Authors: Stacey Jay
Suddenly it’s charged, electrified with danger. Romeo has arrived.
I know it’s impossible, but I swear I can smell him coming, a faint odor of evil that cuts through the stink of the Solvang High breakfast. My stomach sucks in tight to my spine. I stand a little straighter, determined not to let him see any change in me.
Today is the same as any other day, this shift the same as any other.
I clutch my tray and turn, face carefully blank as I search for Romeo and find him all too quickly. He is striding across the cafeteria, followed by a shorter boy with honey-colored skin and jet-black hair that sticks up in spikes. The shorter boy wears dark blue jeans and a black button-down shirt, while Romeo has dressed Dylan’s body all in black—black sweater, black jeans, and black motorcycle boots that give him another two inches of height, maybe more. His cheek is slightly bruised, as if—oddly—he hasn’t quite healed from the accident, but he’s still undeniably handsome.
But it isn’t his looks or the bruise that make the air rush from my lungs. It’s his hair, that unruly mop of brown curls. He’s
curled
Dylan’s hair, made it fall in soft waves around his forehead, made him look so much like—
I sway on my feet, lost in a crush of memories I was certain I’d burned away. I forget how to move, to speak, to breathe.
How
did I not notice this last night? Darkness, the threat of death, the shock and pain of entering a new body—none are adequate excuses. Nothing should have kept me from seeing how much Romeo resembles his old self, the boy I knew, the one who crept through my window with an expression just like that one.
No,
not
like that one. There was no glitter of madness in
his old eyes, no thinly veiled threat in the baring of his teeth. He’s coming to me, in broad daylight, with this new friend—probably Jason, the one Gemma mentioned—to torment me, to break me down with some cruelty he’s worked out during the night. It’s the same as it always is, but so much worse.
Because I am alone, and Ben and Gemma are so strange, and he is … haunting.
I back away, fingers gripping my tray so hard my bones begin to ache. I don’t want to look at him; I don’t want to speak to him. But I have no choice. If I run, he’ll know something is wrong. I never run, even when I should, even though the Ambassadors say it’s better to run than to fight.
Instead, I put my tray back and walk toward him, meeting him head-on.
“Get me meat. Lots of it. Meat on meat,” Romeo says to his friend before stopping in front of me. For some reason this makes the shorter boy snort with laughter. His dark eyes meet mine as he walks by, and I fight the urge to shiver. It’s like looking into the face of a reptile, a predator born without human feeling. Even
Romeo’s
eyes seem warm by comparison.
“So glad to see you,” Romeo says, grinning like the madman he is. “I wanted to apologize. For last night.”
Apologize? I look around, wondering for whose benefit he’s putting on this show. There’s no one within earshot, and his friend is already pushing a tray through the line fifteen feet away.
“Sincerely. I’m sorry. If I’d known, I never would have touched you.”
“Known what?” I cross my arms, bracing myself for the inevitable punch line.
He leans close, his voice dropping to a whisper. “The world is different this time. You can feel it, can’t you? You’ve noticed … things.”
I narrow my eyes, searching his face. He’s fishing. He might not know that I can’t contact Nurse, but he knows something. Now it’s just a matter of finding out what he knows without giving myself away. “I’ve noticed you don’t seem to be healing as quickly as you should.”
His fingers go to his cheek, pushing at his bruise. It’s fainter than it was last night, but it’s definitely there. He smiles, as if relishing the wound. “Perhaps my new father gave me a beating for wrecking my car.”
I flinch. The thought of Romeo being beaten by anyone but me is unexpectedly disturbing. At least I know that every time I’ve struck him he deserved it.
“Or perhaps my gifts are fading,” he continues. “Perhaps I’ve been abandoned by my cause. I believe it’s likely. Look at this mess.…” He turns and lifts his carefully coiled curls, showcasing a dent in his skull, the one I made when I slammed his head into the glass roof of the car.
I gasp. And turn to make sure no one else has seen.
“Aw. I didn’t think you cared.” Romeo laughs, and slings a casual arm around my shoulder. “So tell me the truth, Jules. How goes it with you? Things rotten in the state of Denmark?”
“Wrong play.” I shrug him off, refusing to think about how tired I am or how frightened by my inability to contact Nurse. I know better than to trust him. Romeo always has an agenda.
