~Peregrine Storke~
Sweat dripped down my shoulder blades, causing the tunic I wore to stick to my back as we walked, our feet scurrying over vegetation, massive fallen leaves, and slippery moss. Fall in Awkward was the same as spring in the real world. It was damp, cool, beautiful, and over laden with pollen.
Foster pushed a leaf out of the way and held it back so that I could duck beneath it.
“Why did you draw these so big?” he asked.
He fell into step next to me, our eyes searching the foliage for our lost friends.
“It seemed right,” I answered.
His gaze was heavy on the top of my head. “Can we be honest with each other?”
His question startled me. “I would hope so.”
He stopped walking. Perspiration beaded his brow, his tunic clinging to his chest. To be honest, we were both a mess. The air surrounding us smelled strongly of sweat, dirt, and cotton candy.
“This world,” Foster said, his hand gesturing, “it shocked me. At first, I thought you were insane. If I’m being truthful, I’m still somewhat on the fence about that. But this,” he glanced at the refracted light pouring through the gaps in the trees, “it’s amazing, Perri. An entire world. Make me understand this.”
I stared. “You want to understand Awkward?”
Foster’s gaze searched my face. “I want to understand you. You’re Awkward, Perri. Something made you create this place. Not just because you wanted to belong. It was something else.”
Swallowing hard, I started to walk again, my eyes tracing a series of yellow vines. They circled the trunk of a nearby tree, the golden stalks concealing tiny creatures I’d drawn into Awkward. There were a lot of things I’d added to this world—gnomes, nymphs, centaurs … anything I’d ever had a fascination with.
“My dad,” I began, “he’s mentally unstable.”
It was the first time I’d ever admitted this to anyone. I’d never even told Camilla. Mental issues of any kind were so full of stigma. It only took saying the word “mental” for people’s eyes to change, for their expressions to go distant, even fearful. It was easier blaming the alcohol.
Foster took my elbow. “Mentally unstable?”
I shrugged. “He’s got a lot of issues. It started with a nervous breakdown when he was in high school. Later, after he married my mother, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. If there is anything else wrong with him, we wouldn’t know because he refuses help.” I glanced at Foster. “I don’t hate my father. I know it seems like I do. I’m afraid of him. I’m afraid of being like him, of turning into what he has become. The mood swings, the yelling, the gambling, the alcohol, and the women. There are times he considers himself superior to everyone. It’s then he yells and criticizes everything, and then there are times he hates himself. Really hates himself. It’s hard to remember that it’s not always him talking.”
Foster didn’t say anything, his silence a balm to my nerves. If he’d spoken, I wouldn’t have been able to say anything more.
“It’s difficult growing up with someone who doesn’t think he has a problem. It changes you. My mother wanted to pretend his issues didn’t exist. It drove her to hide behind anything that would dull her senses.”
Foster’s hand tightened on my elbow. “And you?” he asked.
I exhaled. “As a child, I didn’t understand him. I just wanted to be perfect for him. I wanted to do everything right so he wouldn’t have an excuse to tell me what I was doing wrong. The older I became, the more I realized it wasn’t all me, that he had other problems, too. By then, however, I’d started having anxiety attacks. I was obsessed with being what I thought was perfect. He’d made me afraid of so many things.” I pointed at the trees. “In Awkward, there was nothing to be afraid of. Until now.”
Foster’s silence made me aware of other noises: birds chirping, bugs trilling, and the wind whistling down through the trees. The light in the forest was growing dim.
“You are every creature you’ve ever drawn into this world,” Foster murmured.
There was no need to respond. He hadn’t asked me a question; he’d simply stated the truth.
Pulling me to him, he forced me to turn around. His fingers brushed my cheek, where my glasses would have sat if I’d been wearing them. “You’re Elspeth with her spectacles.” He glanced at my feet. “You’re Nimble with her clumsiness.” His finger tapped my forehead. “You’re Herman with his love of knowledge.” His gaze settled on my face, my lips. “And you’re Weasel with his love for sweets.”
