Chapter 18

Sunday September 28th 2014

He pulled up his ripped and torn jeans before throwing on a stained shirt that was old before he'd found it at the shelter. Over everything went his thread bare black hoodie. Walking the dead corridors, he was only another shadow in this place of endless darkness. But shadows never hurt. It takes people to do that, and this early everyone was asleep.

The campus was quiet, held in the razor twilight between dark and light. Swinging around the Vulpes, he took a seat in the forest's edge with his back against a tree. The tree's bark dug into skin, the cold of the earth questing through thin pants and into vulnerable flesh.

He'd thought her beauty would be less. That memory had lied, shading his eyes with its illusions. But she was just as beautiful today as she'd been last week. The robe shone with the baby soft rays of the new-born sun, golden hair gathering the light, purifying it into something holy. Floating across the grass, she was an ethereal thing of beauty and light.

Cesare had seen her mad, furious, blood hungry, and deadly. But he'd never seen her at peace like she was today. A light shone from her eyes and skin … a purity of faith and purpose.

Alexandra passed him with only a nod of welcome. Her first words would be with god. Nothing was more important than that. It was sacred, no matter the religion. A mindset that found meaning in the world's cruelty. All religions were born from love, the taking of god as your one true love.

He'd never owned faith, only jagged needs consumed his soul. He probably knew Christianity better than many of the devoted, but knowledge was meaningless to God. Faith is what's required, not facts.

Cesare watched the sun rise above the Vulpes as cold crept into meat and dirt stained his pants. It might have been hours or minutes, but eventually she came down the trail.

Alexandra radiated joyous contentment. "Have you come to accept Jesus Christ as your savior and Lord?" Her small smile let him in on the private joke between them, yet her eyes were deadly serious. The confrontation had made her question her duties to Christ.

Standing, Cesare dusted off his pants with a smile. "Nope."

Nodding, her own smile was undimmed by his answer. "Not that I don't appreciate you watching over me, but why did you come?"

Cesare collected what he wanted to say as they walked slowly back to the Vulpes. "I wanted to see you."

Her eyes ran over him before turning away. The silence ripened in the long minutes before her soft words threaded the air. "Some boys get the wrong impression … but you should know, I don't feel that way about you," Alexandra said.

He hadn't come here to ask her out. No, he'd just wanted to get to know her. The illusion that guys like him could get girls like her had never been a lie he'd bought into. But that didn't mean they couldn't be friends.

No words left his mouth. Instead, he moved off the path and away from her. "Wait! Cesare, I didn't mean …" Her words faded away as he kept walking. This was a mistake. He never should've come. It was stupid to leave himself open to a person like her. He shouldn't of thought he could be friends with a girl like her. She didn't have male friends, didn't look at them as anything but potential suitors.

Hours later he was working quietly in the cottage when Elizabeth walked in. Coming up behind him, she looked over his shoulder. "What are you doing?"

"Fractional crystallization. It's done by boiling and cooling a solution, filtering out the crystals, and then boiling it again. Once I have the purity I need, I'll powder and melt them down along with a few other things until we have a finished product." The answer rolled off his tongue as he watched the solution. Boiling bleach wasn't something to take your eyes off. Luckily, he'd asked for one of the better fume hoods, along with a cover that came down over the working area.

"And what are you making?" Elizabeth asked pointedly.

"Potassium Chlorate. It's an explosive combined with a carrier, making it an effective plastic explosive. It was used in World War I before more stable compounds came into existence." There was a palpable silence at his words.

"Explosives?" Elizabeth squeaked out.

"It's no different from napalm. Both are dangerous, but only if you're not careful." Cesare smiled at the Chthonic's pale face.

"Tell me you know what you're doing?" Elizabeth asked quietly.

Cesare looked down. "Do you think I'd do anything that would hurt you?"

Elizabeth watched him work for a long minute, taking in the smooth play of his hands over the explosive materials, the sure way he adjusted the drip and temp. Her soft hand rested on his shoulder. "I know you wouldn't. Do you want to talk about what's bothering you?"

"No." She squeezed his shoulder and left him to his work.

She walked away, but continued to talk, the words wrapped around him, offering a friendship he'd never known. The soothing words worked where he'd failed, calming the serpentine thoughts that wound through him. Why would anyone want to be with him? What did he offer but misery? What would anyone see in a boy who'd been thrown away by everyone that mattered? What could an ugly boy like him offer a woman that had everything? How could he be stupid enough to think they would ever look at him as a person, as a friend? Do you look at a dog eating out of the garbage as an equal? What could they feel for him but pity and disgust?

The blackened snakes sunk down into the darkness of his mind under Elizabeth's words, but they never truly left him. And why should they? They were his truest friends, the only ones he could depend on when the world walked away from him. Even in the darkest nights, slicked with cold, hunger twisting his gut, body quivering from fear, he still had his self-loathing and hatred. When love has flown, revealed as only a fair-weather friend. When hope's proven to be the tarnished whore she always was, you still have your hatred to keep you warm. When that's all you have, you learn to like it because it's still better than being alone.

The batch went into the fridge, ready for the next step. Another hour of cleaning and he was ready to start work on the campus. With Elizabeth's voice beside him, he followed her out to start the torture of the day.

