Stay for My Life

Ok, Emily I typed, rubbing my eyes. I know it's Wednesday, I glanced at my alarm clock on my bedside table, the numbers glowing a faint green. (Ok, Thursday) and we were supposed to turn this in, um, actually a month or two ago, but I was... incapacitated. I glanced at the form sleeping on my bed, the glow of the clock shining green on his face in the darkened room. And I will be for a while still. I might never come back to school. There's just too many... "issues". I glanced again at the sleeping boy in my bed. He was starting to drool, the wetness shining softly soaking into my pillowcase. I almost laughed, turning back to the plain screen of my e-mail program. Almost. Ian's hearing was too sharp, even in his sleep, for me to make that much noise. He was the reason for my "issues". It all started about four months ago.

As a left handed person, I had never used my right hand for writing before. And that was exactly what my teacher was trying to get me to do.

"Annabelle Lee" I wrote in a clumsy hand across the top of my paper. The protest in all of my muscles reminded me why exactly my left hand, the one I normally used, was in a freaking cast. My boyfriend, Jeff, was very physical. But he only hit me when I did something wrong. I just had to watch what I did around him. How I spoke, especially.

Two nights previous, he had put a ladder outside of my second-story window. And he started climbing it at two in the morning. I was already in bed, asleep, of course. I had a test the next day. But there was Jeff, right outside my window. He knocked once, gently, but I started anyway. I shot up in bed, my brown hair flipping itself in front of my face, my nondescript brown eyes wide, giving temporary recognition to my otherwise unexceptional face. I decided I had probably been dreaming the noise and sank gratefully back into my warm blanket.

Jeff knocked again, three short, irritated taps. I recognized the noise was coming from my window. I jumped up, whirling to face whatever was behind the glass, my hand clutching the first hard object it had come into contact with for protection.

A pencil. I thought, glancing at it. Yeah, great weapon. Then I recognized the figure outlined by the moonlight outside.

"Jeff!" I gasped, running to the window and throwing it open. I knew I was probably already going to be in trouble for making him knock twice.

"Annabelle." The way he said my name made me think of a southern belle, eyelashes all a-flutter, cautiously smiling down at the public at her first debutante ball. "I wanted to see you." He climbed into my window awkwardly. I had retreated to over by the bed, my tired face twisted into an ugly scowl.

"Of course. So instead of letting me sleep, like a normal person," I couldn't stop the flow of hideous words pouring from my exhausted mouth, though I knew they'd only get me in trouble. "You somehow got the notion that it would be perfectly fine if you just happened to wake me up at two in the freaking morning!" I practically spat at him.

The next thing I knew, he had me pinned up against a wall, his forearm pressing against my neck. I couldn't breathe. His face was inches from mine. "Never ever f**king let me hear you speak like that again, d**n it!" He shoved me, hard, towards the still open window.

I stumbled back a few steps, catching myself on the low sill. Jeff strode over to me, gripping a thick book from my bookcase, my unnecessarily large dictionary. He raised it over his head, and I tensed, expecting what would happen next. There was a faint 'woosh'-ing sound, and the book came into contact with my face. I felt it tear my skin across my cheekbone. I leaned back, expecting the cool glass of my window to keep me from falling, but Jeff had forgotten to shut it after he had sneaked in, and I started to fall. Jeff grabbed at my wrists, trying to save me, but they slipped from his hands and I fell. I shut my eyes tight and braced myself for the fall, holding my frantic screams inside me. Then, the world went dark.

According to the doctors at the hospital I was rushed to, if I hadn't landed in my neighbors' pool, I would have died. They attributed the cut on my cheek and my broken wrist to the hard cement bottom of the pool.

All of this was why I was in school on a perfectly good Friday afternoon. I had missed the test because the doctors had wanted to keep me overnight for "observation". That was a load of bull crap if you asked me. They just wanted to charge my parents more because they knew my parents could afford it.

I shook my head, trying to concentrate on the anatomy test in front of me. It was over the bones of the human body, very easy memorization work. Finishing it, I sighed, my pulse throbbing in my poor, overworked right hand. Mr. Bell, my anatomy teacher, collected my paper and sent me on my way.

