Break Away (Away, Book 1) (13 page)

“Like I told you…a phenomenon,” she said with
an amazed smile playing on her full lips. “People have been coming
in a lot over the last few weeks—even to lend out movies.” She
glanced at the glass enclosure on the corner where the DVD’s and
video games filled black racks. No, actually they weren’t filling
the racks. I narrowed my eyes and focused. Had the place been
robbed?

“This week though, has been the big winner,”
she continued, offering an answer to my muted thoughts and walked
to the tall alphabetized bookcases. I trailed behind her with a
frown that refused to leave my face.

“People have finally realized how wonderful
and stirring reading is.” She stopped in front of a wide wall of
books and glided her fingers on the empty space absently, as if
taking great pride in the lack of written material in these
shelves—and many others.

Never in my life had I seen anything like
this. Not that I frequented libraries on my free time, but the
numerous holes in the jagged rows of books weren’t normal. There
was
nothing
normal about this. How could anyone not notice
it? How could anyone take pride in it?

I rested my eyes on a large bookcase in the
middle of the hallway only to deepen the pucker between my
eyebrows. “How many books is someone allowed to take out?” I asked,
eyeing the blank spaces. If the limit was high, the amount of
readers could’ve been low. So less people to worry about.

“Hmm?”

I turned to look at her and repeated the
question.

“Oh, um, two books for a maximum of two
weeks.”

I felt as if a pot of ice-cold water had been
dropped onto my head, freezing the blood flow in my face.
Definitely not good news.

“I'm sorry I distracted you with all of this.
You must be in a hurry to get the information for your article and
be done with it—spring break rush,” she added with a knowing
smile.

Still on a brain freeze, it took me a while
to answer back. “No, it’s okay. I, uh, need to get back to my
house. I forgot something.” I lied.

She cocooned her hand around the other one
and flashed me an understanding smile. “No worries. I’ll be here
until eight if you need me.”

I half smiled and walked to the doorway, all
my neurons gathered in one particular thought.
I was right
.
I wasn’t blowing things out of proportion
. And with it came
another idea.

Yes, I still had one more place to visit.

“W
hat do you mean?”
I asked, catching my bottom lip with my teeth.

“Sales have rocketed up,” the cashier told
me, glancing up at me from the thick stash of coupon codes he was
counting.

A big bookstore like this needed to live up
to its customer’s expectations and demands, and by the look of it,
discount coupons were just the way to do it. “Even at our online
store,” he continued. “It’s crazy. Frantic week, I tell ya.”

Given the thick stash of coupons he was
holding, it didn’t surprise me. “Doesn’t all this book frenzy seem
weird to you…”—I looked down at his name tag—”…Roman?” His mom
must’ve been a fan of romance fiction. I could clearly imagine a
muscle-bound, handsome hero with that name. If only the
good-looking features had come with the name, though. The wiry,
pimpled guy standing behind the counter was far away from owning
the title.

“CD’s and movies, too.” he said, oblivious to
my thoughts.

“What?”

He shoved the narrow papers into a box and
proceeded to write something down. “The frenzy…is not only
books.”

I frowned and remembered that half empty
glass enclosure in the library. Books, movies, video games,
CD’s—what was going on? I thought about the stored stash of
coupons. “Roman…has there been a special sale or offer going on in
here?” It could’ve been the reason behind those sky-high sales.

He stopped what he was doing and finally
looked at me. “Are you a spy from another company? Because all of
this inquisitive business is starting to sound like industrial
espionage.”

I held back a roll of my eyes. He did belong
to the bookselling world. “Please. Do I look like an industrial spy
to you?”

“Why are you answering my question with a
question?”

“It was just a rhetorical question.”

“But a question all the same.”

This guy was annoying.

“You’re being elusive—a typical trait of
spies,” he added with pride, as if he’d discovered another reason
to label me as an undercover agent.

This time, I rolled my eyes. “Ridiculous. I'm
not a spy.”

He leaned forward and whispered, “I don’t
care if you are though, as long as you let me give you my phone
number. It’s not every day you stumble upon a hot, gorgeous
spy.”

