Escaping Fate (9 page)

“I’m sure it tastes fine,” I said.
“What do you recommend for my mom?”

“Definitely the raspberry sorbet, but
I’ll wait to get that until you’re ready to leave.” Tanner took a
big scoop of peanut butter fudge and plopped it on a cone for
himself.

“And what makes you think I’m not ready
to leave right now?” I asked, a smile playing on my lips. I wanted
to stay, but my mom would definitely have a fit if I waited any
longer. I did not want another lecture about how she almost had to
call my dad away from the hospital.

“How can you resist a man with free ice
cream?” Tanner laughed.

He was lucky his friends were far
enough away not to have heard that, I thought. Evan would have died
of laughter. Tanner himself looked fairly embarrassed that the lame
line had actually come out of his mouth. I was about to explain why
I needed to leave when a sharp ring sprang from my pocket. For once
I was actually glad my mom had called to see if I had been in a car
accident or stung by a killer bee.

I snatched the phone from my jeans and
answered it. “Hi, Mom.”

“Arra, where are you? I thought you’d
be back by now.”

“Mom, I stopped to get ice cream,
remember? There was a little problem with their ice cream machine
so I had to wait a few minutes,” I explained.

“Oh, okay. I was just worried. How’s
the car?”

“Mom, were not in Manhattan anymore.
Relax. I’m fine. The car’s fine. Everything’s fine,” I said,
getting annoyed again. Tanner stood waiting, pretending to watch
his friends. “Actually, Mom, do you mind if I’m out a little
longer? I ran into Tanner. His mom owns the ice cream
shop.”

“Tanner? The boy from
yesterday?”

“How many other Tanners do I know,
Mom?”

“Well I guess that’s alright then. Just
don’t be too long.”

“Thanks, Mom. See you in a little
while.”

I closed the phone and returned it to
her pocket.

“You want to sit down?” Tanner asked.
He had obviously been listening to every word. That probably should
have seemed rude to me, but I doubted that anything Tanner might do
would annoy me too much.

“Sure. Lead the way,” I
said.

Tanner led me to a table as far away
from his friends as possible, which still was not very far, since
the dining area was only slightly bigger than our living room. We
took our chairs and silence fell over us. I tasted my ice cream,
trying to keep it from dripping all over my hand and tried to think
of something to say. The chocolate was dark and strong and
incredibly distracting. I couldn’t think of anything else at the
moment.

“Do you like it?”

“It’s really good, Tanner, thanks,” I
said honestly. I wondered whether his mom would teach me how to
make this. I could have eaten it every day.

“Thank my mom. She makes all the ice
cream herself. She banned me from the kitchen a long time ago,”
Tanner admitted.

We drifted back into silence as we ate
our ice cream. I noticed Tanner’s mother make her way back into the
kitchen. She looked at me with an appraising smile. I was suddenly
sure that Cheryl would run into my mother very soon. Mother’s
couldn’t help but gossip about their children it would seem. I
remember all too well going through this before with my brother
David. I had found it amusing then, but not so much now when I knew
I was about to become the center of the gossip and
planning.

“Would you like to go shooting with me
again sometime?” Tanner asked suddenly.

Surprised, I swallowed my ice cream
slowly to force myself from jumping at the invitation. “I don’t
know if I could take the embarrassment,” I said drily.

“You can use my sister’s bow next time.
It’s smaller, so you should be able to draw it a little easier,” he
promised.

“I wouldn’t count on that,” I said.
“I’ve really never been that great at sports.”

“Well, you won’t know unless you try. I
can teach you.” Tanner caught a large drip of ice cream before it
splattered on the table. “Besides,” he said, “you’ve got to find
something to occupy your time now that you live here. Like you
said, there’s not that much to do in Grainer.”

Caught by my own words, I smiled. I had
of course intended to accept his invitation from the start, but
watching him try to convince me had me and Tanner’s mother
grinning. “As long as you promise not to laugh,” I
agreed.

