Sun Damage (The Sunshine Series) (39 page)

I can hear Myles crying above me.
“Yeah.” He laughs softly.

When my eyes finally do open, I know that the world will be out there, that there will be more questions, more confusion, and more, endless choices for the rest of my life. But I also know what lies ahead. How Jade will be happy again, how successful o
ur band will become, how Ava and Evan and Michael and Myles will be okay. I can see it all before me, playing out. Smiles and laughter. Music and sunny skies. I don’t know how we’ll all get there but that’s not important. What’s important is that it goes on.

Epilogue

Four Months Later

I climb the steps to our house with a fluttering in my chest that I don’t think I’ve ever come close to feeling before. It’s Halloween in New York. Orange lights and jack-o’-lanterns line the other buildings on the street and orange and
brown leaves, despite how few trees there are, cover the sidewalks.

I h
aven’t felt the cold in a while but I wear a light jacket anyway to keep up appearances.

After I came back from death for the second time, I became more of a “real” vampire. Now I can drink blood from a bag or donor, though I much prefer Myles. I can hear and see things more accu
rately. I don’t need to breathe and I’m not really sensitive to hot and cold anymore. My heart still beats, though, which at first almost bothered me, but I’ve come to like it. It’s something from my human life I can never lose.

Myles is in the basement, I can feel him. He’s been painting something new for a while. When I asked him what it was, he wouldn’t tell me. He doesn’t like showing me the painting too much e
ither because it isn’t finished but he knows I can pop into his head at any minute to see what it looks like. I only did it once and I made sure he wasn’t aware of it. All I saw at the time was a figure standing in the middle of the otherwise blank canvas. She had my face and light coming out of her chest.

He likes to paint in the basement when I’m not home. He says my energy sticks to the walls and he can feel it for days after I’m gone. An Anachronism just got back from a west coast tour that was a month long and we only got to see each other a few times, so I guess that comes in handy in those long gaps.
It was last minute and the spots were meant to be played by Honus but I heard that Manny left the band as soon as I came back to the club. The rest of them disbursed, joining other bands or fading away, back into normal everyday lives.

Myles w
anted to come with me this time but I told him not to. I wanted to tour without a safety net, and though I missed him every day, it felt good knowing I was okay on my own. For the first time in a very, very long time.

When I open the door, he’s lost in himself and his work, only seeing the colors in front of him on the huge c
anvas that could take up half the wall in our room.

I’m careful when I speak so I don’t startle him. “Hi,” I whisper.

Myles glances up and smiles, dropping his paint brush and palette onto his work table before I can say anything else.

He’s in front of me, grabbing my waist and kissing me hard on the mouth like he can consume me. I drop my suitcase and it makes a loud thud.

When he finally pulls away from me, he says, “I missed you. Happy birthday.”

“I missed you too,” I say, “Thanks.” I pick up my suitcase again and move it a few feet away.

I sit down on my piano bench in front of my piano, the same one that I’ve had since I started.

“How was tour?” he asks like I didn’t call or text him every day we were apart to tell him how amazing it was.

I smile. “Pretty awesome,” I say. “The fans seem to like the new addition.”

“So Jade liked his first tour as a musician, I guess.”

“Yeah.” I smile at the not so distant memory of my brother playing with us, put back together and alive.

Myles grabs my hand and squeezes.

“I um...” I start, suddenly nervous about what I’m about to say. “I kind of have a present for you. But you probably won’t want it.”

His eyebrows knit together
and I can feel him trying to push against my walls so he can see what I mean, but I strengthen them. If he could see what I’m thinking, he definitely wouldn’t let me continue. “But it’s
your
birthday,” he says. “You get presents, not me.”

I shrug, staring down at a fleck of dried yellow paint on his thumb. “I wanted to give it to you anyway.” I clear my throat. “I really hope you take it. I went through a lot to get it.”

Confusion crosses his expression and lingers there a moment before he kisses me on the forehead. “Whatever it is,” he says. “I’m sure I’ll love it if you’re the one who got it for me.”

I hesitate for a few more silent seconds before standing up and lugging my suitcase back to him
. “It’s in here,” I say. “It’s wrapped, but you’ll probably know what it is as soon as you see it.”

Myles comes over to the suitcase, kneeling down next to it.

When he unzips it, he finds the neatly wrapped present in bright green paper on top of all of my unfolded, packed up clothes. I did it that way so it would be harder for him to tell what it is. Dirty clothes mask the scent.

Myles p
icks up the medium sized object and it crinkles in his hands. My heart thuds loudly in my ears. Despite all of the horrible and scary things we’ve been through, I don’t think I’ve ever been so afraid in my life.

“You’re really nervous about giving me this,” Myles notices, but he makes a joke out of it.

I laugh awkwardly because I can’t speak.

He doesn’t say anything as he realizes what it is he’s been holding.

“Sophie,” he says, his voice uneasy.

“Just open it,” I cut off whatever he was going to say next. I wrap my arms around myself and try to remain calm. “Please.”
My heart pounds.

Myles runs a hand through his hair, pausing longer than necessary.

He looks up at me again. His mouth opens like he’s about to say something else. Something that will prolong the entire thing. Something that will stop it.

“Shut up,” I try to joke, and it thankfully comes out light enough. “Just open it.”

Finally, the paper comes away, and the ripping sounds fill the silence of the room. I press my back into the piano, asking it for support.

