Category Archives: Excerpt

Silence.

Darkness.

Stillness all around me. There was only the endless blackness that stretched out into infinity and swallowed me whole. I floated, weightless, suspended in a starless universe.

I had fallen, hadn’t I?

I’ve gone to hell.

I didn’t understand when, or how, but I must’ve had become a fallen angel. I would forever live and succumb to the darkness that I felt inside of me. I would roam the mortal realm with a heart filled with hate and destruction.

I moved my arms but I couldn’t see them. It was as if I didn’t exist. I was only mind in this world. Wherever this was. The air around me was thick and I took long, deep breaths, but it only caused the feeling of suffocation to enclose me even more.

I thought of what had happened before I had come here, an attempt at trying to piece it together. How and why I had been the one to end up in this place. My memories were hazy, distant, but they were there. I maneuvered around the fog that kept them hidden but I couldn’t tap into them. They were blocked off.

I allowed myself to wander through my life before any of this happened. My parents. Memories flashed through and I gripped on to each one, holding on to the past. Holding on to the love once filled my heart, yet there was nothing there now. No love, no happiness. It seemed like a distant memory, but why? Why had I fallen? There was a faint noise that sent vibrations all around me. I extended my arms, trying to feel for something. Nothing.

“Hello!” Although I couldn’t see myself, I was able to hear. My voice echoed fiercely but no one responded. It was silent for what felt like forever.

“What are you doing here?” Claire. She sounded distant and muffled. I wanted to call back to her, to ask her to help me, but something stopped me. Something deep inside me made me doubt her, almost hate her.

I tried to move, but I couldn’t really tell if I was moving at all. I just floated.

“I can protect her. She will be safe with me, and most importantly, she will feel no pain.” Blake? Why was Blake here? Or, there? Wherever it was that they were. Did they know each other? Questions gathered in my head, but there was no one around to ask them to. I still screamed them out.

“What is going on? Where are you?!”

There was a warm feeling on my hand and then it spread along my arm, as if the darkness was caressing me softly. I twitched away from it, scared by the feeling it brought. The fear was instantly gone. Left behind was emptiness, I just was; the darkness no longer scared me. I wanted to go where he was. Blake. He would know what to do.

“Michael, you can’t think for one second life will go back to what it once was, can you?” Claire’s voice rippled though my body, awakening a monster.

Michael? Who the hell was Michael?

“Of course it won’t, but it’s not because of me, is it?” He spat out. “It was your hand that killed him.”

Killed him.

Who?

A set of blue eyes flashed before me.

And something inside of me broke. Again.

I saw his face and that was all it took for the pain to come crashing down like a tidal wave. I tried to hold on to his face, to the emotions that were coming across in his eyes, but he was gone, and the glimpse of my own emotions was gone with him. I stared down at my own arms, they way they had been wrapped around his body as he took his last breath. The way his bright eyes had lost their intensity; not even the moon that washed the forest with light could brighten them up. His eyes had moved through my face as if searching for something that would save him. But I couldn’t save him, and his eyes soon stared, lifelessly at the star filled sky above us. He had died in my arms and I had done nothing to stop it. I had nothing to prevent it from happening.

Could I had saved him from the doom that loving me had brought upon him?

I screamed, or at least I thought I was screaming. There was no more sounds coming out from me.

I dug deeper through the memory. I could still feel the weight of his body in my arms. There had been a tear deep inside of me the moment I felt his soul vanish, when he had become just another useless death in Lilith’s game.

Lilith. Who had left him there to die. Who just stood by as Shemer’s sword took the one person I lived for. Who stood by when Claire, my best friend, killed him. Lilith, whom I would have sacrificed it all to, if only to see his face one more time. If me dying meant I would be with him again, that’s what I wanted to do. Where I wanted to be. But I was trapped here.

Alone.

I hear their muffled whispers and understand every Italian word. Every witty comment made at my expense.

It’s like my brain is automatically translating.

I bunch the soft fabric of the dress in my hand and then reach up to feel the ribbon in my hair. I lightly skim my fingers over my chin and feel my lack of zit. I take in the costumes of the crowd, the stench of the animals, and the Italian I can now speak and understand. And suddenly it hits me.

