Pieces of Hope (34 page)

Mac
pulled a travelling coin from his pocket without saying a word. Just before I
ran through the wall separating us from the Station, I looked back once. Charlotte was nibbling on
a fingernail as she looked back.
  

17
Soulnapped

My third
step down the aisle of the flat-nosed bus sent me into that familiar space
where I was traveling in the direction of my thoughts. But midway, something
altered. It was like I was being pulled in a second direction—taffy in the
hands of some obnoxious child—and it was a most unpleasant sensation.

Travelling
took longer than it ever had before. When I finally saw light, a grayish-green
haze hung over the sky. Though shrouded in mist, I saw that I was standing at
the top of an enormous range of cliffs, with an ocean spanning the entire
horizon. Scattered amongst the barren patches of grass, yellow dandelions
flowered at my feet. I’d seen a picture of this place, once, in a frame in
Ethan’s room. He’d visited here. Though the thought was pleasant and view was
breathtaking, for some unknown reason my insides jittered.

Before I
heard his voice, I felt an instantaneous rush of emotion, as though I were a
can of shaken soda and someone else had hastily yanked the top.

“Cliffs
of
Moher
,” he said smoothly. “Word has it you’ve
become quite enamored with the Emerald Isle. Lucky me that you showed up at the
same time.”

He came
from behind me, his voice sounding as lazy as his stroll, as if it were a total
fluke that we were both here. I twisted sharply and railed on him, “How did you
get me off course, Daniel? You know this wasn’t where I was going!”

He sent
an innocent look my way. “I intercepted you, Hope. Besides, from what I
remember, you used to love my surprises.”

“This is
not a pleasant surprise! You—you
soulnapped
me!” I
physically restrained myself from reaching out and strangling him.

“Go
ahead.” He smiled wickedly. “The pleasure would be all mine.”

“Stop
listening!” And then it dawned on me. “You can hear my thoughts?”

“Don’t
act like it’s such a big deal, love. You could hear mine too if you’d just let
yourself. In fact, if you’d stop acting for one solitary minute like you still
had a body, you could do all kinds of things.”
          

“But I
do
still have a body!” I argued. “And
strictly speaking, so do you!”

I
couldn’t believe how angry I was. Funny, I often felt that way when I got
around Daniel. On the other hand, I knew Ethan was in pain somewhere, and I
needed to comfort him. That would make anyone incensed. I listened, but could
no longer hear his voice.

“Trivial
detail,” Daniel mused. I hoped he was acknowledging the fact that he still had a
body, and wasn’t responding to my thoughts on Ethan’s absent voice. Like an
insistent child, he pleaded, “Can we have some fun now, please?”

“No!
Show me how to do a shortcut, and I’ll be on my way.” I noticed as he came
closer that a fog crept into my head, but I disregarded it and growled, “I’m
sure you know how to do it.”

“I do,”
he teased, his voice still so casual, his wavy hair rumpled by the wind. “I’ll
make you a deal. You do what I want to do, and then I’ll send you back to the
whiner.”

“Don’t
call him that!” I thought about arguing my point further, but sensing it was a
losing battle—I’d never won an argument with Daniel; he enjoyed it too much—and,
in an attempt to stop wasting precious time, I thrust out my hand instead.
“Shake on it. Take your five minutes of thrills,” I said, my voice full of
contempt, “then let me go.”
  

Daniel
shot instantly beside me. Though he moved like golden vapor—a drastic change
from the panther at the Station—thanks to my bodiless vision, his physical
shape remained visible. I tried not to notice, but he’d made it look so
graceful.

Instead
of shaking my hand, he lifted it to his lips. That’s when my head became
enshrouded in that too-familiar fog. “Stop doing that!” I insisted as it
encroached on me again. Daniel looked at me as if he had no idea what I was
talking about, but I’d seen that innocent look before. He was faking it. “Let’s
get this over with!” I grumbled. “I’ve got a busy day ahead of me.”

