Sophia—definitely not his little sister nor his great-aunt—and her comet of red hair streaks into the room. She has on a fuchsia fifties swing dress with a neckline that plunges to the equator. Green-and-gold sparkling sweeps wing her pale blue eyes.
She glitters like she walked out of a Klimt painting.
“Hello my darling,” she says to Oscar in a thick accent, I swear, identical to Count Dracula’s.
She kisses his left cheek, right cheek, then presses her lips to his in a long, lingering finale. Very long and lingering. My chest caves in.
Still lingering . . .
Friends do not greet each other like this. Under any circumstances.
“Hello there,” Oscar says warmly. Her magenta lipstick is smudged all over his lips. I have to put my hand in my sweatshirt pocket so I don’t reach over and wipe it off.
I take back all that Goldilocks garbage.
“Sophia, this is CJ, Garcia’s new disciple from The Institute.” So he does think I go there. He thinks I’m their age. And a good enough artist to get into The Institute.
I don’t clear up any of it.
Sophia reaches out a hand to me. “I’ve come to suck your blood,” she says in her Transylvanian accent, but perhaps I misheard, perhaps she said, “You must be a very good sculptor.”
I mumble some gibberish in reply, feeling like a sixteen-year-old darkness-eating troll with leprosy.
And she, with her flaming hair and bright pink dress, is an exotic orchid. Of course he loves her. They’re two exotic orchids together. It’s perfect. They’re perfect. Her sweater’s fallen off her shoulder and a magnificent tattoo is twisting out of her dress and around her entire arm, a red-and-orange fire-breathing dragon. Oscar notices the sweater and adjusts it like he’s done it a hundred times. A dark surge of jealousy rises in my chest.
What about the prophecy, whatever it is?
“We should go,” she says, taking his hand, and a moment later, they’re gone.
When I’m certain they’ve left the building, I run at a full sprint—thankfully Guillermo’s still not back—down the hallway to the front window.
They’re already on the motorcycle. I watch her wrap her arms around his waist and I know just how it feels, how he feels, from sketching him today. I imagine it: gliding my hands up his long oblique muscles, lingering over the grooves of his abdomen, feeling the heat of his skin in my hands.
I press my hand against the cold glass. I actually do this.
He kick-starts the bike, revs the throttle, and then they’re ripping down the street, her red hair crackling like a wildfire behind them. When he kamikazis the corner at 500 mph, at an absolutely fatal angle, she raises both hands in the air and whoops in delight.
Because she’s fearless. She lives dangerously. Which is the worst part of all.