Unchanged (20 page)

"You were
rude
to Merko," Joy accused. "He said you must be having some kind of breakdown."

"Look, Joy, it's not a good idea for you to hang around that guy."

"Oh, so you know him?" Joy's tone was heavily sarcastic.

"Enough to know that he's very, very bad." I didn't see how she could fail to heed the seriousness in my voice.

"Please," she said sneeringly. "You're just jealous that I've found a guy I like. You probably want him for yourself. It's not enough to have every other guy fawning all over you, you have to have mine, too!"

"Um, you're a little out of line . . . ," Brandt said uncomfortably.

Joy's accusation was so far from the truth I didn't even know how to respond. I put my head down, the heels of my hands pressing against my closed eyelids. I was sick of her attitude towards me, especially since I had no idea what had caused it. I'd put up with so much crap from her and had even tried being her friend. I was done.

"What is your problem with me?" I demanded, staring right into Joy's eyes as I lifted my head. I felt bold and powerful suddenly. I hadn't realized how much I'd resented her.

"What?"

"Come on. Ever since we met you've had nothing nice to say to me, and lately you've been even worse. You act like I'm an idiot and you make me feel shitty all the time. It's not like I don't have enough self-esteem issues without you making them worse."

A fierce blush colored her creamy cheeks but she refrained from responding as the server brought our drinks. As soon as she'd walked away, Joy sighed with exasperation. "It's not anything you've done, all right?" She concentrated on stirring her black coffee, not looking at me. "Sometimes you seem sort of . . . stuck-up. Like you can't be bothered to socialize with anyone else."

I narrowed my eyes at her and Chris started nodding sympathetically. "It's true, Lilly. Some people at school won't talk to you just because they think you won't talk to them. It's because you're quiet, I think, so you're not very approachable. But it's not your fault," she added quickly. "It's just the way you are."

"Oh." I could feel my face warming and I fidgeted with my silverware. "I sort of knew that."

"Please, don't take it the wrong way," Chris said earnestly. "Obviously you wouldn't want to be friends with someone not interested in getting to know you, right?"

I shook my head. "Anyway, Joy," I said quietly, "I was just trying to look out for you. Merko really is a creep."

"Well. Thanks," she replied stiffly.

When our food arrived, Austin finally succeeded in catching my eye. His expression said he was sorry and he silently indicated we needed to talk about what had happened. I wasn't sure I was ready for that. I had never particularly liked him in all the time I'd known him, not because of anything he'd done but because of a nasty little feeling I got whenever I found myself in his presence. I'd tried to ignore it lately, but now I wondered if it had anything to do with my past lives. I couldn't help but connect Austin with Cayden and Kennard, neither of whom I had liked in the past. I wondered if his feelings for me in this life were merely residual. Did he have a choice in how he felt about me? I knew neither boy had actually loved me in the past, nor did Austin love me now, but they had been there, drawn to me by circumstances. Was Austin merely acting out his part? Would his feelings eventually falter?

I had to conclude Austin
did
have a choice, both in his actions and feelings, the same way I did concerning Ahaziel. Maybe he felt drawn to me, but the strength of his attraction was something else altogether. I doubted he wanted a relationship with me, but eventually he would realize there could be nothing between us other than friendship, at best. And maybe, I considered, that was what he wanted to talk to me about after all. I shot him a quick nod across the table. We'd speak after lunch.

While Austin took care of the check, the others waited outside. I lingered, pretending to tie my shoe. When Austin came back to the table to leave the tip, I waited for him to say whatever he needed to. To apologize, hopefully.

"Listen, about last night . . ." He scuffed his foot on the floor. "I didn't mean for that to happen. I thought you liked me."

"Why did you think that?" I asked, arms crossed. "Because most every other girl in school likes you, I must too?"

"Ah . . . sort of. I guess. But you're different from those girls, you know. I didn't plan on liking you. I hardly ever noticed you until lately, but then one day you were just there, and I wanted to . . . I don't know. Be near you, I guess."

I felt troubled. Maybe Austin
didn't
have a choice. It unnerved me to think a reincarnation cycle stripped people of free will. Maybe my life was playing out almost exactly as it had one hundred and two hundred years earlier. The only way to free him and myself was for me to die. To be killed by Merko.

But it was obvious I had to stop him before that happened. Maybe the cycle could be broken if I killed him instead.

"Austin," I said as plainly as possible, "I'm not interested. And it would be best if you just forget about me and move on to someone else."

He frowned, looking as if he wanted to say something, but then he just nodded and we met up with the others outside. I was pleased I seemed to have solved that problem, at least.

"Brandt," I said on the drive home. "I know you said you don't believe in past lives—"

"I said I don't
know
if I do," he corrected.

"Well, whatever. But just say past lives do exist. And what if someone's life kept repeating in a sort of cycle, with certain people showing up in sort of the same roles. Do you think those people would have a choice in how they felt or what they did?"

His eyebrows came together as he considered my question. "You mean, regarding the events that keep repeating themselves?"

"Yeah."

"I personally believe in free will. I don't believe there's some force out there controlling or predetermining our actions."

He didn't ask why I'd wanted to know, which was one of the good things about my brother. Most of the time he acted kind of shallow, probably trying to impress people, but he was there when I needed him, always ready to listen or stick up for me. A good brother, really.

At home, we discovered our mom had gotten a job. She'd gone grocery shopping so she could fix a celebratory dinner. I was happy for her, for us as a family, but my enthusiasm was only skin-deep. I hung out in my room as she prepared dinner, doodling on my sketchpad. The evening grew deeper. I kept glancing out the window, not sure what I expected—Ahaziel tapping on the glass, whispering for me to let him in, maybe—but all I saw was a reflection.

