First Kiss (11 page)

“That’s how
you became Brandon’s cousin? How were you able to leave in the spring?”

“I don’t know.
For a decade everything has been the same; this was the first time something
was different. For us, different is good.”

I smile,
knowing exactly how that feels. “So you came to town to see me and pretended to
be someone you weren’t? Why didn’t you just come and tell me who you were?”

He laughs,
“How crazy would that have sounded?”

I nod, “It
still sounds crazy.”

“Exactly.”

“So you
thought being someone I would let into my life was smart?” My chest hurts. I
had liked him so much. I think I still do, regardless of the insanity and lies.

He nods, “I
knew if I found you and made you believe that you would want to help us go
home. I hoped you would want to go home. I am your king—it is your duty
to assist me. But it was worse than I expected. Not only did you not remember
me, you were very different. I saw it on your face. You were just a lost girl.
I gave up hope then.”

“I still don’t
know what you’re talking about. I want the truth and this sounds crazy. Start
at the beginning and stop lying to me.” My tone is getting spicy.

He sighs, “You
have been told lies and your memories have been stolen, but it has never been
me doing it. You didn’t know me when we met before. I saw that plain as day on
your face.”

I shake my
head, rattling my brain a little, “Bash, just stop. I think you have me
confused with someone else.”

“You are the
girl I need. Trust me. You have gotten rid of the borders and you are identical
to Baylor in almost every way.”

I shake my
head, "I don’t understand. I know you are a beast and I am cursed, but I
don’t understand the rest. It’s not possible. King of what land and where is
this land? Is it like
Alice in Wonderland
? Do we fall
through a hole? I don’t get it. I think the scars and the injuries are more
serious than you think."

He smiles,
"You will. You were but ten years old when we came to this terrible place.
You have aged where we have not. We have spent ten years here, not leaving the
house except once a year. The food shows up in the pantry, the furnishings and
state of the house change according to your mood, as does the yard, and I think
maybe even the season."

I can feel
frustration and anger welling inside of me, but I can't reach it, not properly.
I point at the mirror, "Baylor?
The magic mirror?
The curse and this terrible land?
I don’t get it.
You’re talking in circles. What has happened to me? Has a year past or not? Am
I in a coma in the real world and this is my imagination or dream? Does the
mirror represent something?"

He shakes his
head, “I don’t know. It was always rumored that witches could make the people
disappear
into
the mirror. Your mother used this very mirror to see images of the landscape
when we first got here. I assumed you would be able to do the same thing, but
you seemed like you had no powers.”

"DID YOU
KILL MY MOTHER? WHAT IS HAPPENING?"

He jumps at my
shouting, “I never touched her. She left here one day, pregnant with your
sister, and I never saw her again. I don’t know what is happening. I don't know
any more than you. I don’t know anything. You were a child when your sister
brought us here. Baylor called upon an evil curse and sent us here. Your father
is not dead, Lynnie. We have all been stuck here this many years." He
looks as angry as I think I feel. He jumps up, grabbing my arms, "Break
the curse, I beg of you! Remember!"

I sob, "I
don’t know what to do."

His face is so
close to mine it gives me an idea. I have a feeling. Maybe it’s the Disney
stories I have watched, but I grab his face and plant my lips upon his. I can
feel the cuts and hardened scars of his skin against mine. I close my eyes and
grip to him. His lips are soft, the way I imagined them to be. I press into the
kiss harder, breathing him in. I hate that this stolen kiss, done out of anger
and confusion, is my first kiss. When I no longer feel the scars, I open my
eyes. The house is a shabby mess again but his face is as it was when I met him
before.

"Bash,
you look normal again. Maybe we don’t belong in the nut house.”

He touches his
face hesitantly, “I told you,
you
could do it.”

“I have
magic!” The curse dawns on me. I gasp, “Can you breathe? Did the curse hurt
you?" I reach for him but he jumps back. He is scared of me I think. I see
his eyes looking behind me like they are locked there. I turn, jumping at the
face of the scarred man in the mirror.

He touches his
face, "I am me again."

