Sleepless (16 page)

I shake my head. “He is very much alive.”

His face falls. “But you said—”

“I said I would take care of it. Bret Anderson is not the monster you make him out to be. Nothing about him even comes close to that creature that nearly murdered Julia when she was a child. Yes, his dreams may be somewhat inappropriate, but he’s just a normal, hot-blooded boy, who
loves
her.” I clench my fists. “It is not criminal to want her, but it is criminal for you to stand in the way by ending his life.”

I can see the heat simmering under his white collar. “You want me to tell the elders—”

“I do not, but would you really hurt Chimere that way? Your mentor? You are not so cold.”

He chews on his bottom lip. “If Bret so much as—”

“He will not. I assure you.”

He sighs, opens his mouth, but closes it a moment later. For the first time since I met him, he has been silenced.

I walk away then, without another word. Triumphant. Perhaps my student can be taught after all.

CHAPTER 21
Julia

H
art Avenue isn’t exactly the kind of place where you’d want to hang out after hours. Actually, I don’t think I’d want to hang out here before or during hours, either.

But then again, I’m not really sure what I’m thinking.

“Hon,” my mom says as we pass a bag lady meandering down the street with a shopping cart filled with trash bags for the fifteenth time. “What are we doing?”

“Uh,” I say, trying to remember the excuse I came up with during my Sweetie Pi’s shift. “This is a good street to practice parallel parking on.”

And really, it is. It’s one of the few streets in town with parallel parking and meters; plus there are so many cars and people and garbage cans and other obstacles everywhere that I imagine if I can park my mom’s RAV4 here, I’ll be able to park anywhere.

“Oh,” she says. I make a turn and head down the next street, preparing to go around the block and cruise down Hart again. Just as I’m beginning to think she bought the excuse, she says, “But why do I feel like we’re casing the joint?”

I wonder what mobster movie my lily-white mom got that saying from and shrug. “I’m looking for a parking space.”

“We passed a bunch.” We turn onto Hart again, and she points out the window. “What about that one?”

“Um, too narrow.”

We pass another. “And that one?”

“Those cars I’d be parking between are black! It’s too hard to see them in the dark.”

“Hon, are you nervous? Don’t be. Parallel parking is simple.”

I’m not, really—about that, anyway. My dad has put the cones on the street outside our house so often that I could probably park anywhere in my sleep. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be for my driver’s test in a couple of days. But I wanted to find out more about Mr. Geronimo DeMarchelle. Even though I’m positive I would remember a guy like him if I’d ever met him before, I still have the strangest sense of déjà vu around him, like we not only knew each other once before … but we knew each other
well
. And there were things that didn’t add up. How did he know where to find Bret and me that night at the party? How did he know that Griffin was my boyfriend? That’s why I performed a dozen games of twenty questions on him, trying to knock something loose from his past, some common bond. But there was nothing. Our lives are so different that he might as well have arrived in a time machine. So when he walked me to my mother’s car at the end of our shift, I couldn’t help wanting to know more.

The kicker came right before we parted, when he kissed
my hand. After that, he nodded respectfully to my mother, placed his hat on his head, and sauntered away, whistling. He put the hat on like it was something he’d done every day of his life. Griffin would have done something like that as a joke, as part of an act, and would have looked utterly ridiculous. But Eron seemed comfortable with it, and when he kissed my hand, his eyes bored into me so that immediately my wrist went limp. Then shivers traveled up my arm, down my body to my knees, so I had to grab on to the car door to stop from toppling over on the curb.

And now, even though all that happened nearly an hour ago, I can still feel the imprint of his lips on my hand. Griffin used to kiss me deeply on the mouth, like they do in the movies, and I never felt as much. Okay, I felt more than with Bret, yes. Maybe a quickening of the pulse, a little fire. Sometimes it wouldn’t even feel all that wonderful, like something was nibbling off little pieces of my flesh. Griffin was the first guy I’d ever kissed, so I assumed it would always be like that, with anyone. So now all I can think of is what it would be like to kiss a guy who could practically set my hand ablaze with a G-rated, gentlemanly gesture. I’m the Ice Princess. Things like that can’t happen to me.

