Chapter 12
C h a p t e r T w e l v e
K i a n G r i m m
My fingers flex around the belt I’m wearing and for some reason a strange obsession courses through me.
Those green eyes bleed into my vision, blurring everything that's supposed to be right. This isn’t according to my plan, she’s messing with my head.
I wasn’t supposed to find interest in the broken new girl, yet she haunts me.
I can still taste the lavender on her skin, feel the heat of her Adams apple against my tongue.
She ran out of here with her tail tucked between that round ass and all I want to do is follow.
I crack my neck and stand up. I follow the trail of lavender as if it's my last dying meal until I catch up to her. She walks ahead of me, quick and determined. Her shoulders are squared as she heads in the opposite way of her home and towards the train station.
I follow her, confused but with steady strides. My hands slip into my pants pocket to keep warm as we make our way towards the station. She doesn’t seem bothered by the sharp bite of the wind and that makes me even more confused.
Where the hell are we going? I’ve never followed her this far before.
The screech of the train's wheels dig into my ears and I groan at the sound of the loud noise. I hate loud noises. It scratches a part of my brain that shouldn’t be wired.
She buys a ticket and I stand back waiting for her to find a seat inside the train. She moves quickly and doesn’t even flinch when a couple bumps into her as they get off. She sits in the front, her eyes fogged over.
I wait until I hear the last horn before I board.
The doors close just as I step on. My feet carry me to a seat a little ways behind her but on the opposite side.
She won’t notice me unless she turns all the way around but I’m still close enough I can see each flicker of sadness across her features.
I want to know what causes her sadness? What makes those pretty tears flow down her red cheeks?
My hand finds my camera around my neck before I can stop myself and I spin the lens on it, turning the flash off.
I position it in front of my eyes, not caring if anyone sees the obsession in my eyes as I take her picture.
I cage her between my eyes and lens, because she’s not the type to stay still.
Each click freezes her forever in the memory card, something I can look at every second of the day.
I watch her through the tight lens and each tear that flows down her cheeks details out into soft puddles.
She pulls out the same newspaper clipping she had at lunch today in school.
She looks down at something that’s circled numerous times in the corner and I zoom in.
Lilith and an address is pressed in as her thumb traps it and my eyes scrunch up.
Who is Lilith, Little Swan?
I lower my camera and flick through the pictures I’d taken. I love that the beauty of truth comes out. The kind Sylvia tries so hard to bury under her grief, yet I see it.
I see her.
I lift my camera back into position and she shifts Amos into her lap.
Her large fur ball of a cat settles into her lap and all I want to do is replace him with my face.
I continue watching through my lens and she shifts again, this time you can see the uncomfortable tense of her posture as if she can sense me.
She turns a little, not enough to notice me and I take her picture.
Her features are delicate and I take back all the words I said before.
Her green eyes glint with curiosity and her full lips turn up.
She’s beautiful.
Every picture I take peels back that wall she’s created and I know her far more than she will willingly ever say. I see her pain, grief, determination, but most of all her loneliness. It calls to me, beckoning me forward.
I hate it, but I also crave it so much. It feels as if I'm burning myself alive. That’s why I love photography.
In my lens she can’t run from me.
The train finally comes to a stop, its wheel screeching to a halt. As soon as the doors open Sylvia jumps out of her seat. She walks fast as she pushes through the crowd of people. I wait, counting in my head as each person goes by so she doesn't see me.
As I step out of the train, cold whipping wind and rain seeps into my coat. I pull my hoodie over my head and tuck my camera. I squint against the heavy crowd, looking for her.
Her black hair catches my gaze and I fall into step with her. She opens her bag and takes out an umbrella as if she had already known it would be raining. I grab one from the bin beside the train and open it. This town seems slightly bigger than mine but quiet and full of mystery.
She walks fast, really fucking fast, and I follow suit not worrying about hiding myself since its pouring raining and there’s a crowd of people around us. She’s tucked the newspaper back in her bag but her lips move as if she's saying the address over and over again.
A sick thrill courses through me as I come to realize how easy it is to follow someone, to see their life just as they do. A low chuckle leaves my throat and my fingers flex at my sides. All reasons for caring have gone out the window. Why? Because I want to know the mystery behind this girl.
We come up to a street where all the homes look the same, deep red brick and vines covering most of the sides.
My swan slows down, her breaths coming out heavier.
