Chapter Twenty
That meant a whole something different to me than it did for him. Like Jesse said, he was still completely clueless, even his double showed no sign of what I wanted or even what he claimed to have felt. Why were guys such meat heads?
"See, that just doesn't work for me. I have friends. I have a best friend and he's sitting in there waiting for me. Granted he's a sex crazed teenager but he was still there for me just like he is now. He didn't abandon me when I needed him and certainly not when a new, shiny group of stuck up friends came along."
"That's not fair. You know the only reason I stayed away was because I was commanded to."
"That doesn't mean anything to me. You made it that way. You pushed us all away, pretending like we didn't exist to you anymore. How did you expect it to be? If you were alone you made yourself that way."
"I know that but by Saturday, everything will be fine. I can finally tell you why..."
"I don't care why. It happened, it's done, now you have to deal with the consequences. Did you honestly think we were just going to fall back in where we were? It doesn't happen that way."
"Lots of people spend years apart and when they see each other again..."
"I've seen you. I saw you everyday during the school year and periodically during the summer. It's not like you weren't there."
"I might as well have been invisible. I couldn't talk to you."
"Speaking of that, how are you here, right now, if you couldn't be here just a few days ago?"
"You're turning Elite."
"It's not that simple."
"Yes it is. Look." He pointed at my chest, right where my heart was. "Go ahead."
"I am not looking with you here. That would be weird."
"Why? I've seen you naked before."
"When we were like four! I'm pretty sure the topography has changed since then. A lot."
This time both him and the double were smiling, although the double was more like grinning...
"I'm going back inside now. Go home."
"Wait." He pulled me to a stop again and forced me to turn around and look at him. "At least tell me where you got these."
He held up what looked to be a solid, white stone. Like the ones you'd find at a rocky beach. I had a ton of them from Pebble Beach, California. My mother and I used to go stone hunting when my dad played the tournament there.
I shrugged. "I haven't seen that before in my life."
"It was next to your clutch in the kitchen."
My eyes grew wide. "You stole something from my house? I can't believe you!" Like with the faux rock I tried to snatch that one back too.
"Answer the question."
He held it out of my reach but still for me to see. "I don't know, Cecil. Let me see it."
He slowly lowered his hand when he realized I wouldn't try and snatch it just yet. I uncurled his fingers from around the stone and looked it over. I picked it up out of his hand and it was then that I noticed that it was actually two stones that fit perfectly together, not one.
"Huh. Neat."
"No, Tally. Not neat. These are kissing stones."
"Yeah I don't know what that means."
"You're not supposed to." He looked up at me, a little concerned. "Not yet. Not until Saturday."
"You know, I might turn sooner than that. You never know."
"Actually I do." He took the stones back from me, curling his hand around them. I wouldn't have noticed him take a step back but the streak showed me what he was doing before he did it. "I have to..."
"Yeah," I snapped. "Go." I didn't know why I was getting upset. Didn't I just want him to leave a few minutes ago? "My dad or Schylar will probably come looking for me any second now."
There was no hesitation as he walked across the concrete, his back as stiff as a board. But then he paused randomly, like if he took another step away it would be painful.
"I meant what I said."
"You've said a lot tonight."
I was angry and I was tired, not to mention upset and emotionally exhausted. There would be nothing better than for this night to end, for this week to end really. I was slowly coming to terms with the fact I would never get him back. No matter if I turned Elite or not. Things would be different and there was no way of going back.
"Ce?"
He was about to take another step but stopped the second I said something. He turned to face me, the double barely visible now as well as the blue streak. The light from the kitchen casted out, making most of him visible. The purple line that ran across his cheekbone, splitting with one curling around his eye and the other looping around his top lip made him look very strange.
"Yeah?"
"Thank you for being here tonight. I don't know what happened but...it meant a lot to me."
He glanced into the darkness in front of him for a second before walking back over. Part of me was giddy, jumping with joy that he wasn't leaving just yet. Another part of me was wondering where my two favorite people were. They should've been to check on me by now.
One of his hands slipped into mine very carefully, the 'kissing stones' gone for now it looked like. It occurred to me that I might need to do some research on those.
"Tally, whether you want it to be or not, I'm going to show up randomly. I know it's confusing and you don't like it but...I missed you. I was worried something might happen tonight after you got home and I was right."
I looked up at him and nodded. Tears were trying to fill up the bottom of my vision and I forced my eyes to look away, to do anything so they wouldn't spill out. Crying just wasn't something that should happen. There was no point at the moment. There never was really.
"I'm not supposed to tell you this but...the next couple of days are going to suck. You're going to get sicker and it's going to feel like it's never going to end. But when it does, I'll be there, just like when you got your tonsils taken out and couldn't talk for two weeks."
"Promise?" I whispered.
He nodded. "I'm not even playing this weekend. That should tell you something."
"Ce, you don't have to do that. You should play if you want to play."
"Tally, I've been waiting for you to turn Elite since we were fifteen. Do you honestly think I'm going to miss the first chance I get to spend time with you on a golf course?"
"You spent the last three years..."
"Watching you. I'll be there on Saturday. I promise."
