Given (3 page)

He’s got no clue about his importance, or the power he possesses, it says. The words are huge now. They race across the screen of my consciousness rapid-fire.

The power I possess.

I remember how I broke my bonds at the amphitheater when I needed to save Natalia. That strength and power that filled me, like nothing I’d ever felt before. Was that really something I’ve always had?

YES.

And now I know it’s true. Because it’s filling me again.

The tiny tunnel of light, the pinprick of remaining consciousness, widens again in a millisecond, and suddenly I’m back in my body and Reed is strangling me.

He throws me to the floor and climbs on top of me. He looks like a madman, his true face without the slick mask he normally wears. His teeth are grit together and his eyes are wide and crazed. “Why won’t you die, you little shit?” he cries.

He must have thought he could kill me with a lazy twist of his wrists, and here I am still alive, even as he tries to throttle me with all his strength.

I can’t breathe, but I know I’m stronger than him. My body is thrumming with heat and life and vigor. I grab Reed’s wrists and pull his hands from my neck. His eyes get comically wide now, and his mouth makes a tiny, shocked O.

“Get the fuck off of me, Reed.” I push him to the side and he goes rolling across the floor. Instantly, he’s on his feet again.

“I should have stabbed you in the back, gutted you like you deserve,” he whispers. And then he says something in a language I’ve never heard, and a blue bolt streaks across the room and hits me in the chest.

I feel the energy of it, and I can tell it was supposed to kill me. But Reed can’t hurt me right now. I smile as the look of fear crosses his face for the first time. He’s realized the blue bolt hasn’t hurt me, and now he’s scared.

I start towards him, enjoying this moment, knowing how powerless he must feel now.

“You can’t do this,” he says. “It won’t last. You have no control, and before you know it, you’ll be weak again.”

I slap his face and he falls to the floor. “You’re wrong, Reed. You don’t know me, you don’t know a fucking thing about me.” I pick him up and heave him into the basement wall. Bricks smash and crumble against his back.

He tries to fight back, but nothing he does can hurt me. I break his wrist in an instant, snap it the way he tried to snap my neck.

I need to kill him now, because if I let him go he’ll never leave Natalia alone.

He’ll never stop.

But as I look at him, I realize I don’t have it in me to murder anybody.

“You see?” I whisper, letting him go. He falls backwards and lies there, cradling his broken wrist. “You don’t know me at all. I’m not a killer like you, Reed.”

And then I turn and go.

Chapter Three

Natalia

I spend the rest of the afternoon eating a grilled cheese sandwich and zoning out in front of the TV. My mom is asleep in her room, and when I checked on her, she stirred a bit, but then rolled over and nodded right back off, her breathing heavy and deep. I’m not sure what kind of spell Reed put on her, but she seems to be okay, at least physically. She’ll probably sleep for a few more hours.

There’s a heaviness in my body, the kind of heaviness you get when you’re getting sick. I’m having a hard time keeping my mind on the television, and I grab a blanket off the back of the couch and pull it down over my body, wrapping myself into a cocoon and drifting in and out of sleep.

I’m woken by a knock on the door. I freeze, not sure if I should answer it. It could be Reed, back and ready to use more extreme methods to convince me the fate of the world is in my hands. Yes, he brought me home from the school like he said he would, but that doesn’t mean I can trust him. He’s just buying time, retreating for a little while until he figures out his next move.

The knock comes again, harder this time, and followed by the doorbell ringing. If I don’t answer it, he’ll probably just show up in the family room.

I heave myself off the couch and into the front hallway.

I peek out the window.

Cam’s standing on my front porch, his hands in his pockets.

My heart speeds up.

I open the door.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hi.” I don’t say anything else, wondering why he’s here, wondering if I should just shut the door in his face.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call first, I just… I didn’t want to give you a chance to say you didn’t want to see me.”

I nod, not denying that I would have refused to see him. Truthfully, I’m not sure what I would have done if he’d call first. I’d like to think I would have told him to screw off, but now that he’s here, in front of me, my heart aches, and I can’t help but be glad he came.

