Sing Sweet Nightingale (28 page)

She gestures toward my hand, and I look down. I’d barely noticed I brought the scrapbook down with me.

“You stayin’ for dinner, K.
T
.?” Horace asks.

After a slight hesitation, she agrees, and we all order food while Horace grumbles about kitchens that don’t work. As we wait, I flip through the scrapbook again. I can’t help wondering what Mari would be like now if the demons hadn’t derailed her childhood.

In the pictures, as Mari gets older, it’s like I can watch her pull away from the world.

It starts small—her wide grin turning into a smile that hides secrets—but then she literally starts pulling away from people, showing up at the edges of pictures instead of the center. She stops looking into the camera. Instead she stares off in another direction, like her mind is somewhere else. Her clothes change, getting darker and baggier, and her hair keeps getting longer. The pictures stop before her freshman year. Like she disappeared completely.

Exhaling slowly, I flip back to the beginning and start over. There has to be something here that will spark Mari’s forgotten memories, crack the bonds her demon has tied her down with. I just don’t know what.

K.T. snorts. “Oh, wow! How did I miss this the first time around?”

She pulls the book out of my hands, leaning over a picture of Mariella standing on the top bar of one of those domed jungle gyms, an impish smile on her face.

“I dared her to do that. Never thought she would, but she climbed right up there and balanced on that thing like a tightrope walker. She was fearless. With everything.” K.T. places her hand over the picture, like she’s trying to press it into her skin. “I remember this one day—there used to be this kid named Johnny Dodd. He moved out when we were ten.”

She flips until she finds a picture and points to a tall, angry-looking kid at the edge of a group.

“Johnny was probably the biggest ass to ever live in Swallow’s Grove, even at seven. He’d been picking on this girl because she’d gotten braces, and Mari overheard. She’s, like, half his size, but she walks right up and kicks him in the shin so hard he starts bleeding.” K.T. smiles. “She was wearing her turquoise, metal-toed cowboy boots that day.”

The smile doesn’t last more than a moment. As soon as she starts flipping through the book again, looking at all the moments she remembers and her one-time best friend doesn’t, it disappears. She pauses on the picture of Mari dressed up like Santa.

“What about this?” I ask. “There
has
to be a story attached to this one.”

Her smile starts to come back. “We were about nine. It was for Christmas, and most of us were ornaments and trees and reindeer, but Mari decided she
had
to be Santa Claus.”

“The boys didn’t fight her on that one?” Horace asks, leaning over the page.

“Most of them didn’t dare—not after the thing with Johnny—but Seth fought her for it.” She bites her lip, but she can’t keep from grinning. “The day of the audition she told him that, if he lost on purpose, she’d give him a bunch of kisses.”

What? That doesn’t sound right at all. Or is that me thinking I know a person I’ve barely met? What do I know about Mariella really? Maybe she’s exactly the type to bribe guys with kisses. At nine. I try to wrap my mind around it, but it feels wrong.

K.T. laughs. “I was with her when she told him. He got
so
excited. He flubbed the audition, and the next day she brought him a whole bag of Hershey’s Kisses. He was furious, but he couldn’t say a thing because she never said she’d kiss him—she just said she’d
give him
kisses.”

I smile.
That
makes sense. “Who played Mrs. Claus? Seth?”

“Nope. Me.” K.T. points to another picture, and though K.T.’s face has changed more than Mari’s, once she points it out I can see the resemblance. They’re standing in the center of the stage, their hands clasped together and their faces pressed cheek to cheek as they stare out into the audience with wide eyes.

Glancing at K.T. now, I notice the shadows around her eyes. She stares at the pictures in front of us, and the longer she stares, the bleaker her expression gets. I try to close the book, to hide the pictures of the friend she’s watched disappear in front of her eyes, but she holds it in place.

“Do you really think we can save her?” K.T.’s words are whispered, and she doesn’t look at me.

