“Oh, Ariella.” My mother’s words had heavy gray bottoms like snow clouds.
I sat without moving, numbed by her worry.
After a while, Dashay said, “Maybe he won’t say anything. Maybe the alcohol will make him forget.”
But I was remembering something my father had said. “Remember that what you learn carries weight. With knowledge comes the obligation to use it justly.”
Chapter Four
Have you ever heard a good song that had the word eternity in its lyrics? I haven’t.
Since I received a portable music player from Mãe for my birthday, I’d downloaded hundreds of songs and looked up their lyrics on the Internet. When I did a search for eternity, what came up were lines such as: “I know we’ll be happy for eternity.” “We will be together for eternity.” “I’ll wait for you for all eternity.” All written by mortals, who didn’t have an inkling of what they were talking about.
I was thinking about writing my own song when my cell phone rang. Mãe had bought me the phone to “stay in touch with friends.” So far I’d used it only a few times. When it rang, I jumped.
“That Ari?” The voice was distorted, but I could tell it was Autumn’s.
“Hi,” I said.
“We’re going to the mall. You want to come?”
The alternative was helping Leon sand window frames. “Sure,” I said. I couldn’t read any emotion in her voice, and I was curious to see what sort of reception I’d get. Even if it was hostile, I figured that at least I’d know what Jesse had told them about the night I’d hypnotized him.
They showed up at the front gate an hour later. Autumn had said half an hour, so I’d been waiting awhile when the dusty brown car appeared, moving slowly up the road.
Jesse was driving. He smiled at me and waved—not what I’d expected.
Autumn sat in the front, and I slid in back next to Mysty. Jesse’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. “Morning, Ari. How are you doing?”
“I’m fine. Thanks.”
Mysty looked from me to Jesse and back again. Autumn turned around in her seat. “Jesse says you two had quite a talk last week.” She winked at me.
She and Mysty both wanted to know what had happened. That meant Jesse hadn’t told them.
I decided to be as honest as I dared. “I gave Jesse some advice,” I said. “Slow down and don’t drink.”
Mysty’s blue eyes were skeptical, but Autumn said, “It worked. This whole week, he hasn’t had even one beer for breakfast. Or any other time that I’ve been around.”
“He’s sure not driving the way he did,” Mysty said. “It took us two years to get over here. What’s up with that big fence around your house?”
“It’s to keep out hunters,” I said. Many vampires gate their houses for security reasons. It’s not that we can’t handle intruders; it’s that we prefer not to.
Jesse kept glancing back at me, his eyes full of devotion. He thought I was pretty. He didn’t have a clear memory of being hypnotized, only a sense of admiring me, trusting me, and thanking me for the opportunity to be a hero.
Autumn and Mysty noticed the way he looked at me. Autumn said, “We going to the mall, or what?” She stared out the window, her eyes invisible behind sunglasses that always made her look bored.
The mall near Crystal River was my second shopping mall; the first had been outside Saratoga Springs, NY. Both had movie theaters and Sears and such—but the Crystal River mall suffered from a pervasive retail malaise. “Going Out of Business” signs were on half the stores.
Nonetheless, on a Saturday morning, this was where local teenagers came to parade. A long line waited at the Piercing Pagoda, and another snaked from the movie ticket counters. Autumn and Mysty headed for a clothing store. Jesse stopped walking, and I hesitated, not sure where to go.
“Do you ever look up at the sky at night and wonder who’s looking back at you?” Jesse said. His eyes had a dreamy look. He tipped back his head and gazed at the mall ceiling, as if he were at a planetarium.
“Yes,” I said. “Sometimes.” My father had given me a telescope for my fourteenth birthday.
“Ever think about what it would be like to get out there in deep space?”
“Yes.” I’d often imagined it.
He shook his head. “I’d like to travel at the speed of light, so that when I came back, I’d be the same, but the rest of the world would be different. All my friends would be old guys, and I’d still be in my prime.”
“It’s theoretically possible.” But not likely to happen in Jesse’s lifetime, I thought. And even if it did, not likely to happen to Jesse.
Then Autumn and Mysty were there. Autumn had her cell phone to her ear, and she was saying, “Okay, okay. Whatever.” She hung up. “I got to go meet my parole officer.”
From Mysty’s eyes, I knew this date came as news to her.
“I can’t miss another one,” Autumn said. “We can leave you guys here and come back for you after.”
Mysty said, “Great.” She looked down at her shoes, pouting.
I wondered why Autumn couldn’t drive herself. She was old enough. But then I considered the possible reasons she might need to see a parole officer.
“It’s not far,” Jesse said. “We’ll be back soon.”
“Sooner if you stop driving like an old man.” Autumn punched his arm. Then she seemed confused, as if she’d expected him to hit her back.
