Bloodlines: Everything That Glitters (28 page)

I turned away from her and sat down at the kitchen table. “Then don’t say things you don’t mean. Besides, it’s already too late. I think I love her.”

My mother threw her hands in the air. “I pray to Hero you’re joking. You don’t know what love is, Nikko.”

Wade watched from the corner. “You may be wrong about that, mom. He does love her,” he offered on my behalf.

“Intentions never lie,” I mumbled. Realizing that he knew exactly what he was doing, I stared angrily at him. “If you know how I feel, why are you trying to undercut me?”

“Maybe I love her too,” he confessed.

I jumped up from the table, causing the chair to lay on the floor. “No you don’t, you just can’t stand to see me with anything. This is about your ego, not love.” Suddenly feeling the need to hurt him, I stepped back turned to pick up the chair.

Being the overdramatic person my mother was, she fell to the floor and sat on her legs. “I don’t believe what I’m hearing, my boys are sick,” she whispered while shaking her head.

Pushing my anger to the side, I pulled my mother up from the floor and sat her in the chair. “Wade, as much as I’d rather punch you in the face right now, we have a job to do. Are you ready?”

Without waiting for him to answer, I travelled us both to the door of Centure’s hidden cabin in the woods. “Is she here?” I inquired while looking around the shrubbery.

“No one is here,” he answered.

Sitting on a tree stump, I planted my face in my palms. “I need help, bro.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

I stood up and looked down at him. “I’m serious. There must be a special place in hell for this.”

Wade nudged my shoulder. “Calm down, if we’re going to get that technical about this thing, our mothers
are only sisters by bond not blood or aura. This
family
is merely a state of mind.”

“So is that why you’re going after her?”

Centure drifted down from one of the trees and touched down in our mist. “Good day,” she smiled warmly. “We are all ready, yes?”

I nodded slightly, then placed a hand on their shoulders and disappeared from the woods.

***

I couldn’t stop my mind from racing as I slowly moved through the house. “She’s not my blood cousin,” I mumbled aloud, trying to convince myself it was ok.

“I’m sure your mind is just all sorts of scrambled now,” Wade said with a small smirk on his face. “I should have warned you.”

“A little warning would have been nice,” I replied, quickly pacing the floor. After nearly tripping over the rug, I decided to sit down.

“How was it? More action than you’ve seen in months, I bet.”

I stared up at him while he stuffed corn chips into his mouth. “I wasn’t expecting her to kiss me.”

Wade crossed the living room and sat next to me on the loveseat. “Listen, this chick doesn’t know what she wants to do. She’ll have to learn to guard her emotions a lot better than she’s doing.”

That was certainly the truth
, but was it really a bad thing? “Maybe that’s what I like so much about her,” I replied.

“You like that she’s a being easily enticed and manipulated? I don’t believe that for one second.”

I hopped up from the couch and ran up the stairs. “I still want to punch you in the face,” I called behind me.

Alizarin

Friday October 1, 2010

“I want you to come somewhere with me,” Nikko said as he appeared into the room.

I put the papers down on the desk and looked at him, “Why should I go anywhere with you? Where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise, so just wrap your arms around me and trust me.” He took my hands and pulled me closer to him, I hesitantly wrapped my arms around his waist.

“Let’s go then.”

Traveling through time and space and it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. It’s like the feeling you get when you’re at the top of the rollercoaster about to take an eighty foot plunge only magnified times ten. I saw the spark of the light blue oval rings before the scenery of a beautiful autumn park came into a focused view. I gazed around taking in all of the sweet maple air. “Where are we?” I breathed before turning to face Nikko.

“Buck’s Pocket
,” He replied, stepping away from me as I looked around.

“You have to go back and get Triton,” I said, noticing the other dogs and their owners playing around in the park. Seconds later I heard Triton’s little bells jingling as he began playing with the leaves as they hit the ground.

Nikko was placing the picnic basket on the table when I walked over to him. “So what’s this about?” I tried not to sound rude.

“My sister should be here shortly, I w
ant you to meet her,” he smiled, looking me deep in the eyes. “Don’t get nervous, my sister is actually really cool. More than I can say about a lot of humans.”

“How did that happen? Her being human.”

He shrugged then faded from view. When he came back into view he had a bowl and some other things for Triton bunched in his arms. “This ought to keep him at least halfway busy.” He set the things down and arranged them away from the table then came over and sat down. “Join me.”

I walked over and sat down next to him. “This was very nice of you.” I kissed his cheek and pulled the basket to me, “Let’s see what you brought.”

He pulled it away from me and shook his head. “Not until Natalie gets here,” he said before pushing it away. “So what were you doing before I took you away?”

I looked around the park and tried to remember what it was I was doing. “I’m not sure exactly. It must have been some weird cross between homework and researching something totally unrelated.” The wind blew a chill down my spine and I shuddered a little bit.

“Do you need a jacket?” He said while running his hand down my arm.

Before I could reply he had vanished and come back with a second blanket. “Here you go,” he said as he wrapped it around my arms. “If my sister didn’t live closer to here I’d have taken you somewhere where the sun is always shining.”

My mind went back to the illusion Wade had played for me, the soft white sand and the warm rays of sun on my body; it all felt so real. “Can I ask you something?” I paused before continuing, “What are you going to do with the rest of your life?”

Without any thought he just shrugged. “At this point I’m taking it one day at a time. Why do you ask?”

