The tall girl came back down the stairs and stopped in the middle. She waved at Harry and me. “Come on up.”
We both looked at Daisy once more before following the tall girl. “She’s in third room on the right,” She said in a low voice.
Harry started to follow me, but the tall girl stopped him. “Can you wait here?” she said. “I think Zia still isn’t fully dressed.”
“Ummm, sure,” he agreed.
I left him with her and headed toward the room, my steps much slower the closer I got. I don’t know why I was so nervous. I heard strange noises coming from the direction I was walking. Whimpering. Whispers. I wasn’t sure of anything. I could hardly make anything out. The door in question was cracked just barely and at first, I knocked upon it very lightly. “Hello?” I said, but there was no answer.
I went ahead and carefully pushed open the door.
My heart drowned in my stomach. I think I was dizzy enough for a few seconds that I could have lost my balance. Isaac lay across his bed with Rachel curled up next to him; her head pressed against his bare chest, her long, graceful fingernails tracing the contours of the muscles over his ribcage.
My hand flew over my lips; they trembled under my fingertips. I wasn’t going to be able to hold back the tears for long; my throat burned intensely.
Rachel slowly rose up from the bed. It didn’t matter to me that Isaac was fully clothed from the waist down; just seeing her half-naked in a pair of pajama shorts and nothing but a bra, told me all I needed to know. I couldn’t understand. I tried. I tried so hard, but there was no other explanation.
The room was uncharacteristically hot and sticky. I didn’t know if it was simply because of the nearby burning furnace, or because my blood was on fire.
“What?” said Rachel, “you thought he was yours, didn’t you?”
Isaac seemed to be asleep, but his eyes cracked open and he barely looked at me. They were full of nothing warm, his eyes. They seemed darker, more perilous and cold.
“He would never want you,” Rachel went on, mocking me, making me feel like the total idiot I knew I was.
The first of many tears streamed down my face.
“You’re nothing,” she said, “You’re a weak, ghastly freak of a girl with a fantasy.”
Rachel then leaned down and started kissing him.
I saw him kiss her back.
I ran out of the room, tears barreling from my eyes and I dashed down the stairs as fast as I could, almost tripping halfway down when Zia came running up and caught me.
“What are you doing here?” she shouted. She wasn’t being rude, but she was genuinely concerned. I didn’t care. I was crying and Zia knew that I had seen something. She knew I saw the one thing that I did not want to see.
I hated her for it, for knowing all along, but never discouraging me from Isaac. No, Zia had tried to push Isaac and me together. And for that, Zia was as guilty as he was.
“Leave me alone!” I pushed my way past her. “Harry! Harry! Let’s go!” The tears choked me.
Harry came down the stairs after me. I didn’t have time to ease the utterly confused look on his face yet. I just wanted to get out of there and as far away from the Mayfair’s as I could.
“Adria,” Zia shouted, “You don’t understand!”
I ran toward the front door and then heard Isaac shouting my name from the stairwell. “Wait, Adria!” he said, his voice hoarse probably because he just had Rachel’s tongue down his throat. “It’s not what you think! Please wait!”
How dare he give me that cliché line.
I ran right out the door and jumped in Harry’s car. Harry followed and tried to get me to calm down, but I would not have it.
“Please, just take me home.”
Without another word, my best friend lived up to his title and we sped away.
I DIDN'T TELL HARRY what I saw until much later. The one time I really did want him to just leave it alone, Harry was sure to pry it out of me.
“That’s harsh,” he said, “but you have to see it from Isaac’s perspective.”
My lips parted in disbelief. What happened to my best friend whom I could confide in and I could trust to be on my side? And then I realized, he was the ‘guy perspective’ and that I could confide in and trust him more than anyone. Harry was not telling me what I wanted to hear, he was telling me what I needed to hear.
“You’re not his girlfriend,” Harry said plainly. We were sitting on the hood of his car in my driveway. “I admit, he could’ve been a little more clear about his intentions, but you two weren’t an item, so technically he didn’t do anything wrong.”
The truth stung.
“He hurt my feelings,” I said simply.
Harry nodded, agreeing. “True, but you did go to his house uninvited and you did go into his room, uninvited. I’m sure he didn’t mean for you to catch them.”
Needed to hear it or not, I wasn’t buying it yet.
“But he held my hand,” I argued, “and he put me in his lap. I didn’t instigate any of those things.”
Harry leaned his back against the car windshield. I did too. The freezing glass penetrated straight through my coat in seconds.
“Didn’t you tell me before that the first time you went to their house there were girls all over him?”
“There were,” I said, “but he wasn’t into them. It was weird....”
Harry hesitated in a long, brooding pause as if trying to get over the unforgivable fact that I seemed to be making up excuses. We both looked up at the star-filled sky. It was just the way it used to look back in Georgia. I used to sit out in that barren field around our house and gaze up at the stars for hours. To think, if I had only done that instead the night Alex and I saw what we saw, none of this would have happened.
