Marked Read online

  Chapter One

  “I can’t believe you’re dragging me along to this stupid house party.”

  I meant it too, it really was stupid. Then again, I wasn’t the biggest party girl in the world, so I guess my opinion might not be as valid as I thought. I don’t hate parties as such; I just hated the loud music, and the drunken stupid people, not to mention the overly hormonal teenagers. Okay, so I hate parties, but I wasn’t about to let my best friend trek out to downtown Brooklyn by himself and attend a house party that some friend of a friend invited him to.

  Ever since I had moved from Florida to Brooklyn, at the ripe old age of six, Rhys Waltz had been there for me, and I had been there for him. Brooklyn wasn’t the best neighbourhood in the world and having someone looking out for you was probably one of the best ways to safe in a place like this. Rhys and I clicked for a lot of reasons. He understood that I was strange, and that I didn’t care about how I dressed or how I looked to others, or what people thought of me, and that the only thing I desired to do at the moment was finish school and travel. Rhys was kind of the same as me actually, but he only deserved to move up the chain a little, and live in Manhattan.

  I was already regretting my decision to attend this party about as much as I regret wearing this tight ass dress and these stupid high-heel boots. Apparently I wasn’t allowed to go in my usual jeans, sweatshirt and converse sneakers to this party. I never dressed like I fitted in here anywhere. I wasn’t supposed be living in Brooklyn, and if my life had turned out different, I definitely wouldn’t be.

  My parents died when I was nearly three. I never knew if I was going to stay the only child in that family, or even if my dad would be that typical overprotective dad if I ever got a boyfriend, and I never had the chance to live in Florida as long as my heart yearned to. I had no other relatives that I could live with, besides my Uncle Joseph. He was my mother’s younger brother, and whilst, like my mother they had grown up in Florida and he did intended to stay, but when he was offered a well-paying job in Brooklyn, he took it and me with him. I never blamed him for anything that happened to me. He didn’t know how to be a real parent, and when his sister died he was pretty heartbroken over the whole thing.

  It was a car accident that ended my parents live and also what tore them away from me. It was some drunk driver who ended up on the wrong side of the road. That’s the story I’ve been told anyway. Being so young I can hardly remember any of it, in fact I was in day care the day it happened. I have vague memories of my uncle picking me up in tears, and a funeral, but all of it just seemed to blur together, like a suppressed memory.

  “Did you have to park so far away?” I complained.

  Rhys turned to look at me and he grinned slightly. He found my whinny amusing of course. Why he was even taking me to this party was actually beyond me. He really could get any girl he ever wanted. I meant that too, because it wasn’t like he wasn’t attractive or anything, because he was, and I’d catch him talking to girls all the time, and I knew they were interested, but in the end I think it was him wasn’t always so interested. He had this dark chocolate brown hair that was chopped roughly and kind of swept to one side, and since his grandmother’s side was Lebanese or something, he had this light sort of tanned skin as well. If he wasn’t my best friend I would probably pounce on him, but he honestly felt like a brother to me.

  “I thought it was closer,” he admitted with a shrug, “and would you quit it with that sour face?”

  “What sour face?” I said quickly.

  “This will be fun,” he told me, with a slight skip in his step. “You don’t get enough for one, and I know parties aren’t really your scene, but we start senior year on Monday. Can’t you just enjoy what’s left and have some fun?”

  “Maybe I don’t want to have fun,” I shrugged slightly.

  “Come on, Lily,” Rhys said with an eye roll. “Josie will be there.”

  “Josie hasn’t even sent a text message to us this summer,” I reminded him bluntly.

  He sighed only a little when he realised that I was in fact, right. “Yeah, okay, so Josie has converted to the dark side. Some friend she turned out to be.”

  “Can we just not stay for too long then?” I asked him.

  “Fine,” he caved. “We can leave once you attempt to have fun, okay?”

  “Fine.”

  We could hear the roar of the music a few blocks from where were now, and I noticed a stream of light coming from a two story house nearby. The front door was wide open when we reached the house and there were a few people scattered out on the front lawn, one puking too when I looked closely enough, not that I wanted to look closely. Rhys grabbed onto my hand as we walked the stone path to the front door. Rhys could be like my older protective brother a lot of the time, and I guess I needed someone like that in my life, because what else did I have?

  For once in my life, I think I fitted into the crowd and didn’t stand out like a sore thumb. I figured it was this ridiculously tight dress and the tough cute boy on my arm. In the dark no one could see my long wavy strawberry blonde hair that was nearly down to my waist at the moment. My uncle told me I got my hair from my mother, and the green eyes from my father, and that I was literally more a mixture of both of them, rather than just resembling one of them. I liked my hair to be honest, one of the only features of myself I actually liked. I never met that many people with red-like hair anyway; it was a recessive gene after all. I have always been a little short too, but then again Rhys was ridiculously tall, so that didn’t help me right now.

