Ephemeral (The Countenance) (4 page)

“What the hell is going on?” I say each word like its own sentence. “What’s the penalty if I don’t play by the rules?”

Her eyes elongate like eggs, her lips press together, forming an anemic white line.

“You, dear Laken, will simply disappear.”

A rush of silence stops up my ears. The room spins from her dizzying words.

“I have to get out of here.” I push my way past her, and she snatches me by the wrist, quick as a thief. “My little sister, my mom—they’re going to be worried sick.”

“You can’t leave.” Her voice breaks when she says it. “They won’t let you.” There’s a desperation in her that pleads for me to understand.

“But this is all a lie.” A wave of unexpected tears rush to the surface, and I suppress the urge to bawl.

“I know it’s a lie,” she whispers. “I’m just like you. I remember everything.” 

3

Forever

Casper leads me through a sea of dense ground clouds, along the twisted path toward Henderson Hall. We pass dozens of rectangular dorms, each window glows a bright orange hue as though a slow building fire burned in each one—smoldering, alive with licking flames.

This place—Ephemeral—it’s odd in nature, and I can’t put my finger on why. Outside of my obvious captivity, there’s something altogether off about the environment, the people.

A heavily shadowed forest lines the periphery. It towers over us, as though supervising our misery. Even the moon with its powder white glow seems to want in on the secrets—the mysteries these hallowed grounds hold—unknowable as ancient hieroglyphics.

“And another thing”—Casper takes a breath—“my brother, Flynn, is a junior like you.” She picks up her pace. “If you move, and you’re a female, you’re a viable option for his hormonal tendencies. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a nice guy—but I doubt he’s the one for you. So do you have a boyfriend? I guess the fallout from that whole Rycroft thing is enough to blow out any flame, right?”

Wrong, I want to say. Badly I want to let her in on the fact Rycroft probably doesn’t exist, but I’m not in the mood to debate reality, and I’m curious as hell to see this new improved version of my brother. God—what if he’s gorgeous, and I fall in lust with him? How sick would that be? A true testament to this budding insanity.

I inspect the foreign clothes I’ve donned. Casper introduced me to the left side of the closet, said everything there was shipped over from Rycroft where I did something so terrible they lobbed me clear over to their rival school to be rid of my shame.

“I had a boyfriend back home,” I whisper. I’m not particularly proud of my love story gone awry. “His name was Tucker. I was on my way to breakup with him when I got in an accident. Apparently, he and your brother have a lot in common.”

“Sorry.” She wrinkles her nose like she means it. “Guys can be such dicks sometimes. Did you love this Tucker guy?”

“I thought I did.” My chest cinches with the lie. “Actually, I loved someone else. A boy named Wes. We grew up together. He and my brother drowned in the lake near our house.” I pause just shy of filling her in on the gory details of Fletcher’s demise, how we found them facedown with the moon bathing them in gold, how my heart fractured that night—how it’s been irreparable ever since. “So what do you think is going on? What’s with the fake families?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice turns to gravel. A light breeze picks up and she tightens her coat around her waist. “Are you up on your angel mythology?”

“My what?”

She lets a group of cackling girls pass us by before pulling me off the brick path.

“They believe it.” She blinks in frustration. “They’re going to assume you do, too.”

“They believe what? And who are
they
?”

The dormitory towers over her, pulls her into its dark reserve by way of its nefarious shadow. It washes her features dull as soot, reducing her to nothing but a disembodied voice. The glowing whites of her eyes dissolve intermittently in the murky light.

“There are five factions of angelic beings that descend from the Nephilim.” She draws in so close I can feel her breath feathering across my cheek. “As far as I can tell, hybrid humans are the binding cord that holds this place together.” She pants into me with an uncalled for amount of energy like she just finished an Olympic worthy sprint. Her features darken, a layer of fear galvanizes beneath the surface as if she’s broken a sacred vow, and the price she’ll have to pay is far too high. “I’ll explain the rest later.” She leads us back onto the crimson path.

The moonlight sprays down and washes her in a gentle glow like a spotlight. I half expect some giant orb in the sky to drop an illuminated stairwell leading her up to the mother ship. It all feels possible, every absurd improbability as viable as the next.

“It’s going to be okay,” she assures. “I mean, they don’t abuse you here or anything.”

We come upon a gleaming brass sign that boastfully reads, Henderson Hall. The building glows with rosy pride. A silhouette of a couple lingers in the window directly above the entry. I’m mesmerized by the way the shadowed boy holds the hourglass girl, the way her head extends with laughter or passion—both.

You could write a story with the shadows that linger in each window. A part of me wants to sit on the lawn, nestle in the cool night dew, and do just that.

The thick scent of clove cigarettes billows from the corner of the building, making me wonder what kind of supervision Ephemeral Academy provides if kids are making out in bedrooms and smoking questionable narcotics right here on campus. I take in the cool, sweet scent of the cloves as if I were smoking them myself—close my eyes and pretend I’m anywhere but here.

Casper takes me by the hand and runs us up the porch. Music streams out of the opened doubled doors, pulsating through my chest with its disruptive rhythm. We maneuver our way through a thicket of bodies and into an expansive common room much like the one at Austen House.

“I don’t think we’re meant to be friends.” Her voice spikes over the music just enough so I can hear.