I look at him,
"You are you. But now I have kissed you and you will die."

He walks to
the mirror, looking at the scars and ignoring my words, "I am me but the
house isn’t the same as it was back home. Is the curse broken? Was it so simple
all along? Are we home? Is this how it looks now? Is it dilapidated and ruined?
Has she ruined all my lands while we have been gone?"

“I don’t know
what you mean."

He looks
around us, “I’m not sure the curse is broken.” He shakes his head, "I
don’t feel different. I look it, but I don’t feel it. Do you have your memories
now?”

I shake my
head, "What do we do now? How do we stop the curse from hurting you?"

He looks
around, "The house is the same—what does that mean? It doesn’t look
the way it did when it was your father’s house.”

“I kissed you,
you might die.”

We are both talking
and not listening.

I grab his
arms, “The curse—it might kill you now. I kissed you.”

He laughs,
finally listening to what I’m saying. “You have to understand the curse. It is
not what you think it is. It was your sister all along, really."

I look at us
next to each other in the mirror, "But I think I love you, Bash, and I
kissed you."

He shakes his
head, "You cannot love me. Just like I cannot love you. Your family must
pay for their crimes. You must run. It’s why I didn’t want to bring you back
here after I spent that week with you. You’re not evil like them. You don’t
deserve the fate that will await you here."

“You sound
like an idiot. What are you even saying? Why can’t I love you or you love me? I
kissed you and you’re better. The bad you is trapped in the mirror. I saved
you. Why can’t you love me? Maybe we’re meant to be, and that’s why I was able
to save you and break the stupid curse.” I sound desperate and rash.

He gives me
the most horrible look. It is the one he was giving me at the party, "I am
grateful for you breaking the curse, but I can’t love you, Erralynn—ever.
I never imagined that what I had to do was make you love me back. In fact, it
is cruel that your sister made that the way to break it. Your curse is your
family, Erralynn, and you will never be free of that. You must run.”

My eyes well
again, "I don’t understand, don’t you see? You haven’t told me anything. I
mean the magic, isn’t so shocking. I think I always knew it was there, but the
rest of this, is crazy. Is the Lake curse gone? Am I free of it?"

His smug look
is back, like he’s tired of me. "The Lake curse is not what I was stuck
with, you simple girl. The Lake curse doesn’t exist except in the imaginations
of a bunch of idiotic, small-minded townies. It never has. You and your kind
are your own curse, and the townspeople of Lakeland have no idea what they’re
dealing with. When you kissed young Sam, I wasn’t lying. You were the victim of
the people of this hateful place. I hate the way they have treated you, but you
are in your power now. If you were in Lakeland, you could make them pay. Here
in our land, you will have to hide it though.”

I cock an
eyebrow, “We’re still in Lakeland.”

He shakes his
head, “I feel so sad for you, Lynnie. I will always hate Baylor for the spell she
put on us. She has always hated you. You were the life of the party, a sassy
little charmer who won everyone’s heart with your artist ways and charm. But
when I put her to trial, you must stay hidden. You look too much like her. No
one will believe you are not her."

“You aren’t
making any sense.” I am lost in a thousand thoughts, but he gets up and leaves
me there on the floor without a single answer. I shake my head, “Wait—my
mother—where is she?”

He walks to
the front door and looks back at me, “I don’t have that answer. She left us
here. I don’t know what happened to her. I trust you will go to your aunt’s
house now and seek refuge with her. When the kingdom finds out what your family
has done, they will call you a witch.
Stay hidden, Lynnie.
I will protect you the best I can. Your aunt has all the answers you need. I
must find my brother. I’m
sorry,
I don’t have time to
answer your questions. Thank you though, for freeing us and returning us home.”

I jump up and
follow him. The yard is a mess. The horses and carriage are there. Heidi,
Lance, and Tim are waiting for him at the foot of the carriage. They look like
they want to say something to me but they don’t. Tim waves at me as they climb
aboard, “Thank you, Miss Erralynn.”

Alex walks
past me, ignoring me completely, and boards
.

