Timeless (29 page)

But I was careful. I didn’t want to choose a
country where Damien didn’t actually know the language. I wanted it
to be an English-speaking country despite Damien’s knowledge of
Latin, now an unspoken language, and French. Since we’d visited
France during our class trip, I thought that was too dangerous.
Madame Renalt might also begin to ask questions. I couldn’t choose
England because his accent sounded nothing like a modern British
accent, even with all of the regional variances. I knew we’d have
to explain that he had relatives who’d lived in England, but I
thought, overall, that New Zealand was the best country for him.
People had heard of it, but it was still not well known—not like
Australia. And no one knew anyone from New Zealand to my knowledge.
The chances that we’d actually meet a native New Zealander were
slim to none.

Damien was not happy about the lie, but he
knew there was no real alternative. We couldn’t exactly explain to
everyone that he’d come from the past, nearly eight hundred years
before.

We spent the Saturday before Aunt Jo returned
checking out books from the library about New Zealand so that we’d
both know something if anyone asked us any questions or started to
dig deeper into Damien’s past. I wasn’t too worried that anyone
would actually uncover the truth, but I wanted to make sure.

I knew we’d have to create a transcript and
grade record for him and that likely would involve my powers;
otherwise, the school registrar would begin to ask questions.

I was more concerned about how he’d do in his
classes. Science, math, history—nearly all the subjects he would
take—wouldn’t be recognizable to him. They would be much different
from what he would have remembered, and there was no way I could
catch him up on everything. Smart as he was, I didn’t think he
could fake it. Fortunately, he seemed to have a natural aptitude
for math, not that I’d been able to show him much so far. It was
too bad I wasn’t terribly good at it, but then I’d never really
tried all that hard. I did okay, but there were definitely nights
when I’d skipped the homework assignment.

Damien wanted to hire a private tutor right
away, and I didn’t think this was such a bad idea. But I wanted to
see first how well he did in school before we did that.It was going
to take time for him to adjust to modern life, and I was afraid he
could slip up if he worked with someone too closely.

It turned out that most of my fears were
unfounded. I’d underestimated just how smart and hard-working
Damien was. Once he did begin taking classes, he did very well in
most subjects, much better than I expected. I felt a little ashamed
that I’d assumed he couldn’t do it; he had been my father’s best
knight in our past life. Damien was a serious student who, unlike
the rest of us, actually read his textbooks and did his homework
the night before. I had taught him how to use the library before
his first day, and he spent most of his time away from me reading.
He was also building his own library at Sugar Hill, amazed at the
amount of books readily available. He couldn’t believe that so many
people could read. In the thirteenth century, books were a rarity;
they had to be copied out by hand, usually by a scribe, and almost
no one could read them. He was amazed to discover how the world had
changed. It was not just the knowledge that astounded him; the
world itself was much bigger and more diverse than what he’d
thought possible in the thirteenth century.

His first day in school was one I would never
forget. I spent the night before concentrating on all of the
records he’d need. It helped that I had copies of mine in an old
box under the bed so that I would know what to imagine. I didn’t
want there to be any gaps. Damien wasn’t entirely pleased with
this, hoping there could be another way for him to enroll, but I
assured him that they’d start to ask questions we couldn’t answer
if there was no record anywhere of his having attended school.

I decided that, though he’d be a native of
New Zealand who vacationed with relatives in England, he had spent
the majority of his time at a Swiss boarding school, which is where
he’d picked up such impeccable French. I researched on the web and
found a suitably impressive-sounding school with a name no one,
including me, could pronounce. It was just a matter of imagining
his records there and having them faxed to the registrar. We listed
Mrs. Arthur as his guardian, thinking that no one would question
this. I knew everyone would wonder why anyone with that kind of
wealth would want to come to our small town and finish high school.
True, there was the beach nearby, but really, we couldn’t compete
with one of the best private schools in Europe. But there was no
help for it.