In a
single whisper of vapor, we travelled to the edge of the cliff. My shoes
gripped at the crumbly edge, but I had no reason to be frightened. Daniel stood
behind me with his arms locked securely around my waist. From here, I could see
that the cliffs rose like ancient black monoliths hundreds of feet above the
sea. I even spotted the occasional tip of a colorful beak belonging to one of
the penguin-like birds that lived here. I sensed we weren’t in the living
realm, but the details were exquisite. I wondered if Daniel had done some
research prior to my arrival. The idea of this made my blood boil.

Had he
planned this?
 

“These
cliffs rise nearly seven hundred feet above the sea in some places.” Daniel
pointed a slender finger toward a group of orange-beaked birds. “Those are
Atlantic Puffins. I guess you could say they’re famous—think of them as the
Brad Pitts of the bird world—and they like to call this place home.” The longer
he spoke, the more he came off sounding like a tour guide (less like a
soulnapper
.) My anger was abating, replaced by a drowsy
wooziness that made it difficult to concentrate. “Out there,”—he pointed toward
a barely visible series of green mounds—“are the
Aran
Islands in Galway. And those”—he twisted sharply—“are
the hills of Connemara.”

“It’s
spectacular,” I said breathlessly. Then as the sun peeked through the clouds,
the fog in my head lifted. I felt more like myself. “Okay, can I go now?”

A roar
of laughter sounded behind me. “Hope, we’re just getting started. Whatever
happened to the girl who couldn’t get enough excitement in one day? Where’s
that
girl? I want to spend the day with
her.”

I didn’t
mean to say it; it flew out of my mouth by accident. Like a tiny boat on a
stormy sea, I was at the mercy of my emotions. “That girl got abandoned by her
boyfriend at fifteen. That girl worried herself sick about what might have
happened to him.
That
girl is dead
.”

He
pulled me closer. I wished he hadn’t. He was squeezing me tightly. His arms,
the same ones that used to hold me for hours on end, were urging me to soften.
I tried to remain stiff and unyielding, but that woozy sensation dragged me
under again.

“I’m
sorry I put you through all that. I wasn’t myself back then.” He sounded like
he meant it, but I couldn’t make myself look to see if was genuinely sorry.
“Biggest mistake of my life.” His voice cracked.

Another
wave of emotion was suffocating me; I lifted my head above it.

“Good.
I’m glad,” I snapped, carefully avoiding looking at him.

He took
me back to a terrible moment when he said, “That’s when my mother went missing.
I lost it. You had to have heard about it. It was all over the news.”

“You
didn’t even bother to tell me about it!” I shouted, still averting his gaze.
“It was exasperating! You didn’t let me help you!” I made a mistake and looked
at him. Something smothered me. My lower lip trembled.

“Biggest
mistake of my life,” he repeated, shaking his head. “It wasn’t a conscious
decision to ignore you. I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. I know I hinted at
times that things weren’t great at home. I should have told you the whole
story.”

Though I
suspected he was making it up, I mumbled, “What story?”

His eyes
narrowed as he spat, “John
Hartlein
—it disgusts me to
call him my father—used to beat my mother so often that she kept a packed
suitcase hidden in the trunk of her car, just in case she ever got the courage
to leave him for good.”

My one
trip through John
Hartlein’s
body came rushing
back—an intense hatred and a desire to harm Daniel flooded my senses in present
time. And what—what was it
Hartlein
had thought when
he passed through me? The hair on my arms stood up. Anyone, I thought, would
run from a man like that. Though Daniel was capable of lying, I could see in
his eyes that he was telling the truth.

I was
relieved when the disturbing memory passed as quickly as it came.

“How
awful . . . for both of you,” I muttered, suddenly feeling miserable for him.
“Did he, I mean, did he ever—?”

“Hit
me?” He looked at me as if to say
he
wouldn’t dare
. “My mother protected me when I was younger and as I got
older, he knew better than to try. I told him once if he even thought about
hitting me, he’d better make it a good one because I would kill him before he
got in a second punch.” Daniel was breathing rapidly. His last few words were
nearly inaudible. “I still would.”

I
reached out to comfort him. Daniel remained frozen, but along his ribs I could
feel his breathing settling down, and without really thinking about it, I
pulled him closer. This was once so easy between us. I missed him more than I
had realized. His body was still so familiar—lean and lightly muscled. Daniel
used to hate it when I said he reminded me of an Abercrombie and Fitch model
with a sharper edge. It messed with the image he had of himself as a moody,
rebellious artist.

