I got up off the bed and stood scrunching my toes on the floorboards. Xavier looked at me curiously. I returned his stare without speaking and slowly pulled my top up over my head and let it drop to the ground. I didn’t feel any sort of self-consciousness; I just felt free. I slipped off my pajama bottoms and let them crumple around my feet so that I was standing before him, fully exposed and vulnerable. I was letting him see me at my most defenseless.
Xavier didn’t speak, it would have broken the hum of silence that had fallen across the room. A moment later he stood and mimicked my motions, letting his shirt and jeans fall in a heap on the ground. He came over to me and ran his warm hands down my back. I sighed and let myself sink into his embrace. The feel of his skin on mine sent a warm glow flooding through my body, and I leaned against him, feeling whole for the first time in days.
I kissed his soft lips and ran my hands over his face, feeling the familiar nose and cheekbones. I would have recognized the shape of his face anywhere; I could read it like a blind person reading Braille. He smelled fresh and sweet, and I pressed my chest against his. In my eyes, he didn’t have a single physical fault, but I wouldn’t have cared if he did. I still would have loved him if he was scarred or dressed in rags, just because he was Xavier.
We lowered ourselves onto the bed and that was how we stayed — until we heard Ivy and Gabriel downstairs — just the two of us, holding each other. Molly would have thought it was crazy. But it was the contact we wanted. We wanted to feel like the same person rather than two separate individuals. Clothing concealed us. Without it, there was nowhere to hide, no way to mask any part of ourselves, and that was what we wanted — to be completely and utterly ourselves and feel completely safe.
28
Angel of Destruction
The next morning Xavier came back to have breakfast with us before school. As we ate, Gabriel tried to talk some sense into him. We all knew that Xavier was furious about Jake’s duplicity and was ready to take him on single-handedly. That was something Gabriel wanted to avoid at all costs, especially as we didn’t know the extent of Jake’s power.
“Whatever you do, you mustn’t confront him,” Gabriel said soberly.
Xavier looked at him over the rim of his coffee mug. “He threatened Beth,” he said, his shoulders tightening. “He forced himself on her. We can’t just let him get away with it.”
“Jake is not like the other students. You mustn’t try to deal with him alone,” Gabriel said. “We don’t know what he’s capable of.”
“Can’t be too dangerous, he’s pretty scrawny,” Xavier muttered under his breath.
Ivy gave him a stern look. “You know that his appearance has nothing to do with it.”
“So what do you want us to do then?” Xavier asked.
“We can’t do anything,” Gabriel said, “not without drawing unwanted attention to ourselves. We can only hope that he means no harm.”
Xavier let out a short laugh and then stared at Gabriel. “You’re serious?”
“Deadly.”
“But what about what he did at the prom?”
“I wouldn’t call that evidence,” Gabriel said.
“What about the accident with the cook and the deep fryer?” I said. “And the car crash at the start of term?”
“You think Jake might have had something to do with those things?” Ivy asked. “But he wasn’t even at the school when the crash happened.”
“He only needed to be in town,” I replied. “And he was definitely there that day in the cafeteria — I walked right past him.”
“I read about a boating accident at the jetty two days ago,” Xavier added. “And there have been a couple of fires recently that the paper said were started by arsonists. That’s never happened around here before.”
Gabriel put his head in his hands. “Let me think about this,” he said.
“That’s not all,” I cut in, feeling guilty to be the bearer of so much bad news. “He has
“Beth, go and get ready for school,” Gabriel said quietly.
“But…,” I began.
“Just go,” he said. “Ivy and I need to talk.”
___
After the prom, Jake Thorn’s popularity seemed to grow with alarming speed, and his followers doubled in number. When I went back to school, I noticed they all walked around with vacant looks, like drug addicts, their pupils strangely dilated, their hands thrust deep in their pockets. Their faces only came alive when they saw Jake, taking on a disturbing, adoring expression that suggested they would drown themselves in the ocean if he instructed them to do so.
Acts of random vandalism also seemed to be suddenly on the increase. The doors of Saint Mark’s church were desecrated by obscenities, and the windows of the municipal offices were shattered by vandals, using homemade explosives. Fairhaven reported a virulent outbreak of food poisoning, and many of its residents had to be transferred to the hospital.
And it seemed that wherever disaster struck, Jake Thorn was there. He never allowed himself to be implicated in any way; he was always an observer, hovering at the sidelines. To me, it seemed he was bent on causing pain and suffering, and I couldn’t help thinking that his motivation was revenge. Was he showing me the consequences of my rejection?
On Thursday afternoon I planned to leave school early and pick Phantom up from the dog groomer. Gabriel hadn’t come to school that day because he called in sick; in truth, he and Ivy were replenishing their strength after a week spent cleaning up Jake’s messes. They weren’t used to having so much to do, and despite their strength, the constant effort had left them drained.
I had just grabbed my school bag and was heading out the front to meet Xavier at his car when I noticed a crowd of people a little way down the hall just outside the girls’ bathroom. I felt something at the back of my mind, like a warning telling me to stay away, but instinct and curiosity drew me closer. The group of students were clutching one another and talking in hushed voices. I saw that some of them were crying. One girl was sobbing into the shirt of a senior hockey player who was still in uniform. He’d obviously been called away from practice in a hurry, and he was staring at the bathroom door with a mixture of distress and disbelief on his face.
I moved through the crowd as if in slow motion. I had a strange feeling of being disconnected from my body — as though I was watching the scene on a television set, rather than being physically present. Interspersed with the faces of ordinary students, I noticed members of Jake Thorn’s crowd; they were easy to pick out these days by their trademark hollow faces and black clothing. Some of them stared at me as I passed, and I realized that they all had the same eyes: deep, wide, and black as pitch.
As I drew closer to the bathroom, I saw Dr. Chester standing by the door, along with two police officers. I saw one of the officers was talking to Jake Thorn. Jake’s face was molded into a mask of earnestness and concern, but his cat’s eyes glinted dangerously and his lip curled back ever so slightly as though he wished he could sink his teeth into the man’s throat. I got the feeling it was only me who could see the menace behind his expression and that to everybody else he looked every bit an innocent teenager. I moved closer to hear what they were talking about.
“I can’t think how it could have happened in a school like this,” I heard Jake say. “It’s come as a shock to us all.”
Then he shifted his position, and I couldn’t catch much else, just words here and there: “tragedy,” “no one around,” and “inform the family.” Eventually the police officer nodded and Jake turned away. I noticed that his followers were looking at one another, laughter in their eyes, traces of smiles on their lips. They looked greedy, almost hungry, and they all seemed to be secretly satisfied by whatever was going on.
