Sunshine (13 page)

Chapter 13
Things Reveal Themselves
“I caught a demon in a mousetrap, one day behind the house.”-Anthony Green

The only reason I
know
I fell asleep at all is because I’m woken up by the unmistakable feeling that someone is sitting at the end of my bed.
I freeze.
My eyes open and sure enough, I can see a dark shape sitting there. I can hear my heart beating in my head, and I’m starting to get really freaked out. I force myself to speak. “Who is it?”
“I shouldn’t be here,” I can’t believe whose voice answers.
I suddenly find myself completely pissed off but not able to move at all. “Uh, yeah. You just can’t come in here whenever the fuck you want,” I try not to yell.
“That’s not what I mean,” Myles says. His voice is sharp and cold. I try not to think about the doorknob, but that doesn't really happen. I keep seeing the crumpled up metal, imagining some part of my body in its place.
I don’t know what he’s trying to tell me, I still can’t see him in the dark of my room, and I’m terrified. Maybe if I try to talk calmly with him, nothing bad will happen to me. “What do you mean, Myles? Are you okay?” I try to keep my voice even.
He moves a little closer, but not enough so that I can see him. “I’m nothing like you.” It’s almost too quiet to hear.
Okay, so maybe he’s feeling a little upset about being able to do all of these abnormal things. Maybe he’s had a mini-snap or something.
“Myles, there’s nothing wrong with you, I already told you I’m not going to tell anyone,” I say even more calmly, knowing what the problem is.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Sophie,” he says in the same, cold tone. I gulp. “You know there’s something not right with me. I can feel that much coming off of you, even if you can’t admit it to yourself.”
Before I have a chance to even think about responding, he’s a few inches from my face. I gasp without wanting to. How did he do that?
I close my eyes and try to breathe. I wait for what’s next.
He lightly touches my cheek with his hand. “Myles, what are you trying to tell me?” I manage to ask.
“I should have never came here.” I feel his hand leave my face.
Stevie is shaking me and I’m practically blinded by the light overhead that someone has turned on. “Sophie, you okay?”
I shake my head like I’m trying to shake something off of me. “I was sleeping?”
“More like having a nightmare. You were screaming.” His wavy hair is frizzed to one side of his head. I’m on the floor of my bedroom with my blankets curled up all around me so I can’t move. Stevie helps me squeeze out of them. I get up and immediately throw my hair in a high pony tail to get it off of my neck. I’m sweating like crazy.
“I’m sorry, Stevie. I didn’t even know I was sleeping.”
He rubs his eye with the palm of his hand. “You’re okay, though?”
“I’m just a little freaked out. I don’t think I’ll go back to bed yet,” I say. “I might go to Wawa for some food and then go back to bed.”
“You sure?” Stevie asks. “It’s like, one am.”
I shrug. “Yeah.”
“Okay, I’ll see you in the morning then.”
I wait until he’s gone before I leave.
God, that dream was messed up. I’ve never had a dream about something that hasn’t happened to me personally, and I’ve most certainly never had one where I didn’t know I was even dreaming. I get my huge sour apple slushee and drink the atomic freezing liquid slowly, trying to convince myself that it was just a dream, that I’m being stupid. But I can’t help thinking that Myles had something to do with it. It was too real. Like he was in my head or something.
Could he do that?
It’s not much of a stretch from being able to see things that people are thinking and feeling to being in peoples’ dreams.
Maybe I’m being irrational because I now have brain freeze from chugging a slushee at one o’clock in the morning, maybe it’s because I think he
can
do it, but I find myself driving to Myles’ house. Before I can think or try to stop myself, I’m on his porch, pounding on the door.
It’s only after I am well into slamming my fist against the wood that I think only a clinically insane person would go to someone’s house in the early morning because of a freaking dream she had. Just as I’m thinking that I’ll stop, turn around and go home, I hear a dog barking from inside.
A few seconds later, his porch light flicks on and the doorknob is being turned. Myles emerges in a white t-shirt and blue pajama pants. His hair is messed up like he was sleeping. God, I’m such an idiot.
“Sophie?” His eyes seem less sleepy when he takes in who is on his front steps. “What are you doing?”
“Uh…” I really didn’t think this one through.
“And why is your tongue all green?”
Wow. I can just imagine what I must look like to him. “Yeah, I’m going to go.” Just as I’m about to leave Myles there wondering, I see a large fuzzy head poke around his leg.
And I think I’m dreaming all over again.
It’s the white dog I saw at my house a few weeks ago. Sure, there are tons of white dogs in this world and everything, but for some reason I can’t shake it off that this is the same one.
