The Hybrid (23 page)

“Innocent looking people can’t have boyfriends?” Tru
asked, looking up at her.
“Wait a second. I think you misunderstood me.” Bethany scanned the street around them as she whispered, “I
meant, have you ever been with a guy⎯
sexually
?”
The minute the word came out of Bethany’s mouth,
Tru stopped, yet again. Her eyes grew wide, and her face
turned bright red. No matter how much she tried to hide
it, she wasn’t going to be able to lie her way out of this
question. Her face said it all.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Bethany replied. She began to
laugh hysterically. For a moment, Tru looked at her, feeling incredibly embarrassed. Bethany then casually placed
a hand
on
Tru’s
shoulder,
and
continued,
“It’s
okay.
There’s nothing wrong with being a virgin. I am too, but
not because I’ve never had a boyfriend, ‘cause I’ve had a
few. I just want to wait until I find the right guy.” She
smiled when she finished, with her nose in the air, as if
she were posing for a picture for the front page of the
newspaper.
Tru began walking down the street again, her eyes still
intently fixated on the ground. She couldn’t believe they
were really talking about such a subject. She could feel
the warmth of blood that was still filling in her cheeks. If
Bethany had turned around to look at her, she would see
that her face was as red as a rose. So, Tru continued looking at the pavement, counting the cracks as she crossed
over them.
After about twenty cracks, Tru decided to concentrate
on the crunching and squishing sounds of leaves beneath
her feet as the two sauntered further down the sidewalk.
Bethany’s footsteps were just like her personality: light
and enthusiastic.
Tru listened to the occasional clicking of heels a while
longer, before returning to her own again for comparison.
When she could finally hear them again, she noticed that
the
sounds
her
shoes
made
against the
wet cement,
sounded more like bricks being dragged across a chalkboard. And when she could no longer hear Bethany’s
footsteps moving with hers, she looked up.
Bethany was standing just a few short feet away, staring off into the distance. Tru turned to follow her gaze,
noticing the house⎯ in desperate need of a mowed lawn
⎯ in front of them.
Home
, Tru thought.
The house was older, probably built sometime in the
eighties, and had a certain charm to it. The front of the
house was painted in a bright creamy yellow color that
was slightly dingy around the corners. The trim and gutters were solid white, and showed obvious signs of heavy
rainy seasons. The flowerbeds in front of the porch and
along the edge of the yard were well tended and groomed,
but lacked any color from flowers that wouldn’t bloom
until spring. The pathway to the front door was made of
brick, meeting the completely wooden porch with two
short brick steps that were framed with a small fluffy
shrub on each side. The front door itself was bright white,
with a large frosted diamond-shaped window toward the
top of it.

“Yeah,” Tru casually replied, rubbing her nose with the
back of her hand as she looked at the front window that
lead into the kitchen, trying to see if her grandmother was
spying again. When she didn’t see the woman’s finger
poking through the blinds, she turned to face Bethany,
waved, then turned back around and walked up the pathway to the front door. When she reached the porch, she
pulled the small, brass key out of her pocket and pushed
it into the tiny keyhole in the doorknob.

“I’m home!” she called, as she opened the front door. It
was much warmer inside the house than it was outside, so
Tru quickly shut the door behind herself, removing her
raincoat once she made it further into the family room.

“Good,” Tru replied happily when her grandmother
walked past her to sit down on the old, seventies- looking,
plaid couch in the family room. She then picked up a paperback book from the coffee table, opening it about a
quarter of the way through.

