Made to Love (8 page)

Rita fled, and I watched
her back in befuddlement.

Was the world going crazy,
or was it just me?

Chapter
Seventeen

“
Come on,” I muttered,
“pick up your phone.”

After several rings, the
default answering machine message picked up.  “We’re sorry,
but the person you are calling is unavailable right
now…”

With a furious growl, I
flung the phone against the wall.

I paced my bedroom, arms
folded tight under my breasts.  So this was the game he was
playing, huh?  One amazing night together, he tucks me into
bed so sweetly the next day, and then he’s gone?  Maybe he was
afraid of commitment.

But that wouldn’t explain
why everyone at school treated me like I’d lost my mind when I
asked about him.

“
People don’t just
disappear like that,” I told the rose bud on my shelf. 
“That’s not how it works.”

My hand began to quiver,
and I knew the force that was driving it.  The need for the
pain on the inside to manifest in the outside.  People would
know there was something wrong if I bled for it.  They
couldn't forget if I had the scars to show them.

I dashed into the bathroom,
grandmother's quill in hand.  I looked at myself in the
mirror, saw my face taught with the agony that consumed me, then
down at my the small white scars running up and down my
wrists.  The nib of the pen hovered over my ivory skin, the
gold glinting in the light.

My hand wouldn't
move.  It hovered, dangling the feather and nib over my wrist,
but wouldn't make contact or puncture the skin.

I cried out and threw the
pen out in the room.  In a rush, I grabbed my notebook and a
pencil and took my notebook out to the chair I had permanently
stationed on my balcony and stared out at the ocean.  The
pencil too hovered over the page, only this white was more pure
than the jagged edges on my arms.

The sound of the breeze
reminded me of what Octavius’s had been singing on the rocks the
night before last.  It made me hurt inside to think
about.

I started writing words
without thought, and it took me a minute to realize what that I was
writing Octavius’s song, humming the melody in the back of my
throat.

Seeking your
song,

Persephone,

A haunting dream of
you

After these months your
mother longs,

Persephone,

Ever since your soul fell
through

I frowned at the
words.  Persephone?  That didn’t make any sense. 
Octavius was into poetry, sure, but Greek mythology?  My
memories were confused, just like me.

Scribbling out the words, I
went to the next page, but I couldn’t think of anything to write
other than his song.

And then… I heard
it.

“
Seeking your song,
Persephone…
”  It wasn’t the wind or my imagination. 
I knew Octavius’s voice when I heard it.

I stood, setting my
notebook on the chair I had vacated, and went to the balcony. 
Squinting down at the beach, I shielded my eyes from the wind
rustling my hair and tried to pick out the location of the
song.

On the sandy beach beside
our property stood a figure with dark hair and pale
skin.

Octavius.

Chapter
Eighteen

I ran down to the
beach.

Octavius stood like a
figure from myth, a Greek god all his own.  The wind whipped
through his hair, and he closed his eyes and leaned into it. 
I felt myself melting into a pile of goo.

I shook my head to try and
clear it and stepped up to him.

“
What's going on?” I
asked.  “First, my dad knows who you are when you've never
even met, and now, the people at school that we were hanging around
just days ago didn't recognize your name.”

He smiled faintly. 
“I've met your father before.”

“
Okay, whatever. 
Something's going on, and you know what it is.”

“
There's a lot of
somethings going on, Calliope,” he said.  He hummed the tune
under his breath.  “And you're at the center of them
all.”

“
Me?” It made no
sense.  I was the epitome of average.  It was this town
that was weird, everyone around me who was creepy.  “But
why?”

“
I can't spoil the fun,”
he said.

“
No, please.  Spoil
it.  I need to know!”

He hummed more of his
song.  I felt myself swooning.  He put his hand on my
cheek, then leaned in and whistled in my ear.

The next thing I knew, I
was lying on the sand, and the grit dug into my cheek.  I rose
to a sitting position and looked around.

Octavius was
gone.

Trying to ignore my
splitting headache, I grabbed a handful of sand and threw it at the
ocean.  “I can't
take
this anymore!”

The waves crashed several
feet away.  I watched them dance, the moonlight flickering
across the surface.  It seemed so simple, and beautiful, but I
was quickly learning that nothing in this place fit that
description in the slightest.  Who knew what secrets the ocean
held?

For a brief moment, it
seemed like I was going to get an answer.

Something moved beneath the
waves.  I thought at first that it was a shadow, or a large
fish, but it looked like neither; it glowed slightly.  I
watched, and it reappeared, glowing more brightly.  I thought
fleetingly of the apple blossoms in the orchard, and wondered if
they were connected.

It disappeared.

I found myself walking
toward the ocean.  I needed to know what I was seeing for
once.  But though I stared and stopped at the very edge of the
water, it didn't reappear.

It was only when the moon
had moved halfway across the sky that I trudged back toward the
house.

Chapter
Nineteen

No one at school knew the
name Octavius.  I asked around, even talking to jerks like
Rich and Jana, and nothing.  I had the added benefit of Rich
stalking me through the halls the rest of the day, even following
me part of the way home.

What was it with the creeps
in this town?

I stumbled in the house and
up to my bed immediately.  All the weirdo nights were taking a
toll; although I was keeping up with my homework without any
difficulty, I had spent the moments not searching for news of
Octavius falling asleep on my desk and on my lunch.  It felt
like I was turning into some kind of zombie of the
night.

