Wow. Gemma. And Mike, the student teacher. It’s … scandalous.
Which is probably why she did it. Gemma loves anything with shock value. I’m sure she’d have her own collection of tattoos if she didn’t have a fear of needles.
“How are you, Ariel?” Mike asks. “Did Gemma ask you to meet us here?”
“No, she just happened to be here.” Gemma wraps her arm around his waist, mimicking Dylan’s possessive gesture. “It’s a sign, don’t you think?”
“I do.” He smiles down at her, his eyes soft.
Aw. At least one of them got married for the right reasons. Mike’s clearly in love. Crazy in love. It makes me hope Gemma feels the same way. If not, he’s going to be really, really hurt when she decides to dump him for the next flavor of the week. I look back at her, searching her face for some clue as to how she feels, but she’s not looking at Mike, or me. She’s still glaring. At Dylan.
“Will you please leave?” she asks. “Mike and I need to talk to Ariel, and you are not welcome.”
“Please, Gemma,” I say. “I—”
“It’s all right.” Romeo steps away and scoops my dress from the floor. “I’ll go pay for our things. Call if you need me.”
I nod, but I hate the feel of him easing away from me. I don’t want to be apart. Our time is running out, and I don’t want to miss a moment. Even for Gemma. I love her, and she’s been my best friend since we were little, but her complete lack of concern for how her disappearance would make me feel has soured this reunion.
“What a freak show.” Gemma rolls her eyes. “I thought he’d never leave. What are you doing with him, Ree? He’s twisted.”
“He’s nice to me.”
“I’m not exactly sure what you think nice means, but Dylan isn’t—”
“I know what nice means,” I say, interrupting Gemma for the first time in our friendship. “And I know it isn’t nice to disappear and not even think about how worried your best friend will be. I was really scared. You should have called me.”
Gemma’s mouth falls open, and she stares at me for a long, long minute. “I’m … sorry,” she finally says, glancing up at Mike before she continues. “I didn’t think.”
“I’m sorry too,” Mike says. “We called the police, and faxed over our marriage license to Gemma’s parents and the police department. We thought everything was okay. We had no idea Gemma’s parents had posters up until we got into town this morning.”
“We seriously didn’t,” Gemma agrees. “But … I … You’re right. I should have called.”
“Yeah. You should have.”
“I’m really sorry.” She sounds like she means it, and there’s a shine in her eyes when she asks, “Forgive me?”
“Forgiven,” I say, amazed by how easy that was.
Jeez. I should have called Gemma on her bull years ago. But I was too grateful to have a friend to risk standing up to her. I wouldn’t risk it now if it weren’t for Romeo. His words from earlier still knock around inside me. He thinks I’m strong, that I could change the world. He has certainly changed me. If he can touch me this deeply in a couple of days, think how I could touch the world in a lifetime. Maybe there is a way out of the dark present to a brighter future.
It would be a nice thought, if the possibility of facing the future without Romeo weren’t tearing me apart. I turn, and find him still at the checkout counter. Gemma has five more minutes, and then I’m out of here.
“Are we okay?” she asks.
“We’re good.” I smile. “What did you need to talk about?”
She takes a deep breath. “I need a favor. Kind of a big one.”
“Okay.” I look between her and Mike, but their hopeful expressions don’t give me any clue what the favor is going to be. “What’s up?”
“Mike and I are headed to Seattle, to stay with some friends of his for a while until my dad calms down,” Gemma says. “When I talked to him, he said he was going to force me to have the marriage annulled.”
“But you’re eighteen. You’re legally an adult.”
“He says since I’m still in high school it doesn’t matter. Their lawyer said they have the right to force me to live under their roof until I graduate. Or get my GED, which I obviously haven’t had time to do yet.”
“Maybe if you talk to them, they’ll change their minds?”
