The Mirrors of Fate (7 page)

He said nothing more about it and positioned the ladder by the wall. He held on to the sides for her and Maria steadily climbed it. She knew he was probably getting a full, unpleasant view of her ass, but that couldn’t be avoided now. He’d just have to suffer through it.

“
So, tell me more about you,” he said.

“
Me? I don’t know.”

“
Come on, come on,” he urged. “There has to be something you can say.”

No there wasn’t, nothing she could tell him about her life, anyway. The last thing she wanted to do was scare him away with details of her strange ways and her adoptive family.

“
I’m not all that interesting, really.” Her confession made her feel incredibly inept. “You’ve made friends with a dull person, Mr. Alan Kristinsson.”

“
I highly doubt you’re dull. I like you already, and I don’t like boring people.”

Liked her? Ha! She caught him. She had only needed real proof he was a ladies’ man and she just got it.

“
You like me so soon? Wow, I’m fortunate.”

“
You don’t believe me?” he seemed to ask with heightened interest.

“
Not particularly, if you want to be honest.” Thankfully the levelheaded, frank girl in her came out. “You’re probably one of those guys who...”
Wait! That’s too bitchy.

“
No please, go on. You can’t offend me. It’s next to impossible.”

Next to impossible, eh? He’d have to prove that. “I was going to say you’re probably one of those guys who use that pretty smile of yours to get what you want. You probably have the King-of-the-World complex.”

“
I’m glad you like my
pretty
smile, Maria.”

She grimaced at the admission she had just allowed to slip out, and at the teasing grin she could only imagine he was giving her now behind her back. But for some reason she dared steal a look at him. She blushed heatedly when she realized he had been green-gazing at her again.

Well, at least he wasn’t annoyed with her. Only giggly schoolgirls swooned and sweated when a cute guy came around, and the thought of him putting her in that category for any reason at all was stomach-turning.

“
Well, whatever, I’m not going to lie,” she said. “You have a
decent
smile. Anyways, I’m sure my judgments aren’t far off. Before you even got on that plane to come here I’m sure you knew all the girls would be stalking you, looking the way you do.”

“
I’m not into that whole stalker, childish bit. I like down-to-earth girls with a little more to them. I don’t need plastic girls who think they’re perfect.”

“
I’m not down to earth. I’ve always been in space.”

A charming laugh left his lips. “On the contrary though, you’re a challenge. Also another thing I like.”

She was incredibly flattered but hid the feeling behind an audible scoff. “You know you probably want a model.” That thought troubled her briefly. If a model was really what he liked, she did not fit the criteria at all.

“
You’re lumping me in a category. What guy wants a fake girl? Besides, a model wants a perfect guy. I’ll admit any day that I am far from perfect.”

That’s debatable
, Maria thought, but his humble comment gave him points.

“
Oh yeah?” she challenged. “What kind of imperfections could you possibly think you have?”

He said with no trouble at all, “I have a bad scar. Certainly no model could have that. I busted up my arm and my back a few years ago.” His tone suddenly became coated with solemnity.

Alarmed, Maria looked down and over her shoulder at him. “Badly? How did that happen?”

“
Doesn’t really matter. Just did.” He let go of the ladder, lifted the sleeve of his shirt and turned.

Maria was shocked to see a large prominent mark that began at the back of his left shoulder blade.

“
It continues all the way down to the middle of my back.” He looked at her now and seemed a little taken aback by the genuine, apologetic look she gave him.

“
I’m sorry. Could you have...died from it?”

He glanced away only for a moment before returning his eyes to her. “Yeah, well...I could have died just from the pain of it.” A muscle tightened in his jaw and a disheartening expression darkened his already tanned face. “I guess shit just happens sometimes.”

Maria became silent and awkwardly continued working. She did not want to stir up any difficult memories in him, and by the look on his face, troubling thoughts had invaded his mind because of her stupid inquiries.

He gripped the ladder again, his eyes focusing in on his hands with pupils blinded by a slowly building fire. “You ever experienced pain, Maria?” His eyes watered slightly.

“
Well, yeah of course, but nothing close to something like that, though.”

He felt his blood stirring. Eager hands tightened around the ladder, his teeth grinding away enamel. “I have a good tolerance for high bouts of pain.”

“
Lucky you. Paper cuts are my limit.” Maria looked at the wall. “That’s the last balloon I’m putting up. Tough luck if Trisha hates it. Yippee for us, we finished! Good job, teammate.”

“
Everyone,” he began, his voice a slow rolling thunder, “should experience something painful just so they know how it feels.”

“
What?” she asked absentmindedly. The idiot was still staring dumbly at the wall. “What did you say?”

“
I’m talking about real pain, Maria,” he muttered under his breath. “Real pain.”

Alan shifted to the right.

A cluster of noises came, a clatter and a loud bang. Eyes went searching and heads went turning. The students had heard but hadn’t seen. A sea of gasps became audible when they saw a ladder on the floor and Maria lying unconscious near it.

Before their confused eyes could try to decipher what happened, he dropped to his knees with masterful urgency and started shaking Maria. So quickly she had been turned into an unresponsive shell beneath him, and strangely, but satisfyingly, it fueled something dark within him.

Trisha was the first to run over, screaming, “God, what happened to her?!”

They encircled Maria’s motionless body and the drops of blood that lay near her. He raised her head in his arms, wiping away the blood from the side of her head.

“
Don’t just watch damn it! Call the nurse!” he shouted.

* * * * *

CHAPTER THREE

Maria
...

Maria
...

Maria, wake up, sweetie
.

