The Blood That Binds by Madeline Sheehan

 

Willow

One minute I was trudging slowly through the ravine, desperately trying to keep up with Logan, and the next…

I was running up the walk to Lucas’s house, excitedly knocking on the door. Overhead, the porch light flickered while mosquitoes buzzed around my ears. Waiting, I ran my hands down the front of my dress, smoothing out its wrinkles.

A thick head of blonde curls peeked from behind the curtain, a wide smile appearing. The door popped open and Lucas’s mom exclaimed, “Oh, just look at you! Now if you’ll just let me fix that heavy eye makeup…” she trailed off as her gaze reached my feet. Her wide eyes raced back to mine. “Willow! You can’t wear combat boots to the homecoming dance!”

“Oh my god, Mom, stop it.” The door opened fully, revealing Lucas wearing the three-piece suit we’d found at the local thrift store the previous week. It was a dark twill pattern and, according to the saleslady, a European cut. It was also far too short on him, showing a good portion of his striped socks and several inches of his arms.

Kissing his mother quickly on the cheek, Lucas rushed onto the porch, grabbing my hand. “Bye, Mom!” he called over his shoulder, tugging me down the steps.

“Lucas—what on earth are you wearing?” she called after him. “What happened to your Sunday suit? Lucas—you look like Huckleberry Finn in those floods! Lucas? Lucas, get back here!”

Giggling, we raced down the driveway, down the sidewalk, not slowing until we’d turned the corner on our street. Ducking beneath the heavy canopy of an elm tree, I clutched my stomach, laughing.

“Oh my god, did you see her face? Your mom is too precious for this world.”

Lucas kicked off his shoes and began shrugging out of his too-small jacket. “I’m just glad your mom didn’t follow you over with her camera bag.” Lucas paused, placing his hands on his hips and lifting his chin. “How many times do I need to remind you kids that film is better than digital,” he scolded me in a comically high-pitched voice. “A phone camera will never capture all the details, and details are the most important part of photography, dontcha know.”

Grinning, I fumbled with the side zipper on my dress. “I promised I’d smile for the yearbook photo in exchange for not taking our picture tonight.”

Lucas guffawed. “And she believed you?”

“I can be very persuasive.” Wearing only my strapless bra and underwear, along with a pair of torn fishnet stockings and my combat boots, I handed my dress to Lucas. “Your gown, milady.”

When we’d gone shopping for our homecoming outfits, it had been me who’d picked out the suit, with my size in mind, while Lucas had picked out a dress that he could also comfortably wear.

Taking the length of satin, Lucas paused to look up and down my body with a sly smile. “Too bad you can’t go like that.”

“Ha,” I retorted, preening under his admiring gaze. “They’re all going to completely freak out when they see you in a dress—if I showed up in my underwear, too, we’d have a county-wide catastrophe on our hands. I can see tomorrow’s byline now—LOCAL SATAN WORSHIPPERS CRASH GOOD, GOD-FEARING HOMECOMING.”

“Satan worshippers,” Lucas snorted. “Don’t insult me.”

Having successfully switched clothing, we ducked back beneath the veil of wispy branches and continued on down the sidewalk, this time arm in arm. It was our first year of high school, our first homecoming dance, and we were determined to make a lasting first impression. Or rather, I was determined to make an impression, while Lucas was always content to do whatever I wanted.

Soon, we could hear the thumping bass and the din of a multitude of voices. Breaching the school property line, the path to the gymnasium had been fitted with an arch of green and gold balloons, our school’s colors. Small groups of students milled around outside the entrance, all of them stopping to watch our approach.

“Oh look, the circus freaks are here.”

“Logan, isn’t that your brother?”

Logan stood, the tallest among his smirking teammates, scowling in our direction. Like the rest of his varsity team, he wore his football jersey over his dress shirt.

“Oh look, it’s the homecoming court of assholes,” I sneered, pausing to do a dramatic genuflect. Standing straight, I met each of their gazes head-on, ending with Logan. “What’s it like to peak at seventeen, Your Majesty?”

As his scowl turned downright murderous, I hurried to retake Lucas’s arm and we ran into the gym, howling with laughter.

“You need to drink, Willow. Come on, just drink a little bit—come on, drink something, damn it.”

A voice reached me; sunken somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind, I grabbed hold of that voice, tethered myself to it, letting it pull me, coughing and spluttering, back to consciousness. Someone was holding me upright; a bottle was pushed past my lips, warm water was pouring into my mouth. Reflexively, I coughed again, sputtering as I tried to swallow. I felt myself being raised higher.

Muscle aches, the likes of which I’d never felt before, burned agonizing pathways through my body. Making everything worse, one second I was burning hot, feeling as if I might suffocate from the extreme heat, and then just as quickly, I was shivering and shaking once more.

“Lucas?” I rasped.

“Willow, you need to drink something,” the voice demanded.

I blinked, focusing on the blurry face before me. I knew that mouth. That nose. That unruly beard. Those hard eyes, which right now, burned with concern. Logan was concerned for me? I must still be dreaming.

“Where… are… we?” It took all my strength to say three measly words, leaving me exhausted and drifting off to sleep again. “Tired,” I managed to slur.

