Book of Love (9 page)

He took his hand out of his pocket and
touched my arm. I lurched away from him as I felt a surge of
something cold ripple across my skin. Goose bumps prickled across
my entire body and the screaming pain suddenly stopped, as though
he’d triggered an off switch.

I gasped, finally able to
breath. I looked up at him, finding his eyes were darker than
before, the green afterglow a calm shimmery black. The fear I’d
felt left almost instantly, and I found I couldn’t look away—his
face was…
beautiful.

“
Again,
I’m Greg.” His voice sounded muffled, as though my ears had been
stuffed with cotton. This time he offered me his hand for a
shake.
Why was he introducing
himself a second time?

I licked my lips, smiling
slightly in an attempt to hide my issues. I took his hand and shook
it. As I let go, I felt a strange attraction wash over me. “My name
is Em—
Em
,” I
stuttered. “I’m Emily.” I felt dazed.
Hadn’t he already known my name?
I
was a idiot.

Greg smiled, tilting his
head back. “Alright,
Emily.
Here, have these. They’re on the house this
time.” He pulled the bottle from his pocket and took my hand. His
grasp was cold and strange, but it didn’t seem to matter anymore.
He pressed the pills into my palm, curling my fingers over the
smooth, orange plastic.

I never stopped watching his eyes,
mesmerized by the black, shimmery glow.

“
My treat.” He let go of my
hand and it dropped idly to my side.

“
Thanks,” I managed to
squeak.

His smile was compelling. He leaned in and
kissed me on the cheek. “See you later, Emily.” He winked and
brushed past me, the hold over me released like a weight had been
lifted.

I took a deep breath,
exhaling as I once again found myself able to breathe
freely.
What was that?
The feeling I’d been left with was one of admiration, but it
didn’t seem right. I turned around to look for Greg, but he was
already gone. I looked down into my hand, curling open my fingers
and seeing the orange bottle of pills. I felt my head, feeling as
though I’d just woken up from an all night bender, which I had; but
this was worse. I opened the bottle and took one of the small red
pills that were inside.

Did I even know what it was?

Did I really care?

Wes:

No, not again.

My hand began throbbing as I sat in third
period Math. The prickling began at the fingertips, and then crept
up my arm. I dropped my pencil, unable to grip it any longer. I
wriggled in my seat, the movement giving me little comfort. Sweat
slowly began to seep from my pores, my shirt clinging to my skin. I
felt trapped behind my desk as the teacher droned, the anxiety
spiraling out of control. My jaw began to hurt and I tried to
massage it. I leaned back as far as I could as the bones in my back
ached and cracked. I looked up at the clock with blurring vision,
afraid that there was too much time left—afraid that something
would happen to me in front of everyone.

How could I get out of here?

I looked down the line of desks, seeing
Emily at the end. I was a year behind in math, but I was horrible
at it so it made sense. Emily, on the other hand, was smarter than
she led on and was actually ahead, placing us together. Her eyes
were half open in a dopey daze.

She had taken something.

Looking back at my hands, I clenched my jaw,
grinding my teeth. The roots of every tooth hurt as though
infected, sending spikes of pain through my head. In desperation, I
looked toward Emily once more, and this time, I found she was
looking at me. She quickly looked away when our eyes met, shocked
that I’d caught her staring.

No. Turn back,
I thought.

As I silently begged, her gaze returned, her
eyes narrowed as though hearing my cries, her lips forming a
question.

I didn’t know exactly what she was thinking,
but I supposed she understood because she stood immediately,
disrupting the whole class. A group of girls giggled from the back
of the room, but she didn’t seem to care. Neither did I. The
teacher stopped talking, glaring at her.

“
Emily, please sit.” The
teacher pointed at her, his face beginning to turn red as his blood
pressure rose. He liked Emily. Otherwise, he would have immediately
sent her to the principal’s office, no questions asked. He was a
zero tolerance kind of man.

She frowned at him, and then at the girls
that were laughing. They laughed harder now. She looked at me one
last time as I watched her eyes flutter. She fell to the ground
then, her eyes closed as though she’d fainted. The whole class
stared, the giggles silenced by a wave of gasps.