“Your car’s back,” he says.

“Yes. The… the police brought it back this morning.”

“Let me guess,” he says. “Reed found it.”

“How’d you know?”

He opens his mouth to say something, then shuts it. “Can we go for a walk or something?”

His face looks hopeful, but there’s something else, there, too. Something different about him. These past few weeks, Cam has looked a little tired and worried.

But now his eyes are bright and alert. His cheeks are flushed from the cold, and he’s wearing my favorite blue sweater, the one that makes me want to curl up in his arms.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Your mom?”

“No.” I shake my head, even though lying and blaming it on her would give me an easy out. “She’s sleeping.”

“Okay.” He doesn’t say anything, just stands there, looking at me, that same look on his face.

If he’d pushed me, I probably wouldn’t have gone. But the way he’s just standing there, the way he’s not putting any pressure on me, almost like just standing near me is making him happy, pushes me toward him. I miss him. A lot.

“I guess I could go for a little while,” I say. “Let me just grab my coat.”

I take my puffy red coat out of the closet and slide my arms into it. It’s my winter coat, but it’s getting dark, and a cool wind has kicked up outside.

“Okay,” I say once I’m outside. “Let’s go.”

We walk down the driveway together and out into the street, our legs falling into a rhythm. The movement starts to make me feel a little better, makes the tension that’s been building up in my muscles dissipate just a little bit.

We walk around the block one whole time without saying anything, and when we get back to my house, Cam looks at me, his eyebrows raised in a question, and I nod. We start another loop.

“How’d you know Reed was back?” I ask finally. I can’t help myself. I know I said I’m done with everything – and I am – but I’m worried about Cam.

“I ran into him at Hadley’s house.”

“At Hadley’s house? What the hell were you doing at Hadley’s house?”

“I broke in to see if I could find anything.”

“Cam.” I shake my head. “That wasn’t a good idea. Why the hell would you do that?”

“I needed to,” he says. “Becca, she… Aidan…” He trails off and takes a deep breath. “Aidan killed Becca. Or at least, he thought he did. But she’s alive and so --”

The tension immediately flows back into my body, my muscles tightening, my stomach turning inside out. “What are you talking about?”

“Aidan came to my house this morning and told me he killed Becca. And so we went to the police. But when we got to her house, she was alive. I think she came back from the dead.”

That must have been what the policeman was talking about this morning when he said Cam was involved in another investigation. My chest tightens, and the wind kicks up, blowing a cold gust into my face. I struggle to walk against the wind, struggle to find my voice.

“Stop,” I say quietly. “Please, just stop. I don’t want to hear any of this. I don’t want to hear about you and Reed, I don’t want to her about Aidan and Becca. I don’t want to hear about any of it.”

My head is pounding now, a steady rhythm signaling the beginning of another headache. I focus on putting one foot in front of the other, on getting around the block and back to my house.

Further down the street I can see a swarm of white butterflies. They beat their wings faster, and faster, and come at me, surrounding me until the flutter of their wings is so loud that I can’t hear anything else. I put my hands up to my ears, and close my eyes tight. When I open them again, the butterflies are gone. I’m just walking with Cam, the way I was a minute ago.

“I need to tell you this, Natalia,” Cam says. “I think I figured out why – ”

“Stop!” I’m almost screaming now. “Stop, please.”

“Okay, okay.” He stops in the middle of the street, reaching for me and pulling me close. I remember seeing him with Kaci on the couch that day, and my mind screams at me to push him away, to resist him. But it feels good to be back in his arms, and I lean my head against his chest. We stand like that for a long time, him rubbing my back, me burying my face in the warm softness of his sweatshirt.

Finally I pull back, wiping the tears from my eyes. “Listen,” I say. “I’m sorry, I am. I know you want to tell me all this stuff. But I’m done with it, Cam. I have Raine’s necklace, and I told her I’m done. Reed and everyone else can do whatever they want.

As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t involve me anymore.”

“Natalia,” he says, and I can tell by the look on his face what he’s about to say.