“Since when have my parents listened to anything I say?” She’s right. Her mom and dad have never been big on caring about what Gemma wants. “There’s no point in talking to them. We wouldn’t have even come back here if we didn’t need cash. Mike’s savings are running out, and we need something to hold us over until we can get jobs in Seattle. I’ve got a thousand dollars and a bunch of jewelry hidden in a box in the back of my closet. If we hock the jewelry, that should last us until we get money things figured out. The only problem is … getting to it.”
“We have to lay low,” Mike says. “I shouldn’t have let Gemma get out of the car and come in here, but there was hardly anyone in the parking lot, and—”
“And the lady who works here is blind,” Gemma says. “And deaf. And I didn’t think anyone who knew me well enough to connect my face to that poster would be at the Goodwill.”
“Never underestimate the allure of the Goodwill,” I say, earning a smile from Mike and a grunt from Gemma. “Okay, so you want me to go get your stuff.” The thought of walking into the Sloop home without Gemma makes my heart race. Her mom is a supersnob, and her dad is plain scary. His eyes don’t look like they’re connected to a soul. “But how will I get inside?”
“Tell them you left a few things in my room the last time you spent the night. Go right after school before my dad gets in from work. My mom will be back from her morning shift at the tasting room and will have had her first couple glasses of chardonnay by then. She’ll be too buzzed to walk you up the stairs. She’ll send you up, and you can stick the box in the bottom of your backpack and pile some of my T-shirts and pajamas on top. She won’t check your bag, and even if she does, she doesn’t know what my stuff looks like anymore. You can just tell her they’re yours, wish her good luck finding her long-lost daughter, and head out the door.”
I think about it for a few seconds before nodding. “Okay.”
“Okay?” She sounds surprised.
“I’ll do it. What about Saturday? Your dad works at the tasting room until three or so, right? I could—”
“Could you go tomorrow instead? Please?” Gemma wheedles, obviously seeing the reluctance on my face. Tomorrow could be my last day with Romeo. “It won’t take more than half an hour. You can just grab the box, swing it by our room at the Knight and Day Motor Lodge, and we’ll be on our way and out of your hair.”
I know she wants to get out of town before someone who’s seen those posters spots her and reports back to her mom and dad. “All right.” It shouldn’t take long. And I can always ask Romeo to drive me. “I’ll go tomorrow. Right after school.”
“You will?”
“Didn’t you think I would?”
“Well … yeah.” She cocks her head. “But I thought you’d need a lot more convincing.”
“No.” I glance over my shoulder. Romeo is waiting by the door, his suit and my dress flung over his arm. I don’t need any more convincing, and even if I did, I wouldn’t stick around to get it. I have my own drama to live for once. “It sounds doable. I’ll take care of it and meet you at your hotel at four.”
Gemma smiles and lunges for me, wrapping me in a fierce hug. “Thank you so much, Ree! You’re a lifesaver.”
“Really, thank you. We’re in room fifty-three. Around the back,” Mike says, a little uncomfortably. I can tell he doesn’t like the thought of needing Gemma’s money to get by, but I imagine he’s strapped for cash. It’s not like you make any money being a student teacher. “We appreciate your help.”
“Consider it my wedding present,” I say when Gemma finally sets me free. “I hope you’ll be really happy together.??
?
“We will be.” Gemma beams up at Mike. As far as I can tell, she loves him more than she’s ever loved anyone else. Which doesn’t necessarily mean a whole lot, but still … I hope it will be enough.
“Okay,” I say as I back away. “Then I’ll see you at—”
“Wait.” Gemma’s eyes shift to where Dylan stands by the door, then back to me. “I honestly don’t mean to be a jerk, but you should think twice about dating Dylan. He’s not a nice guy.”
“I know what I’m doing. I promise. But thanks for worrying about me.”
“But, Ree, I—”
“I’ve got it under control,” I say, as firmly as I’ve ever said anything to Gemma. “Trust me. I’m not stupid.”
For a second I think she’s going to keep arguing, but then she nods. “Okay. Just … be careful.”
