Ephemeral (The Countenance) Read online

  17

  Tears for Cheers

  I hang out with Wes during nutrition and lunch.

  We sit on a bench beneath a Sugar Maple with branches that vault their citrine foliage straight up into the pale expanse—grey as Cooper’s eyes.

  I pick up a few stray leaves off the ground and run my fingers over their waxy skins, crushing the brittle ones under my feet to powder as Wes fills me in on this strange new life of mine.

  “You never said two words to me all last year.” He looks downright perturbed by the idea.

  I want to say it’s because I wasn’t here. I was a figment of his imagination–but don’t. “I dreamt about you every single night,” I whisper. “My days were swallowed alive by the fact we were apart.”

  He frowns like he doesn’t believe me, like I must have hit my head pretty hard to think so.

  A shadow emerges. It inches its way over in a phantomlike state.

  Kresley appears wearing a pair of dark maple riding boots, her uniform rolled up at the sleeves.

  “Hey, Wes—Laken.” She drags my name out like a curse. “I’ve got some of your things in my room. I thought you might want them back.” She swivels her hips into him. Ironically, to Kresley, seduction is a key ingredient in the break-up ritual.

  “I’ll swing by,” Wes says it curt, clearly annoyed by her efforts.

  “Or I can give them to Laken for you.” She shrugs. “That might be easier.” Her shoulders hike up to her ears and stay there as she zeros in on me with a cold-filtered hatred.

  “That would great,” I say, a little overeager. I’m not opposed to reducing the emotional and physical proximity between the two of them at any given time.

  “Perfect, I’ll get them ready for you.” She shakes out her dark curtain of hair and presses her nose into the wind. She might as well be posing for a print ad—she looks that perfect. She leans forward, offering Wes a brief hug and traps my fingers against the bench with her knee, crushing them with a horrible pinch. I retract my fingers like pulling them out of a fire.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” Her hand flies to her lips with the lie. “I would never do anything to hurt you, Laken.” It comes out a knife-sharp threat.

  “I wouldn’t let you.” I meant to say, I’m sure you wouldn’t, but the words rearranged themselves in the right order.

  She burns me to ashes with her laser-filled venom before stomping off. The dew-covered lawn stains her boots clear to her ankles and I have a feeling she’ll blame me for ruining her shoes like she blames me for stealing Wes.

  There are some things you can replace with money and some things you can’t.

  I wrap an arm around Wesley and take him in, my dark knight whose life springs eternal alongside my own.

  “I’m impressed with the way you handled that.” He gives a sly grin as he pulls in closer.

  “I’d rather find other ways to impress you—like this.” I lean in and deliver my own box full of memories by way of a kiss that spans state-lines. It leads us all the way back to open skies and fresh country air.

  I can feel his heart beat erratic just beneath mine.

  I would say he is most certainly impressed.

  During P.E., the rest of the girls who are being forced to cheer and I are wrangled over to the west end of the field where Jen and another assistant coach huddle over a clipboard. The other girl, a milky blond like Jen but not as ridiculously beautiful, introduces herself as Mars Adams.

  Flynn was right. This really is the land of pretentious names and assholes with most people taking residence in both categories.

  Jen and Mars break us up into groups, and Carter and I get thrown in with Jen.

  “Don’t you go to Trinity U.?” I ask my newly acquired sibling as she crouches over a set of speakers.

  “Tuesdays and Thursdays. In a few years I’ll be running this place—the cheer part of it anyway.” She spikes to her feet. “And you’re going to help.”

  “I am?” I find this doubtful. I’m hoping to have escaped my strange incarceration long before I let a couple of years drift by. One thing I’m finding consistent about nuJen—she has an unending supply of rich delusions.

  “Yes.” Her eyes augment to the size of tennis balls. “Wouldn’t it be something if you married Wesley and I married Blaine?” She gets that swirly look in her eyes that one can only achieve at a heightened state of fantasy. “We could work together and have families together. Blaine is going to teach here. We could live on campus and never leave Ephemeral.”

  Why do I get the feeling Ephemeral and a roach-motel have an awful lot in common?

