rode on the water's surface. Some mornings Michael woke up and wished he and Ronan were like the leaves, that during the night they had been taken elsewhere, far from Double A, far from his father, and David, and the threats that hung over them. But when his mind cleared and he could think like the formidable creature he was and not the child he had been for so long, he realized distance was not salvation. It didn't matter where he was, the intangible ropes that connected him to his past and even to his enemies would still be tightly bound around him. What Michael needed to figure out was how to live with those ropes and not be strangled.
Michael splashed some water onto his face, and, as cool drops ran down his cheeks, onto his chin, into his hair, his mind took control of his eyes and he saw into the past. R.J. was standing before him, as lanky and relaxed as ever, sweat dripping down the sides of his face, his cheekbones reddened and moist. R.J.'s eyes barely opened, the sun was too strong, so he had to squint, but it was enough for him to see. “Ya lookin' all grown up, Mike,” he said, his lips sliding into a smile when he was done talking.
Guess not everything about the past is so bad, Michael thought. Then he wondered what R.J. was really doing right now. Sadly, he figured he was probably still leaning up against the gas pump, motionless, sweating, waiting for the next customer to drive up, waiting for the next reason to move. But where was R.J. going to go? The guy had never crossed the Nebraska state line in his entire life. At least Michael had gotten out of there. Thanks to this father. Oh not again!
Grabbing his sneakers, Michael bounded away from the stream, his feet jamming into the earth, one angry step after another. “Why can't I get him out of my head?” Michael asked, staring at the trees, a bit surprised that they didn't answer. His right foot landed squarely on a rock, but instead of wincing or losing his balance, he pressed down hard. When he lifted his foot to keep walking the rock was gone, burrowed into the ground. “I'll tell you why,” Michael said, answering his own question. “Because every time I think of that car I think of him!”
And unfortunately it was hard not to think of the Benz since it occupied his world literally and figuratively. Regardless of where he went during the dayâSt. Joshua's, the pool, some new, unexplored area of campus, even Edenâhe dreaded returning home. Now, walking back from The Forest he felt the same way. At least when he reached the clearing that led to St. Florian's he saw that the SUV wasn't waiting for him alone.
“Nice feet,” Ronan said. “Looks like you stepped out of a page from
Huck Finn.
”
Michael looked down and saw that from his ankles below he was almost completely covered in mud.
“How was your walk, love?” Ronan asked.
Sighing, Michael sat on the ground next to Ronan. “You know me,” he replied. “I'm just a regular country boy.” Michael leaned back and pressed his body into the rough stone of the building, allowing its cold to embrace his skin. “I see that it's still here.”
“Like a blighter, it just won't leave,” Ronan said.
Michael knew Ronan was using one of his British slang words again, and he wished he had memorized more of the book Saoirse had given him for his birthday. “Blighter?”
Smiling, Ronan grabbed Michael's knee and played with the frayed trim of his khaki shorts. “Pest,” Ronan translated. “The Benz is like a pest that just won't go away.”
“Isn't there an exterminator we can call?” Michael asked. The cool stone and Ronan's warm touch almost made Michael forget how annoyed he was, almost made him feel like he was just lounging with his boyfriend on a summer afternoon. Almost, but not quite. “Or a towing company?” Michael suggested. “I'm serious, Ronan, I don't think I can go another day seeing that ... that ... thing!”
Ronan leaned back against the stone as well. He let his hand slip to hold onto the back of Michael's thigh and realized that the car really had been parked outside for quite a long time now. “You know, it's against school rules to have a car parked anywhere except for the lot by the headmaster's office,” Ronan said. “Odd that David hasn't told you to move it yet.”
There was nothing odd about it, at least not to Michael. His father and David were working together, in cahoots with each other, so of course David didn't care if the presence of Vaughan's gift broke school rules. The thing wasn't even a gift anyway; it was bait, a bribe to try and get Michael to forget every heinous act that Vaughan had ever committed. It wasn't going to work. “My father's one of Them,” Michael seethed. “They protect each other.”
Ronan wanted to remind Michael that that's what families do, they protect each other, stand by one another, but he knew that Michael didn't want to hear that. He also knew that if anyone else had given him that car Michael would be driving it up and down every road in the United Kingdom. All he had talked about was getting his driver's license and how driving to him was synonymous with freedom. He hadn't changed his mind simply because he had acquired alternative methods of transportation; it was still a dream of his to be behind the wheel of a car, and Ronan felt terrible that Michael was letting his contempt for his father stand in the way of fulfilling that dream. He had to say something that would allow Michael to see beyond his hatred. “Have to admit it's beautiful, though,” Ronan said. “Betcha it's got a brilliant ride.”