“Deal. What are you doing tomorrow?”
Tanner asked, grinning shamelessly now. I couldn’t resist
laughing.

“I’ll probably be at my grandpa’s
house. He’s, uh, helping me with a project. I mean I’m helping him
with a project.” Tanner glanced at me with a puzzled expression.
Project, I thought berating myself for the bad word choice, what,
am I in summer school or something?

“What kind of project?”

Why did I say project? Why didn’t I
just say I was helping him clean out his garage, or something that
actually made sense?

“A family history thing. I’m helping my
grandpa write down some of our family’s stories,” I said. It was
not completely untrue. I quickly put those kinds of thoughts out of
my mind though, determined to enjoy a moment of
normalcy.

“Oh, that’s cool. Will you be there all
day?” he asked. Our ice cream was almost gone. Evan and Jackson had
already finished theirs and were trying to get Tanner’s mother to
give them a little more. I did not want to leave, but if I really
had to, I wanted to walk away knowing I would see Tanner again
soon.

“I guess I might be free after lunch,”
I said.

“Do you want me to pick you
up?”

“Sure, but would you mind picking me up
at my grandpa’s instead of my house? Then I won’t have to walk all
the way back home,” I said. The last thing I wanted to deal with
was a curious mother or an over protective father.

“No problem,” Tanner replied. “I guess
I better get you that raspberry sorbet.”

I finished off the last couple bites of
my ice cream cone and followed Tanner back to the counter. His mom
already had the dessert ready. Tanner looked a little disappointed,
and actually, so was I. Cheryl thoughtful gesture had stolen a few
more minutes I could have delayed leaving the shop. Not wanting to
show my feelings, I thanked her for the ice cream and walked out of
the store with Tanner.

When we got around to the driver’s side
of the car Tanner reached for the door handle before I could, and
opened the door for me. I had to resist the urge to giggle like an
idiot. “You have ice cream and you open doors for me, you are
pretty irresistible,” I said. It was just as dorky as what Tanner
had said earlier, but he beamed at the compliment
anyway.

Tanner stepped in a little closer and I
suddenly became aware of the raspberry ice cream slowly melting in
my hand. Why did my mom have to like ice cream? A bead of water
rolled off the ice cream cup and over one of my fingers. I wondered
if Tanner’s body heat was making it melt even quicker. Based on how
fast my own heart was going, my own heat was enough to turn it into
soup if I didn’t get home soon.

“So, I’ll see you tomorrow then,”
Tanner said, still standing what my dad would have thought was a
little too close to me. I nodded. It was all I could do at that
point. I just wanted him to lean in a little closer, but all too
quickly he stepped back.

“I guess I better let you get home
before your mom’s ice cream melts,” he said.

“Yeah, I guess,” I said. Forcing myself
to get into the car, I smiled as Tanner pushed the door closed. He
lingered for just a second before stepping back and moving onto the
sidewalk. I drove away wishing it was already tomorrow
afternoon.

After handing off my mom’s slightly
soupy sorbet, I spent the rest of the evening scouring the pages of
the genealogy records for the ill-fated souls she knew existed
somewhere in my family’s past. That and thinking about Tanner. Even
the eerie list of dead girls weren’t enough to throw him completely
out of my mind.

Having looked through my mom’s entire
genealogy collection, I found only two more girls before the
history ended. Anise Malo died at sixteen years old in 1847, and
Linnet, who died in 1817. She was only sixteen years old, too. I
added their names to the list I had started, needing no pictures to
know that they would also have the telling raven hair and silvery
eyes.

I was physically and emotionally
drained by the time I finally made it through the last of the
notebooks. I could hardly even feel the despair any more. I
couldn’t feel anything, not even the memory of Tanner’s closeness.
A sense of inevitability crept over me. My earlier hopes of
surviving this frightening chain had quietly slipped away. Name
after name, death after death assured me of my fate.

