Лайза Макманн - Cryer's Cross

Just as abruptly he pulls away. “What do you want, Kendall? Are you really ready for this? I don’t think you are.”

She gasps and takes a step back. “Shit,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”

He stares. “Me too.”

“You understand that I can’t. .”

He closes his eyes wearily. Takes a deep breath, lets it out, and turns away. “You can’t,” he says. “You can’t do anything because of your missing boyfriend.” His voice is filled with bitterness. “Sure, I understand. Yeah, you just wanted to get a freebie, just a little something, so you can keep mourning without missing too much action. What’s not to understand? Besides the fact that it was obvious you two were so much more like brother and sister than boyfriend and girlfriend.” He doesn’t wait for her to respond. “Obvious to me from the moment I saw you.”

“You don’t know anything,” Kendall says.

“Maybe you should think about getting a different ride to school. How about your other boyfriend, Eli?”

“What, now you’re you jealous of Eli?” she blurts out. But then she gets control. “His car is full already.

And maybe you’re right about Nico and me, and I just didn’t know any different.” She bites her lip, still tasting Jacián, hating herself for wanting to kiss him again. “Jacián,” she says quietly. “All I know is that

Nico never made me feel like you make me feel. Nobody does.”

Jacián stands there a long moment, agonizing, and then rips his fingers through his hair and turns back toward the horse barn. “God, Kendall! Don’t. I can’t do this.” He swallows hard and looks away. “You do this, and I’m the one who looks bad.” His eyes bite through the darkness, but his voice is resigned. “I can’t keep being the bad guy around here.”

He turns away and jogs off into the darkness.

Kendall trudges slowly, numbly, to the house.

We slumber, lying in wait, saving Our strength for the day. Now sensing, now quivering. Thirty-five, one hundred. Thirty-five, one hundred.

Redemption dawns.

Kendall goes to sleep thinking about Jacián, but at night her dreams are about Nico again, urgently trying to contact her through the desk. He pleads, cries out, begging her to find him, save him.

When she wakes up, sluggish and still exhausted, her heart is all mixed up about how she’s supposed to be feeling about guys and life and death. So conflicted. But the one thing that’s clear to Kendall is that she needs to go back there. Back to Nico’s desk one more time. Because if she doesn’t, she’ll never shake the feeling that his blood is on her hands, that she could save him if she just weren’t so stubborn.

The ride to school is quiet. Marlena, in the middle with a birthday-cake hangover, rests her head against the seat back and whines about how tired she is. Jacián drives stone-faced. Kendall aches. They are all lacking sleep for a variety of reasons.

Kendall knows that whatever happened last night, it’s never going to happen again. She’s devoted to

Nico. She has to be. No matter what. At least until somebody knows something about what happened to him. She moves mechanically.

Jacián doesn’t speak to Kendall. Resolute, she goes about her morning routine and then, as if drawn in, she forgoes the pretense of starting at her own desk, and just sits at Nico’s.

She sees the new graffiti and is only mildly surprised. Recklessly she dives into that world, no resistance this time. She drinks in the words, running her fingers over them, hearing Nico’s voice calling to her. She rests her cheek on the desk, facing away from Jacián. Her throat catches when she hears

Nico’s voice lingering over the short phrases.

Save me. I’m alive.

Say yes. I need you.

Come back.

“I’m back,” she whispers. “I’m here.” Not caring. Never caring again. “Yes, Nico.” Slowly she feels something fill her body, fill the emptiness inside.

Throughout the morning Nico’s voice grows stronger, more desperate. Over and over he begs Kendall to save him, to come to him, and she can’t pull herself away. Not that she wants to. She is forever in that moment just before sleep, that sweet hovering of a moment where nothing else matters. Sounds, urges, all is deep background noise. This, she realizes. . this is truly where her brain doesn’t rule her world.

As Kendall floats to the sound of Nico’s voice for hours, something changes. His voice, it grows increasingly urgent, deeper, darker — like it’s inside her. Part of her now. Over time she realizes that the voice doesn’t really even sound like Nico at all anymore. And another layer chimes in, like in a round, chanting, Thirty-five, one hundred. Thirty-five, one hundred. But really, it doesn’t matter anymore in this floating world. She is trapped here. And she doesn’t mind.

Then the words change.

Beneath her cheek, swirling in whispers through her body. The words become cold and restless.

Strong. Powerful.

Come to me.

Tonight.

Tell no one!

Only you can save me.

Thirty-five, one hundred. Kendall shudders in her surreal state. It’s as if all the warmth is sucked from the room. Still, she is caught there, alone except for the new, strange voice. She’s trapped by the mesmerizing feeling, the seductive timbre. She floats, shivering, the cold coming from within, and she is unable to snap out of it on her own. Unable to care enough to try. She is one with the voice.

She knows how it will be. She can see it now. There are pictures flashing behind her eyes — gravel road, long grasses, tangled vines, a fence — hints of where she must go. She accepts it. Accepts her fate as the one who must sacrifice something so that she can save Nico.

And they shall have her. Their way. It is the right way.

When Kendall shakes her at the end of the school day, she rises, sluggish, to her feet, takes her things.

“Are you okay?” Marlena asks.

Jacián fails at his attempt to ignore Kendall completely.

“I’m just so tired,” Kendall says, slurring her words. And she is. It feels like she hasn’t slept in a week.

Yet she is aware enough to know that she has only one task on which to focus. One goal before it’s all over. One rule — that she must return tonight to save him. And tell no one.

Or Nico will die.

At her request Jacián and Marlena drop Kendall off at home. She trudges up to her bedroom and collapses onto the bed to daydream about seeing Nico again.

She pictures it, as if the desk is inside her, feeding her still. The back of her school, where she can enter through the always unlocked cellar door. And the place where Nico is — dark and spooky, fog rolling.

Massive trees and overgrown brush too thick to pass through. An iron gate, rusty underneath miles of coiled, creeping vines.

Before dark, before her parents get home from working, Kendall pulls herself out of bed and makes her way to the tool barn to collect the things she knows she’ll need. She selects a flashlight, a shovel, and a hedge clipper and returns with them to her bedroom. She packs the items into a canvas sack and puts it under her bed.

She feels weak for lack of eating; too weak to try to find something to make her feel better. So she stays upstairs to dream about what will happen when she reunites with Nico. Soon. When her mother comes to check on her, Kendall says she’s not feeling well.

She puts on her pajamas and pretends to turn in.

Come to me rings in her ears.

She doesn’t sleep.

At eleven p.m., her parents sound asleep, Kendall rises from her bed. She picks up the sack. At the front window she stops. Lingers and says a last good-bye toward Nico’s house. “See you soon,” she whispers. And then, quietly, she sneaks out of the house. Locking the door behind her. Putting on her boots outside on the step.