Sapphire: A Paranormal Romance (4 page)

The music overtook
them.  As they danced they held each other, then just held hands, then danced
apart, but looking at each other, and then came back together again, over and
over again.  She smiled at him and he smiled back.  The music receded just like
the people around them. They floated across the floor and the people around
them parted without looking at them. It was as if they had merely to wave their
hands and the other dancers would react unconsciously.

Sapphire and Jimmy
revolved around each other like planets.  With each new song the tempo changed
and they didn’t miss a beat.  Jimmy didn’t feel hot or tired or out of breath. 
They grew closer, her arms wrapped around his neck and she pulled his head
close to her neck and Jimmy reciprocated and put his arms around her waist and
held her close to him.  She felt alive, vibrating beneath his fingers, and the
warmth radiating from her made sweat stand out on his upper lip.  The lights
grew dim and they rocked slowly, revolving in a small circle, their foreheads
pressed together, his eyes never leaving her green orbs.

They danced for
hours.  At some point, most of the dancers on the floor vanished and sat down
at the tables.  Jimmy registered the fact that they were virtually alone on the
floor and that the music had changed, and that the others were eating, but he
dismissed all of it.  It was as if he were feeding off the energy that Sapphire
was radiating from her pores.  She seemed not to have a single bead of sweat
anywhere on her body.  She showed not a single moment of being tired.  She
smiled and laughed as he swung her around in his arms.  Her feet never seemed
to tire, her muscles apparently as strong as when they had first hit the dance
floor.  Jimmy just laughed with her and continued to dance, oblivious to the
stares that pursued them as they danced.

Only when George
tapped him on the shoulder was the spell broken.  Jimmy felt it on his right
shoulder, and shrugged it off.  Then he felt another tap, this one more
urgent.  Again, he shrugged it off and continued to dance.  Then a hand grabbed
his left shoulder and gripped hard, pulling him around and pulling his gaze
away from Sapphire.

“What?” he said to
George, feeling out of breath for the first time.  “What do you want?”

George’s eyes
froze him to the spot.  George’s face was livid.  His lip curled. 

“It’s time to
leave,” George said.

“What do you
mean?” Jimmy said.  “The dance goes until midnight.”

George held up his
watch.  “It
is
midnight, you dumb-ass.  You’ve been out here dancing for
hours. And, in case you haven’t noticed, you’ve been garnering more attention
than anyone and anything else.  You’re upsetting the natural balance of things
and the athletes have noticed.”

Jimmy blinked in
surprise.  He looked around.  The gym was half empty.  The remaining dancers
were staring at Jimmy.  There were a few of the jocks left, hanging near the
back wall, and they were staring at Jimmy and Sapphire.

“How is that
possible?” Jimmy asked.

George threw his
hands out to the side.  “You tell me, Astaire!  You’ve been dancing non-stop
for hours.  How the hell is that possible?”

Jimmy blinked
again.  He couldn’t stop himself from blinking.  He felt as if he had been
napping for hours and George had just thrown a bucket of cold water all over
him.  His mouth opened and closed, as if he were trying to find the right
words, but no words came out.  He had been dancing for hours?  He had missed
dinner?  How had any of this happened?  How had this entire night actually
happened?  Then he felt Sapphire’s dazzlingly warm hand in his.

“It’s OK, Jimmy,”
she said close to his ear.  “George is right.  We’ve been dancing for hours. 
The prom is over.”

“Finally,” George
said, throwing his hands out in that comical and dramatic way again.  “Finally,
she makes sense.”

Jimmy grabbed
George’s shirt.  “Stop being rude, George.  I swear to God, you have no idea
what kind of crap comes out of your mouth.  Just because Sapphire and I had a
good time while you sat at the table and watched isn’t my fault.”

It was George’s
turn to blink in surprise at the overreaction.  Jimmy had never reacted that
way before to anything George had said.  Something was happening to Jimmy, and
he was not acting like himself.  His mouth opened and closed as Jimmy’s had. 
Then he swallowed, a look of pain—and, perhaps, jealousy—washed over his face
for a moment, and then was gone.  George straightened his shirt collar and cleared
his throat.