  Personally, I don’t see how all of us shacking up on a campus, that’s overrun with a healthy population of the undead, will be mutually beneficial to either of our prospective families. In fact, if I do end up trapped in this bizarre alternate universe for a long stretch of time, I might be moved to slaughter a few hundred residents myself.

  “Look, I’m not really into cheer.” I hate to drop the pom-poms so early on while the shoots of our sisterly bonds are still tender at the root and whatnot, but I don’t see any other way of getting out of voluntarily showing snatches of my underwear to thousands of people armed with telescopic photo equipment on game day. “To me, cheer has always been on par to publicly pantsing yourself in order to build a false sense of community through a glimpse of girls crotches. I mean, it derogates our entire species and sends women’s lib back about a thousand years. I seriously doubt cave women jumped up and down and showed off their sheepskin panties as a display of appreciation for the home team.” On some level, I’m thinking she’ll agree. There has got to be something in her that finds the premise behind the sexual aerobics of it all belittling.

  “What?” Her face contorts as though I’ve physically assaulted her. “I have news for you…” She hisses, casting a quick glance behind her shoulder. “I pulled some strings to assure you a slot on the team. It’s going to take a lot of idiocracy on your part to screw this up. And women’s lib? What is the matter with you?” Her hand flies up over to her lips as if she’s just had an epiphany. “It’s because of Casper,” she whispers. “You’re saying all kinds of irrational things because you’re having a meltdown.” She pulls me into a lengthy hug. Her silky hair blinds me momentarily as I take in her scent, a sickly sweet honeysuckle that I inhale by the vat full. “From what I hear, she had some serious problems with her parents. They think an Internet romance was involved.” She gives a disapproving smirk before blowing her whistle. “Get in line,” she barks out at the entire group.

  Jen subjects us to a third-degree torture routine that assures me on many levels I will never be a good candidate for anything that involves extreme forms of physical exertion i.e., the army, Olympics, marathons, walk-a-thons, read-a-thons—they are all clearly outside the realm of my endurance capabilities.

  In an act of mercy, the bell rings, and I collapse on the lawn next to Carter with sweat trickling down the side of my face in long, hot beads. My skin stings like a sunburn from the sheer effort I’ve put in, and my joints ache from Jen’s attempt to extricate them by way of jostling them out of my body.

  “There’s a party at Henderson Saturday night.” Carter sits up, dusting loose blades off her thighs. The back of her hair has blown up into a ball of frizz from the soft precipitation dotting us.

  “I won’t be here. Fletch is taking me home to meet my uncle.”

  “Meet your uncle?” She narrows in on me. “Are you talking about Jones?”

  “Meet with my uncle,” I’m quick to correct. Wes is right. If I keep up the blank-slate routine, I’ll be strapped in five-way restraints by midnight. “You know, hang out with family—have a barbeque, sing by the campfire.” It’s going to be really hard not to spill everything to Carter. I’ve never made it a habit to hold on to secrets for very long. I’m desperately in need of someone to talk to outside of Wes. If anything, Wes is fueling this insanity by playing along with the rules of a game that neither of us sign
ed up for.

  A group of football players walk by. The tall one with shoulders wide as a building offers a generous smile. It’s not until he turns that I realize its Cooper. His teardrop shaped dimples melt off his face—makes me want to initiate them over and over again.

  “Tell me about Cooper Flanders.” I’m pretty sure it’s the one subject I won’t be grilling Wes on.

  “Coop? He’s a nice guy. He’s a jock, smart like Wes. Lives off campus with his family. Mostly keeps to himself. Why? You like him?” She lights up like a jack-o-lantern at the prospect of fresh gossip.

  “No.” My cheeks burn with the intensity of an inferno, calling me out on the lie. “Wes says he can help me.” I doubt I should mention the head doctor. “On my essays—in lit. Plus he’s in my global challenges study group.” It’s true. We paired up during fourth.

  “You should make him your official tutor—you know, pay him.” She nods thoughtfully. “He gets to go to school here because his dad’s on staff. He doesn’t come from money.”

