“Russell is on our side—don’t worry. Actually, he’s used his power to create something wonderful I think, and you will probably agree. Russell is what you may call a sort of ‘cupid’-type traveler. He can become the perfect companion for a willing soul, but can only make this transformation once in a lifetime,” he says. “And Russell has made his choice.”
My eyes grow wide.
“It
’s not exactly how I thought it would play out, but Russell has picked Amber. He will become exactly what Amber needs as a boyfriend, and someday husband. He really does love her already, but it is up to Amber to realize this and reciprocate the true love he will openly give.”
“And if she
doesn’t return the love?” I say, knowing the probability.
Gunthreon thinks, then shrugs his shoulders. “I guess I don
’t know the answer to that. Hmm.”
Gunthreon gets up slowly from his seat and covers Bu with a soft chenille blanket. “Kailey, before we conclude for the evening,” he says, “let
’s get you to try one thing. Are you willing?”
“Sure
... I guess...”
Gunthreon walks to the kitchen and I hear what sounds like him rifling through the garbage. My assumption is proven correct as he returns, holding a rancid cantaloupe halve in his hand. He brings it
toward Bu’s nose, which twitches. Bu’s mouth also grimaces as it opens to gag.
“He hates cantaloupe,” Gunthreon whispers.
“Gunthreon!” I try to whisper, not wanting Bu’s peaceful sleep to be disrupted. Bu’s ears twitch and he begins waking.
I
instinctively reach to Bu with my own energy, closing my eyes as I do so. I think of beautiful thoughts and caress his energy, negating his repulsion, and coaxing him to fall back into peaceful slumber. My own energy vibrates a soothing lullaby as Bu smiles and starts snoring almost immediately.
Gunthreon smiles widely. I smile back, tears forming in my eyes from a newfound sense of pride.
“Everything happens for a reason, Kailey,” he says as he approaches to hug me.
I immediately point to the cantaloupe and hold my nose.
“Oops, sorry,” says Gunthreon.
“I should go. I have to check on my dog,” I say, tired.
After I kiss Bu on the forehead,
Gunthreon walks me out, and there is a limo and driver already waiting for me. “Ooh, is this one of my new perks? I could get used to this!” I say, climbing into the car, catching a glimpse of the burly, tanned man behind the wheel. Gunthreon laughs, waves to me, and walks back inside.
Chapter 11
Mysterious
I step out of the car, thank the driver
who only smiles in return as he pulls away, and then stand in front of my building for a moment, just admiring the structure. It’s plain, and really nothing special, but I love it. It’s gotta be the inability to draw attention to itself. The apartment sits there before me, happy with its boring red brick and 1960 wrought-iron accents. I think of the possibility of any of the inhabitants knowing of Renhala. The thought makes me twirl around, scoping out the area, for my fear of monsters has increased fivefold since Gunthreon’s chat about Velopa.
I eye the particularly interesting balcony across from my own. It
’s just odd. Several dried herbs hang from the gutters, and there are strange scribblings—most likely made by Sharpie permanent marker—around the balcony door. It’s a door littered with scratches both on metal and glass, like some eager dog tried his damndest to get inside.
Suddenly, a quick movement of the curtains lets me know that perhaps I am intruding.
I gather myself and realize I should be feeding and walking Kioto, who now stares a hole through me from my own patio door, most likely cursing me for my time away tonight. And I came back so late.
My legs carry me speedily up the stairs, and my head spins from the rush of blood. Then, after minutes of searching, I finally find my keys at the bottom of my purse, connected to a few paperclips and hair thingies. Just as I bring the key up to the lock, the dizziness lifts slightly, and I turn to find myself staring at a beautiful little boy, around seven or eight years old—in my guesstimate—with the most gorgeous shaggy blond hair and the deepest brown eyes. The only thing that ruins his perfection is a small scar underneath his left eye. He wears black boxers and a tee-shirt with a skater performing
an ollie on the front. He stands before me, motionless. I don’t move, and he bites his lower lip slightly, tilts his head, squints his eyes, and stares at me, intensely. The “sureness” he emits makes me feel as though I’ve underestimated his age, perhaps.
