“Yes.” I hung my head, willing to acknowledge what a total ninny I was. Because only a ninny used the word ninny, right?
I clenched my jaw, searching for something redeeming to say.
He beat me to it. “So I know you pick on deer—” he rubbed his starched shirt where the dart had struck— “and you collect mountain rocks.” He smirked a little, not unkindly. “I’m also going to guess your last name is Mitchell. What’s your first name?”
“Milo.”
“What do you think mine is?” He dropped back, staring thoughtfully at the ground, and I slowed to match his pace.
I looked over his suit, over his face—so honest and clean. “Nick,” I said. “Your name is definitely Nick.”
“Nick Carraway.”
“Yeah. But not for long. Soon we’ll be at my house, and I’ll be calling everyone who lives near here and we’ll be finding out who you really are. Or, hey— you’ll be remembering.”
“Maybe.” It sounded like he was talking through a cloud.
“I’ll help you. I’ll do everything I can.”
He looked at me, a strange expression on his face. “Thanks, Milo.”
We walked to the rest of the way to the house in slightly less uncomfortable silence. I kept thinking about the way he said my name. Mi-lo. It seemed to roll out of his mouth. I glanced at him a few times, desperate to know what he could possibly be thinking.
When we reached the row of firs that lined the driveway, I slid through first, and he followed me across the tire-sized indentions in the grass. Mom wouldn’t be home, but that was probably a good thing.
“No one’s here,” I said as I climbed the stone steps and fished the keys out of my coat pocket. “It’ll just be us. I can get you something to eat and then we can decide what you want to do.”
“What I want to do?” He stared at me skeptically, like I’d suggested we go fly a kite.
I shrugged. “You know… I can go through a list of all our neighbors, see if anything seems familiar. You could be a cousin or something, visiting from the East Egg. If that doesn’t work, maybe we should call someone.”
“Someone.”
“You know, like the police.” He didn’t say anything, but his brow furrowed, and I could tell he didn’t like the idea. “Or the hospital? I don’t know…”
As I pulled the screen door open, Nick lagged. I turned to face him, leaning my back against the heavy cedar door.
“We don’t have to do anything,” I said. “It’s your choice. You call all the shots.”
He cocked a brow and rubbed his abs. I blushed. “Almost all of them…”
HERE - Chapter Four
As “Nick” followed me into the house, I wondered how the kitchen looked to a stranger’s eyes.
He’d see dark hardwood—unidentifiable because our floors were made of enviro-friendly scraps—lots of indwelling shelves crowded with books, wall-mounted miners’ lamps converted to use LED bulbs, my dad’s old Persistence of Memory print, and our dining room table. The table was totally schizophrenic, incorporating so many colors it almost made you dizzy. The slab where you’d sit dishes or rest your elbows was made of road signs, welded together with strips of stained glass; its legs were a bed post, an old Native American walking stick, and two oversized wooden baseball bats. The chairs: four big eggs in primary colors.
“It’s kind of…cluttery in here,” I said—as if he’d lost his eyesight as well as his memory.
I loved our house, but with someone new seeing it—and maybe judging it—I felt embarrassed. Like Halah had said once: “For well-off people, your family lives like rednecks, Milo.”
Anybody wearing a Brioni suit would surely see it as junky.
Nick just shrugged and, after a second, slouched down in the blue chair.
I walked behind the island and spread my hands out on its rough stone counter. “Okay. So I’ve got milk, cider, lemonade, carbonated stuff—oh, and hot chocolate. It’s my mom’s recipe. Pretty good.”
Nick pulled off his jacket, tossing it roughly over the back of his chair. “Yeah, that works. Your mom’s stuff.”
As he said it, something flickered over his face. Wonder about his own mom, maybe? I wanted so badly to ask.
I turned to the refrigerator, then glanced over my shoulder for a look into the den. It was unusually dark in there. Dark and…quiet.
“No power,” I realized, stepping to the microwave. I rubbed my hand over the blank gray rectangle where the digital clock was supposed to be. “So weird,” I mumbled. There hadn’t been any weather, nor was any in our forecast. I recalled the flash of light, and I tried to remember: Was that real, or had it happened in my head when I’d shot Nick?
I walked behind his chair, close enough so that I could have indulged my insane impulse to touch his hair, and peeked through the wooden blinds of a front-facing window. “Uh-oh…”
“What?”
“The turbines really aren’t moving.”
“That’s bad.” It was a statement, but I sensed his question.
I turned toward Nick. Slits of murky light made broad lines across his face and chest. “We sell the power that the turbines make to a power company. One of the good things about them is that they don’t ‘go out’ ever. They’re considered energy independent, but they need some electricity. Some models work with gasoline, but… gah. I’m sure this is boring you to tears. Basically if the turbines are down, that means something big happened. With the power. Not that that matters compared to...”