  “What about that hospital named after his dad?”

  “His grandfather,” she corrects, “and it was more of an honorary thing.”

  “So, the rest of us come from money?”

  “There are only six degrees of separation between the rest of us and God.” Carter bears into me in earnest. “Riches are just at the top of the list.”

  “Laken.”

  My name vibrates from far in the distance—cool and smooth as if it were a friend waiting to greet me.

  “You hear that?” I ask, turning toward the forest. It was a girl—the same eerie voice from this morning.

  “Hear what?” She follows my gaze completely perplexed.

  Wes comes up with Fletcher by his side, and I forget all about the voice and the acute pain my body is in. Instead, I take Wes in as a feast of carnal roving ensues.

  Carter and I pop off the lawn like corks to greet them.

  Wes nods me over to the side by way of a killer grin. His dark hair is slicked back, arranged in thick strands black as raven feathers. His eyes compete with the lawn to rule this emerald empire. My entire body quivers to be near him. Even in this close proximity it’s not nearly enough.

  “How did you like school?” He steps into me until our stomachs touch.

  “This place is impossibly tough,” I lament. It takes everything in me not to wrap my arms around him and run my fingers through his saturated mane. He looks genuine, not at all like someone who might lure a girl into the forest.

  “You’re just on overload. Give it a week. It’ll be okay. I’ll help you through it.” He picks up my hands and gives a gentle swing. “I talked to Cooper,” he continues. “He said he wouldn’t mind if you swung by his house to talk to his dad.”

  “Trusted sources say we should pay him for the tutoring services.” I twitch my fingers in air quotes when I say that last part.

  “Already got it worked out. I’m taking care of it.”

  The Wes I knew held a job at a nearby dairy afterschool and on weekends. We needed to save just to see a movie, eating was mostly optional. If someone gave him a Range Rover, he would have sold it for cash, lived off the reserve for the rest of his life.

  “So what should I tell his dad?” I try to envision myself on some long couch that doubles as a bed in a cloistered office littered with how-to manuals for the reanimated human brain. “That I came from Kansas? That you and I are both dead—Fletch too?” Obviously this is loaded information. I might come off more lucid if I walk in with a bomb strapped to my chest and demand a thousand pounds of chocolate. And that’s precisely how much chocolate it’s going to take to alleviate this entire situation. Not that it could ever be alleviated, not with Lacey temporarily, perhaps permanently, out of my life.

  “No.” Wes gives a little laugh. “The other truth.” He softens into me. “Tell him about the tree house, how you’re having trouble remembering. I bet he has ten different exercises that will bring you back to normal in no time.”

  Normal. There it is, his proclamation to my so-called insanity. Wes believes I’m abnormal. Maybe, I am.

  “Okay. I’ll go.”

  “Great. Coop will meet you outside the gym at five. He can give you a ride. I got library duty, but if you want, I can swing by and pick you up.”

  “I’d like that.”

  Wes twists a smile that says he’s unsure about something, but his lust-filled gaze suggests otherwise. A powerful spike of heat rips through me. I’d like nothing more than to give him a kiss right here on the field.

  Wes lights up as though he’s onto me, leans in and presses a searing kiss against my lips. He pulls back and canvases me as though he were conducting an audit of my emotions. There’s a marked look of sorrow written across his face, and it alarms me on a primal level.

  “What’s wrong?” I bear into him. “Why all the sadness when you’re with me?” Sadness is an understatement. He drips with agony, slow, achingly sweet as honey.

  Wes pulls me in, rubs his cheek against mine before walking me over to the gym.

  “I’ll be honest.” He pauses, leading us over to a Ponderosa Pine, sturdy and stout, a true architectural feat of nature that’s immense enough to house every bird on the planet. “Laken…” He sighs, glancing behind me for a brief moment. “I’ve always dreamed of a future with you.”

  “I thought you said I was Fletch’s little sister.” I tease, holding his gaze. His skin looks pale as a ghost against this backdrop of shadows. “That I was like your sister, too.”