The staring contest ends when his mother comes bounding up the stairs, her arms filled with groceries
from the nearest 24/7 store. “Philip, what are you doing out here in your pajamas? Go back inside,” she says. He turns and walks back, looking at me over his shoulder, throwing me an expression which makes him seem somewhat familiar.
“I’m so sorry if he bothered you, Miss,” she says. “He should have never have come out here without me home. He usually keeps the door locked until I get back. Hi, I’m Karen, by the way. Nice to finally meet you.” She holds out what she can of her hand.
“Please, let me help you carry those in, and I’m Kailey.” I motion for one of the bags.
“Oh no, I can handle it, really.” She moves toward her doorway and starts to enter. With a quick turn, she lets me know that I
’m not going to be invited in right now. “It was a pleasure meeting you, and I’m sorry about Philip, my foster child. He’s special-needs. I’ll try and talk to him about giving you your privacy. Have a good evening.” The door is closed, and locks are locked—all three of them.
I hear Kioto whimpering and
scratching the door, so I insert my key into the lock and turn. As I open the door, she sniffs the air anxiously beyond me. Once her eyes meet mine, however, she scrutinizes and instantly scowls at me, rejecting my attempt at a kiss. She turns her head and walks toward the treat cabinet, sits down, and stares out the window. I laugh, and she growls a bitchy sort of growl. How can I help but give her a big sorry hug and two of her favorite treats?
I get ready for bed and tenaciously crawl under my cozy comforter, resisting a far happier Kioto’s constant nudges to join her in play. She eventually gives up and humphs at me loudly before settling next to my bed. I drop my hand down to her, and she licks it gently.
As I drift into sleep, my mind keeps wandering to Philip and the judgmental stare he gave me, as though he was trying to decide which crime I was guilty of. It leaves me very unsettled. But still, I slip into a deep REM state, and the dreams begin.
*********
Philip stands at the edge of a lake, muddy in his black boxers and skater shirt, continually transforming into several different people: People I’ve never seen, people who seem vaguely familiar, and a few people from my life, including childhood friends whose names I forgot. He emanates confusion.
Bu sits at an elegant table eating rotten cantaloupe with a rusty fork, and Amber and Russell play catch with a giant beach ball shaped like an embryo. Gunthreon plays chess with himself, and my mom stands in the middle of it all, crying. I try running to her, but hands are holding me back—hundreds of disfigured and non-human hands. They pinch and pull and hurt. I scream at the pain of being unable to reach my mom as I watch her melt into the ground. All that’s left are her eyes and the top of her head, and that’s when she homes in on me, her eyes widening with recognition. Her sorrow suddenly feels like an arrow to my heart.
I am suddenly released by the hands and thrown upright in bed as I gasp for air, sickened by the images burning in my brain. The sweat has dampened my pajamas, and when I get up to go into the bathroom, I feel the pain in my arms—a horrible soreness in my muscles. I pull up my pajama arms, and then I see the bruises—deep purple, finger-shaped bruises.
Kioto sits at the front door, sniffing underneath it and wagging her tail. I run to it and peek out the eyehole, only to see Philip’s door close quickly and silently.
I call my mom immediately. The phone rings only once, and she answers, “Hello?” with no hint of sleepiness in her voice.
“Mom, are you okay?” I say.
“Yes, honey, I’m fine,” she says. “You must have had a bad dream. Go to bed.” I don’t. I stay on the line. These days I can’t believe that any insanity I envision, or pain I feel is only a dream. It seems there’s reality in every bit of oddness in my life.
“I
’m scared, mom,” I moan, holding back tears.
“You need me to come over?”
she says, hurriedly and worried.
I pause while reaching over to pick up the silver ring off my nightstand. I say, “No. No. I will be fine,” as I turn it over and over.