I could no longer pretend I would
somehow live. Whatever my grandpa had been planning, there was no
way it could possibly work. If there was a way, wouldn’t somebody
have found it by now? No, I knew that I would die in three days.
That thought stayed with me as I pushed the binders and papers off
my bed and drifted into a troubled sleep.

Chapter Eleven

The ornately dressed priest moved from
in front of the altar as the terrified girl reached the temple
mesa. As he moved, the young girl was afforded a perfect view of
her impending future. Her eyes darted from the priest to the stone
altar. Her heart nearly stopped as she stared at cold slab. The
oblong obsidian blade lying at its center sent a shudder through
her body. She knew her fate.

The horror she felt won out and broke
through her defiance. She fell to her knees on the cold stone
floor. No one moved to help her up. No one dared touch her. She had
been purified for the sacrifice. Anyone who defiled her purity
would be sacrificed along with her to pay the gods for an unclean
offering.

The priest and guards waited
impatiently for the girl to pick herself up again. Convulsive sobs
wracked her body. Her hands shielded her face from the priest’s
vicious scowl, but the thunderous crack of his staff on the stone
floor silenced her crying instantly. Quickly she uncovered her face
and struggled to right herself. As she stood, she was silently
instructed to proceed to the altar with harsh gestures by the mute
guards waiting beside the fire.

Standing next to the altar, she saw
deep red smears covering the stone. The blood of thousands of
sacrifices. The stains were never washed away. To wash the blood
away showed the gods that the people were ashamed of what had
happened. The stains reminded the people of the city of their
obligation to pacify the gods.

The girl forced away thoughts of past
sacrifices she had watched and cheered for in earlier years, and
hated herself for her involvement. As a child she had watched,
enjoying the festivities and celebrating when the sacrifice was
made. It had been like a play, some grand game of pretend. Safe on
the ground she had never seen the blood, but she had sometimes
heard the cries, the screaming over the cheering of the crowd. The
celebrating she had done as a child was before she knew about her
own future role. Now she knew that the agonizing cries would be her
own.

Trembling silently next to the altar,
she tried to wish away the horror her life had become. The priest
removed the obsidian blade from the center of the alter and held it
in his steady, practiced hand. Holding the black shard in both
hands, he lifted it, presenting it to the sky, to the gods. Drums
sounded.

Lowering the weapon, he now held it
firmly in only one hand. The point nearly brushed her skin as he
held it next to her heart. The smooth surface shone in the
sunlight, shattering her wishes of reprieve and signaling the
beginning of the impending violence.

Unsure of what she was expected to do
next, she stood staring at the rough surface of the altar, too
terrified to move. Compelled to face reality, she reached out her
hand and touched the bloody stains on the face of the altar. The
slight touch seemed to awaken the stone’s past victims. The pain
and anguish of thousands seemed to reach out to her in that brief
second. Terrified, she pulled her hand away quickly. The guard’s
eyes glimmered from behind his painted face. He reveled in her
terror.

The strange sensation assaulted her
again, but she stiffened and refused to acknowledge it. The guard
only smiled. The priest raised the blade again, presenting it now
to the crowd. Overwhelmed with fear the raven haired beauty fell to
her knees. Her head in her hands, she fell on top of the altar and
cried with more true emotion than she had ever felt
before.

Leaning closer to her head, the guard’s
hissing voice whispered in her ear. “They come to welcome
you.”

***

Way beyond bolting up in bed because of
the awful dreams, my eyes opened slowly, already filled with tears.
I could still hear the echoes of the girl sobbing with her head
cradled in her arms. I felt the tears run down my own cheeks but
did not brush them away. In the dark of my room I felt as alone as
the doomed girl. The shadows in the corners of my room seemed to
creep closer, silently stalking like the ancient guards. Every
sliver of moonlight became the terrible shining blade from the
altar.