The teacher dropped his pen and rushed to
her side, the whole group now craning their necks in order to see
what was happening. Shocked, I shot from my chair, but instead of
rushing toward her, I grabbed my bag and rushed to the door. Wiping
the sweat from my brow, no one noticed as I slipped out and into
the hall. I let a low cry of agony pass my lips as I leaned against
the lockers. Recovering, I forced my body to move.

How had she known what to do?

Emily:

I was on the ground, the musty smell of
dirty carpet filling my nostrils. I opened my eyes, feeling as
everyone watched me. I pretended to breathe hard, grabbing my head
and faking a wince. I wasn’t sure just why I did it, but the look
on Wes’s face seemed to tell me. And his thoughts, they wanted me
to do it—to help him somehow.

“
Emily, are you alright?”
The teacher was shaking me. I blinked, nodding. I looked at the
faces of the students that had surrounded me, their mouths hanging
open and their eyes agape.

“
Sorry I—” I tried to come
up with some sort of an excuse, but then figured saying nothing was
just as good.

The teacher grabbed the arm of the student
standing next to him. “Jake, take her to the nurse, will you?” He
was the teacher’s pet after all—other than me, of course.

I tried to hide the
disdain as I discreetly rolled my eyes—
anyone but him.
Jake grabbed my arm
and I cringed. This was embarrassing enough as it was. I began to
wonder what people thought, but then again, everyone expected this
from me. I was a freak.

I leaned against Jake despite all my body’s
cries not to. I had to play the part. He led me out the door, his
mind relishing every moment his sweaty hands touched me. It was
definitely going to be his last. In the hall I shrugged him away.
He looked at me, stunned.

I straightened my clothes.
“Listen, Jake. I’m fine. Don’t tell anyone.” I reached in my pocket
and fished for the five dollar bill I knew was there. “Here. Just
go walk around for a bit and then go back.” I shoved the bill into
Jake’s palm. He pushed his glasses up his nose with his other hand.
“Say anything and I’ll
ruin
you,” I added, jabbing my finger in his face with
warning.

Jake look terrified as I glared at him, my
face close to his. His braces dripped with nervous saliva. I felt
bad for him. It wasn’t his fault that he was such a nerd, but I
needed him to pull through for me. This was his chance to shine. He
nodded, his asthma kicking in as he reached in his pocket for his
inhaler. I patted him on the arm as he coughed. Despite the way I’d
treated him, his thoughts still obsessed over how hot he thought I
was.

I rolled my eyes. “Thanks, Jake.”

He tried to smile as he inhaled his
medicine.

I shook my head, giving him one last nod
before I turned and ran in the opposite direction of the nurse’s
office. I glanced back to see Jake nervously bustling down the hall
and away from the classroom, following my directions. I slid on my
heel as I turned the corner, making my way out and into the parking
lot where I saw Wes’s car still parked in the spot he had left it
in this morning. I walked briskly across the pavement, nearly
running. As I drew close, I saw that Wes was inside. Grabbing the
handle of the car door, I opened it and ducked in as the old
leather of the seats squealed in protest.

“
Wes,” I said his name,
urging him to look at me. He was breathing hard, gripping the wheel
with both hands. The look on his face frightened me. The whispers
in my head returned, chanting something I couldn’t understand. I
blinked hard and tried to press them to the back of my thoughts.
“Wes, what’s going on?” I gasped. I touched his arms but he shied
away, as though it had hurt.

He looked in my direction,
his eyes reddened.
“Em—I…”

“
Shh…
Wes, it’s alright.” I
wanted to comfort him, but I knew he didn’t want that. I looked at
the wheel of his car, then him. “Here...”

I carefully lifted myself off the seat,
moving over the shifter, and into his lap, thereby forcing him to
switch seats with me. He didn’t seem to care, his pain too great to
resist. He grabbed my hips as he moved out from under me, and I
couldn’t help but take pleasure in the brief contact.

