The Reaping of Norah Bentley (19 page)

I started to my feet, stumbling a little thanks to my sore knee. My teeth were clenched together in pain when I spoke again.

“A person who really cared,” I said, “would have actually done something that night. Would have faced things, instead of running away from them like I always do.”

Eli was standing now too, offering his hand when I stumbled. I didn’t take it, and I didn’t look at him as I said, “Why are we talking about me, anyway? You’ve got somewhere to be, don’t you? With the happy man. The happy man is waiting for you.”

“He’s got a few more hours,” he said, reaching and taking my hand anyway.

My eyes were on the ground, and that was where they stayed. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to look at him; I could just feel the corners of my eyes getting damp, and I couldn’t let him see that.

But he took a step closer, and then the tips of his fingers were suddenly resting underneath my chin. I tried to pull away, but he cupped his hand against the side of my face and lifted it toward him. His hand slid back, pushing the tangled mess of hair away from my face. His thumb brushed along the side of my cheek as it went, collecting a stray teardrop.

“You’re not running now, though,” he said.

A sudden feeling overwhelmed me, like the wary relief that comes when you finally remember something that you’ve known all along, something you’ve had on the tip of your tongue but just couldn’t seem to spit out. I looked straight into his eyes, saw myself reflected in their perfect clarity.

“No,” I said. “I guess I’m not.”

He tilted his head forward. Our noses touched.

“So. I guess you don’t
always
run away,” he said.

I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time, at the complete truth and absurdity of what he was saying—the same absurdity that had struck me last night, when I was lying in his arms thinking I should probably run. But I didn’t run then, and I wasn’t running now. He was right. I couldn’t really explain it, couldn’t comprehend what had happened to me these past few days. I just knew I didn’t want to run from him.

So I met his eyes, and I managed a small smile.

“Well,” I said, as smugly as I could, “I don’t see much reason to run. For the supposed manifestation of death, you’re not especially terrifying.”

His face brightened, and he pretended to look hurt. “I can be extremely terrifying, when I want to be.”

“I’m almost positive that’s not true.”

“It’s because I don’t have the scythe, isn’t it?”

“Or the cloak,” I reminded him.

He sighed a mock sigh. “Or that.”

I laughed a little, and the movement shook free the few tears still clinging to my eyelashes. Eli caught them before they’d even slid past my nose.

“But even if you had that stuff,” I said, lowering my gaze again. “Your eyes would still give you away.” My voice got quieter towards the end, and I could feel the warm color rising in my cheeks.

“My eyes?”

I shrugged. “They…they’re too blue. Too calming, too…I don’t know.” I looked up from the safety of the ground, because just talking about his eyes, just thinking about them, made me want to look in them myself. Made me want to face them, even though I started to tremble the second I did.

“They’re just not scary,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “Not the eyes of somebody who could end a life.”

He was quiet for a minute, just studying my face through those eyes like I was something beautiful—something worth memorizing. Then he pulled me toward him and gently brushed his lips against mine.

Up until about twelve hours ago, I’d only kissed one guy in my entire life. Owen Matthews. Eighth grade spring social. Although, I don’t even know if that one counted, since the second his friends saw us and started whistling, he backed off—so our lips only touched for like, a millisecond.

Now, I’d kissed two guys in less than one day. And one of them was my best friend. This was bad.

This
was
bad.

So, why did the thought of seeing Eli again make me feel lightheaded in the best possible way? And why did it feel like he’d been gone for days, instead of just a couple hours? I saw him every time I closed my eyes. I relived the scene over and over in my mind—his hands entwined with mine, his strong arms pulling me toward him, and the way our mouths had fit so perfectly together…

I walked to the corner of my room and grabbed my guitar from its stand. I needed to distract myself with something. Anything. Because this was bad. Bad, bad, bad. I shouldn’t have been thinking like this. At least not until I sorted things out with Luke—and even then, there were so many other things that made this all wrong. I could see my reflection in the vanity’s mirror, and even though it was all the way across the room, the scratch across my cheek still burned a bright red, and the thought of seeing Sam again made my fingers tremble, made me drop the guitar pick I’d just grabbed off my nightstand. I dropped to my knees and started absently patting around on the cold hardwood floor beneath my bed, searching until my fingers finally closed around the flimsy plastic.

Now that I was down here, I didn’t seem to be able to get up; so I stayed on the floor and rested my forehead against the side of my mattress, the hand holding the pick clenched and braced against the floor. I closed my eyes again, and this time I saw Eli’s face—still beautiful but tired now, the shadows sinking into it, spreading over his whole body and weighting it down. Shadows that wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for me, keeping him from doing what he was supposed to be doing.

But if he left me—if I really could manage to stay away from him—what would that mean?

I didn’t want to think about it anymore, so I turned around and leaned back against the bed, reached up and pulled my guitar down into my lap. It was an automatic reaction then, once I got it into place: my fingers positioning themselves on the fret board, the pick suddenly between my thumb and index finger, and then strumming. Not any specific song. I was just strumming. It had been weeks since I’d played, and the calluses I’d built up on my fingertips had already started to heal. So the steel strings sank into them with a pain that was wonderfully distracting, and I pressed harder and harder still, knowing that it was worth it. The pain was worth it. I could endure it, because the harder I pressed, the more beautiful, the more smooth the chords sounded. The easier the sound was to get lost in.

