Break Away (Away, Book 1) (7 page)

“What?” I said after not getting any sign of
follow-up from her part, my muscles itching to scram.

“Were you
crying
?”

Perfect. Just what I needed. More
humiliation. “Puhlease, that was just yawning. The movie
was…terrible.”

“Okay, I know for a fact that’s a lie,” Ian
suddenly said next to Buffy.

Don’t let the guard down
. “Do you?” I
said, challenging him with my chin high.

He twitched up the corners of his mouth into
a lazy smile, erasing all trace of tenderness from the edges of his
face. He had a full smartass stand now. “The cymbal-clapping monkey
tore you to pieces.”

“Oh, God, now I'm really mad I slept through
the whole movie,” Buffy added with her shoulders down. “It’s my
curse with musicals.”

“It did not,” I told Ian. “You know, I just
remembered that article on schizophrenia I read last week on some
blog. It said artists share several key traits with
schizophrenics—and some other thing I definitely won’t tell,” I
said, widening my eyes at the memory. Ian pulled up his eyebrows.
“Anyway, I thought it was crazy because I’ve never had any kind of
bizarre stuff, like hallucinations or delusions happening to me.” I
inwardly paused at those words. Something bizarre had, indeed,
happened to me, only I couldn’t remember exactly what. “You on the
other hand,” I continued without hesitation, “have turned upside
down my beliefs. You’re clearly having lame visions.”

“You mean…visions of you crying over a
wretched phantom and a clapping monkey?” he said amused.

Had I said something funny? Was my statement
supposed to be funny? Suddenly I wanted to erase that stupid smile
from his lips with my knee up in his manhood. “No doubt you’re on
the edges of sanity,” I said with a scowl that would’ve brought an
entire army to its knees. But Ian’s grin only got wider.
Bastard.

“First of all, I don’t think it’s lame. I
think it’s cute.”

Cute? Ugh, it would’ve been better if he’d
said I was Hitler
,
because
that
word screamed ‘weak’
all over it.

“And sorry to disappoint you, but my mind is
just fine.”

“Which means,” Buffy continued, “that those
weren’t crazy visions. Besides, who do you think I am, Dafne? You
can't fool me. I'm, like, your other half.”

“Oh, I can fool you fine.” I crossed my arms
over my chest. “I’ve done it so many times that it’s
embarrassing.”

“Maybe,” she cocked her head. “But the red
on your eyelids and nose just killed you. And let’s not talk about
how bright the indigo in your eyes is. You cried, admit it.”

“I didn’t! Stop pushing.”

“Don’t her eyes look more surreal, like if
she was wearing colored lenses?” she asked Ian, ignoring me.

He paused for a moment, losing some of the
amusement on his face. “They always do,” he finally said, locking
his eyes with mine.

I didn’t know if I wanted to shoot at him
one of my killer scowls once more or…or something.

“Yeah, but they get even more surreal after
she cries,” Buffy insisted.

I got the point. This wasn’t my win, better
to let it go instead of sinking myself deeper into the humiliation
well more than I’d already had. “This conversation is completely
useless.” I sighed with a shake of my head, unlocking my eyes from
Ian’s. “I’ll leave you two to your love nest. Just keep the R-rated
stuff out of the house if you have some dignity—and in case you
didn’t catch my telepathic message Ian, the ban goes straight to
you. I’m out.” I spun and burst out from the living room before he
would start with the smart-ass comments. One more second there and
a new intense wordplay would’ve exploded.

I crossed the foyer and rushed up the
stairs. Gran’s room was the only one not crowding the upper part of
the Lady. She’d claimed she chose sleeping on its “belly”—meaning
the ground floor—to keep a comfortable temperature in the room,
because heat and humidity was something she simply couldn’t cope
with. It was especially bad during summer when the roof soaked up
the bright sunlight and squeezed it out into the house,
transforming it into our own personal oven. She’d even wanted to
migrate to the Lady’s feet—meaning the basement—and shape it into
her own cool heaven, but the stairs were a pain in the ass and
fixing them meant time and hassle.

She had thick skin, and a cold and fresh
milieu to sleep in was her delight—German genes, I guessed.

