The Mirrors of Fate (2 page)

(Because that was how she was.)

“
Calm your thoughts down, sweetie.”

I take a moment, then breathe, and try to speak again softly. But the words won’t come. Why did someone so young have to go through such a terrible ordeal? And then slowly, very slowly, my own near-death experience starts to scratch at the surface of my mind, reminding me that I know her pain. But I barely remember that incident, and the memory can only fade away into nothingness. Unlike her, I was fortunate enough to have my accident happen now as a teen. Only seven and she is so brave, so different from anyone at school I called “friend” now. Her spirit in a way...completes what’s missing from my own.

Inevitably, her tears pour over her eyelids, and I quickly embrace her, allowing her face to nuzzle in my chest and her tears to soak my long curly hair already frizzing at that first sign of moisture.

“
I'm sorry. I shouldn’t have made you talk about it.”

“
No, you’re my friend so I should share it. I just get sad sometimes.”

But it isn’t sadness that starts to suddenly morph the little girl’s expression now. Her pupils narrow as if she’s just glimpsed the face of evil, and even when I smile and ask her what’s wrong, her strange expression goes unchanging.

“
Maria...I don’t want what got Mommy and Daddy to get me too.”

“
Sweeting, nothing’s going to get you. Why do you even think such a thing?”

“
Because someone hated us.”

My heart stops in my chest. What in the world had she gotten into her head? That they might have had enemies? Been...intentionally murdered somehow? No. No. This is only a child’s ways of making up stories.

I don’t want to hear any more.

“
But I have a secret plan,” she mentions now with eyes decisively serious. “Whatever got them won’t trouble me. I
know
if I stay happy, nothing will get me—and I’m happy with you Maria. Please don’t ever leave me. Can we pinkie swear? Do you want to pinkie swear so we can be sure?”

But I just give her a smile that does not reach my eyes and simply embrace the girl again. Why am
I
the one trembling?

(Because those words were so—)

“
I know my brother will take care of me too. Wherever he is.”

Brother? She failed to mention a living brother. Her nurses said she had no more immediate family. They all died late last year November, including her only brother. But ah, I realize such wishing is simply from a child’s mind. If she wanted him or all of her family to be alive, I wouldn’t have minded. Hell, she and I were in this place, weren’t we? Just by thinking, I could bring her family into the secret garden, so long as she told me what they looked like. But I wouldn’t dare. That would be interfering too much in the mental state of this precious girl, if this place doesn’t already do that.

“
That big man saved him, you know?” she goes on, picking at a newly formed scab with the apparent intent to see the wound bleed. Her voice trails off, “Saved my brother...”

“
A big man?”

“
Mm-hmm. Big.”

“
Well, sweeting, I think you—”

“
No one believes me, but I saw him. But he wouldn’t help me. He wouldn’t save
me.
” Her eyes redden when the scab comes off in her fingers with blood. “He never helped me at all even though I was crying! He took him into his arms and he looked right past me as if I was invisible! He told me I had no chance! Why didn’t he help me too?! I am important just like he is!”

I can say nothing despite how my chills remind me that talking about the dead in present tense is dangerous in any culture I’ve read about. And things only worsen when I see her reach into her pocket and pull out a folded up photo. It is old and tattered, evidence she has handled the picture a great deal.

“
I don’t have any more pictures of Mommy and Daddy, but I have one of him,” she says.

I hesitate to take hold of it, afraid to be overwhelmed with sadness, but when I finally do I realize the person is—
was
indeed her brother in the photo. The family resemblance is apparent straight away. But instead of giving it back quickly, as I expect to feel the urge to do, I hold the photo firmly between my fingers, compelled to stare into the young man’s face.

A high school graduation picture. He looked older and more mature than most. He was probably around nineteen when the photo was taken. Through black hair and handsome dark brown eyes, I see their relation and where beauty translates as handsomeness in her family. His secretive, small, Asian eyes tell of what particular charm he must have had. Maybe, just maybe, his friendly countenance meant he was sweet and considerate toward his little sister. I find myself questioning what he was like when he was alive, and I smile to myself, barely realizing I am doing so.

“
Maria?”

I look up at her anxious face and laugh a little. “Sorry,” I say and hand the picture back to her slowly.

Suddenly a horn blares. Finally time to go. Wonderful news for me.

“
We need to get out of here now, sweeting. My bus has arrived.”

Without argument she obediently agrees. Within seconds we find ourselves back in the white hospital room, as quickly as we had traveled to the beautiful garden of our dreams. All is blurry to me before I can focus on the all-white furniture and walls. I breathe deeply and check to see if she has returned safely as well. Once or twice she had gotten stuck there before.

“
Sweeting?” I check.

She weakly sits up in her hospital bed. “Thank you, Maria. You always make that place so magical and pretty.”

I grin amid listening for someone to call me. Knowing that she enjoys our game of make-believe always does something to me that I can’t explain. I'm the only person in her life who can bring her this level of joy, and my God, who wouldn’t be thankful for that? To pay a visit to such a wonderful girl is a blessing.

But at the end of the day, I’m still a high school student, and I can’t run my life around community service cases even if I wanted to. Her regular tests involve physical therapy; mine involve equations and essays. Her homework is to keep hoping to walk again; mine is to keep hoping I have a reason to hope for. We’re both living our lives....I am not selfish.

(“
I was never selfish to her!”)

A rapping comes at the door and it opens a few seconds later. Nurse Nancy, or Old Nurse Saggings as we sometimes call her, walks in. She is one of the fakes who do not know about imagination.