  There were so many people in this house that trying to get anywhere meant having to graze up against someone to get from one room to another. The music in the longue room was so loud that just walking by the room I could feel the beat of the bass in my chest. There probably was an even mixture of girls to boys too as I scanned through, and a pretty even ratio of the cute ones, and even the unsure shy ones who sat in the corner and just nodded their heads to the beat.

  For out of the town Brooklyn, these people definitely had more money than we did. I lived in an apartment building on the second floor in a two-bedroom apartment. Our kitchen barely managed to fit my Uncle and me in it on any day of the week, and most of our furniture was second hand. This house however was exactly what you would call a house. It had real art on the wall, and not just art I had picked out of some unknown artist or painted myself and had stuck on the wall, it was actually real priced art, but that was nothing compared to the chandelier light in the foyer. The house had a foyer for crying out loud. I never knew any such luxuries of money or anything similar for that matter. A house like this was kind of a dream.

  Rhys dragged me through to the kitchen to where he managed to get both of us a drink. Maybe alcohol could make me enjoy myself a little more, but I highly doubted it. I’m usually pretty pessimistic; it’s part of my personality. I guess I thought I couldn’t be happy now, at this age, in this place. Rhys is the only person that kept me grounded. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy things. I love books, and music, and art, especially drawing … I just wasn’t so into being a teenager I suppose.

  “I couldn’t make you dance even if tried, could I?” Rhys asked me, yelling over the music.

  “No,” I told him dimly. “Unless I’m drunk, you know what I’m like then.”

  Rhys simply laughed at me then.

  “Go dance though,” I urged him, yelling into his ear. “Don’t let me stop you, go have some fun! And I’m pretty sure I saw someone checking you out before.”

  He gave me a bit of a look, a look that was asking if I was serious or not. I rolled my eyes at him and gave him a little push towards the sea of dancing bodies and he finally let himself disappear among them. I now just stood in the kitchen for a little while, with
my drink, looking like a complete loner, but I couldn’t really say it bothered me too much. I couldn’t see Rhys anymore, but I just have to presume he was having fun now, and why wouldn’t he be? I was only going to be a buzz kill hanging around him all night.

  Truthfully I think he would hate the idea of me being home in my room reading a book while he was here enjoying himself. I mean, we do everything together, absolutely everything, and that was mainly because our common interests were all the same. We both had this thing for pop culture, especially marvel comics. We spent most of our time arguing over who would win in a fight between Iron Man and Thor. I would argue Iron Man and he would try and argue Thor, and we could never agree on who would actually win. Guess we were both stubborn like that. People often presumed that we were dating, and by now the notion didn’t surprise either of us. We weren’t though, and we probably never would. I didn’t see him like that, I couldn’t see him like that, and I didn’t want to see him like that honestly.

  After about ten or so minutes of standing in the same place I decided to move, maybe try spot Rhys and check if he’s actually enjoying himself. I leant on my toes to try seeing over everyone’s heads, but even then it’s hard to see anyone’s face. Not even the heels I wore really helped me get the bird’s-eye-view needed. My eyes swept over the back of the longue room near the large open window. I managed to spot a couple toward the corner of the window. The girl was pressed up to the window while the boy stood in front of her completely smothering her, and whilst the position looked awkward from here they were probably loving it.

  I found that my eyes jumped from them to look anywhere else but there. It wasn’t just because I don’t really have any interest in seeing some random people make out, but because in the corner of my eye I noticed something else. I noticed someone was watching me from the outside of the window. I knew that through this crowd of people there was probably no way he actually staring at me, but there was something about his stare that made me stare back.

  He stood directly in front of the window on the outside of the house with his arms crossed over his chest. He was dressed in this leather jacket, a jacket that I felt stood out, and maybe it was because it seemed to be thick and nothing like a fashion accessory. His hair was messy and untamed and gives off a silhouette around the top of his head that comes from the street lamps that shone through the window, and because of it, it was impossible to tell if he had dark hair or light. I was able to notice his eyes though and from such a far distance it honestly surprised me. I could tell they were blue, I didn’t know how though, but I felt like they looked directly into mine. There was something about him that was so off…there’s just something about him…something I couldn’t understand.

  “Ow.”

  I jumped back down onto the balls of my feet as I felt myself nearly fly forward and feared I was going to fall flat on my face. I managed to hold myself though and I turned around to find that it was a boy that has elbowed me in the back, but with the lack of light I could barely make him out.

  “Sorry,” he apologised quickly, walking past me before I could even reply.

  In that moment though I wasn’t so concerned about some random boy elbowing me in the back, I was more concerned about the boy in the window. I immediately jumped back on to my toes and desperately turned myself to the face the window. I felt my heart drop slightly when I realised he was gone. There was only that awful couple who really seemed to be going at it now. I let out a sigh. What the hell was I doing? Looking for some mysterious boy in a window? I was probably drinking too much.

  I turned my attention back to find Rhys, but Rhys had literally disappeared into thin air and I still have no idea where he was. I had only given him an hour in all fairness; I guess I can’t force him to leave yet. I decided instead to explore the house and get my mind off the stupidity of wondering why there was someone staring at me earlier, or if that was even real. They probably thought I was someone else, yeah that it’s, they thought I was someone much better looking, probably.