“This is your dog?” I ask.
Myles shrugs. “Yeah.”
“Well while you were gone he was at my house. I mean, I saw him.”
“Sophie, are you okay? You want to come in? Why are you in your pajamas?” I think it’s probably because I just want him to be guilty in this, but he sounds like he’s hiding something.
Before I answer any of his questions, I push past him and the dog and go inside. “Where’s your mom?” I ask as I sit down on his brown sofa. Myles sits in the arm chair across from me with his dog at his side.
“She’s working the late shift,” he says.
I can’t help staring at his pet. It has one blue eye and one brown, that’s not the way his eyes looked when I saw him last. Now I feel like even more of an idiot. This is obviously not the same dog.
“So what’s wrong? You seem…anxious.”
“Yeah,” I sigh. I already came this far, there’s no point in just leaving now. “Okay, don’t get offended or anything. Just remember I don’t know much about your, uhm…abilities.”
“I was in your dream,” he cuts me off.
I can literally feel my eyes bulge in anger. “Okay, that’s not cool.”
He smiles but it’s not happy. “I knew you wouldn’t like that.”
“So, why did you do it?” I ask. “Were you trying to freak me out, or piss me off, or what?”
“I wanted to see if it would be easier to explain things to you that way. Not face to face, really. But I don’t think telling you anything in any way is going to be easy for me.” He pets his dog. He sighs. “I’m tired of trying to keep half of my life secret from my friends.” He glances at me for a second before returning his attention back to the white fur. “From you.”
I slide off my boots and sit Indian style on the couch. “So tell me.”
He stands up. “Are you sure you really want to know what I’ve been hiding?”
“Yeah, if you really want to tell me.”
He sighs like he doesn’t know where to start. The dog gets up and sits in the chair that Myles just got out of and curls up like a cat. “Well, I kind of already did. In your dream, I said that I’m nothing like you.”
“Well,
no one
is like me.” I try to lighten the mood.
He doesn’t seem to be amused at my attempt. “No. I mean I’m not like
anyone.
”
“Okay. What do you mean?”
Myles looks like he’s struggling. He paces slowly back and forth in front of me. “You won’t believe me.”
“Myles, look, I’m believing the fact that you were in my dream a few hours ago on top of everything else. Why would you think that?”
He shrugs. “You’ll be scared.”
I don’t want him to think I’m someone that would easily get freaked by the fact that their friend decided to confide something in them. “Myles, I don’t really scare easily.”
“That’s true, I guess,” he seems to realize. “The only time I really sense that you’re afraid is when someone is invading your personal space.” As if he’s just thought of something he says, “I’m really sorry I invaded your dreams like that.”
I’m happy he apologized, but I want to know what all this weirdness is for so badly that I almost don’t even care that he did it. “It’s okay. Just tell me what you have to tell me.”
He resumes pacing back and forth and really, the suspense at this point is killing me. “Myles, just spit it out.”
He stops moving for a second and looks at me like it’s a good idea. He takes a deep breath and sighs it out. As he’s doing this, he says it:
“I’m dead.”
Oh no, maybe his mom is mad at him for disappearing, or he’s done something and now he’s in trouble. “Did something bad happen?” I ask.
He looks at me like I’m speaking Japanese. “No. You don’t understand.”
“C’mon, it can’t be that bad. What did you do?”
“Sophie.” He sits down next to me and doesn’t take his eyes away. “I mean I’m not alive.”
“What?” is all I can manage. “What do you mean, like…” I trail off. I’m trying to figure out if he’s attempting to make some sort of elaborate metaphor or if he literally means he’s dead. Which is insane.
Myles stands and resumes with the pacing. He rubs the back of his neck with his hand. “A while ago,” he starts. “Something happened to me. Someone killed me.”
All I can give him is a blank, dumb stare back. Of course he can’t be serious. I mean, he can’t be dead obviously, he’s standing right in front of me.
“What are you talking about?” I’m completely serious.
Myles looks around him like the answer to my question is written somewhere on a cue card in his living room. “Okay,” he says, suddenly getting an idea. “Give me your hand.”
My immediate reaction is retracting my hand and grasping it with the other protectively. “Why?”
“I’ll prove it to you.”
Prove that he’s dead. That someone killed him and he’s dead. Yeah. Okay.
I’m about to protest. Tell him to stop acting crazy and to just tell me the truth. Because honestly, how could the truth be any worse that what he’s making up?
Myles kneels down so that he’s looking me right in the eye. “Please?” Those lighter-than-the-sky-blue-eyes stare back from his skull. “This is something I have to do.”