“Good,” Maggie repeated, turning a few more of the
thin pages before she reached her bookmarked page.
“Well,” Tru
paused,
waiting
for
the
woman
to
say
something else. But when she didn’t, Tru continued, “I’ll
be in my room.”
Without looking up from the page she was reading,
Maggie spoke, “okay, dear.”
Tru turned around and slowly meandered down the
hall and to her room. It seemed strange that her grandmother didn’t have more questions to ask. She had always
been so involved, but today, it was like she was an entirely
different person.
When Tru reached her room, she grabbed the book she
had started reading earlier and sat down on the warm
bed, leaning up against the headboard. As she read, she
couldn’t help but think about her conversation that had
proceeded with Bethany.
Have you ever been with a guy sexually?
The words rang through her head over and over until
finally, she slammed the book shut, yelling, “Stop!”
Tru slowly opened the book once again, flipping to her
last spot. This time, as she began reading a sentence, new
thoughts came flooding into her mind.
Am I ready for that emotional stress?
she asked herself.
Am I physically
and
mentally ready to be with
someone that way?
For some reason, she couldn’t really explain, Tru felt
compelled to look up from the page she was reading. And
when she did, her eyes immediately landed on Edyn
standing⎯ like a statue⎯ at the foot of the bed. It was
like he knew exactly what she wanted before
she
even
knew she wanted it.
“How did you⎯” Tru tried to ask how he had gotten
into the room without anyone noticing, but before she
could finish her sentence, Edyn placed a single finger over
his mouth.
“Shh,” he whispered softly.
Edyn advanced across the carpeted room, and around
the bed, closing the distance between he and Gertrude. As
he moved closer, he removed his finger from his mouth,
and held his hand out in the air, the palm facing up. Tru
slowly stood from the bed and moved toward him, reaching for his open hand. The warmth of his skin against
hers tingled through her entire body.
The room was flooded with his piney scent, and for the
first time since his arrival, Tru drew in a deep, long
breath, letting it fill her nose and lungs as she inhaled.
His skin on his palm was soft, not at all callused, as she
would have thought. Tru blinked before looking up at his
bright green eyes, and when she did, she slightly lost her
balance.
With his immense strength, Edyn quickly pulled Tru
into his shirtless chest, stabling her body. He let go of her
hand and wrapped his arm gently around her waist, as his
other hand rested lightly against her cheek. Tru continued to gaze into his glassy leaf-green eyes as he slowly
rubbed his thumb down the side of her cheek, and then
smoothly over her lips. She tried not to make a sound.
Tru carefully placed her hand on Edyn's shoulder, her
palm shaking as she did so. As he traced her lips once
more with the tip of his thumb, she watched her own
hand slide casually up the side of Edyn’s neck, stopping
just at the bottom of his jaw. Tru looked at his half-closed
eyes once more, and suddenly, she could feel his warm
lips pressing against hers. She could taste the sweet forest
air in his breath.
Tru gasped for air as Edyn’s lips made their way along
the edge of her jaw, and then back up again, her fingers
slowly combing through the tousled brown hair above his
neck.
A
moment
later,
and in one
effortlessly
swift
movement, Edyn was cradling Tru in his arms. He set her
down on the bed, watching as she pushed her books to
the floor.
It was easy not trying to fight her feelings for him anymore. Doing what was right had finally taken the back
seat to doing what made her happy. Tru had been doing
the right thing for so long that she had almost forgotten
what doing what she wanted had felt like.
The two continued to kiss for a few minutes longer, but
as Edyn’s warm palm touched the bare skin of Tru’s
stomach under her shirt, her body tensed.
Edyn pulled away momentarily, with a surprised look
on his perfectly chiseled face. “Did I hurt you?” he asked.
Tru’s hands wrapped around the back of Edyn’s neck,
pulling him toward her. Slowly, he climbed on top of the
bed, one leg on each side of her body. Tru moved one of
her hands down his back, softly gliding her fingertips over
every curve of his muscles. Edyn, trembling, carefully
propped himself up with one hand against the bed, while
his other hand cautiously made its way further up Tru’s
stomach, growing closer and closer to the curves of her
chest. Tru playfully grabbed his hand and placed it on her
neck. When his fingers grazed her chin, his mouth pulled
away from hers. He was just inches from her face, staring
directly into her eyes.
“Gertrude,” he whispered. Leaning toward her once
more, he softly kissed her warm forehead. “Gertrude,” he
repeated a little louder.
“Yes?” Tru asked, before closing her eyes to kiss his
neck once more.
“Gertrude,” he said for the third time. But this time it
didn’t sound like his voice. It sounded almost like a woman. Tru instantly opened her eyes and saw her grandmother’s face hovering over her as she stood next to the
bed. Startled, Tru quickly sat up and looked frantically
around the room.
Where did he go?
Tru was still in her bed. Sunlight was pouring into the
room through the opened blinds, flooding it completely
with a yellow-orange glow. She could see tiny dust motes
floating in the air, like specs of glitter. Slowly, she looked
over at the digital clock on her dresser. It was eight-thirty
in the morning.
“Gertrude?” her
grandmother
asked
as she
looked
down at the girl. “Are you alright?”
“For a minute there, I forgot where I was.” Tru closed
her eyes as she fell back against the mattress.
A few seconds later, she propped herself up onto her elbows and
looked around the bright room once more.
It was all a dream,
she thought to herself.
I fell asleep
reading my book.
“Well, I just wanted to tell you that breakfast is ready.
So wake
up and come
into the
kitchen when you’re
ready.” Maggie patted her granddaughter on the head,
and then quickly walked out of the room, closing the door
behind her.
It was only a dream,
Tru repeated to herself.
But, her feelings in the dream were purely nonfiction.
She knew then, more than ever, that she wanted to be
with Edyn. She felt that if she weren’t in his presence, she
would have a panic attack. He was an intellectual creature. He was easy to talk to. He was everything Tru wanted, and even more, he was everything she
required
. He
knew what she felt, what she thought, what she wanted,
and part of her felt as though she knew him the same way,
even if she couldn’t read his mind. It was almost as if she
had met him in another life.
But then what about Declan? He was attractive. From
what Tru could tell, he was smart. He played an instrument. He was exactly like the kind of guys she would have
normally fallen for. But the problem was, she didn’t really
know him. She didn’t know who he really was. She didn’t
know what he wanted out of life. She didn’t know what he
liked to do in his spare time. She didn’t know what type of
funny or annoying quirks he had. She didn’t even know
his middle name. For all she knew, he could have been
the biggest jerk at the school, and everyone was too afraid
of him to say anything about it.
Tru looked the closed bedroom door before falling
back against the bed once more.