The plastic makes it hard for him to tell who it belonged to before it was in the bag, but before he can ask, I take it upon myself to explain.

“Evan,” I say to him. “I stopped by the club before I came home and he gave it to me.”

“What’s this for?” he asks.

“You.”

He studies it for a second longer. “I figured,” he says, looking up at me. “
Why
is it for me?”

I
gulp, deciding the best way to get him on my side of things is to get it all out as fast as possible. “He said that he was probably one of the oldest vampires I’d be able to find.” I take a breath and quickly continue. “He said that it should be enough.”

“‘He’?”
Myles asks. “‘He’ who?”

“Evan,” I whisper. “And...Michael.”

His expression doesn’t change, but something in the air shifts, becomes heavier with his realization of what I’m trying to explain.

“I thought Michael left,” he says, unable to look at me now.

“He did,” I say. “But he came back.”

I watch as Myles swallows. “Show me what happened.

I hesitate for a second before I close the small space between us. I place my hand on the side of his face and it takes a long time for his eyes to reach mine. “I don’t know how,” I admit.

His smile isn’t exactly happy, but the little carved out moon shape appears just long enough to put me at ease. He kneels down on the floor and I follow him so we’re both sitting on the cool cement. “Just remember,” he says. “Remember what happened and give the memory to me.”

“It sounds so simple when you put it like that,” I joke, but then I concentrate.

I funnel every thought and everything I had to do in order to get to this point, with Myles holding a bag of Michael's blood and both of us discussing what I intend to do with it.

Evan called me a few weeks after I came back from death for the second time. I was at Jade’s house with Boo and Trei, recording some songs in the studio Jade and Stevie had built for me.

“I thought we agreed to turn our phones off,” Boo complained from his drums as I removed my headphones,
but he wasn’t really mad; he took out his own phone to text.

My phone stopped rin
ging and when I checked the number, I didn’t recognize it.

Trei slapped him on the arm.
“Hypocrite.”

Boo stuck out his tongue at her as she stood from her stool to stretch.

Jade came in next, his guitar slung over his back. “Sorry it took so long,” he said. “I had to get it out of the attic.”

They all began talking so I checked my voicemail, pressing the phone to my ear.

“Sophie,” Evan’s accented voice came through the other end.

I honestly can’t remember all of the details of our conversation because my heart was beating
so fast and my mind was racing but he told me that Michael was at his house. That I should come right away and to not tell Myles. Most importantly, he told me there was a way to cure him. All of them.

I went through the rest of recording not remembering most of it. As soon as we were done, I got in my car and drove all the way to New York, to Evan’s house. I didn’t bother calling back.

I remember sitting in the car, staring up at the door. I didn’t want to think about what I was doing there or who was inside. All I thought about was when I was brought back. How I knew Myles, Evan, and Ava would be okay--that I would be the one to help them--but I didn’t know how.

Now here was the answer
and I didn’t want to believe it.

I pause, my hand slipping from Myles’ face. I hadn’t realized I closed my eyes until I actually open them and his are closed too. He blinks slowly, never fully focusing his gaze on me. He lifts my hand from the floor and places it on the side of his head once more. The bag of blood is in his other hand. “Please,” he says. “Show me the rest.”

Myles closes his eyes again
and I concentrate even harder, trying to make the memories real for him.

I went inside eventually, because the memory picks up there, inside a part of Evan’s house I hadn’t been before, which was kind of like his office at the club, only bare. There were plain white walls, a few books on an otherwise empty shelf, and an ancient looking laptop on a clean brown desk. Michael was sitting in a chair pushed up against a wall, and when Evan motioned me inside, he stood up, looking almost nervous.

“It is alright,” Evan said from behind me, shutting the door.

Between the tense expression on Michael’s face and my heart hammering in my chest, I didn’t know who he was talking to.

“Please sit down,” Evan told us both.

Michael sat back down
and I took a chair at the desk, which was a comfortable distance away from him. Evan sat behind the desk, folding his hands on top.

“So what is it?” I finally asked.

Michael looked from me to Evan. Evan was the one who spoke. “Michael’s blood is no longer poisonous,” he said. “He brought you back with it.”

I nod. “I remember.” I absently rubbed my neck, the mark long gone.

I didn’t know how I should have felt with this man who made my life a living hell sitting in the same room as me, wanting to help me, as well as all of the other people he had hurt.

“And your blood will cure what is left of the poison,” Evan said after a long pause.
“If one of us were to take all of it.”

“Kill me,” I corrected. I wasn’t scared for some odd reason. I was just talking, spouting out facts.

Evan cleared his throat. “Yes.”

I looked to Mi
chael then, the pieces clicking together. “And Michael’s blood would bring me back,” I said.

Michael nodded.

I shifted my gaze to Evan again. “So you brought me here for Ava, right?”

He stared at his hands before looking at me. “I don’t expect you to help us,” he said.
“At least, not before Myles. I want you to help him first too.”

“How do you know it will work?” I asked.

Evan opened his mouth but Michael spoke for him. “I want to help all of you.” His voice was stretched thin, like he had been holding onto that sentence for a long time. “When my blood was black it killed, and now it is not.” He blinked a few times. “Because of you and your light. It will bring you back.”

Now I stared down at my hands. I still didn’t believe that it had all happened. That something so pure could come out of something that I had once used to hurt myself
and cause scars. But then again, I also used the same hands to heal. I used them to create songs that pushed the bad things out of me when I couldn’t do it on my own.