Reyna must have pulled some kind of gypsy mojo.

Maybe this is one of those nifty “change your life” magic scenarios like in the movies. I mean, mostly I’m still expecting to blink and be right back in the midst of overpriced, gaudy tourism, but for now, the gypsy-time-warp explanation is infinitely better than thinking I’ve lost my mind. As I decide to go with that option, I feel my frantic tension melt away.

The growing crowd seems to notice my change in demeanor and begins shooting one another amused looks, but I don’t care anymore. A smile stretches across my face. Evidently, I was wrong earlier; Reyna is a psychic mind reader, because if this is her special brand of bibbity-bobbity-boo, then she made my exact daydream from earlier in the courtyard come to life.

The long red gown, the braided hair, the Italian merchant’s daughter, the time period. I am in Renaissance Florence.

I stare dumbly at the ground, the words and reality sinking in.

I’m in Renaissance Florence!

I was just about to put out my cigarette and go back inside when I heard a skateboard coming down the street. It sounded like waves, like a conch shell against your ear. That full, empty sound.

Maybe it was Aaron. I conjured up my stupid daydream, the one I used to fill my head when I couldn’t deal with any of the other stuff in there—that he would find me, that he would apologize, that he would tell me that prom night hadn’t been his fault.

The difference this time was that when I looked toward the sound, he really was there.

It was him.

Aaron.

He was skateboarding down the sidewalk like it was made of water, wearing the same loose, worn jeans from his Facebook picture. He carried a backpack, like he might have been coming from the library, but I doubted he ever went to the library.

I lit another cigarette with the end of my last one; any excuse to stay put. Then I remembered I was wearing a suit.

“You got another one of those?” he asked. His eyes were blue. I hadn’t noticed that in his picture.

My hands shook as I gave him a cigarette. He brought a silver- and-black Zippo to his mouth, flipped it open with one hand, lit his cigarette, and slapped it shut. The whole thing took seconds, but it felt like he was doing it in slow motion. “Thanks,” he said.

Maybe he had just stopped to get a cigarette. Maybe it had nothing to do with me.

It probably had nothing to do with me.

“I know you,” he said. “Where do I know you from?”

I couldn’t tell him. Telling him that he’d stood me up for my own prom would have been way too embarrassing. It would tell him that I still cared enough to remember.

“I’m friends with Lila and Cassie,” I said, wishing that my hair wasn’t pulled back in a headband like I was a nun.

“What are you all dressed up for?” he asked.

Of course he didn’t know me. If he had, he would have known that I’d just come from court and that I was trying to do everything I could to forget it.

“I work here,” I said, thinking fast. “I’m supposed to be a librarian.”

“You don’t have to lie,” he said, laughing. “I’m Aaron.”

“Amy,” I said, waving hello with the cigarette in my hand.

He smiled. “Though you do make a cute librarian.”

I tried to keep myself from coughing. “This suit sucks,” I said. It seemed cooler than saying thank you. It seemed cooler than getting all squishy over what he said, even though that was how I felt.

I looked at his skateboard. “You wanna try it out?” he asked . The deck had a mural of blue sky and white-capped mountains hand-painted on it . The wheels were covered with stop-motion birds, so that when they spun it must have looked like the birds were flying.

There was more to this boy. More that I wanted to know.

“I guess I could,” I said, but then I remembered my mother. She would come looking for me soon.

I shook my head. “I should go.”

“You got a cell phone?” he asked.

“Not that I’m allowed to use anymore.”

“Parents,” he said. He pulled a sketchbook from his backpack. Maybe he had painted that beautiful mural. He ripped out a piece of paper, wrote something down, and handed it to me.

It was his phone number.

I tried not to act surprised, tried to act like boys gave me their numbers all the time, especially when I hadn’t asked for them.

“See you around, Amy,” he said. He dropped the skateboard next to him. It landed perfectly on its wheels like a cat would on its legs.

As he skated away, I looked at his number; the paper was as soft as fabric. I folded it smaller and smaller and hid it in my bra. Maybe he hadn’t said what I wanted him to say, but he had found me.

He had found me.