Mad Love (11 page)

Find
me. Find me. Find me
.

I bolted out of bed. Morning sun seeped around the edges of the drawn curtains. The yearning that had plagued me yesterday, temporarily dulled by the doctor’s sleeping potion, was back in full force, burning like a swallowed torch. I threw off the sheet. I didn’t care that I was dressed in pink cotton pajamas. I didn’t care about the pillowcase lines embedded across my face. I didn’t run a brush through my tangles. The intensity of the burning could only mean one thing—Errol was near. And if I didn’t go to him I would burst into flames.

Mrs. Bobot was fast asleep on my couch, a steady snore vibrating the edges of her nostrils.

I stumbled into the foyer. Someone had propped open the building’s front door with a pot of geraniums, the morning’s heat filling the building. A moving van was parked out front and two sweating men lumbered up the stairs, carrying a floral sofa between them.

“You didn’t tell me you had two boyfriends.” Realm sat on the foyer table where the mail carrier left packages. A long gray shirt hung over her black leggings.

“What are you talking about?”

“The guy on the skateboard yesterday. The one who followed you home.” She took a sip from her latte cup. “He just skated by a few minutes ago. When he asked about you, I told him you went to the hospital last night but that you were fine.”

This conversation wasn’t the least bit interesting. I rubbed my face. I needed to do something, but what?

“And I met your other boyfriend, Errol. Do they know about each other?”

“You met …
Errol
?” My heart skipped a beat.

“Yeah.” She tapped her fingers on the side of her cup. “He’s so not your type. He’s way too tortured. He looks more like my type.”

Her type? The spider bite itched like crazy as a primal reaction gripped my brain. At that moment, Realm was no longer the troubled girl who came for a month each summer to stay with her grandmother. She was a warm-blooded female.
An available female
. “He’s not your type. You got that? He’s
MY
type.” I clenched my fists. Words burst from my mouth. “You stay away from him, you hear me? He’s mine. If you try to take him away, I’ll kill you. I swear, I’ll kill you!”

“Jeez, you’re a freak, you know that?” Realm slid off the table, then crept away, probably because I was breathing like an overheated bulldog.

“Stay. Away. From. Him.”

“Whatever.” Realm headed toward the safety of the front porch. “If I were you I’d be careful about threatening me. I know your secret. And if you make me mad, I might write all about it in my blog.”

What was she talking about? And who cared?

FIND ME!

I took a deep breath. The rush of oxygen fed the fire, sending agonizing flames throughout my body. I didn’t need to ask where Errol was. He pulled at me like a compass needle to due north. In a blur of pink cotton, I raced up the stairs. With each step, the chanting voice grew louder.

I reached the second floor in record time. The door to the building’s fourth unit stood open. The moving men passed me on their way downstairs. As I stepped into the apartment, the chanting pounded at my temples like a kettle drum. Everything blurred until the world was a sheet of rain-splattered glass. Sweat broke across my chest. He was near. The vibration of his footsteps rippled up my legs as he walked toward me, his face and body a smudge of color. The pounding intensified. I couldn’t move. Could barely breathe.

He stood real close, his warm breath on my neck. Longing drizzled over me like hot honey. I threw myself at him. Wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him on the lips—a hungry, long kiss. The yearning didn’t go away. I pushed my chest against his and kissed him harder. Why didn’t I feel better? I’d found him—we were together. But the chanting was everywhere and my body burned. I tightened my arms and for a moment, he kissed me back, his mouth as eager as mine. Then he pushed me away.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said.

I threw myself at him again but he held out his arms so that a space as wide as an ocean separated us. His words floated through the chaos that filled my head.

“Do you want this to stop?”

“Yes,” I pleaded. “Make it stop.”

“Will you write my story?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“Do you promise?”

“Yes. I promise.”

“Then drink this. It’s the antidote. You’ll feel like yourself again.”

The cold edge of a can pressed against my lips. I tasted salt, sand, and kelp. With one swallow, the world came into focus.

And so did he.

I stood in the fourth unit’s kitchen and looked at the guy I’d been obsessed with for the last twenty-four hours. Only I wasn’t obsessed with him, not anymore. That feeling had washed away with the clam juice, leaving behind a painful combination of embarrassment and confusion.

I’d kissed him! I’d kissed Errol! In my pink pajamas with my hair a mess, I’d thrown myself at him. My first kiss, and it had been with Errol! I didn’t even know him. I didn’t even like him. What was the matter with me?

He pushed off his hood. His hair was sheared to the scalp like Realm’s. Perhaps they shared the same blind hairdresser or had grabbed the same blunt scissors during a bout of self-loathing when they’d tried to change themselves—Lily to Realm, Errol to Cupid. But while Realm’s hair was dirty blond, Errol’s was white. Snow white.

“Feeling better?” he asked, his voice no longer a tickling whisper.

I stepped back, my recent words regurgitating in my mind.
He’s mine. If you try to take him away, I’ll kill you
. Oh God, had I really said that to Realm? I’d never live that down. But when those words had spewed out, all I’d felt was the blinding need to claim Errol as my own. And now there I stood, only a short time later, feeling no urge whatsoever except to crawl into a corner and hide. Clearly I’d had an out-of-body experience. My brain had taken a brief vacation, leaving my body behind to do a bunch of stupid, embarrassing things. I couldn’t blame drugs or alcohol. There’d been no beer this time, and the doctor’s sleeping potion had long worn off. The blame lay entirely on that catchy little term “genetic predisposition.” As I’d long feared,
crazy
had finished germinating and was ready to burst into full bloom.

