I slowly drift awake in the early morning to the sound of soft snoring. Not wanting to open my eyes, I lay there quietly, trying to remember where I am. Groggy, it takes a couple of minutes for the memories to come to me, but when they do I smile. They’re like pictures at first, snapshots of the fun we had; Cael laughing at my expression after he threw a pillow at my head, our crappy attempt at a couch fort. Then they start to move together like a reel. He was tickling me and I kicked over my coffee cup, and I felt such horror and embarrassment at first but then our laughter continued as he said it didn’t matter and continued to tickle me anyway. I replay the moments that lead up to when I eventually must’ve fallen asleep, and I lie there in our terrible attempt at a couch fort, listening to Cael’s snores, feeling his chest move up and down under my head with his breaths and I realize something. This must be what it’s like to fall in love.
***
I never thought anything like this could be possible but here it is, this situation that has my kind-of-human heart beating fast and hard in my chest; the chest which her head is currently resting upon deep in slumber, her breaths even and deep. I find myself smiling as she mumbles something incoherent in her sleep and shift my arms around her a little tighter and she sighs into the embrace as if there’s nowhere she’d rather be. There is nowhere I would rather be either than right here, right now. I will protect her and I will find a way to break her curse. The Battle is fast upon us, and I need to find a way to tell her fast.
“Father,” I whisper. “Please help me.” In response, thunder rumbles in the distance and the rain pelts the windows and roof harder. My heart lurches. He cannot help even if he wanted to. God can only do so much.
***
My eyes pop open at the sudden movement underneath my head. I scan my surroundings and realize I’m still at Cael’s. Yawing, I sit up and stretch as he does the same.
“Sorry to have woken you,” he says, running his fingers through his sleep-messy hair. “I was about to get up to put the coffee machine on. Do you want some? I also have tea and hot chocolate if you’d prefer.”
I smile gratefully. “Coffee would be heavenly, thanks.” I begin to yawn again but stop half way when panic strikes me; I must look like a total mess! I stand up rather abruptly. “Uh, I’ll be right back. I have to go to the bathroom.”
Cael smiles a knowing smirk and nods his head. “Aye then, I’ll go start the coffee.”
It takes everything I have not to run to Cael’s small but tidy bathroom, but when I get there I close the door behind me and take stock of my reflection in the mirror above the sink. I don’t look half as bad as I thought I did, which is probably saying something. My hair is a greasy mess, there’s dried drool in the corner of my lip on the left side of my face and what little makeup I’d put on yesterday is miraculously un-smudged, but my eyes are red like they always are when I first wake up. Sighing, I splash some water on my face and decide to put my hair up in a messy bun using the hair elastic I always keep around my wrist just for emergencies like this. When I’m done, I don’t look half bad.
I exit the bathroom, walk down the hall to the living room to see that Cael has already taken down our fort and folded the blankets and sheets. “Did I take that long fixing myself up?” I ask.
The coffee machine beeps, letting us know that it’s full and he laughs. “Does that answer your question?”
For the next couple of hours –we got up at around eleven– we sit and talk about random things, what I’m doing at school, what we’re both currently reading; I’m reading Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein and Cael’s reading a book of Yeats’s poetry that he picked up at the bookstore he works at, which I finally – after such a long time, I realize – remember is called Yes Books.
When one o’clock rolls around my phone buzzes with a text from Cara asking if I want to go accessory shopping for semi-formal with her and even though I want to say no I agree because I basically ditched her last night and feel bad about it.
“So you’re down?” She asks.
I roll my eyes and turn to Cael, who smiles and rolls his eyes too prompting me to chuckle. “Yeah, I’ll come with. Maybe I’ll find a dress. But first, how are we going to get to the mall? If you’ve forgotten, the Rabbit isn’t working anymore. Mr. Brown towed it to my place.”
Cara grumbles, reminding me of Pug. “Yeah, I know, I’ll drive. Don’t worry; my car should get us to the mall and back without too much protest.”
“You’ll have to pick me up from Cael’s. I’ll give you directions; it’s not too far from your place.”
“Yes ma’am!” She agrees to pick me up from Cael’s place in twenty minutes, giving her enough time to pick an outfit for the day.
“I guess this will be goodbye until tomorrow,” says Cael after I hang up.
My heart thumps in my chest a little faster and a lazy smile rises to my lips. “Yes, well,” I say, as I lean in and kiss him on the cheek, “unless I want to lose my job, I’ll see you at work at the usual time.”
~*~
Dutifully, Cara picked me up exactly twenty minutes after we spoke. We drove to the mall and that is where I find myself right now, standing in front of a full length mirror in the same green and pink dress I tried on what feels like forever ago. It still looks as beautiful as ever on me, and now that I’ve been working and received my first pay check, I’ve finally got the money to buy it. We’ve been at the mall for at least three hours and so far Cara has found absolutely nothing in way of accessories.
She practically shrieks when I come out of the fitting room with the dress slung over my right arm. “I’m so excited for you!” she says. She offers me some lip-gloss which I refuse as always, before she coats her own lips in the stuff, “I don’t want to give you my cold,” I explain.