I hugged him before he could go anywhere. I could sense him trying to draw back, the blue/gold streak heading for where he'd stood across the drive. But the second I did that, the streak disappeared. At least for now.
Very carefully, he hugged me back, his chin resting on my shoulder. He'd gotten taller so I was literally on my tip toes.
"Why couldn't you tell me any of this before?" I whispered. "I know, the whole commanding thing which still doesn't make sense, but you could've slipped me a note. Or anything."
"You'll find out that it's not that easy. From your view point right now, everything seems to have a simple solution. But there isn't. I have to go. I wasn't supposed to be here this long."
But neither of us were letting go and for a second, one blissful moment I let myself believe what he said in the woods. Maybe he loved me too.
"I don't want you to go yet. If it'll keep you from leaving, I'll tell you what I'm seeing."
He hesitated, like he was about to say something important. Despite what I said, I wanted answers. I wanted to know why he'd ignored me. Why that time was taken away. Whatever the reason, it couldn't be that significant. Not if we were really meant to be together.
"Tell me."
His stubble rubbed against my shoulder, chaffing my skin a little. I secretly smiled to myself, the shape our two shadows were making made me happier then I'd been in a while. There was no discerning which part belonged to me and which to him. Even our heads were one big blob.
"I can see your path. Where you're going but not where you've come from. It's like a streak of blue light mixed with a little gold and it changes, just like the lines do. I can also see a double. I don't know what it is but...it's like an alternate version of the Elite standing in front of me. It doesn't happen with the non-sick humans."
His arms automatically tightened around me. "How long?"
"I first noticed it with Union, that day I forced Jesse to talk to me in Mrs. Harroman's classroom. But the rest of it didn't happen until recently." I stayed silent for a second. "But there's something else."
"What?"
"At first it didn't happen unless I was coughing or just finished a big coughing fit. But now, right now, I can see it, clear as day. It's stronger when you're around."
"I have to go."
And like I'd snapped a rubber band, the cold strangeness was back. I very carefully let him go and looked up at him. "Sure." I was disappointed mostly because I was hoping this new demeanor was permanent. It was the closest thing I'd seen of my friend in years and I didn't like the Elite version.
"Stay away from Union Davidson, Tally. I mean it." He squeezed my hand a little to punctuate his statement.
I nodded, biting my bottom lip. "Ok."
He looked grim and nodded just once before disappearing into the dark.
*
When I got back inside, and closed the door, I found my father packing the fridge with water. At least that answered why no one had come to see where I was. They'd already known, or at least he did, but he was being very nonchalant about not looking over at the door. That was before I came in.
"Were you spying?" I asked leaning against the counter.
"No. I was going to go out there and say something but you two looked like you were discussing something important."
"It wasn't that important."
"Then why do you look so devastated that he's gone?"
"Dad, now is not the time to be insightful."
"That bad, huh?"
"He's talking to me more and more but sometimes it feels like it's not really him." He closed the door of the fridge and turned to look at me. "Was it like that with Uncle Clay?"
My father thought about my question for a moment, his eyes looking somewhere between over my shoulder and at the ceiling. I called it his 'perfect shot' look. When he used to play the game professionally, we had a game. I would study his technique, his every shot, and tell him when he got home or over the phone that night about what he did wrong, what he did right, and how he could change it. Like if he'd twisted his body too much to put umph behind a shot, if he used the wrong club. I used to have tons of marble notebooks full of notes and we would go over them when he got home. We treated it like some coaches would football games and their playbooks. My marble notebooks were our playbooks.
Mom would have a plate of chocolate chip peanut butter cookies baked and ready along with a gallon of milk. Cecil would join us more often than not and I could still see him passed out on the floor on the big dog pillow my mother had bought him for that distinct purpose. She used to kid around that he was the lost puppy that wandered up to the door and never went home.
"I remember your Uncle Clay taking a good amount of time adjusting. He would have mood swings, times when he didn't want to be bothered about anything. But I never got the sense that my brother wasn't there. Clay has always been Clay and there's no changing that. Cecil is different, honey." He reached out and took my hand where it was folded over my chest. "He died and then he came back. That is bound to change someone."
"I know," I said meekly. "I just want..."
"I know what you want, honey, but maybe you should consider that it's not exactly what he can give you. If it makes you feel better, the look on his face while he was talking to you..." He smiled a little and looked away from me. "It reminded me of me and your mother." He looked back at me. "I never bought into that whole 'meant to be together' crap everyone in this town used to mutter on about you two. Your mother did. She used to tell me eventually the two of you would get it together and then I would have trouble on my hands."
"She said that?" He nodded. "And you believed her?"
"There's something you don't know about your mother, Tales."
"If it's she didn't like chocolate cake, I already knew that. She told me right before she died actually. When we were talking about what kind of cake to make me for my birthday."
"Hmmm." He squeezed my hand and pulled me in for a hug. "The thing is your mother was a smart lady. She wasn't one to be pushed around or lied to. So I knew if your mother said you and Cecil would give me a run for my money, she was telling the truth."
"That doesn't tell me much."
He was trying to make me feel better but it wasn't working very well. It just brought up how much I missed my mother and how much I missed Cecil in turn. At this point I was more then ready to become Elite so I could get that one connection back. Not that I'd tell anyone that.