Sapphire: A Paranormal Romance (7 page)

“I have to get out
of these clothes,” he responded.

“It can wait a few
more minutes,” she replied.

There was a tone
in her voice.  It was a tone that he had heard many times.  It meant that she
had made a decision and nothing he said in protest would matter.  The one thing
that could have saved him was intervention from his father, but he was not
there.  Jimmy’s father had been dead for five years now; he’d died suddenly
from a brain aneurysm in the garage one night.  Since then it had been Jimmy
and his mother.  Most nights Jimmy lay awake and thought about his father, but
some days he could barely remember what the man’s face looked like.  

Jimmy sighed and
tossed his shirt into his bedroom, just barely landing on his bed.  Then he
turned and walked back into the living room.  His mother was sitting in an old,
worn rocking chair that she loved.  She had a stern look on her face.  Here it
comes, he thought, but why was it coming in the first place?  Why had his
entire world turned upside down in the course of twenty-four hours?  Had
everyone on the planet gone crazy overnight?

“Are you still planning
on meeting up with that strange girl you met last night?” she asked.

“Of course,” Jimmy
replied.  His head began a new wave of pounding against the inside of his
skull.

“I don’t think
it’s a good idea. I think you should stay home,” she said.  “You have to work
again tomorrow and I don’t think you should stay up late tonight.  What’s more,
I don’t think you should try to see this girl again.”

Jimmy nodded. 
“OK, thanks for the advice, Mom.  I’ll take it under advisement.”

“Don’t mouth off
to me, young man!” she snapped.  She hardly ever raised her voice, but Jimmy
could tell that she was really upset about something.  “You are still living
under my roof, and you will follow my rules.”

“Not on this!”
Jimmy surprised himself by snapping back.  He felt anger, hot and loud, rushing
into his blood.  “I finally meet a girl who actually wants to be with me and
you, George, and everyone else are doing everything you can to warn me away
from her.  Why? Why are both of you overreacting so much to this?  It’s like
George is acting like a jealous girlfriend and, you, well, you’re just a
acting…weird.  Do you want me to stay alone for the rest of my life?”

“Don’t be so
dramatic,” she said.  “There are lots of girls that you could be dating.  You
just never ask anyone.  Any one of them would be better than some girl you met
on the side of the road.”

Jimmy felt anger
suddenly burst within him.  It was white hot and totally unexpected.  That
feeling like he had had the night before when he faced off against Clint suddenly
emerged within his mind.  It was as if he were saying words that were not
entirely his, doing things that were not entirely his own actions. 

“No, Mom,” Jimmy
replied.  “There are not a lot of other girls I can date.  I am loathed by
nearly everyone at Knorr High School.  Don’t you know that?  Haven’t I told you
that? There is not a single girl at school who would be seen anywhere near me. 
They cross to the other side of the hall, duck into classrooms, and do all they
can to stay out of my way at school, Mom.  Any notion you have that I am
somehow going to end up dating the captain of the cheerleading squad needs to
go right out of your head.  It is not going to happen.”

“You don’t need to
date the head cheerleader,” his mother said with utter exasperation in her
voice.  “What about your friend Carole?  She’s nice.”

“She’s as much of
a geek as I am,” Jimmy said.  “Why am I only destined to end up with someone as
miserable and lonely as I am?  Sapphire is gorgeous, Mom.  She’s beautiful and
she likes me.  She actually wants to see me.  How can I not go and see if this
is something real?  It may be some giant cosmic mistake, or perhaps some cruel
joke, but how can I not find out for myself? Don’t make me regret telling you
about last night.”

“You are NOT going
out tonight,” she said, her voice cutting and brittle in the still air inside
the house.

“If you try and
stop me, I will just sneak out,” Jimmy said.  “We can do this the easy way or
the hard way, and unless you plan on nailing my windows shut or handcuffing me
to the bed, you are not going to stop me.”

The phone rang. 
Jimmy paused and picked it up. 

“What do you
want?”

