“Do you want to turn back, Dare?” I ask, and my voice is flirty, and we’re here in Joyland but it’s older and dirtier.
“Not on your life.” Moonlight shines upon his face, and drenches us, illuminating the dark stubble outlining his jaw.
“Let’s do it then.” I smile, and my heart is full and we disappear into Nocte.
The darkness swallows us, then blends together, then falls away, and then I’m once again standing in the sun, and Dare is staring at me, confused, bewildered.
“Calla?” There’s concern in his voice, and there is no stubble on his clean-shaven face.
I shake my head, shaking all of the confusion away, because it’s notrealnotrealnotreal.
“I’m ok,” I whisper, but I’m not really. Because sometimes I’m here, and sometimes I’m not.
Keep his ring. It will hold you to the ground, and make you always remember where you are. Eleanor’s words echo through my head and I focusfocusfocus on them.
I’m here.
Dare’s here.
Yet a minute ago, as real as anything, I wasn’t here. I was somewheresomewheresomewhere else.
We go home, back to the funeral home, and the days inch, fly, swirl past. They turn into weeks, and the weeks turn into months, confusing wonderful beautiful months.
Dare spends my birthday with me, then two. He spends Christmas. He spends every day in between. Every day, he becomes more and more unsettled.
Because he’s not real.
Because I don’t know what he is.
“If I could fix everything, I would,” I tell him one day as we stand on the cliffs. The wind whips at my hair and I shove it away. Dare stares at me and there’s sadness in his eyes.
“I know, Calla Lily.”
He’s so vulnerable, and sad, and he’s seventeen now and I’m fourteen.
I lean up, because I need to kiss him more than anything in the world.
“Kiss me,” I whisper, looking hungrily into his eyes. He looks away and the warmth the warmth the warmth. It warms my belly and floods my heart.
“I shouldn’t,” he answers, low and husky, and he’s unsure because he might be a figment of my imagination, or we might be related, and he shouldn’t he shouldn’t he shouldn’t.
But he wants to. I can see it see it see it. His eyes are cloudy and tormented.
“Do it anyway,” I reply, hoping, praying, holding my breath.
So he does,
He lowers his dark head and his lips press into mine, hard, warm, firm, real.
My first kiss.
Kissing him is like taking a fresh wintry breath. It gives me life, it fills me up, filling all of my darkest, most emptiest places.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” Dare mutters, yanking away, and I don’t want him to leave, but he does it anyway.
He stalks away and I trail behind, my fingers on my lips, still in too much wonder to care that he’s regretful. I know why… because I’m fourteen and he’s seventeen and he’s my cousin and he thinks that creates a chasm.
But it doesn’t.
It’s not a chasm,
It draws us closer together.
He’s mine. He just doesn’t know it yet.
After dinner, I find him down at the woodshed, punching at it like a machine.
“Dare, stop!” I plead, holding onto his hands, trying to prevent him from injuring himself further. There is blood on his shirt, blood gushing from his knuckles. His face is so tormented, so pained.
“Do you know what it’s like not to be able to change something?” he asks, and his voice is so ragged, so painful to hear that it tears my heart into ripped pieces.
“Of course,” I tell him. And I lead him to the Carriage House where I clean up his wounds.
He strips his shirt off and muscle ripples from the top of his back to the bottom, and LIVE FREE is bold and strong. I can’t breathe because he’s beautiful and warm and vibrant, and he’s right here.
So close.
So close
So far away.
He studies me, my face, my eyes. And when he sighs, it’s such a lonely sound. “You don’t know what it’s like,” he says and he’s resigned. “Not like I do. Because you don’t remember everything, but I do.”