“I know
you still love me.” He wrapped his arms around me as his body relaxed. I felt
his breath on my neck. “You can’t deny it forever.”

Coming
to my senses, I dropped my arms, appalled at my behavior, and took one step backwards.
“Daniel, too much has happened since then. I love—” I love Ethan I started to
say, but I couldn’t hurt him like that so I changed it to, “I loved us once,
too, and we were great together, but like I said—”

“Too
much has happened.” There was laughter in his voice.

Suspicion
crept into my tone. “What are you playing at—”

“Give me
today, Hope. Give me a last goodbye.” He was begging, but there was a glimmer
in his gray-blue eyes. Then he added pitifully, “Don’t you owe us that?”

“You’re
exasperating!” I huffed. “And stop looking at me like that.” He flashed a hint
of a smile. “If I don’t agree, I suppose you’ll just keep trying?” A brief nod
followed. Through my teeth, I muttered, “Well, since I have no choice . . .”

“I’m
irresistible, aren’t I?” He smirked, but I didn’t think that he was joking. Daniel
had the wildest imagination of anyone I’d ever met so, better judgment aside, I
did feel a tiny jolt of anticipation that prickled down to my toes as he said
this.

He spun
me back around, facing the sea, wrapping his arms around me again. The breeze
was strong, a perfect day for kite flying. Perhaps I was so preoccupied earlier
that I had missed it.

“As I
recall,” Daniel said, “you aren’t much of a fairy tale kind of girl.”

He had
obviously been spying on more than one of mine and Ethan’s dates—at the
waterfall, and Ireland—and
this question was reminiscent of an earlier one from Ethan. If I’d wondered if Daniel
Hartlein
was over his jealousy, I knew better now.

“I hate
Cinderella,” I told him. He lifted his mouth into a crooked grin. “But you
already know that. That story messes girls up for life.”

He
howled with laughter. It was a bit much, I thought. Plus, I wasn’t joking.

“I
remember,” he said, still laughing. “But I’ve been giving some thought to the
idea of princesses being rescued by knights . . . usually in shining armor.”

“You
have? That’s a little weird, Daniel, even for you.”

He
laughed again. Definitely overkill. Where was he going with this?

“Actually,
I’ve been thinking . . . what if there was a twist in the in the tale? What if
the damsel in distress didn’t end up with the glossy, shiny, perfect knight?
Wouldn’t it be a far more interesting story if she chose the dragon instead?”

Glossy,
shiny, perfect knight? Was he talking about —?

“That’s
not the way the stories go,” I argued, knowing that he was Ethan bashing.

“You
don’t like them, anyway,” he reminded me shortly. “Remember?”

I opened
my mouth in reply, then snapped my teeth together. Something fluttered in a
fresh breeze. I caught a flash of red and raised my left arm. A long trailing
sleeve, open to my elbows, danced in the wind. To my shock, I saw that I was
wearing a blood-red floor-length gown—the fashion equivalent of fantasy vixen
meets fairytale princess. The velvety fabric clung to my body until it reached
my upper thighs. From there it billowed out,
puddling
around my feet. Lifting the long skirt, I stared in disgust at my feet. I wore
ballerina-style flats with thin ribbons attached to them. The ribbons crisscrossed
up my legs and tied just below my knees.

I gave
him a look that could frighten the dead. Instantly, I morphed back into my T-shirt
and jeans.

But the
moment I dropped my arms, the sleeves began to flap again.

“Stop
doing that!” I tugged awkwardly at my T-shirt as it returned, probably more of
an attempt to hold onto it than anything else.
   

“I
wanted to see you in a dress. You never wear one. I thought about a short one,
but for modesty’s sake, I thought a long one would be better.”

Once
again, my sleeves fluttered. “Modesty’s sake? What do you—”

“There
are alternatives,” he suggested slyly.

“Don’t
even think about it,” I warned, fearful that my clothing might disappear in the
next instant. “So, what of this idea of yours . . . dragons and such? Were you
actually going somewhere with it or was that just an ADD thing?”

I would
have sworn I felt him smile.