The Siren

Everything changed three weeks after Stolas's party. Almost a month had passed since Maddox had kissed me in that computer lab at school. Things between Maddox and I had been growing tense since that day. I've been constantly avoiding him, which basically consisted on playing a game of tag inside the Walsh residence. If Maddox walked inside a room I walked out. If we crossed paths at school or at the halls in his house I would look down or away, or any other place that wasn't his cruel, handsome face. Mercifully, he never tried to speak to me in the past month. Dinner time was still horribly long, but he never again corrected me if I finished too soon or ate too little. I felt his hard, unforgiving eyes on me all the time, but Maddox didn't seek me out or made a move on me.

Thanksgiving passed and with it my last hope to ever get used to the Walsh's crazy family dynamics. Cora spend almost the entire day cooking. She refused my help when I offered to help her cook that monstrosity of a turkey I've seen defrosting at the kitchen counter. Her denial was fine by me. I spend Thanksgiving sleeping and reading, sequestered inside of my bedroom. Not even Ivy managed to take me out of the safe isolation I've gotten myself into. By dinner time I walked downstairs. I sure as hell wasn't ready to confront all the Walsh men and Landon McGuire watching a football game while they waited for Cora to call them to eat. The surprise was a lot to handle.

My eyes spotted Landon by the end of the L-shaped sofa at the living room, while he followed the game in the huge TV with a dark look. He was seated tensely, with his legs opened and his tattooed knuckles crossed over his knees. When he saw me appear by the end of the stairs his blue eyes looked up and for a moment I looked into the eyes of an equal. Up to that moment I hadn't paid much attention to Landon. He was the quietest member of their group and rarely I saw him laughing or enjoying girls the way Rick and Stolas liked to. He didn't make a statement out of being handsome and popular. He wasn't loud, nor talkative. He was just very silent and pensive. All the time. I stopped and looked into his eyes, finding two blue pools of emptiness and rage. And above all of it...death.

Maddox and Rick stopped talking then and a pair of greyish-green eyes focused on me. Maddox scowled when he realized I'd been staring at Landon. I felt myself blush under his cruel eyes. Drip...drip...that was the sound inside my hollow body every time Maddox looked at me. It didn't matter he was scowling at me. It didn't matter he looked angry and about to come to me and throttle me with his long fingers. My body didn't know the difference. The traitorous contours of my soul didn't know the difference. All my body knew was that it was awakened whenever he gave me his attention. And like a sponge my heart absorbed his attention until it disintegrated the reality surrounding us. His attention on me disintegrated the smell of life, the activity in the kitchen, the sound of the game in the TV. Maddox was the life I was missing and the bastard knew it.

I swallowed nervously and walked out of there. Out of the house and to the cold backyard. The back door opened easily for me and suddenly the cold November night slapped me in the face. I stood in the dark dock, staring at the pool with a heavy feeling setting in my chest. Nothing I've done had worked. I've tried to fight my attraction to Maddox for a month and nothing I did seemed enough. My heart wasn't dead enough. At least, not for him. Up in the sky I could only see tiny stars sparkling now and then. Apart from leaving Cora and never coming back I had no idea what to do to fight my feelings for Maddox. I sighed and returned inside the house after finally calming my trembling body. The coldness of the night cocooned my body in its deadly grip, killing the bacteria spreading from my new, beating heart, to the rest of my semi-living body. I only took one step inside of the house before Maddox emerged from the shadows of the hall and unapologetically shove me to the wall, closing his hand over my neck. His weight settled against me, pinning me hard against the wall. I gasped in surprise and then my instinct took over. I knew two things then. One, he smelled like a clean shave and hot skin. Two, Maddox had once again pushed me back to the land of the living and for the first time ever I didn't want to return to my limbo dreams if that meant I would lose the feeling of his skin against mine.

"Why were you staring at Landon?" he asked me softly, too softly. His voice was like the cunning sharpness of a knife balancing at my throat. I tried to move but Maddox's fingers spread over the column of my neck, firmly holding me in place, "answer me."

"His eyes...he has dead eyes like mines..." I whispered and for a second his index finger caressed my jugular, feeling the life beneath my skin. His greyish eyes focused intensely in my own eyes, studying them hard and giving nothing back. His body heat spread against me and in the silence that followed my words the air changed between us. It took only a second for the atmosphere to dramatically change from anger to pure lust. My eyes looked down, to those lips that felt hot and uncharacteristically soft when he kissed me. I swallowed, the movement turning sensual when my throat bobbled beneath the force of his hands obstructing my windpipes. I opened my mouth, tasting the air between us, which felt heavy and paused.