“I apologize,” he
said.  Then he did a weird little bow toward Sapphire.  “If I offended you,
Sapphire, I apologize to you, as well.”

Sapphire beamed. 
“George, I take no offense.  You should have come out and danced with us.”

George straightened
from his little bow.  He smoothed his shirt again.  He gave a strange,
cock-eyed look at Jimmy and then looked back at Sapphire.

“There didn’t seem
to be much room out there,” he said simply.  “I’ll go to the parking lot and
get the car warmed up.  You guys get whatever you need and head out there.  Try
not to dawdle.”

George turned and
grabbed his tuxedo jacket.  He looked down at the floor and swung the jacket
over his shoulder.  Jimmy and Sapphire watched him as he left. 

Jimmy turned and
looked at Sapphire.  She was still smiling.  Her chest rose and fell rapidly
and she looked so alive.  Her face looked flushed and her eyes sparkled.

“I can’t believe
we danced all night,” Jimmy said.  “Now I’m starving.”

She laughed. 
“Well, we can eat when we get home.  You guys will give me a lift back, right?”

Jimmy looked
surprised. “Of course.  Why would you think we wouldn’t?”

She shrugged. 
“You just never know.”

“Can I see you
again?”  Jimmy blurted out the words before realizing he had done so.  He put a
hand to his lips.  “I’m sorry.”

Sapphire smiled,
reaching up and taking his hand away from his mouth.  For a moment her hand
felt very cold against his skin, and then there seemed to be a kind of transfer
of warmth between them.  After that, she was warm and alive again. 

“We’ll see,” she
said.  “You don’t have to be shy with me, Jimmy.  I like you and I’d like to
see you again.  It’s just—”

Jimmy felt his
heart sink into his shoes.  He knew this was too good to be true. 

“What?”  He asked.

“It’s a bit
complicated,” Sapphire said.  “Sorry.  I wish I could tell you more, but I
can’t.  Not now.”

Then, suddenly,
she stood on her toes and kissed him lightly on the lips.  There was that
strange sensation of freezing cold followed by intense warmth as they kissed,
and an equally strange feeling of energy being transferred from him into her.

“I’m going to take
that as a good sign,” Jimmy said, and smiled.

“You should,”
Sapphire said

He put his hand on
her waist and they turned to walk toward the door.  As Jimmy turned around, he
found his path blocked.  His heart, having just risen out of his shoes,
suddenly plummeted back into them again.  Yes, Jimmy had upset the very careful
order of things at the school.  He was a dork, someone to be reviled and preyed
upon by the popular kids and the jocks, in particular.  He was expected to show
up to the dance either with his ugly cousin or some unpopular girl.  Instead,
he had shown up with a gorgeous girl who cast a strange spell on everyone and
everything around her.  She had entranced them as much as she had Jimmy, but
what really had upset things was the fact that she was even with Jimmy.  No,
this was wrong, and Jimmy knew it and knew that the jocks knew it.   Now, it
was time to reset the balance of things.

Three of the
football players Jimmy had seen watching them on the floor at the prom were
standing there.  Jimmy didn’t really know them except for the torment that they
liked to heap upon him and others like him for no other reason than that they
could.  Maybe it made them feel better about having to shower with each another
after practices.  In front of him were Stan Little, the team quarterback and
easily the most popular boy in school, Dale Tern, one of the defensive players
and roughly as big as a small mountain—and about as smart as one—and Clinton
Marsters, a running back.  Their expressions said that this was not a social
call.  No, this was a call to re-establish the hierarchy of things at Knorr
High School.  Namely, the gorgeous girls were with the jocks, and Jimmy was to
cower in the corner while they did what they wanted.

“Hey, nerdling,”
said Stan.  “We think your date should come with us.”

“Yeah,” said Dale,
his eyes blinking way too rapidly.  “We can’t figure why she came here with you
in the first place.”

He pronounced the
word “figger,” and Jimmy resisted the urge to correct him.

