I lift my nose and sniff the air. Power fills the room. “I can’t be late for school,” I say, unable to see him, but of course he’s here. I make the mistake of shifting a bit, to get a cramp out of my leg, and wince at the second rush of pain.
“You already have more tardies than everyone else,” Fear says, appearing at my side. “One more isn’t going to hurt.” He sits down and cool air rushes into my face. He smells of dew and sunlight and horror. “Why is that, by the way?” he adds, small wrinkles appearing in his otherwise-smooth forehead. “You’re a robot in every other aspect, but you can never seem to make it to class on time.”
Struggling is pointless, so I try to find a more comfortable position, hurting myself in the process. Fear only watches me; he’s still angry. I’ve injured his pride, and he won’t be able to forget that easily. “Could you at least get rid of part of the illusion?” I ask, nodding to my limbs and torso, where the cuts continue to bleed.
Fear smiles faintly, but it’s not a real smile. “No,” he re-
plies. “I want answers.”
I give up, going completely still. “What could I possibly know?” I ask.
In answer, Fear reaches down and picks up one of my paintings. He must have brought it over from the loft. It’s the one of the house by the ocean. Foam shoots into the air, reaching up the cliff side with white fingers. “You create these,” he says. “You dream. And I know you think about it constantly. I want you to tell me everything you know. Who are these people? What happened? Ah … ” He holds up one long, pale finger. “And don’t lie to me. I’m afraid I don’t have the patience for it today.”
“As you said, I dream and paint,” I say after a moment. I’m weakening from all the blood I’m losing. I wonder how long Fear will let the charade go on. “I know next to nothing; I’ve never seen the girl before. She screams and weeps, and she begs the boy to come back. There isn’t much more than that.”
Fear grimaces, leaning closer, his hands clasped loosely between his knees. “You’re keeping something from me, Elizabeth. I need to know. Please, just tell me.”
The wall within me trembles. For an instant, I see the depth of his desperation, his desire, before his mask falls back into place and he’s the cocky, arrogant, self-assured Emotion that I know. The pain is almost gone now; my body has gone numb. I turn my head away from him to look out the window. Morning light is always the most gentle, most serene.
“I have a theory,” Fear says, disrupting the silence. “About you. See, I don’t really believe that you feel absolutely nothing. There’s too much to indicate otherwise.”
“Such as?” I prompt. The sooner this ends, the sooner I can get my normal world back and get to school. I’ve never skipped once in my life; I do everything I can to avoid the school making phone calls to my house.
“You do care, Elizabeth.” Fear touches my cheek, tenderness suddenly filling his gaze. “You care about your friend Maggie, you care about your mom, you care about hurting that boy’s feelings at school. You may not feel in an overwhelming way; you’re subtle about it.”
“Wishful thinking, Fear. You want to understand, and you want to able to put me in a category. But the reality is we’ll probably never know the truth about what happened to me.”
“I can’t believe that,” he says, and once again he seems unable to resist touching me when I’m so near. His fingers trail down my neck and he makes little designs on my chest. His fingers are cool, and his essence battles with my immunity. Images of war and pain and terror sweep through my mind.
The ball of fire in the sky has risen even higher into the endless expanse, and the light inches into my room. It catches the icy blue of Fear’s eyes. “You watched me grow up,” I say. “Wouldn’t a child cry when her parents ignored her? Wouldn’t a girl care when her father hit her? Wouldn’t the way Sophia treats me bother me? And wouldn’t seeing Maggie—”
“Why are you so insistent?” Fear challenges. “You’re so adamant that you’re right and I’m wrong. Isn’t that feeling something?”
Arguing with him is pointless. I glance at the clock by my bed. “Fear, I do need to go. Would you please release me?”
He sits back, sighing, roughing up his hair in frustration. “Not yet.” He follows my gaze to the window. He shifts restlessly, a wild thing, a creature no one can tame or understand, not completely. He makes me think of a pale, pale lion. Beautiful and feral and always on the hunt.
“Everything has a purpose,” I remind him, my voice soft. “And yours isn’t to solve me. If you’re ever going to be happy, you need to move on.”
He laughs quietly. “See? Right there. Why would you say something like that unless you really do care?”
I lift one shoulder in a mild shrug, ignoring the pain the movement costs me. “I have instincts, Fear. But I don’t have all the answers. So, please, let me go to school.”
He sighs yet again, waving his hand. Suddenly I’m back in my real room and Tim is gone, as are the cuts and blood on my body. “I’m sorry,” Fear says. I don’t know if he’s apologizing for the pain or the rest of it.
“It’s fine.” I slide my feet to the side of the bed, standing. Fear watches me, longing in his eyes. I don’t have time to shower now, so I move to my closet, pulling out jeans and a T-shirt—what I wear every day.
“You’d look beautiful in a dress,” Fear says, so quietly that I almost don’t hear him. I don’t bother asking him to leave—he never listens to me, anyway—so I turn my back to him and take off the shirt I slept in. I hear him suck in a breath, but when I turn again to speak, he’s gone.
Ten
After a day of Sophia making snide comments every time she shoulders by me in the halls, and Joshua doing his best not to stare at me, I pull out of the school parking lot. Instead of going home, I head to town.
Hal, the owner of the hardware store, waves at me when I pass him. Nodding in return, I go directly to aisle eight. I study the selection carefully, though it’s very limited. There are exactly three shades of green: lime, emerald, and myrtle. Debating for a moment, I decide to take them all. As an afterthought, I also grab cans of gray and black and white.
“Do you need help carrying those to your truck?” Hal asks as he takes my money.
I stack the paint cans and lean them against my chest, shaking my head at him. “No thanks.” I start for the door.
“No, don’t touch anything!”
A display of vitamins topples over. The same female voice curses, and a woman appears in the aisle. Her hair is streaked with blond and her acrylic nails glint in the light. With a cell phone pressed to her ear, she bends and begins to stack the bottles. “I told you to keep your hands to yourself!” the woman snarls. Her glare is directed at someone blocked by the display. “No, I’m fine,” she says into the phone now, still stacking. “Morgan is just being a pain.”
She has to mean Morgan Richardson. Sophia’s little sister. This must be her babysitter.
The clock over her head catches my attention, and I hurry outside.
I drive over the speed limit to get home; Tim will start bringing the cows in from the pasture, and Charles won’t be around to cover for me when it comes time for milking. Once I’ve pulled into the driveway, I park beside Tim’s truck and leave the paint cans, heading straight to the barn. Mora pokes her head over the edge of a stall at the sound of my approach—I’m even later than I realized—and I immediately move to the milking supplies.
“Where have you been?”