When the Shadows Fall by Elise Noble

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 32 - SKY

“WHAT’S THAT SMELL?” Vanessa whispered.

“I have no idea,” I lied, careful to keep my hands on the desk where everyone could see them.

I knew precisely what the smell was. Carbon disulphide, but to most people it smelled like a really bad fart. Childish, perhaps, but I’d tried scaring Deandra, and I’d tried having a quiet word in private, and neither of them had worked. So I figured I might as well try public embarrassment. Sofia had told me exactly what to do.

Yesterday in chemistry class, I’d pilfered a glass bottle of carbon disulphide and snuck it back to my room. According to Sofia, it was a boring but stinky organic solvent. Then, during today’s morning break, I’d tipped the ginseng capsules Bradley had packed for me out of their little brown plastic pill bottle, paid a visit to the bathroom, and poured an ounce or two of the liquid in. Timing was key, Sofia said. I had twenty minutes. So I’d hurried to today’s chemistry class early and taped the bottle under Deandra’s lab bench, ditched my gloves, then taken my own place near the front. Now, ten minutes in, the solvent had begun eating through the polycarbonate bottle and drip-drip-dripping onto the floor underneath.

And everyone was wrinkling their noses, even Dr. Merritt, the thieving bastard.

The stench grew stronger, and nobody was looking at the whiteboard anymore. Yeuch, that stuff really did reek. The only thing worse was Lenny the night after a curry.

Follow your noses, people. Come on, you can do it.

“Why is everyone looking at me?” Deandra shrieked.

Nobody answered, but nobody looked away either. How strong was the smell at the back? Tiffany was gagging, and Meaghan had gone a peculiar shade of green.

“Stop staring!” Deandra ordered, standing up to emphasise her point.

The problem was, I’d sprinkled a little dry tempera paint on her stool, a fetching shade of brown that didn’t show up against the dark wood. And she’d tied a non-regulation cream cardigan around her waist, the same way as she always did. Carlie saw the skid mark first, and her eyes bugged out of her head.

“Uh, Dea?” Carlie pointed one trembling finger.

“What? What?”

Deandra spun around, and everyone saw it. Whispers turned to laughter, and not even kidding, Deandra went scarlet as she twisted to see what everyone was looking at.

“That isn’t… I didn’t…”

“Sure, we believe you,” Asher said. He was sitting at the back with a ridiculous grin on his face. I couldn’t meet his eyes. I didn’t dare. Not just because I’d burst into a fit of giggles, but because we’d freaking kissed last night and I hadn’t got the faintest clue what to do about it. He’d texted me earlier to say good morning, and I’d done the same back. But now? Muggins here was clueless. I had no idea of flirting etiquette because I’d never had to do it before. Smiling at assholes in the club when they smacked my ass didn’t count. Was this even flirting? I wasn’t sure.

Deandra ran out of the classroom like her swanky designer heels were on fire, and Dr. Merritt gaped after her. Was the Wicked Witch dead yet? Perhaps not, but I sure hoped she was flailing.

My phone buzzed, and I snuck a peek under the table. Asher had sent me a row of clapping emojis. I sent back a face with a finger to its lips.

Asher: Chemistry’s more fun than I thought.

Me: Sometimes listening in class pays off.

Asher: Maybe, but I keep getting distracted by the view.

What view? I focused on a framed diagram of an ethanol molecule hanging beside Dr. Merritt, and the reflection in the glass showed Asher watching me.

Me: Pervert.

Asher: Guilty as charged.

It turned out that talking to Asher by text wasn’t as difficult as I’d thought. He was happy to joke around, and the little messages he sent me throughout the day made me smile. But I still missed the real thing. That was one big drawback to school—people telling me what to do all the time. Where to go and how to act. Yes, I got ordered around at Blackwood, but it was different. Their rules had a point to them, and they were also negotiable. I liked to think of them more as guidelines.

So what did I do? I did what I always did, of course. Looked for a way to break Shadow Falls Academy’s stupid damn rules.

I could get out of my room, but Dr. Pearson had apparently taken up residence on the sofa at Linton Hall. Apparently he’d even fallen asleep there last night. I eyed up the outside of the dorm during my afternoon cross-country session. Unfortunately, Asher’s room didn’t have a handy tree outside, but it did have a wall nearby. About six feet high and six feet from the building, presumably built to stop busybodies from looking into the living room because Dr. Pearson needed his privacy, didn’t he? Hmm…

Me: Leave your window open tonight. And your light on.