The ragged breath I released sounded as if it had been locked deep inside for a lifetime. Is this how my mother felt at the end of one of her episodes? Relief tainted by foreboding—wondering how much time she had before it happened again.

“You’re wondering if you’re going insane,” Errol said, setting the can of clam juice on the counter. “You’re not. It was my doing. The voice saying ‘Find me.’ I made that happen.”

“What? How did you …?”

His serious gaze swept up and down my face, then side to side, studying me. “If it makes you feel better, only sane people worry about losing their sanity.”

I took another step back. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not worried about going insane.”

The furrow between his eyes deepened and he leaned against the counter. “I’m the one who put the voice into your head. It was my doing. What I want to know is, can you still hear it? If you can, you need to drink more.” He grabbed the can and shoved it at me.
Craig’s Clam Juice. Processed from 100 percent organic clams and organic brine. Sixteen ounces of mouth-watering goodness. Best served over ice
. I gagged and covered my mouth as the taste of muddy bay made a repeat appearance. Then I pushed the can away.

“Get that away from me.”

“Is the voice gone?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He tossed the can into the sink. “You may think it’s disgusting, but it’s the only known antidote. The only time it doesn’t work is if you have shellfish allergies. Well, even then, it stops the voice, but then it kills you.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Crap. I forgot to ask you if you had allergies.”

Two moving men stomped in. “Where do you want the television?”

“I don’t care,” Errol said over his shoulder. “I don’t need any of that stuff. It’s not mine.”

“Yeah, well, we’ve been paid to deliver it, so where do you want it?”

“I said I don’t care!”

As the moving men set the television in the living room, everything I’d done during my unfortunate lapse into crazy shot right to the surface. “You moved here on purpose,” I said to Errol. “That girl with the red hair thinks we planned this. Mrs. Bobot thinks I wanted you to move here. How did you know I lived here? Have you been watching me or something?”

He looked away. “We need to talk about my story. You promised to write it.”

“Your story?” Oh right, his story. That envelope filled with notes. The reason I’d met him in the first place. And that’s when the absurdity of the situation hit me. I needed a story and he had one. Except he was some kind of stalking lunatic.

“How much will you pay me to write it?” It was a bluff. I wasn’t going to write it, no matter how much he offered.

“I don’t have any money.”

“Oh gee, what a surprise. Well, sorry, but I can’t work unless I get paid.”

“Let’s go back to my room,” he said.

“Your room? No way.” Only a few minutes ago I would have married the guy. Now I was seriously questioning whether either one of us was sane. How could one person put a voice into another person’s head? Not possible. He was delusional and so was I. I needed to forget the last twenty-four hours—forget that I’d heard a voice, that I’d made a fool of myself. But I could still feel that kiss, warm and hungry.

“I don’t want to write your book. Okay? Are you listening? I don’t want to write it.” I hurried into the living room. “Stop what you’re doing,” I told the moving men. “This is a huge mistake. He’s not moving in. Take all this stuff back to the van.”

“What do you mean, this is a mistake?” one of the men asked. “We ain’t lugging all this stuff back downstairs. That girl at the beauty parlor paid a move-in fee, not a move-out fee.”

“I’ll pay the move-out fee,” I offered desperately.

The guy scratched his beard. “That ain’t right. I can’t do that without her signature. I could get sued.” He pushed his empty cart toward the door.

Crud!

I stood as stiff as a tree as Errol’s gaze brushed across my back. It would be a nightmare having him in the building, bugging me every day to write his story. I looked out the fourth unit’s living room window, onto the building next door. Oscar the cat was perched on its fire escape, cleaning his front paw. He glanced up and looked at me.
What are you going to do
? his green eyes asked.

I didn’t want to think about the fact that Errol had invaded my life. I wanted to shut myself away and work on
Untitled Work in Progress
, not simply because I needed to, but because it would take me away from the past twenty-four hours and all the embarrassing things I’d done and said. Is that why my mother wrote? To distract herself from the reality of her life? “I’ve got to go.”

“What about your promise?” Errol asked.

“I’ve got to go.” I headed toward the door.

With a groan, he kicked a cupboard door. Then he kicked it again. I’d almost made my escape when he cried, “Go ahead! Run back to your apartment, hide from the truth!” He grabbed the can of clam juice from the sink, crumpled it, then threw it across the room. It bounced off a wall. My legs tensed. Was he going to attack me?

But he drew a long breath then ran a hand over his white hair. “Look, Alice,” he said, forcing calm into his voice. “You can go back to your apartment and never truly know what happened. You can live with the fear that everything you felt was some kind of prelude to madness. Or you can let me explain.”

Curiosity held me in that doorway, a threshhold between realities. Waiting downstairs was my unraveled but familiar life. I knew how to hide in that world. But Errol wanted to pull me into his world. His words threatened to suck me in like a black hole.

“I’m sorry I shot you,” he said quietly.

Surely I hadn’t heard correctly. “What did you say?”

“I said I’m sorry I shot you. Maybe I shouldn’t have done it. But I needed to get your attention.”

“You …
shot
me?”

“I don’t usually knock people off their feet but I’ve been shaky lately.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Your wound should be gone. It goes away as soon as the spell wears off.”

My hand reached under my pajama top and I slid a finger under the Band-Aid. The spider bite was gone. No welt, no itch, just smooth skin. “Huh?” My mouth fell open. There’d been no spider. No lightning. “What did you …? How did you …?” I blabbered. “Why would you …?” His words from the bagel shop came back to me.

I
am
Cupid. The original, one and only Cupid
.

I clenched my hands into fists. “YOU SHOT ME WITH AN ARROW?”