Slowly, I reach my right hand out. He looks at nothing but his hand grasping mine. Then he places it over his t-shirt, on the left side of his chest.
Oh, c’mon. He wants me to feel for a heart beat? Is he nuts?
“Can you feel anything?” he asks.
I let out a snort without wanting to. “Myles could you just tell me what the
real
problem is?”
“Shhh.” He grasps my hand tighter under his. “Do you feel it or not?”
I actually concentrate on trying to feel something there, but it’s like I’m touching a wall. I pull my hand back. “How do you do that?” I ask.
Myles grasps his hand to his chest like I hurt him.. “It’s not something I
do
, Sophie. It’s something that was done to
me
.”
I cross my arms over my chest uncomfortably. “You can’t expect me to believe any of this.”
His eyes are on mine again. “You can listen to it if you want,” he says. “There’s nothing there.”
As if to prove that he means it, he stands up and out stretches his arms like he’s an exhibit in a museum I’m supposed to deem authentic or reproduction.
“Oh, what the hell.” I get up and cautiously place my ear against his chest. I can feel my own pulse beating erratically from being so close to him, but all it takes to calm that down is telling myself that I’m doing this to prove Myles wrong.
Minutes pass by without so much as a creak from within his chest.
Myles stays completely still. He doesn’t say anything, waiting for me to make my next move. I place two fingers on his neck to find a pulse. There’s nothing there either.
Now I’m freaked out.
I pull away and stare at him. “Okay,” I say, trying to remain calm. “Tell me what’s going on right now.”
Myles relaxes his body little by little. I sit back down because I suddenly feel dizzy and I don’t know why.
“I told you,” he says softly. “I’m nothing like you. I’m not normal.” He sits down next to me, but not too close. He won’t look at me. “I’m not even human.”
I stare at him, trying to focus my eyesight which has gone a little fuzzy for some strange reason.
“So,” I try to think of something, anything that will distract me from the fact that my new friend seems to not have a heartbeat, and therefore, no pulse, and therefore, is dead. “Uhm…” I trail off. “What are you?” I force myself to ask.
Myles clasps his hands together in his lap and stares at them. “Well,” he starts. “That’s up for some debate, but most people would group me into one category.”
“And that is?” I’m vaguely aware that I’m clutching both of my knees with my hands to keep myself from shaking.
“Most people, if I were to tell them everything, would say I’m…” he trails off.
I can’t take it. “Spit it out!” I practically scream.
“A vampire.” He sounds almost embarrassed when he says it.
“What? What do you mean? You’re like, one of those people who dresses up in black and goes to clubs and drinks blood, or one of those people who gets caught up in vampire novels and buys themselves some fangs?” I’m on the verge of hysteria here.
Myles looks at me like a fly just flew out of my mouth. “No,” he says. “People like that aren’t really like us. They’re just like you, human.”
“And you’re not.”
“No,” he kind of laughs out. “I drink blood,” he blurts out.
I struggle to ask my next question. I mean, I’m here in this crazy situation. I might as well ask everything before I decide to just run screaming from his house. “Blood from where?”
He raises his eyebrows for a second like he wasn't expecting me to say that. “Everyone’s different,” he says. “Some have donors. People who are willing to give them blood. Some have other sources.”
“Other sources,” I say, wondering if he really believes this whole thing, and whether I should just leave now.
“Some have not evolved.” He shrugs.
“Evolved? Like a Pokémon?” I have no idea why I say this. I think I'm kind of going into shock, and the first thing that pops into my head when he says evolve is Charmander evolving into a Charizard.
He gives me the reaction I was expecting. Confused. “What?” He shakes his head. “No,” he says it gently. “Some still live the way you may be familiar with from movies. In coffins, stalking people. Some…grow.”
I gulp, but I have no response.
“You’re freaked out,” he says.
I laugh a little out of nerves. “Yes. Totally. I just want to know everything before I can think this through.”
He nods. “You can ask me anything. I’m tired of hiding.”
“Are you even supposed to be telling me this?” I ask.
His mouth twitches a little. “Adrienne wasn’t too happy about it,” he says. “But I explained that I trust you, and I think he’s okay with it now.”
“Woah. He knows?”
Myles pauses. “Him and Alex are like me too.”
I take in these last few seconds of conversation. If I try to soak up all of it, I think I might get a nose bleed.
“Do you want some tea?” Myles asks me out of nowhere.
Yeah. Because right now, all I can think about is some Earl Grey.
But I nod anyway and follow him the short walk around the back of the couch to the small kitchen. He pulls out a chair for me and I sit down as he turns on the stove. He sits down across from me.