He leaned forward, looking even more striking in his white dress shirt than he had in his coat.
“Compared to what’s going on with you,” I finished.
I had a vision of Nick in his tuxedo, sitting at a worn desk at a social services office with his gorgeous coppery head in his hands, alone in the world, unable to go to school, be with friends, live his life. And all my fault.
STOP MAKING NEGATIVE PREDICTIONS.
Moving purposefully, I strode over to the kitchen counter and pulled open the drawer with our emergency numbers list. My mom had typed them for my babysitters years ago, and none of our neighbors had changed.
As soon as I got the laminated paper in my hand, I realized I still hadn’t offered Nick anything to eat or drink. I sneaked a glance at him, found him sitting with his eyes shut, his head in one hand with the tips of his fingers pushed into his hair. I swallowed hard.
“Do you want something cold? Lemonade? Maybe with some cake?”
He straightened, shrugged without turning around; I could sense his distress building. “Can I have some water? Food, too.”
“Friendship cake?”
“Sure.”
“Good.” I forced myself to smile. “I can maybe even find an interesting rock to go with it.”
Nick smiled back, but I could see the strain.
I lobbed a huge piece of cinnamon-vanilla cake onto a pottery plate, filled an old jam glass with ice cold well water, and set both on the table in front of him. Then I eased into the red chair across from his, armed with our neighbors’ numbers and my cell.
It felt wrong to interrupt when he was eating, so I scrolled through my contacts, stealing glances as he cut his cake into neat squares with large, hard-looking hands.
I looked over the list of phone numbers, letting him have a few more bites before I started throwing questions at him. Maybe I was putting it off because I was nervous we wouldn’t learn anything. But we had to, right? Other than Mitchell Road, which was a long way from the tree house, there wasn’t another road in any direction for at least ten miles. So he must have come from one of the neighbors’ houses.
“Who should I start with?” I asked. “Our neighbors are the Simpsons, the Roanokes, the Patels, the Coles, and Mr. Suxley.”
I held my breath, praying he didn’t say Suxley. The man had to be near seventy by now, but he still ran his enormous organic vegetable farm on the land directly north of ours. When my family had moved here, he’d prot
ested the turbines at Golden’s city council, and when they’d ignored him—the council was as thrilled about “green” energy as they’d been about his green veggies—Suxley had petitioned the city of Denver. When no one minded the “abomination,” old Suxley’s only revenge was honking the horn of his dingy Landrover any time he passed me on Mitchell Road. For years I’d regarded him as a sort of community terrorist, and the idea of phoning him now was irrationally daunting.
“I think the Simpsons would be our best bet,” I said, when Nick didn’t speak up. “Unless one of the other names rings a bell.”
He shrugged as he took a swig of water.
I was punching the first digit when I heard a low hum. In the silence of the house, the sound was loud. It drew my eyes to the window, where I couldn’t decide which was weirder: the sky full of inky black clouds that had suddenly appeared in the last five minutes, cloaking the cliff tops (on a day the forecast had called for clear skies) or my mother’s truck, an ancient F-250 that I usually never saw before 9 o’clock.
“Wow. My mom is home.” I looked at my cell phone—4:48—and moved toward the door. “Something really bad must be going on with the turbines. Or the weather. Maybe both.”
If I heard Mom coming—or, more often, saw the truck’s lights from my bedroom window—I tried to open it for her. After a day up at the turbines, her hands were often covered with grease, and the door knob was a fancy stained glass creation she’d made several years ago, back when she was still just an artist.
I opened the door, and she said, “Milo!”
It was the same way she always said my name when she got home: happy but exasperated, like she had some story to tell me about her day. She went in for a light hug, but I stepped back.
“Um, Mom—” I started. I glanced over my shoulder. Blinked once. Twice.
The table was empty, all signs of Nick gone.
About the Author
Ella James writes young adult fantasy and adult romantic suspense. She lives in Alabama with her amazing husband, energetic baby, and mopey dog. Her young adult novels Stained and Here were nominated best debut novel and best sci-fi/fantasy, respectively, at utopYA Convention 2012. Her books have been featured on numerous Amazon bestseller lists.
Books by Ella James:
Stained (Stained Series Book 1)
Stolen (Stained Series Book 2)
Chosen (Stained Series Book 3)
Exalted (Stained Series Book 4) – Coming Fall 2012
Here (Here Trilogy Book 1)
Trapped (Here Trilogy Book 2) – Coming Fall 2012
Before You Go
Learn more about Ella and her books at www.ellajamesbooks.blogspot.com and friend her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ellajamesbooks
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