Wicked (2 page)

“She’s right,” I say. “Why should we let Chloe ruin our party?” I cut a beastly look into the crowd before heading back into the bowling alley.

The chaos is steadily rising with the decibel level threatening to test the eardrums of both the living and the dead.

Mom and Tad are happily bowling with Mia and Melissa as though our lives were normal, as though I didn’t know their secret. Dr. Oliver and Emma fast approach, and I manage to ditch Gage just before they hit us. I don’t have it in me to even hint to Dr. Oliver—Barron, that I can’t find it in me to appreciate his gift.

I hightail it to Ellis over by the banquet table and join him glowering at Chloe.

“Look at her,” I scowl. She’s buried nine deep in a circumference of overeager bodies just waiting to touch her as though she’s got some sort of healing properties. “She ruined my party.” I was going to say, she killed my dad, but that’s not what came out.

“You should kick her ass,” Ellis suggests.

“OK.” Really I didn’t need the nudging. I hardly think Ellis meant for me to do it or even entertain the idea as if it were something that could actually morph into reality. But it is my party—I could kick some ass if I want to.

I push through the first layer of Chloe worshipers, the tangled middle—the final membrane of bodies part for me wide like the Red Sea.

Chloe gives a serene smile, but it’s the cutthroat look in her eyes that tells me she knows it’s coming, that she’s been expecting it all along.

“Thank you for coming to my party, Chloe.” The words struggle through my vocal chords. “If you weren’t here, I couldn’t do this.” I take a clean step forward and latch onto the silver chain around her neck with both hands and crisscross until a silver line cinches deep into her flesh—until her nails claw into my arms in an effort to stop me from strangling her.

“Shit!” Michelle blows into me with a series of hard pushes. She tries with tireless perseverance to shove me away, but I’ve screwed my feet into the floor and become an impenetrable wall.

Chloe’s face lights up a delightful shade of purple, so close to blue, so close to death for real this time.

I increase the velocity in which I hope to asphyxiate her—tug harder at the chain—tighten its noose effect around her throat until her eyes bulge, until blood vessels burst in the whites of her eyes just like fireworks on the Fourth of July. Her arms and legs begin to flail.

It’s the laborsome distress—the abnormal hyperactivity of watching someone in death throes that makes people uncomfortable when observing the art of dying.

It is all out confusion, screaming at unimaginable octaves, and yet, it’s like I’m off on some desolate planet with Chloe—all alone in our own psychotic world. I’m murdering her in front of dozens of witnesses, and I really don’t mind. If I’m going down for this, I’ll gladly do it with an audience. Hell, some of them might even thank me.

People tug at my clothes, try to peel my sweater right off my body, my hair is pulled out in handfuls leaving hot patches of pain all over my scalp—my skin carved into with fingernails, but it’s my Celestra strength that buoys me. Ironic how there is only one other Celestra in the vicinity, and I’ve made it my mission to publically decapitate her.

“Skyla!” Gage shouts, penetrating the crowd in an effort to reach me.

A body falls over me, then dozens.

The world gives a soft spin. Everything becomes unnaturally quiet as I land hard on the floor with a thump.

My eyes flutter open.

Gage and I are no longer at the bowling alley.

Chapter Three

The Promise

It’s dark. Molasses colored dew falls over the world as I try to make out my whereabouts.

Gage rolls off me, and I hear his footsteps shuffling away until he flips on the lights. It’s then I realize he’s teleported us to his bedroom.

“Nice move,” I say trying to right myself.

“You were going to kill her—again,” he smarts as he helps me up off the floor.

We head over and sit on the edge of his mattress. There’s a towel on the floor, and the bed isn’t made, but other than that his room is immaculate and holds the scent of his woodsy cologne.

“Do you forgive me?” He wraps an arm around my shoulder and leans in.

“Should I?” Of course, I forgive Gage. I’ve lost everything tonight including my sanity. The last thing in the world I want to lose is Gage.

“Yes.” He gives a wry smile. “Neither Logan nor I knew anything about Chloe coming back.” He looks down remorsefully. For a brief moment I wonder if the remorse is because he said Logan’s name, as though reminding me of Logan were enough to make me fall in love with him all over. “Anyway, I’m gonna let him fill you in on the details about his bloodline.”