She waves my explanation away and smiles at me. “You are going to look so beautiful, honeybun. Hopefully I find some nice accessories soon because we’ve been in his mall way too long. I’d settle for a crappy fake diamond necklace as long as it looked good. Honestly, you’d think there’d be something in this place for me.”
“Semi-formal is a month away and we have lots of time to go shopping, you know.” I say, swatting her arm playfully.
Cara smiles at me and shakes her head like she pities me but says nothing as we walk towards the cash. “What, is a month not enough time?” I ask.
When we reach the cash, a girl of about six years old begins to cry from her seat on a bench just outside the store. Her mother is standing about six feet behind me, looking at a royal purple gown, ignoring her daughter’s tantrum. My head starts pounding with a sudden headache and I find myself sighing.
Cara sighs as the cashier rings up my purchase. “There can never be enough time, right up until the day of the dance I will search for the perfect accessories. Maybe I should go into Portland. There’s more variety. Hell, I might even find a better dress! Imagine?” My turn to shake my head. She pointedly ignores it. “Well you never know. I’ll let you know how it turns out if I end up going.”
“You do that,” I say as we head out of the store. “In any case, I’m done for the day. My head is pounding and I need to get home to take a shower.” Cara frowns at me, reaches out and touches my forehead and her frown deepens. “Babe,” she says, “You’re a little warm.”
I shrug. She punches my arm, hard. “You could have told me you were sick. I’d have postponed this for another day. It’s not like the dress would have gone anywhere, nobody our age really comes to this mall to buy their stuff anyway– they all go to freaking Portland.”
“I did mention that I have a cold…”
Her face scrunches up even more, concern palpable. “Yeah, but a cold is a cold. This kind of fever doesn’t usually indicate a simple cold, babe.” I keep forgetting that Cara wants to go into nursing.
“Well I feel like crap. I just want to go home and rest, I mean I’ll probably feel better after I take some pain meds and a nap.”
Her frown deepens even more. “I’m coming over to make sure you actually get to bed.” I think of the first day I met Cael and smile, remembering that I did the same thing.
“Okay, you’re going loopy,” says Cara, “What’s with the idiotic smile?” She feels my forehead again and shakes her head.
“Nothing. Just remembering something.”
“Riiight,” she says, taking my things from me. “Let’s just get you home.”
~*~
I wake up to Cara’s voice. “Get up. You’ve slept long enough, babe.”
I open my eyes to see that it’s light outside, and I glance at my alarm clock and realize how much I’ve slept. It’s six in the morning. My heart jumps into my throat. “Holy shit Cara. Why did you let me sleep for so long?”
From her perch at the foot of my bed she shrugs. “You clearly needed it. I tried to wake you up to get you to eat, but you just drank some water and went back to sleep. How do you feel? I figured I’d wake you up early so you could shower and stuff, but if you still feel sick…”
“No,” I sit up immediately. “I feel better. Thanks.”
Cara beams at me, obviously proud of herself. “Good. Your parents were worried but I told them not to worry too much. They both left for work not long ago. I stayed the night; hope you don’t mind.”
I shake my head, “No, no it’s fine. Really. I appreciate it actually.” I stretch my arms above my head and reflexively yawn. “I guess I need to take that shower. I must smell like a homeless person.”
She laughs and tells me that I do, but only then do I realize that she’s acting too chipper for somebody who was up taking care of their friend all night when I know for a fact that she’s usually rather grumpy when she’s tired. Something’s off. “Cara,” I say, “have you slept at all?”
She stands up, “I should probably make breakfast. Do bacon sandwiches sound good to you?”
“Cara.”
“Is that a no?”
“Is there something wrong, Cara?” I ask, my heart starting to beat too hard.
Her face falls. She toys with a lock of red curly hair and she looks at the floor. Cara mumbles something, but I don’t understand.
“What?” I ask. She repeats herself, a little louder, but I still can’t hear her. I ask a third time and of course she yells at me.
“There was someone at your window last night!”
I wish I had the power to stop time to properly think about what she just said, but I don’t, so all I can do now is freak out.
Standing up, I walk over to her, ever aware of our height difference because i have to look up at her. “There was a person in my window last night? How could you not wake me up to tell me that there was a fucking person in my window last night which, by the way, you need to get to by climbing a God damned tree?”
Cara’s voice warbles when she says, “It was a guy...and he...”
“He what, Cara,” I say, realizing that she seems genuinely upset.
She shrugs. “He looked a lot like your least favourite person. And he looked angry. When I got to the window he’d probably jumped down and run away. I stayed in your living room last night, your parents helped me get all set up, and I’d come in to check in on you every once in a while, and one of those times…yeah. I didn’t tell you because maybe I’d hoped it didn’t actually happen.” She’s crying now, and when I hug her she crumples into my arms like a child.
“I’m sorry I didn’t wake you, but you were so sick. I don’t know why Damien would be at your window, but I was so scared Khiara. He looked about ready to kill you.”
“I think,” I say, “that it was a bad dream. You must have fallen asleep and not realized it. Damien has no reason to be creeping on me when I sleep. He might be a little strange, and I may not like him or even trust him but I don’t think he’d do that.” She nods and hiccups back her tears.
“Go take your shower,” she says, still clearly shaken. “I’ll get on those bacon sandwiches.”