The Academy - Introductions (18 page)

Luke
: “
Promise not
to tell?”

Would I tell? Promise? Would he trust me? He hadn’t even
met me yet.

Sang
:
“I promise.”

Luke
:
“Pinkie
swear?”

Sang
:
“How
can I pinkie swear if I’m not there to shake your pinkie?”

It was two minutes before I got another message. This time
it was a picture message. There was a male hand in the shot, the pinkie lifted
up, partially curled.

I thought it was funny. It took me a minute to figure out
how the camera worked and to take a photo but I returned one of my pinkie in
the same position.

Luke
: “
Your hands
are small.”

Sang
: “
How can you
tell?”

Luke
: “
There’s a
book in the shot. It’s that Grimm’s Fairy Tales?”

I hadn’t even looked at what I put nearby. It was a Grimm
book.

Sang
:
“
Yes.”

Luke
: “
Which one’s
your favorite?”

My mind had gone blank. I flipped through the pages to look
for a title that I recognized.

Sang
: “
I like The
Princess in Disguise. So what’s your big news?”

Luke
: “
We’re buying
the church on your block.”

Sang
: “
What? Why?”

Before I got a text back, I heard a rattling at my door. I
dropped the phone behind the trunk against the wall and picked up the book. I
heard it clunk and I stressed, worried I might have broken it. What would
Victor think if I broke the brand new phone he bought for me?

The door swung wide open. My older sister Marie poked her head
in. Her dark eyes narrowed in on me.

“Mom wants you to come down for din-nur,” she cooed.

“Ugh,” I said. “What is it?”

“Beef stew.”

We’d had canned beef stew three times that week. Most of
the time my mother didn't care if we showed up but when she was in a
particularly annoyed mood, she tried giving us orders on when to eat, when to
sleep and so on. “I don’t really want any,” my voice cracking as I spoke.

“She’ll just yell for you in a minute, anyway.”

I grumbled. She was right. “Hang on, let me close this
window.” It was still open, and I was grateful. It gave me an excuse to stay
there for a few minutes. Marie disappeared, not bothering to shut the door. I
heard her thud down the stairs.

I did close the window but I checked the phone quickly before
tucking it away in the attic.

Luke
: “
We’re
opening a diner.”

That night, I was still awake at midnight when I got the
last text from Victor.

Victor
: “
I’ll let
you go to sleep.”

I was grateful for it. My thumbs tingled. Luke had told me
about his uncle who wanted to open up a restaurant, so they were going to do a
diner and use the church building. He sounded excited about it but soon had to
go to eat dinner, too. Gabriel wanted to talk about what I was going to wear to
registration and was telling me about the school building being a drab box with
windows. Victor asked when my birthday was.

Sang
: “
October.”

Victor
: “
Mine’s in
January.”

The next morning, I was out the door the moment my dad took
off to go to work. I couldn’t sleep at all that night, but I was grateful since
there weren’t any nightmares. I stole down to the garage, taking the plug for
the phone. I charged it from the inside of the shed where I was shielded from
view. It took only fifteen minutes. When it was filled, I hid the plug and
pocketed the phone, heading for the woods again.

I should have been tired since I hadn’t slept but the air
was so fresh and I felt really good. I was only wearing some sandals this time,
with a short green cotton skirt and a thin yellow hoodie with three quarter
sleeves and a front pocket. I had my hair brushed out, pulling up my hair in a
neater twist with my clip but left two locks on either side of my face tucked
behind my ears. I thought it framed my face better. I giggled at myself that morning
in the bathroom for being concerned with my looks now. I always thought other
girls at school were silly to spend so much time fixing their hair and makeup
for school classes. A week ago, I wouldn’t have cared how I looked.

I tested my voice as I walked. Since I was able to rest it,
I could speak softly but it started to crack if I talked at a normal level. I
was hopeful by the time Silas came around it would be even better. I didn’t
want him wondering what happened.

I had the phone tucked into my pocket as I walked. I
fiddled with it in my hands as I took the shortcut through the woods. When Luke
talked about his plans to turn the church into a diner, I wanted to check it
out before it all changed.

If it wasn’t for the large cross over the door, the building
might have looked like any old of utility building. The windows were maybe a
couple of feet long and narrow along the side. The large white double front
doors were plain, clean cut. The metal siding was a bland beige. Still, the
building looked clean. There was a large blue kid jungle gym and a swing set
nearby. The grass around it was a little high. I climbed onto the landing of
the gym set, sitting on it and swinging my feet off of the edge as I tried to
picture the place as a diner. The parking lot was gravel but still very usable.
The small attempt at a border garden around the front had a few stick trees and
dead bushes. It would take a lot of work to make it look attractive.

I felt the phone in my pocket vibrating and it tickled. Who
was up this early?

Luke
: “
What’s your
favorite breakfast?”

I smiled to myself, thinking about the answer. It was silly
but it wasn’t embarrassing. Would he think I was childish?

Sang
:
“
Chocolate
chip pancakes.”

“With syrup?” a voice asked behind me.