“Wha—”

“You don’t have to tell me the truth. I
understand,” he said, leaning closer. I was too shocked to move
away. “But, baby, together we can shake the sheets, if you know
what I mean.”

Well, well, well. Who would’ve known our
pimpled cashier boy had such a high opinion of himself? Low
self-esteem was definitely not an issue. Good for him.

“Oh, I know,” I said, swallowing back a smile
and feigning disappointment. “You would’ve rocked my world. Too bad
I have a boyfriend.”

He crossed his arms over his narrow chest
with suspicion dancing in his eyes. “A spy, too? I bet he is. Maybe
you have something like Mr. and Mrs. Smith going on.”

This guy was seriously engrossed in fiction.
“First, I'm not married. I'm seventeen. And secondly, not
everything you see in movies is real.” It was about time someone
told him. His sense of reality was completely warped.

His eyes narrowed and I could see I’d already
lost the case.

“You know what…I really need to get going.
My, um, bosses are expecting me at the…agency.” Playing along was
the only way out, I guessed.

He thumped his chest with a fist in a way
he’d surely seen in some warrior movie. “Your secret is safe with
me.”

I gave him a nod and turned to leave the
store. For his sake, I hoped he would land on earth someday. Losing
himself to a fantasy world wasn’t doing him any good, I thought
with a shake of my head.

I reached the glass door and slipped outside
with what felt like an anxious bug eating my insides. The whole
expedition had given me more questions than answers—not the result
I was looking for. And something told me I wasn’t ready to find
what I was looking for.

Yet.

Buffy’s door was open. The soft orange glow
of her rice paper lamp on the floor, one she’d bought at a small
store in Chicago’s Chinatown a few years ago, wrapped the entire
room in warm luminescence. The dressmaking dummy in the corner,
with a tape measure hanging around the neck and pins on both
shoulders, cast an eerie shadow on the wall behind, like a humanoid
creature from another planet.

Listening to music, with silver Skullcandy
earbuds pressed against her ears, Buffy seemed more relaxed than
I’d ever seen her in months. She was lying on the bed, legs crossed
at her ankles and eyes closed, head swaying to the rhythm of the
song. I stepped inside the room and sat next to her, noticing for
the first time the creases and ripples wrinkling the sheets. The
white feather comforter was shoved to the side.

She’d been sleeping.

At the slight tilt of her bed, she opened her
eyes and surprise flickered in them when she found me sitting next
to her. “Dafne,” she said, pulling out her ear buds and
straightening up in bed.

I smiled. “You did say I could enter you room
whenever the door was opened.”

“Yeah, of course. I just…it’s weird seeing
you around here, that’s all.”

“I know.” I dropped my gaze. Maybe it had
something to do with all the strange events that were taking place,
but I felt the need to be with my sister. For the first time in two
years, I wanted to drop the walls between us, be near her, talk to
her, and know what was on her mind. I wanted to take advantage of
the time I had with her, not the other way around.

I glanced at the long working desk with the
sewing machine and drawers, where I knew she kept all sorts of
fabrics and threads and zippers. The eyeball pincushion I’d given
her for our fourteenth birthday—in my opinion, the coolest
pincushion—was tucked against a wooden pencil box Gran had brought
her from Germany. A black folder with what might’ve been dress
sketches sat in the middle of the table.

“Are you still planning to go to AI in New
York?” I asked.

“I…yeah. Yeah.”

Noticing her hesitation, I turned to look at
her. “You’ve always wanted to go to that school.”

“I want to,” she said with a hasty nod of her
head.

“Then why do you get so nervous about
it?”

“I'm not.” I gave her a look. “Really. I…I
just…”

A long pause followed.

“Buffy?”

She rubbed the back of her neck, reminding me
of Ian, and dropped her hand with a strong sigh. That’s when I knew
where things were headed. “I’m thinking about going to AI in
Chicago.”

“Chicago? Why?” I knew the answer but still
wanted to hear it.

“You know I love the Windy City and…and it’s
closer to Berryford. I could visit Gran on weekends. I could visit
you
.”