Of course the stupid test had caused me to miss my stupid bus. I thought about waiting three more hours until my parents could come pick me up. My mom was my dad's secretary - he sold life insurance. I pulled out my purple phone, debating on whether or not to call my boyfriend. I decided not to trouble him, and turned in the direction of my house. I had to walk through a bad neighborhood to get there, though. It wasn't like I was worried about anything happening in the middle of the day, too much, but I always kept a bottle of pepper spray in my purse and a rape whistle around my neck, just in case.

I got all the way to Eighth Street, which was lined primarily with rusted out '87 nutsmobiles. There was a group of kids playing soccer in the streets, with two overturned trash cans on either side acting as goals. They stopped playing and looked at me solemnly as I passed. Strangely, though, they seemed to be looking past me...

About four blocks later, I heard a small "oof" behind me. I whirled around, one hand immediately going for the pepper spray while the other made its way to the whistle on a chain around my neck. I held them both up, prepared to use them as need commanded, but there was not a soul in sight. I turned around again, stiffly, on edge, and kept walking. It wasn't long before I heard footsteps behind me. I stopped purposely and sneezed. I pretended to dig for a tissue in my purse while my hand systematically found my pepper spray again. There was a tap on my shoulder, and I turned, spraying my "attacker" in the face, not bothering to see who it was.

He fell, clutching his face and moaning. I whipped out my cell phone, preparing to dial 9-1-1, when he spoke from the pavement. "Oh, why? I was just trying to give you a tissue!" One of his hands was wrapped around a tissue. He rolled around. "Oh my GOD that hurts!" his hands clawed at his eyes. "f**king hell!" his voice broke, and I realized that he was probably right around my same grade. He looked familiar, too. Maybe he was in my history class.

Whatever possessed me to help the boy up and take him to a nearby gas station to wash out his eyes, I'll never know. But I did anyway. There was just something so instantly right about him. I could feel it.

"Sorry for pepper spraying you." I mumbled sheepishly, handing the boy the damp rag I had sweet-talked off of the cashier of the gas station, a socially awkward-looking chess club type.

He wiped the remains of the pepper spray out of his eyes as well as he could, and turned to me. "Ouch." He said pointedly, looking at me with bloodshot eyes.

"Um, I don't believe we've been properly introduced." I said, sticking my hand out in front of me, business-like. "My name's Annabelle?" I formed the sentence into a question, asking for forgiveness with my name.

"Annabelle?" He asked, incredulous. He didn't take my hand, either. I couldn't blame him. I had just pepper-sprayed him in the eyes, after all.

"Um, yeah." I responded, nervously scratching the back of my head with the hand I had extended for him to shake. My parents were kind of into a 'Little House On The Prairie' type of phase when I was born." I winced, remembering the countless photos of a very young me sitting atop horses, or wearing cowboy hats and those old-style hoop skirts. Those were really embarrassing.

"Huh." The boy said. He, too, looked thoughtful. "I'm Ian." He seemed to snap out of his abstraction.

"Ok. Uh, Ian?" I asked. His head snapped up at the sound of his name. "Why were you following me?"

It was his turn to wince. It was sort of cute, watching him fumble for an explanation. "Well, I um..." He looked at his hands, which were busy wrapping themselves around the cloth I'd brought for his eyes. "I think that a more... well less public place might be better to explain this in." He looked up at my eyes.

For a moment, I was paralyzed. They were such a pure green, his brown hair falling to cover them ever so slightly. He looked like a lost child, pleading with me to help him go find his mother. Those eyes were so pure and sweet, so innocent, so impossible to say no to.

"Sure. My parents won't be home for a while, anyway." I felt myself say, rather than my brain actually telling my lips to form the words.

So of course he followed me home. I spent the trip mentally slapping myself Stupid, stupid, stupid! I thought. He might be some sort of a thief, or worse. I shuddered, my mind playing out all of the possibilities of what could happen when I got home. None of them were too pretty.

I hesitated in front of my house. I hadn't thought of any brilliant reason for why he couldn't come inside while I was walking. So, being the good Greek hostess my parents had taught me to be, I brought him inside and offered him an ice cold drink. He politely declined and instead dragged me to the sofa. He knew exactly where it was, like he knew the house as well as I did, like he lived there, too.

"Well," he began, pulling me onto the couch beside him. "I was right behind you for a really good reason, I promise." He grabbed my hands in both of his.

"I'm going to sound crazy." He mused, laughing at himself a bit. He played with the loose skin directly above my right wrist bone, as my left one was still wrapped in plaster.