I couldn’t make my gaze meet his. “Is there anything awkward about you, Foster?” I asked. “I mean really awkward.”
Foster’s hands fell away from me. “I’m perfect.”
It was a bad joke made at the wrong time. I tried to pull away, but he stopped me.
“Wait! That was wrong.” He inhaled. “I don’t know how you want me to answer that. I don’t think of myself as awkward or not awkward.” He smirked, his fingers forcing my chin up. “I certainly don’t laugh like a hyena or drool in my sleep.”
If he hadn’t smiled, I would have been offended. Amusement replaced my irritation. “No, you just don’t like eighty percent of the food in Louisiana, and you go all ninja when you’re resting.”
He released my chin. “You have me there,” he agreed.
We started walking again. Wariness crept up my spine, the conversation with Foster distracting me from my fears. It was getting darker in the forest, and we hadn’t found Elspeth, Nimble, Weasel, or Herman yet. The oncoming night was making me jumpy and apprehensive.
Foster cleared his throat. “Since we’re being honest here, I also won’t go on a second date with a girl unless she kisses on the first date.” He pulled Queen Norma’s ball from the pouch on his belt. It was changing color again, the green bleeding into blue. He replaced it. Neither of us mentioned the change.
“So a girl has to be easy for you to date her?” I asked.
Foster grinned. “No, she just has to kiss. A kiss says a lot about a person. You can tell a great deal about the way they are just from the way they kiss.”
I gaped. “Wow, no pressure or anything. Most people just ask questions.”
Foster’s hand fell against my waist as we maneuvered through the forest. There were shadows everywhere. The sound of creatures stirring was more eerie than it had been before.
“I’m sort of squeamish about my feet,” Foster admitted. “I blame the military.”
My heart rate was rising. I was seeing things in the growing darkness, things that weren’t there. Glowing eyes and bloodthirsty men.
Foster’s fingers tightened on my waist. “Come on, Perri,” he soothed. “Play the game with me.” He didn’t need to sense my uneasiness, it was written all over my face. Every muscle in my body was taut. Foster drew in a breath. “You don’t want to see what feet look like after a long time in the field.” He shuddered. “And when you share a bathroom with a lot of guys, you start wearing shoes in the shower just on principle.”
He pinched my waist, and I jumped. “Your turn, Perri.”
He was trying to distract me. I gulped, my eyes wide in the dim light. “I twirl my hair when I’m in a crowd too long, and if I get nervous, my stomach rumbles. Really loudly.”
Foster drew closer to me, his hand guiding me to a tree. “We’re not going to find them tonight, you know that, right?”
I exhaled, the sound shaky. Faint light from the full moon trickled down through the trees, but it wasn’t enough.
“If we keep walking, we might break out of the forest,” I insisted.
“Into what?” Foster asked. “Another swamp? Another giant? A man eating succubus?”
I glanced sidelong at him. Most of his face was in shadow. “Light. There will be light.”
Foster forced me to sit before tugging a man-sized leaf down over us both. Chilly dampness seeped into my bottom from the spongy earth. “What makes you fear the dark so much?
”
“It’s not the dark,” I answered. “It’s the monsters in it.”
Foster huffed. “That’s irrational.”
Shame ate away at my gut. “Maybe,” I agreed, “but it’s hard not to be afraid of something when you’ve been taught to fear it.”
Foster scooted in close, his shoulder touching mine. “Your dad?” he asked.
Foster’s body was warm, his presence reassuring. I looked down at my hands. “He tried to kill himself once. He was interrupted by a friend, a minister who told him it had been God that led him to our house that day.” I inhaled. “I’m not saying it wasn’t a higher power, but Dad takes everything to the extreme. He suddenly felt called to be a preacher. He does things like that. He comes up with these hare-brained, spontaneous ideas and just runs with them. A jack of all trades, he calls himself.” I snorted. “He went to seminary school and did whatever he had to do to become a preacher.”