“You could visit
Ian
on weekends.”

“No.”

“No?” Did she think I was stupid? Why else
would she want to stay close to Berryford?

“I won’t have to visit Ian on weekends
because…I’ll see him during the week,” she said, studying my face
with worry, as if my reaction frightened her.

“What do you mean?” I didn’t like the sound
of this at all.

She took a deep breath and said, “Ian will go
to Aremihc. He just got the acceptance letter today.”

My eyes almost bugged out. “
What
?”

Aremihc was the most exclusive and selective
art academy in the world. Its grounds were located in the
surrounding underground area of the Water Tower in Chicago, but
nobody knew its exact location or its exact size. Rumor had it the
founder, Vincent d’Azyr, had built the academy with such
ground-breaking technology that space shuttles looked like plastic,
cheap toys next to it. The place was almost like a ghost,
untouchable and invisible to anyone but its staff and students.

Even if it was practically impossible that an
academy that big, with dorm rooms and dining halls and libraries,
dwelled there amid subway railroads and tunnels, with no
underground topographic maps showing any sign of it, the students
coming out of the Water Tower every so often were clear evidence of
its presence in the city.

Aremihc was a mystery, and everyone loved
good mysteries.

But that mysterious fog enclosing its
dwelling wasn’t the only thing that made this academy unique. The
rate of success of its graduates was unequaled. The world’s leading
artists were born in Aremihc. An acceptance letter from this
academy was the golden ticket to a very promising future, a winning
lottery ticket of sorts. Ian could consider himself already a
star.

“It’s the one you applied to, right?” Buffy
asked to break the silence. “The one you’ve always dreamed of.”

Yeah. Every artist dreamed of getting into
Aremihc. Hard not to. But just a few—and I say few, as in two dozen
in every program—actually got the chance to get that heart-stopping
letter. I’d sent my portfolio a month ago and was still waiting.
Not that I expected a quick response. It’d taken two years to Ian
to get a smoke signal from them—a heck of a smoke signal—and some
people waited even longer, with no luck.

I was hopeful and I was determined to gain an
acceptance. But with Ian now in the panorama, I wasn’t so sure
anymore. I wasn’t sure about anything at that moment. A whirlwind
of confusing emotions was turning inside of me. And I hated it. I
hated he could change our lives and decisions so drastically. Why
did he affect us both so much? Why did he affect
me
so
much?

“I know you’ll get it, Dafne,” Buffy said as
if trying to reassure me. She thought my lack of words had
something to do with nervous jitters. “You’re an amazing painter.
They’ll have to be blind to not see it.”

I snapped out of my inner storm and looked at
her. “There are a lot of amazing painters in the world, Buffy. I’m
just a grain of sand amid a beach.”

“But a worthy grain of…”

“Stop trying to turn around the
conversation.” I cut her off with a shake of my head. “The point
here is you can’t leave your dream for the moron of Ian.”

She narrowed her eyes. “That moron is my
boyfriend and I love him.”

“So? Are you telling me you’re going to
follow your hormones instead of your dreams? Don’t be stupid,
Buffy.”

“I’m not following my hormones. I'm following
my heart. Why is that so bad?”

“Because you’re changing everything
you
are for a piece of ass, that’s why.” I pulled myself up
off the bed and stopped before her working desk. “Our dreams are
what define us in life,” I said while tracing her sketches. “Do you
want yours to be defined by some hot, spur-of-the-moment choice?
You’re going to regret it your whole life.” I frowned. What was
really going on in here? Why was I so mad? Was it really because of
Buffy's decision or something else?

“I will not,” she said with so much certainty
that it put a match to my contained fire. I was all flames now,
searing and sharp.

I locked my eyes with hers and without
thinking said, “Think about Mom and Dad.” Buffy’s eyes widened, as
if she’d been slapped. “Think about what they would’ve said. Do you
think they would be proud?”

“Shut up.” Her voice wavered.

“Or do you think they would be ashamed?” I
ignored her. She swallowed and a tear escaped her eye. “Think about
it. You know the answer.”