“Whoa,” Jesse said
on the other end.  “That had to be the angriest greeting I’ve ever heard. 
What’s going on, my man?”

Jimmy sighed. 
“Nothing, just debating something with my mom.  Hi, Jesse.  Sorry.”

“Not a problem,
anything I can help with?”

“No,” Jimmy
said.   “What’s up?”

“Been waiting all
day to hear from you.  I heard some interesting rumors.  Did you stab one of
the football players?”

Jimmy felt himself
blushing.  “Well, things kind of got out of hand.”

“And were you
there with a girl?”

“Yes,” Jimmy
said.  “Well…it’s kind of hard to explain.  And I don’t think now is the time.”

There was a pause,
the steady hiss that always seemed to come from a silent phone line, and noises
in the background at the library where Jesse worked.  Jimmy had hurt Jesse’s
feelings now and he knew it, but he gripped the phone and said nothing.

“I understand,”
Jesse said.  “Stop by the library when you can, OK?  Let’s talk.”

“OK,” Jimmy said,
and hung up the phone. 

Jimmy stood there
with his hand on the phone for several minutes.  He knew his mother had
overheard the conversation, and he could feel her eyes boring into his back. 
The disappointment was coming off her in waves.  He balled his hands into
fists.

He suddenly turned
and stormed away.  She called his name, but this time he found the strength to
ignore it.  He thought about Sapphire’s smile and the way she’d felt as they
danced.  He thought about her voice and how her laugh reminded him of wind
chimes.  He thought about all of that as he slammed the door behind him, locked
it, and sat down on his bed. 

He was shaking. 
He let his anger subside and then he set about finding something to wear.  He
expected his mother to come to his door, but she didn’t.  That feeling of being
controlled had left, but now he was left shaken, stunned, wondering what the
hell was going on for the umpteenth time that morning.

Outside, the sun
began to make its final descent to the tops of the trees.  Sapphire was
waiting.

Jimmy
opened his bedroom window.  Technically, he had no reason to sneak
out of the house, but he didn’t want to run into his mother again.  The night
air was cool, and the slight chill cut through the shirt he was wearing.  He
reached back into the room and grabbed a jacket.  His heart was pounding.

It had gotten dark
early; that usually happened at this time of the year in this part of
Pennsylvania.  The hills were so high that the sun dropped down behind them
long before it dropped down below the horizon.  Thus, it was dark much sooner
than other parts of the state that was a bit more flat.

He walked across
the lawn, his feet making soft, wet noises on the grass.  He mounted his bike
and began to pedal.  The doubts began to assault his brain almost immediately. 
He was driving into an ambush.  All that would be waiting at the bridge were
the football jocks.  Given what he had done the night before, he’d be lucky to
get out alive and not drowned in the river.  Or he might just spend the entire
evening freezing while standing by the side of the road.

The ride seemed to
take forever.  Every time a car went by, Jimmy became convinced that it was
filled with the football jocks.  He moved over into the woods each time and
tried to hide among the shadows.  Above him, the sky turned from blue into a
kind of light gray, and then the edges of the horizon began to glow and turn
pink and orange.  He hoped that if Sapphire were the real deal, someone who
really loved him, she would still be there when he arrived.

The journey felt
like an eternity as he rode up and down the hills and around the twisting turns
of the road that led to the bridge.  What took minutes in George’s car—and with
George’s lead foot—took half an hour on the bike.  When he rounded the bend and
saw the bridge ahead, his heart leaped into his throat.  He found new reserves
of strength, pedaling faster, his eyes straining against the dying light,
trying to find her standing at the side of the road.  He saw nothing.

He reached the
bridge, out of breath, and feeling like he was going to pass out and sweating. 
He figured he probably didn’t exactly look like the most attractive man on the
planet right now.  He parked his bicycle off to the side of the bridge and then
stood near the opposite end.  He looked up and down the road and heard crickets
in the trees and could hear cars whooshing by on the highway about three miles
distant, and somewhere, high overhead, he could hear the roar of an airplane’s
engine.  What he did not see, nor hear, was Sapphire.

