“You okay, Harlow?” Molly asks, frowning at me over her copy of Beowulf. She doesn’t ask me every time I have a nightmare, but it’s like she’s got a sixth sense for the really bad ones.
I nod, my breath slowly returning to me as the darkness recedes.
“You want to go see a movie today?” I croak. I know I must look crazy, my hair as wild as my stare. Hell, I’m at least a little crazy. That’s why I have the pills after all and the doctor on speed-dial whom I’ve missed my last two telephonic appointments with.
I want to get out of here, away from the memories of William, for which I have no respite.
Molly shuts her book.
“Heck yeah,” she says. “It’s a pretty far drive but definitely.”
I remember I don’t have my car. I cringe by way of apology.
“Can you drive?” I ask. “I’ll pay for gas.”
Molly laughs. “It’s fine, girl.”
She hops out of bed and heads toward her closet, grabbing a pair of jeans and a sweater, tossing them onto her bed.
She turns to me, grinning widely. “Up and at ‘em! We don’t want to be late.”
I laugh because I know for sure she has no idea about the movie showtimes and just wants an excuse to avoid doing homework.
18
Harlow
Hungry and tired, I walk out of From Colonialism to Industrialization: The Birth of the Modern World. God forbid Voclain name its humanities classes anything normal like World History. My book bag digs into my shoulder like it weighs forty pounds, probably because it does.
I am exhausted, and my indolent feet protest at my shuffle. I know what I’d see if I looked in the mirror: a heavy-lidded gaze with blue eyes made even clearer by the dark circles underneath them. I could blame Ian or I could blame the Rules, but that’s not entirely truthful. A cloud stews and swirls above me, my own personal thunderstorm.
The nightmares are worse lately. William haunts my dreams, and with his every appearance, I fade a little more, like I’m the one who is the apparition.
I should tell someone—my doctor or maybe my parents—but it sort of feels like doing so would admit failure. And I don’t admit failure—I won’t admit it—because if I fail then the dreams that live on through me disappear from the world, just like he did.
On the rare nights I don’t dream about William, my mind cruelly deposits me in front of Ian. Those nights I wake up panting, yearning deep and low in my belly.
Ian Beckett has seared his imprint on my soul with a branding iron, and an ugly scab cracks open and bleeds every time I see his stupid, beautiful face, even if only in my imagination.
One dream plagues me more than most. It comes to me the same. Always the same.
In that dream, Ian walks lazily across the football field, shirtless as drops of sweat fall from his mess of inky hair to his bronze shoulders. Grass and dirt stain his football pants, and the sun kisses his devilish image like it is his own personal spotlight. There’s just him and me on our own personal gridiron.
He stares at me as he stalks forward, his gaze like thunderstorms rolling on the edge of the horizon. I am powerless as I take a hesitant step toward him. My feet move, but I am not in control. I’m just a girl locked in a cage inside her brain, pounding on the walls and screaming to be let free.
He smiles, all straight, white teeth and contagious charm as the sun bathes him in the last amber light of day. Helpless, my lips curve to return his smile, but inside I am yelling to not do it, to not go to him, but I am just a bystander, watching as I betray my friend and everything I hold dear.
My body walks toward him until I am less than a foot away, and he reaches for me. As our hands touch—and I pound on the walls of my cage, begging myself to turn and run in the other direction—I awake, feeling as though I have been capsized on a cloudless, sunny afternoon.
Ian visited me last night again in that dream, and I have spent the entire day trying to forget a memory that never even existed.
My stomach growls, and I skirt around a pair of girls blocking the hall and walk straight into a hard shoulder. My eyes snap open, and I am greeted by Aurora’s cruel glare.
“Watch where you are going, slut,” she sneers, before turning to her crew, Blythe, Lilith, Ivy, and Arabella. Each of them regards me with the same disgust. “Looks like money can’t buy manners after all.”
I blink at her, and it takes me a moment—longer than it should, but I blame it on the lack of sleep—before I retort. “Then what’s your excuse?”
“What did you say to me?” she snaps, her eyes darting wildly from me to her friends.
I am too tired for this crap. I ignore her and hike my book bag further up my shoulder.
I start away and decide to eat lunch in my dorm. The cafeteria is nicer than the prepackaged selections the school offers, but it’s hard to have an appetite surrounded by vultures.
My steps are slow as I pass through a sea of students, squeezing between oblivious bodies. I am nearly to the exit doors when I’m jerked back violently, the straps of my book bag digging into my shoulders.
I flounder, my arms waving like I’m a baby bird preparing to take its first flight. I’m shoved into the girls’ bathroom. My palms barely keep my face from crunching against the door.
I stumble forward, my steps wobbly and uneven, before I get my bearings and turn around.
Aurora is front and center, a blade in her hand. You have got to be kidding me.
It takes a good ten seconds before I realize I
