Chapter 34

Aleda walked out of the apartment in a kind of daze. Ever since that incident at the shopping center, the world burned at the edges of her vision like an after-image of itself seared into her retinas. It was so faint, and if she looked at anything directly, the light disappeared and she couldn’t find it. The people in and around the stores had glowed, and Talia shone like brightest dawn.

And Ryan…

She had looked up at him, when she was still on the ground, and she had seen him. She had really seen him, the way that Talia had once begun to tell her about, there behind his eyes. It had been like looking into the sun.

Everything around her was sharper, clearer, just for a few moments. She could see every detail of the dark forest behind them, and she could smell the sweat, fear, and anger coming from Ryan. It had begun to fade after a few seconds, leaving her feeling robbed, but a few traces of the fire lingered in her vision even as Talia guided her back to Mom’s car.

She had told Mom that Nate’s car had a flat tire, so she had to drive. It felt weird lying to her. Mom always knew. But she had just smiled and nodded at the lie and told her to have a good time and Aleda left the house to drive west. West towards Elkton, towards Ryan and Talia, and further and further from Nate. Her boyfriend. He thought she was sleeping over at Mara’s house. She didn’t even know what Mara was doing that night. Val was having another party, of course. Maybe she was there. Aleda hadn’t been to one of those parties for what felt like years.

“Hey, Little Leda, what are you doing on Friday?”

It was Talia. She had walked with her out to Mom’s car, and leaned against the door.

Aleda blinked back to the present and looked at her. “Er, school. Why?”

“I’m having a birthday party Friday night, and you should come,” Talia said.

“Wait… Whose birthday? Your birthday?”

“Of course my birthday!” Talia said brightly. “And the party will be after school, so no worries about that. Very casual—just a bunch of people crowded into the apartment with food and music and all sorts of bloody good times. What do you think?”

“Um… Yes?” Aleda tried. She blinked a few times, trying to get the world to resolve itself.

“Fantastic! Just come on over whenever, I’ll be there all night. Well, unless we decide to go somewhere later, but that won’t be until, well, later. And bring that boy of yours. Sound good?”

Aleda nodded dumbly.

“Alright, I’ll let you get home, Little Leda. See you Friday!”

Aleda grunted something in response and got into the car.

The drive home was a strange one. She kept seeing the drivers flash by inside the cars, and it was very hard to focus on the road, and on not hitting anything. She did make it home, though, and by the time she did the strange afterglows had faded away. She tossed the backpack on the stairs as soon as she got in the door, hoping that neither of her parents saw it. Papá was in the living room, watching television. She wasn’t sure where Mom was.

“Mom?” she called.

“Oh, you’re home!” Mom answered, emerging from the kitchen with a mug of hot chocolate. “How was the date?”

“Er… Great! I had a really good time,” Aleda said. She stood awkwardly in the living room, pulling at her ill-fitted sweater.

“Is that a new sweater, honey?”

Oh, crap.

“Oh, um, yeah. I spilled… dinner on my other one. Other sweater. So we—Nate and I—stopped and… I bought a new one. This one.”

Mom nodded and settled herself onto the couch next to Papá. “Did you bring back the other sweater?”

“No. It was, um, tomato sauce. Covered in tomato sauce, completely ruined. So I threw it away.”

“Oh, honey, I could have at least tried to get the stain out. You really liked that sweater.”

“I guess so… Sorry.”

“No problem. Just don’t throw away any more clothing until I’ve had a look at it, okay honey?”

“Okay, Mom,” Aleda moved towards the stairs, but poked her head back around the corner. “Oh, Mom?”

“Yeah, honey?”

“What do you think I could get Talia for her birthday?”

“Oh, geez, I don’t know, honey. Why do you ask?”

“Well, her birthday party is on Friday, so I should probably get her something.”

Papá frowned. “Wait,” he interjected. “Talia is having a party on Friday? Are we going?”

Aleda froze.

“She called while you were still at work,” Mom said quickly. “But we’re busy that night. I must have forgotten to tell you.” She looked up at Aleda and winked. “Good night, honey.”

Aleda did a double take and hurried upstairs as fast as she could get away with. Downstairs, she could hear Papá mention that she hadn’t been gone very long. Two minutes later she heard a soft knock on her bedroom door. She quickly finished pulling on her pajama bottoms.

