Captivate

  I don’t give it to him. I don’t want him to do what my father did and start whispering it at me when I’m in the woods, trying to get me confused. Instead I ask again, “Why were you in the road?”

  “I was waiting for you.”

  I nod like it makes sense. It doesn’t make sense. “I don’t feel right.”

  “You are in shock.” He lightly presses his fingers against my arm. “You are hurt. You are also turning a bit blue.”

  “It’s cold.”

  He lifts an eyebrow and shifts position, cringing again as he moves. “I do not believe that is why.”

  “Are you hurt?” I ask. “Your stomach—”

  “Is already healing. I am not at a hundred percent yet, but I appreciate you asking and thank you for saving me that day.”

  The snow shocks the skin on my bare palm. I study him. He looks so normal. I try to focus on his face, that wind-ruffled blond hair, his eyes. Try to see the pixie under the good looks. “Why were you waiting for me on the road?”

  “I want you to lead me to them.”

  “To who? The other pixies?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” I say. I take a big breath and my ribs sting with pain.

  He puts his hand behind my head. “No deep breaths. I believe you have bruised your ribs.”

  We are so close. His face is inches away. I swallow hard. “You have to promise not to hurt my friends. Hurt me if you have to, but leave my friends alone.”

  “I shall never hurt you.” His eyes stare into mine for a minute. “I hate to leave you, but you will be all right.”

  He sounds so sincere, as if he really wants to help. “Tell me about the Valkyrie,” I press. My chest burns.

  “I shall sometime.”

  “No. Now.”

  He slips his hand out from the back of my head and then stands up and pats my shoulder like a mom would. He only does this a couple of times before he says, “Your wolf is almost here.”

  I cough and then manage, “My wolf? How do you know that?”

  “His scent is all over you.” He flinches as if the scent is bad, like cooking broccoli or something. For a second he almost looks sweet and young, like I can see the little boy he used to be. It makes me want to comfort him—almost.

  I struggle toward him. One hand goes back into the biting snow for balance. “What do you mean my wolf?” My father warned me about this. “He’s not mine. I don’t own him. People don’t own each other.”

  But he’s already gone, the jerk, just melded into the fog. I’m alone on the snowbank. Yoko is a burning mess. There are sirens in the distance.

  He’s put it all together already, I bet. Pixies are like that: cunning and smart. They aren’t perfectly evil, just evil enough. Figures.

  “Zara!” Nick’s voice brings me back to reality. It’s a struggle. My eyes open. He stands over me and blocks out the scene. “Oh . . . oh, baby.”

  “I’m okay,” I manage. I reach out my good hand so I can touch him. He looks so warm. I want his warmth. “I killed Yoko.”

  “Are you cold? You’re a little blue.” He reaches down and scoops me against his sweatshirt. I scream from the pain. He loosens his hold right away. “Baby?”

  “My arm,” I gasp. “And my chest.”

  “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I hurt you.” His face is full of shock and worry. There is a piece of pixie dust on it. “I just wanted to hold you.”

  “It wasn’t you.”

  He gently leans me back on the ground. He whips off his coat, tucks it under my legs, and then plops himself on the snow so I can rest on him. Sirens get closer. The trees sway in the wind. He smells like warmth and Old Spice and a little bit of antiseptic from the hospital.

  “I’m so sorry, baby.” He rocks back and forth. “What happened? Did you hit black ice?”

  “There was a pixie. The same one—the one I let go.”

  He stiffens. “What happened? What did he do to you?” His voice turns positively icy. “Did he kiss you?”

  “Nothing. He was . . . He was in the middle of the road. I stopped fast and skidded. There was a tree.” I try to sit up. “I can sit up. It’s just a little achy.”

  “Stay there.” Nick surveys me for damage. “Can I open your jacket?”

  “Yeah.”

  He shifts me around so that I’m pretty much lying across his lap. He unzips my jacket and pulls my running shirt and my Under Armour down from my neck a bit and says, “You’re bruising. Are those sirens for you? Did you call 9-1-1?”

  “He did. My phone’s in there.” I gesture toward Yoko. “So is my laptop and my iPod and—”

  “He called? The pixie?” Nick interrupts.