“I hate to say this,” Harry went on, “but it’s your own fault for falling for someone who made a bad first impression to begin with.” I could see him shaking his head from the corner of my eye. Harry was straightforward and cruelly blunt, but I one hundred percent respected him for it. “If I saw Zia in a situation like you saw Isaac, there’s no way I could ever be attracted to her.”
I looked over at him defensively. “But Harry, I told you it wasn’t like that.”
“Are you sure?” He looked right back at me harshly. “Don’t make excuses for him, Adria. Unless you can really find a reason to back them up.”
I could find no reason to back them up.
But it didn’t matter to me that it was my fault for letting down my guard, that I got my hopes up too quickly, or that I read too far into a situation and twisted the events to make them something in my mind that they weren’t. Isaac Mayfair still led me on. Subtly I know, but sometimes subtle can be more powerful than straightforward flirting. This was one of those times.
Well, I was definitely not going to let it happen again.
When I was alone in my room that night after Harry had gone home, I had time to reflect. Or rather, I had time to see just how embarrassed I was by what happened and I didn’t know how I was going to show my face at school for the next day or two, or at Finch’s Grocery when Nathan could show up there. I was sure the whole Mayfair house was buzzing with rumors about how I ran away crying and that I was such a dumb girl to think Isaac was ever interested in me. I can’t think of anything more embarrassing than that.
All day Sunday, I dreaded Monday. Still mad at Zia, the last thing I wanted to deal with was having to avoid her at school.
To my relief, Zia was absent on Monday.
And she was absent on Tuesday.
Wednesday.
Thursday.
I was getting worried, and the school was starting to talk.
“I bet she dropped out like Julia Morrow,” said a girl in the hall between classes.
“That girl’s a freak show,” Tori said at lunch while passing me alongside her new friends, so that I would hear her.
“What if she was kidnapped like Sebastian?” said H
arry.
We were in Geometry and Harry was whispering into the back of my head again.
“I’m really worried,” he said, “I haven’t heard from her at all. I even tried calling her landline last night, but no one answered the phone.”
It was strange. There were only two hundred people living in that house and for not one person to answer just didn’t seem right.
By the time I got home from school, I was prepared to dismiss everything. No one had reported Zia abducted like they did Sebastian, and it was true that Zia had a problem with keeping school hours before I ever met her.
Things weren’t so strange after all, I thought. Until Beverlee came home from work and I overheard her talking to Uncle Carl about how Nathan had not been back to work since Friday night.
I lay in bed staring at my cell phone that contained Isaac’s number, which I had never called. I thought about calling a hundred times, but all I had were a bunch of lame excuses I knew anyone would see right through. Isaac never told me I could just call him. He only gave me his number in case Alex ever came home.
But I didn’t want to talk to him anyway.
I tossed the phone on the end of the bed a little too hard and it bounced off and clunked against the hardwood floor. I curled up on my side with my pillow and fell asleep crying and angry. Only crying now because I was angry.
The knock at my bedroom door scared me awake. My eyes flew open and I lifted my head from the pillow.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” said Beverlee peeking around the door. “Zia’s downstairs and wants to talk to you.”
I lifted quickly, my mind still trying to catch up to being awake and I looked over at the clock on the nightstand. I thought it would be much later than nine. I felt like I had slept for hours.
I forced myself the rest of the way awake, but with incentive. I could only wonder why Zia would be at my house. Now I just had a few seconds to decide how I wanted to act toward her: still angry about the Isaac thing, over the Isaac thing completely, or just glad she was okay and full of questions about where she had been.
“Thanks,” I said to Beverlee, “can you send her up?”
Soon, Zia was knocking lightly against my opened door. She came inside; smiling cautiously, but there was also an apologetic glint in her eyes.
“Hey girl,” she said.
“Hey.”
She came over and stood near the bed, picking my cell phone up from the floor on her way.
“I really hope you don’t mind I’m here.”
I looked down at the swirly colors on my bedspread.
“No, I don’t mind,” I said and then I stared up at her, subconsciously trading the subject before it was too late, with a less embarrassing one. “Where have you been? Harry and I have been worried.”
“Yeah, sorry about that.” She looked away briefly. “Isaac was really freakin’ sick with pneumonia and then Nathan got it, along with Dwarf and me. It sucked hardcore.”
“Pneumonia?”
Zia smiled softly as if there was some kind of hidden meaning behind it that I should know. “I’ll have tons of homework to catch up on.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re okay,” I said, “and Harry’ll be relieved to know. I’ll have to call him later. Soon. Soon, but later; I mean after you leave.”
Zia stopped my babbling. “I just don’t want you to be mad at me.”
The more embarrassing subject was inevitable. I just wished it held off a bit longer.
“I’m not mad at you,” I said, sitting up the rest of the way while for the first time realizing that was the truth. “Look, I know what Isaac does isn’t your fault and since you’re living with his family, you can’t necessarily go around telling his secrets, or he’d probably kick you out.”
Zia shook her head. For a second, it seemed she wanted to say something and I guess I was kind of expecting her to explain herself, but she just looked away from my eyes.
I sighed.
“I would’ve done the same thing though,” she said finally, “if I were in your shoes.” But I got the feeling those were not the words she had wanted to say. They felt more like a tradeoff.