“Come in!” she called.

Mom came in and shut the door behind her.

“So,” she whispered. “What really happened tonight?”

“I-I–” Aleda stammered helplessly. She could feel her entire face burning.

Mom offered her a soft smile and sat down next to her on the bed. “I know you didn’t go out with Nate. That boyfriend of yours wears too much cologne—I can always smell him when you come home from a date.” She tilted her head towards Aleda, her nostrils flaring. “Right now, you smell like leather. So,” she said again. “How was the hunt? Kill anything tonight?”

Aleda’s eyes went as round as saucers. “Y-you knew?”

Mom grinned. “You never could lie to me, you know. Besides, you’re my daughter,” she said matter-of-factly. “If you’re anything like me, you’re going out every chance you get to hunt. What about my old crossbow? Is that still working alright?”

“Er, yeah. It works great. The dagger, too,” Aleda added.

Mom frowned. “Now where did you… Oh, that’s right! I must have left it in my violin case! Very handy in a tight corner.”

“Yeah… handy.”

Mom stood and walked towards the door. “Well, I’ll let you get some sleep. If you ever need an excuse, just come to me. Don’t tell your Papá, though. He’s still very protective of you. And no running off to New York—I don’t want you to be too much like me,” she added with another wink.

Aleda was left sitting dumbfounded on her bed.

 

 

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Well, at least she didn’t have to lie about where she was going on Friday night. Mom and Papá were out on some sort of dinner-date, the details of which she wasn’t terribly interested to know, and Nate was coming with her. Since Talia had been so vague about the starting time, she decided it would probably be best to just show up at the same time she had been for the past couple of Saturdays.

There were definitely a few more cars in the apartment complex’s lot than usual. Nate looked in vain for a free spot, and finally ended up double-parking in front of Talia’s rustbucket. He let Aleda go in front of him on the way up to Talia’s apartment on the second floor, but jumped in front of her to knock on the door. Always ready for a party, that one.

“Come on in!” a voice called from the inside, so Nate opened the door and strode inside, leaving Aleda to juggle the few small packages that were meant to be Talia’s birthday presents. Mom and Papá had gotten a couple of trinkets for her as well, although nothing large since Mom said that Talia didn’t like to be tied down with lots of stuff.

There were several people inside the apartment already, clustered around the small kitchen table and crowded onto the couch, which had been moved to face the middle of the room. Talia was somewhere in the thick of them, a bag of chips in her hand; Ryan was sitting in the middle of the couch, looking crowded and uncomfortable. Aleda shot him a sympathetic glance, but his attention was on Nate, who had found his way over to the birthday girl and was offering her a congratulatory hug. Honestly, what was his problem?

Aleda shrugged to herself and followed Nate over to Talia. She hoped the card she had gotten was alright. None of the sweet or sappy ones really seemed to fit her, although she had come close to picking one with a cute puppy on the front. She had finally found one with a half-naked man on the cover and a joke about being “over the hill” that was just ironic enough to work.

“Hiya, Little Leda! Glad you came!” Talia exclaimed when she saw her “Whatcha got?”

“Oh, here, these are for you,” Aleda said, handing over the card and packages. “Happy birthday!”

“Thanks! Ooh, hot guy!” Talia pulled out the card Aleda had given her and admired the front, then laughed when she read the inside. “But you didn’t have to get me anything!”

Aleda shrugged. “Well, I wanted to.” It was just a little crystal suncatcher.

Talia grinned when she saw it, and hugged Aleda. “Thanks, Little Leda! I love it!”

“Oh, hey, um…” Aleda leaned close. “Are these people, er…?”

Talia shook her head. “Just a few, from Philly. The rest are people from work.” She giggled. “They all think I’m twenty-two. Oh, remind me to pretend to get drunk in a few hours!”

Aleda snorted. “If you say so.”

“Hey, come here, come here, you have to meet Pizza Boy!” Talia grabbed Aleda by the hand and dragged her over to where a very cute boy was munching from a plate of—yes—pizza bites. “He’s nineteen,” Talia whispered in her ear. Aleda stared at her, properly scandalized.

“Cradle-robber!” she playfully accused.

Talia shrugged. “Yeah, well… Hey, Pizza Boy! This is my cousin Aleda. Aleda, Pizza Boy.”

The young man held out his hand. “It’s Trevor, actually. Nice to meet you.”