"Trust me, Ian." I said, making an effort to sound as warm and comforting as possible, although I probably came off sounding quite insane. "Nothing is going to sound crazier than you just following me around for no reason." I attempted a smile.

"I beg to differ." Ian muttered before continuing in a normal, but guarded voice. "I'm... destined, if you will, to protect you. That's why I was following you, to protect you.

I tried to get up, maybe run away or call the police, but he held my hands tightly, trapping me to the couch.

"What do you mean?" It was the first question that popped into my head. That question could have been easily replaced by so many others, like Are you completely insane? andWhy on God's green earth are you not letting me go?

His lips twitched a little bit. "You're the reason I was put on this earth, currently. You're the most important thing in my life."

At this point, I was waiting for his hold on my wrists to slacken enough for me to get out of there, but it never did. "I'm your guardian. I wouldn't be here without you. My life revolves around keeping you safe. And I kind of seem to suck at that..." He said, examining my bandages.

"I don't understand." I barely whispered, so low I couldn't hear it.

Somehow he could though. It made him chuckle. "Everyone, well, everyone important has a guardian. I'm yours. You must be destined for greatness to deserve a guardian. But that's only for the Powers That Be to speculate upon, not me."

A million questions trickled through my mind; Ian sat still and watched me process what he had told me. The silence became unbearable, so I blurted out the question that was on my mind at that time.

"Guardian? Like a guardian angel?"

Ian's face fell. Obviously, the idea offended him a bit. "Well, at first all the guardians were angels, hence the term. But too many people needed to be looked after for only angels to handle. Too many people, accident-prone people like yourself. So they employed others. Non-angels. Other species." Ian bit his lip, dreading the question I was sure to ask next. But I decided to surprise him.

"So, have you been doing this whole guardian thing since I was born?"

Ian's face relaxed. He was pleased to put off the "angels and non-angels" conversation indefinitely, or as long as he could. "Before, actually." He seemed proud of that. "Your mother had an odd tendency to dart out randomly in front of cars. She was a very oblivious pregnant person."

"Hm." I responded, racking my brain for the next most important question, but Ian interrupted my thought process.

"Technically," he said, gesturing between us with the clump of hands that was his and mine together. "This isn't supposed to happen. You're not supposed to ever be aware of me. I should be that random Good Samaritan that you never see again. Or better yet, the helpful stranger whose name you never care to ask."

"Helpful stranger?" I asked, raising one eyebrow.

He sighed, finally releasing my hands. But strangely, I didn't get up to run. I settled further into the couch, in a more comfortable position, intrigued by the mystery boy beside me. "Today, before you maced me, of course," Ian grinned. "But after you saw those boys playing soccer, I saved your life. You'd be surprised about how jealous non-guardians are of those of us who are guardians. And the easiest way to take down a guardian is to take down the one who he's supposed to guard." Ian spoke slowly.

"Two questions. One - why is that? Two - how many people have you been guardian for? And, whoops! Make that three - how old are you, exactly?" I numbered the questions on my fingers.

"Well, in an answer to your first question, a guardian and his person have a very strong tie. It is as much physical as it is emotional. Our hearts beat the same, and if the person's heart stops, the guardian's does, too. But it doesn't work the other way around, in the best interest of the human." He answered, giving me more information than was necessary.

"As for number two, the answer is five. All of them died of old age, I'm proud to say. None of them ever noticed my presence, either." He narrowed his eyes at me.

"If they're all dead, then why are you still... not dead? Not to sound rude or anything." I smiled.

"Well, there's a way for a guardian to become... un-appointed, if you will. That's just so that the good ones don't die. Whenever the human reaches the age of eighty, or whenever they finish doing whatever it is that they're supposed to do that's important, then the guardian has done their duty, and they are un-appointed.

"For number three, I am well over three hundred years old. Training to be one of the millennia's best guardians doesn't just happen overnight, you know."

My mind reeled at the concept of so many years. He'd seen so many things that I'd never seen. And he still would see so many more than I ever would.

Ian looked a bit concerned about my expression, which was a mixture of dizziness and shock. "Maybe you had better go up to bed; you've had a long day." He said, leading me upstairs to my room.

"One more question, first!" I giggled at the slight loopy feeling in my head. "What are you?"

"Your guardian, I told you that." His brows knotted together.

