Sun Poisoned (The Sunshine Series) (30 page)

I stare at the white tiles on the ceiling; I don't look down as this all happens. I'm too afraid of what seeing my blood against his skin might do to me.

Evan is completely silent as he sits upright, stands, and sits back in the office chair he wheeled over in the beginning. He doesn't utter a word when he unfolds my fist, which I had completely forgotten was still clutched around the handkerchief he handed to me earlier.

He takes the cloth from my hand, folds it, and presses it to the spot on my waist.

It is so painfully quiet. I hear nothing but my breathing, my pulse slowing. My vision blurs and then becomes vivid. There is no euphoria this time.

Then Evan's voice breaks through all of the silence.
“Do not let him see this part of your body until it is completely gone.”

A thought suddenly dawns on me.
“Won’t it leave a mark?” comes out in a whisper, so I try to steady my voice more when I continue. “I mean . . . a mark that he'll be able to see?”

Evan sighs quietly, not taking his eyes from the handkerchief under his cold palm.
“A vampire can only mark you if it was his
intent
to mark you.”

I blink until the room stops spinning. Evan’s free hand gently grazes my collarbone.
“Like Myles has done to you.”

My left hand flies up, pushing him away. There's nothing there anymore, but somehow Evan knew exactly where Myles had bitten me. He knew exactly where to place his hand.

Evan cocks his head slightly to the side like he’s thinking about something, but he tries to mask it by making it look like he's inspecting the wound on my stomach.

“
He did not ask you beforehand?” Evan asks.

I don't respond or move my head. I don't even twitch a muscle in my face that could be construed as some kind of a silent answer.

Evan stands and walks behind his desk and opens one of the drawers. After I hear the soft thump of wood against wood, indicating that the drawer is shut, Evan returns with a square of paper. He rips it open and I realize it's some kind of bandage. I wonder vaguely if he keeps them in stock just in case someone gets hurt or if he gets hungry. Or maybe, just maybe, he had planned all of this before I even came back to New York. Maybe he thought—knew—I would give in to whatever he asked as long as he brought Myles and the pain he was feeling into this.

I honestly don't know which is worse.

They're both horrible. I feel horrible.

Except
. . .

I roll my shirt back down and slowly sit up, my head spinning, nausea hovering over me. I take a second to evaluate that question and find that besides the ache for Myles, I feel okay.

Not one hundred percent better, but okay.

“I did not take it all purposely,” Evan says, folding the handkerchief in his hands carefully so he doesn’t get blood on him.

I look at his face for the first time since the whole thing happened and there’s nothing there, not even a speck of evidence
of what went on in this room.

“
Myles tells me that he cannot feel your pain anymore, but someone else could have noticed,” he explains.

Though the guilt is overwhelming, I don’t feel like I’ll ever have to cry again. And I don’t feel guilty about
that
, the way I had when Myles tried to take the pain away. I don’t want Evan to give me back everything I was holding on to before. As a matter of fact, I want to be like this, the way I am now, forever. Minus the slight splinter of guilt for doing this behind Myles’ back and being a horrible person.

“
It will not last forever, of course,” Evan says, interrupting my thoughts. “It will eventually wear off slowly.”

I give Evan a wary look.

“Grief tends to be intense and then recede, only to come back stronger at times,” he goes on to explain, like I haven’t ever experienced it myself. “So it should go undetected by Myles.”

“
He can’t ever know?” I wasn’t aware I wanted to know the answer to it until the question has left my mouth.

Evan stands again, taking his desk chair back behind the desk and sitting in it.
“It would not be wise,” he says. “But perhaps a while from now, when these events are more distant, you may tell him.”

“
Okay,” I say, more to steady myself than anything else. “Is this like…cheating?”

He blinks.
“Cheating?”

“
Yeah,” I say, and part of my voice gets stuck in my throat. “Letting another vampire bite you when you’ve been ‘marked’ or whatever.” Now I’m unable to stop talking. “Is that equivalent to cheating in the human world?”

I stare at my hands, folding and unfolding them as the new mark on my body begins to throb half-heartedly, reminding me of what I’ve done.

Evan stands yet again. From the way he keeps standing and sitting, I’d say he was more than a little uneasy himself about what just happened, but I could be wrong. He sits again on the lounge chair, close to me, but a good enough distance away so our bodies aren’t touching. “No,” he says. “I would not say it is the same at all.”

“
Then why do I feel like this?” I blurt out.

He shrugs.
“Because you are under a lot of stress right now,” he starts. “Because you tell Myles everything, and keeping something like this from him is hard for you.”

That sounds about right. But I’m not sure if those are the only reasons.

“Do not think about it so much.” He stands again, and this time, I think it’s the last time, because he goes to the door, his hand on the knob. “That feeling will pass as soon as the mark is gone. I promise.” Now he cracks the closest thing to a smile I’ve ever seen on him.

I stand, wobbly at first, but then I regain my balance. When I’m able to take a few steps without falling flat on my face,
 I decide I’m as fine as I’m going to be in order to leave.

Evan opens the door for me, nodding his head once when I slip into the hall.
“Uhm,” I struggle, feeling a tiny, short lived wave of dizziness come over me and then disappear.

“
Thanks.”

“
You are welcome, Sophie,” he says, shutting the door to his office behind me, closing me off from him and the room, but not what we just did.