“I don’t care if you’re tired,” Logan snapped, nudging the bottle against my lips. “I need you to drink something.”

No, I thought, reaching up, fumbling with the air before finding his hand. I attempted pushing him away, though he didn’t budge.

“Drink something!”

“Sleep,” I whispered, closing my eyes. And the world slipped away once again.

Lucas and I were stretched out over freshly cut grass, sharing a pair of earbuds. The overhead sun glistened on our skin; our backpacks and forgotten textbooks spread out around us. Two empty beer bottles and half a pack of cigarettes sat between us.

“That’s not ironic, Will!” Laughing, Lucas played with my hair, wrapping one of my braids around his finger. “I mean, maybe there’s some situational irony there, but that’s about it.”

“What? Come on! A ‘no smoking’ sign on a cigarette break—that’s ironic.”

“Nope. It’s only ironic if they didn’t already know the sign was there.”

Blinking over at him, I chewed thoughtfully on my lower lip. “Okay, so what about meeting the man of your dreams and then meeting his beautiful wife—that’s definitely ironic.”

“Meh, kinda. I think that’s still situational irony. You wouldn’t expect to meet the man of your dreams only to then meet his beautiful wife, right?”

Making a face at the sky, I shook my head and said, “Can you imagine how shitty that would be? To meet the person of your dreams and they’re already with someone else.”

Lucas rolled toward me, pressing a soft kiss to my temple. “Good thing we found each other, huh?”

“What the fuck, Luke—I thought you said you were going to the library.”

Logan stood above us. His short blond hair spiked with sweat. He was fresh from football practice, a duffel bag brimming with gear slung on his shoulder.

Lucas scrambled to sit, hurrying to stuff the empty beer bottles into his backpack, drawing Logan’s attention straight to them.

“Are you kidding me—you’re back here, drinking?”

“It was only one beer,” Lucas mumbled.

“Yeah, and who does that sound like?” Logan demanded. “This is bullshit—you know better.”

“Hey, crazy,” I snapped. “He only had one beer—calm down!”

Logan’s jaw tightened. Ignoring me, he said to Lucas, “You keep fucking off like this, you’re never going to get out of here—is that what you want? To be stuck in this shithole forever, with her?” Not waiting for a response, Logan continued bitingly. “I’ll be in the truck—if you’re not there in five minutes, I’m leaving without you.”

“Oh no,” I called after him. “However will he make it home without you? What with you living three short blocks away and all.”

Logan’s shoulders stiffened, though he continued stalking away. I glared after him, feeling myself growing angrier. I didn’t understand why he hated me so much.

“Great.” Lucas flopped backward on the grass with a groan. “My whole family is crazy—can I move in with you?”

“Yep,” I said, settling back beside him. “And wouldn’t that be ironic.”

Lucas began to laugh. “No, Will, it definitely wouldn’t be—not even a little bit.”

I awoke to grunts and groans, scraping and scuffling noises. I knew those noises, I knew what they meant; only, just as quickly as my panic rose, my thoughts drifted away as my eyes drifted closed.

There was an audible thump to my right; my eyes flew open. A rotten stench filled my nostrils, making my stomach churn anew. The world was blurring in and out of focus, but there was something there, just to my right.

“Lucas?” I whispered, his name sticking in my throat. “Is… that you?”

My vision continued to blur in and out of focus, until I could suddenly see, and what I saw was Lucas, his beautiful face drawing closer, a smile splitting his lips.I lifted a quivering hand, reaching for him. As my vision wavered again, Lucas’s features began to morph into the decaying face of a Creeper. Growling, it grabbed at me, gripping a handful of my hair and painfully twisting it. Its jaws snapping like angry traps, its mouth a fetid black hole, it used its grip on me to pull itself closer.

“No,” I demanded faintly. Weakly, I tried to move, tried to push its hand away. Breathing hard, my muscles burning from exertion, my fingers closed around its arm, my nails digging into its scummy flesh. As its skin peeled away from its bones, my hand fell away with its skin. Too weak to do anything more, a strangled cry rose in my throat.

There was a blast—an explosion that ricocheted all around me. As the Creeper’s hold on me disappeared, Logan took its place beside me.

“Were you bitten?” he demanded. Frantic hands pulled at my clothing, roughly turning me this way and that. I tried to speak—I tried to tell him that I hadn’t been bitten—but my mouth refused to cooperate.

“Not bitten,” he said, sounding relieved. “Not bitten… not bitten… .”

Reaching up, I pressed a limp hand to my chest and tried to speak… only no words came. No words. No tears. Just nothing. I was a silent passenger in my own body.

“We gotta keep going, okay? Willow, can you hear me?”

As Logan melted away, I was left staring up at the sky, the heat of the sun beating down on me. I thought I saw a bird—a black shapeless thing that dipped and dove through the never-ending blue above me. I stared at it, envying its freedom, the ease in which it could rise above this world, utterly untethered.

Turning away, blinking sluggishly, my eyes feeling as if they had glue in them, I glimpsed the passing brickwork of a dilapidated home. Then another house with a faded FOR SALE sign hanging crookedly amid an overgrown lawn. Both were gone before I could blink again.

Eventually my eyes closed, the world winking into darkness once more.

Idly, I wondered if I would ever wake up again.