Startled, I twisted myself, nearing falling off the ledge
and I reached out to the pole support to hold myself up. On the ground behind
me was a guy with blond hair so long it almost touched his shoulders. Most of
it was pulled back into a loose ponytail behind his head. Several locks hung
around his ears and in his face. He was wearing dark blue Levi jeans, black
flip flops and a white button up shirt with the collar looking rumpled. The top
three buttons were undone so I could see halfway down his chest in the opening.
The bottom button was undone as well. I wondered why he bothered with the shirt
at all. His skin was only a smidgen darker than my own pale skin. His eyes were
brown, striking against his light hair and features. He had high cheekbones and
he had a strong chin. With all the guys I had met so far, if I had to pick out
which one would be the most popular with girls, he would have beaten them all
by miles. I could easily imagine him being a model.

I knew my mouth was hanging open and I quickly closed it,
trying to process his question. Did I hear him right? I swallowed to make sure
my voice would work. “Luke?”

He put his hand to his waist and made the smallest of bows,
a wide smile on his face. “In the flesh.” He stood up and reached for a rung on
the monkey bars, picking up his feet to hang from it. I could see his belly
button when he did it and the defined muscles of his abdomen. He wasn’t as cut
as Nathan but he was clearly strong. “What do you think? Can you see it as a
diner?” he asked.

I looked toward the church, tilting my head. “I think it
depends on what the inside looks like.”

“Not judging the book by the cover, huh?” he smiled and
then crossed the monkey bars, swinging his body as he did, until he could put
his feet on the platform I was sitting on. “We have to get rid of the gym set
though,” he said. “Insurance would kill us if we kept it.”

“That’s a shame,” I said. “Would have been a good way to
bring in parents with kids.”

“I know,” he said. “It’s going on fall now but I thought
about setting up a patio up front. Improving the size of the garden a little
maybe?”

The yard of the church was at least an acre. It sat right
on the corner where the highway met the neighborhood road. The neighborhood
homes were tucked behind a row of evergreen trees so there was some separation
and the neighbors probably wouldn’t notice or hear the traffic to the diner.
The would-be diner had easy access to a fairly busy road and no competition
within miles. “What made you guys want to start a diner?”

“It’s what my uncle wants to do,” he said. He leaned back
against a pole, looking at me with those dark eyes. They were playful, like he
wanted to laugh, and he was just waiting for the joke. “He was working with a
partner and the partner is kicking him out. So he’s starting his own place.”

“That’s too bad,” I said. He looked confused. “I mean it’s
too bad that his partner wanted to split up. Were they friends?”

“I think when they started,” he said. He moved away from
the post and leaned toward me. “So you want to see it?”

I tilted my head at him, an eyebrow going up.

“The inside?”

I smiled. Exploring? Of course. “Yes.”

He jumped down from the platform. The scent of something
sweet came from him as he passed me. He moved around in front of me and held up
his arms until his hands were on the outside of my thighs. From the angle I was
sitting, I could see the muscle tone in his arm flexing. His eyes focused
directly into mine.

“Let’s go.”

It was as if it were as natural as breathing, which
surprised me later when I thought about it. I reached out and he moved his
shoulders so I could balance myself and I hopped down. He had me by the hips
and lowered me gently to the ground. He held on to me when I started to step
back as if he was worried I had stumbled.

The moment I was stable, he let go of me and turned to walk
toward the church, pulling keys in his pocket. It was like he never thought of
the moment between us that felt so intimate to me. My family never hugged each
other. I barely remembered the last time I even touched hands with one of them.
He helped me down from the gym as if it were just the thing to do. Was it
normal? So many of the boys had touched me this week that I was feeling a crazy
sense of loneliness when they let go.

I followed on his heels toward the front door. My eyes
going up to the cross. It felt like it should almost be sacred but would it
feel differently once it was converted?

Luke fit the key into the door lock and then held it open
for me. I stepped inside, smelling the heavy dust and stale air. The hallway in
front of us was in shadow.

He closed the door and moved forward. At a certain point in
the hallway, it started getting super dark. I was trying to reach out with one
hand for a wall to help guide me but something touched my hand and I jumped.

“Here,” Luke said and he reached for my hand again. “Stay
behind me. I’m sorry, I don’t know where the light switch is. It didn’t seem
that dark down here when we started.”

I sucked in a breath and held his hand, following behind him.
His hand was warm, his fingers interlocking with mine. My heart fluttered. He
was just helping, I told myself. Normal people do this when necessary. I needed
to get used to it.

Near the end of the hallway, a window provided a little
more light. There was a wide, double door to our right. He let go of my hand to
open it.

The inside was pitch black.

“Hold the door open,” Luke said. “I’ll find the switch.”

I stood by the door and Luke disappeared into the darkness.
Minutes passed. I was worried he might fall or something might happen to him.
How could I find him in the dark?

Electricity crackled above my head and the lights flickered
on. There were two sets of chandeliers, a couple of the bulbs were missing but
it mostly worked. The room was the chapel. The pews were gone and there were a
couple of faded green hymnals stacked along the walls. There was a platform on
the far end, a podium in front with a cross on it. The carpet was a dull brown,
the walls a yellowed off-white.

Luke was standing on the platform near the back wall. He
walked toward the front of it, looking around the room and his hands slid into
his pockets. “Well? What do you think?”

I swept my eyes across the room, trying to imagine what it
would look like as a diner. “There’s a lot of space for tables,” I offered.
Still, it was a vast, empty space. You could have used it for anything.