Maddox tightened his hold a little bit harder, almost as if he had half a mind of leaving his mark on my skin to remind me of his touch. Then he freed me and took a step back, regarding me with a look that was equally mad and equally hungry.

"Don't look at him like that ever again," he ordered, taking another step away from me. His body heat still clung to my thirsty pores while I watched him move, "your eyes are mine. Only mine."

"Why?" I asked him with a shaky voice that I couldn't even recognize as my own.

"I told you before why. You are mine," he said effortlessly, shrugging as if he had no other choice but to remind me the truth.

"What are we doing Maddox?" I asked him in a whisper, making him halt. We were standing like two starving shadows in an empty hall. His heat curled at my feet and my darkness enveloped him softly, embracing us in a seclusive secret. The moment snapped when Maddox moved his head to the front, not looking at me.

"We are doing whatever you want siren. I've come to you twice and both times you said no," he said over his shoulder, leaving me alone and confused in the shadows, " if you want me you know where to find me."

The rest of the night passed smoothly. Rick and Ivy sat by my side during dinner while Maddox and Landon talked by the other side of the table. Maddox and I didn't look at each other, we didn't breathe face to face, we didn't even acknowledge the other's presence. By the end of the night I walked back to my room feeling strangely like a zombie. I was alive whenever I heard Maddox's voice, or smelled his cologne when passing his bedroom, or just listened to his name being called downstairs. Then I died a little bit more, leaving pieces of my past persona on my way to my bedroom. I sighed opening the door of my room while I wondered what the hell I should do with that useless piece of heart that had started beating inside of my chest.

"Want to watch the Gremlins with me?" I stopped suddenly, looking surprised at Rick. He had made himself comfortable on my bed in the time that had taken me to help Cora with the dishes and walk to my room. I frowned, staring at the smiling boy spread on top of my bed. Rick had his laptop on top of his legs and had surrounded his shirtless torso with two pillows. I knew about thirty girls at school that would scream at the idea of jumping to bed with Rick. But to me Rick was like a little brother, a very annoying and handsome little brother that had an irritable fixation on taking his shirt the minute he walked inside the house. By now I was used to seeing him shirtless.

I paused at the door, looking over my shoulder at Maddox's door.

"What about Maddox and Landon?" I asked, trying my best to sound as if I didn't care about Maddox when all I wanted was for Emrick to call his brother and try to convince him to watch a movie with us. Rick shrugged, wiggling his toes and getting even more comfortable on my bed.

"He has work to do with Landon," he said cryptically, making me frown. Work? I didn't know Maddox worked. What exactly did he do? And why he was working during Thanksgiving? And how exactly did Landon match in all of this? Still, I couldn't quite ask all my questions to Emrick and look disinterested. I shook my head and marched to my bed, ignoring the fact Emrick's long body occupied more than half of it and that it was almost impossible to lie down at his side without touching him.

After the first, general awkwardness of feeling my legs brushing Emrick's legs I started to feel more at ease. Against any logic I got lost in the movie and interested I looked up at Rick and found him already staring down at me. My head was resting on top of one of the pillows he kept under his arms and I supposed my movement had alerted him I was going to ask him something.

"I like this movie," I stated, looking back at his laptop screen, "what was its name again?"

"Do you seriously don't know it? This is the Gremlins. No way you couldn't know about this movie," he said with a smirk, his dirty blonde hair hanging heavy over one side of his forehead. I shook my head at him and Rick stopped smiling, "Vi, how many movies have you seen?"

"Not many," I admitted softly, feeling my cheeks blush under his perusal. I hadn't had the time to watch many movies while I was growing. We rarely used the TV at our home, since the sounds and the flashes of light gave my mother migraines. I wouldn't admit to Rick how fucked up have been my childhood, but somehow he seemed to know exactly how painful was all the words that carried my silence. He nodded, messing my hair and winking at me.

"Don't worry girl, from now on I'm showing you all the good movies. Just the ones I like of course," he said, with a wolfish grin and to my surprise I smiled back at him.

"Of course," I said softly, looking back at the movie. And just like that my relationship with Emrick changed again. Inadvertently I adopted him as my brother that Thanksgiving and for better or for worse, he let me.

I didn't know this would happen, but a week after Thanksgiving reality came crashing on me. I was resting in the living room, spread over the sofa under a thousand warm blankets while I watched Ivy watch Disney channel. I did this all the time. I would just look at her and marvel. I was fascinated by her childhood, by all the things that made her happy, and made her sing and jump and behave like a child. I guess it was true what Edna St. Vincent Millay had written, "Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies". And what a beautiful kingdom Ivy had built around her. It was pearly and unbroken, with a fine spine made of dreams and innocence. In comparison I've always lived in a desert. A dry desert where nothing ever lived, not even when I was growing up. Death had touched me from very early on and its bony fingers had grown roots and rivers inside of me, until only my hollow body remained anchored to this world.

