Velvet

“I’m seventeen.”


“You’re talented.” And with that, he picked up both boxes—which probably weighed eighty pounds combined—and headed for the door. “Come on, I need to get Lucian home before Mariana and Dominic have a hernia.”

I followed him back into the main room, still in shock. Lucian had finished his card castle and was staring at it in triumph.

“Come on, Lucian; we’re going home,” Adrian said to his little brother.

He sighed. “Okay.”

We packed up in a few minutes and headed out to the truck. Lucian fell asleep, his head against Adrian’s chest and his feet thrown over my legs. Adrian had his arm stretched out over the back of the seat, his hand wrapped around my shoulder, as Christmas music slowly drifted over the radio. I closed my eyes and breathed in. As the shock of his presents started to wear off, I realized one very simple, awful thing:

I loved Adrian.





14

TWO WORDS: SLUMBER PARTY

On Christmas morning I woke to fluffy, white snowflakes floating sleepily past my window, and my first thought was that this would be the first Christmas without my mom. But if I wanted to make it through breakfast and presents and being around other people, I couldn’t think about that. Not yet.

I groped around for the slippers Uncle Joe had given all of us the night before and followed the scent of coffee out of my room, then stopped short at the balcony. Rachel was downstairs on the couch dozing lightly against Joe’s chest. He was reading an old, yellowed paperback Western, but put it down after a moment and simply wrapped his arms around his wife. It made a lump slide up the back of my throat until it was hard to breathe. It also made me wonder if my parents had ever been affectionate like that. I honestly couldn’t remember.

I went back to my room, intent on giving them a little while longer to themselves. Still fighting the throat lump, I checked my e-mail and saw I had a new message from Trish. It was, predictably, short and sweet.

Mystic!

Merry Christmas. Don’t forget to tell Adrian what we told you to tell him.

—Trish

I shook my head but smiled. I didn’t know how someone could be infuriating and endearing all at once, but Trish managed it. After the Green Thing incident, I’d decided to save money and give her and the rest of the girls in our class these two-by-two-inch hand-embroidered pictures. My mom always made me one as a stocking stuffer, and just last year taught me how to pencil in the design straight onto the muslin and stitch over it. Flowers and butterflies were easier to do, but I was always easily bored with patterns, so I made stylized sketches of what everyone reminded me of. Trish’s was, of course, a bear. I stitched red mittens for Stephanie, a mountain range for Jenny, Red Riding Hood’s cape for Meghan, and a stack of books for Laura. They took forever, so I made them small, but everyone really seemed to like them, and it made me feel close to my mom, to carry on that tradition. But I couldn’t think about that now—I couldn’t think about her.

And I couldn’t think about Adrian—not after last night, not after that moment in the back room of the cabin where he’d whispered my name. Someday soon I wouldn’t be a target anymore, and then he and I would have to break off our fake relationship—which had never felt all that fake to begin with—and then my memory would get wiped and I wouldn’t remember that I’d ever felt anything about him at all.

A while later, Rachel called up that breakfast was ready. Shoving all the emotions back down into the pit of my stomach where they belonged, I headed downstairs. We ate a huge pile of waffles with the strawberries cooked right into them, and bacon. I went through several cups of coffee, and then we headed into the living room to open presents. Joe, Rachel, and Norah all seemed appreciative of my somewhat pathetic gifts, although Rachel overdid it, feigning so much enthusiasm that I had to pretend to go to the bathroom to avoid the bear hug she was trying to give me. Norah got me a cool old sketchbook she’d found at an antique store with a metal lock-clasp and faded purple velvet cover, and Rachel bought me a couple sweaters in different shades of funky greens. I really liked the gifts but it was hard to sit there with them, like this was normal, like there wasn’t someone missing.

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