And that’s exactly what I did, for what had to have been at least an hour. I played random chords, hummed whatever tune popped into my head, all while staring blankly around my room at the vague shapes of furniture, at the mess of clothes and school books and everything else I probably should have been cleaning up.

My gaze flickered over my dresser about a dozen times. And every time it paused a little longer on the row of pictures along the back of it, until my eyes focused on them long enough for the frames to take definite shape, to break my blank stare for a second. The guitar strings buzzed uncertainly as my fingers dropped away from them and I got to my feet. I shuffled over to my dresser and just stood in front of it for a second, picking up the picture frames one by one, tilting them up and down to try and get rid of the glare from the sunlight streaming through the window.

And I guess that’s when it really hit me for the first time, while my fingers traced the smudged glass, paused beside the faces of my family and friends. That this is what I would have lost that night, if it hadn’t been for Eli. This was what I might still lose.

I reached for one of the center photos, the one I’d been trying not to look at. There the three of us were—me and Luke and Rachel, sunburned and smiling on the porch of the beach house Luke’s grandparents owned. And behind us, the serene, glass-surfaced ocean. I’d sworn I was never going back to that beach, or any beach—not after what happened that night. I’d started avoiding swimming pools, too, and the lake, and even puddles that I couldn’t easily see the bottom of. I didn’t even like looking at this picture, even though here the water was contained— tiny-looking, even, an afterthought back there behind us. Perfectly harmless.

I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t stop staring at it, either—not until someone knocked on my door. I went to answer it, the picture still in my hand. When I pulled the door open, though, the picture slid from my hands and I just barely managed to catch it before it hit the ground.

“Nice reflexes,” Eli said, flashing his brilliant smile.

My heart double-thumped as Helen looked at him—my Helen, living, breathing, not-even-a-little-bit-dead Helen. And then she nodded in agreement. She was looking straight at him.

I was too shocked to say anything, so I just nodded too, and took a long time straightening up, checking the picture like I wanted to make sure it was still intact.

Helen cleared her throat. “I’ve just met your little friend Elijah,” she said, alternating glances between me and him.

“You have?” I managed in a semi-normal pitched voice. Today was just getting better and better.

“Why haven’t you introduced me before?” Helen’s voice was even, her smile pleasantly fake.

“I…” My eyes darted nervously to Eli. I kept them there on his confident smile while I answered, “I’ve been meaning to. Just…We’ve both been so busy, I didn’t want to bother you, I—”

She shook her head. “It wouldn’t have been a bother.”

“Oh. Well, um…Helen, Eli—Eli, Helen. There. And now that we all know each other, I really need to talk to Eli.” I reached for his hand. Helen raised her pencil-stroke eyebrows, and I quickly added, “About this stupid Geometry homework, because it’s been frustrating the crap out of me for about an hour now.”

Eli was quick to pick up the cover story.

“You guys are studying Desargues’ theorem, right?” he asked, stepping into the room.

I didn’t even know who Desargue was, but I nodded anyway.

“Yeah, and I don’t understand
any
of it.” I groaned—maybe a little too dramatically. Helen seemed to buy it, though.

“Well, I’ll leave you all to that,” she said slowly. But before she turned to leave, she pressed my bedroom door open the rest of the way and gave me a deliberate look. “It’s a little stuffy in here—you should probably keep this door open for a while.”

So apparently, I was still twelve years old.

“Yeah, sure.” My cheeks were already burning, but Helen wasn’t done.

“And if you two are going anywhere tonight,” she said, “you need to finish that homework first.”

“Okay.”

She still didn’t leave, and instead reached toward me and lifted the hair out of my face. “Norah, what happened to your face?”

“I tripped,” I said impatiently.

“What, into a pile of broken glass?”

“It doesn’t look
that
bad. It’s just a scratch.”

“You should be more careful.”

I wanted to ask her just how careful she would’ve been if an Archangel of Death was chasing
her,
but instead I just said,

“Point taken.” I gave her a deliberate look of my own and glanced toward the stairs at the end of the hall. “I feel like I’ll probably be safe doing Geometry, though. If you’ll excuse us.”

“Right. Good luck.” She still looked unsure. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve said she looked genuinely worried—the look on her face was somehow different then the haughty disapproval I was used to. Her hand dropped slowly away from the cut on my face.

“I’ll be right downstairs if you need anything,” she said. Then—like she’d flipped a switch in her brain— the smugness was instantly back, etched as deeply into the lines on her face as ever. She gave Eli one last glance-over, me one last I-know-what-teenagers-do-behind-closed-doors look, and then she finally left.

I sunk back into my room and pushed the door as close to shut as I dared, listened until I didn’t hear Helen’s footsteps anymore before turning to Eli. He was still smiling.

“I should warn you,” he said in a low voice, “I was never very good at Geometry.”

I smirked. “Well it’s a good thing my Geometry teacher hasn’t assigned a single page of homework all year, then.”

He grinned back at me, and for a moment we were just like two kids, thrilled with the thought of having outsmarted the grown-ups. But it only took a second for the reality of the situation to hit me.

“You want to explain what just happened? What are you doing introducing yourself to Helen? Showing yourself to her?”

“I told you this morning that I could do it.” He frowned a little. “Weren’t you listening?”

“Of course I was— and I was
also
listening to the part about Sam and the others not liking it, and about how sick it made you.”

“I was feeling more energized than usual—because of you, I think.” He shrugged, and suddenly his grin was back. “So I figured a few minutes of quality human time wouldn’t kill me.”

I just shook my head.