“You have mine,” I said, offering her mine. “La mia parola è buona quanto il mio sangue.”
Her shoulders stiffened at those words, that vow, before we shook. She knew what it meant and how serious it was.La mia parola è buona quanto il mio sangue—“My word is as good as my blood.”
Pnina might have cracked open my chest, but I had ripped my own heart out and placed it in an hourglass filled with rushing blood.
Chapter Three
1998 ~ Scarlett
Falling in love just happens. When you least expect it. When you are not looking for it. There is no rhyme or reason, and if there is, it is hidden away where all the mysteries of this life go. I can only hope it’s the same place my brother went. It feels like heaven.
I should’ve known that it would all begin on the most benign day of the week. Wednesday. Even Monday, with all its cursed glory, was a more talked about day than the third day of the week. The middle child, so to speak. Or my sister Charlotte, if Wednesday were evil.
To give this Wednesday a bit of flair, it started with a dare. I had never given in to peer pressure before, but Violet Castellanos could push all the right buttons. It was hard to tell if that was a good or bad thing, but despite the undecided outcome of the thought, I had accepted her dares as somewhat of a personal challenge. I wasn’t all that offended by actually losing. I just wanted an excuse to get out and feel the world.
Violet’s dares offered me that luxury. She was a seasoned veteran at reverse psychology, and me at pretending I didn’t know what she was up to.
Violet knew the truth. Her egging gave me an excuse to go out and experience the world. Therefore, our status always floated aroundbeston the friend meter. I don’t think it was particularly anything Violet did or didn’t do. She recognized that too. It was me. Some days I didn’t care one way or another.
“It’ll be fun!” she practically yelled. “Look at you. You’re depressing. You’re pale and you have purple circles under your eyes. You’re beauty trapped in a tragic cage.” I shot her a look, and she swung both of her hands up. “Take a chill pill,Sandy,” she said in a goofy voice. “If fun doesn’t float your boat, what about a dare?” She wiggled her dark eyebrows at me. Her hair was blonde, her eyes blue, and her shimmering tan skin came straight off a beach in Greece. The combination was no less than gorgeous. “Idareyou to go with me so I don’t get grounded. And what can be more rebellious than going to a party on Wednesday? Give me one example and you’re off the hook.”
I thought about it for a moment. “Grounded” was the least of her worries. Some of the guys she found attractive were jailbait, and not in the common use of the term. They were bait to the fishing officers.
“All right. I’ll go.”
Violet stopped walking next to me for a moment. People were switching classes, hustling to make it on time before their next lesson, weaving between and around us. A freshman bumped her on accident, and she scowled at him before looking at me again.
“You used to be so chatty,” she said with an accusing tone to her voice. “Now a perpetually sad melody follows you around.”
Without giving me a chance to respond, she turned and disappeared into the throng of pushing and shoving students.
The day turned into night, and once again I found myself jostled and bumped, not by throngs of students shoving through school halls, but by those same kids, now drunk, pushing through a packed party surrounding a bonfire.
* * *
“I used to be a lot of things,” I muttered to myself. I sighed, releasing the pressure weighing heavily on my chest.
Two talkative girls standing next to me, with plastic red cups in both of their hands, glanced my way, but not finding me all that interesting, looked back at each other. I put my hands out, feeling the heat of the bonfire touch my skin. The temperature was crisp, October rolling in with the promise of a cold winter, and the contrast between the warmth from the fire and the chill was comfortable.
I grinned at a familiar face; Juliette and her friend, Kari, made their way through, bringing me a farewell book to sign. Juliette was leaving, her family moving, and she had decided earlier in the day to attend this party as one last goodbye. Though I wasn’t close to anyone but Violet, there were a few people I’d never forget. Juliette was one of them. After I signed her book and hugged her, they both disappeared, leaving me alone amongst the crowd once again.
Even with all of these people surrounding me, I still felt alone.Pathetic.
I settled my back against the rust-colored Ford Taurus behind me. The metal didn’t feel as chilled as it had been. The owner of said vehicle sold some type of gelatinous lime shots out of his window for fifty cents each. He said he didn’t mind that I loitered outside of his business.
Thank God for small favors.
This small favor was almost dismissed in light of his next comment:“Stay as long as you want. You’ll bring the boys in, like bees to sweet honey.”
Violet danced up to me, a guy trailing right behind her. Her wild blonde hair made her seem more lioness than human in the glow of the fire. The light but abundant hairs on her arms were silhouetted when she threw them up in excitement.
“I can’t believe we’re here!” she shouted over the music, which wasn’t really that loud.
“Yes,” I said into my cup of Coke, feeling like a rebel, “me either.”
I gave the party another once over. A bunch of underage (and perhaps some actually legal) pedestrians were hanging out by the train tracks, music drifting with cigarette smoke and ashes from the non-permitted bonfire burning rebelliously in the center of the party.
Strict instructions had been given upon arrival:If anything should go down, run like hell. And if you’re caught, blame it on the homeless. Now have fun.