I reached the end of the hall, pushed open
the door of my room and stepped inside. Why she couldn’t use air
conditioner to create that cool heaven of hers wherever she wanted,
I didn’t know. A European thing, too, I guessed. I remembered the
time we went to visit Gran’s hometown and decided to take a tour
around Europe. Three of the five countries we’d seen—Spain, France
and Italy—apparently rejected the whole notion of using an air
cooling system while travelling in a car. Having the windows rolled
down with natural air sliding past their faces was the standard
thing to do, even if
natural
meant hot-choking air.

But being as caring as always, Gran had
thought of her granddaughter's survival during hot summer days and
had installed air conditioner units in our rooms. They’d been
really
helpful last summer. But since it was spring, the
weather was still cool enough to avoid them—cooler than normal
actually, but it wasn’t too much of a surprise. The weather here
was bipolar. One day could be hot enough to cook an egg on the
pavement, whereas the next day could be cold enough to lose one’s
hand from frostbite. Lovely, really.

I flipped the light on and closed the door.
The drawer of my dresser—the one I’d painted with multicolored
curlicues, stars and random forms—was half open already. I plucked
out the first flannel pants and Cami my hands found, peeled off my
clothes, and pulled the others on to sleep. It was a blue-and-gray
plaid pant and a white Cami, and I thought it was not too bad of a
combination, until I stopped in front of the standing mirror and
saw my reflection. I tossed the dirty clothes into the yellow
“Toxic Fabric” hamper in the corner and meditated on whether
putting on a bra again, or showing my
two friends
here to
anyone who clasped eyes on me. Because the see-through cami
wouldn’t hide them from the firefighters if the Lady suddenly
decided to get angry and burst into flames, or if a tornado
suddenly decided to show up to say hi and, God help me, leave my
friends exposed to the whole neighborhood. One never knew what
might happen. The world was, indeed, full of crazy
possibilities.

After a moment of deep consideration, I
opted to stay braless because the probabilities of a fire or
tornado were, after all, pretty low. And there was nothing better
than sleeping loose and comfortable.

I turned on the lamp on the nightstand and
flipped the light off, veiling all the mini paintings in the four
walls under a shadowy light. Some people said my room looked like a
giant, four-dimensional doodle, and I just told them it was the
result of lacking canvas. But truth to be told, I loved painting in
walls. There was something
definite
about stamping my soul
into a strong, permanent material, as if that peep of creativity
could never disappear—a mark of one’s passing. The wall could be
repainted over the years, but the painting would always remain
there, hidden under layers and layers of colors. A canvas, however,
was more breakable, weaker. It was a loose ground for the depiction
of one’s mind, while a wall was steadier.

But that didn’t mean I didn’t like using
canvas—or paper. I had several sketchpads piled up in boxes with
drawings dating back even six years. My commitment to art had begun
at an early stage. Times when I was supposed to play with Barbies
and dolls had been spent with color pencils and crayons over loose
pieces of paper. They’d been aimless shapes at first, but they’d
soon transformed into beautiful, well-structured images. And when
Mom had realized this, she’d decided to take it to the next level
and bought me sketchpads. They’d been my diversion since then—and a
source of liberation.

Yes, I
did
have a way to deal with
the heavy oppression of sadness. Buffy had her books, and I had my
sketchpads.

I bent forward and pulled it out from under
the bed. In case someone busted into my room, the sketchpad wasn’t
in plain sight, at least. Some sketches felt intimate in a way.
They were glimpses of my soul, of my true-self (the one hiding
inside those icy walls from the world), and the pencil seemed to be
the gulp of air, the revitalizing blow that my core needed
sometimes. Along with the short escapades, the sketchpad was the
only palpable connection of the real Dafne to this reality. Without
them, she would be lost, buried deep into the tangled blackness of
my insides, with no imminent light to show her the way out, and I
didn’t want that to happen.

One needed to be tough to stomach all the
darkness and sadness and greediness in the world, but not for the
high price of losing oneself. If being down in the dumps for
opening my heart while drawing my thoughts onto paper was the price
I had to pay to not do it, then I would definitely endure it. More
now than ever when my essence seemed to evaporate a bit more each
day.

