Bren walked me home in the dusky hours of morning, when the air was still and cold and the moon hung bright in the sky. I was reminded of a dawn not long ago when I had crept out onto the deck and lifted my eyes to a false sun rising over the mountain. Now it warmed my hand as we walked together, the boughs of the evergreens whispering as we brushed them on our way past.
We stopped before rounding the corner of the deck.
I gazed up at Bren, my eyelids still heavy from sleep, and he kissed me before I could speak. My blood stirred as he pulled me closer. I was desperate to hold onto him, panicked now that the time had come to walk away. When he released me, I saw the same panic in his own eyes.
“Out here, or in the lodge,” he said. “Nowhere else.”
“I know. It’s going to be fine.”
“My shift ends at six. I’ll see you right after.”
I nodded. I didn’t want to wait that long.
“I’ll have my phone if you need me. Keep yours on. I don’t care about school policies. If I call and you don’t answer I’m going to come looking for you.”
I smiled. “Don’t worry.”
He kissed me once more, and then I turned to face a day in a world where I was slowly losing my balance. It was like stepping out onto solid ground from the spinning barrel of a funhouse.
The school day went by in a slow blur. I stared at my teachers as they lectured, my focus on mental images of Loki’s calm blue gaze as he stood in the hail, Fenrir’s glittering coat and razor teeth, Bren’s eyes blazing in the night. Brianna glowered at me all through lunch from her new perch on Brian’s knee, but Tyler didn’t glance at me once, or try to speak to me again. By the time the day was over, I was buzzing with the need to get home, to catch a glimpse of Bren on the trails and make sure that he was okay.
My mother drove maddeningly slow, and as she stopped at a yellow light I scratched at my head in frustration.
“I know you don’t want to discuss this," she said as the light turned red, "but I just…I feel I have to say something and we don’t seem to get the time to talk anymore.”
“What?” I turned to her, momentarily pulled from my mania. “What is it?”
“Well. Your relationship with Bren. I don’t know how far it’s gone, but…”
“Mom.”
“No, Jenna. We need to do this.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now.” Her voice was firm, so I waited for her to continue. The light turned green and she pressed the gas, still creeping along at the speed limit.
“As I said, I don’t know how far things have gone, but given your age, I can imagine you’ve considered having sex with this boy.”
“God,” I whispered, propping my elbow on the edge of the window and dropping my head into my hand.
“And I want you to know that I don’t want you to do that. You’re not ready, and it can complicate your life in ways you can’t imagine.”
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do, Jenna. I don’t think anyone your age knows until they get pregnant or end up hurt in some other way. But regardless…”
“I get it.”
“Regardless. If you choose to have sex with this boy despite my feelings on the subject, I want you to be safe. I want you to see a doctor, and I want you to use birth control.”
“It’s not like that. Okay?”
We were silent for a moment. I watched her inhale and then pause, her breath suspended.
“You’re wearing your jacket.” She said in a gust.
I lifted my head. “What?”
“Last night, you told me you left your jacket at Frieda’s. But you’re wearing it today.”
My body went cold. I’d told her about my jacket before Frieda and I went upstairs to the suite, and then, as far as she knew, I’d been in for the night. I thought about telling her Bren had run it over while I was walking Frieda downstairs, but it would have seemed too contrived, too convenient. Neither of us spoke until she pulled into her space at the hotel.
“I’ll make you an appointment,” she said. And then we opened our doors and went our separate ways.
I dropped my backpack behind the reception desk and went out onto the deck, surveying the mountain for Bren. After about fifteen minutes, I gave up and broke the rules, running up to the suite to grab my boots. My board was still in the rack where I’d left it, and I thought I’d practice a little to kill some time. For one moment, I considered taking the lift up the big mountain. I’d been to the summit with Bren and had made my way down just fine, turns and all, but the thought of going alone drew all kinds of crazy ‘what ifs’ into my head - like breaking my leg as I tried to get off the lift, falling against a rock and knocking myself unconscious, getting lost on a trail or stuck on a black diamond. So instead, I trudged to the top of the bunny hill, scanned down and back up for a glimpse of red, then buckled in and took my first run.
It was better than I thought it would be. My turns were improving and I was able to accumulate some speed, skirting and coasting past most of the beginners on the hill. I was still afraid of falling every second, but it felt good to be ignored a little instead of gawked at by seasoned skiers and boarders, who, I imagined, took bets on how many seconds would lapse before I crashed, and in which direction I would bounce. After my fourth tumble-free run, I stopped at the bottom to unbuckle my boot and rotate my ankle. It was almost healed from the pull, but I still felt a twinge of weakness every now and then.
The sun brightened as a thin cloud cleared its surface, and I tilted my head and closed my eyes, allowing it to infuse me with a false sense of normality. I knew it couldn’t last, but I let that and every other thought drift away as the rays warmed my face.
“The days are short, the sun a spark, hung thin between the dark and dark.”
The voice was rough and smooth, a beach of white sand. I opened my eyes.
“John Updike,” Loki said, his irises Caribbean blue now, and sparkling. His hair was combed back off his face, his skin like porcelain in the sunlight. I looked down at his skis. They were a metallic chocolate that matched his clothes, but tattooed over the surfaces with bright yellow dots and swirls.
As I slid back a little, he pointed to my board with his pole. “Didn’t take you for a boarder.”
“Why not?” I glanced at the skiers and riders rushing past us on both sides, making their way to the lift. Bren told me Loki probably wouldn’t cause trouble in public, but I found it hard to believe anyway, in the light of day, that he could be so terrible.