“I will. See you tomorrow.” I wave, and then turn and hurry toward the door. When he sees me coming, Romeo’s face lights up. In that moment, I swear I can see past the skin he’s wearing to the person inside. And I don’t care what he’s done, or who he used to be. He is beautiful.
“Hey. The woman gave me the suit and the dress for forty, if you can believe that.” He looks so happy to see me, like he was worried I’d forget him in the few minutes we were apart.
As if that’s possible. As if I’ll ever forget.
I wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him, squashing the clothes between us. He makes a surprised sound, but it doesn’t stop him from kissing me back, a deep kiss with a little bit of rough that leaves my entire body buzzing by the time I pull away. “Let’s go.”
“Yes,” he says, his voice promising that everything I’ve been dreaming about this afternoon is about to happen.
I take his hand and walk out the door without looking back.
SIXTEEN
Romeo
The magnitude of the near future hums between us as we swing by Ariel’s house to say hi to her mother and make a quick picnic, and gets louder and more distracting as we drive to the other side of town for blankets and towels. Dylan’s dad will still be at work—or at the bar down the street—and even if he catches me walking out with a few towels and a comforter, he probably won’t ask any questions. Unlike Ariel’s mom, who was quite curious about our picnic plans, and even stole a peek into our basket when she thought we weren’t looking.
Luckily that was before Ariel slipped into the bottom the protection we purchased at the gas station.
Protection. If only it were so easy to protect her from all the dangers in her life.
“You okay?” she asks.
“Fine,” I say, pushing my fears to the back of my mind, doing my best to keep up my end of the conversation.
We talk a bit about the dance and about Gemma and Mike and what Ariel has promised to do for them tomorrow, but soon silence falls again. Our preparations are almost complete. The moment is nearly at hand, and the moment is too momentous for small talk.
Seven hundred years of thinking and longing and remembering is about to come to an end. It’s been seven hundred years since I’ve been with a girl. There’s been no one since Juliet. I tried once or twice early in my Mercenary afterlife, but the inability to feel made it impossible. Pressing my skin against another’s and feeling nothing was far, far worse than feeling nothing on my own. It only made the loneliness worse. Even the seductions I performed as a Mercenary stopped well before reaching the bedroom door.
Not that Ariel wants a bed. Or a door. She wants skinny-dipping in the moonlight, all of her bare to all of me, naked and covered in little water droplets and—
“You’re sure you’re okay?” The lightest touch of her fingertips on my arm makes my breath rush out with a strangled sound.
“I don’t know.” I park the car on the street a few houses down from Dylan’s and cut the engine, but make no move to get out. “I’m … It’s been a long time since …”
“Since … Oh. Really?”
I nod, but can’t bring myself to look at her. “A really long time. I’m not sure I’ll …”
“Are you joking?”
I shake my head, wishing I were, wishing I didn’t feel like a kid on his wedding night. Worse, on my actual wedding night, I’d been too stupid to be nervous.
She kisses my cheek. “You’ll be perfect.”
“Aren’t I supposed to be the one reassuring you?”
“I don’t need any reassuring, but if you do … We can just go swimming. If that’s what you want.”
“It’s not what I want. I want you.” I do. I want her. “But I—”
“No buts.”
“But—”
“No. Buts.”
“Oh there will be. Have you ever seen a man’s butt in real life? Hideous. Especially Dylan’s. Pale, fish-belly-colored skin with hair like patchy grass and—”
She laughs, that high, pure laugh of hers that sets things sailing inside me.
“I’m serious,” I say.
“You’re funny,” she says, laughter warming her eyes. “And I’m not afraid of any part of you.”
I want to tell her I am. I want to tell her that I’m afraid of the dark and the past and the lies and the evil in the world. I’m afraid of her beauty and kindness and the way she holds my hand like I’m worthy of her touch. But most of all I’m afraid of leaving her defenseless. I’m afraid of the fingers that twine through mine being bent and broken as some Mercenary tortures her while I can do nothing to protect her.
Nothing. It’s what I’m known for. I’ve been nothing for so long. How can I change that now, when the course of my destiny was determined so long ago?