“I have a donor through the hospital,” he says. “They donate their blood, and I pick it up once or twice a month. I don’t hurt people. I won’t hurt you.”
“And you uh, drink it?” My brain seems to be cutting in and out, making it hard for me to form complete sentences.
He nods, but he doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t like talking about this subject, which is fine with me.
I jump when the tea kettle starts whistling. Myles smiles almost apologetically at me as he stands to pour our tea. I wait patiently, trying to keep my mind on one thing at a time.
He sets a blue mug down in front of me before sitting down with his own. I wrap my hands around my blue mug. “Is your mom like you too?” I choke out.
Myles takes a sip of his tea. “There are certain places that are set up to help people like me blend in,” he says. “I wanted to try and live out my teenage life the way I never had. I wanted a mother, and to go to school and make friends.”
I nod so he’ll continue.
“They set me up with Phyllis.” He smiles slightly. “She feels bad for me. This is something that happened to me that I can’t control. Most of us want normal lives, but we can’t have them without help.”
“So your real mother? She’s uhm…”
“She died a long time ago. She only knew that one night I went missing and never returned.”
“And that night was…when you were…”
“Turned?” He glances up at me.
I gulp. “Yeah. I guess.”
He stares at his mug on the table, the steam rising from it. “I was reborn in 1609. There isn’t much to tell.”
“You can tell me if you want.” I have to force myself to say it.
He nods. “Every now and then I remember things from my human life. My three sisters, my mother and father. But other than that…” He seems to be staring off into space. “It’s like I blacked out for all of that time.”
I know what that feels like. I can barely remember things from my childhood. Anything I know from those days has been told to me. It’s not nearly the same thing, but it’s kind of similar. And I need to grasp at something.
“Anyway, It was more or less random,” he continues. “There was a storm one night, and there were two horses that got out. One of my sisters was crying for me to go find them, so when it seemed to die down, I went to look.” Myles adjusts himself uncomfortably in his chair, like talking about this hurts him in some way. I feel bad about that, but I have to know. “It was a woman. It was fast. I couldn’t stop her.”
He looks at me to gauge my reaction, I’m guessing. I’m trying to concentrate on anything but the fact that Myles is over 400 years old.
I think this might be the thought that breaks me.
It’s my turn to stand up and pace back and forth now. It’s like there’s a short in one of my wires or something. I head toward the door and make it halfway down the driveway in just my socks.
Myles is now standing in front of me, when I know there is no possible way he could have ran that fast. This makes it worse. “Sophie,” he says softly.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” I almost shout. “This can’t be real. I mean, c’mon!”
Myles keeps his distance, barely looking at me.
I think of all the things I know about vampires from books, TV, and movies, and I try to connect Myles with them. I struggle to find the words at first, but then I can’t seem to stop what spews out of my mouth. “This is
insane
, Myles. You’re not a vampire, you don’t drink blood, and you don’t have fangs or anything. Oh, and you can be out in the daytime? I haven’t seen any coffins lying around lately. And I've never invited you in anywhere and you can come in my house and my apartment, and you eat food, you have a reflection, and you’re so…damn
normal,
” I blurt in as few breaths as humanly possible. “It’s just not true,” I say weakly, blinking a few times as I hold my head with one hand, trying to make everything stop.
Myles reaches out to touch my arm, but lets his hand fall. “Sophie, I know this is hard for you. I know you’re confused and scared. But please, just come back inside and I’ll explain,” his voice sounds strained.
Before I can stop myself, I’m following him back inside. He sits back down at the table, but I’m more comfortable standing. Easier to bolt that way.
We’re silent for a few moments, I’m guessing he’s waiting for my cue.
“I don’t need to know everything right now,” I say quietly. “But I want to know what you can tell me that won’t completely send me over the edge. I don’t want any more surprises.” I breathe in and let it out very slowly.
Myles stands up and comes over to me. He speaks to me very softly, probably afraid he’ll do more damage. “I’ll tell you whatever you want. Just sit down.” Pulling out a chair, I sit automatically. Myles does the same, this time facing me. “Are you okay?” he asks.
I nod, just hoping there’s not anything worse than the fact that he’s 400 something and drinks blood.
“Which question do you want me to answer first?” he asks.
“You pick. I don’t care.”
“I’ll start with the easiest,” he says. “You do have to invite me into certain places,” he begins. “You did the first day we hung out together. You remember?”
I think back to that day. How Myles just stood there. How he only came in
after
I urged him to. And Stevie and Jade invited him into our house, too.
Giving him a slight nod, I wait for him to go on.