His back ached as he kneeled on the ground, his spade deep in the earth making the hole big enough for the plant. Elizabeth spoke from behind him. "I think it's time for lunch." Cesare set the plant inside the hole, gently packing fertilizing mix around the roots before covering it with dirt.

Dirt caked his knees and butt, streaks of brown running across his shirt. Elizabeth, as usual, kept clean. Granted, her hands were as dirty as his, but her pants had gotten away with only a light dusting.

He got to his feet with a groan before holding his hand out to Elizabeth. He hoisted her up quicker than either had expected. Suddenly, the two were face to face with only inches between them. Her breath washed over him as he lost himself in her brown eyes.

"I brought a blanket." Her eyebrows rose, color flooding her cheeks. "Not for that. For a picnic … under the cherry blossom tree. If you set up the blanket, I'll get the food. It's back at the cottage in my bag."

"Just like that." Elizabeth's statement had a challenging lilt to it.

"Just like that. Get the bag and I'll get the food." With a wrench in his heart, he backed away. He could feel her eyes on him as he walked away. If he'd given her a chance, she'd have found an excuse to call it off.

By the time he returned, Elizabeth had put the blanket down under the cherry blossom tree. They shouldn't be here, not like this. But it's better to regret a choice than to live a coward.

Taking her tray, Elizabeth's words were a quiet echo of his thoughts. "We shouldn't be here."

A slow drink of water gave him time to think. "Depends on who you're asking. If you ask me, we most definitely should be doing this. Besides, we agreed the weekends were our time."

Setting his tray aside, he laid back and stared up through the branches. The cloudlike canopy danced in the light breeze, the sunlight shooting darts through pale pink blossoms. Elizabeth was a bare few inches from him. It was probably wishful thinking, but he could swear he felt her warmth. Closing his eyes, he relaxed as the breeze brought the smell of the forest to him. Cawing and flapping, growling and whistling, the sounds of the ravens were oddly comforting. They were the only family sounds he could remember hearing, the intimate sounds of siblings, friends, fathers and mothers arguing, fighting and living.

"You want to talk about it?" Elizabeth sounded close enough to smell.

"Not much to tell. I went to see Alexandra. Got up early and waited until she was done with her prayer's. She told me I wasn't her type," Cesare ground the words out. "I don't know why women have to say that before I even open my mouth. It's not like I … I know what I look like and I know who I am. I just wanted to talk to her and see if … I was just looking for a friend." It came out broken— only pieces of words, little islands of agony.

"Only those you care for can hurt you. You may not believe it, but you care for her, far more than as a friend. Just as you care for Anastasia. You may not see it or want to admit it, but we see it," Elizabeth said softly. "I don't think she meant to hurt you. I'm not apologizing for her … I hate what she did. Just as I hate what I did …" A warm finger ran over his forehead, tentatively brushing his hair back. "I hate it because it hurt you, and I can't take that pain away. And I hate it because I don't know what to do now." The hand drew away reluctantly.

"Do you know what the friend zone is?" Cesare asked.

"If I remember correctly from when I was in school, it's when a guy likes a girl, but she doesn't like him."

"I'm the friend zone kind of guy, well, if I'm lucky I am. In a story you have the guy that gets the girl? Yeah, I'm not him. I'm the throwaway. The comic relief getting punked by the hero. Girls like bad boys, tough loners who don't give a damn and kick ass … like Blaez, not the homeless punching bag." Only in books does the loser get the girl and believing anything else was stupid. But hope—that most insidious of emotions, that most treacherous of friends—never quite left him.

"Do you like them?" Elizabeth asked softly.

"They're talented, rich, and beautiful. I'm sure just about every guy has feelings for them in some way. But it doesn't matter how I feel."

"And if you get your secret wish and one of them becomes your girlfriend? What then, Cesare?" Elizabeth tried for casual but failed miserably. Fragile and oh so breakable, all it would take was one wrong word.

"I've been thinking about that," Cesare said into the pregnant silence. "People move into your life. We fuck them, date them, and drop them as easily as boy bands. Because we don't love them. We fall in love with fantasies, not people. And when the fantasy dies under the reality, we go looking for another dream."

"Possession's stronger, owning a pure madness truer than love. Stripped of illusion, its ownership in name and need. Skinned of poisonous fantasies and lies, its an honest sadism. For a special few, a greater bond's formed from that darkness."

Her sigh seemed to drain the life from her. "I can't give you what you want, Cesare. For me, everything's on the line. It wouldn't be a fling with a broken heart at the end. I don't remember a time when I didn't want to be a teacher. I went to college so I could come back here and teach. Over a decade of schooling and I made it. One wrong move with an underage student and I've destroyed decades of work."

She laid her hand lightly on his shoulder. "And Cesare, this isn't the time to say this, but I have to. I'm older than you. What I'm looking for … you don't have. If I were younger and still in school, maybe we could have been something but now … It's never going to happen."

Her hand left his shoulder, the spot cold and dead without her warmth. He'd never expected anything else. Cesare's hope, a small sickly thing, was never anything more than a diseased baby teetering on the edge of the grave. That hope gave a wet, agonized whimper and died in his heart. She would never be his.