Mysty and I had lunch at a place called Friendly’s. Before I’d taken two bites of my tuna sandwich, she’d devoured a cheeseburger and eaten half of her French fries. She noticed that I wasn’t so fast, and she wondered if eating slowly kept me thin.
“You haven’t lived here long?” I asked her.
“Four or five months.” She dragged a French fry through a puddle of ketchup. “My stepdad, he moved us here. He got a transfer to work at the power plant.”
“You like it?”
She popped the fry into her mouth and tried to chew slowly. “It is so boring. I thought I’d die of boredom, until I met Autumn. And Jesse.” She blushed, and suddenly she looked much younger.
So she thinks she loves him, I thought. And she thinks I’m competition.
The server asked us if we wanted refills on our sodas. Without waiting for us to reply she dumped half a pitcher of cola and ice into our glasses, liberally splashing the table in the process.
“Jesse is a nice guy,” I said. “But I’m not interested in him.”
She looked cheerful, but only for a moment. “He likes you,” she said. “When we were coming to pick you up, you were all he talked about. ‘Ari said’ this and ‘Ari said’ that. I mean, you got the guy to stop drinking.” She spoke as if I’d performed a miracle.
“He’s stopped for a few days,” I said. But I had a feeling he wouldn’t resume, unless I told him to. And for a moment, I admit, I basked in my power to make a man do as I commanded.
Her head tilted to the right, Mysty smiled. She knew what I was thinking. She really was a pretty girl, I thought, noticing her tanned skin and carefully curled hair. Everywhere we went, people stared at her. Even though we both wore jeans and T-shirts, hers fit better than mine.
“I want you to teach me,” she said. “Teach me how to make Jesse like me. Teach me how to talk to him, the way you did that night.”
I wasn’t going to try to teach her hypnosis, but maybe I could help her some other way. “You could teach me something, too.” I gestured toward two teenage boys in the next booth. Their eyes had been fixed on her since we walked in.
She got the point. She winked at me.
After lunch we strolled around the mall. From time to time Mysty pointed out clothes that would make me look “hot” and told me I should use my hips more when I walked; when I stood still, she said, I should keep most of my weight on one foot and bend the knee of my other leg, to emphasize the shapes of my calves. In between these lessons, she told me her life story and the stories of her parents and older sister. Her stepfather was inclined to drink when he wasn’t at work, but he was “a sweetie,” not “a creep” like her “real father.” Her mother was “an old hippie” called Sunshine who’d named her daughter Mystic Rose; now Sunshine worked as a clerk at a local drugstore, where people called her Sunny. Mysty had two stepbrothers living in Tennessee.
Telling me her story was her way of letting me know that she trusted me. All I gave her back were generalities: a vague sense of my parents being separated, my mother breeding horses and bees, and some generic tips on how to handle Jesse.
“Look into his eyes when you talk to him,” I said. “It’s amazing how few people really look into each other’s eyes. Look deep, and speak slowly. Tell him what you want.”
Mysty treated this advice as if it were a revelation. As I spoke, she touched my arm with her small tanned hand to signify agreement and thanks. I moved farther away, so that she couldn’t reach me. Then I felt it—the familiar tingle up and down my skin that comes when someone is watching me.
I looked around, but saw no one. A few boys were eyeing Mysty.
My instinctive urge was to run away.
“Tag,” I said, knowing how stupid it sounded. “You’re it.” And I ran off, down the mall. Mysty raced after me. After a minute I ducked into a side passage that led to a cash machine. She came after me, slapped my arm. “You’re it!”
I put the index finger of my other hand against my lips. We stood still for a few seconds, catching our breath.
Then Mysty said, “Ow!” She held out her arm. “Look, something pinched me, hard. I didn’t see anything, did you?”
I hadn’t seen a thing. But I’d felt the presence of something approach us, pause, then go on. I looked at the bright red mark on her arm. “Maybe it’s an insect bite.”
By the time Autumn and Jesse returned, Mysty considered me her best friend. She sat next to me again in the back seat on the drive back to Sassa, chattering about clothes, scratching at the welt on her arm. “You think this is a spider bite?”
“Who knows?” I said.
The car’s air conditioning didn’t work. Even with the windows open the air was thick with cigarette smoke and the musky smell of Autumn’s perfume.
Mysty reached over and touched my arm again. “Feel how cool you are!” she said.
Autumn turned around, sunglasses on, her face impassive.
“Feel her!” Mysty said.
Autumn stretched out a hand and let her fingers brush my arm. “Cold,” she said.
“How do you do that? You’re not even sweating, and it must be ninety degrees in here.” Mysty’s eyes were wide with wonder.
