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Chapter
18
The
Ghost and St. Rose
The
glowing red digits on Felix’s clock informed him that it was 3:15. Lucas’s desk
lamp was making an island of light in the darkened room. He didn’t remember
turning it on. He rubbed his eyes, then looked over at Lucas’s bed. Still
unmade. But no Lucas. He lay there for a while trying to go back to sleep, but
it was an exercise in absurdity. He was wide awake, uncomfortable (he was still
wearing his clothes from the day before), and feeling terrible. He’d let the
sadness go too far and it had carried him away. Now it was like a physical
sickness; it was sticking to him, coating him. If he didn’t get it off, it
would burn right through his skin and eat at him for days.
His spine popped like dominos when he
stood up and stretched. He threw on a hooded sweatshirt and a baseball hat and
slipped out of the dorm, emerging into a cool misty drizzle. There wouldn’t be
another warm day until May—just another thing to be depressed about. No one was
hanging out in the Freshman Yard except for a clutch of kids smoking cigarettes
under a tree on the north end by Satler, where it looked like the party was
still raging. Music was pouring out through open windows on the top two floors.
He thought his friends must still be there, and wondered if they were having
fun. Of course they were having fun. Why
wouldn’t they be?
I
should’ve gone to the party,
he thought miserably, giving himself a swift mental kick to the ass. Now he was
missing out on a good time and he still wouldn’t get any sleep before the game.
Instead, he was about to wander the campus like a loser when he could be…what? Hooking up with Harper? Not
likely. But he felt like he had a shot. Of course he had no shot at all if he
didn’t try. He was telling himself that he wasn’t at the party because of Coach
Bowman’s dumb rules. But the rules were just that: dumb. He could get around
them; Bowman didn’t have a spy network reporting back to him on rule-breakers.
So did that mean he wasn’t trying?
But why wouldn’t he try? He wanted to
hook up with Harper. Desperately. Thinking about ravaging her perfect body
occupied almost as much time as football practice; it was how he made it
through his classes when he grew bored or couldn’t focus. But if they did hook
up—big if—it wouldn’t end there. She
would want to get to know him. Of course. And it wouldn’t take long—maybe five
minutes—for Harper to realize he was a total wreck. And once she discovered
that she would reject him. Just like Emma had rejected him. He couldn’t handle
that. Despite how much he liked her. Not even Harper was worth that risk.
With a very melancholy soundtrack
playing in his head, he dug his hands into the pockets of his sweatshirt and
headed toward The Yard. He turned and walked backward for a spell, letting his
feet feel their way along the cobblestones in the soft glow of the pathlights.
From a distance, Downey looked peaceful—the rooms were dark, the blinds drawn—a
tomb compared to Satler. Everyone in Downey was asleep . . . or getting lucky. But
not Felix. Luck had a strong aversion to him.
He passed by the first few lecture halls
on the north side of The Yard without seeing a soul. There was nothing but
empty paths and lawns drifted with wet heavy leaves. Alone with his thoughts,
he began thinking about the guy he’d caught staring up at his room. The guy. It didn’t have to be a guy, of
course. Girls could be stalkers too. Either way, he couldn’t understand why
anyone would wait out in the rain just to catch a glimpse of Lucas with his
shirt off. So what if he was on TV. What was the point? He just didn’t get it.
Voices off to his right made him jump.
His eyes flitted up to a sheltering overhang at the entrance of the Culver
building where he found the culprits: two kids making out. Felix wasn’t alone
after all. He watched them for a moment and a puddle of cold water that
submerged his sneaker right up to the shoelaces was the reward for his
voyeurism.
The Yard looked as desolate as a stretch
of farmland. Dew frosted the grass, sparkling beneath the haze. He drew in a deep
breath as he rolled the kinks from his neck. He liked the way everything
smelled. It was as if the trees and plants were giving off some wonderful
floral scent in appreciation of the long drink the elements had bestowed on them.