I want to nod, but I can’t. I’m
not
sure we can save her, but I am sure of something.

“I’m gonna try.”

For a second, everything is frozen. Then K.T. exhales a long, slow breath and the color starts to come back to her cheeks.

“I guess that’s all we can do. Try.”

Twenty-Six

Mariella

Friday, September 5 – 12:00 AM

Before I can say a word to Orane, he sweeps me onto the back of a black horse and races across the lavender field. The thudding hoofbeats make my headache worse. For a second, I forget the sprains in my hand and try to grip the horse’s mane to steady myself. Pain rockets up my arm, and I gasp, my vision blurring.

Warmth spreads through my body, starting at the spot where Orane’s hand rests on my arm and spreading down to my hand.

“You should be more careful,” Orane whispers in my ear.

The intense sparks of pain shift to a dull throb. Dark and deep, the bruises are as bad as ever, but by the time the heat fades, the pains in my hand and in my head are almost gone. Sighing, I lean into Orane’s embrace and smile, letting myself enjoy the wild ride.

After the agony and the strangeness of today, it’s so nice to let go of the questions that have been spinning in my head as relentlessly as a hyper hamster trapped in an exercise wheel. Like I’ve suddenly shed twenty pounds of dead weight. The worries aren’t gone, but for now they drift somewhere behind us as Orane’s steed runs so fast it’s almost like flying.

Too soon—
far
too soon—the black stallion slows, and Orane helps me slide from his back. My bare feet settle into the grass, and the breeze plays against my skin. I close my eyes and breathe in the comfort of the lavender. I take a deep breath and…it’s not there. Breathing again, I wait for the scent to hit me, but it doesn’t. Nothing does. I smell nothing.

I open my eyes to make sure I can see lavender in the distance. It’s there. Purple lavender and blue forget-me-nots and lilacs. But I can’t smell any of it. I can’t smell anything.

Orane steps in front of me and runs his fingertip along the creases that have dug into my forehead.

“What troubles you so, Mariella?”

His violet eyes meet mine, and I start pouring out everything that happened today. I’m still so confused. It’s lucky K.T. and Hudson were there to help me when I came out of whatever fog I spent the morning in. The more I tell Orane, the thicker the lines around his eyes get and the deeper his frown becomes.

When my words run dry, he pulls me against his chest, kisses the top of my head, and strokes my hair. “I wish I could have been there to help you through such a day.”

I hold him tight, breathing deep and smelling nothing. Before I can tell Orane, he pulls back and smiles.

“I had not planned on telling you so soon, but I think you need good news today.”

His eyes are sparkling, and he looks so excited I can’t help smiling back. “Good news? What kind of good news?”

“The kind I have been waiting for years of your time to be able to share with you.” His voice is soft but intense, and his hands are warm when he brings them up to my cheeks. “Mariella, I may have found a way to bring you here for good.”

My heart stops, and tremors run through my entire body, a spasm that feels like my muscles are trying to tear themselves away from the bone. I almost scream in pain, but his lips descend on mine and then the pain doesn’t matter anymore because Orane is kissing me.

His long fingers tangle in my hair, and he holds me like he’s afraid I’m going to disappear. Blazing heat spreads across my skin, the kind that turns my thoughts to dust and makes my knees buckle. This kiss goes deeper than any other we’ve shared. He kisses me with a passion I thought was reserved for movies, with a consuming intensity I thought was impossible.

He kisses me like he’s saying goodbye.

The longer the kiss lasts, the less I care about memories or injuries or missing out on the lavender scent of his world. What does any of it matter when I have him?

Twenty-Seven

Hudson

Friday, September 5 – 7:40 AM

K.T. slides to a stop in front of me as I wait for Mariella to arrive Friday morning.

“Have you ever heard of Dr. Lucas Carroll?” she asks before I can say hello.

“No. Unless you mean the guy who wrote
Alice in Wonderland
?”

K.T. rolls her eyes. “No, that was
Lewis
Carroll.”