“You too.” She turned back to Talia. “You really call him Pizza Boy?”

The little blonde winked at her boytoy. “He likes it. Hey, where’s yours?”

Aleda looked around. The last time she had seen Nate, he had been headed for the couch. There was an American football match on the television, and a bunch of guys were clustered around it watching the game. Nate had found himself a spot on the crowded couch with the rest of them. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any more room on the couch, so she set herself down on top of Nate.

He looked up at her. “What, am I your pillow now?”

“You don’t mind, do you?” she asked.

“Naah, you’re not that heavy. Hey guys, this is Aleda.”

“Talia’s cousin, right?” one of them asked. Aleda nodded. “We work at the Old Navy with her. Nice to meet you.”

“Geez, Nate, your girlfriend’s hot!” another said. Aleda blushed, and Nate grinned.

“Yeah, she’s alright,” he said, and wrapped his arm around her legs. “It’s why I keep her around, after all.”

“You mean you don’t ‘keep her around’ for her company?” Ryan asked mildly, from the other side of the couch. He was flipping through one of Talia’s magazines.

“Hey, chill dude,” Nate said. He pulled Aleda more tightly into his lap.

“I’m very chill, dude,” Ryan countered with the same placid tone. He turned a page, his eyes not leaving the magazine. “I’m not the one manhandling my girlfriend in public.”

“What the hell is your problem?” Nate demanded. “Seriously?” He snorted. “It’s not like I’m doing anything I haven’t done to her in private.”

Ryan snarled.

Aleda covered her eyes with her hand. Here they went. She’d recognize that look anywhere. Her only hope now was to stay the hell out of it and hope it was over soon.

“What, exactly, do you mean?” Ryan said through gritted teeth. “Manhandling? Or treating Aleda like a piece of meat?”

“Look, dude, just because you haven’t touched a girl since the eighties, doesn’t mean I can’t.”

…Oh, geez, Nate really didn’t know when to stop sometimes. Aleda looked around desperately, her eyes going anywhere but to either of them.

“Do you really want to go down this road?” Ryan growled. He stood, dropping the magazine to the floor.

“Hey, come on man, take a joke! Hell, take a hint from that sister of yours. Word is, she knows how to have a good time. How many of these guys here has she slept with, again?”

Ryan had heard enough. In one step he had covered the distance between them and was dragging Nate up by his shirt collar. He caught Aleda with his other arm and set her on her feet.

“Hey, now--!” she protested.

Ryan wasn’t paying any attention to her. He had both hands on Nate’s collar, now, and he had dragged him up until they were practically eye-to-eye. “You do not talk about Talia,” he said in a low, dangerous voice. “You do not talk about Aleda. …In fact, you do not talk at all.”

“Ryan, please,” Aleda begged. “People are looking.” Every last person in that apartment was staring at the spectacle, actually. Even Talia was watching with a curious—and rather amused, oddly enough—look on her face.

“Let them look,” he suggested. “Maybe they’ll learn something.”

“S**t, dude, you’ve got some serious issues,” Nate put in, despite his position.

“Mostly? I just don’t like you.” A cold, predatory smirk that Aleda did not like at all appeared on his lips.

“I hear you’re not too fond of Aleda, either, from what she tells me, but I haven’t heard anything about you roughing her up. Or have I just not heard about it?” Nate persisted.

Ryan hurled him over the couch with a disgusted noise.

“Ryan!”

He turned to Aleda with blazing eyes. “He was out of line.”

She gave him a hard look and hurried over to where Nate had landed on the floor. “Are you alright?” she asked, fussing over him. He stood up with only a little difficulty and turned his head to glare at Ryan.

“I’m fine. Let’s go, Leda.” Nate grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the door, barely giving her a chance to grab up her purse.

“Wait!” Talia said. “Don’t go! Please? It’s my birthday!”

Aleda looked sadly over at her friend. “I’m sorry, Talia. I hope you have a great birthday. Enjoy the suncatcher.” She turned her gaze to Ryan, who had moved in front of the door. “Don’t worry,” she said, a little more coldly. “I won’t be bringing him back here any time soon.”

He clenched his jaw and opened the door dramatically, ushering them through. “See you tomorrow,” he said pointedly to Aleda. He glowered at Nate as he passed. “…And her name is Aleda.”