Foster laughed. “Your dad? A preacher?”
A twig snapped, and I grabbed Foster’s arm. His bicep tensed against my palm.
“Your dad,” Foster prompted.
“It lasted two years,” I told him. “For two years, he wouldn’t let us watch anything on television. He wouldn’t let me listen to any music that wasn’t gospel. He’d stay up late at night and play heavy metal records backwards, listening for messages. Dad also held meetings at our house. But the worst part was Halloween.”
Foster pulled the leaf closer around us, as if he thought the barrier would ease my fears. “Halloween?”
“The devil’s holiday, my dad called it. He used to tell me that there were bad men and women who liked to take blonde-haired little girls and sacrifice them to the devil on Halloween. He’d turn off all of the lights in the house and make me sit in the middle of the floor. For the entire night, I couldn’t make a sound. They’d hear me, he’d say. All night long, I’d wait for someone to come into the house and take me away.”
Foster whistled. “On Halloween? Wow.”
“Bet you’ve never met anyone afraid of a holiday before,” I said lightly. There was really no way to turn it into a joke, but I tried anyway. How much more awkward can a person get? Afraid of a holiday children should love. Candy and costumes and festivals.
“That’s why you would never come to our annual Halloween party.” Foster’s voice was full of awe. “Camilla always invited you, and you never came. Here I thought you were just uptight.”
It’s a shame you can’t glare at a person in the dark.
“It’s a stupid fear,” I murmured. “I’m not afraid of much, just the dark and Halloween. Logically, I know it was just a part of my dad’s mania, but I was seven. At that age, you don’t understand mania. You just understand fear.”
Foster leaned back, his arm falling across my shoulder. It was a familiar gesture, one I’d seen him do many times with Camilla when she’d been upset.
“Blood makes me queasy,” he admitted suddenly. Just like that, he made the conversation better. His effortless acceptance didn’t make my fears go away, but it made them easier to accept.
Something howled in the woods, and I pulled my knees against my chest. “Blood? But you were in the military.”
Foster chuckled. “I didn’t say it made me pass out, it just makes me queasy. It felt like a weakness to me when I was younger. I saw a lot of blood in the military. In a way, by facing what makes me sick, I discovered that even as much as it bothers me, I was able to stand up against it.”
He was a sensible man, Foster. “You grew up,” I said abruptly.
He knew what I meant. The rhyme he’d come up with at seventeen would always hang between us, a childish reminder of how young we’d been.
“Everyone does, Perri. Some just don’t do it well.”
It was a logic I couldn’t disagree with.
“Sleep,” Foster prompted. “There’s no telling what your world will throw at us next. For a fairytale, it’s brutal.” His brows rose. “There are no wolves dressed like grandmothers waiting to eat us, is there? No evil queens with poisoned red apples?”
I fell against him, my head awkwardly positioned between his shoulder and the tree. My back and bottom hurt. “Let’s hope Elspeth eats the apple if there is one. She has a prince who can kiss her awake.”
Foster’s chest shook with silent laughter. “That’s truly insulting, Peregrine Storke. Are you saying my kisses aren’t powerful enough to break a spell?”
I grinned. “Can the princess get past the smell? You kind of stink, Foster Evans.”
He sighed. “Hence reality. In the real world, we sweat.”
In the real world, we did a lot of things. In the real world, princes didn’t ride on stallions and save princesses from towers. In the real world, they smelled a lot like dirt, sweaty skin, and cotton candy. In the real world, they were friends first. They didn’t fall in love over a first kiss and no conversation. In the real world, they were kind of awkward.
Chapter 16
“That awkward moment when you wake up next to someone you’ve told entirely too many secrets to and you’re suddenly illogically afraid they’ll tell someone.”