"No, I mean what are you?!" I demanded.

He finally understood. "Sleep, dear heart. I'll tell you tomorrow." He set me down on my bed, pulling the covers around my face to ward off the chills I always got in my sleep.

Funny, I thought. He seems to know that I get cold in my sleep. Then something occurred to me. Duh! Of course he does! He's my guardian, isn't he?

The next morning I awoke to a muted laugh. Ian was sitting cross-legged on the foot of my bed, holding a hand-written note from my mom.

"Annabelle." He read to me once he realized I was awake. "Your father and I had to go in early today. There're some pancakes on the kitchen table." He flicked the note towards my face and then crawled up to lay down next to me. "Sorry I woke you up." He was so close to my face I could feel his breath. "You feel free to go back to sleep."

"No, I'm quite fine." I yawned and stretched, a funny squeaking sound making its way past my lips. Ian raised his eyebrows, and I blushed, quickly speaking to cover up my embarrassment. "Are you going to tell me?"

He seemed to know that I was still trying to figure out what he was. "You won't like it." He cautioned, but I waited, so he continued. "But you deserve to know. First, you need to understand that you're an incredibly important person, for some unknown reason. Next, you're very... how do I put this lightly... death is close to you, I suppose. You've no idea how many times I've had to save you from random things. And third, I would not be here if it was not safe for you. Your safety is my top priority at the moment."

I waited. He seemed to be gazing at me expectantly, trying to communicate something incredibly important using only his eyes. "I have no clue what you're talking about." I finally said.

Ian jumped up, dragging me behind him. He yanked me over to beside my window. He wrapped me tightly into a hug, burying his face in my neck, muffling his words. I noticed he smelled like warm water. "I don't want to tell you. You'll be scared of me." He mumbled, sounding morose and quite pathetic.

Despite the adrenaline coursing through my veins, screaming about a danger my mind could not grasp, despite my pulse hammering so loudly I could feel it in my toes. I reached up awkwardly to pat Ian's back. "I won't be scared of you." I promised.

He didn't believe me, of course. How could he when he could feel me trembling? I was already scared of him. "You will be!" he sobbed. "But you have to know." I felt his arms stiffen, and my heart raced. I wasn't quite sure why, but I had a feeling it was because I knew I was in danger. His voice came softly as a whisper, carefully uneventful as the wind in the trees. His breath tickled my neck, making the fine hairs there stand on end.

"I don't know what I am." He sounded fearful. "That's why I'm so dangerous." He heard me gasp, and quickly corrected himself. "But not to you. I would never hurt you." He sounded fiercely sincere.

"Those Powers That Be were reluctant to make me your guardian for that very reason. But it's not like they had a choice."

His words didn't make me nervous, like they perhaps should have. Likely, if what he was telling me was true, he wasn't anything too dangerous. My pulse quieted and the adrenaline slowly evaporated from my system, leaving me feeling slightly drained and shaky. I pulled myself out of his grip and turned to go get my pancakes.

So suddenly I had no clue what happened, I was pressed up against a wall. Ian's hands were gripping my shoulders, pinning me there. His face was dark, his eyes two narrow slits - angry.

Ian?! I thought frantically, my hands flying up to push him away from me.

Half a second later, he was a few feet in front of me, holding a plate of warm blueberry pancakes. Some loose papers fluttered around his feet. "If you wanted some pancakes, why didn't you say so?"

My shoulders hurt. Ian noticed that I was glaring daggers at him, walked up to me, touched the inside of my wrist once, softly, and want to sit on my bed, his head hanging. He was still holding my pancakes. "I'm sorry I hurt your shoulders." I looked at him, incredibly confused. A soft smile touched the corners of his lips.

"You're wondering how I can know what you're thinking. Well, there's two ways for that to happen. Do you remember how I told you that we share an emotional bond? Well, when we touch, that bond gets stronger. That's how I can tell what's on your mind. The other way is if you think at me.

"Hm." I said, then got an idea. My favorite color is blue.

"Your favorite color is blue." He responded easily, a smile on his lips.

No, I lied. It's orange.

"No, apparently you're a liar and it's orange." His smile widened.

Green

"Green" His smile disappeared.

Yellow. Purple.

"Yellow, then purple. Can we stop this, please?" Ian was getting annoyed.

"Sorry." I muttered, twisting the pancake fork around in my hands.