  “He saved me. He pulled me out of the car before it caught fire.”

  Nick snarls. His back goes rigid and his head whips up. “He did not save you. He made you crash. He probably only left you because you were too injured to kiss and turn.”

  “That’s not true. He wants to know where the pixies are. I think he wants to let them out.”

  Nick groans. “This is all my fault.”

  I pull myself in closer to him and wrap my good arm around his neck, even though he’s trembling with rage. It pulses through him. I don’t want to argue. I’m too tired to argue. “It’s not your fault. And it’s fine.”

  Nick draws in a ragged breath and I can tell that a tiny bit of tension leaves him. His big hand rests on my neck and he starts kissing my face with these tiny, gentle pecks. At the same time his fingers reach up and stroke my cheek. It feels so good. I feel so safe all of a sudden. But it can’t last, can it? Of course it can’t.

  A fire truck peels in next to my car. I notice it doesn’t skid. I am the one who skids in crazy directions because I am the one who does reckless things and then doesn’t fess up. Firefighters jump out of the truck, hauling hoses. One of them starts down the road toward us.

  “Nick, even though I let him go and now all this happened,” I start to explain, “I still don’t regret letting him go. He would have died.”

  “And that would be a bad thing?” Nick snaps. He tilts his head back for a second and closes his eyes before he speaks again, and this time his voice is much milder. “You are too kind for your own good, Zara. You’ve got to learn to not be nice.” He kisses my forehead to take the sting of his words away. “Especially to pixies. Deal?”

  I nod, but I can’t promise it. I can’t say, “Deal.” Instead, I say, “I’ll stop being nice when you stop taking chances.”

  He shakes his head but we both know that I mean it and we both know that neither of us is going to back down, at least not anytime soon.

  Grandma Betty slams out of the ambulance and power strides across the snow, speaking into her radio and hauling her EMT bag. Only a flicker in her eye betrays any emotion. She is all business. There are no hugs from her right now. She leans toward me, hovers over my face, and checks my eyes. “Pupils look good.”

  I open my mouth to speak.

  She silences me with a finger. The wrinkles at the corners of her eyes crease even deeper. “Tell me your name.”

  “Zara.”

  “What state are you in?”

  “Maine. Or consciousness?”

  “Funny. Nice sarcasm, miss. Although you have learned from the best.” She starts to smile and then gets professional again. “Were you thrown?”

  I don’t understand.

  “From the vehicle,” she explains. “Were you thrown?”

  “No.”

  Her eyes narrow the way they do when she’s trying to figure things out. The wind whips her gray hair straight above her head. “How’d you get all the way over here, then?”

  “I—I—”

  I must take too long, because she interrupts me. “Did you move her, Nick?”

  Nick shakes his head gently, I guess so he doesn’t hurt me too much. “I wasn’t here when it happened. She was tinked.”

  Betty nods really quickly and
switches gears. “Where’s it hurt?”

  “My arm. The one I broke. My chest. My head and neck. It’s not too bad, though,” I explain as Betty directs the other EMT, this tall guy, Keith, who has movie-star hair and a very bad chin. They get a gurney-bed thing out.

  “We’re going to move her,” Betty tells Nick.

  “Excuse me. I am not ‘her.’ And I’m right here. And I can walk,” I complain, struggling to get up.

  “No.” Betty slaps a big, ugly neck collar on me.

  “I didn’t break my neck,” I insist as they lift me up.

  “I’m not taking any chances,” she states. Her boots clomp down in the snow, hard and no-nonsense.

  Nick gives me a sympathetic glance. He almost looks like he’s going to laugh. I twitch my nose at him, which makes him smile.

  “Can I go in the ambulance with her?” he asks.

  Betty thinks about it for a second.

  “I can walk,” I say again. “People are staring at me.”

  “Firefighters are not people. Firefighters are professionals, and it is their job to stare. Yes, you can come, Nick,” Betty says just as Issie and Devyn pull up. Issie flies out of the car and rushes toward us.

  “Oh man, Zara! Did the pixies do this?” Is blurts out.

  Keith’s head whips up and his mouth drops open. He stares at her. “Pixies?”

  “The rock group,” Betty covers. “Zara listens to music far too loud. The Pixies are one of those old alternative groups from the 1980s.”