“Skiing’s more graceful. Don’t you think? Riding is so aggressive…all that stomping around and tearing everything up like Godzilla attacking the city. Besides,” he said, gazing down at me with a smirk that was mostly in his eyes. “Skiing is easier to learn. They say.”
“I doubt that,” I said, motioning to his skis. “There are two planks to control instead of just one. Your legs could snap like twigs.”
“Horrible image.”
“And what makes you think I’d choose the easiest thing?”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“Do you?”
I felt a jolt of fear run through me as his eyes steadied on mine, the amusement in them freezing over. I fought to be still, to hold my expression as I had the night before when Fenrir loomed in the shadows, but the air grew thick and heavy between us, and my gaze finally dropped under the weight of it. I stared at the white collar of his t-shirt, focusing on the necklace hovering just above - a round, blue stone fastened close around his neck by a leather strap. The stone was the same color as his eyes. He reached up and touched it, his fingers moving over the surface.
“Don’t you see how you’ve chosen what’s easy, Jenna?” He asked. I lifted my eyes again. His expression was softer now. “Easy to be afraid of me. Easy to believe what they’ve told you.”
“Are you saying it’s not true?” I would never have taken his word over Bren’s,
but my mind craved an explanation, some way to balance what I knew with what I saw.
“There is no truth.” He said. “Only perspective.”
“Sounds like you’re avoiding my question.”
He laughed. “That is the way of the gods.”
And I knew at least that much was true.
I squinted against the sun as I peered up at him. “Where’s Fenrir?”
“Resting. He’ll be sorry to have missed you.”
“I thought he was going to eat me last night.”
“So did I.”
“And you would have let him?”
He shrugged. “How do you think he got so big?”
I thought I detected humor in his tone and wondered if it was wishful thinking.
“You lied to me,” I said, as if to make an argument for heeding Bren’s warnings. “You said he was an Alaskan Malamute.”
“I told you what you wanted to hear. What would you have done if I’d told you what he really was?”
Peed my pants, I thought.
“Exactly,” he said. I slid back further. He dropped his hand from his necklace. The stone looked darker now and I checked his eyes. Darker.
“You’re honest,” he said as if he was conceding a point. “That’s rarer than you’d think.”
“How do you know I’m honest?”
“You’re easy to read."
“I have a feeling it wouldn’t matter.” My voice was shaky.
He stepped closer to me and grinned. “No, it wouldn’t.”
I leaned back, moving my eyes over his face. I felt as if I couldn’t see him whole, as if I were playing the game where you are given a close up of one part of something and have to guess the entire image.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
We stared at each other for a long time, the lift and the hill and the noise around us a faded backdrop hung behind the sharp, bright moment.
Before I even registered his turn, I was watching him ski off toward the terrain park. He did not propel himself, but rode his skis like blades, his body still, his poles pointing stiffly behind him. And no one noticed.
I took the lift back up to base, agonized. There was no doubt in my mind that I should not keep this from Bren. They’d want to know everything, but it was such a quick conversation. Nothing, really. And Bren would freak out, insist on the babysitting thing, and basically imprison me in my own life. Trying to deal with my mother under those conditions would be nearly impossible, and it wouldn’t be worth it. I decided that their attention would be best focused on finding out what Loki wanted.
I slipped my board into the rack, unzipped my jacket and climbed the stairs to the deck, meaning to get my backpack and catch up on my homework in the lodge, but as I reached for the door handle, I caught Skye in my peripheral vision, standing against the far rail. Her stare was pointed, so I dropped my hand and walked over, stopping a few feet away. She was wearing her instructor’s jacket, which hung halfway down her thighs and looked a bit awkward on her, and a purple hat that matched her streaks. Her legs were pressed together, her arms in a knot across her chest.
“Make a new friend?” She asked in her emotionless tone.
“Not exactly.”
“Are you going to tell Bren?”
“Are you?” I watched her violet eyes.
She shrugged. “Your call.”
We were quiet for a moment.
“I don’t think it’s a big deal,” I said. “He has enough to worry about.” I gestured toward the bunny hill. “That was nothing. Stupid. I don’t want to upset him for no reason.”
“So it has nothing to do with your not wanting a bodyguard?” She straightened to face me squarely. “Unless it’s Bren, of course. And just to let you know, if you think you can walk around here completely clueless as long as there are people around, then you do not understand things.” She leaned forward. “Loki does not care about anyone. Not us, not you, not your mother, not hundreds of vacationers. No one.”
“I’m not walking around here completely clueless."
“Really?” She raised a brow. “Then why didn’t you see him coming?”
“Because I do not have supernatural vision,” I snapped.
“Exactly.” She let herself fall back against the rail with a satisfied smile.
I threw a glance at the sky. “Look. Just tell me if you’re going to tell Bren or not.”
She lifted a shoulder, let it fall. “He’d know if he wanted to.”
“What does that mean?”
She hissed out a chuckle, her way of punctuating my ignorance. “Bren can see people’s thoughts better than I can. He’s not in your head because he chooses not to be. He thinks it’s disrespectful.” She rolled her eyes. “The two of you are going to get us all killed with this ‘I’m such a good person’ crap. It makes me want to throw up.”
“The bathrooms are inside to the right.” I said coldly. “So are you going to tell him or not?”
“Do what you want. I’m out.” She skirted around me and stomped away, her footsteps too thunderous for her wispy build.
Chapter 23