***

When I get back to the stage, Myles, Jade, and Laura are sitting in the balcony section, waving at me as I go on and sound check myself. I purposely don’t look at Myles while I’m telling the sound guy to adjust my earplugs and piano so it sounds just right.

Then Boo and Trei are dragging me
backstage. We change into the clothes we had decided on weeks ago, which have been hanging back here, waiting for tonight.

I’m aware of everything but it’s like I’m watching it in a movie. I feel what I’m supposed to when I think about Stevie or Jade, or what just happened between Evan and I, but it’s only because I’m a believable character, going through my lines, hitting my marks.

Boo, Trei, and I sit in the chairs in front of the mirror, and I’m conscious of Trei fixing her smudged makeup from earlier when she was crying and Boo combing his hair.

The front of my dress falls to the top of my knees and the back flows down to the floor. My hair hangs in straight pink rivers around my shoulders. The light pink sits against the red strands that have already faded into a rust color. I take the newer streaks and swipe them together with the original magenta, pinning it to one side.

The neckline shows the pink scar that runs vertically down the middle of my chest, meeting the smaller on in the hollow of my throat, the way it’s been for over six months.

Boo’s on my right, wearing his black and white striped pants, to my left, Trei’s in her tutu. I open my cosmetic bag and set the two tins Manny let me keep between the three of us. It’s just understood what we’re meant to do with it.

My drummer shoves his index finger into the white, his ring finger in the black. Boo paints a line down his chin in white, and two black horizontal lines on his cheeks.

Trei dots three white circles on both of her cheekbones.

We watch each other do this slowly, like we’re learning something.

When it’s my turn, I paint a thick line from the base of my left ear, across my cheek, the bridge of my nose, and to the other ear. The paint is cool and thick on my skin, and I add more, this time in a thin white line beneath the black.

“What do you think?” I ask Boo, turning to him. I keep my expression even enough when the movement causes my new wound to sting.

“
It needs something.” He digs his finger into the tin again and traces a thin white line from the bottom of my lower lip down, stopping at the edge of my chin.

“
Now is it good?” I ask.

“
Hold on,” Trei says, sticking her pinky in the black paint. She dots three small circles in a triangular shape on both of my temples. “There.” She smiles.

Then all three of us are smiling back at ourselves in the lighted mirror. We’re not exactly happy, but somehow we’re less sad, ready to do what we can to feel better.

***

We start off the show with Idioteque, which I know inside and out at this point. My head is swimming from the blood loss and the crowd cheering, the lights in my face are almost too bright, and I’m also trying to not let my eyes linger on Myles too long.

Thankfully, I have something more important than all of those things right now to distract me. I’m not sure what it is: the feeling that we’re doing something that Stevie would want us to, that we’re nailing each song, or what, but I go through each song without any snags, without crying, without stopping it altogether and just crawling under a rock because I’m a horrible person.

Before I’m aware of how much time has passed or how many songs we’ve played, we’re at the last one, and Boo and Trei are urging me to call Jade on stage.

This was one of Stevie’s favorite songs. My brother should be here.

“
So,” I start, squinting into the audience, shielding my eyes from the spotlight that’s blaring pink in my eyes. “I’d like to invite someone special on stage for the next song.”

I can’t see well, so I stand up and walk to the edge of the stage so I can look up at the balcony. I find Jade in the sea of people looking around for this special person. He stares back at me, his eyes sparkling, his mouth in an almost smile. I’m sure he’s going to shake his head no when I motion for him to come up.

“Come on!” I yell in his direction.

Myles is standing next to him, saying something encouraging into his ear. Then Jade is descending the stairs, walking through the crowd
, and I grab his hand to hoist him onto the stage. This makes the bandage at my waist crinkle and the wound scream, but I ignore it once my brother is standing next to me. People are clapping and I’m not even sure why. Most of them don’t even know who this is.

I sit back at my piano. Boo hands Jade the guitar he was just using and both he and Trei jump
off stage to watch what we’re about to do.

Jade moves to my right as he adjusts the guitar strap over his shoulder.
“What song are we playing, Sunshine?” he asks.

“
No Surprises,” I tell him with a small smile.

He imitates it back, nodding.
“I’m ready when you are.”

The commotion dies down a little when I tap the microphone to get the crowd’s attention. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say. There is so much I could tell these complete strangers, but I decide that they get this piece of me and that’s all they need. They don’t need to know the whole story.

“We’d like to dedicate this song to Stevie,” is all I tell them, and I nod at Jade, who starts in with the first few chords. I join in a few seconds later with the piano and start singing.

Jade backs up my voice with his slightly higher one, making both of ours entangle and then separate, over and over.

I barely recognize how strong and full of ache and everything I’ve been feeling for the past few days my voice is when I start again.

This is my final fit.

My final bellyache.

I can calm myself long enough for Jade to come back with the chorus.

No alarms and no surprises.

But my voice is just above a whisper when I sing the last,
“
Please.
”

It’s over after that. The crowd is silent for too long when we’re finished, but I don’t care. I can’t concentrate on anything besides how badly I want to hug my brother right now.

Jade’s already walking toward the piano and pushing the guitar behind him as I stand. We meet somewhere in the middle of the stage where we collide.

It’s then that the audience starts to clap and cheer. Not that it matters. All that matters is me and him right now. We both smell sweaty and I know I’m getting face paint all over his neck as the curtain closes in front of us. It’s a long time before we separate.