"Well." He said, after a few minutes of silence, punctured only by the scrape of my fork against the white plate in my lap.

I looked up at him at once. He pursed his lips before continuing. "Since you know about me, I guess the rules apply to you now, too."

"Rules?" I asked dryly, my mouth full of pancake.

"Yes. And don't talk with your mouth full, you'll choke" I rolled my eyes at him, and made a show out of swallowing my pancakes.

Ian grinned. "Well, rule numero uno. Anybody who knows that I, specifically, am your guardian cannot be stopped by me." I was about to ask a question, but he held up his hand, signaling to me to wait.

"I know, it's weird, but it's a protective measure for the Powers That Be. Rule numero... two. I can't help you when you're thinking that you could use my help. Another weird rule, but it's just a precaution. You're not supposed to find out about me. And rule number three. In public, I don't exist. I can't compromise the position of all of us for just the lives of you and me. And lastly, I can't save you from yourself. You, currently, are the only human that is anywhere near capable of harming you."

Ian and I were silent for a minute. Most likely, he was waiting for his rules to sink in and the flow of questions to start.

Then, the door flew open. It hit the wall with a loud BANG, probably leaving a hole. Jeff stood in the doorway, and he looked mad. He tried vainly to compose himself a bit when he saw that I was not alone in the room. I quickly hopped up; trying to make the fact that Ian was in my room look as innocent as possible. I grabbed the heavy dictionary off of my desk. There was still a little blood on the corner from where it had hit me in the face,

"Here's that dictionary. Hope you can find out what 'supercilious' means!" I grinned at Ian, sounding slightly hysterical as the dictionary exchanged hands. I shoved him roughly out of the door. He eyed Jeff, gently closing my door behind him.

"Jeff, my dear!" I turned towards him, a large plastic smile plastered on my face, my voice brimming with false enthusiasm. A silent moment passed. I could see him trembling.

Suddenly, his fist reached out and caught my chin. The movement was so fast that I couldn't follow it; his hand was just a blur. But it was enough to send me tumbling. I landed on my bed, thankfully, and not on anything sharp.

Jeff started to yell at me. I strained to catch his words. "What the f**k, you dirty little sleeper?" he screamed at me.

"That was my neighbor, I-Ethan!" I cried. Walk up the sidewalk to my neighbor's house. I demanded with my thoughts.

Jeff strode over to my window, throwing open the blinds and staring towards the street. Seeing Ian, dictionary tucked securely under his arm, walk up the steps to my neighbor's house seemed to be proof enough for him. "Babe, I don't like the look of him. He looks like some sort of a freak. I can't have my delicate little flower hanging out with that."

He hadn't apologized, though, and I would've gotten mad if I hadn't been afraid he'd just hit me again. I almost gagged at his choice of words. "Really, he's fine. I wish you wouldn't worry about me so much."

Jeff turned to me and sat beside me on my bed, smiling softly. "But I will. I worry about you all the time, every day. I can't imagine how empty my life would be without you." He traced the red line on my cheek where my cut was healing. Moments like that almost made me forget other, more painful moments, like falling out of a window.

I glanced at him with a timid smile and his eyes gleamed like meteors. Dangerous and deadly, but oddly comforting. After a while, he said goodbye. Apparently, he had wrestling practice. I promised to see him soon and accepted a gentle peck on the lips. Aside from sometimes losing his temper, he really was the perfect boyfriend; never pressuring me to do anything I wasn't comfortable with, sweet to me when he was in a good mood.

"Why do you let him hit you?" Ian's quiet, worried voice sounded from behind me as soon as I heard the front door click shut.

"'Cause it feels so d**n good when he stops." I rolled my eyes and turned to Ian.

"I'm serious." He said, sitting down rather abruptly on the floor. "I don't understand. Help me get it."

Slowly, I rose from my place on my bed and walked to Ian. I grabbed his arm, reliving every moment of Jeff's hour-long visit. Letting Ian feel the stomach tingles I got when Jeff looked at me that certain way out of the corner of his eye, when he was sure I couldn't see. The ache in my soul when he told me he had to leave. The way he held me in his arms so many nights when I was upset, and just be there when I'd cry myself to sleep. At those times it was hard to imagine the other side of him. Without my consent, the memory of the first time Jeff had hit me played in my head.