I knew when Damien arrived on the first day
in an Audi wearing Versace that we’d have to be ready with some
sort of plausible background for him. I did consider buying him
more normal clothes, but I didn’t have the heart to dress him in
Levi’s when there was Armani in his closet. I wasn’t totally immune
to fashion.

On his first day, we rode together, with me
behind the wheel. I dissuaded him from having Dmitri take us, since
we were already going to cause enough gossip as it was. Though I
felt safe with his driving, we didn’t need the police asking
questions about his past if we were pulled over.

I knew, when we arrived in the parking lot,
that we’d stop traffic. I didn’t anticipate, however, that this
would literally happen. Most students didn’t drive nice cars—not
luxury, pricey ones. Angela’s father had bought her a used mustang
for her sixteenth birthday, but most students drove boring ones.
Even Aunt Jo’s old car didn’t really cause too much comment when
I’d first driven it to school.Ben had teased me a little, but that
had been the extent of it. Everyone had, of course, long seen Aunt
Jo driving it around town for the last fifty years. People began to
stare at us as we drove up, and two students actually stopped their
vehicles, blocking us as we pulled in.

“What’s wrong with everyone?” Damien asked
me. He still had no real idea about the distinctions between cars,
proving, I thought a little smugly, that the “car gene” was not
encoded into the male DNA the way Zack and Ben had always
argued.

“Nothing. Let’s just say, if we’d ridden in
on a horse, it would be a thoroughbred,” I answered.

“Oh,” he said. That registered.

We parked and got out of the car. Everyone
stared at us. For once, I really wished that I’d used my power to
give me a designer outfit to wear rather than the boring t-shirt
and jeans I was wearing. I quickly dismissed this thought, though.
People had enough to talk about without wondering how and where I’d
finally acquired fashion sense.No one stopped us on the way in, and
I made my way over to the office. I thought that this would be
trickier, but it was amazingly easy to enroll Damien in school. The
registrar seemed to accept our story, only asking how we knew each
other—and that was just politeness. Stupidly, I hadn’t actually
thought of that.

“Um, we met on vacation a couple of years ago
and kept in touch,” I explained, knowing that I was talking just a
little too loud and a little too fast, a habit I had when I felt
nervous. I’d have to work on that end of the story later.
Fortunately, she didn’t seem alarmed. We were just another couple
of students, two of many she’d probably see that day.

The fax from the Swiss boarding school had
arrived just before we did that morning, so it validated our story.
It showed his transcript, complete with a prior history of
schooling in New Zealand. It was just a matter of registering him
for a class schedule.

We sat in the registrar’s office before first
period, and I helped him to choose Latin, which he probably knew
better than Mr. Henley, the teacher; English; History; Calculus,
which I had the most misgivings about; Anatomy, easy enough without
prior knowledge, I thought, since it was mostly about memorization
anyway; and Gym. I’d tried to put him in as many classes with me as
I could, but I knew we wouldn’t be able to take everything
together. I wanted him to have some classes where he had some
knowledge of the subject, like Latin or French, but there were no
spaces open in my French class. They wouldn’t let him enroll in two
languages at the same time anyway. Not surprisingly, Latin was not
a popular subject, and there were plenty of openings mid-semester
there. It was just as well, I thought. People might get suspicious
if we were always together.

Most of my friends accepted our story easily.
I’d begun hanging out with them again a couple of weeks beforehand,
so it was easier than I’d originally thought to introduce Damien to
the group, which usually included Ben.

Ben and I had settled into a distant
friendship—enough, at least, that we could sit together and ask
about our day, but certainly not the closeness we’d once shared. I
hadn’t taken off the ring he’d given me. I couldn’t explain why,
but it seemed an important part of me, of who I had been before
Damien. I didn’t want to let it go, even though I knew it was
hurting Ben. Damien had commented on the ring the first week we
were together, wondering who’d given it to me. I evaded his
question, and I think he assumed it was my mother’s. It matched my
eyes, he said. I let him believe the misconception. I still really
hadn’t explained anything to him about Ben, and I was fairly
certain that the idea of my having a prior boyfriend was
inconceivable. I wasn’t sure how he’d react when he learned,
either, so I was trying to put it off for as long as possible.
Maybe, I thought optimistically, it wouldn’t come up.

