“That is good, because I definitely need you,” Eerie said, sounding reassured, squeezing the handle of her knitting basket.
“Okay,” Alex said hesitantly, feeling as he always did when talking to Eerie; slightly over his head, as if he had agreed to something he didn’t understand, and now could only hope that it would turn out for the best. “I’d really like to take a shower before I go anywhere, though. We aren’t going to San Francisco this time, right?”
Eerie poked his chest experimentally, causing him to start back involuntarily and yelp, and then wish, immediately and wholeheartedly, that he hadn’t done any of that. At this point, pretty much everyone in the gym had stopped what they were doing and were staring at them. In the free weight section, a number of early morning lifters watched and laughed openly.
“You aren’t that sweaty. Can you please just change and come with me? I don’t have a lot of time.”
“Are you in some kind of trouble, Eerie?” Alex asked, toweling off the back of his neck.
“Because if you are, I can try and help you…”
“Good,” Eerie said, smiling at him and urging him toward the locker room. “Because I am in trouble.”
Alex couldn’t get anything more out of her no matter how he asked, and she seemed very nervous and eager to leave, so he settled for a quick rinse in the shower. He put his clothes back on, wishing he’d worn something a little nicer than the track pants and sweatshirt that he was wearing. He did his best to ignore the guys who were staring at him.
Eerie was in the lobby when he came out of the locker room, so nervous that she was literally hopping from one foot to the other in a little shuffling dance while she stared out the window, clutching her knitting basket as if she were afraid someone would try to take it from her. For all he knew, that was exactly what she was worried about. She wasn’t aware of it, but almost everyone in the gym had stopped making even a pretense of working out, they were so absorbed by Eerie’s bizarre performance. He was feeling raw about the situation until she saw him, but then she smiled as if she were truly happy to see him, and his resentment evaporated. Eerie latched onto his arm and practically dragged him from the gym, relaxing only when they were out of sight of the building, heading away from the dorms, toward the crest of the hill the Academy sat on.
“Eerie, what’s going on?” Alex asked, wondering how a girl so much shorter than him could set such a demanding pace. “Are you okay?”
“I am in trouble,” Eerie repeated, as if she was describing the weather outside as sunny. “I am okay,” she said, taking a deep breath and then launching into a breathless tirade. “But Rebecca is mean, and Gaul is mean, and they are mad at me! They are mad even though they told me to make friends! And I am trying to make friends! And Rebecca tried to make me do things, but I said ‘no’, and then Gaul looked all scary, and then they said they would stop but that I had to wait outside, and when I was waiting outside they were talking about suspending me and I don’t want to be suspended and I don’t want to be in trouble and it isn’t fair because I didn’t do anything wrong…”
“Uh, Eerie? You’re talking too fast. I’m not sure what you are trying to tell me. Are you in trouble with Gaul and Rebecca?”
Eerie nodded, her eyes moist with frustration.
“Is it because of San Francisco? Because of, you know, what happened to Edward?” Alex was certain that he already knew the answer. He had been waiting for weeks to hear the inevitable consequences of their unauthorized trip.
Eerie nodded again, and Alex got angry. He suddenly realized that they intended to punish Eerie but not him, probably because they didn’t want to upset him. Because he was valuable and, though he didn’t like admitting it, because he was fragile. The unfairness of it all made him puff up with indignation. Not that he wanted to volunteer to be punished or anything, but still…
“What are you thinking about?” Eerie asked him again, making him realize that they had been walking up the hill in silence for an indeterminate period while he was lost in thought.
“You.”
Eerie looked at him sharply, checking if he was joking. He wasn’t, but he found himself unable to meet her strange eyes, anyway.
“That is a good answer,” she said, clutching his arm tightly.
“It’s true,” he said, shrugging, trying to play it off as if it was no big deal. “What did they say they were going to do?”
Eerie let her hand drift down, until it came to rest inside of his own. He took it automatically, and intertwining her cool fingers with his own. His clammy palms embarrassed him, but she didn’t notice or didn’t mind and he felt obscurely grateful to her.
“I left before they told me,” Eerie admitted. “But, they are going to send me away, I’m sure of it.”
“But where would they send you, Eerie? Isn’t the Academy your home?”
Eerie hesitated so long before answering that he wasn’t sure that she intended to. When she finally spoke, her voice was so small that he had to lean close to hear her.
“Away from you.”
“What?”
Eerie stopped and looked at him oddly. He wondered, as he often did, what she saw through her dilated, teary eyes.
“They are going to send me away because they don’t want me to be near you,” Eerie blurted out, looking distressed and anxious. “They are afraid of you, Alex, and they get more frightened when I am with you.”
Alex followed along as she led him away from the path, into the gnarled oak trees that lined it, Eerie’s hand in his own, and he tried very hard not to get angry. He remembered his talk with Rebecca after he’d woken in the hospital, after his protocol had put him to sleep for more than a month, and her bizarre offer to extend his sleep, her concern about him associating with Eerie. He stilled had his doubts that Rebecca would actually send her away. He was so engrossed in his thoughts that he hardly noticed at first when stopped beneath a particularly craggy and ancient oak tree.
He squeezed Eerie’s hand and smiled at her until she was able to smile back at him. Alex was going to say something, but then he thought better of it. The mood seemed good, and Eerie was standing right in front of him, looking as if she wanted to be comforted. He put his hand on her shoulder and she slid forward so that she was standing up against him, one of his hands on her waist, the other resting behind her neck. She went up on her tiptoes, eyes closed, and he did what seemed like the right thing to do.
After a minute of mashing their lips together, she extracted herself.
“Uh, Alex,” Eerie said, pushing him away gently, “that kind of… hurts. You’ve never done this before, right?”
Alex was too embarrassed to look at Eerie. He managed a nod.
“Well, then, let me teach you.”
This time he let her take the lead, responding gently to her swollen lips instead of crushing them to him. The mouth that pressed against his own was warm and impossibly soft, and Alex knew nothing but the sensation and his own sweet, laconic response. She kissed him harder, nibbling his lower lip, and he tasted raspberries and honey. He wasn’t sure what to do, but to his relief, she moved slowly and seemed to expect very little from him. Without realizing it, he knotted the back of her blue hair around his fingers, but she didn’t seem to mind. When he bent to kiss her, he breathed in the scent of sandalwood, aromatic and pervasive, and it made him slightly dizzy. His skin tingled, pins and needles along his bare arms and all the way down his back. His other hand crept gradually down from her waist to run along her skirt and the soft curvature beneath it, hesitantly at first, and then more forcefully when she responded.
They found their way to the ground by stages, the logistics of which he was only barely aware, the grass crushing down beneath his back and poking him through his t-shirt. Eerie lay on top of him, her legs intertwined with his, her breasts pressing against his chest, her strange, wet eyes sparkling above his face as she smiled, brushed a blue lock behind her ears, and then bent to kiss him again. His hands wandered across her back, her skin warm through the thin cotton of her tank top. His hands lingered on her legs and the immaculately smooth skin of her thighs. The world swam pleasantly before him, a swirl of colors and impressions and golden motes that caught the light in fascinating ways; but it was the tactile, the rush of sensation from his fingertips and lips that captured him, rooted to the ground like he’d grown out of it, underneath the girl as if he belonged there.