In one quick, brusque movement, Michael stood up. Clearly, Ronan's words had pushed him into action. Michael thrust his hand into the side pocket of his shorts and pulled out the car keys that he had been carrying with him ever since his birthday. He stared at them with such disdain it was as if he believed they would burn his flesh. Michael flicked his wrist, and the keys flew out of his hand and were caught by Ronan's. “Then take it for a test drive,” Michael said. “I don't want it.”
It was not exactly the action Ronan had been hoping for.
Â
An hour later, sitting across from Ciaran in his lab, Ronan received yet another unwanted response.
“No, Ro,” Ciaran said, his right eye firmly pressed into the lens of a microscope, “I haven't heard from Mum lately.”
Knowing Michael needed to be alone for a few hours to sort through his feelings, Ronan had wandered around campus until he decided to go to St. Albert's lab where he knew he'd find his brother. Ciaran hadn't changed that much. Just because it was a beautiful summer day didn't mean he wouldn't be hunched over his microscope conducting some complicated experiment. An experiment that he seemed to be more interested in than their mother.
“Don't you find that a bit odd?” Ronan asked. “She used to always pop in from out of nowhere.”
The oldest,
Ciaran thought,
but definitely
not
the wisest.
“Into your life maybe,” Ciaran stated. “But I've kind of grown accustomed to living mine without the constant appearance of our mother.”
Embarrassed, Ronan gazed at the red and white blob that was squashed in between the two small, glass plates clipped onto the microscope's stage as if he knew what he was looking at, as if it held any interest. Although Edwige frequently visited Ronan and took an active part in his life, the same could not be said about how she treated Ciaran. Ronan had thought things would have gotten better after the family party he made her throw a few months ago, after she saw how all her children and even Michael needed her, but he was wrong. If anything, the party had the opposite effect, and lately, she was not only keeping her distance from Ronan's siblings, but from him as well.
“I will admit to one thing, brother,” Ciaran said, tapping his notebook with the eraser end of his pencil. “It's not like her
not
to meddle in
your
affairs.”
Ronan couldn't agree more, and he also couldn't push from his mind the disturbing thought that something terrible had happened to her, that wherever she was she needed her children's help. Then again Edwige didn't act like a typical mother so maybe she had just decided to spend a few months traveling and forgot to tell anyone where she was headed. “Do you think she went on holiday?” he asked.
“Possibly,” Ciaran said. From the tone of his voice, Ronan knew his brother was not convinced that their mother was frolicking on a beach in the south of France or shopping in an exclusive boutique in New York; he knew instinctively just like Ronan did that she was missing. The problem was that neither boy knew how to find her. “Guess we'll just have to wait until she gets bored wherever she is and decides to come home,” Ciaran advised.
The idea of not being proactive, of just letting the events unfold around him, went against Ronan's instinct, but reluctantly he had to agree. Edwige was far more powerful and cunning than anyone Ronan knew, so if she didn't want to be found, if she wanted to take a leave of absence from their lives for a while, there was nothing he could do to change that. “Guess you're right,” Ronan said.
Even though he accepted fate, it didn't mean he wasn't going to try and fight it. There had to be something he could do to connect with his mother. She was often able to read his mind; it made total sense that he should be able to read hers. Maybe if he followed in his brother's footsteps and conducted more experiments to strengthen his telepathic ability he would be able to destroy whatever intangible barrier Edwige had put up to separate herself from her children. Yes, that's exactly what Ronan had to do, because the possibility still remained that Edwige had been taken by force, against her will, and the barrier that divided them could have been put up by someone else. Now that he had decided to take action, Ronan felt much better. Until Ciaran spoke.
“I haven't seen much of Saoirse lately either,” he remarked. “Like mother, like daughter, I suppose.”
“What are you talking about?” Ronan asked. “Saoirse's missing?!”
Startled by his brother's concern, Ciaran almost dropped the new specimen he was about to clip into place. “No, she isn't missing. I saw her this morning,” he replied. “But it was the first time I have since Michael's birthday.”
Relieved, Ronan forced himself to laugh so Ciaran wouldn't think he was paranoid. “Oh good, 'cause you never know with that one.”
It looked like the tactic had worked, and Ciaran resumed his study. Once again his face was practically devoured by the microscope's eyepiece as he inspected whatever germ or bacteria cell was on the glass lens. As inquisitive as Ronan could be, he couldn't imagine anything that tiny igniting that much curiosity. He admired his brother for his interest and acumen in science, but didn't understand it. “What are you looking at?” Ronan asked.
What wasn't admirable was Ciaran's lack of communication skills. “Nothing.”
“Well,
nothing
seems to have you over the moon,” Ronan said. “You can't take your eyes off that thing.”
It was true. Despite the close proximity of his brother, despite the fact that they were having a conversation, Ciaran's eyes hardly ever strayed from his experiment. Even when he jotted something down in his notebook he kept his eyes looking into the thin, metal tube.