  “Very retro,” Is says, trying to cover up. “Very old-school. But hip. Yeah. Zara’s hip. Oh man, Zara, did you break your hip?”

  Nick’s hand lands on Issie’s shoulder. “Is, take a deep breath.”

  “Deep breath?”

  “Inhale and exhale,” Nick says calmly.

  Some firefighters start yelling. There’s a heavy knocking sound by Yoko’s remains and then the clanking of metal hitting metal, the whirling of water through hoses. Nick shifts his weight and keeps talking to Issie like nothing else is happening. “And maybe take a step back so they can get Zara in the ambulance.”

  “She’s going in the ambulance!” Issie exclaims. She reaches out and grabs my hand. “We’ll follow you the whole way. We’ll be right behind you. Do not worry. Okay? No worrying.”

  “Breathe, Issie. I’m okay.” I smile and squeeze her hand for a second before I let go. “No hips broken. No massive concussions.”

  “Thank God for small miracles,” Betty mutters as they lift me into the back. She slides in next to me. Everything is tight space and instruments, drawers full of medicine and needles, just enough supplies to keep people alive and stabilized until they get to a hospital. Nick hauls himself inside too. He bends his head so he can fit.

  The moment Keith gets into the driver’s seat Betty mumbles so only I can hear, “You are going to tell me exactly what happened, right?”

  I try to nod but it’s hard with the silly neck brace thing. “I’m sorry about the car, Gram.”

  “The car, my dear, is the least of my worries,” she says. Then she does a very un-Betty thing. She leans over and kisses my cheek. Her lips are soft and dry. “You are going to be the death of me.”

  She chuckles. I’m on my back, staring up at their faces. The light is so fluorescent bright that I can make out their pores, Nick’s individual eyebrow hairs. So many people have been in this ambulance dying. Some of them Betty has saved. She is a hero. So is Nick, taking down so many pixies all by himself and never complaining, just trying to keep everyone safe. A hero can be anyone, but I have two right here, and they love me. Tears seep out of my eyes.

  Nick leans down and kisses my eyelids. “Loving you, Zara, is a full-time job. It’s a great job, don’t get me wrong. It’s the best job in the universe. But it is not easy, because you tend to . . .”

  “Get hurt?” Betty suggests. “Find trouble? Pass out? Break arms?”

  “All of the above.” Nick laughs.

  My hand finds Nick’s wrist and I grab onto its thickness. “You know, I’m the patient here. Where’s the bedside manner? Where’s the sympathy?”

  “Zara, sympathy is just a good excuse to buy greeting cards and make sorry eyes and secretly gloat over how glad you are that you aren’t the person whose crap is hanging out there for the world to see,” Betty says.

  A check at the hospital reveals:

  • one sprained wrist,

  • a couple of minorly bruised but unbroken ribs, and

  • one small neck strain that does not require a neck brace.

  Gram changes into her civilian gear at the hospital, putting on a flannel shirt and L. L. Bean cords, and then drives us home in her truck. I’m in the middle seat leaning against Nick.

  I push my thigh against his. “Well, thank God.”

  “Thank God what?” he asks. His hand slowly rubs up and down the place where my shoulder meets my arm. It makes me good shiver.

  “That I don’t have a neck brace. It’s hard to rock a neck brace, especially if we’re still going to that dance.”

  He leans in and kisses my nose. “If anyone could do it, you could.”

  I tilt my head so our lips meet.

  “Hormonal ones, I am right here. Me. The old lady otherwise known as your grandmother,” Betty says.

  “Sorry. He’s just irresistible,” I say, settling back against him.

  “Well, try to resist the irresistible,” Betty says knowingly as the truck bumps over a pothole. “Sorry! Didn’t mean to jostle you.”

  “Wait,” Nick says. “What did that mean?”

  “She said to resist the irresistible,” I explain.

  “But that means me.”

  Betty starts laughing again. “You have a high opinion of yourself, don’t you, Mr. Colt?”

  He starts stuttering. “But Zara said and then . . . and you said . . .”