The cold was depressing, though he didn’t mind the rain. When you grow up in a
town where it’s sloppy wet 250 days a year you have one choice: get used to it.
He wasn’t sure where he was going. But
that was the plan. He didn’t care where he ended up. The night air felt good;
it was already having a soothing effect. He passed another shadowed lecture
hall and found a path that wound its way north as it hugged a dense thicket of
sculpted shrubs. It split into two paths to accommodate a specimen tree of some
sort, then reconnected on the other side at the edge of an English garden
tucked in behind the building. He’d never been this way before. He didn’t stop
to admire the plantings, though he was sure they were quite lovely.
Horticulture wasn’t his thing. The mist was thickening, creating a haloing
effect with the pathlights. Just past the garden, he came to a clearing where
five trees were standing guard like monstrous sentinels—the Star Trees. The towering goliaths formed
the shape of a five-pointed star, each tree acting as a point. He’d heard some
kids talking about it at the dorm, but he didn’t know where it was. Until now.
As he neared the southernmost tree, he
stopped to have a look around. He tilted his head back, trying to see the tops,
but swirling curtains of fog covered them up. The rain lightly spritzed his
face like a spray bottle set to mist. It was refreshing. Coming outside had
turned out to be a good idea; it was just what he needed. He looked back down
and started toward the—
A woman, her back turned to him, stood
in the center of the clearing. The sight of her startled him, freezing him in
place for a moment. He was sure she wasn’t there just a second ago. He kept his
eyes on her as he reached out for the tree next to him, feeling the rough bark
brush across his fingertips as he slid slowly past it. Her clothes were really
odd; it looked like she’d gotten lost on her way home from a costume
party—Cinderella came to mind. She was wearing a flowing blue dress that
bunched up on the ground all around her. The dress was sleeveless, and her
arms, so pale that they shone, hung loosely at her sides. Her hair was dark and
long—he couldn’t tell if it was brown or black—and it cascaded in lustrous
gentle curls to her narrow waist.
“Hey,” Felix called out, approaching the
woman. “What are you doing out here?” The rain stopped all at once. Of their
own accord, his eyes flicked up to the enormous branches of the Star Trees
which all met in the center of the clearing, forming a canopy that kept
everything beneath them comfortably dry.
She cocked her head and tucked a loose
strand of hair behind her ear. Her cheek and the visible part of her jaw were
so white it looked like she was wearing stage makeup. If it wasn’t 3:30 in the
morning, he would have thought she was about to perform at the school theater.
“Hey,” he said again. She was close now,
no more than ten feet away. Her arms were disturbingly pale, and he wondered if
she was standing next to a light he couldn’t see. Something had to be making
her appear this way. Or was something wrong with her? Was she sick?
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She nodded twice, stiffly.
“Are you hurt?” He took another step. He
was close enough to smell her perfume if she was wearing any—she wasn’t.
Another step. If he reached out he could touch her.
She shook her head. Her shimmering
hair—it was dark, but not quite black—swayed elegantly over her shoulders and
across her back. His eyes followed the contours of her slender arms down to her
fingers, long and delicate, ending in fingernails that were flawless, and
somewhat pointy. Her fingers were white. Too white. Bone white. Vampire! he thought suddenly, his heart
lurching to his throat. An icy fear swept over him as he looked up, expecting
to see the face of a monster.
But the person in front of him didn’t
have fangs. And she wasn’t a monster. Far from it. The beautiful woman before
him was staring at him, the traces of an inscrutable smile hovering at the
edges of her red lips. Her green eyes blazed like smoldering emeralds, roaming
over his face, measuring him. She looked older than the girls on campus, but
not that much older, and it was hard for Felix to gauge her exact age because
his brain had shifted into panic mode like the time he went camping in the fourth
grade and discovered he was sharing his sleeping bag with a garter snake.
And then—without warning—she turned and
ran.
Felix
felt his feet lift off the ground and take flight after her.
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Happy Reading!
~!~ Amanda, Novel Addiction ~!~
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