I eased into bed and settled the sketchpad
on my knees. I pushed out my hand to reach the glass of water on
the middle of the nightstand and grasped…air? I turned to look. The
glass wasn’t there. I sighed.
I forgot to take it.
Then my
eyes narrowed.
Because of stupid, chauvinistic
Ian
.

Usually, I never forgot to pour me down one
for the night. It was almost an automatic thing, an essential, like
brushing my teeth before sliding inside the-glow-in-the-dark
starred comforter. Mom had made it a routine. She used to bring us
up every night a glass of water to our rooms—a Bugs Bunny glass for
me and a Tweety one for Buffy, which she’d decided to ditch after
getting her first bra. I still used mine, though. Midnight water
just didn’t taste the same without that smiley bunny on the other
side of the glass.

With the chipped bowl and all, I guess I had
a thing for tableware.

With Ian, however, the only thing I had was
a colossal desire to punch him in the face, straight into his
perfect nose and intense gem-like eyes—a shade of reddish purple
under them would’ve brought out that maddening emerald. Maybe chop
some of his annoying silky hair with Gran’s garden shears, too. And
try that highly corrosive drain cleaner hidden in the storage room
on his pianist hands to see its full effects would’ve been sweet as
hell.

The guy needed some humbling. He was
infuriating.

With a groan, I got to my feet and tiptoed
down the stairs, careful enough to dodge the floorboards’
complaint. The toes in my naked feet curled up once they touched
the cold foyer, recoiling in disapproval. My arms pebbled with
tight goose bumps. It was freaking Antarctica down here!

I hissed back a breath and threw my hands
over my stiff shoulders. Who’d left the doorway open? I stopped
before the edge of the solid wooden door, not wanting to cross that
stream of polar air slicing through the middle of the foyer, and
leaned over to see if I could spot the villain who’d done this. The
lights in the porch were sleeping, a dark veil wrapping the front
of the Lady. I frowned. I looked back at the far end of the hall.
The lights in the living room were off duty as well. Purposely,
maybe. I could hear Buffy’s dim voice buzzing somewhere. Snuggling
and making out with her
darling
on the couch most
certainly—or rug. It would’ve given them more space to…

The snap of a car door outside ripped my
hot-blooded visions. I jerked back my eyes to the porch and focused
on the tall shape crossing the road, the lights of the fancy Range
Rover blinking behind it in acknowledgment. So I’d been wrong about
the tonsil hockey game on the couch, then. I shouldn’t have been
surprised. Of course the villain was Ian. Who else?

“I should’ve known that uppity car was
yours,” I said when he reached the porch steps, stepping out
straight into the polar stream breaking through the threshold.
There was nothing shaky about my stance, even if I
was
freezing my ovaries by standing in that torturous spot, even if my
toes were purple-colored. But I wasn’t going to give it away.

He stopped on the first step and looked up
at me. The light in the foyer cast shadows over his face,
sharpening his angles and hollows in a dazzling way—a beautiful
ballet of contrasts, worthy of a 2B and 6B pencil—not that I would
ever sketch his annoying face. His eyes were rimmed with surprise
and a pinch of nervousness danced in there—which was remarkably
odd. If there was something steady about him, it was his
steel-confident nature.

He cleared his throat after a moment of odd
staring and looked down. “A gift for good behavior,” he explained
the car, climbing up the last four steps.

“From whom this time? Daddy?” I cocked my
head.

“Your psychic skills amaze me.” He strode
through the threshold and circled around me, leaving behind him a
soft breeze suffused with the cold nocturnal breath. My arm
shivered.

“You were patting those leather seats,
weren’t you?” I turned and closed the door behind me, mentally
grateful for cutting off that stream of ice inside. “I bet you
can’t stay away from your rocking Rover for more than two hours. I
bet you even sleep in it, cuddling that dead skin you love so
much.”

He snorted a laugh and spun on his heels to
look at me. “Yeah, I even take my naps there and fantasize about
you wearing that
dead skin
. It makes the whole experience
more pleasant and addictive somehow.” He paused and stared at me,
crooking a wicked smile. “Though I think I won’t need to fantasize
anymore since you’re considering the PETA photo shoot more
seriously.”