I search the street again and there’s no sign of a guy in spats and a white dress shirt. This is ridiculous, anyway. What would I say to him if I saw him?
Hey, you forgot your apron
. It’s not like I can test out my kissing theories on him in the middle of the street, surrounded by a bunch of drug dealers and homeless people, while my mom waits in the car. This plan has failure written all over it. And he said he’d be working at Sweetie Pi’s tomorrow, so I am not sure why I have this burning feeling that if I don’t see him right now, I’ll go crazy.

There’s a guy walking down the street, and though he’s too short and his white bald head shines in the streetlight, I slam on the brakes beside him. A car horn blares behind me. My mom grabs the door handle for support. I catch a glimpse of myself in the side mirror. I look like a madwoman. Like I’m obsessed. And over what? What I really need right now is to go home and get some sleep.

Sighing, I slow in front of a parking space I saw the past three times we drove by. “I guess I’ll just do this one,” I say. I line my front bumper up with the parked minivan’s front bumper and throw the car into reverse. Then I check my rearview mirror, turn the wheel all the way to the right, and slowly back into the parking spot.

As I’m straightening the wheel, my mom beams at me. “Bravo!” she says, clapping. “I don’t think I could have done any better.”

She opens the car door to check and I can see the curb—six inches. It’s perfect. “Thanks,” I mutter, too embarrassed with myself to properly celebrate the victory. I check my rearview mirror again to make sure no traffic is coming before I pull out.

And there he is.

In a picture window across the street is Eron’s figure, framed in light. His back is to me but I can tell by the shock of black hair, now a little messed, and the well-defined curve of his back. He’s in one of the shabbier buildings on the street, standing on a second-floor landing, spreading out laundry. He’s … he’s …
not wearing any clothes!
Before all the air can be pushed out of my lungs, before I can have a coronary, I blink a few times and focus. No … at that moment, he hikes up a pair of gym shorts that have fallen dangerously below his thin waist. He brushes the
dark hair out of his eyes and turns his broad back toward the window, then sinks out of view. I sit there for a moment, quietly willing him to come back, and then I remember my mom.

Now she has both feet pressed down on the floor mat and is biting her lip as she watches a couple of lowlifes leering on a stoop near us. “Ready to go whenever you are,” she says, but I know she’s thinking, Now, please?

“Um. Oh. Okay.” I glance up at the window again as I shift the car into drive. It’s not like I can throw stones up at his window and say,
Yoo-hoo! I was just in the neighborhood!
anyway.

Eron turns back toward the street, and now there’s a worried look on his face. He picks a T-shirt up, shakes it out as if he’s about to put it on, and then …

Then …

He disappears
.

I’m vaguely aware my jaw has fallen into my lap. The white material of his shirt—the material that only two seconds ago was in his hands—floats peacefully in the air and settles somewhere out of view. Okay, no. That didn’t just happen. He must have fallen, or jumped away, or something. He couldn’t have … There’s no way …

“Let’s get a move on!” my mom urges in her most commanding voice, startling me.

I spring upright, forgetting I’ve already put the car into drive, and press on the accelerator.

And barrel straight into the minivan parked ahead of us.

CHAPTER 22
Eron

S
hortly after ten this morning, I become human again and rush to the apartment on Hart Avenue in my bare feet, hoping not too many people will see my shameful nakedness. When I climb the stairs and open the door to the living room, I groan. The room smells even more like rotting garbage than it did yesterday. Worse, Harmon, that drunken fool, has thrown all my clothes into a messy pile in the corner, and a partly bald yellow cat is lounging in it, licking its paws.

I shoo the cat away and shake out my trousers, balking at the dreadful stench. If I put these on, I will smell like a dying animal for the remainder of the day.

The doorbell rings, and I’m still attempting to determine if any of my clothing can be salvaged when I fling open the door.

I stop shaking out my shirt and stare.

It’s Julia.

“How … how did you know where I live?” I ask, my body still frozen.

“You told me,” she says.