"Come on!" I shouted, pulling at Jeff's shirt sleeve. "What are you afraid of? The ducks?"

I had scoffed, a mistake I didn't know not to make. I didn't even notice Jeff's arm stiffen in my grip. Nor how his eyes narrowed, or the angry set of his jaw.

Then, his arm reached out, like lightning, to slap me across the face. It was enough to send me tumbling to the grass. His eyes widened, reflecting me back to myself when I looked up at him from the soft turf, bewildered. His mouth dropped open like he had just witnessed some sort of a horrible accident.

"Annabelle." He whispered, keeling down beside me. His voice brimmed with regret, and the funny flutters in my stomach kicked up, even in my fear. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

He picked me up, placing me softly in the car and fastening my seat belt before climbing in himself and driving me to the duck pond where I'd been trying to convince him to take me. He just kept telling me how sorry he was.

And I believed him

I forced the memory to cut off then, and another one flooded into my subconscious to replace it, giving Ian the rest of the sad story.

I didn't remember much after the duck pond. Jeff had driven me home. I took some painkillers for my headache, and some Valium for my nerves. The combination had left me in an unfeeling, barely thinking stupor. I walked into the bathroom with a large, scary-looking kitchen knife. The broken razor was heavy in my hand as I pulled up the bottom edge of my shirt, revealing my pasty stomach. A delicate pattern of thin scars decorated it like a lacy veil. The lack of sensation when the blade pierced my skin was dizzying, and it only made me press harder. I couldn't figure out why I'd done it. I hadn't cut since ninth grade. The red dripped steadily onto the bathtub. Drip, drip. I could hear the faint splashes. It stirred something within my druggy dimness.

Ian pulled away from me abruptly, horror-struck. It was obvious that he had no more idea as to why I'd done it than I did.

Blushing, I threw myself onto my bed. I'd never been so embarrassed. He knew my secret. He knew why I always wore a one-piece bathing suit. The real story, not the "Oh-I'm-Just-So-Modest" lie I fed my parents. I'd never told anyone my secret. And Ian knew.

I closed my eyes. Ian walked towards me slowly, I could only tell by the slowly creaking floorboards. He placed a cool hand on my stomach. I shrunk away from it instinctively, and rolled myself off if the bed and onto the floor. But Ian was still staring. He wasn't going to simply let my scars go.

I sighed bitterly, and snapped at him, quickly jumping to my feet. "Fine. You want to see for yourself? Be that way. See if I care."

I rolled up the hem of my shirt a few times. The scarring looked worse than it had in my memory. It was worse. Each scar had a corresponding bad memory. A hit, a taunt, broken hearts... They were all mapped out plainly on my stomach, for anyone who knew how to read them.

Ian reached out, and I could see his hand shaking. His fingers felt along a few cuts in various stages of healing before he spoke. His voice was non-threatening. It didn't accuse me of my wrongdoings.

"Why?"

It was only one word, one whispered word, but it held so much sorrow, so much concern. I felt my internal walls beginning to chip.

I stammered, thinking of the proper response, the one he would want to hear. But before I could get a single word out, he spoke again.

"What..."

I spoke then, the question he was surely about to ask. "What was I thinking, I know."

He looked confused for a moment, and then spoke again. "What made you feel so sad and hopeless that you did this?"

He was tracing my scars with his littlest finger, memorizing, reading them. For some reason, it touched my heart. I broke; I cracked, telling him everything - my whole life story, laughing at the great parts, collapsing into sobs at the bad. I let Ian hold me in his arms, forgetting he could understand my thoughts and that I didn't have to speak for him to know. I tried to keep some of my memories secret, but ended up telling them anyway.

How it felt when my baby brother, little Sammy died of pneumonia. How, when I met Amy, my very dearest friend, my life turned around. How we'd laugh, cry, and complain with one another. How hard I laughed when my uncle showed up at my parents' one and only anniversary party wheeling in an oversized cake with a stripper inside. Eventually, after hours that felt like mere minutes, my tears ran dry. I still sobbed, but there just wasn't enough of me left to really cry in earnest. Ian simply sat and held me the whole time, patting my head and mumbling encouraging words. When it was all over, he knew everything I knew. Well, almost everything. There was one secret I wasn't prepared to tell him. One that I wasn't prepared to tell anybody. It was stored in the very deepest corner of my consciousness, locked away so deeply that I was seldom bothered by it.