“I’ll call you tomorrow before you go to work.
Go to bed,
Kailey,” my mom says.
I hang up the phone, head to the freezer, grab a bag of frozen peas and try to nurse a few of the bad bruises. I fall asleep holding the bag to my arm.
Chapter 12
Deceiving
“Mom, we have to talk. Are you going to be home tonight?”
As I chat on the phone, I’m also changing damp, stinky bedsheets reeking of freezer burn.
“I’ll be home Friday. I gotta run to Frankie’s in Aurora—needs some assistance with picking out new wall colors. Wanna come over then, and I’ll do the cooking?” she says.
“Can I put in a request?” The drool starts puddling on my tongue from the thought. I can’t help it that food excites me so much.
“You don’t need to. Steak Diane and honey mustard-crusted potatoes it is.”
“Yes! Thanks, Mom. You’re awesome!” I can almost see the smile on her face. For a moment, I even forget the purpose of Friday night.
My next call before I head off to work is to Gunthreon who tells me that he actually had a really good night’s sleep. There are wretching noises in the background on Gunthreon’s end, as if someone is hacking up their lungs.
“It’s Bu,” Gunthreon state
s. “I’m thinking he may have eaten something really bad, and considering he eats raw meat and has a stomach of iron—“
“Gunthreon, my dream—this has to do with my dream last night!” I say. I tell him about the dream, and the bruises on my arms.
“Was it only us in the dream?” queries Gunthreon. “Was there anyone else you knew besides us?” I hear emotion creeping into his normally indifferent voice.
“Philip was in it, too.”
“Who is Philip?”
“One of my new neighbors. He seems to be quite a strange boy, but
he’s beautiful, Gunthreon. He’s special needs, I think, or at least that’s what his foster mom, Karen, says.”
“What does Philip look like?”
“He’s about eight, with blond hair and big, brown eyes.”
“Is there anything different about this boy?” says Gunthreon, who is seemingly trying to squeeze some important information from me. “Maybe an accent, or birthmarks, or anything like that?”
“No—wait—he has a scar on his face.”
“Is it below his left eye?”
I don’t know what to say, so I just sit there, stupefied. “Yes...”
“After all this time, he’s right beneath our noses!” Gunthreon starts laughing. “Kailey, oh, Kailey, you have no i
dea what this means.” He laughs even more.
I
’m suddenly scared of Gunthreon’s interest in this boy, which then turns to fear of the boy. “Should I be scared of him?”
“Oh, yes, be scared of him—be very scared.”
He laughs especially hard this time, making me want to hang up the phone, for fear of Gunthreon’s hysterics traveling through the phone waves. “Kailey, you must go over there and talk with him. Don’t let him know you know anything about him. Just pretend you’re being neighborly.”
“Why are you sending me out to talk with someone dangerous?”
I stutter, praying that he doesn’t laugh again.
“Just trust me. I’ll talk with you later,” says Gunthreo
n.
Then he hangs up.
He is going to drive me insane.
My next call is to the office, because there is absolutely no possible way I will be able to work today. I would be a mess, and Amber would see right through me, expecting some logical answer to my odd behavior, which I cannot give
anyone
right now. I need to keep all this on the down-low, until I can fully grasp what the hell is going on.
Kioto tries to ignore me this morning, yet she keeps peeking at me out of the corner of her eye as I get dressed. She doesn’t exactly know what to expect of me right now—whether I’m going or staying since I
’m usually gone by now. I go to her and sit by her on my bedroom floor, nuzzling my head into her neck. She licks my face and smiles at me in her own dog way.
After a few minutes, I decide what I must do. I grab both my ring and pendulum and toss them into my pocket, then grab a cranberry-orange muffin—which I don
’t even like, and only accidentally bought on a recent grocery stockpiling expedition (I don’t like venturing out much on my own)—and head toward the door. For a brief moment, I want to scream, because I don’t know what course of action to take, but I decide that not rehearsing will be the best way to handle it.