Between Damien’s cross around my neck and
Ben’s ring on my finger, I felt like a complete person. It wasn’t
fair to Ben, and I knew that when I came to school with Damien,
he’d be upset, even if he didn’t show it.

When we walked into English, our first class
together, Ben eyed Damien warily, his face quickly settling into
lines of frustration, resentment, and anger. It was a rare look,
but I recognized it immediately. I knew him too well. I could see
his fingers twitching, and I knew what to expect. I had no idea
that the day would end the way it did, though. I might have thought
twice about enrolling Damien in school.

Everyone seemed fine in the morning. Damien
had made his entrance with me in the classes we had together,
stopping every girl mid-sentence. No one at school had his dark
good looks, and the sheer size and height of him made most of the
guys, including Ben, look shorter and weaker. As a knight, Damien
had mainly trained outdoors; he had an olive complexion, so he fit
in with most of the students, who spent time surfing at Daytona
Beach and working on their tans. But there the similarity
ended.

Fortunately for me, I thought,
thirteenth-century standards of beauty for women were much
different than twenty-first century ones. Damien thought it was
natural for me to protect my face, which burned easily, from the
sun. Fair skin was the fashion hundreds of years ago, and he
thought that the girls who attended high school, most of them very
tan, were completely unattractive. I couldn’t help but hide a smile
when I’d asked his opinion of the girls he’d met. After overcoming
the initial shock of their outfits, not considered decent in the
thirteenth century, he assured me that he thought my long hair and
pale face was the most beautiful he’d seen. I was vain enough to be
pleased with this. No one but Ben had ever thought I was beautiful,
and I wondered if love gave a person new eyes.

I thought Ben had taken Damien’s sudden
appearance with me remarkably well. We’d had a couple of classes
together, and I thought he was handling everything okay. But, by
lunchtime, however, his patience had ebbed.

Damien and I entered the cafeteria, stopping
most of the conversations around us. I made the introductions
between Damien and those he hadn’t met sitting at the lunch table,
when Ben asked us how our day was going—a simple enough
question.

Damien answered.

“Fine. Emmeline has been most helpful to me,”
Damien said fondly, reaching his arm around my shoulders.

“Emmeline?” Ben asked. I saw the tell-tale
twitching of his fingers.

I hadn’t had the heart to correct Damien when
he called me Emmeline. It sent a small thrill of excitement through
me for him to use the name I was called in my past life. I hoped
that most people would assume that Emily was short for Emmeline or
believe they misunderstood Damien because of the accent. His
pronunciation wasn’t too far off from Emily in any case. I should
have known that Ben would have reacted instantly to the
difference.

I hastened to explain.

“Yes, it’s a different form of Emily,” I
continued, hoping that would be the end of it.

We’d finished eating, and Damien rose to take
our trays up, bending over to kiss my cheek when he stood.

That was all it took.

Ben stood up, knocking the trays from
Damien’s hands and spilling leftover pork chops, mashed potatoes,
and pink lemonade all over Damien’s expensive clothes.

“Get your hands off of her!” Ben shouted,
ready, I could see, to fight.

Damien had been trained for battle—it’s what
knights constantly prepared for. I tried putting a restraining hand
on Damien’s arm, concerned more for Ben than Damien.

I was surprised by Damien’s reaction. Instead
of attacking Ben, as I’d thought he would, he turned to me, a
somber look in his eyes.

“What is he to you, Emmeline?” he asked me a
little too quietly.

I was so surprised, I nearly didn’t know what
to say. Both of them were looking at me, waiting for a
response.

“He’s…he’s…” I stuttered. I didn’t know what
Ben was to me. I knew what he had been. But where did that leave us
now?