I sat in his seat, left very warm from his
clearly feverish body. I turned and reached across him, fishing
into his coat pocket for the keys. I pulled them out with a shaking
hand, forced them into the ignition, and started the car. I looked
at the foreign dash, biting my lip and trying to acclimate myself.
I fought with the shifter and clutch as the car whined, but so did
Wes. I clumsily made my way out of the lot and down the street,
praying that I could figure this out fast enough to get him
away.

I’d saved him. I was his hero.

Jane:

At lunch, Wes was nowhere in sight. I looked
around for Emily but didn’t see her, either. I took my milk and
sandwich to a table outside, sitting alone. I kept my head down,
trying to eat as fast as I could. Looking up, I saw Liz approach,
along with her new future death: lying in a park, her body gorged
with ice cream. I couldn’t help but snicker just a little.

Liz glanced at me and smiled discreetly, but
didn’t bother to stop and say hello. It was too public for her to
acknowledge knowing me here, and I wasn’t considered the type you’d
want to be seen talking to while recruiting new freshman minions,
especially after this week.

I watched her and her friends walk across
the courtyard before looking back to the bagel in my hands. Walking
was an art form for them, and every boy in school, even the
druggies, stared hopelessly. Each one of her friends’ deaths
involved dying from some sort of unpopularity. I laughed some more
at the irony.

I opened my milk, taking a sip and feeling
increasingly embarrassed to be alone as the humor of what I’d just
seen faded. Anxiety gripped my stomach, and I rose to leave,
despite my unfinished food.

I grabbed my bag, lifting
it off the ground. It was then that I glanced up in time to see Max
enter the courtyard. I froze, my bag sliding back unnoticed onto
the grass. An image appeared in my mind. I saw him in the graveyard
again, the wind in his hair, smiling at me as though mocking the
fact that he was still
undead.
A basketball player stopped to talk with him,
looking slightly intimidated by Max’s lean muscle and height. The
player handed him a flyer, but Max looked less than interested. He
nodded absently.

My heart began to beat a little harder, the
anxiety replaced with a happier sort of butterfly feeling. I saw
Liz take notice of Max, turning her body to face him as she perked
her chest in the air, standing straighter. All I could see when she
did that was her dead face covered with rainbow sprinkles.

I leaned against the table, figuring I’d
stick around to see what happened. Her entourage began to giggle
and point, but Max didn’t seem to notice, or care. Liz trotted over
to him, her blonde hair waving behind her. She delicately nibbled
on one nail, twisting her foot in the grass and batting her lashes.
I grumbled to myself as he smiled at her. My heart sank as I
continued to stare, unable to draw my eyes away from them.

What had I really hoped?
That he
liked
me?
Just because he had spoken to me meant nothing—just because I
happened to dream of him also meant nothing. I was a bumbling geek
playing out an imaginary relationship in my head.

I looked at Liz’s perfect clothes, made from
the most expensive fabric, and shoes that looked brand new. I
looked down at my own outfit, inspecting the jeans I’d had for two
years now, dotted with charcoal smudges I couldn’t seem to get out.
The plaid shirt I was wearing once belonged to my father, and as
such, it hung shapelessly over my frame. My skin was pale, and not
the cute, fair pale, but the gaunt, sickly type.

Feeling a bout of desperation wash over me,
I pulled a hair band from my wrist and grasped the extra fabric of
the flannel behind my back. I balled it into a knot, fastening it
with the band. I then rolled the sleeves up, hoping that it could
help make me appear less frumpy—though it regretfully revealed more
pale skin. I blew the loose bits of hair from my face, telling
myself that this was as good as it was going to get. At least I was
wearing blue today, just as I had in the dream. Maybe if he had
really been there, then he’d notice my play on color—the same color
of his eyes.

I brushed the rest of my hair away from my
face and sat up tall, hoping it made me more appealing. Glancing
up, I saw that Liz was draping herself across his shoulders, her
hand caressing his chest. I watched shamelessly, forgetting that I
was gawking. Max laughed as his head fell back, but when it tilted
foreword, his gaze locked on me.