Always
. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, Juliet. Don’t lie. I don’t want to lie or fight anymore. I’m so weary of it, aren’t you? Wouldn’t you jump at the chance to put an end to it all?”
Romeo has said similar things before, when he’s offered me the chance to join the Mercenaries. All I’d have to do is convince one soul mate to sacrifice his or her love to the Mercenary cause and I’d pay my way into their eternity. A waking eternity, where I would be free to do as I wished between missions. Romeo has reminded me a dozen times that the offer stands, but never with much conviction. He knows me well enough to realize I’m not capable of stealing an innocent soul.
“I’ve told you, I’m not—”
“I’m not talking about the Mercenaries. Or the Ambassadors.” He leans even closer, until his lips are inches from my ear. “This shift is different. And if we play our cards correctly, it could be our last.”
R
omeo is waiting on the stage when Gemma and I walk into rehearsal that afternoon, smiling that smile that assures me my efforts to avoid him are futile.
Gemma chucks her backpack onto the floor and joins the dancers onstage without bothering to say good-bye, and Romeo’s smile becomes a merry grimace. I turn and slip into the wings, determined to ignore him.
He’s been relentless today, bent on winning confidences I refuse to give, shadowing my every move, forcing me to skip my lunch date with Gemma in the name of keeping him away from our soul mates. I apologized to her afterward, but we
haven’t had time to talk. We don’t have class together in the afternoon, and texting isn’t allowed on campus.
Hopefully I’ll have the chance to smooth things over after practice.
The rehearsal music blares to life. Wrinkling my nose against the musty smell lingering in the wings, I gather my paints and set to work. The SHS theater smells like every other building I’ve had the misfortune to enter today—moldy and damp. White plastic buckets litter the backstage area, rapidly filling with yellowed water. I have to stop to empty them barely twenty minutes after I’ve started, tossing the water out the backstage door into the sodden grass. It’s the wettest spring on record in central California. Fields of grapevines suffer in standing water, mudslides ooze down the hills, and roofs fail at an alarming rate.
“What the hell, Hannah?”
Tempers fail even faster.
“This is so stupid.” Gemma’s outraged voice carries to where I’m set up stage right, finishing Ariel’s work on a series of flats meant to resemble a New York City street. I’m trying to enjoy it, but even painting can’t offer comfort on a day like this. “Just let me have an eight count in the front row, and don’t BS me about being too tall. I’m only five nine.”
It’s the hundredth fight I’ve overheard today. People at this school are chronically miserable and angry. But who am I to judge? I’ve certainly experienced my share of both emotions since this morning—misery at learning that Ben is destined to be with a girl like Gemma, anger that I still can’t reach Nurse in any of the mirrors I’ve tried, including the bathroom mirrors at school.
“The choreography is set,” Hannah says. The petite brunette directing the dance numbers studies at the Santa Barbara School of Ballet and is a passionate member of the I Hate Gemma club. Most people seem to be. Ariel is an uncertain quantity the other kids avoid; Gemma is a spoiled princess they want to rip from her throne. “We’ve only got three days until the show opens, we’re not going to—”
“But there’s no reason I should be in the back during the entire dance number,” Gemma says. “I’m
Bernardo.
”
“Bernadette,” Hannah corrects. Several girls are playing boys’ parts. There aren’t enough boys in the drama club to fill them all. It’s quite a change from Shakespeare’s time, when men played all the roles—male and female—and I can tell it amuses Romeo.
He laughs again, a high-pitched
hee hee hee
that makes my next stroke hit the canvas at the wrong angle. What the hell does he have to be so happy about? And why is he wasting time with me when he should be hard at work ruining Ben and Gemma’s love?
Maybe he was telling the truth this morning and really does know a way out. Or maybe this is just a new way to ruin my afterlife, to trick me into doing something the Ambassadors can’t forgive, something that will end what small semblance of existence I have left.
“Please, Mike.” Gemma’s voice rises, appealing to the student teacher helping with the drama club for the semester. Mike, a senior from Cal Poly, stands in the shadows on the other side of the stage. With his shaved head and multiple piercings, he looks more like a student than a teacher, but he’s trying his best to offer guidance while Mr. Stark, the official sponsor, is busy.
“I think Gemma’s right, Hannah,” he says. “Why don’t you give her a chance in the front?”
“But Miiiiikkke,” Hannah whines, stretching his name into half a dozen syllables. “She’s too tall.”