Only the soft click of the front door and hushed voices of my parents as they arrived home from work alerted me to the late hour. I bit my bottom lip, glancing at my clock. It was 12:37 AM. I was supposed to be asleep. So suddenly that it made me dizzy, Ian was gone, my lights were off, and I was tucked under the covers, facing away from the door. My door hinges creaked open.

I closed my eyes and tried to act natural. My mother walked in, her heels clicking gently on the floor, and kissed my forehead. "I love you, baby." She whispered, pushing my hair out of my eyes. I waited for my noisy door to creak closed before I sat up and threw the covers off of myself.

Ian's cool hands were on my shoulders at once. He pushed me gently back into a laying position. "You really should get some sleep, Ann."

My stomach growled. Ian smiled. "Or perhaps I should go get you some food first?"

I nodded, and watched Ian swiftly jump out of my window, only to land deftly on the grass below, barely making a sound. While he was gone, I decided to check my email. There was a new message from Emily, my partner for the big math project, whom I'd affectionately nicknamed Emma.

Annabelle She'd written,I've gotten our subject. It's the Pythagorean theorem. Here's my idea... The email went on to explain in detail an ambitious foamboard pyramid that would open up to reveal a complex assortment of Pythagorean triples. She told me to only worry about the written part, and she'd take care of the rest with her "creative genious".

The small of pasta filled my nose as I clicked out of my email program. Ian spoke from behind me. "I brought Italian food from Tony's."

Tony's was the best Italian restaurant in town. No need to mention it was the only Italian restaurant in town.

I breathed in the delicious scent of my fine Italian cuisine. Alfredo pasta was my favorite food in the world. Ian was going to make me spoiled. So I told him so. "You're spoiling me."

"Really?" Ian was grinning. It made me wonder how long he'd gone without any sort of companionship whatsoever. "If I'm being honest, I'd say I think that's pretty funny."

"And if you're not being honest?" I challenged.

"Then that is the absolute least funny thing in the world."

A month passed without much event. Amy and Jeff found out all about Ian. Amy found out on my birthday when he'd saved me from a random knifing. Of course she was grateful - she'd been a target as well. When Jeff found out, it was also that day. Amy and I had arrived at my house late. Amy was still staring at Ian like he was some sort of magnificent being. Jeff was simply annoyed with me for making him wait. Seeing Ian only added to his annoyance, and I ended up telling him everything. He took it extremely well, too. It only earned me a slap across the face and a fierce kick in the side. In the presence of Ian, of course, who simply stood in the corner, grinding his teeth and trying to look relaxed. He couldn't stop Jeff from hurting me, not now that he knew so much. Then Jeff helped me up off of the floor and hugged me tightly, assuring me that he was just worried about my safety and was doubtful of Ian's story.

Aside from that one day, the rest of the month had been a nonevent. Amy and Jeff had both sworn not to tell anyone about Ian in order to protect me.So it was a warm Saturday afternoon and I was at the grocery store. Ian had some other business to take care of, so I was, for once, utterly alone. I felt vulnerable, like someone sinister stood watching my every move, but I wrote that off as paranoia and went to the store anyway.

I was in the cereal isle when I felt someone watching me. I looked around and didn't see anybody, so I shook off the feeling and tossed a box of Lucky Charms into my shopping cart. Then, I heard a voice at my neck. I bristled.

"Annabelle." The unrecognized voice purred. The person who it belonged to put his hands ever so lightly on my shoulders. "You're about to cause a lot of trouble for me."

I gulped and turned around, my eyes locking with those of the stranger behind me. I quickly assessed his appearance. He was in his late forties, probably. He was dressed rather simply in a dark blue T-shirt and jeans. I tried to look away from him, to run, to scream, to do something. But I couldn't seem to make my body obey my mind. I was frozen.

"Thank you." He said, touching my face beneath my chin. "There's no need to make a scene, and you've just made my job a lot easier."

I tried to pull away from him. My mind shuddered and trembled at his touch and at his words, but I still wasn't moving. My shuddering tremble was entirely mental. My heart didn't speed, my breathing didn't accelerate. Through my fear, I found it mildly annoying.