Later, after dinner, I couldn't seem to shake a restless feeling. I paced my room, straightening things, hanging up clothes. I lay on my bed for a while, eyes seeking shapes in the ceiling, but still I couldn't calm down. Eventually the house grew quiet as my mom and Brandt went to sleep. The hum of the refrigerator and soft drone of the heater were the only sounds.

I crept out into the living room without turning on any lights. I tried to be silent, as if I were sneaking through a stranger's home in the middle of the night. I crossed the room to the window, lifting the curtains to peer out into the darkness. My street looked the same as ever—ordinary houses, ordinary shadows, comforting if feeble glow from the streetlights. This was how a street was supposed to look at night. No people, no cars, because everyone was home in bed, dreaming ordinary dreams.

Tiptoeing to the front door, I unlocked it slowly and quietly. The faint crack of it releasing from the painted frame seemed astonishingly loud. I waited a moment for my mom or Brandt to come investigate, but the house remained silent. Holding my breath, I stepped over the threshold and pulled the door gently shut. I hugged myself and danced a little to hold off the chill, wishing I'd had the forethought to grab a sweater. But I hadn't and I wasn't going back inside. Not yet.

However much I wanted to see him, I wasn't brave enough to go searching for Ahaziel, not with Merko wanting to kill me. Going outside at all, especially in the dead of night, was probably suicide. But I hoped Ahaziel would come to me. I hoped he'd realize I needed him. My eyes searched across the street, hoping to see his form rippling the shadows as he walked towards me.

By the time my toes had grown numb inside my socks, there was still no sign of him. Defeated, I started to open the door when I noticed a dark shape fluttering down from the sky. I watched it swish back and forth and land at my feet. It was an evergreen leaf, I saw when I picked it up, with spiky needles. It felt dry and brittle. I handled it gingerly, twirling it by the stem until I'd determined it had come from a yew tree. I was no expert on trees, so I wasn't sure how I knew this so certainly.

Still holding the leaf, I headed inside and locked the door behind me. I went to the TV and sat down in front of it, setting the leaf on the carpet beside me. I switched the set on for light and muted the infomercial. Along with a few movies, my mom kept an encyclopedia and dictionary, the only books we owned, on the cart beneath the television set. I reached for the encyclopedia and flipped it open to Y, bluish light flickering over the tiny text. Quickly I found the entry for yew and a detailed illustration confirmed the leaf I had found did indeed belong to that tree. Holding the large book close to my face, I skimmed the entry, hardly daring to breathe.

Yew tree . . . exceptional longevity . . . highly poisonous nature of the seeds and foliage . . . slow growth, resistance to decay . . . branches bending to rest on the ground . . . often referred to as a tree of life . . . resurrection, faith, and sorrow . . .

I snapped the book shut. My skin tingled.

The leaf was a message.

Ahaziel was in trouble and he needed me. Something must have been keeping him from meeting me like we'd planned or else he'd have been here already.

There was no evidence to prove this. But I
knew
, just as I had known the leaf belonged to a yew tree in the first place. And there were no yews in our neighborhood or anywhere in town I'd seen. The leaf had come from the forest, and somehow Ahaziel had sent it.

I wanted to help him. But what if this was some sort of trap Merko had laid trying to lure me to him? If I went to Ahaziel, perhaps we would both die.

I needed help.

My first instinct was to go to my brother, so I put the encyclopedia away and wasted no time getting to his room. I didn't care that he was sleeping. We had to do something
now
. I shook his shoulder roughly and hissed his name until he peered at me in confused annoyance.

"
What?
"

"Remember those questions I was asking you earlier?"

"Yes. This had better be good." He rubbed his eyes, yawning.

"There's a reason I was asking."

And then I laid everything out for him. How I first met Ahaziel in the forest, the day I'd ditched school. I told him Eve's story and Olivia's, how they had lived, how they had died. I mentioned my nightmares, which I was sure had to do with the times I'd died at Merko's hand. I told him Merko wanted to kill me again. I confessed how I had decided I
did
have a choice to love Ahaziel or not, only to doubt myself later while wondering if Austin could decide for himself whether he liked me. When I'd finished, I watched my brother expectantly.

He was sitting up now, no longer sleepy. "Okay, first of all, we already had this discussion about free will. Even if people from your past lives keep showing up, they're still making their own choices. Austin's probably just letting his hormones control him, like every other guy his age. And you loving this Ahaziel guy isn't set in stone. You either do or you don't, but it has nothing to do with what happened however many hundred years ago, except that maybe you know him better in this life because of what you experienced then."

I blinked at him. "You believe me?"

"You aren't exactly fanciful, so I don't think you made this up. But maybe you're crazy, I don't know. I'd like to believe you're telling the truth, though." He swung his legs off the bed and stood up. "Now about this Merko guy."

"I need your help with that."

"How so?"

"I want to kill him."

Brandt rubbed his face, silent for a moment, then placed his hands on his hips and looked at me. "Seriously?"

"I know how it sounds," I admitted, recognizing the desperation that had begun to creep into my voice. "But I have an idea. Sort of."

"Okay. What is it?"

"Ahaziel told me Merko can't be killed as a normal man. And when I was Olivia, he said something to me that got me thinking. He said I could become part of his world if I ate food he offered me. I thought the same thing might work in reverse. This is how we can make Merko a normal man." I paused, not liking Brandt's raised eyebrow. "How we can kill him," I added helpfully.

"By offering him food from our world."

"Yes."

He shook his head and looked skeptical. "This is far-fetched, Lilly. Really far-fetched."

"I know, Brandt. But please, help me. I
promise
you he'll kill me if he gets a chance."

For a moment he looked at me, as if searching for any trace of deceit or madness. Then he raised his arms, smiling a little in disbelief of himself. "All right, Lil. Let's do this shit."