Bastion looks
over at me, "Goodbye. I have to find my way home now. I must stop your
sister and get back my throne. I will return your servants to their homes. You
must see if you can find your father. If your house looks like this, I fear for
him. If you don’t find him, go to your aunt’s house. Three-days walk to the
east from here—never leave there." His grey eyes look at me for what
feels like the longest moment ever, “I hate the way I feel about you.”

My jaw drops
"What?" Of all the nonsense he has said to me, I am stuck with that
as the last thing.

He ignores me
and walks to the carriage too. He climbs onto it. I run to it but Lance shouts
at the horses and they pull away from me.

My heart is in
my throat. "Wait! Don't leave me here!"

They ride down
the mushy road too fast for me. Tim peeks his face out of the black curtain. I
scream as they pull away and round the corner, leaving me there. I drop to my
knees, "I don’t understand. I don’t understand." I sob, dropping to
my hands, squishing the mud in my fingers. "I don’t understand."

I look back at
the decrepit mansion, shaking and rocking and waiting for an answer.

Chapter Eight

It was all a
dream.
A dream that I am just waking from.
A nightmare, really.

My feet ache,
but when Brandon's parents’ store comes into
view,
at
least I start to feel some semblance of sanity creeping back in. I am in the
real world. No aunt’s house, haunted mansions, or disfigured kings with scars I
can kiss away with my poisonous kiss.

I am in
Lakeland. I never imagined I would be grateful to see the damned place, but I
am.

I stagger past
the store, almost rushing in and begging to know what year it is and if I can
have some water, but it is closed for the night.

I walk down
Main Street, noticing the way it has not changed in the year I have been gone.
When I get to Mary's, I walk past the red car and the gate and stagger into the
yard. The house is unlocked, as it always is. "Mary!"

She doesn’t
answer me. I walk into the kitchen and pull open the fridge to find it full of
fresh food. I grab an apple and eat it as fast as I can. I crack open a ginger
ale and guzzle it to the point my throat hurts from the sugar. I am gasping for
air and stuffing things in my face. I never knew I was so hungry. I catch a
glimpse of myself in the microwave. I am a mess. I turn and wander up the
stairs to take a shower. Mary is hiding on me, no doubt about to jump out and
murder me any second. I don’t care though. I don’t care at all.

I stand under
the hot water and try to make any of it make sense. Even just a small detail I
must have overlooked.

It doesn’t
work.

My mother went
there and died, but he never saw it. The house was my father’s, but my
grandfather lost it fifty years ago when my father was an infant. Bastion was a
king in his mind, but he is a ghost in mine.

None of it was
real. Nothing that confusing could be real. It was a dream, a nightmare.

I just see his
face over and over, telling me he didn’t love me. He never loved me. He played
me the week he was here, protecting me and being kind to me. He was trying to
trick me into coming to live at the mansion from hell. And to top it all off,
the Lake curse isn’t real? I don’t have a friggin’ clue where to start. So
basically my entire life has sucked for no reason at all.

“It was a
dream, Lynnie. All a dream.” I shake my head as I wash my hair and think about
his week with me here. It’s so weird, he needed me but then he left. He never
brought me to the mansion. He was angry when Lance did it for him. He is a
ghost who has tortured me for a year, if I have even been gone that long.

I feel like I
have been trapped in a painting for a year. Forced to deal with the things in
the painting.

It was a
dream. I push it away and nod, "It was all a dream."

I get out, surprised
Mary never took the chance to kill me in the shower. The white curtain really
would have added flair and shock to the whole scene. My room is empty. She has
thrown out all my things including the bed.

I look at the
carpet and see it is fixed. The place I used to stash my money is gone.

I turn and go
into her room. It stinks of cigarettes and old lady. I steal a pair of jogging
pants and a tee shirt. It's better than nothing.

I steal a pair
of her sandals and a raincoat and leave the house. I look homeless but it suits
my situation. I have lost my mind. The cold drizzle is a discomfort but it, at
least, is real.

I walk to the
bar I used to sing in and notice the boarded-up windows.

