“Oh,” I said. I sunk into the loveseat, and Charles sat beside me. “I’ve never met a boyfriend’s parents before.”
Actually, I’d never done anything more than date a guy for a few weeks here and there in high school, which had amounted to little more than hand-holding in the school hallways or kissing in the back corner booth at the local ice rink.
Charles wrapped his arm around me. “You have nothing to worry about.”
But I did. I had a lot to worry about. I was going to meet Charles’ parents—the people I would be stealing him from if he ever became a pure Strigoi and started aging with me.
Was it now, more than ever, important to tell Charles about the voices? Or was now the worst time to bring up my secrets? If I didn’t say something soon, should I never say anything at all?
***
I DECIDED TO TACKLE THE BASEMENT. It was huge and bare—the perfect place to hold rituals. The floor stretched out in an unwrinkled slab of concrete, only chipped in a few places along the walls.
Charles made a run to the hardware store to purchase some paint. When he returned, he set the two buckets on the bottom step. “You’re cute when you’re determined.”
Cute. Not a word most women like to be called, but better than crazy.
Charles cut in the wall edges using the antique white paint, and I rolled out the rest. Within two hours, we’d completed the task, thanks to Charles’ incredible speed.
We headed to the kitchen for a break, leaving the cellar doors open with a rotating fan circulating the air to dry the paint. Charles served peach cobbler and lemonade, but while the cobbler was warm and sweet, the room was cold and heavy with silence.
My basement project was a foolish attempt for distraction. Painting over the imperfections did me no good: waiting for the paint to dry forced me back to my thoughts—forced me to think about Charles’ parents coming to visit and whether I needed to open up. There was one major problem with sharing secrets, though. Once the words left my mouth, I could never take them back.
Charles sipped at his lemonade in a way that seemed almost scripted. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” I said, poking at a slice of peach on my plate.
No, just a bunch of frenzied whispering voices assaulting my brain. As usual.
Not only were they as non-distinct as ever, overlapping and running wild in my mind—Sto. Are y. Bel. Didn’t see th. Shhh.—but now they were accompanied by dread and anger and other emotions that didn’t line up with what I was supposed to feel.
When the paint finished drying, I returned to the basement and applied a stick-on decal to the wall—a brown tree with yellow and pear-green leaves and a bird cage hanging from an outstretched branch with an orange sparrow inside. In spite of all the brightness and openness of the room, I felt only like the caged bird. Trapped inside myself by the truth I refused to share.
Leaving the floor a deep, gray color, we moved the old upstairs couch—just a few shades too pale to be lemon—from under the basement stairs to the space along the wall where I’d applied the tree decal. I tossed a couple poppy red pillows on either side, and still I wasn’t happy.
As if decorating were a substitute for addressing my emotions. But even this realization didn’t stop me; it only made me hate myself more as I continued.
“Do you mind if I finish up alone?” I asked.
Charles placed a gentle kiss on my temple. “I’ll start dinner,” he said, and he left me in the drearily cheerful room.
In one corner of the basement, I set up two wooden chairs I’d painted daffodil yellow and a small table I’d painted avocado green. Beside the couch, I placed a cream-colored cabinet from my grandfather’s house, the only family heirloom I had in my possession. Using the cabinet as a side table, I filled a clear vase with crystal beads and tucked in several silk flowers, creating an arrangement of candy pink gerberas, bright blue hydrangeas, and lime-colored daisies. I spritzed the flowers with a spray that lived up to its promise of crisp rain and traces of fresh mint.
I stepped back. The bright, airy room radiated a warmth I couldn’t share. To say the room reflected me in any way would have been a lie. This room, this house, was merely a reflection of who I wanted to be. Not who I was.
I sank into the sofa, dissolving into tears. Guilt became a steady undercurrent to my emotions. Why was it so hard to tell him the truth? I’d told him about the spirit following me, and he’d been able to help with that. He hadn’t thought I was crazy. Even if he couldn’t help with this, there was no reason I shouldn’t be able to open up with him about it.
I took a deep breath, pulling the air all the way down to the bottom of my lungs, then headed upstairs. Charles was in the bedroom, flipping through his music collection. When I stopped in the doorway, he snapped the binder of CDs shut.
Despite all effort to remain calm, my breathing was unsteady. “I need to tell you something.”