“Whatever.” I have a feeling I’m going have a hard time believing anything Logan tells me. “So where am I gonna live?”

“Home?” He pulls me back onto the bed, and we land side by side.

“Can this be my new home?” I’m only half kidding.

“I wish. How about,” he presses a series of soft kisses into me, “after you go to bed, I’ll come over and keep you safe.”

“Do you really want me to go back there?” I’m petrified at the thought. My so-called mother has probably been poisoning my food all these years. Forget the theory that eating her cooking was a slow suicide—it’s probably been a slow homicide.

“I don’t get the feeling they’re going to hurt you. When I found out, I was in shock, but we had the away game and—”

I cut him off.

“How could you have found out just before the away game? Logan had that list for weeks.”

“It took us that long to comb through it. Their names were buried in the back. And Logan wasn’t mentioned until the final few pages under a list of hybrids.”

“Hybrid,” I say it just above a whisper. Logan’s face impresses itself upon me. He’s always had that extraterrestrial godlike quality about him. Something deep and knowing that lies just beneath the surface of his sublime features—that pitch perfect body that I’ll never know to touch because now I can’t stand to.

“I know you’re upset.” He pulls me in close until my chest is pressed up against his, and I can feel his heart pummeling out of control. “I beg of you, don’t be upset with my dad, he honestly had no clue we didn’t want Chloe around. He mentioned he had a gift for the both of us, but I had no idea about her showing up tonight, or breathing for that matter.” He shakes his head in disbelief.

Chloe was quite the unbirthday present.

“I could never be mad at your dad. I already think of him as my own.” I dig my fingers into the back of his hair, and like some unwanted alarm, Logan pops into my mind again. Logan tugs at my heart, interrupts the moment. He is the constant quivering nag on the outskirts of my love for Gage, fighting to be let in, only now, knowing who he is, it’s impossible to even entertain the idea. How could I have ever been so stupid to wrap myself around him so completely? And now letting go of him feels like peeling off a layer of skin.

“Things are going to be different with Chloe around,” he laments.

Something cinches inside me when he says her name. She’s the demon I’ve called into being through the labor of my marrow. We’re blood from the same bowl, literally.

“Promise me something?” I whisper.

“Anything.” His eyes sparkle in the light like the ocean on fire.

“Promise we’ll never change. That you’ll never leave me, or lie to me, or hold anything back from me ever again.”

“Skyla.” His hand runs down my hair, swift as a waterfall. “There is nothing on this planet, in heaven or hell, that can keep me from you. I more than promise.”

His cobalt optic spheres dart through me, and I know his words are true.

We fall into a bliss-filled kiss that spans decades, time, and space. Loving Gage is more powerful than Chloe and her venom, stronger than Logan and all his lies. Gage washes me in his truth, the deep rich colors of his love. It feels eternal—right.

A light knock erupts at the door.

We both know who it is.

Chapter Four

Don’t You Forget About Me

Logan steps in and gives way to a sigh. His blonde hair catches the light and gives off an aura of otherworldly superiority, makes me like him less.

I don’t bother getting up, but Gage is already bolting for the door so Logan and I can ‘talk’.

“I’ll be right downstairs,” Gage drops his gaze before exiting.

I can’t believe he’s leaving me with Chloe’s minion.

Logan comes over like he owns the place, like he owns me. I leap off the bed and take three long strides in the opposite direction.

“Whoa.” He holds up his hands in defense. “Skyla,” he latches onto me with those eyes of orange fire—magnetizes me with an intense pull, but I won’t give in, “did Gage tell you we found out before the game? Your mom—”

“He told me.” I interrupt his flow of excuses.

He takes a step forward and sends me sailing the other way.

“So, I have Marshall to thank for this.”

“You have you to thank for this,” I shoot back. “You should have told me.” An unnatural chill fills the air. “But then, you never tell me anything. I bet it pleasures you to keep me in the dark. Some kind of me-Tarzan-you-Jane, cerebral high you get off knowing things.”

“No—never. Skyla, I love you. I want to share everything with you. You knew I wasn’t a pure Celestra. I—”

“Why should I trust you?”