Asher: Why? What are you planning?

Me: Just do it.

Asher: Yes, ma’am.

After dinner, I left Vanessa in our room sketching the outline of a castle—with dragons, because every castle needed dragons—and climbed down my new favourite tree. Vanessa knew where I was going, but she wouldn’t say anything. She’d even become friends with Asher, sort of—they had a music class together this term, and he actually worked in that, so she’d upgraded his status to “half-bum.”

Nobody else was around as I skirted the back lawn and jogged towards Linton Hall. As I got closer, I built up speed, ran up the wall, balanced on the top for a split second, tipped my weight forward, and leapt. It wasn’t the most elegant of manoeuvres, but I made it through the window and used a forward roll to scrub off the rest of my momentum.

“Holy fuck. Are you okay?” Asher asked, offering me a hand.

“Fine, perfectly fine.”

“Are you insane?”

“That’s a definite possibility.”

“Where the hell did you learn to do that?”

“In London. I got bored and joined a parkour club. We met every Monday and Saturday to practise.”

“Bet that takes some skill.”

“It’s about fifty percent skill and fifty percent balls, that’s what my instructor always said. Except I don’t have any balls, so he figured I was just crazy.”

“I can agree with that assessment.” He shook his head, still incredulous. “Wow. So, what do you want to do? I thought maybe we’d study, but you haven’t brought any books.”

“I…” There was the flaw in my plan. I hadn’t entirely thought this through. “I just wanted to see you. To talk to you. To hang out, I guess. Being forced apart sucks.”

“To hang out…” He sighed. “Have you eaten dinner?”

I nodded. “With Vanessa.”

“Saw she got the new glasses.”

“You both had a music class earlier, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. We’re working together at the moment—she’s singing, and I’m playing the piano.”

“For credit?”

“Yeah. Mrs. Keele’s latest project. We have to compose a song based on either a happy or a sad event in our lives. It’s fuckin’ miserable.”

“Whose life are you basing it on? Yours or hers?”

“Hers. No way am I talking about mine. Or even singing about it. Want a beer?”

When I hesitated, he said, “I’m not trying to get you drunk or anything. I’m not that kind of guy.”

“What kind of guy are you?”

Might as well get that question out of the way at the beginning. Asher wouldn’t force himself on me the way Brock had, of that I was sure, but yesterday’s kiss had left me worried. Yes, it had been weirdly pleasant, and yes, I liked spending time with Asher, but I didn’t want to spend time with him naked.

“The kind of guy who surprised himself last night.”

I trailed Asher into his tiny kitchen. He wasn’t the tidiest of people, but his apartment wasn’t dirty. He just didn’t put things away. There was a box of cereal on the counter, papers all over the desk-slash-dining table, a sweater slung over the back of the couch… The place had a lived-in feel about it. I didn’t mind that.

“Surprised yourself in what way?”

“By kissing you. Cards on the table, Sky. I have no desire to sleep my way through the entire senior year, no matter what my uncles think. I don’t have a desire to sleep with any girls in the senior year. Or the school. Or anywhere else.”

Now I was even more confused. “So you’re…gay?”

“No, I’m not gay.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I just don’t like sex. And when every other girl in this school says they want to hang out, that’s what they expect.”

“You don’t like sex?” A wave of relief crashed over me. Asher was my fucking soulmate. But unfortunately, that relief made itself known in the form of a high-pitched giggle, and I saw Asher’s eyes shutter.

“No! I didn’t mean it that way. It’s not funny, not at all.”

“I’ve never told anyone that before. I thought you were different.”

How could things have gone from awesome to awful so fast? Now Asher was hurt, and I… I was so far off balance that I kind of wished I’d missed the damn window.

“I am different.”

Uh-oh. Asher’s folded arms weren’t a good sign. I panicked. I didn’t want to lose his friendship, and I reacted without thinking things through.

“You want my cards on the table too? Okay, fine. I lost my virginity to a rapist when I was fifteen. The thought of sex makes me want to puke, and I really do just want to hang out.”

I’d never forget the look of absolute horror on his face. The widening of his eyes. The way his jaw dropped. The bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed. But I blathered on regardless.

“You’re the first person I’ve kissed since then. And it was nicer than I expected. Usually, I have a panic attack if a man touches me funny, but I didn’t, and I was pretty happy when I managed to stay standing. You know, I thought of becoming a nun, but they wear those ugly dresses and pray all day, and—”

“Sky, shut up.”

“Maybe I should leave.”

