Happy Birthday to Me Again (Birthday Trilogy, Book 2) (31 page)

Tell me what’s wrong, Leese. I’m your husband
now. You can tell me anything.

The lights inside the auditorium started
flashing about twenty minutes later, and everybody took their seats. A short,
stubby woman waved to everybody as she waddled to the center of the stage.

“Hello everyone,” she said, “and welcome
to our Musical Night of Shining Lights, an evening that showcases some of the
best musical talent under the age of eighteen that our country has to offer.
I’d like to start by introducing, in our front row, the President and the First
Lady!”

The famous couple stood up at the center
of the first row, turned around, and waved to the audience. They were dressed
in formal attire, and while I couldn’t tell for sure, the President’s hair
looked a tad grayer than it did the last time I’d seen him speak on television.

“And now,” the
lady said, “here are all your gifted musicians!”

She walked back over to the left side of
the stage as fifty, maybe sixty, children and teenagers took the stage, without
instruments, to wave to the audience and bow their heads. I found it a little
conceited for all of these kids to bow already—what if some of their
playing was not as great as everyone hoped?—but I clapped anyway. Kimber
stood on the right side of the stage, waving to the audience, but to her family
mostly. She looked better, calmer, more confident than she did at dinner. I
knew she would do well.

Unlike her Reno performance from a year
ago, when I stumbled in at age eighty to enjoy her final performance of the
night, my sister went on pretty quickly tonight. She was in the second group to
perform. There were about fourteen teenagers on the stage, all with violins,
with Kimber looking to be, surprisingly, one of the youngest of the set. She
sat on the left side and played to her heart’s content for five minutes or so,
until finally, without warning, a solo forty-five seconds of Kimber, and Kimber
alone, began.

I tuned out the whole world for that
minute, just concentrating on my sister’s controlled, harmonious playing. While
she continued with her trusty violin, I thought of how much our relationship
had grown in the past year, how much closer we’d become. She’d felt like a
stranger to me fifteen months ago, but now, she was a significant part of my
life. I thought of my parents, who in the last six weeks had gone back to the
way they used to be. When we returned from Europe, I was happy to see Dad not
sleeping on the couch anymore. They were close again, and I hoped it would stay
that way. I thought about the immediate future, where I was to leave Reno at
the end of the summer to travel to New Haven to officially begin my four years
as an undergraduate at Yale. I was excited to finally learn all I could about
architecture, and dive straight into my overdue college experience. I thought
about Liesel, and how our love for each was only growing, and that at the end
of these six weeks I couldn’t have been happier about my decision to marry her.
Life, for the first time, in every way, was perfect.

Absolutely perfect.

Kimber finished her solo, and while the
group continued playing, loud applause erupted in the auditorium. I looked over
to the front to see even the President clapping for Kimber. She was beaming up
on stage, still playing, but clearly overjoyed that she had made it to the end
of her solo in one piece, earning great respect from the entire crowd. I
must’ve clapped loudest of all. I couldn’t have been happier for my talented
baby sister.

“Cam,” Liesel
said.

“Hmm?” I turned
my head to see Liesel in tears. “Whoa, hey… Are you all right?”

“Cam, I need… I
need to get out of here…”

“What are you
talking about?”

“Just… please…” She started standing up.
There was nothing I could do to stop her. “I need to get out of here.”

“You need to
what
?”

She stumbled over my legs and started
moving to the edge of the row. “Sorry,” she was saying to everybody. “I’m
really sorry.”

I turned to my left to see my parents
shaking their heads, dumbfounded. I put my hands up in the air in confusion and
started making my way to the end of the row as well. I watched as Liesel
charged down the aisle, out of the auditorium, and I followed her, stopping
just once to see Kimber and the others finish their performance. I clapped from
the back of the building and stepped out into the warm night air.

I took a few
steps forward and didn’t see her for a moment. “Liesel? Where are you?”

I turned to my
left, then my right. There was nobody around.

“Cameron,” she
said. “I’m over here.”

I turned around to see her sitting at the
edge of a fountain across the way. She was looking down, her hands on the back
of her neck—she was clearly lost in thought. I knew anything out of the
ordinary with Liesel was never a good sign.

I rushed up to her. “Hey, baby, what’s
wrong?” I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her on the cheek. “What
happened? Did you get claustrophobic or something?”

