romeo remeemed

chapter 14

ariel

As soon as the latch clicks shut behind us, Romeo leads the way to a dark corner that can’t be seen from the rectangular window in the door. He settles down cross-legged on the tight blue carpet. I sit down beside him, feeling like a little kid again. It’s like circle time, when we’d go around and share whatever we’d brought for show-and-tell, but a thousand times more exciting, with none of the terrifying pressure of having to speak when my turn comes. He reaches out and takes my hands. “This isn’t a happy story,” he warns, staring down at the places where we’re linked. “I knew I was joining a dark group of people. As I said, I wasn’t the nicest boy. I was angry and selfish and thought there were a lot of people in the world who deserved to suffer.” I think about Jason and the real Dylan and all the other boys who made the bet. I think about Hannah and the girls who’ve avoided me like my scars are a plague that’s catching, and I shrug. “You were probably right.” He shakes his head. “No one deserves what these people do. They are utterly evil. I had no idea how evil until I vowed my allegiance to them. As soon as I did, I knew I’d made a horrible mistake, but it was too late. There was no way out. The way they force their converts to live …” He tries to pull his hands from mine. I hold tight, wanting him to know I’m with him. “I lived inside the dead.” “What do you mean?” “My soul entered the corpse of my choosing, and the magic of the people I served made it appear lifelike. But it was still a dead body. It still felt …” He looks up. I try to keep thoughts of zombies and horror movie monsters from my face. I manage, but then another fear zips through my mind. “Is Dylan dead?” I ask. “Is that why you—” “No. His body is alive, and his soul is resting in another place. This shift is different. This is my first time in a living, feeling form in hundreds of years. Before Tuesday night, I couldn’t taste or touch or smell. And I did terrible things. Unspeakable things, but … I could speak of them. If you want me to.” I want to tell him it’s okay and I don’t need to hear it. That who he is now is all that matters. But I know it’s not that easy, and he doesn’t really want it to be. “How terrible is terrible?” “I was a monster.” He lays the words down like a verdict. Blunt. Inescapable. He means murder and things worse than murder that I don’t even want to think about, but for some reason it doesn’t change the way I feel. “But you would take it all back if you could,” I say. “You’re different now.” He nods, relief flooding into his eyes. “I am different. I swear to you.” “What changed? Why are you here? You’re not here to do something terrible to me, are you?” He hesitates for a second too long. “No.” “Are you sure?” I feel like I have to ask, but I’m still not afraid. Not of him. I’m still haunted by this feeling that Dylan and I—Romeo and I—are going to end badly, but I no longer think it will be because of anything he’ll do. “I didn’t set out to hurt you. A short time ago, I did something marginally noble that drew the attention of a different magic. Good magic.” He wrinkles his nose. “Or better magic, at least. I was given a chance to …” He sighs. “This is difficult.” “I haven’t run away yet.” “I … You’ve heard the story of The Little Mermaid.” I nod, not surprised by the abrupt change in course. At this point, I’m not sure anything he says could surprise me. “Yeah. I have the same name as the character in the Disney version. But my mom named me after the archangel.” “The angel of wrath and creation. Suits you.” He does a decent impression of his amused smile. “Then you know that the mermaid traded her voice for legs, and was unable to tell the prince why she washed up on the shores of his kingdom, or what she required in order to be able to stay.” “So … you’re saying you can’t tell me why you’re here.” He nods. “And you can’t tell me what you need from me to stay.” He nods again, making my empty belly burn. “But you need something. And you … want to stay.” “I would give anything to stay,” he says. “But the play worries me.” “What does the play—” “I’ve never lived in a world where there was no Romeo and Juliet. I don’t know what it means. The play is gone. Does that mean I simply never spoke with Shakespeare in this reality, or is it something more?” My mind sputters, hiccupping over the latest piece of his puzzle that he’s tossed out so casually. “You mean there are … other realities?” The cells in my brain move farther apart, spread like the expanding universe, leaving me wobbly and less solid inside. “Like … things going on at the same time, but in different … spaces?” I’m not sure I’ve made sense, but he seems to understand. “There are,” he says, confirming the existence of something I find harder to believe than the story of his curse or another soul living in Dylan’s body. But magic has always seemed more real to me than science. Just thinking about how our bodies are composed of tiny, racing particles with