“
It’s time for you to go home. The rest of your little friends have already gone on the school bus.”

After I gather my things and go the door, sweeting calls to me with a hopeful, “See you next week!”

I hesitate and rightfully so. She doesn’t realize this is temporary charity work, only compulsory for grades six to nine. How can I keep coming and entertaining her with imaginary places? Ninth grade is almost over. I shouldn’t have any commitments like this. I cannot guarantee if I will be back any at all. But I will try.

“
All right, sweetie,” I eventually say with a smile of reassurance. “I’ll see you later. That’s a promise.”

(But she knew her back was turning for good.)

I close the hospital door, watching the corners of her mouth fall.

This is the last time I know I’ll see her.

(And the last time Maria ever wanted to remember her betrayal to Emma.)

* * * * *

CHAPTER ONE

Two years later
...

He was nineteen. His wind-combed, slightly tousled blonde hair sat on his head with uneven bits falling in loose disarray down his face and barely hanging over the sexy, merciless full line of his mouth.

And oh God, what a mouth he had! Rightfully his lips should have been declared a national treasure. Without premeditation, he would shyly lick those gems of his and draw attention to his succulent mouth through the tastiest of invitations.

His smile was utterly captivating. Innocent charmer or deliberate seducer? A flicker of a grin made you blush, but a fully dedicated smile sent white-hot sensations coursing through you.

And his complexion! It should have been praised! Thankfully he wasn’t pale or overcooked like the other sorry excuses for men at the school. Every square centimeter of skin was kissed perfectly by the sun’s golden rays, a miracle considering where he hailed from.

And as for his eyes, those beautiful emeralds were not only attractive, they were downright hypnotizing. If you did not shudder under that kind of penetrating gaze, then there was only one rational explanation: you had no pulse.

Not one senior girl or even guy, for envy rather than admiration, in the entire Halimond Academy wasn’t talking about the new student who had arrived two days ago when school recommenced after the unpredicted long weekend and freak storm. The only person not hyperventilating over him was Maria who had missed the two days of school and the frenzy.

“
Succulent mouth?” Maria grimaced distastefully at her friend’s choice of words. “God, he’s not a stuffed pig with an apple shoved in its mouth.”

“
No, no, no! Yet again you are
underestimating what I’m trying to tell you,” Maria’s overly-excited friend stressed. When Gina’s blood got boiling, one had to watch out. Her shallowness always came packaged with a barrage of nonsensical comments. “This guy is gorgeous! You should’ve been here when he first arrived. He is
foiiiine
. And I don’t mean like a ‘
Hey, that guy is pretty cute over there’
kind of fine,
I’m talking about a ‘
Wow, that guy is sooo hot he makes my teeth sweat’
type of guy.”

Maria tightened her smile to a disinterested, cynical one as she continued filling her bag with books from her locker.

“
I spoke to him a bunch of times,” Gina went on. “He said he’s from...What was it? Iceland? No, hold on, wait. I think it was Finland. Something-Land! I don’t know why he came all the way out here to Kentucky, but thank God he did. Tall, handsome, an accent that could melt butter!” Gina swooned and dropped her pudgy chocolate-skinned body against the lockers with a girlish sigh.

“
An’ don’t fergit he’s a nice person,” Ellie added. Ellie Blake was Gina’s blonde-haired sidekick, the real definition of a Kentuckian. “He seems so down-to-earth an’ intelligent.”

“
Yeah, yeah!” Gina agreed with eyes widening on her round face for emphasis.

Maria should have laughed. Of course they had to conveniently slip in a non-physical analysis, or otherwise face the label of superficial. She let them have their way.

“
I really want to get a chance to talk to him again,” Gina wished. “And you should too, Maria. You always complain no one around here likes your type, but maybe he’ll be the first in the academy to like our little brown, Miss Indian-Caribbean girl with no proper accent from anywhere she’s affiliated with.”

And as if given a stage cue, Gina and her sidekick began singing playfully. “No good
‘Hey ya’ll’
Kentuckian, no good
‘Tank u beri much’
Indian, and no good
‘Irie mon’
Caribbean voice.”

As she was accustomed to doing, Maria smiled away their playful insults.

Gina’s tone became slightly condemning. “But anyway, I seriously hope underneath it all he’s not stuck up and egotistical.”

“
I doubt it,” Ellie said, tucking her hair behind the protruding ears she had once been mocked for when she was a freshman.

Gina’s considerable influence around the school, shaped from a big mouth and an even bigger desire to use it and tell you what she thought of you, made ridicule a thing of the past for her sidekick.

“
I got the feelin’ he’s pretty shy an’ mowdest. But then again, he does look you in the eyes when he speaks to you, so maybe he’s not
that
shy. He kinda looks partially Asian, though. When he smiles he’s got that slit-eye thang. But his eyes’re so green, though.”

Gina grinned, her thick lips exposing all her gum over small white teeth. “I’m just so glad we’ve actually got some good-looking guys here now. I’m tired of the
things
we’ve got walking around here thinking they’re God’s gift to the female species.”

And you both are just so above them all
, Maria thought to herself. Listening to them go back and forth was her usual morning routine. As much as she did not mind gossiping with them every now and then, her friends often took their chatter to an annoying, imbecilic level she preferred not to participate in. This was the last year of high school. She had more things on her mind than “succulent-mouthed” men. She wasn’t even allowed to think of them, to begin with. She wanted the conversation to steer in a different direction.

And unfortunately for Maria, it did.