She looks around, not noticing me as she steps toward the brick home.
She slowly walks up the steps, her hand trembling as she lifts it to knock on the wooden door.
I hide behind a hedge in the neighbor’s yard as I watch her carefully knock. Her knuckles hit the wood with soft precision that I can’t hear.
Her damn secrets pull me in more.
What is she doing here? What makes her appear as though she’s scared of what's on the other side of the door?
I release a breath and realize my obsession is just fascination, nothing more. I’m just curious, that's all. In Grimmwood nothing ever happens so I can’t help but to be curious.
She’s like my camera, just something I prefer to have with me to control what it does.
“Kian.”
Her voice surprises me. It’s thin with a slight quiver and it makes my head spin as I glance at the woman I’m supposed to call mother. Her brown hair is cut sharply into a bob and her cheeks have hollowed with age.
“Are you ok, son?” Father cuts in, his voice low with age and his silver hair comes into view as he steps around her.
I ignore them both not bothering to shape a reply, their voices never seemed meant for my ears. As a kid I was often ignored by them. My voice would fall on deaf ears and I learned then it was just better to be quiet.
My steps never falter as I walk towards the terrace. He groans behind me and the echo of my boots hitting the wood is the only sound between us, silence that accumulates in families that don’t know what to do with each other.
The home smells of them, not the perfect clinical smell it normally has. Her strong perfume drifts all throughout the home and the stench of my father’s cigar follows. I hate it.
I push open the terrace doors and slip out. The air is cold, stale, and clear of the awful smell of my parents. The sky is the color of steel and the clouds are heavy and low. I pull the almost empty cigarette packet from my pocket and light one.
I lean against the rail and inhale, the smoke clouds around me and glows warm against the creeping cold.
Something wet falls on my hand and I look at the twinkling water.
A snowflake. They begin to steadily fall around me and I pull my hoodie over my head.
The smoke rises and mixes with the snow creating ghosts around me.
I can hear the chatter of my parents inside. He makes excuses for my poor behavior while mother cries. It’s annoying, really. She’s wasting her tears on nothing. I’m just giving them what they gave me growing up.
Silence. Absence.
Because that’s what makes sense to me.
My pocket hangs heavy and I pull the envelope from it. It’s thin but full, a crack in my heart seems to heal the more I hold it.
I went back to the academy and grabbed them, the smell of chemicals still sticks to them.
I pull each picture out, one by one, and hold them up to the yellow terrace lights.
They seem dangerous and oh so tempting. A cruel smile forms on my face and a piece of snow hits the edge of it, melting into a puddle of water.
She nestles into the train seat, that distant expression in her eyes as if she wasn’t here or elsewhere, merely frozen. Her hair seems to be what the camera adores most, its glinting and full of silk. I want to run my fingers through it.
Ash from my cigarette drops onto the white that's collecting on the terrace boards. I watch it, stuck between temptation and release. The smoke in my lungs doesn’t help me pick between the two so I do both. I watch her and smoke.
There’s something about her expression that grounds me.
It's not fear, it's the lifeless gaze in her eyes and the grief she carries. Those tears she cries are meant for me, but they’re not. They’re for something or someone that lives three hours away.
You don’t travel that far without purpose, especially to a town like that.
That place isn't somewhere people chose to go to, you either grow up there or pass by.
Her chin is lifted in the next photograph, as if to say ‘try me’. She plays with the piercing on her tongue, pushing it between her lips in thought.
What is going through your mind, Little Swan?
Each picture softens in my hands as snow hits them and the tips of my fingers become numb with a chill.
“Kian.” His stern voice resonates through the glass but I no longer flinch or turn around as I once did. “Come inside, son, it's too cold out there.”
He won’t come out here and wouldn't dare let the snow touch his expensive hair cut. To him it’s cold, for me it’s a moment of freedom. A way to let my mind breathe without the exhaustion of others in my ear.
I flick ash over the railing and place the last picture back into the envelope.
Sylvia will never know that she beckons men like me. Lonely, calculated, and unnerved men who find it too easy to go after the girl in the Porsche. Even now, with this town quieting under the white snow, these pictures of her face call to me.
The wind picks up and a flurry of snow begins to pour. I can hear it hitting the side of the home so I walk inside. The heat around me is suffocating yet comforting to my frozen limbs.
I’ve always been good at reading people and I’ll read her until my head aches.