  “I didn’t just mean you, Nick,” she says, her voice softening for a second. Then it hardens up and I know what’s coming. We told her about the pixie guy I freed. The voice hardening means Official Grandmother Lecture Time. “For Zara the irresistible isn’t just you, it’s justice. It’s being noble. It’s being the martyr. It’s about ending pain for others and forgetting about herself or the big picture.”

  “That’s harsh, Betty,” Nick defends me.

  “Harsh? I’ll tell you what’s harsh. Her little do-gooderness set a pixie free, possibly a king, judging from how quickly he healed, and she almost died because of it.” She takes a corner and even though she’s mad at me she takes it slow so I don’t bounce around too much. “You get that, don’t you, Zara? You could’ve died today.”

  My bruised ribs hammer home her point. We pull into our driveway. All the windows in the Cape are dark. The sky is dark. Everything is dark. The woods are just pieces of shadow. You can’t tell what’s back there. You can’t tell who might be watching.

  Pixie Tip

  A pixie’s true skin color is blue. Cookie Monster, Grover, and other lovable Muppets are also blue. Do not confuse the two. Muppets don’t kill you. Usually.

  “Wake up. Zara! Honey! Wake the hell up.” Betty shakes me.

  I swat at her, hit her flannel pajama top. The soft plushness of it is so different from Betty’s hardness. The lights are on in my room. Huh? My eyelids flutter, but I manage to open them, sit up. My voice is a frantic mess. “What? What is it? Pixies?”

  She holds my arms up by the shoulders, but her grip loosens. “You were having another nightmare.”

  I flop back onto the pillows. My chest aches from all the movement. “Again?”

  I’ve had one every night since the accident. That makes a week’s worth of nightmares.

  “You remember it?” Her hand touches my forehead, soothes away some hair.

  “Yeah.”

  “You want to tell me?”

  “Gram, nobody likes to hear about other people’s dreams. It’s like watching PowerPoint presentations of somebody else’s vacation
in St. Croix or something. You hear about the beach but you aren’t really experiencing the beach, so it’s just not that interesting.”

  Her eyes close a little bit as she examines me. Her hands work at soothing out her pj top, which features frolicking lions and lollipops. Then she stills herself. She is so solid and good and tough, the best kind of grandmother. “I’m sorry I woke you up,” I finish.

  “Not a big deal, sweetie. I’m up all the time.” She leans over and kisses my forehead. She straightens up and walks stiffly across the hardwood floor to the open door of my bedroom and hesitates by the light switch. “You want me to switch this off?”

  My pulse speeds up. It hits against my skin, like blood is trying to beat its way out of my veins. “No. Light is good.”

  The door clicks shut and I stare up at the Amnesty International poster that hangs over my bed. There’s an image of a candle wrapped in barbed wire, a flame that still burns.

  There were flames in my dream. They flickered around my feet and I was running through them, running up the stairs of a house, running toward someone. Every single part of me needed to get up those stairs, deeper into that fire. The hallway was just like the one in the big pixie mansion that we’ve trapped my father and the rest of them in. I thought for a second that’s who I was looking for, but I suddenly realized that it wasn’t him. Nick called my name from the bottom of the stairs, but I ignored him, rushing deeper and deeper into the flames where the blond pixie was waiting for me.

  Then Nick screamed. I turned around and he was surrounded by pixies, feeding pixies ripping at his clothes, his flesh. I hesitated and that’s the worst part of the dream—me hesitating. The flames were so tempting, the pull to go farther into the house so great. But then I ignored my need and started to head back toward him. And when I did? Bam. Something grabbed me from behind. I shrieked. And Betty woke me up.

  That’s it. End of dream.

  Man, I hate dreams. How is it they can make you feel guilty when they aren’t even real?

  Worry keeps me from sleeping. I get out of bed to use Gram’s laptop, which she’s letting me borrow until we go up to Bangor and buy a replacement. I open up my e-mail to read Amnesty’s current Urgent Action paper. It’s about Fidelis Chiramba, Gandhi Mudzingwa, and Kisimusi Dhlamini, who are in a jail in Zimbabwe just for being political activists, though they all have major medical issues. They weren’t even allowed to appear for a trial. It drives me nuts. I shoot off an e-mail to the Zimbabwe government and consider getting ready for school.