Maria’s eyes jerked open.

“
That’s a good girl,” the nurse said softly as she stood over her. She closed the small bottle of smelling salts. “How do you feel, Ms. Jaghai?”

Maria’s eyes slowly shifted from side to side, examining the blurry nurse’s office that was gradually coming into focus. She felt god-awful. Her head was still floating up through a layer of hazy clouds and the entire left side of her body was throbbing.

“
Well, you look to be doing okay,” the wrinkle-faced woman said in assessment. “You better not try to move much.” She went over to a white counter where a Christmas mug of hot chocolate lay. “That was an unfortunate accident you had.”

Accident?
Maria’s hand weakly went to the left side of her head and she winced from a sharp pain.

“
Now, now, don’t touch your head,” the nurse scolded and came back with the hot chocolate in hand. “Can you sit up?”

With the nurse’s hand flatly placed on Maria’s back, she was able to sit up, but not without a dizzy, disorienting feeling sweeping over her. Carefully swinging her feet around, she placed her bare soles lightly on the cold tiles.

“
You fell pretty badly, but luckily it wasn’t too serious. You’ll have to leave the bandage on for a little while though, and you’ll probably miss a few days of school. Do you feel any nausea?”

She fell? She could barely recollect that happening.

“
Here. Drink the chocolate,” she said with a smile that suggested the sugary goodness would cure every ache and pain, nausea included.

Maria simply accepted the offered drink and sipped it cautiously. The school nurse continued to speak to her slowly and gently.

“
We were going to call the hospital, but it turns out we didn’t need to. All you did was bleed a little.”

Maria stared at the lady.
Save face, why don’t you. Stupid woman.
If the faculty could avoid having to tell her father about her accident for now, then they certainly would, even with how illogical and unwise delaying the inevitable really was.

“
You hurt your left side pretty badly, and your head of course, but the rest of you is clean as a whistle. Do you remember what happened, any at all?”

Maria did in fact start to remember something as the nurse kept speaking. Or at least a blurred version. She remembered the fall happening so fast she couldn’t do anything to stop it. Her only visual was a spin of the room and then blam! That was all.

“
I can give you some painkillers since you’re not feeling nauseous. I don’t think it’s vital we call your parents now, do you? No, no, let’s not. You have a car, am I correct? I think we can let you off early. Let’s not worry your father while he’s hard at work. In fact, it wouldn’t do any harm to tell him you merely tripped or something and that the nurse said you can stay home for a day or two.” The woman let out a nervous chuckle. “This wasn’t really a concussion-concussion.”

For a long time, all Maria could do was stare incredulously at the woman, trying to imagine what the nurse would sound like if she were a trained doctor; maybe something along the lines of, “Well, you don’t really have cancer-cancer.” But more disturbing than the prospect of that imbecilic, irresponsible woman one day having the title of MD was the fact that the stout, graying nurse wanted her to downplay her accident to her parents.

“
I don’t know if I can drive,” Maria informed her. “Maybe we should call my mom and have her come. Of course she’ll tell my father
right away
, but I guess that can’t be avoided.”

The nurse looked at her indecisively and hesitated, as any other member in the faculty would have behaved at the mention of her father. He was such a social presence in White Crest City and so much of an intimidating man that even if Maria had been hit by a speeding car, the faculty still would not have wanted to face him and his infamous black cellular phone he used on many occasions to start law suits. He could teach others about the lethality of the cellular phone over the pistol. For now, the nurse felt comfortable with procrastination, ignorantly forgetting that such hesitation was a lawsuit waiting to happen. Maria didn’t know whether to laugh or feel sorry for their predicament.

“
Well...I guess I can inform them now if you want, or I can just get a teacher to drive you. Wouldn’t that be more convenient?”

To end the woman’s torture and her own, Maria merely nodded. “That’ll be fine, Nurse Dempsey.”

And so, the school nurse did her job of summoning a teacher, and by ten thirty that morning Maria found herself at home in her bed instead of comatose in the nurse’s bland quarters.

With effort, she was able to get sleep for the first hour, but after that she kept waking up. Something was troubling her, and that something would not let her rest.

She needed to find out how she fell, how it all happened. Something was not making sense. As she lay there underneath her covers and staring at the ceiling, she waited and waited until her mind slowly began to recall miniscule bits of the incident. She remembered talking to Alan. Her shoes were firmly planted on the metal rungs and he was holding the entire thing to keep her steady. Maybe he had let go at some point and by her own recklessness she had managed to fall off. Maybe a rung had been loose and no one knew. The tall ladder was, after all, hidden away behind the bleachers. Someone had to have put it there with the hope no one would use it.

But she didn’t remember anything breaking away underneath her feet. Had Alan accidentally caused the ladder to topple over? That she wouldn’t fall backward on top of him or flat on her back instead of on her left side seemed strange. That would have seemed more plausible. Did some movement of his cause her to teeter to the side?

Did a shake or his hands accidentally—

A paralyzing memory struck her. She froze in her bed. Her hand, the only thing moving, slowly traveled to her right side as if guided by an unseen force. She hissed between her teeth in pain. The spot hurt, but not like everywhere else on the left side of her body affected by the fall. Most of her left side was sore and tender. There, on the right side by her ribs, was somehow a sharp pain in one particular spot.

She tried to think. If she didn’t fall on her right side, then...had something hit her on it?

Yes. Something not like a brush but more...more forceful. What had touched her? Maybe...thumped her? Could it have been...hands? Hands she remembered pushing her in her side?

Think back, Maria. Try and think.