Prologue
The girl looked at her own flushed and excited reflection in the mirror critically. Her hair was curled, she was wearing eyeshadow, and she was dressed in a beautiful new blue silk dress with a bow at the waist, but she knew she was no beauty.
That was for sure.
Her nose was too big and her mouth too broad and filled with metal. She was also covered in a layer of puppy fat, at least that is what her mother had told her. Glasses covered her best asset: her eyes. They were enormous and made of the clearest green liquid. Not even a hint of gold or hazel to muddy their spectacular beauty. The pupils were large, like the eyes of an innocent child.
When she heard the roar of a sports car pulling up in the driveway she froze with sudden terror. The butterflies in her stomach were going crazy. Trembling with nerves she ran to the windows, and hidden behind the net curtain looked down. She nearly peed herself. Holy Mother, he was getting out of the car with a bunch of flowers!
‘OMG! OMG!’ she shrieked with excitement. He came. He really, really had come for her. Some part of her had not believed that he would stand her up.
Distractedly she took off her glasses and placed them on a table filled with books. She had many books. They were safer than people. She moved through her suddenly blurry bedroom to the door and stood behind it, waiting. The best thing to do was to let her mother call her. She didn’t want to appear too eager or too desperate.
‘Sky, Miko’s here,’ her mother called from the bottom of the stairs.
Sky opened her door and, sucking her stomach in, stepped out. As regally as she could she walked slowly down the stairs. Both Miko and her mother were two blurred figures standing at the bottom of the stairs waiting for her. When she got to the second last step her mother’s face came into soft focus. She was eyeing her daughter worriedly. Ever since Sky’s father had died last year her mother had changed, becoming frightened and introverted.
Shyly Sky turned toward Miko. And… Wow! Just wow! He was so gorgeous she lost her power of speech. Her poor teenage brain felt quite overwhelmed in the presence of the most handsome boy in school. All she could do was gaze up at him as if he was the hottest, coolest thing in the whole world. He could have had anyone he wanted and yet he had asked her. She felt a warm glow at the thought.
Sky had become infatuated with Miko from the first moment she had set eyes on him, from afar. Her mother dismissed it as a girlish crush, but Sky was certain it was love. She was certain she was deeply and irrevocably in love with him. She doodled his name on the insides of her homework folders, and daydreamed about him for hours.
It was a silly, obsessive, wonderful, exhilarating fantasy that would have come to nothing, until last week, when he had suddenly invited her to a party one of his friends was having. Come to think of it, last week was when a few other boys who had never noticed her before had also asked her out. She had looked in the mirror and wondered if she was changing. If she was somehow becoming more attractive, but the mirror said NO!
She stepped off the last step and stood grinning stupidly up at Miko.
‘Well, you kids better be off then. Will you bring Sky home by ten p.m., Miko?’ her mother said.
‘Of course, Mrs. Johnson.’ He turned toward Sky and smiled a heart-shattering smile and she thought she would melt right there on the spot. I think he likes me. I think he really likes me. It made her heart crash so loudly against her ribs she was sure he could hear it.
Outside, he opened the door of his sleek Cobra, and courteously settled her into it.
He got in, powered on one of those megawatt smiles in her direction and started the engine.
He drove fast and silently. Outside the huge mansion where the party was being held, he stopped under a large tree and turned off the engine. She turned toward him.
‘Thank you so much, Miko, for asking me to this party. I’d never ever imagined you’d ever even look at me let alone invite me to a party. This is the happiest day of my life,’ she blurted out suddenly, and blushed at her own daring.
He frowned and then gazed at her as if seeing her for the first time. In a daze he lifted his hand, brushed it against the back of her ear, and pushed her hair to the side, exposing her long throat.
She shivered and tilted her chin upward and saw through the canopy of leaves a sky brilliantly full of stars. She couldn’t see them clearly without her glasses and they seemed like tiny holes in the black sky through which brilliantly white light was pouring. She returned her eyes to his face to find that his eyes had left the smooth curve of her neck and were settled on her mouth. For a moment she thought he was going to kiss her—his face even moved toward her, and she worried about all the metal in her mouth—but then his expression changed. He seemed almost shocked by something.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he whispered softly.
She blushed even more, and he stared at the color flooding her face, and shook his head as if to clear it. He turned his face away from her abruptly and stared ahead of him. A muscle ticked furiously in his jaw. For many seconds he was silent and she simply stared at him. She had never been out with a boy and she didn’t know what to do or say.
‘You know what?’ he said finally. ‘Let’s not go to this party. Let’s just go to town and get to know each other better over some burgers and Coke.’
Her face crumpled with disappointment. She had never been to a party before. Her life had been sheltered. It was her parents and her books. She had no real friends. They had only moved here two years ago and she was still treated like a stranger in this tiny town of five thousand people. ‘You’ve changed your mind,’ she said dully. ‘You’re ashamed of being seen with me around your fine friends.’
‘Of course not,’ he denied hotly, but a flush of shame slashed across his cheekbones.
She shook her head sadly. ‘It’s all right, you don’t have to explain.’
‘Shit,’ he cursed under his breath.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and bowed her head to hide from him.
He turned to her and clutching her face in both his hands lifted it and forced her to
look at him. ‘Don’t be sorry, Sky. It’s not you,’ he said fiercely.
She brightened at that. ‘All right, we’ll go into town instead. I’d rather have a burger and a Coke with you than go to a party, anyway.’ And she smiled tremulously. The truth was she didn’t mind not going to the party. Burger and Coke with him would be a dream come true. It was silly of her to have insisted. It was just her pride that had been hurt. She was not beautiful. And that was that.
He let go of her and looked down at his hands for a moment. ‘Fine,’ he said flatly, ‘we’ll go in, but we’re not staying. Five minutes and we’re out of there.’
She grinned from ear to ear. He did not grin back. He seemed almost fearful. He opened her car door and held his hand to help her out of his car. She put her hand in his and felt the warm power in it.
He dropped her hand but they walked close to each other. At the door he took a deep breath and looked at her. She was gazing at him with shining eyes. He opened the door and they stepped inside.
She had never been to a party in such a fine house and she looked around her in awe. Sky immediately recognized some of the girls from school, the vampiric popular crowd who derived their power by humiliating and ridiculing the lesser endowed. She didn’t allow herself to think it, but they were the golden girls who usually hung out with Miko, the ones with the lithe, cheerleading bodies and flawlessly beautiful faces. One of them was holding a clipboard and staring at her and looked like she was about to come in their direction.
Miko grabbed her hand and started to pull her through the throng of people. One or two people called out to him, but he waved in their general direction and dragged her even faster toward the back of the house. In a corridor where the crowd had thinned a little, he turned around and, still walking quickly ahead, said, ‘Come on, let’s get a drink.’
She noticed that he seemed tense and different than he had been in the car.
‘Come on,’ Miko urged, when she lagged slightly. They were nearly at the kitchen by then.
‘What do you want to drink?’ he asked, his eyes roaming around them.
‘Beer,’ she said although she didn’t really like it.
‘There is fruit punch if you prefer,’ he said.
She nodded gratefully.
‘Stay here and don’t move,’ he instructed, putting her into a corner where there was no one, and where no one could see her. She watched him leave her to get the drinks.