Outside was cold and dark. Winter had officially started and with it I was back to my kingdom of death. From time to time Emrick would come to my room and watch a movie with me, he would seek me at school and even share lunch with me and Amy. In those moments I pretended for him and smiled from time to time, but honestly, between you and me, I was as dead as always. The only moments when I became dangerously alive was in those instances when Maddox's presence was impossible to avoid. It was then, or when I was alone in my room at night, that I let myself think about the possibility, however small to go to him and finally succumb to all that infinite wanting between us. If you want me you know where to find me.

His words rolled like dices in my head. But the consequences, my responsibility towards Cora and Ivy...I just couldn't defraud them. I really couldn't bet their trust so easily. Maddox promised oblivion through passion. And the tempting idea of really living for the first time in my life. He was life, and I could have it if I accepted the price. But what I price I would have to pay to taste life in his lips and passion in my body. I sighed, screwing my face at the same time that Cora appeared by the foyer, checking her bag and taking her car keys in a hand.

"Are you going somewhere?" I asked her and Cora nodded, still checking the contents of her bag until she found her wallet and waved it in the air, giving me an eye roll. The woman had an inclination for losing her wallet and leaving it at random places. I smirked while she came to me and took a seat by my side on the sofa. Ivy was so lost in her show that didn't spare us a glance. Cora pat my head slowly, before dropping the bomb that would change my life forever.

"Are you ready for our trip?" she asked me, making me tense and look up at her.

"Trip?" Cora frowned, staring at me in surprise.

"The boys didn't say anything? I reminded Rick to let you know about our plans for winter break," she shook her head and smiled, "It's my fault for trusting Rick's memory. Anyway, the Walsh have this tradition to go visit family in Australia for the winter. Is summer time down there, so we make the trip and visit the beach while we are at it. The kids have some cousins they like to hang with and Ivy loves it. You are going to love it too."

Let me think. Summer. Beach. Vacationing and Maddox together...nope. That couldn't happen. Not to mention that summer, sun and the ocean wasn't really my scene. I could count with a hand the times I've gone swimming and those times had been in a pool at the house of a friend. The Australian beaches were a famous destination for surfers all over the world. And tanning. I didn't tan. I wasn't like one of those Victoria Secret models that tanned easily. I was pale, with a propensity for freckles and a red nose after getting too much sun. Not to mention this plan sound horribly wrong. Too lively. Too sunny. Too hot.

"I'm not going," I declared and Cora shook her head at me, not taking me seriously. I hadn't exactly been joking around.

"Vi, is not an option. We will be gone for three weeks. There's no way I could leave you alone for so long," I was about to interrupt her and assure her I would take good care of the house and myself for whatever amount of time they will be gone, but Cora shook his head no at me, "Just think about the things you will need and let me know. We will not be leaving anytime soon, so there's plenty of time to get used to the idea. Now I need to go before they close the bank. Take care of Ivy until the boys return from practice, please?"

"Okay," I said nodding and masking every single one of my emotions. The moment I heard the front door close after her I let myself fall in the spiral of a nervous breakdown. One thing was to avoid Maddox while we were occupied with school and he had football practice and that secretive job that consumed almost all of his free time. I still didn't know what his job was, but it took hours and hours of his time. Regardless of that, how exactly would I keep my heart dead around him for three weeks without school or any other distraction. I wouldn't. I simply wouldn't.

The bell ringing at the front door shook me out of my stupor. I walked to the door, eyeing Ivy one last time while she stared attentively to the TV. I opened the door without checking, thinking it was just Cora who had forgotten something as usual.

Just that it wasn't Cora.

In her place was a completely stranger. Just that she wasn't. Her exact mini copy was watching cartoons in the living room, dressed in overalls and red socks. The woman in front of me blinked her greyish-green eyes and smiled at me with a weird smile. Too big, too empty.

"I'm here to see my daughter, Ivy Richardson Walsh," she stated, putting a ringed hand over the door and giving me an unhinged look that made me freeze in my spot.

~~~

Crazy, isn't it? The story will get even crazier, I promise:) I'm sorry for not updating in time. I'm currently studying a lot to pass a huge exam and I will not be able to upload as frequently as before. I promise I will try my hardest to keep posting more parts, but I'm not sure when. Eat, rest, read and smile a lot.

I love you guys. Keep positive!