“Please,” he
whispered under his breath to no one in particular, “Please don’t let me be an
idiot for waiting here.”

He paced back and
forth on the shoulder.  The sky above him grew darker and darker.  It seemed as
though the shadows of the forest that lined the road drew closer and closer to
him, the branches of the trees seemed to reach out toward him.  He shivered and
tried to pull his jacket more tightly around him.  He heard a noise from the other
side of the road and froze.  Were those footsteps?

“H-hello?” he
said, and when his voice cracked he cursed under his breath.  He was losing his
cool.  “Sapphire?”

There was a pause
that seemed to stretch on forever.  He heard nothing.  The footsteps had
stopped, as had the sounds of the brush rustling.

“Jimmy?” said a
voice that reminded Jimmy of wind chimes. 

“Sapphire?” Jimmy
called again.  He felt relief, but he was now just as nervous as when he’d
arrived.  He had been so sure it was all going to end up being a grand joke on
him that he wasn’t sure what to do now that Sapphire was really here.

She came into the
dimming light across the street from where Jimmy was.  She was still wearing
the dress she had been wearing the night before.  She still had Jimmy’s jacket
slung across her shoulders.

“You forgot your
jacket,” she said with a smile.

“You’re wearing
the same dress,” Jimmy replied, realizing how stupid that sounded.

She smiled and
shrugged.  “I thought you liked it.”

Jimmy held up his
hands in a gesture of supplication.  “I do like it.  I just didn’t expect you
to be wearing it again.”

Sapphire shrugged
again and stepped forward, grabbing Jimmy’s hand.  Her fingers were cold, and
he nearly pulled his hand back instinctively.  When he wrapped his fingers
around her hand, he felt the same strange sensation he’d felt the night before,
as if his warmth was transferring to her.  In seconds her hand was as warm as
his, and her smile widened.  Jimmy leaned in, and she mirrored him.  Her lips
were warm and soft against his, and he closed his eyes, hearing only the soft
rustling of tree branches over their heads.

“I missed you,”
Jimmy said the moment his lips left hers.  “I spent all day thinking about
you.”

“I missed you,
too,” she replied.

“George isn’t happy
with me,” Jimmy said.  He hadn’t intended to bring up George, but it was like
he was unable to keep his mouth shut around her.  “My mom isn’t too happy about
things, either.”

A frown crossed
Sapphire’s face.  “Why?”
Jimmy sighed.  He should have kept his mouth shut.  Why did she have this
effect on

him?

“I shouldn’t have
said anything,” he said quietly.

She shook her
head.  “No, we should be honest.  I want you to tell me everything.”

Jimmy looked at
her in surprise.  “Really?  I kind of got the feeling that there were things
about you that you didn’t want to talk to me about.  That’s the reason both
George and my mother think this is crazy.  They had never heard of you before,
you came out of nowhere, and then you seemed to vanish into nowhere.  No one lives
down by the river, and both George and my mother feel that there’s nothing
about you that’s even remotely honest or true.”

Sapphire dropped
her hand and stepped away from Jimmy.  A frown crossed her face again, but she
seemed to regain her composure.  Then the mask cracked, and a look of pain
crossed her visage. 

“I didn’t mean to
hurt you,” Jimmy said quickly, expecting her to suddenly bolt into the darkness
and vanish from his life forever.

“They’re right,”
she said.  “There are things that don’t make any sense about me.  Everything
they said is one hundred percent correct.  I don’t even fully understand what
happened last night, how I ended up here, how I ended up dancing with you, or
how we are even here again tonight.”

She looked up and
stared Jimmy straight in the eyes.  In that moment, he was lost in the darkness
of her eyes.  He could feel her stare piercing his skull, focusing on some spot
in the back of his head that even he didn’t know was there.  It was as if she
could see him as he truly was, without any of the false machismo that he
attempted to put on from time to time.