“I am not. And I’m going to get stabbed to death in like two scenes. Can’t I—”
“You girls work it out,” Mr. Stark urges from the auditorium, where he’s grading papers, clearly happy to let Hannah and Mike do the directing.
“You need to stay in the back,” Hannah insists. “If you don’t like it, you can quit. You’re already going to miss the Saturday night performance, so—”
“That’s
one
show out of six,” Gemma protests. “And you said you’d fill in for me, tool.”
“Maybe I’ve changed my mind, Sasquatch. I don’t think it’s fair for you to play a lead role when you’re not going to be here for every performance.”
Gemma growls with frustration. “Maybe you just wanted my part all along and are a nasty little bi—”
“Gemma, come on.” Mike puts a calming hand on Gemma’s back. Gemma takes a breath, relaxing slightly.
“Right, Gemma,” Hannah says. “Everyone knows who the
witch
is around here.”
“Girls! Please.” Mr. Stark’s seat squawks as he rises. “What’s this about missing a performance, Gemma? When did this happen?”
“I have to miss Saturday night.” Gemma sounds younger, nervous. I drop my brush in my water can and creep closer to the stage. “My parents are making me go to a rally in Santa Barbara Saturday night.”
“Gemma, you made a commitment to this show.”
Mr. Stark stands near the footlights, shaking his head. “You need to be here.”
“I know. I swear, I know.” The panic on Gemma’s face surprises me. This seems important to her, despite the fact that she pretends to participate in drama club just to have an extracurricular to put on her college resume. “But my dad is never going to let me out of it. I already begged a hundred thousand times.”
“Can’t Hannah fill in for her?” Mike asks. “She did all the choreography, and knows where Gemma’s supposed to be onstage.”
“But Hannah’s also the dream Maria in the dream ballet, and the best chorus dancer.” Mr. Stark lets out a frustrated sigh. “It will be confusing for everyone to have her change roles for one night. I’m going to have to side with Hannah. It’s not fair for Gemma to play a lead if she’s not able to be here. Might as well cut the dream sequence and let Hannah step in as Bernadette now and—”
“But Mr. Stark!”
“I’m sorry, Gemma.” Mr Stark pushes his glasses up his nose, looking more exhausted than sorry. “It would be different if we had an understudy who could take over for you, but we don’t, and—”
“I’ll do it,” I say, stepping out onto the stage.
A strained silence falls over the cast, and twenty stunned glances crawl across my skin. Mr. Stark, Hannah, Gemma, all the other boys and girls in their dance rehearsal clothes—everyone stares at me like I’ve grown a second head. But then, a lot of them are in Mr. Stark’s public speaking class, the one Ariel nearly failed because she’s so petrified of getting up in front of a group of people.
No one knows how to respond. No one except Romeo, who laughs like I’ve told a fabulous joke. “I think that’s a great idea. I’d love to see Ariel dance. And sing.”
I can’t sing, no matter what body I’m in. My voice is adequate on a good day and painful to listen to on a bad one. Romeo knows this, but I don’t allow myself the luxury of glaring at him. I’ve already acted out of character by volunteering. Instead, I glance down at my feet, affecting Ariel’s usual awkwardness. If I can pull this off, Gemma will owe me, and maybe she’ll finally open up about what’s happening with her and Ben.
“I don’t have the best voice, but I know the music and words. I’ve been listening while I paint.” It’s true. Ariel has the show memorized. It would be hard not to after six weeks of rehearsal. “If Gemma teaches me the dance numbers, I can do it for one night. It’ll be easier to pretend to be someone else than to … you know …”
“She could, Mr. Stark,” Gemma says, though she doesn’t sound entirely convinced. “I think it’s a great idea.”
“But she’s never been onstage before,” Mr. Stark says. “And singing voice aside, Ariel, there’s a lot of dancing in the show. Can you dance?”
Can Ariel dance? She’s never tried, but she’s fairly coordinated and has been watching the others learn the choreography for weeks, and
I
can dance. I’ve already taken liberties with Ariel’s personality. Might as well take one more in the name of winning Gemma’s trust and devotion. “Sure. I can dance.”
Hannah snorts—doubting my ability but unwilling to say anything outright—and turns to stare at Mr. Stark. The rest of the cast studies their shoes. Even Gemma doesn’t say a word.