“Excuse me?” A prick of heat spears through me like some visceral
, I told you so
. I let Casper Masterson, whoever the hell she is, lure me into this teenage wasteland laden with Abercrombie models, and now I’m going to be drawn and quartered as she and the rest of the Ephemeralites pour on the public humiliation. Shit. I can smell the pig’s blood a mile away.

“Whoever they programmed to be your friend will find you,” she says. “I could tell by the way Kres and Grayson were ignoring you, they’re going to make your life miserable.”

Kresley and Grayson hating me was bound to happen in any world, in any dimension. That’s just your basic social economics. That bit of non-news could have been shared quickly and succinctly back at the room. She could have spared me the trip over the hills and through the woods only to find myself alone at some raging party populated with the very same assholes that were in my dorm.

“We can totally be friends in private.” She nods as if it’s a given.

Why does this relationship suddenly feel dirty and closet worthy? Actually, I’m fine with the whole I-can’t-really-be-seen-with-you-in-public social middle finger. I just need to hit the exit and catch my bearings, figure out an escape route out of this hellhole.

“They can’t really stop anything.” She punctuates “they” with air quotes. “I’ve tested the waters. I know for a fact they keep us on a very long leash.”

Perfect. I’ll be testing the validity of that theory as soon as I hop the first bus back to Kansas.

There’s something sincere about Casper, honest in nature. Something in me shifts, and I’m under her spell again.

“Who exactly are
they
?” I lean in as though Casper were about to deliver the secret to the universe while a blond boy behind her openly undresses me with his eyes. I can tell by his budding lewd smile, by the glossy lust-driven look in his eyes that his sex-ray vision is in full effect.

“I don’t know who they are.” She laughs. “See what I’m up against?” She spikes up like a lunatic and waves past my shoulder. “I gotta go. Just start walking around. Things will happen. They always do.” She darts across the room and jumps into a screaming hug with group of girls sporting matching spiked heels and skirts that barely make it past their underwear.

I step deeper into Henderson Hall and take in the crowd of jostling bodies, the scent of new clothes lays thick in the air like a toxin.

Things will happen.

“They always do,” I whisper. 

The Harman Kardon speakers spew out varying levels of unrest at unfortunate decibels that leave me meandering slowly toward the exit. I’ve been to parties back home where the speakers shoot out crap as loud as a jet engine—stop up your ears for days from the ruptured capillaries alone. Mostly those were overblown, hyper-sexed parties rife with beer kegs and stoner circles. The cops rarely showed because no one really cared. They saw it as our moment in time, the building of our glory days and they relived theirs by way of not interrupting ours. It was a chain of stolen wishes, the dream of better days than those adulthood brought along, and they had no intention of baptizing us into the cruel world of bills and paychecks any sooner than necessary.

I circulate around the periphery, waiting for something to happen like Casper suggested. A walking carcass invasion—an entire busload of dead relatives filing in from the not-so-great beyond, it all seems possible. Who knows where this macabre merry-go-round could lead.

I glance around at the bevy of expensively dressed people. I’ve never witnessed so many kids who use wealth to leverage their social standing all at once. It’s like a piñata exploded and vomited Rolexes and diamond stud earrings. I’m half-worried a homegrown terrorist will attack to prove some political statement, narrowing in on the have and have-nots. These glossy bodies, these polished stones of society, walk around like sultans. Long scarves of expensive perfume mix with warm scented cologne, creating the kind of noxious cloud you would expect walking through the cosmetics department at the mall.

There’s something unnerving about being around so many financially privileged people in one confined space. It’s like harnessing the power of the atom, accidentally splitting it and nothing but coins falling out—stocks and bonds, foreign currencies flying around like a fiscal intergalactic shower.

Instinctually, I want to school them on the harsh realities of life, the unfairness that howls in the street at night, the destitute that freeze on park benches in winter. Here, you would never believe poverty existed—that getting a glass of water was the biggest daily burden for people on the other side of the planet.

A boy dances in the crowd like he’s having a cardiac episode. His jagged motions remind me of the not-so-welcome committee I ran into earlier in the haunted forest. I was so caught up on the fact Casper could remember her past that I forgot to mention my run-in with the undead—and the handsome boy who thought nothing of saving the day. He acted as if it were just another mundane task, banal as taking out the trash.  

I turn in haste to look for Casper, and my head ignites with a flash migraine.

“Whoa!” A guy wearing a plain T-shirt and jeans pulls his drink out of my way. “Almost got you.” He holds out a hand. “Flynn—and you must be
Rycroft
Laken.” His mouth illuminates with an ultra-bright smile, the kind that says I know what you did last summer—and I’d like a demonstration.

I take his hand and gently grip his fingers, clammy, and cold at the tips. He’s tall and handsome in a frat boy sort of way, dark eyes, same ultra-light hair like Casper. It’s evident why the female population willingly puddles to his feet. His face is chiseled to perfection with a nose that looks as if the artist ran out of time to smooth out the edges. My old boss at the diner had a nose like that, and Mom called him Ski Jump right to his face. She knew just how to cradle people’s feelings with her barbed wire embrace.

Flynn doesn’t miss the opportunity to slip his hand around my back. There’s a warm way about him, although snakelike and predatory, but I’m starting to feel the powers of his seduction as he inebriates me with those deep mysterious eyes.