The Keeper's Vow (30 page)

Michael turned red and put his half eaten
candy cane back on the table. “Is it still worth fifty?”

Katie found Tristan’s eyes and they laughed.
Laughing with him made her feel invincible. If she were wearing a
paper bag it wouldn’t matter. He made her feel pretty. Katie
grabbed of few of Allison’s skittles sending Allison into a fit.
“Stop eating my skittles, Kay,” she yelled, throwing her cards onto
the table. Katie laughed so hard, she choked on skittle juice.

She caught her breath and looked around the
table. Everyone was laughing. They were all as red faced as she
felt, even Allison who graced them all with her cancer curing
smile. Faces she had grown to dislike and was envious of, were
smiling back at her. She’d always spent her time with Tristan, she
never considered the others as potential friends.

“How about we stop playing cards and just
eat candy?” Jenn said. She had a nice smile too. Katie would have
liked her if she hadn’t slapped her in the head three times.

They all threw their cards into the middle
of the table and unwrapped candy. Everyone except Tristan. He
looked uncomfortable, stuck between pretending to eat, like he did
at school, or sticking out. Katie stood up and grabbed his
candy.

“You just got jacked by the candy ninja,”
she said before she realized how stupid it was.

“What?” Adam said, starting to laugh
again.

“I don’t think it’s ninja if I saw you,”
Tristan said, stealing back a skittle. He popped it in his mouth
and scrunched up his face. He squinted his eyes and swallowed
hard.

“What’s wrong? Don’t like food?” Brian said,
draining the rest of his egg nog.

“I almost forgot you were here,” Tristan
sighed.

“I live here.”

“So do I.”

“I did too once,” Katie said. “You live down
the hall right?” She looked at Brian. “I
knew
you looked
familiar.”

“You
all
live together?” Christi
asked. Her voice startled Katie. She had been so quiet—
how
unlike her
.

“I don’t anymore,” Katie trailed off.
Talking about it felt like an invasion of privacy. She never should
have mentioned it.

“Oh. How about you Tristan, you’re Brian’s
cousin right?” Christi wasn’t taking the hint.

“Something like that,” Brian said, raising
his eyebrows.

“Sorry, it’s just this is as much as I’ve
heard you talk. You only hang out with Katie and Allison. Not that
there’s anything wrong with that.” Christi said, giving Katie a
look. The look bothered Katie. There was something behind it, like
she was saying,
“it’s true,”
or
“that’s a good
thing.”

Tristan raised his eyebrows and shrugged.
Everyone in the room averted their eyes, pretending not to see his
indifference.

“We might have all hung out last semester,
but Brian kind of ditched us,” Katie said. “I didn’t mean ditch—”
she turned to Brian and offered an apology.

“Well he did,” Allison said under her
breath.

“Don’t be a bitch, Allison.” Brian twirled
his glass.

“Piss off,” Allison smiled back at him.
If looks could kill….

Brian flicked Allison the middle finger, he
always had to have the last word.

“Why
did
you guys stop being
friends?” Michael said, sucking on the rest of his candy cane. “I
thought you were like one step away from getting together.”

“Seriously, Michael? Because that’s not the
most awkward question to ask right now,” Jenn said.

Me and this girl could be friends.

“Well that doesn’t matter anymore. You and
Tristan are like inseparable now, right?” Christi said, nodding her
head. Katie wanted to hit her. Why was everyone talking about her
love life. No. She didn’t
have
a love life, they were making
it into that.

“She can have more than one friend,
Christi,” Brian frowned. Brian emphasized friend.

“That’s right, only you dump off one set of
friends for the other, right?” Tristan said.

“How about we
all
be friends?
Kumbaya? Anyone bring a guitar?” Katie smiled, but no one smiled
back. She was no longer in control of the situation. It was turning
into something—something dangerous.

“I only stopped because she started hanging
around you,” Brian spat back.

“Okay, that’s a lie,” Katie said.

“No it’s not. You two were inseparable the
day he got here,” Brian said with astonishment scribbled on his
face.

“You’ve
got
to be kidding me. You
started avoiding me the day after Preliminaries, and you know why.
Don’t give me that bullshit you’re spewing. I’m not stupid.”

“Bullshit? You’ve been ‘buddy buddy’ with
him rubbing it in my face. Like
you’ve
found a new
best-friend.”

“You’re delusional, Brian.” She flung
M&M’s across the table on accident, but she was too mad to
apologize.

“And you’re spiteful, Katie,” he sang
back.

“Spiteful about what? You ditching me when I
needed you?”

“You’re so full of yourself.”

“
Me
?
I’m
the one with a ego
problem?”

“Yes. I made new friends and you can’t stand
that. Ever since then you’ve been a spiteful little shit.”

“I am not some clingy little girl
,”
Katie yelled.

“
Ha!”
Brian twisted his lips into a
cruel smile.

“If anything, I think she’d be spiteful
about you using her as target practice,” Tristan said.

“Wait,
you
shot
her
? I thought
Katie shot Jenn in the head with yellow paint during preliminaries.
I did hear that right, right?” Michael said, stuffing M&M’s
into his mouth.

“It was an accident,” he mumbled

“Like you being a guardian?” Tristan said,
staring at Brian. An eruption of laughter from the adjacent party
filled the room. It was obnoxious. Un-welcomed.

“Ouch,” Ethan chimed. Katie wanted to get up
and rip his throat out. Where had he come from? He was like a fly
on the wall, big and irritating. A disgusting fly. She wanted to
set fire to his wings and watch him fall off.

“Hey, guys,” Lucinda said, poking her head
in the room. “Everyone come out I have an announcement to make.”
She winked at Katie before she saw the frowns on all there faces.
“Everything all right?”