“So then what happened?” I said.
Zia went over to my vanity then and ran her fingers through her short, spiky bangs. Her reflection looked back at me through the mirror. “I told you why we’ve been M.I.A for so long.”
“Yeah...” I waited a moment longer, just in case she wasn’t finished. “And what about Isaac?”
Not sure why I cared; maybe I just needed some closure.
She put one last piece of hair into place and turned back to face me again. I couldn’t figure out her expression and it bugged me.
“I never speak for Isaac,” she said, “but he wants to talk to you and tell you himself.”
“What?”
“Yeah,” she nodded, “he sent me over here to pick you up. Damien is outside waiting.”
There was no way....
“If you don’t want to talk to him, I understand, but I really think you should go and hear what he has to say. Just my advice.”
I didn’t want to deal with this. It was bad enough I fell for a guy and then was completely humiliated by him. Honestly, I had never been so humiliated before by anyone.
“If he wanted to talk to me, why didn’t he come over here himself?”
Zia grabbed my sweater from the ottoman by the window and threw it into my lap. “You’ll have to let him tell you that,” she said. “Coming or not?”
I just stared at her.
I had nothing to say to Isaac Mayfair. I accepted he was never my boyfriend to begin with, but I was still hurt and bitter. I cursed myself for ever allowing myself feel this way. That I ever allowed myself to fall for Isaac at all. I had always been so careful...okay, the truth is that I never felt about anyone the way I felt about Isaac and it scared me. But it was wrong. That love at first sight stuff was, quite honestly, a load of crap and I never believed in it.
My mom used to say it was love at first sight with my dad, who left us when I was so young, and then later she said the same about Jeff Bradley.
I rest my case.
For a long moment I just sat there; distractedly clinging onto the sweater in my lap and that evil twin of mine trying her hardest to win this fight.
But I came out the victor this time.
I looked straight at Zia then and set the sweater aside. “No,” I said. “I don’t want to see him.”
Her expression failed under a shroud of defeat.
I stood from the bed and began picking things up from the floor. A pair of gently worn socks, a stack of paper which I had scrawled random notes and doodles upon when Harry had spent the night. I could still smell the ink that had been pressed over and over again deeply into the paper. I tossed my dirty clothes into the laundry basket beside the door and lined my shoes against the wall. It was all just to lessen the awkward feel of the mood. I thought about how Zia should come over more often on behalf of Isaac like this because at least then my room would stay clean.
“Adria,” Zia said almost pleadingly, “come on.”
“No,” I snapped, stopping in the center of the room and turning to see her at my left. “Sorry, but I won’t change my mind.” My voice trailed.
Zia’s perfectly manicured hands dropped lightly at her sides. She wore a form-fitting gray coat that tied stylishly around her hourglass waist and stopped just past her hips. I don’t know how she always pulled it off, but every time I looked at her I had to swallow a tiny dose of envy. I was the girl-next-door compared to her, who always, with powder-white skin and black bewitching eyes, looked like a walking Photoshop ad.
I went over to the mirror and pretended to be cleaning off the vanity when really I was looking at myself. I could see Zia behind me, finally deciding to sit down in the wooden chair near the nightstand and the bed. Absently, she poked her finger at the soft wax in the heart shaped candle holder beside the clock.
&n
bsp; It never bothered me before this night, as I looked at myself in that brusque and spiteful piece of glass, that maybe I just wasn’t hitting the mark. Maybe that’s why guys always chose Alex over me. Maybe that’s why I spent every weekend night reading a book, or staring up at the stars alone instead of going out like every other girl I knew.
Maybe that’s why Rachel was with Isaac and I was not.
Suddenly I slammed the hairbrush I had unknowingly been clutching the whole time, against the vanity. The mirror shook and I could see Zia behind me in the chair, no longer interested in the candle wax.
“Where’d you get those boots?” I said, turning around quickly and stealing from her the open opportunity to question my little fit.
Zia glanced down at her black, lace-up boots and then back up at me. “Amazon.” I could tell she was still confused about the shift of reactions.
“I love them,” I said.
“Better love them a lot for one hundred-twenty bucks.”
“Ouch,” I said. “Well, I hope you don’t think I’m copying, but I’m definitely getting a pair.”
Still, I could tell Zia was trying to sort out what might have really been going on inside my head, but finally she took the hint and went along with it.
I was glad to have her back and so was Harry when I called him later that night after Zia had gone home. And like before, the three of us at school were inseparable. Zia and Harry had so much in common, I thought there was no way they wouldn’t end up together. But despite the amount of attention she gave Harry, I noticed too that she seemed to keep it at a certain level. She never made a move forward, or indicated directly or indirectly that she might’ve been interested in Harry for anything more than friendship. I could see it, but thankfully Harry could not. He continued to walk around the school with a beaming smile on his face even when he wasn’t actually smiling.
I couldn’t break it to him, that Zia seemed to have a lot on her mind and Harry wasn’t part of any of it. At least not in the way he hoped. I figured it was best to just let him believe there was still a chance. After all, I wasn’t sure myself even if my suspicions were right.