“Just go and see what happens, right?” I say to myself. I step across the hallway, knowing it
’s Monday and that Philip is most likely at school, but knock on the door anyway.
Before I even finish the third knock, Philip opens the door. I hold out the muffin, and he stands, motionless, inside the door. He puts his hand out, brushing my skin, and a small sigh escapes his mouth as he pauses before taking it, examining it, and sniffing it. I grab my hand where he touched it and mixed feelings of hostility, admiration and a sort of longing, meld to form a troubled sensation.
“Cranberry-orange—my favorite,” he chuckles. “Trying to butter me up? Ha! No pun intended.” I stare at him. “Butter, get it?” he says as I continue to stare. He leaves the door open, turns around and starts walking away, not waiting for my reply. I assume he wants me to follow, so I move forward, but for some reason I cannot walk in. I bump against what seems to be an invisible wall. I shiver at the strange energy that seems to flow over my skin. I put my hand up, and against the barrier. It doesn’t seem threatening, but more like a simple hindrance.
“Philip, if you want me to come in, I can
’t. I think you know this, don’t you?”
He turns around and walks back, then takes a post-it note off of the wall, just near the doorway and places it on a table near the door. “Try now,” he says as we stare at each other.
“I swear we’ve never met,” I say, “but you seem awfully familiar to me.”
“I live next door, for God
’s sake. You have to have seen me at some time. Or maybe you’ve seen me on the cover of GQ magazine—wait, make that Parenting.” He laughs.
I attempt to enter the apartment again, slowly, and sure enough, I can. In turning around once inside, I see Sharpie scribbles written across the door frame—a matching set to the ones outside on the balcony. Removing one of the symbols somehow breaks the chain that protected the doorway.
He turns around and heads toward the kitchen. When he’s not looking, I grab the post-it note off the table, for fear of being trapped
inside
this apartment, somehow.
He grabs a mug and some milk, which seem harmless enough for me to stay. He then lights a flame on the stove and places a tea kettle on it.
The whole apartment is green—and not the walls and carpet, but rather plants and flowers, situated in every possible foot of the place. Lush and vibrant, they look as though they were just plucked from a rainforest.
Then I notice the itty—bitty little ball of mud in Philip’s hair, near his neck.
“You have mud on your neck,” I state, matter-of-factly.
“What can I say? I have a green thumb and a muddy neck,” he says, as he places a tea bag in a cup and then pours hot water over it. His actions resemble someone quite familiar with the kitchen—someone independent.
“Philip, I think if your mother came home right now and found me, a stranger, in your apartment, it would be very bad, and she may try to shoot me.”
“Don’t worry. She
won’t be home soon.” Philip responds. “We don’t own a gun. She’d only try to stab or strangle you.”
“Great.” I make sure to move as far from the kitchen and its knife set as possible.
Without even asking me, Philip adds a bit of milk and a dollop of honey to the tea cup—just how I like it—then hands it to me. As I take the cup, he places his hand on top of mine. I don’t pull away, but instead, find myself curious of this boy’s emotions. He pulls his hand away.
“How old are you, Philip?”
He looks in my eyes and hesitates. “Seven,” he blurts.
He walks to the kitchen set and pulls out a seat. “Please sit,” he says. “Before you ask me questions, I need to ask you one.” Philip pulls out the chair next to me, and brings it close. “It’s a simple question,” he says. “How about I ask it, and you choose to answer or not. Deal?” He stares at me with what might seem to some like puppy-dog eyes, but I’m thinking “lion” is the better description.
“Agreed. Ask.”
“Who is that creature that waits outside your door all night?”
The bile creeps up through my esophagus and I immediately jump up. “Outside
my
door at night?” My eyes are wide now, and he seems to realize that I honestly do not know what he’s talking about. He grabs my arm lightly and pulls me back down into the seat. He then holds his hand over mine, in my lap, and looks at me with a soft face, one that holds years of experience—one that looks years older than seven.