“How can you not?” He looks genuinely perplexed and hurt at the same time.

“When Chloe and I were light driving to see my father, she mentioned that she wished the Logan from the future would visit her.” I stare off into the black of the window. “At the time, I thought it was strange.”

“Wait, you think I’m in on something with Chloe?” His eyes spring wide as though he’s just digested where this might be headed.

“Why wasn’t your name on the list of people she hated in her diary? Gage and I were both on it. So why were you omitted? Didn’t you supposedly piss her off by breaking up with her? Didn’t she decide the end?” I ask, mockingly.

“I don’t know why I wasn’t on it. I don’t know why Chloe does anything. Maybe she wrote the list while we were still together?”

“Sure,” I whisper acrimoniously.

Logan swallows hard as he eyes me with the distinct look of fear. I can’t dissect it enough to know if it’s because he’s genuinely afraid or afraid of getting caught.

His hair looks so pale in the wash of moonlight streaming in, soft as feathers, and I want to touch it and put this entire nightmare behind me.

>

His eyes round out in alarm.

“At the party,” I demand. “The first thing she did was go over to you. You remember. Also, can you try to remember that you said you’d never lie to me?”

He lets out a heavy sigh.

“What did she say?” I repeat.

Logan compresses his lips until his entire face looks as though it’s made of plaster.

“I thought so.” I scan over the desk in an effort to hide the hurt in my eyes.

I miss Gage. Just looking at his things makes me long for him, his open math book, his backpack where he once carried a poem to school for me. My heart perforates at the thought of Logan being incapable of loving me the way Gage does so freely. I wish I never gave my heart to Logan. I wish Logan were who I thought he was.

A dark amber bottle sits collecting dust on the top shelf. It catches my eye as the light filters through the bronze glass. I snatch it down—let it warm in my hands as I examine it. Root Beer. I wonder what prompted Gage to save it. I wonder what makes guys do anything. According to Marshall they run porn reels twenty-four seven—I suppose that hardly affords the time or energy to find the recycling bin.

Logan surveys me with caution like a predator ready to pounce.

“Tell me,” I say, rubbing my hands over the circumference of the bottle. Let it roll around between my palms before grasping it by the neck with my left hand. A slow building rage pumps through me. I can taste the anger inside me, dull and bitter like sucking old coins.

“She said, ‘well done.’” His head dips when he says it, resigned to the fact the words were loaded, that they testified against him in the worst way possible.

An impervious silence lodges between us.

“So you were the well-placed boyfriend,” I say it as fact. No wonder Chloe laughed when I suggested Ellis. It was Logan all along.

“It wasn’t me. I would never do that to you, Skyla.”

“You looked right at me when she spoke to you!” The words rattle out of my lungs in a heated scream.

“Because I knew she was setting us up for something.”

“There is no us!” I crash the bottle down against the edge of the desk and send a series of brown glittering shards all over.

“There is.” Logan’s voice is low and pressured. It’s as though he wants me to believe there was something real there between us as though he weren’t hiding anything else in the world.

“I can’t believe you.” Tears spike up unexpected, and I blink them away. “I’m so freaking angry!” I push hard into his chest over and over. “You tried to make me believe you were putting me first, but you were always with someone else! And this whole time Chloe had you on a string like some kind of puppet,” I shout in his face.

“I love you.”

“I hope you really do love me!” I roar. “I hope it hurts like hell when you see me with Gage. In fact, I’m going to give you something a little more permanent to remember me by.”

My hand flies up over his face with the broken bottle. I give one clean swipe down the right side of his cheek until a line of crimson emerges on his flesh and awakens me to what I’ve just done.

My hand opens in horror, and the glass drops with an unimpressive thud onto the hardwood floor.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, covering my mouth reflexively.

But I’m not sure I really am.

Chapter Five

Far Away From Here

I lean against the kitchen counter with Gage as Dr. Oliver stitches up the side of Logan’s face. A stack of clean dishes lie on the granite with a dishtowel over them, and the fragile scent of coffee lingers from the reserve left in the pot.

Lucky for Logan, Dr. Oliver took the time to invest in quality invisible thread since the last time he stitched up the living.