“No, don’t leave.” He scraped a hand through his hair. “Fuck. I don’t know whether to hug you or swear I’ll never touch you again.”

“How about you just get me that beer?”

“A beer? Right, a beer.”

Asher opened a cupboard, gave his head a confused shake, then opened the refrigerator. Now he was off balance, and I’d never meant for him to end up that way.

“Hey, it’s okay.”

“Okay? Okay? No, Sky, it’s not okay. Who was it? A boyfriend? A stranger?”

“Just some guy I met in a club. Please don’t get stressed.”

“Fuck. Fuck!”

He stopped rummaging and leaned against the counter.

“Please?” I put a hand on his arm, and he stared at it, frozen. “It was two and a half years ago. I’ve learned to live with it.”

“Did they catch the guy? Tell me he’s in prison.”

“I never told the police. It would have been my word against his.”

“What about DNA?”

“He used a condom.” A tear leaked out and trickled down my cheek. “Can we please stop talking about this?”

I desperately needed that beer. I grabbed a bottle from the fridge myself, then opened the drawers until I found a bottle opener. In truth, I’d have preferred something stronger, but Vanessa had finished the vodka and the only other place I could get alcohol on campus was the chemistry lab. And I wanted to drown my sorrows, not preserve my insides for eternity.

“What should I do, Sky? I don’t know what to do.”

“Don’t do anything different. If you want to kiss me again, then fine. If you don’t, that’s okay too. We can just be two friends who hang out and don’t have sex.”

Asher’s turn with the nervous laughter. “Sounds good to me.”

“Great.”

“Uh, you wanna watch a movie?”

“Do you have popcorn?”

“No, but I have chips.”

Tendrils of tension still crackled between us when we sat on the sofa—me at one end, Asher at the other, and a bowl of potato crisps in the middle—and I wondered what I’d do if I could turn the clock back to a point where I had a fully functioning set of brain cells. Would I still have told Asher about my past? If everything between us was real, then the answer was unquestionably yes. I really could be friends with this guy, but I was a liar, and in a few short weeks I’d disappear out of his life for good. Perhaps it would have been more sensible to use his confession as an excuse to back away?

“What kind of movies do you like?” he asked.

Too late now.

“Anything without subtitles.” Shit. I smacked my head. “Sorry.”

Could I get any more insensitive?

“Forget it. I actually speak Spanish too. Learned it from my dad.”

“I’m learning Spanish.”

“Really? Where?”

Engage your damn brain, Sky.

“Uh, I mean I was. In England. We had a Spanish club on Monday evenings. Mi nombre es Sky y tengo diecisiete anos.”

Asher burst out laughing, a proper belly laugh this time.

“What?”

“Your name is Sky and you have seventeen anuses? You mean an-yos, not a-nos.”

“Ah, shit. Años. I always forget about that little accent thing.”

“So I guess we’ll be watching a movie in English?”

“That might be best.”

We picked out an action movie, which turned out to be possibly the worst action movie ever made. You could still see the stuntman’s wires. And the love affair between a Navy SEAL who could barely swim and a grocery store cashier who looked like a catwalk model wasn’t particularly realistic either.

Or was it? The idea of falling in love had always seemed weird to me. Two people start by exchanging messages on a dating website, and suddenly they want to get an apartment and a cat? They share a bottle of wine, the guy sticks unmentionable parts of himself into the girl, and before you know it, they’re off on a minibreak to Butlins? I didn’t get it. Had Asher ever dated? What made him decide he hated sex?

“Sky?”

“Huh?”

“What are you thinking about?”

“Uh, the movie?”

“You haven’t been watching the movie for at least fifteen minutes.”

Busted. “Which means you’ve been watching me for at least fifteen minutes.”

He didn’t try to deny it. “What’s eating at you?”

“Curiosity.”

Asher raised one dark eyebrow. How come his eyebrows were almost black and his hair was blond? Genetics, I guess. Maybe a touch of bleach. Overall, I had to concede he hadn’t done badly in the looks department.

“What are you curious about?”

“You.”

“What about me?”

“The thing you said earlier… Why do you hate sex? Presumably you’ve tried it?”

“In every possible way you can imagine.”

Instead of elaborating, he went to the kitchen, and when he came back, he had a bottle of Jack Daniels in his hand.

“I suppose I owe you an explanation, but I’m gonna need this. It ain’t pretty.”

He took a long swallow, and I held out my hand. After a brief hesitation, he passed me the bottle, and I relished the burn as I poured a good measure down my throat. Better. I hugged a cushion on my lap as Asher began his tale, a pointless move if ever there was one because from the look of dread on his face, there would be no soft landing for either of us.