A desperate
scream fills the air of the silent street. "Lynnie!" I turn to see
Sam running towards me. He looks the way he did in the
mirror—professional and clean cut, only he is here and not in Boston. His
handsome face is the same, but I can see that I have been gone long enough for
him to become a man. He grabs me, sweeping me into his arms. He hugs so hard I
can barely breathe. He speaks in a muffled voice, drowning in my hair.
“Lynnie!”

I smile as he
puts me down. "Hey!"

“Hey? All you
have to say is hey? I can’t even believe it’s you! I thought I was crazy there
for a minute.” He shakes his head, "What are you doing here? What are you
wearing? Are you okay
"

I blush and
look down as I answer, "I stole some clothes from Mary. I came to see her
but she isn’t home."

He looks
crazed, "Where were you? I looked for you everywhere.”

I shake my
head, “Working. I need to find Mary.”

“I'm sorry to
hear about her. I know you’ve never liked her, but she is your grandma."

I pause,
"Yeah." I have no idea what he's talking about. Is Mary sick?

"Want me
to walk you to the hospital?"

I nod,
"Sure." I guess that answers why she never murdered me in the shower.

We walk no
more than ten steps before he stops me, "I need you to know,
I
told everyone it was the sesame seeds. I know it wasn’t
you. I told them we never kissed."

I start to
cry. I can’t stop myself. He is the first real thing I have seen or touched. I
lose all control. I don’t even know why. Maybe because I can see the scar on
his throat, or maybe because I am so confused and lost, or because I am a
little scared that I've gone crazy and have been living in the woods for a
year. He wraps his arms around me, kissing the top of my head, "I am so
sorry for what everyone said."

I just cry
into his chest. I think it's a release. He has no idea as to why I am a puddle
of emotions, but I think I need it. As far as my brain and body are concerned,
the whole thing happened about a month or two ago. But maybe it has been a
year. I’m exhausted like it has been.

He holds me to
him, cradling me almost. I stammer, "I'm so-so-so-sorry, Sam. I didn’t
mean to. I didn’t mean to like you that way."

He shakes his
head, "I liked you that way, I'm glad you did. I'm glad I wasn't alone in
it."

I can’t face
him after my admission. I can’t face him or anyone else in the town. I realize
that as we stand there. My old wounds have not left me. Lake curse or no, I am
still the curse girl.

He wraps an
arm around my shoulders and forces me to walk. "Where did you go, Lynnie?
Tell me you were safe."

“I was.” I
look down, wondering how I answer that. "I went and worked for a rich
family who didn’t know me." It's only a partial lie.

"You come
back looking like you’ve spent the year in the woods and don’t call anyone?
You've been gone for over a year. Not a word to anyone. Didn’t you think we'd
worry?"

I’m almost
grateful it really has been over a year, so at least I have one fact about my
time missing. I shake my head, "No."

He kisses my
head again, "Never do that to me again. I searched everywhere for you. I
hired someone to look for you when Brandon told me what had happened.”

I don’t have a
response to that so I just mutter, “It’s not a big deal.”

He nods
against me, "It was a very big deal. I almost took a year off from school
to find you. Brandon told me what Mary did to you—took all your money.
Your nineteenth and twentieth must have been awesome!" His sarcasm gets
lost as I instantly start to realize what that all means. “I confronted her,
but she’s old and cruel. She doesn’t care about you.”

I look up at
him,
I feel my mouth go dry, "What's the date?"

He scowls,
"It's October twentieth."

My birthday
was three days ago. How the hell is it
fall
already?
It was spring this morning at the mansion. I’m losing my mind, like my mother.

He smiles,
“Did you at least get your inheritance?”

The
money from my father.
Wait—if the Lake curse is
fake
,
what about the money?

It was all a
dream. The money is there. It has to be. I shake my
head,
"I just got to town tonight." There is a crippling fear that Mary has
somehow taken my inheritance and blown every dime of it or it never existed.
But I force myself to believe I am a Lake. My pace quickens to the hospital.