All I know is that I have a hard time denying her, especially when I want her so badly I can hardly remember what I’m supposed to fetch from Dylan’s room.
So I don’t say a word. I just kiss her, and promise to “Be right back.”
I step out into the rapidly cooling air and cut through the neighbor’s yard, heading around the back of Dylan’s small, run-down house, where the door is always unlocked. Why bother locking up? It’s not as if the Strouds have anything worth stealing. Their television has seen better days, and the rest of the furniture is too shabby for the Goodwill to take on donation. Even their computer is an ancient thing that takes forever to start up and even longer to connect to the Web.
But still … there might be enough time …
I haven’t been able to get to a computer all day, and I’m still troubled by the disappearance of Romeo and Juliet. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe Shakespeare simply decided against dramatizing the story a troubled young man told him in a pub late one night. Juliet and I lived and died hundreds of years before Shakespeare was born. It wouldn’t have been strange for our story to fade into obscurity without the Bard’s influence keeping it alive. But our tale was a popular one among the traveling minstrels of our day. There might still be some mention of the story of Romeo and Juliet in history if a person went looking for it.
And then there’s the boy who thinks he’s Benjamin Luna. I should discover what I can about Ben/Benvolio. That mystery is too strange to be ignored.
As I make my way through the living room, I see that the computer is already on. My decision is made. I set it to connect, and by the time I fetch two mostly clean towels and grab the comforter off the bed, the search engine has launched. I slide into the chair, type in Benjamin Luna, and wait the endless thirty seconds it takes for the search results to load.
When they do, there isn’t much to see.
No Facebook page. No juicy gossip or confessional blog. Just an honorable mention in a soccer tournament and a brief cameo in his mother’s obituary. I shift the results to show images only, and am rewarded with crappy school pictures provided for newspaper articles about his athletic endeavors. He still looks like the Benvolio I remember so well.
“Lame,” I tell the boy. The old Benvolio was much more interesting. I type in Romeo and Juliet and hit enter.
There doesn’t seem to be a
nything to worry about where Benjamin is concerned. The real issue is, why does Ben look like Benvolio? And more important—
“No.” My voice is loud in the otherwise silent room. I scroll down the first page of search results and then the second and the third. There is nothing. Nothing. I try adding Verona into the search, and then the year 1304, but still nothing.
Heart beating in my throat, fingers stiff, I type in Juliet Capulet, and am rewarded with a single mention on a genealogy website: Juliet Capulet, 1290–1304, buried in Verona, Italy. No mention of why she died at the tender age of fourteen, no drama surrounding her death. I try Romeo Montague, and Verona, Italy and wait and wait, forcing myself not to panic as I scroll through the search results. At the bottom of the fifth page, I am finally rewarded for my patience.
“There,” I whisper, clicking the link. But the relief I feel at finding mention of myself fades quickly. The website is in Italian—not medieval Italian, the modern version that isn’t as familiar—but I can decipher it well enough to know that what I’m reading isn’t good.
It’s a walking tour of some of the more obscure Verona historical sites, including the church and burial ground where Juliet was interred. My name is mentioned only once, in a paragraph beside a picture of the church:
In 1304, the original church caught fire. The flames were contained before they spread to the churchyard, but a significant portion of the nave was destroyed. It was reconstructed in 1306 with donations from Benvolio Montague, a wealthy landowner whose cousin, Romeo Montague, was killed in the fire, along with the parish priest. A statue of the benefactor stands at the edge of the yard, keeping watch over the tombs. After leaving the church, turn left at the central sarcophagi and proceed north fifty paces to see the statue, as well as the oldest markers in the cemetery and …
I can’t read any more.
I close the browser window and shut down the computer, as if that will somehow make this new story go away. It has to be a story. Fiction. Just like Shakespeare’s play. I didn’t die in a fire any more than I died on the floor of Juliet’s tomb. I didn’t die at all. I’m here, in this boy’s body. That alone is proof the story is false, or at least operating under false assumptions.