“Yeah, just ate too much candy,” Katie said,
trying to paste a smile on her face. She left the dining room
feeling like the music was too loud, there was too much laugher,
and too many smiles.

Lucinda waved Tristan up to the fireplace.
Tristan tucked his hands into his pockets—a sign that he was
annoyed.

“This year’s party is more than just another
Christmas party.” All the talking dwindled. “We are also
celebrating the fact that we have a new edition to our house. He’s
just as stubborn as me, but a wonderful boy all the same.” There
were kind laughs and light cheering, as Lucinda raised her glass of
wine in the air and every one toasted to them.

Katie was taken aback. She smiled, but
couldn’t help feel uneasy as she watched Brian in the corner, his
head tossed back, draining a new glass of egg nog.

“This is from Lucy and me,” Will said,
smiling bright. He handed Tristan a small box. “Don’t worry, just a
Christmas Eve present.”

Inside was a homemade stocking for him. No
doubt handmade by Lucinda. Tristan’s face was unreadable. To every
one he looked happy and thankful, but to Katie…. She knew him too
well to know that it was anything but a mask. He searched the crowd
for her and when their eyes met, she knew he hated the stocking. It
meant that he had a home and was wanted. It meant he had to let go
of all the anger and resentment that swam around in his
thoughts.

“That’s just what this family needs. A
halfbreed,” Brian slurred. The chatter died as he made his way
towards the fireplace, another glass in hand, this time it was full
of a dark liquor. He wasn’t even hiding it now.

“Where did you get that?” Lucinda said
between gritted teeth.

Katie quickly moved to him, grabbing his
arm. “Let’s go, Brian.” She needed to get him out of the living
room before everyone noticed he was drunk out of his mind, and
before Lucinda unhinged. But everyone wasn’t looking at him. They
were looking at Tristan.

“Get off me,” Brian yelled, shoving Katie.
His fingers caught in her necklace and it pulled, snapping from off
her neck. She crashed into a woman and hit the ground covered in
eggnog and Brian’s alcohol. Rum, she could smell it and her mind
started to spin.

“Tristan don’t!” Lucinda yelled. In a
instant Tristan was on Brian and Katie was filled with his
hatred.

I should have killed him
, she heard
him think.

Will stepped in front of him and they stared
each other down. Tristan’s jaw was stiff, he breathed rapidly and
his nostrils flared. “Does he have to
shoot
her again before
you believe me?” Tristan said only loud enough for her and Will to
hear. He offered Katie a hand. Her hand touched his, and she felt
it. All the eyes on
them
, as if she were touching a rabid
animal.

“You think you’re better than me? You’ll
never be anything but halfbreed scum. You’ll never be apart of this
family,” Brian yelled red in the face. Spit flew from his mouth.
“You think you can replace me?” Will back-handed him across the
face. Brian fell back a few feet and the room was filled with
gasped. Eyes flickered between Brian holding his face, Will daring
his son to say one more thing, and Tristan.

But the eyes of disgust lingered on Tristan.
Somehow, he was worse than the toxic waste that oozed from Brian.
What if they had known she was like him? People she had known for
years. What would they call her…Katie or halfbreed?

Her dad was making his way towards them.

“Come on Kay,” Allison said, picking up the
necklace from of the floor. It was laying in a puddle of milky
eggnog. Katie let her hand drop out of Tristan’s.

She stared into his stormy blue eyes. The
Black Void sent chaotic waves of rage and misery between them
both—but he turned from her, pulling it all away. She felt nothing.
Nothing but her own fear and fury.

Allison pulled her out of the living room,
and Tristan disappeared out of her sight.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The party was
dying. Katie could hear it die from upstairs. Allison was trying to
get the eggnog out of the dress and cursing Brian to hell. There
was a knock on the door. Katie opened it. Her dad. His eyebrows
rested above his eyes as if to say,
“What did I tell
you?”

“Can you excuse us, Allison?” When the door
closed he sighed. “Now do you see why I didn’t want you to know?
You saw the way they turned on him, and with just one word.”

Katie said she didn’t care, but it did
unnerve her. Her dad looked out the window as people spilled out of
the house like it was the site of an outbreak and they were all in
danger of catching the disease.

“Will and Lucinda are going to lose face
with all these hypocrites,” he said, shaking his head.

When he finished his rant, she said goodbye
to him and he went home. She had packed a bag to stay the night.
She expected the party to last a lot longer than it did.

Will screamed at Brian non-stop; though his
voice was muffled, isolated words like,
“This is it,”
or
“Boarding school,”
lingered in her room.
Boarding
school,
bothered her more than anything else he said. Allison
said that was were kids who got their memories erased went. Will
would never do something like that. He was a calm man. But she
never thought he’d hit Brian the way he did either. Always the
light slap on the back of the head when he wanted to get his point
across. Tonight he hit Brian like a man.

Lucinda kept creeping into her room and
asking if she was all right, apologizing for Brian as if Katie were
a stranger and she, completely embarrassed, was unaware of where
the rage had come from or that it was even there.

When all the noise settled down and Katie
washed the eggnog out of her hair, it was a little passed midnight.
It was Christmas. She looked out the window wrapped in her towel.
Snow blew everywhere, big white puffs covering everything in sight.
At least one thing had gone right amongst all the drama. She felt
guilty. Tristan. What was he thinking right now?

She sat down at her desk and picked up the
book she’d gotten him. She had gone back to the book store and
bought that old copy of Othello. Touching it now made her sure he’d
like it—leather bound, soft, and a little droopy the way an old
worn book is. She could give him his present now—it
was
officially Christmas.