“You can be on
your way now, little man,” said Clinton.

Clinton stepped
forward and reached out for Sapphire.  His hand closed around her wrist. 
Sapphire’s eyes got wide and she looked at Jimmy in fear.  Clinton yanked
Sapphire’s hand away from Jimmy’s.

Jimmy reacted
without thinking, his head still spinning as if he were drunk, reacting in a
way he never expected and had never done before.  He reached over, grabbed a
fork off the nearby table, and jammed it with all of his strength into
Clinton’s hand.  The jock’s eyes went wide in shock rather than pain.  Jimmy
was certain that the ’roided-up jock did not feel any pain, but he saw the
immediate shock and outrage on his face.  Blood spurted from the wound,
spattering in fine droplets across the floor.  Clinton’s eyes threatened to
come right out of his head.  His mouth opened to scream.

Jimmy reacted
again, almost totally on instinct, as if someone else were controlling him, moving
in a way he never had before.  He stepped forward, yanked the fork out of
Clinton’s hand, and clamped his left hand across Clinton’s mouth.  Although
Jimmy was skinny, he had the advantage of being relatively tall, so he looked
right into Clinton’s eyes.  With his right hand he held the tines of the fork
to Clinton’s neck, just below his chin.

“You scream,”
Jimmy said in an even, cold voice that he barely recognized as his own, “and I
stick this somewhere you really won’t want it stuck.  Do you get me?  If your
friends make a move, I will shove this up through your mouth and into your
tongue.  Nod if you understand—provided you can actually understand basic
English.”

Clinton’s eyes
were still so wide that Jimmy thought he could see all the way to the back of
his skull.  Snot ran from his nose and tears were streaming from both eyes.  He
nodded.

“Now, unhand the
lady,” Jimmy said.

Clinton released
Sapphire’s hand.

Jimmy nodded and
let go of Clinton’s mouth.  Clinton held his hand like a dead fish with his
other hand, still bleeding quite freely onto the floor.  Jimmy turned to face
the other two jocks.  They looked at him with wide eyes.  Jimmy tossed the fork
at Stan, and he jumped back as if Jimmy had just thrown a dead rat at him, but
the fork, with one tine now bent, hit him in the chest.  Stan fumbled for the
fork as it bounced off his chest.

“Now, gentlemen,”
Jimmy said, feeling Sapphire’s hand in his again.  “If you please, stand
aside.  Sapphire and I have to leave your lovely company.  Enjoy getting drunk,
and, hopefully, driving fatally off a road somewhere later on this evening.”

Jimmy did his own
little bow and then he and Sapphire walked past the stunned jocks.  He did not
look back.  Instead, he looked at Sapphire, and she smiled and laughed as they
walked across the floor.  Once again, Jimmy felt so lost in her eyes that he
did not notice the dozens of pairs of eyes that watched them as walked to the
door.

“This isn’t over!”
Jimmy heard Stan yell as they reached the door.

Jimmy turned to
look at the jocks.  Stan stood in front of Clinton, and they had wrapped one of
the napkins around his bleeding hand.  Jimmy figured that Clinton would not be
playing much football—or any other sport—anytime soon.

“Bring it on,”
Jimmy said as he pushed open the door.

Sapphire walked
past him and into the night.  Jimmy stared at the three jocks until she was
past, and then he walked out, as well.  The door slammed behind him, the sound
echoing around the gymnasium.

“Jesus Christ!”
Jimmy said with a nervous laugh as he walked toward the car.  He
could see George leaning against the driver’s side door.  “Did I just stab one
of the biggest, meanest assholes in the school with a fork?”

Sapphire laughed.
“You were fantastic!”

She threw her arms
around him and he swung her around, laughing.  He hadn’t had a single drop of
alcohol all night, but he felt drunk.  Or, to put a finer point on it, he felt
what he imagined it felt like to be drunk.  He had never had much more than a
sip of beer and a glass of wine in his life, and had never had a single
narcotic that wasn’t prescribed by a doctor.  The world was spinning and his
head felt like something was inside of it running around rapidly in a circle.