  “A sister?” His breathing grows erratic. His sorrowful expression lingers like a curse. “That was a lousy cover,” he says with his chest pressing into mine ever so slightly. “You’re gorgeous, you know that?”

  “You’re gorgeous. Do you know that?” I lean up and push a kiss into his lips, hot—laced with all of my pent-up passion. The forest should fear a fire from the embers of our love.

  He keeps his eyes closed a moment too long. “I guess what I’m trying to say is, as much as I want you to get your memory in working order—I’m afraid once you do, things will go back the way they were.”

  “Well, then…” I huff a laugh. “I guess you’d better hide the toothpaste.” I tease before shaking my head. “I have loved you forever, Wesley.” I stop shy of saying Parker. “There’s no way in hell I’m going to quit now.”

  I crash my lips over his and pull out a string of melodic kisses like strumming on a harp. I reassure him of my feelings in ways that words could never do.

  18

  Cooper

  Cooper drives us to his house in an overgrown SUV, green with white paneling that looks like it has seen more than its fair share of miles with several decades and transmissions under its belt.

  I try to keep focused on the road, but my peripheral vision keeps reverting back to his broad chest, the way his strong hands navigate the steering wheel. The light scent of mint and lemon lingers in the air as if he just hand-buffed the interior. The truck may be old but he takes care of it.

  A low-lying fog settles around us. It wafts and swirls as cars cut through the road like smoke rising in some apocalyptic world.

  The sign up ahead reads, Welcome to Heaven. Ironic since this is probably as close as anyone actually gets to that fabled place—at least me anyway.

  Rows of quaint-looking shops give way to stretches of farmland, houses divided by acre parcels. He pulls off a dirt road toward a relatively average-looking home with a sprawling green lawn and a neat border of spent roses. Their white petals dust the ground like snow.

  Cooper Flanders may very well be a nice guy, but he hasn’t bothered to utter a single word on the way over, not that I’ve inspired any conversation by way of opening my mouth, but still.

  “You’re quiet,” he says, killing the ignition before smoothing his hand over the dash like a habit.

  “I was just thinking the same thing about you.” We envelop ourselves in a bout of probing silence. “I thought m
aybe before I talk to your dad I could spend some time with you—see if you could convince me that Wes is the big bad wolf.” An impossibility in and of itself on multiple levels.

  His eyes sweep over me as though I had laid out a dangerous proposition, as if I offered to sleep with the enemy while on some government sponsored espionage mission.

  “You’re seeing Wesley.” His cheek rises on the side with notable disapproval. “I’ve said too much already.”

  “I won’t tell. I swear.”

  Moments of palpable silence trace by as he considers whether or not to believe me.

  “Let’s go in.”

  The Flanders house is homely inside, plain in comparison to the garish display of wealth that Ephemeral has to offer.

  A set of vanilla candles rest on a small table in the entry. They perfume the house with their thick fragrance coupled with the scent of burnt toast coming from the kitchen.

  “I almost burned the house down.” A lively little girl with sable hair and large brown eyes greets Cooper by way of leaping hug.

  “Hey, punk. Keep out of the kitchen.” He tousles her hair. She lets out a squeal, but the smile fades from her lips as she takes me in.

  “Hi,” she says it sweet, and for a moment, she sounds just like Lacey.

  “Hi yourself. What’s your name?” I drink her in like an elixir, smooth padded face and simple bowtie lips. She fills the void in my soul for Lacey if only for a moment. My entire existence exhales a breath as deep as the universe.

  “Marky.” Her dark eyes flutter like moths, trying to bury a secret before I can see it imprinted over their coffee-colored landscape. I can see the stain of sadness etched behind those haunted lenses, clear and present as if they were tarnished just yesterday with its horrible ache.

  “I gotta run up for a sec.” Cooper hitches his thumb toward the stairs. “Keep an eye on her, Marky, make sure she doesn’t steal anything.” He gives a sly grin before disappearing.

  “Figures, the one time he brings home a girl, and she’s a thief.” She smiles before hopping on a barstool at the kitchen counter. A variety of nail polish is set out, and the residue of polish remover lingers strong in the air.