We stand there for a moment, awkwardly, until I remember
simultaneously that I’m nearly naked and that I am not being a very good host. “Where are my manners? Please come in,” I say, throwing my cat-hair-covered button-down shirt on and motioning to my sleeping couch. There are a few dirty dishes and cereal bowls there. I quickly scoop them up, spilling sour milk on my shirt. Perfect.

Julia looks around unsurely, wrinkling her nose, then sits on the couch. Her long legs are bare. She has a large flesh-colored bandage over the wound she got yesterday, but it looks much darker, almost brown, against her pale skin. “You live here?” She seems shocked, but no more surprised than I was when I walked in.

I nod. “Would you like something to drink?” I ask. I am relieved when she shakes her head. From what I’ve seen, I don’t think Harmon would be too pleased parting with his beloved ale, and I know it’s not Julia’s drink of choice. I turn in time to see her gaze move abruptly away from my collarbone. There is still a rather jagged red scar there, where the machine at the textile mill wrenched my arm apart from it. She doesn’t seem any more disgusted by it than she does by her surroundings, but still, I feel myself blushing like a schoolgirl. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“You said you had the noon shift at Sweetie Pi’s. So do I. I was hoping you could give me a ride?” She smiles sheepishly, and it is so endearing I would say yes in a heartbeat, if only … “I would have called but I didn’t have your number.”

“Um …” I watch a large cockroach scuttle across the floor, near her delicate toes. She doesn’t notice. “I don’t … do that.”

“You don’t do what?”

“I don’t have a … vehicle,” I answer.

“You take the bus or something?”

“No, I walk.”

“Walk? It’s like five miles.”

She says it as if the moon is easier to reach, as if walking is not something that’s done anymore. “I … like the exercise.”

“Oh. I’ll walk with you.”

I survey the shambles that was my quality suit—the herringbone jacket, the fine suspenders—which the cat is now chewing on. I wonder how many customers I will scare away in that. How long it will be until Julia is also frightened away. If only I’d never told her where I lived! I pull the shirt tightly across my chest. “Of course,” I say hesitantly. “Let me just find some suitable attire.”

She shrugs and I head down the hallway, hoping that Harmon has something that will fit me other than the horrid rags he offered earlier, something that won’t be too disgraceful. I can hear him snoring before I push open the door. When I do, I rifle through his drawers quietly. They’re mostly empty, because much of their contents are lying in soiled piles on the ground. In the closet, I find a pair of denim jeans like I used to wear in the textile mill, a belt, and a white shirt that isn’t too wrinkled. I dress quickly in the hallway. The jeans are the wrong size, a little too short and a little too loose, but the belt helps. I tuck the shirt in, splash some water on my face, and sigh. For the first time in a hundred years, I need a shave, but I do not have a razor. And since I can’t find one in Harmon’s mess, and I’d rather not leave Julia to do battle with the cockroaches any longer than I have to, I step into my dress shoes and hurry to her. “I’m ready,” I say, rubbing my chin as if that will help erase the awful stubble from it.

If my presentation is inadequate, she doesn’t seem to notice. I think she was more questioning when I was wearing my fine suit. Perhaps she is in too much shock from the filthy apartment, too eager to escape it, because she stands and follows me out the door, clinging closely to my heels. We walk outside and down the front stairs, to the street. I say, “I’m sorry about the apartment. I haven’t had the time to—”

Immediately she says, “Oh, no, that’s okay. I hope you weren’t upset by me coming over. I just wanted to see if I could bum a ride because … my mom’s car had a little accident.”

“Oh? I hope nobody was hurt,” I murmur.

She shakes her head. We walk in silence a little more and then she says, “Actually, that wasn’t the reason I came over.”

“Oh?” I repeat, staring at the ground. Because I already know from her incessant questioning yesterday why she came to my home. She’s still suspicious. And who’s to blame her? I play the part of a modern youth sorely.

“Tell me how you know so much about me,” she says. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her looking straight ahead, face tense.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“You know so much more about me than any stranger would. That’s what you’re supposed to be, right? A stranger. But you’re not.”

I force a laugh. “Julia, I’m not sure what you’re suggesting, but—”