Sure enough, I awakened
again when the moonlight was streaming through my windows, and
there was crying echoing through the secret passage.

I jumped out of bed and
went inside the passage.  The crying got louder as I
approached, and I wondered what I was doing.  Was it a good
idea to head toward the creepy monster in the lab, especially when
I had no means of going in or blocking him?  Then again, it
was better than not knowing what was going on, so I pressed
forward.

I stopped in the hall
behind the kitchen and listened.

The crying had actually
ceased for a moment, and I heard my father's voice.

“
See?” he was
saying.  “It's all right, Byron.  Nothing's going to hurt
you.”

Byron?  The monster
had a name?  As if things couldn't get any wackier.  I
leaned in closer to listen.

My father was still
speaking, but now, in a more professional  tone, and with
pauses.  “Yes, yes.  All the nerves appear to have
perfect responses in the necessary categories....well, of course
I'm going to keep testing, but--”

Another voice spoke, and I
assumed it was Byron.  But I couldn't hear anything
specific.  I pressed my ear against the door and tried to
listen, but they spoke in hushed voices.  And the hushed
voices cut off, quickly followed by footsteps, so I ran back toward
the passage.

I had no idea what I would
find next.

Chapter Twenty

Never in my life had I been
so ready for the weekend to arrive.

I awoke early on Saturday
morning, before the sun even rose, and I was immediately awake and
alert.  The weather had grown violent sometime
overnight.  The wind shrieked through the tower over my
bedroom, and the rain pummeled my door mercilessly, smacking
against the glass like a torrential downpour of fists.

Huddled in my blankets, I
stared out my door and the towering windows on either side of
it.  The clouds roiled, angry and black.  I hadn’t seen
weather like this all week.

A week.  I couldn’t
believe I had only been in Coos Bay for a week.  It already
felt like a lifetime.

I piled my pillows behind
myself against the headboard, pulled out my journal – a separate
entity from my poetry – and began to write.

Dear diary:

What a strange week. 
I feel like I’m going insane.  My parents locked my into my
bedroom (I think), I met a hot guy who might not be as friendly as
I thought even though I still want him really bad, and there’s a
monster living in my basement.

I’m not sure how much of
this has actually happened.  I’ve come down with a fever
that’s turned my days and nights into a haze of half-dreams and
nightmares.  Maybe my mom didn’t lock me into my
bedroom.  Maybe Octavius never existed.  Maybe I didn’t
go into my dad’s basement and see that thing…

Byron.  His name is
Byron.

I stared down at the page,
gnawing my bottom lip.

Byron.

Last night, I had heard him
screaming again.  Was it a scream of fear, as my dad seemed to
think, or pain?  And what was hurting him?

“
I think I’m going crazy,”
I muttered, closing my journal again and setting it on the bedside
table.  Unfortunately, it was the only logical explanation for
everything that had been happening.

Oh well.  Logic was
totally overrated anyway.

I pulled myself out of bed
slowly, trying not to succumb to dizziness.  Although I was
mentally alert – or so it seemed – my body still felt like I was
suffering from one of the worst cases of the flu in my
life.

Carefully making my way up
the stairs, and trying not to pay attention to the secret passage
at the base of the tower, I went into the room at the top.  It
was small and dusty, but I had ordered the movers to place my desk
and a couple over-stuffed chairs there, and they had
complied.  It was cozy.  There was no electricity running
this high in my tower, but I had also stationed an oil lamp on the
desk, and I bent to light it.  It was enough to fill my room
with flickering golden light.

I stuffed a sheet I had
dragged from my bed to the crack under one of the draftiest
windows, and the light stopped flickering so madly.  I glanced
across to the tower above my parents’ room as I sealed the
hole.

There was a light in their
tower.

I stopped to stare. 
There was definitely light in their room—and motion.  And when
did my dad put a lightning rod on top of his tower?

“
He’s up to something
again,” I muttered, glaring in his general vicinity.

My dad was fond of bizarre
experiments, so it wasn’t too surprising.  He had started out
in his native Hungary as a freelance scientist, but a private
organization in the United States had recognized his brilliance and
paid for him to become a citizen and move across the
pond.

Since then, he had worked
at a variety of universities – one of which was the place he met my
mom, not too shabby a scientist herself – and now finally for the
private corporation again in Oregon.

He was a biologist by
trade, but a real Renaissance man of science by hobby—he was great
at chemistry, and physics, and everything else that required a good
brain for numbers and a persistent desire to experiment.  Ever
since I was a small girl, he had dedicated long hours to building
strange machines and concocting odd potions.  Our entire house
in Georgia, except my bedroom, had housed something of his as it
bubbled and fermented.

I pulled one of my fat
chairs around to the window and sat down to watch him work from a
distance.  My dad and I had once been really close, but when I
hit high school age and refused to be sent to a boarding school for
the scientifically minded – I loved poetry too much to be forced to
do experiments all day like him – that had been the end of our
amiable relationship.

But what in the world was
he doing at four in the morning?

Something moved outside the
tower, and I sat up straight, squinting my eyes to try to make out
detail through the rain.

Was that… my dad? 
Crawling on the roof of the tower?

“
He’s trying to connect
wire to the lightning rod,” I muttered.  Great.  My dad
was going to get struck by lightning and killed.