He’s about to tell me that it doesn’t matter what I think, that I can’t just stop, that whatever’s going to happen is going to happen, and I’m going to be a part of it whether I like it or not.

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I don’t want to hear it, Cam. All I have to do is give Brody his iPad back, and then I’ll be done with all of it.”

His body stiffens at the mention of Brody, and he pulls away from me and starts walking.

I follow him.

“So you talk to Brody about this stuff?” he says.

“No.” I shake my head. “I mean, I did. Or, I used to. But not anymore. I told you, I’m finished.”

“You’re finished after you talk to Brody about it.”

“No, after I give him back the iPad.” He doesn’t say anything, just stares straight ahead, walking and not saying anything. His lips are set in a straight line, like he’s pissed. Which is completely ridiculous. “You’re mad? About me talking to Brody?”

“No.” But he so obviously is.

“Okay.” I say it sarcastically, like I know he’s lying.

“Fine,” he says. “Yeah, I’m pissed. Can you blame me? You won’t talk to me.

It’s just like before. As soon as things got hard, you ran off to Brody.”

“I didn’t run off to Brody, Cam. Brody knew things, things that were helpful to me.”

“How the hell does Brody know anything about anything?”

“He just does. But his job is to keep the peace, to not get too involved.”

Cam laughs at this. “He sure has a funny way of not getting involved.”

“He did things for me that he wasn’t supposed to do because he was worried about me.”

Cam snorts. “Like what?“

“Like giving me that iPad.”

“And he told you he was doing it because he cared about you?”

I nod. “Brody’s not the enemy, Cam. And besides, I think it’s pretty fucking hypocritical that you’re getting on me for talking to Brody when you were kissing Kaci.”

“Fine,” he says. “But if you weren’t always …” He trails off, realizing he’s made a mistake. But it’s too late. I know what he was about to say.

“If I wasn’t always running off to Brody, then you wouldn’t have kissed Kaci?” I shake my head. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Fine,” he says. “I shouldn’t have kissed Kaci. I know that. It was wrong and there’s no excuse for it.” I expect him to add a “but” to that statement, to qualify it with something but he doesn’t.

We’re back in front of my house now, and I stop without continuing on our loop.

I need to check on my mom. And anyway, I shouldn’t be out here with Cam. All it’s doing is bringing up things and feelings that I don’t want to talk about or deal with.

“I should go check on my mom,” I say.

“Why does she have to be checked on?” he asks, like he knows there’s more to the story.

“Cam.” I sigh. “Why did you come here?”

“I came here because I wanted to talk to you. I was worried about you.”

“Well, I’m fine. I’m staying out of things. And Cam, honestly, I really think you should, too.” I look at him, and for a moment, I see that boy I met on my first day at Santa Anna, the boy who came over and helped me when I couldn’t get my locker open.

The boy who sat next to me in study hall, the boy who all the girls wanted and who, for some reason, wanted me.

An aching want wells up inside of me, followed by this overwhelming sadness for what could have been if things had just been different.

I kiss him on the cheek, and he looks surprised.

“Natalia,” he whispers.

But I shake my head and put my finger to his lips before he can say anything else.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “But I can’t.”

I walk toward my house and when I get inside, I turn around and look out the window. Cam’s still standing there in the road, staring at the door.

The longing is still there in my heart, the intense wish that Cam was just a boy I met at my new school. But I push those thoughts away. That’s not what happened, and so there’s no use thinking about it.

I stand there for another moment, and then I turn away from the window and head upstairs to check on my mom.

Chapter Four

Campbell

I walk back to my truck, sadness and regret bubbling up inside of me, brought on by seeing Nat again, being close to her, feeling like we’re supposed to be together, that we both know it and yet somehow we can’t ever get it right.

Or maybe I’m the one who can’t get it right.

Inside my car, I’m trying hard not to cry. It’s stupid to cry, stupid to feel all these things for a girl that I’ve known for less than a school term.

I start the engine and pull out of the driveway, not knowing where I’m going. I don’t want to go home and have to talk to my mother, and I certainly don’t want to see Aidan for a little while.