Unafraid

comment like that even if the conversation was only being played out in his mind? No! This had to stop! Michael told himself. He didn’t want to think constantly about what his father had done; he didn’t want to be reminded constantly that his father had destroyed his family so callously, so definitively. Michael shook his head to force the negative images to leave. But as he pushed the unpleasant thoughts from his mind, another filled the space, one that was much more disturbing than all the others combined. Even if his father had done nothing to his mother, Grace would still have killed herself that night; her note was proof. So his father’s actions, while vile and deplorable, had only accelerated his mother’s death; they weren’t the primary cause.

Stunned by this revelation, Michael’s body froze as his mind reeled. How could he think such a thing? It was horrible, shameful, and yet, sadly, it was true. Is this how a vampire thinks? Logically, coldly, without allowing human emotion to corrupt the basis of understanding? Ronan wasn’t like that.

No, not at all. Well, that wasn’t completely true, Michael realized. Ronan wasn’t inhuman with him, but he did have another side. His views about some people and situations were much more analytical than Michael’s were. Sure, he got hotheaded about certain things, like when he talked about the complex relationship between water vamps and David’s race, but he could also approach a topic quite impersonally and remove all sentiment from the solution. Maybe it was just because Ronan was older, raised much differently than he was. Or maybe it was just because vampires were coldhearted as well as cold-blooded.

Were he and Ronan destined to become like Vaughan and David? Or would their connection to The Well ensure that their humanity would remain intact as long as they walked the earth disguised as humans? Michael was more confused than ever. How in the world did I get from thinking about my car to thinking about my morality?

All thoughts—simple and complex—were forgotten when Michael saw a patch of fog raise from the ground. Phaedra! She hadn’t abandoned him. She knew he needed to be rescued, and she had returned.

He watched the fog spin like a baby cyclone, and anticipation swelled in his heart. But just like in his dream, the fog turned out to be nothing unnatural. In this instance, merely the dusty remnants of someone who had raced toward him with incredible speed. Someone he had never expected to see.

Thanks a lot, Phaedra! Michael thought. This has got to be some sort of cosmic joke.

“I heard Fritz blethering on about your fancy new car, so I thought I’d check it out for myself.”

Michael hadn’t seen Nakano since the end of school. He didn’t know if Nakano was spending the summer on campus, if he had moved in with Jean-Paul, or if he had returned home to be with his family, if he even had a family. Staring at the boy, Michael suddenly realized he didn’t know very much about Nakano other than the basic facts: his motives were suspect, his hair was once again too long, and he hated Michael. The last item made it difficult for Michael to understand why Nakano was standing next to him. Not as difficult to understand, however, as why Michael didn’t just leave. But why should he? After all, he was there first. Nope, he was staying put.

“Well, take a good look at it,” Michael said. “If that’s what you came to see.”

Nakano stared straight ahead, his hands also tucked into the pockets of his shorts, which were jeans cut off just above the knee, and he lifted his chin to study the car. He looked like a surveyor inspecting a plot of land. “For once Fritz wasn’t talking through the back of his neck,” Nakano declared.

“Freakin’ awesome car you got there.”

This made absolutely no sense. Why was Nakano here? Why did he care about my car? And why am I talking to him? “Thanks,” Michael said in a voice halfway between surprised and sincere.

“My bum dad doesn’t even send me a card on my birthday,” Nakano admitted. “Not even sure he knows what day I was born.”

So that was it! Nakano wasn’t paying Michael a compliment; he was praising Vaughan. And why not? They were more like family than Michael and his father were. “First gift I got from him in seventeen years,” Michael said.

“Kind of makes up for it if you ask me,” Nakano replied.

Well, I didn’t ask you! Michael thought. I don’t even know why you’re here. We’re not friends. It’s not like I care what you have to say. And yet Michael was listening to every word Nakano said. He hadn’t asked him to leave, nor had he left Nakano alone to admire the car he so obviously coveted. For some reason despite all their previous differences—and those differences were huge— neither boy felt the urge to escape each other’s presence. Maybe because they were tired of running in the opposite direction? Or maybe because they both knew that it was time to end their feud and accept the fact that they actually had more in common than they wanted to admit?

“So are you going to drive it?” Nakano asked. “Or just stare at it?”

“I haven’t decided.”

Nodding as if he understood Michael’s dilemma, Nakano continued. “Cars aren’t allowed on campus you know, against the so-called rules and all.”

“Yeah, David informed me that I have to move it,” Michael replied.

Finally, Kano turned to face Michael and spoke to him directly for the first time. “So what’s the problem? You got your license, didn’t you?” he asked, knowing full well the answer. “Not that you needed anything so ... human.”

Why couldn’t anybody understand the importance of having a driver’s license? “Ever since I was a little kid I always thought being able to drive would give me freedom.”

“Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Nakano crossed his arms in front of his chest, one thin, sinewy arm on top of the other, and tilted his head back and forth when he spoke. He looked and sounded like a child in a schoolyard mocking his playmate.

As odd as he looked, this was the Nakano Michael had come to know. “So you just came here to make fun of me?”

Abruptly, Kano stopped moving his body and stared at Michael as intently as he had previously been inspecting the car. “Let it go, Howard,” Kano said.

“Let what go?”

“Your license, this car, your relationship with your father even,” Nakano explained. “None of that really means anything, does it? Not sure why you’re making them out to be so bleedin’ special.”

It was weird enough to be standing next to Nakano having a semicivilized conversation, but it was completely insane to think that Nakano might have offered him a solution to his problem when no one else could. Nakano’s comment offered him solace. “That actually makes sense.”

“Of course it does,” Kano replied, turning his attention back to the Benz. “You got your powers and your immortality and ... Ronan. This car and everything it represents means nothing to you.”

It was true, and suddenly Michael felt foolish for making the car seem much more important than it actually was.

“It can only have a hold over you if you let it,” Kano added. “No matter how sweet the car looks, it’s still just a car.”

Michael turned to Nakano and said two words to him that he never, ever thought he’d say. “Thank you.”

In response, Nakano shrugged his shoulders and mumbled, “Don’t mention it.” It was an attempt to be cavalier, to try to act and sound as if Michael’s words, his appreciation, weren’t welcomed.

Looking at the car, Michael could finally see it for what it was, an extraordinary piece of craftsmanship, but not the ticket to his freedom or public admiration. “I really mean it, Nakano, thanks a lot.” Nakano stepped forward and pressed his face against the driver’s side window. “If you really want to thank me,” he said, his breath fogging up the window. “Why don’t you take me for a ride?”

Michael felt his forehead crinkle; it was just about the weirdest proposition he had ever been offered. But Michael had learned to embrace the weird. “Okay.”

Without a second thought, Michael took the keys out of his pocket and clicked the button that released the locks on the car doors. Nakano was already sitting in the passenger seat before Michael had a chance to open up the driver’s side door. He turned the key in the ignition, and the Benz proved to be as beautiful inside as it was out; the car hardly made a sound when it started.

“Niiiiiiiiiiice,” Nakano said approvingly.