My mind flickered to Ian and the conversation we had when he told me the rules. I couldn't help it, though I knew it wouldn't help my situation any. I tried to ask him for help. Ian. Please, Ian if you can here me, I don't know what's going on! I can't move. Am I going to be alright? I waited, but there was no reply. Of course there wasn't. He couldn't help me, now.

"Now, dear." The middle-aged stranger purred. His bald forehead shone in the light. "I need you to follow me. No fussing!"

He shook one pudgy finger in my face. I wished I could make myself bite that finger off. I felt my legs start to move and found that he was leading me through the isles. I gave up on fighting him after a few moments of failure. I couldn't even make myself blink.

I was securely in the back f the stranger's car when I found my body again. Looking back on it, it made perfect sense- the man had gone back inside the store. The physical contact had been broken. I tried every door in the old LeSabre, but none would open, and it was quickly becoming unbearably hot locked inside the vehicle. The red velour interior seemed to somehow amplify the heat. It was obvious, sweating in the backseat of the car, that the stranger intended me to die in the scorching metal box of doom. But I had a small piece of miracle technology he had apparently not planned on stowed away securely in my back pocket. I stood up as far as the car's roof would allow, whacking my head on it in the process, and grabbed my blessed purple cell phone and opened it, deciding who to call. Bless those three little bars of signal in the upper left corner! Bless them shining in all of their signal-y glory.

First I decided to call Jeff, but quickly my mind rejected the pain of him ever knowing about my being halfway-kidnapped, and decided to call Amy instead. I had her number half-dialed before deciding that I could get out of my predicament on my own, since I had been the one to get myself into it, after all. I flipped my brown hair out of my face and my phone closed.

Annabelle! Where are you? I'm coming to get you right nw. I heard Ian's voice in my head, as close as if he was sitting on the back seat directly beside me. I jumped, and the phone hit the floor with a low thunk.

I pursed my lips, choosing my next words to him carefully and closing my eyes so that he wouldn't see my surroundings. I imagined up a picture of the produce isle, instead, the vegetable misters going full-blast. I pretended to be examining a zucchini. I'm at the store. Don't worry, though, I'm on my way homeI could feel the tension through my mind, and picked up my phone and shoved it in my pocket. I spied a stack of dark blankets beside me. The stranger who put me in the LeSabre was probably planning on using them to cover up my body after I was dead. I pulled the two cleanest-looking ones from the stack. One I wrapped tightly around my left leg, and the other I threw on top of me. I couldn't have glass shards on my clothes, and I was about to do something that would surely send those everywhere. I kicked out against the window with every ounce of strength I had in my body, satisfied when it gave way fairly easily. It left a jagged hole where the window once was. I quickly rid myself of the cumbersome blankets and put my hand through the hole, being careful not to touch the broken glass, and tried the door from the outside. It opened easily, and it allowed the gentle breeze to waft in. I took a moment to luxuriate in the feeling of the wind on my hot face, the fresh air blowing strands of long hair off of my sweaty neck. All too quickly, however, the realization of the incredible danger I was in seeped through all the pores of my body. The feeling caused an uncomfortable lump that I couldn't seem to swallow to rise in the back of my tight throat, and my body to go rigid. My mouth felt very dry. My eyes widened with some ancient instinct, and my mouth fell open.

Nearly tripping over myself, I hopped out of the car, hunching over so as to not attract attention to myself as I half-ran out of the parking lot. I realized that the hunchback was probably not making me look unsuspicious, so I reluctantly straightened up, trying not to look like a horrible criminal. I felt stiff and exposed, like someone vicious was going to jump out from behind every car I darted past and attack me. Needless to say, it was a dreadfully long walk home.

"Ian." I hoarsely whispered, stepping into my bedroom. I knew he would hear me. I flopped face-first onto my bed, trying vainly to clear my throat.

Ian was at my side in less time than it took for my heart to beat, pulling me from the bed, his cool hands pressing against my damp forehead. "What happened to you?" He demanded, his wide eyes holding nothing but concern for my safety. For a moment, I was very strongly reminded of a mother having just watched her child walk away from a terrible accident virtually unscathed.

The panic and anxiety that I'd managed to hold off in the high-pressure situation all came spilling out and tumbling down on top of me now, in the typical Annabelle style. I could always keep my head until I didn't need to anymore. I sobbed into Ian's shirt as I sat in his lap. He wrapped his arms around me and patted comforting circles on my back. "I w-was a-a-attacked." I managed after several failed attempts.