The idea of being separated makes my heart pound.
“He understands me,” I tell my mother.
“Calla Elizabeth,” she turns to me, her face stern. “You are sixteen-years old. I’m your mother. I understand you. Dare is going home to Sussex.”
Sixteen? I’m fourteen. Aren’t I?
I open my mouth.
“But…”
“This is for the best,” she interrupts firmly.
I don’t want this.
But no one cares, and I seem to have lost a large chunk of time.
After dinner, Finn approaches me. He’s dressed in a button-up shirt and his hair is freshly washed.
“What were you thinking?” he asks, and he honestly can’t tell. He knows me better than anyone and he believes this nonsense too.
“I didn’t sleep with Dare,” I tell him. “I wasn’t drunk. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s not what it looks like.”
He doesn’t believe me, but he doesn’t argue.
“I’m going to a concert,” he tells me. “I still have your ticket. You’re coming right?”
His words.
He says them tiredly, like he’s said them a hundred times before.
My memory is murkymurkymurky, but I remember Quid Pro Quo. A concert. I was supposed to go, and I am sixteen because we have driver’s licenses. But this will be Dare’s last night here, and I have to see him. I have to talk to him. I have to fix this.
I shake my head and turn toward the wall. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“Fine,” Finn sighs. “I’ll go alone. I just don’t know what’s going on with you, Cal.”
“That makes two of us,” I snap.
Finn leaves and I’m alone.
Alone is my least favorite thing to be.
“Calla,” my mom calls. I find her in the salon downstairs. I approach her carefully and she’s stern when she speaks to me.
“I’m going to book club. You will stay here and out of trouble.”
My eyes fill with tears and hers soften for a minute and she grasps my hand.
“You’ll be fine,” she tells me. “There are just things you don’t understand.”
“I’m so tired of being told that,” I answer. “So tired. Just tell me already. Make me understand.”
“You can’t be with Dare,” she says helplessly. “You can’t. It could only end in heartbreak for all of us. He’ll be your undoing.”
“My undoing?”
She looks away, at the floor, out the windows. “The undoing of us all. There is so much about our family that you don’t understand, that I don’t want you to understand. It’s ugly and complex and even tragic. All I need you to know is that I would rather die than let you be with him. That’s how important this is. You have to choose your brother, or else all of this will be for nothing.”
Her words whirl around me, round and round and round.
I would rather die. Choose my brother?
“But why?” I ask her and I’m limp, and I’m breathless. “Choose Finn how?”
I can’t breathe, and I’m scared and my mom sees that.
“Are you all right, Calla?” she asks quickly, and she sits me in a chair and leans me back, rubbing my temples and of course I’m not all right.
“Breathe, my love,” she tells me. “Breathe.”
She takes a pill from her pocket and gives it to me and I swallow it, and I’m so inexplicably sad.
She stares at me, just stares and stares and stares, and then she holds my hand.
“He’s going to die for you, Calla,” she finally says and her words are so soft, her voice so thin. “One of them will die for you. You have to choose Finn.”
“What?” my voice is a screech and I don’t understand. “What do you mean?”
“You’ll be given a choice, and you can’t fail.”
This
Doesn’t
Make
Sense.
But I remember Sabine saying the same thing… you’ll have to choose, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
“I don’t understand,” I tell her. “Why do I have to choose between Finn and Dare?”
“Because I didn’t make the right choice,” she says weakly. “I chose wrong, and you’ll have to pay for my sins, or this will go on and on and on.”
“Did Sabine tell you this?” I ask her, “Because Sabine is crazy. That old gypsy stuff isn’t real. It can’t be.”
“I used to believe that,” she says, and her face is so sad. “When I was a little girl. But time tells everything, Cal. Time is everything. Once upon a time, in the very beginning, there were two brothers. They were both supposed to offer a sacrifice to God, but only one brother’s was accepted. Then, in a jealous fit of rage, his brother killed him. They are our family, Calla. Our blood. We have to make everything right, we have to sacrifice, or this will go on forever.”
“This is crazy,” I tell her. And I know crazy. “I’m dreaming.”
“You’re not,” she answers simply. “Stay here and rest. I have to take Dare to the airport. You will be fine. I’ve sacrificed everything to make sure of it.”
I feel sick and she leaves, and I sink to the floor and rock, my tears streaming down my face and staining my shirt.
This can’t be happening.
“But it is,” the voice is back, and before I look, I know who it is.
The hooded boy.
“What is your name?” I demand, and my fingers are shaking.
“I don’t have one. I was sacrificed without one.”
“Sacrificed by who?”
My breath is coming in pants.
“By my mother. I was sacrificed for my brother, and you shouldn’t have given him the ring. I could’ve prevented all of this.”
The world stops and spins and stops again.
“Your brother? You’re Dare’s brother?”
He nods and he’s sad, and he pulls down the hood and he’s Dare’s identical image.
“It should be Dare,” he tells me. “It needs to be Dare. Do not choose your brother.”
He tries to pull me to him, to kiss him, but his lips are cold and they feel dead and I yank away in a panic, because touching him takes my energy. It makes my eyes want to close and stay closed.
“You’re as cold as death,” I manage to say, and he smiles and it chills me.
“I am death,” he answers and he’s calm. “I’m descended from the Daughter of Death, and it will always be. I’m a son of Salome.”
This isn’t happening.
His eyes flash black, and I reach for the phone, and I call Dare’s number.
“Hello,” he says quietly, and he knows that I know.
“Your brother is here,” I tell him, and my words are stilted and stiff.
“Run away, Calla,” Dare tells me and he is urgent. “Run away.”
“I can’t,” I blurt, and the hooded boy is grabbing me, and I hear my mother shrieking at Dare.
“Good bye, Calla,” Dare says, and his voice is soft and it’s gentle and it’s firm. “Run. Tell him to come get me.” Then he’s gone, and my phone is dead and I’m desperate so I call my mother, and I know she’s in the car with Dare.
“Yes,” she sighs into the phone, already knowing that it’s me.
“Mom, we have to talk about this,” I tell her urgently. “It doesn’t make sense. This isn’t real.”
“Calla, I will do anything for you, and I have. This is a Savage matter, and we don’t need to speak of it. What has been put into place will be put into motion and you will be safe.”
“But…” my voice is limp and she interrupts me.
“No buts. We’ve said everything we need to say. I need to go. The rain is bad, and the time is right…” She interrupts her own sentence with a scream.
A shrill, loud, high-pitched shriek. It almost punctures my ear-drums with its intensity and before I can make heads or tails of it, it breaks off mid-way through. And I realize that I heard something else in the background.
The sound of metal and glass being crunched and broken.
Then nothing.
“Mom?”
There’s no answer, only loaded pregnant silence.
My hands shake as I wait for what seems like an eternity, but is actually only a second.
“Mom?” I demand, scared now.