“I was seventeen when my dad cut off my allowance. No grades, no gas money, that’s what he said. And driving was the only thing that kept me sane back then. Still is, if I’m truthful. So I got a job. Weekend pool cleaner at the Oakwood Estates Country Club, with plenty of overtime on offer as well. And it was great. I got to work on my tan and look at women in bathing suits all day, plus the boss paid cash in hand every Friday. Sure beat school.”

Beat serving drinks in a nightclub too. “What did your dad say?”

“He wasn’t happy, but by that point, I didn’t care. And then I turned eighteen, and the woman who ran the spa, Lillian, she heard I was thinking of quitting school altogether and told me I’d make a great massage therapist. Said I had nice hands and offered me a trainee position.”

I took one of his hands in mine and uncurled his fingers. They were longer than mine. He didn’t wear any jewellery, but he obviously spent time with a nail file.

“You do have nice hands.” Elegant hands. Probably came from playing the piano. “Did you take the new job?”

“The pay was better. Plus Lillian said they were always busy so I could work as many hours as I wanted. They sent me on a course. It was only six weeks—not really long enough to learn everything, but it turned out that didn’t matter.”

“What do you mean?”

“The first day, they threw me in at the deep end. Six clients. I quickly worked out what the women liked and what they didn’t like. I’d left school to take the course, but I was still sleeping at home, and I earned enough to keep my car running. Then one day—three weeks in, maybe four—one of the regular clients asked for a seated Indian head massage. No problem, I was good at those. I was working the pressure points on her face when she unzipped my fly, and before I knew what the fuck was going on, she was on her knees with my cock in her mouth.”

My gasp of shock drowned out several movie gunshots. “Are you serious?”

He was. Deadly. There was no humour in his expression. In fact, he looked quite sick.

“She gave me a two-hundred-dollar tip. Cash. She dropped it on the table when she left. But she came back three days later.”

“She did the same again?”

“That time, she wanted more. So I gave it to her. Judge me if you want, but I was a horny eighteen-year-old and four hundred dollars bought a heck of a lot of gas.”

I’d never slept with anyone for money, but serving shots in a bikini top and a miniskirt so short it showed my ass cheeks meant I was no choirgirl.

“I’m not judging.”

Asher brushed the hair away from my face and studied me. “No, I don’t believe you are.” He took another swig of whiskey. “Turns out that when one of those women gets her claws into you, it’s just the beginning. She passed me around her friends like a party favour.”

“Holy shit.”

“At first, it wasn’t that bad. I mean, these trophy wives look after themselves. Everything’s nipped and tucked and frozen into place. But fuck, are they entitled. After a few months, the novelty of boning women all day, every day wore off and I realised I was nothing more than a trained monkey. But I was making more money than I’d ever had in my life, so I kept going. I hated myself, but I kept going.”

“Didn’t your boss say anything? Lillian?”

“I soon learned Lillian was more of a pimp than a beauty therapist. She had me tag-teaming with the other guys, and she was banging half of the husbands herself. I used to dream of going home and putting my feet up with a mug of fucking cocoa. By the end, I was swallowing little blue pills like candy to get it up and downing bourbon so I could face myself in the mornings.”

“By the end? You quit?”

“Not exactly. First, my dad died, and as soon as the funeral was over, the Rosenbergs started sniffing around. Then the FBI raided the country club, and the owner got arrested.”

“For running a brothel?”

“For money laundering. When the special agents arrived, I was stripping at Edwina Cunningham’s daughter’s bachelorette party, so I missed all the fun.” Asher mock-pouted and then spread his arms. “So here I am. Tired, jaded, and definitely not in the market for a hook-up. Those bitches literally wore out my dick.”

Perhaps it was the alcohol, and perhaps it was the situation, but I looked at Asher, and he looked at me, and then we both began to laugh. And laugh and laugh and laugh.

“We’re such a pair of fuck-ups,” I choked out.

“I can still give you a massage if you want. I’m not bad at those.”

Tears were streaming down my face. “You’re my perfect man. Is there anything left in that bottle?”

“A mouthful.” He handed it over, then slung an arm over my shoulders. “C’mon. Let’s watch another movie and not have sex.”

“Horror or romance?”

“In our world, they’re the same thing, Chem.”

I snuggled against his side. It felt nice. No pressure whatsoever, just warmth and friendship.

“Homance it is, Shortcut.”