Triton caught my attention as he began to wonder too far off from us, I whistled for him to come back and grabbed him as he ran and jumped into my lap. “I don’t know, but I’ve realized that I may just outlive my parents. When that happens I’m not going to be in the best of conditions to do anything. It scares me.”

He moved closer to me and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “In most cases children usually do outlive their parents. I accepted that when my father died last year, you’ll never forget them but you will heal. Take it one day at a time like I do, that’s all there is.”

I leaned my head down on his shoulder and realized he was right; it’d be harder for them to lose me than for me to lose them. “Thank you,” I whispered.

A tall, slender lady approached the two of us and sat down; immediately Triton saw this as an opportunity to jump from my arms and begin chasing leaves again. “Hello, you must be Natalie,” I greeted while extending my hand.

“And you’re the pretty lady Nikko has been telling me about, nice to meet you,” she replied then turned to look at Triton. “That’s an adorable puppy, what’s its name?”

“Triton the Brave,” Nikko replied before taking his arm from around me and leaning over to give his sister a hug. “How have you been Nat?”

“You know me, in and out of the hospital. They have me going through poisoned therapy again,” she replied casually.

I looked at her and watched as she pulled the blue scarf from her head, exposing her baldness. “You have cancer?” I reached over and gently placed my hand on her, “I can help you.”

“God can’t even help me, so what can you do?” She laughed.

Nikko nudged me and shook his head lightly; she obviously didn’t know about him. I pulled back and sat up straight. “It’s a beautiful day today, I’m glad I was invited to join you guys. What’s in the basket, Nikko?”

He reached over and pulled the basket to him. “I hope you like them because I made it myself,” he said while reaching into the basket and pulling out three sandwiches.

I laughed out loud and took one of the sandwiches from him. “This is the big surprise, huh?” I opened the baggie and took what looked to be ham and cheese on white bread. “Classy,” I smiled.  

“So tell me a little bit about you Aliza, how old are you?” Natalie questioned while splitting her sandwich in half then stuffing it in her mouth.

“Well, I’m 17 now, but I’ll be another year older in a few weeks. I lived in Hot Springs for all of those seventeen years before moving to New Market with my family about two months ago.” I took a bite of my sandwich then called Triton closer before he got too close to another dog much larger than he is.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“Yeah I have a twin brother, his name is Asher but we just call him Ash,” I replied.

She looked confused for a minute then said, “Don’t twins usually have rhyming names?”

We got that a lot whenever we brought up the fact that we were twins and although we were fraternal, people always expected our names to match. “Everyone thinks that, but we’re fraternal. We’re simply two different kids born on the same day, three minutes apart from each other. At least that’s how my mom explained it to me,” I replied with a smile.

“That makes sense I guess, I saw a documentary on the birth of twins once, and they said the same thing, only it took them a whole hour to explain it. So do you know why your parents decided to name you Aliza?”

I wiped mayo from my face and thought about it. “I don’t know, Aliza is short for Alizarin, and now that you bring it up I’ll ask.”

Nikko sat quietly for the next thirty as Natalie and I talked about a slew of random things before he interrupted, “Hate to be a party pooper, but I have to be to work soon. Thanks for showing up Nat, I’ll walk you to your car.”

“I can handle myself,” she said as she wrapped the scarf back around her head. “It was nice meeting you Aliza, I hope to see more of you.” She looked at Nikko then got up from the blanket.

I smiled back at her then got up and hugged her. “I’m pretty sure you will.”

Once Natalie had gotten in her car and drove away, I walked over to Nikko and punched him. “I literally can help her, make her healthy again.”

He shook his head and looked off. “You missed it,” he said softly.

“Missed what?”

“She’s happy with herself despite everything that she goes through. Did she look like a person wallowing in her own depression because of something she couldn’t control? I’m not saying you should be like her but I’m saying that you should at least think about changing your attitude about life. Do you know how many people would
kill
to live forever? Think about it, it’s not that bad.”

I widened my eyes then sat down on the grass and crossed my legs; I would have never guessed this was the real reason he had brought me here to meet his only sister. “Do you think I’m selfish?” I replied lowly. If everyone around me was saying it then it must have been true.

“You’re not selfish, you just need to embrace the person that you are and move on.”

That was it; tears now fell down my cheeks. “That’s the third time I’ve heard that,” I cried. What was wrong with me? Why was I the only one not able to truly come to grips with it and live life without being suspicious of everyone and everything?

“If it’s the third time you’ve heard it then you know you need to make some changes in your life.” He turned around and came and sat down next me and wrapped me in his arms.

I felt safe in his arms, like he could protect me from any and everything as we sat on the itchy grass and looked off into the distance. “Wait, how did you know about any of this?”

He fidgeted for a while before answering, “Your brother told me about it the other day at school because he thought I could help you.”

For a person that didn’t like
others in his business, he was sure in mine a lot. I shook off the thoughts before I started to over think and then start the negativity. “Thank you Nikko,” I hugged his body as tight as I could then let go. “You have to get to work right?”

He let go of me and got up, “Yes, unfortunately, could you grab up some of this stuff for me?”

I got up out of the grass and pulled up the blanket and gather it into the basket, along with the things that he had brought for Triton. “I think he had a little too much fun with this one,” I said as I held up a toy that was missing its head and a leg.

Once I had gathered everything together I picked up Triton and the basket then got closer to Nikko. “So how does this work? My hands are too full to wrap them around you.”