AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Ms. Steadler, the gym teacher, liked to bully me. She never quite called me names but she would insinuate that I would do better in gym if I had less cake, fewer cookies, cut down on ice cream, et cetera. If she knew how little comfort food Mr Carlisle actually allowed me, she might have been a little more sympathetic.
But I guess back then, gym teachers weren’t recruited for their sensitivity.
So, this one day, I had a pig of a morning. Mr. Carlisle was at his ranting, hot rage, fire and brimstone worst. I had to run out the door with my bag and I went without my gym clothes. I got most of the way to the bus stop before I remembered and had to run back for them.
I tried to sneak in the back of the house, but he heard me. He ran back, snarling and yelling about my sinfulness and sloth, and made me stand and listen while he told me how hard he had to work to buy my new gym shirt and I couldn’t even remember to take it, and all the terrible things I was going to grow up into. So I missed the bus.
Then I had to run all the way to school in the hot sun. And, because I was late, I got detention and a letter to take home. Of course.
Then, when I was running on the track, the lace on my running shoe broke and I fell, ripping my new shirt. I felt the aura, like the start of a migraine. I got them only rarely. And they were usually pretty mild. Though there was no way to tell at the start how bad it was going to be.
Ms. Steadler sauntered across the red clay track and stood over me. I writhed, collapsed in a heap. She looked at my wrecked shoe and said, ‘When your weight starts to spill out of your shoes, Evie, you might think it’s gone a little too far.’
I looked up and saw the mocking sneer on her face. My head started to throb. Then I felt a bolt of pain, like a door opened in my skull and let in a hot blast of twisting ache. With it came an image, a feeling of a hot glow, tightening inside Ms. Steadler. And the pain in my head made it hotter.
Her eyes rolled. She looked up and her head rolled back. Then she went down like the air had gone out of her. Crumpled like a puppet with her strings cut.
The ambulance came, and they took her to the hospital.
They sent me home because of the migraine. It lasted into the next day.
We heard Ms. Steadler had a stroke, though the schoolyard doesn’t always get the highest grade of information and intelligence. She never came back to the school, though.
But the feeling, the aura, and then the tingling, that’s how it felt with Lucien.
“Wolf?”
My biker, back in Missouri, was one of the people I most feared in high school. We got close when I traveled back there and I’m missing him now.
“Eve.” The low rasp of his voice made me miss him even more.
We’re quiet for a few moments. It’s a cozy, comforting silence. We’re listening to each other being near. I told him I was coming to see Lucien for dinner. I know he’ll want to know all about it.
Of my three men, Wolf is the most protective. And, I guess, the most possessive, though I don’t allow for much of that.
Saul is the dark priest from what would have been my hometown if they’d ever accepted me. He is the man I turn to for wisdom and insight. And for unconditional acceptance.
FBI Special Agent Steele is my raw power. My law enforcer, with all the strength that brings, even if there is still something about him I’m still not sure of.
Wolf, the biker. Wolf the service veteran, he is my rock.
I snuggle on the couch and tell him, “I’ve been reading the little book my mother left for me.”
“Is it like a diary?”
“I guess it’s like a journal, though some of it is pretty haphazard. She obviously had to keep it hidden, to make sure it stayed safe, and she dashed words into it whenever she could. Some of it is pretty touching, though. Can I read you a piece?”
“You want to?”
“Sure. Let me find it… hold on…” The little book is in my purse. Since I got it, I keep it with me all the time.
I find the passage and I read down the phone to Wolf.
I saw you, and I was so out of it with the drugs they gave me, I hardly even got to look at you. They wouldn’t let me hold you. Not for an hour. Not even for a minute, but I’ve thought about you every day. Ever since.
It might be a dream, but I believe if I saw you now, in a mall or on a bus, anywhere, I would know you. I would recognize you. Immediately. By the light in your eyes.
I don’t have much left to believe in, Eve, so I’ll believe that.