Sam tells me
about Harvard. I don’t really care. He has become a real man in the year and a
half I have been gone.
The year and a half that feels like a
month and a half.
I am sick with worry and more confused than before. I
bet I was living in the woods, like Jack Nicholson in
The
Shining
,
living with the dead, believing I saw things I didn’t.

When we get to
the hospital, I smile at the lady at the front desk, "Hi. My grandmother,
Mary Lake, is here."

She gives me
the look. I have almost missed it. The way people pull back like I am a leper
and then they always give the person standing next to me a questioning look.
She smiles through her fear or disgust or whatever, "Room two-ten."

"Thanks."

Sam points,
"It's this way. I was in that room when I got my appendix out."

I look at him,
"You have had a lot of surgeries."

He nods,
"Four. Tonsils, appendix, tracheotomy, plugs in my ears when I was
little."

I shake my
head "You're a train wreck."

He laughs,
"I know it." He wraps an arm around my shoulders, pulling me into
him. He kisses my hair, “You seem different. If something happened, you can
tell me. I would do anything for you.”

I close my
eyes and hate myself
for ever
liking Bastion. I shake
my head, “Nothing happened. I swear. I was just working in an old mansion.”

When we get to
the room, I stop. I can't make my feet walk into the room. I hate her in so
many ways, but I need answers and my money. I take a breath and walk
in,
at least Sam is with me. He doesn’t give us privacy,
thank God. I imagine he knows the stories of the way she treated me. Everyone
does, and yet, no one helped me.
Me or Rosie.

She looks a
million years old and fragile in ways I can’t even imagine possible. She is
frail and weak looking. I can’t even see any of the malice. I sit next to her.
She smiles, "You must be my nurse." I can see she truly doesn’t know
me.

I shake my
head, "I'm your granddaughter."

She nods,
"My Rosie.
My sweet Rosie.
You came back. You
came back to me. How did you get out of the mirror?"

Oh shit.

I almost cry
but I've honestly had enough crying to last me a lifetime. I nod, "How are
you, Grandma?"

Oh shit.

The whole
thing was true?

She shakes her
head, "You watch out for that sister of yours, Rosie. She is pure evil.
Pure evil."

My heart stops
almost, "Why Grandma?" I can see Sam giving me a strange look. I
shake my head at him subtly. He won't believe anything he hears anyway.

"She can
push people through the mirror. I saw it. I saw her do it. She did it to you. I
thought I was having a stroke. I called the ambulance but they said it was a
panic attack. They said I imagined you had died, but I couldn’t prove you had
lived. They thought I was having a diabetic fit."

Oh God, the
ambulance had never had Rosie in it. She hadn’t died. Where is she?

I swear, I can
taste metal and smell burnt toast. I am having a stroke or something. The room
spins, "What can I do, Grandma?"

I hear
Bastion’s words ringing in my head. It was
all true
.
What does it mean? Who am I?

She puts a
hand out for me, "You stay away from her."

I nod, "I
will. Grandma, it's my twentieth birthday. Is the money my dad left me still
there?"

Her eyes
widen, "Already? Where did the time go? Where does it ever go?"

I smile and
squeeze her hand, wanting to choke the life from her. It's a fleeting thought,
but it's there nonetheless.

She thinks for
a second, "My room, Rosie. You'll know it when you see it. But it’s not
what you think it is. I only ever saw it the one time, when she pushed you
through it. But I think it’s still there."

I smile,
"Thanks, Grandma,” I get up and walk from the room.

Sam looks at
me, "What the hell was that?"

I sigh,
"She must think I'm my sister."

He scowls,
"You had a sister? I thought that was a town rumor."

I shake my
head,
"I used to think Mary pushed her down the stairs.
She told me Rosie died from the fall, now I’m not sure."

He winces,
"How did I not know you had a sister? How did she go in the mirror? What
mirror? I think Mary has lost it."

I shrug,
"Rosie was very little when she died. Mary is clearly confused." I
know that’s not true, but there is no way to explain the hot mess it is without
telling him everything that’s happened. He will have me committed. I stop a
lady walking past, "Hi. My grandma is Mary Lake. Is there anything I
should know? She seems pretty confused."