“Also, I can eat, and be in the sunlight, and things like that because I have done what some call, evolving,” he explains. “It means over a long period of time, we can sort of train ourselves to become more human. Many of us still sleep during the day. Some still even sleep in coffins.” He shrugs, trying to think of something else to say that won't make me flip. “We can communicate telepathically. Alex, Adrienne, and I.” he says softly.
“Okay.” I don’t venture another question for fear my brain will explode.
“And I do have fangs.” When I glance in his direction all I see is his shiny dark brown hair, he's staring at the floor again. “They just retract.” I almost don't hear that last part.
I gulp. “Kay.”
“As far as other things I can do…” He seems to think for a few minutes. “All of the senses I had when I was human are a lot sharper. I can move very fast. I already showed you the strength I have with your door knob…and I can body travel, which few of us can do.”
“Body travel? What’s that?” I ask.
Myles’ eyes shift back into the living room where his dog is sleeping in the same chair. His white head perks up and he stands, panting over to us. He lays his huge head on my lap.
“I found Malakhi abandoned as a puppy,” he tells me. “We’ve formed a kind of trust. I understand him and he understands me. If I concentrate hard enough, I can sort of, control his mind and body…if he lets me,” he says.
“I don’t get it.”
“Well, have you ever heard of astral projection?”
I’ve seen a few books on that subject in Trei’s room. She has a whole bunch of new agey type books.
“All I know about it is that a person can leave their body and float above it, or go somewhere else, or something. Like when people in car crashes see their bodies below them and stuff like that.”
“Exactly,” he says. “It’s like that. Only instead of going nowhere, I go into Malakhi.”
I kind of get it. Barely.
“So this was the dog I saw when you disappeared.” I'm pretty sure of that.
He nods. “I was…sick,” he says. “I just wanted to see you in some way without scaring you.”
“Why would you scare me?”
“You would have known something was up. Trust me.”
“So you can get sick?” I stare at the steam coming from my untouched tea.
He nods. “I wasn't taking care of myself."
We’re quiet for a while.
“So can all of you hear thoughts and feel what people are feeling?” I break the silence. If there’s too much silence, I think too much and that’s something I don’t want to do right now.
“A lot of things come naturally. The enhanced senses, the telepathy. But other than that, we either learn on our own, or we’re taught by someone else. The older we are, the more advanced we become. Most of us can hear and see human thoughts and memories, but I think that comes from the heightened senses.”
All the things I thought I knew about Myles and all the things he told me as a human. Now I have to rethink what was true and what was a cover up. We don’t have the allergic to the sun thing in common anymore. I should have known that was too good to be true. And thinking about that brings me back to that day in the park when he showed me his torn up arms. Call me crazy, but I think being a supernatural being more or less makes it so only another supernatural being can hurt you. And though I want to know, I don’t really want to know right now. I think I’ve had enough for one night.
“So is there anything else you would like to know?” he asks.
There’s only one thing I can think of right now. “Am I the only one you told?”
“You mean of our friends? Yes.”
“Why?”
“I had a feeling you were a person I could tell when I first met you. That's one of the reasons why I was so persistent in being friends with you. You won’t tell anyone, and there just might be a chance that you’ll still want to talk to me after tonight.”
I guess he’s right about some of that at least. I won’t tell anyone, the main reason being they wouldn’t believe me.
“Would you like me to take you home?” He picks up on my exhaustion.
“I drove here.”
“I could drive you home with your car. Then I can just walk home,” he explains.
Right. I guess he just
could
do that couldn’t he? Being a vampire and all.
“Uh. Okay.” I get up, feeling dizzy again. Can’t imagine why that would be.
“So are you thinking about not talking to me again?” Myles asks me on the ride home.
“Honestly, I haven’t even thought about that yet.”
We’re quiet until we’re in my driveway. I think of songs I want to download onto my computer, homework I have to get done, anything else.
“Are you afraid of me now that you know?” Myles finally asks as he turns off my car and hands me the keys.
I think about it. “Would you hurt me, or…bite me…or something?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Of course not.”
“Then no. I think I’m afraid because I didn’t know this huge scary thing about you all this time, and now I do.”
More like he just proved to me yet again that people are unreliable in a ton of ways. You could think someone’s ignoring you, but they end up raping you. You could think someone’s completely normal, but then they tell you they’re a creature of the night.
“I promise. There’s nothing I want to hide. If you want to know, you can ask me,” he says.
I nod.
“You need some time,” Myles says after a few minutes. “I know you do.”
I nod again as I get out of the car and start walking toward my house. I don’t look anywhere but the ground until I’m back in my bedroom, where I toss and turn until I give up sleeping altogether.