“No.”

“Are you still
feeling sick? Do you want me to get you some medicine—”

“No. Cameron, I
feel fine.”

I sat down on
the ledge next to her. “Then what is it? What’s going on with you today?”

Tears welled up
in her eyes, and she put her hands over her face. She just started bawling.

She
wants a divorce,
was my
first thought.
She doesn’t want to be
married to me anymore.

“Is it me?” I
asked. “Is it something I did?”

She shook her
head.

“Does it have…
something to do with… you know… our marriage?”

She shook her head again, and brought her
hands down. She wiped the tears away from her face and licked her lips. She
took a deep breath and stared at me, not saying anything for a moment.

“Something terrible
is coming, Cameron.”

I shook my head.
“What?”

“I managed to
delay her… but for only six weeks…”

I brought my hands to her arms and pulled
her closer to me. “
Liesel
. What are
you talking about?”

“It’s Hannah,” she said. She hesitated,
and a painful cloud of fear passed through me. I didn’t like hearing that name.
“On top of the mountain that night… she was going… she was going to kill you.”

“I know. And you
saved me.”

“I saved you, Cam… only because I made a
deal with my sister… to keep you alive. To keep you with me.”

“A deal?”

“Yeah.”

“What kind of a
deal?”

Liesel looked to her left and got up on
her feet. She crossed her arms and turned away from me for a moment. “There’s
two very important things I’m going to tell you right now, Cam. And I don’t want
you to freak out.”

“
Two
things?” I hesitated. “OK… can you
start with the bad news, please?”

“First,” she said, “I made a deal with
Hannah to keep you alive, in exchange for giving her all of my powers.”

“You did
what
?”

“She needed them for something she’s
wanted to do since January, since our mother died.”

I tried to make
sense of what she was telling me.

“She told me, explicitly,” Liesel
continued, “that in exchange for my powers, she would let you and I live…”

I shrugged. “OK… well that’s a good thing,
right? What does she want with your powers, anyway? Does it concern us?”

“I asked her to
give us six weeks, until your nineteenth birthday,
today
…”

“Until… until
what…”

She sighed and took my hand. “Until the
beginning… of the end…” She took a deep breath. “The end of the
world
.”

I shook my head and leaned in closer.
“I’m sorry. I don’t think I heard you right. It sounded like you just said,
the end of the world
.”

She didn’t flinch. “Cameron, starting
tomorrow, a lot of people are going to die. And there’s going to be nothing
either one of us can do to stop it. The two of us… well… we’re going to be
fine. But everyone else is going to be in immediate danger.”

I wanted to run. I wanted to scream. I
wanted to throw up. But I just sat there, my mouth agape, my eyes bulging out
of their sockets. I stared at my wife in horror.

“Starting tomorrow,” she said, “everybody
in the world, except you, and except me, and except Hannah, is going to start
aging a whole year of their life with each passing day.
Everybody
. And the only way we’re gonna be able to stop it… is to
find and kill my sister… wherever she may be.”

My head was spinning. My stomach was
churning. I started breathing so fast I thought I would start hyperventilating.
I stood up, looked up at the night sky, and felt two tears fall down my cheeks.

I turned to Liesel. “Well if that’s… if
that’s the
first
important thing you
have to tell me… then what in the hell could possibly be the second?”

She stood perfectly still, a small but
worrisome smile on her pretty face. “I’m pregnant,” she said.

# # #

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR:

Brian Rowe graduated from Loyola
Marymount University, where he studied English & Film. He is the writer of
five novels and a short story collection. His fiction has appeared in
The Absent Willow Review
,
Mobius Magazine
, and
Wilde Oats Magazine
. He lives in Reno,
Nevada.

ALSO
BY BRIAN ROWE

OTHER BOOKS IN THE BIRTHDAY TRILOGY

Happy Birthday to Me

Happy Birthday to You

GRISLY HIGH TRILOGY

The Vampire Underground

The Zombie Playground

The Monster Apocalypse

ADULT NOVELS

Slate

Townhouse: A Tale of Terror

CONNECT
WITH BRIAN ONLINE

Twitter:
http://twitter.com/mrbrianrowe

Brian’s Blog:
http://mrbrianrowe.blogspot.com