Edyn’s hands had been bound with a single piece of
rope around his wrists. After the guards had forcibly
ripped his maroon wings out of his spine ⎯ causing his
back to be completely covered in blood ⎯ they tied a
longer, thicker piece of rope around the first, and dragged
him through the great hall and out onto the balcony, a
trail of smeared crimson liquid trailing behind him.

Carefully, Threl and the other guards lowered his body
over the side of the terrace, gripping the long rope in their
hands as Edyn’s body moved further and further down
the side of the large pine tree. With his arms above him,
causing his fingers and shoulders to tingle from the lack
of blood circulating through them, he hung his head over
his chest, closing his eyes.

Edyn wanted to cry out in pain. Emotional. Physical. It
was all the same kind of pain to him now. But he knew he
had to stay strong. He couldn’t let his brother see how
much pain he was in. He knew he had to stay alive. He
had to live for Gertrude. He had to tell her everything. He
had to tell her what he had found out. He had to tell her
what she was, and what would soon be happening to her.

“Secure the line,” Threl said, about twenty feet above
him. There
was
a
slight tugging
on the
rope
around
Edyn’s hands, causing the tan fibers to cut into his wrists.
He could feel the warm blood dripping down his arms, as
well as his back where his wings once were.

“People of Artensia!” Kayne’s voice echoed through the
trees. “The young man below is a traitor. If any of you so
much as talk to this man, you shall also be deemed a traitor. Therefor, you will face the same fate.” All eyes were
on the King.

But Edyn would never know what was said next. The
darkness closed in around the edges of his eyes, blurring
everything
before
him
into
nothingness.
His
head
slumped
further
into
his chest,
closing
his windpipe
slightly.