“He’s a stinky, big, brown, ugly thing with big eyes,” he says as his hand tightens over mine, coercing me to stay seated. He stares into my eyes, looking as though he can read my thoughts. “He’s always holding a necklace or something, and he just sits there, like he
’s guarding your apartment.” My shoulders release the tension built up as I realize who’s been at my door.
“Oh. Philip, do you know Renhala?”
His eyebrows raise and he lets go of my hand as he sits up straight. He then gathers himself and speaks. “I feel you are an honest person, Kailey, and I’m really hoping that I am right,” says Philip. “Let’s be frank with each other, and I will share whatever information I have with you, as long as you reciprocate.”
“Okay then,” I say. “Special needs?”
“I am in whatever categories the doctors here want to lump me in.” I see his throat force down a swallow before he continues. “I tried so hard to not be me, but we are who we are, Kailey. How do you explain the things I saw as a three year old, or how I understood the genetic makeup of an amaryllis at the age of six? Not genius, but ‘special needs.’ They just didn’t like that I was smarter than them. I can guarantee you that a large percentage of us in this particular category also know of Renhala. There, I answered two questions for you. Please answer mine.”
I agreed, so there’s no backing out now. “I
’m going to assume you’re speaking of the young greble I recently befriended. His name is Bu, and is seemingly a gentle soul. Don’t be frightened of him—he wouldn’t hurt you.”
He laughs. I furrow my brow.
Philip looks out the window at a morning dove sitting on his windowsill. The dove turns to him, and I feel an unspoken connection is made between them. The dove then turns away and closes its eyes. “I’m not scared of him,” Philip finally says. “It’s you who should watch out. He’s more dangerous than you realize.”
I feel the sudden need to defend Bu. “Funny,
‘cause I’ve been warned you are the one to be careful around.” I was raised not to beat around the bush, so I might as well run around the mulberry.
“And who told you that?” snap
s Philip, his voice suddenly petulant.
“A small Asia
n man by the name of Gunthreon,—” I am interrupted by his hand.
“I know Gunthreon, Kailey,” he says.
“Care to reveal how?”
“I bet he fed you lots of stories, didn
’t he? Special abilities, quests, legends?”
I clench my jaw as his face sprouts a sarcastic-looking smirk.
He seems on a roll as I feel anger growing in him. “And I’m sure he didn’t even mention to you his power—maybe given you any clue of what
he
can do?” He’s staring at me like I missed out on some joke, which at this point I’m sure I did. Come to think about it, Gunthreon never told me about any gifts of his, and I never bothered asking, either, even after he spoke of Russell.
“The power of persuasion—that’s what he possesses,” says Philip. “He can persuade anyone to do almost anything. Pretty powerful if you think about it, huh? If he gets in a fight, he can just persuade the aggressor to
not fight.
He can persuade a penguin it needs a pair of Nikes. It’s the perfect gift, don’t you see? He can persuade anyone to take up with
any
cause he may have. Do you see this now?”
Suddenly, I feel like I’ve been used. Maybe I never made any decisions on my own. Maybe that
’s why Gunthreon seemed so very trustworthy to me, breaking down my defenses so easily.
“Kailey, I don’t want to be caught up in his or anyone else
’s stupid plans,” squawks Philip. “I just want to live a normal, happy life.” He looks down at his muffin.
As I contemplate what Philip has said, watching him stare at his muffin, I decide being angry at Gunthreon will get me nowhere, and I
’m assuming it’s the same story with Philip. There’s definitely some sort of animosity between the two, and Philip is trying to sway me from believing Gunthreon. “Sorry, Philip, but your life doesn’t seem very normal,” I say. “Where do you go to school? Why aren’t you there now? What games do you play at the park? Huh, Philip? You don’t look too happy.” I know I’m taking some long shots—I only met the kid yesterday—but I feel lucky right now.
And when I see his eyes are wet, I know I’ve hit a sore spot.