their own internal life is enough to give me a bad case of the creeps if I dwell on it too much. “I’ve only experienced two,” he continues. “But I’ve been assured there are more, the world branching off into parallel versions of itself as people make choices that alter the course of the future.” “That’s … wild.” The same people. Different business. It makes me wonder … What if there’s a reason his story isn’t as impossible to believe as it should be? What if … “Have we … Did I know you before? In another reality?” His eyes meet mine and I feel him struggling, but I don’t know if it’s because of the things he’s forbidden to say or his own reluctance to answer the question. “Yes,” he says, making my heart stop. “And no.” It picks up beating again, with a jerky thu-thump. “I saw you, but we never spoke. I was in that world on a mission for the dark magicians who owned me for more than seven hundred years.” “But you’re free now.” “I’m enjoying a reprieve,” he says. “But I may have been tricked. The woman who lent me the power to borrow Dylan’s body … I don’t trust her.” “She’s a sorceress?” “More like a witch,” he says, a wry smile lifting one side of his lips. “A witch.” I know he means more than her ability to work magic. “Like the sea witch in The Little Mermaid.” It sounds silly when I say it out loud. In this darkened room, hunched together on the carpet, it feels like we’re playing some elaborate game of pretend. But this isn’t pretend. This is Romeo’s life, and maybe his death if I’m understanding him correctly. In the original story of The Little Mermaid, she turned to sea foam because the prince didn’t have the sense to love her. I think I love Romeo, but it’s so hard to know for sure. I’ve never felt anything like what he makes me feel—this overwhelming mixture of terror and joy, bliss and foreboding. And there’s something else that bothers me. A lot. “You said that Dylan’s soul is somewhere else, and that you’re borrowing his body.” He sighs, and I know the answer to my question before I ask it. “He’s coming back. Isn’t he?” “Yes.” Oh god. Dylan. Not the Dylan who loves me or stands up for me or kisses me like I’m the heroine in an old 1980s movie. The other Dylan. The one who took bets on whether he could get me to sleep with him and thinks I’m a loser-freak-joke. “I’m sorry.” Romeo tugs the end of my braid. “Do you hate me?” I look up. “Why would I hate you?” “We don’t have much time. Maybe it would have been better …” His eyes scan my face, as if trying to memorize every part. “I don’t want you to think I’m using you. I’m here because I care, but maybe it would have been better if I’d left you alone.” “No.” The strength in the word surprises me. “How long do we have? To figure out what to do?” Romeo pulls my hand to his lips and whispers against my skin, “If the witch keeps her word, until Friday at midnight. Three days from when I arrived in Dylan’s body.” Three days. That means it could all end tomorrow night. If I don’t figure out how to help him, then … what happens next? I don’t know. But I can guess it will be bad. Heartbreakingly bad. The thought has barely flashed through my mind before I’m reaching for him. I can’t speak. I can’t think about him dying or worse. I can’t think about being alone without him. I need him close while he still has a body to show me how he feels. He comes to me, moving over me as I lie back on the carpet. His hands cup my face and his lips meet mine, and he kisses me with all the pain and love and desperation that I’m feeling. My heart is so full I feel I might explode, but the particles inside of me are still spreading, reaching out, finding space that wasn’t there before. Finding hope that feels more like a peephole into another world than a chink in my armor. “I’ll figure it out,” I whisper. “I’ll find a way. I won’t let you go.” “Just promise me one thing.” His fingers brush my cheek, even that small touch enough to make my heart race faster. “Promise me you’ll never forget how this feels.” “I promise.” It would be impossible to forget. If he’s gone by tomorrow night, I’ll spend the rest of my life replaying every second with him, this person who fits me more perfectly than I imagined possible. “And I want … If we can’t be together, I want you to find someone else. Let someone else love you as much as I wish I could.” Love. He said it. Or at least he said he wished he could love me, which is practically the same thing. Isn’t it? I don’t know. I only know that, “I don’t want anyone else.” Tears rise in my eyes, a stinging flood I refuse to set loose. “And no one wants me. I’m nobody.” “You’re not nobody,” he says. “Not to me.” And then he kisses me again, and I kiss him back, and keep kissing him. Even when the bell rings, signaling the end of homeroom, and the halls outside fill with the sounds of people talking and laughing and slamming locker doors. All of that is distant and unreal, another world. I’ve entered my own alternate reality, one where I’m brave and not afraid to fight for what I want.