“I know. So, no, then. Who is he?”

“A
neurologist
!” K.T. grins, but I can’t see why she’s so excited about neurology all of a sudden. “I found an article he wrote online about sudden-onset comas.”

Okay,
now
I’m a little more interested.

“He theorizes certain coma cases are related, caused by a phenomenon unlike anything science has seen.”

Her eyebrows go up and mine follow. But maybe not for the same reason.

Cases?
Plural
? How many has he found? And how many of them are victims of the same demons that got Emily? That almost got me?

My chest aches. While I’m in the middle of nowhere trying to save Mariella, how many other kids are about to fall into their trap?

K.T.’s smile gets wider. “He talks about energy and brain waves that shoot off the charts for no apparent reason, and he insists there’s a
paranormal
aspect to the cases.”

“He might know something. You think he can help us get through to Mari?” I ask, not quite sure where she’s going with this.

The smile fades a little. “Maybe?” She hesitates, and her cheeks heat up. “Um, no. I
was
researching for ways to help Mari, but when I found Carroll, I thought he could maybe help Emily.”

My instinct is to remind her that Mariella is on a deadline, while Emily has been in the exact same condition for four years. She can probably wait another few weeks. I
want
to say that, but I don’t. Because if I were her, I’d hate to hear someone say that.

Dana’s black SUV pulls into the drop-off circle, and I take a step toward the car.

“Call him if you think he can help,” I tell her, “but I have to focus on one fight at a time.” She glances over her shoulder at Mari. When she meets my eyes again, I add, “If I survive Mari’s eighteenth, I’ll do whatever I can to help you with Emily, all right?”

Dana is starting to pull away, so I run toward her, flagging her down to get her to stop.

“Morning, Hudson.” She smiles, but she looks tired. The circles around her eyes are too dark to be completely hidden by her makeup, and her blinks are slow.

“Sorry. I, uh, I wanted to catch you before you left. We have this history project we have to do in groups, and Mari is in a group with K.T. and me.”

Dana’s eyes widen. “A
group
project? Mari doesn’t usually—”

“Well, she volunteered,” I lie. There isn’t a project, but K.T. and I need
some
excuse to spend a ton of time at Mari’s house, and this was the best we could come up with last night. “And I think she’s getting used to us.”

Dana looks toward Mari in time to watch K.T. give her a hug and start talking to her about something. I can’t hear it from here, but I hope it’s the “project” we need to start working on. A sniffle from Dana pulls my eyes away from their conversation, and I realize there are tears running down her cheeks.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Dana laughs and wipes her eyes, but then she looks up at me and gives up, letting the tears fall as she smiles. “Hudson, maybe this is crazy, but she’s changed so much since she met you. She’s been leaving the house and spending time with friends and she smiles more often when she’s with the two of you. You and K.T. are practically bringing her back to life, and it’s—”

She covers her mouth with her hand, her other hand patting my arm. I force a smile onto my face and cover her hand with my own, waiting the moment out.

Dana’s gratitude is like a choke chain around my throat. Each heartfelt tear pulls it tighter until it gets hard to breathe. She’s thanking me. She’s
thanking
me for bringing Mari back to life when, a week from tonight, Mari might fall out of it completely.

“You’re welcome to come over whenever you want,” Dana says when she regains the ability to speak. “You have a standing invitation at our house. Project or not.”

I force my smile wider and nod. “Thanks, Dana. I can bring Mari home after school if you want.”

We arrange the details, and Dana promises to call Horace and invite him for dinner before she drives off. Grinning. Like I need more pressure to succeed.

I don’t have to introduce myself to Mariella this morning, but K.T. and I don’t push our luck. After we fill Mari in on the “project” she missed yesterday, we talk about inconsequential things—homework assignments, sports, clothes. K.T. and I are careful to not let Mari out of our sight or say anything to piss off the demon listening through her brightly lit nightingale pendant.