  It surprised me how the congestion of people thinned out as I moved upstairs, however, the hormones raged a lot more up here in the bedrooms. I was too terrified to open any closed doors; I didn’t even want to know what I might’ve found in there. I walked down the hall though, completely ignoring those who were pushed up against the wall in some sort of embrace.

  I was about to give up, turn around, walk back down stairs and sit outside until Rhys found me sitting on the lawn, when something caught my eye. It was an actual open door, which really was rare in this hallway. It was slightly ajar actually, but the fact that it was the only door open isn’t why I found myself stopping to look at it. Instead though, I noticed something strange about it.

  The top section of the door was about at my eye level, and that was the part that stood out at me the most. Something was carved into the white painted wood of the door. I felt myself frown as I lifted my hand to let my fingers softly trace the shape of the symbol on the door. It wasn’t any type of symbol I knew or had ever seen before, but then again, something about it made me feel like I should at least know what it was, or maybe what it even means.

  I let the palm of my hand press to the door and I gave it a gentle push and let the door swing open. I was relieved to see that no one else was in the room and in fact not even a bedroom, but a study room. I always felt comfortable in a room of knowledge, like a library, and this room immediately caught onto my interests. It wasn’t like any other study room I had ever seen to be honest. I mean, besides the fact that there was a computer on the desk directly in front of me, and that it was placed in the middle of the only two book cases in room, everything else about it seemed strange. All the walls were covered in pieces of paper and as I stepped closer to look I realised there were maps, and drawings of things I didn’t quite understand. It all just seemed so out of place compared to the rest of the house.

  I hesitated before I turned to face the wall on my right. Something sent chills down my spine, but they’re not bad, I didn’t feel scared, I felt confused. The wall itself is covered in sketches and photos, and article clippings and anything you might expect some sort of researcher to have, but whatever was being researched wasn’t anything I had ever seen before.

  I realised quickly that the door wasn’t the only symbol in this room. There were drawings of others on the walls also, but none ever the same, and nothing I ever recognised. It didn’t feel like they would be any sort of language either like Japanese symbols or something similar. They didn’t look right to be anything like that, and they didn’t feel right either. It was hard to explain, but the site of all those symbols set of something that made me feel uneasy to my stomach.

  They are nothing though. They aren’t real symbols of any sort, they just didn’t seem real. I had no idea what they were, no idea why I’m still standing here hopelessly trying to figure it out, like they’re supposed to be important. They’re just drawings, just drawings of symbols, of nothing. I’m still not moving though, I just can’t. They had this sudden hold on me, and I couldn’t explain it, I just knew the symbols were something…they have to be, otherwise why would they be here?

  “Lily?!”

  I jumped at the sound of my name and I suddenly managed to snap out of my trance. I realised now I had practically been holding my breath, only breathing heavily out of my mouth and I realised it made my heart beat a lot faster than it should’ve been.

  “Lily?”

  I recognised the voice to be Rhys’ as it grew louder. My heart won’t slow down and now for some reason I was worried about what to do, worried to even leave this room.

  “Lily, are you up here?”

  My mind suddenly snapped into a new gear and in a frantic attempt to keep one of the symbols I tore a piece of paper from the wall, breaking it off from the pin that held it in place and barely looking at it as I shoved into my spaghetti string hand bag that was on my shoulder.

  “For god sakes, where are you, Lily-?”r />
  I rushed to the door and pulled it open to see Rhys standing near it, peering his head down the hallway as he suddenly spotted me. He looked tired and worn out or something; maybe he had been dancing for too long.

  “What where you doing in there?” He asked me as he tried to peak around me and into the room.

  “Not having fun,” I told him, pushing him away from the door. “Can we go home now? We’ve been here for a few hours now.”

  “Yeah, yeah, okay, we can go,” Rhys said with a sigh. “Only because it’s a long drive back.”

  “Sure, sure,” I smiled a little. “Did you meet anyone?”

  “If you mean, did I meet a girl, the answer is no,” he told me plainly.

  “The answer is always no,” I groaned slightly as we started to walk down the hall and then down the stairs, pushing people to do so. “Do you not want a girlfriend?”

  “I want a girlfriend.” I see him shrug. “Maybe I’m just picky.”

  “You’re real picky then.”

  After I started complaining about how sore my feet were from my shoes as we started to walk back to his car, Rhys ended up carrying me on his back. He always found a way to take care of me, and if that included carrying me for ten blocks he was more than happy to, even if he complained about it a little. I sat in the passenger seat with my head pressed on the window once we’re in the car. I was weirdly tired now, probably because the time had ticked over to a.m. and I hadn’t even realised until now. Rhys completely focused on driving and he only looked over at me as I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.

  As I shut my eyes I realised I have no idea as to why I was suddenly so exhausted. I had barely done anything tonight, unless you counted standing around for a few hours and getting elbowed in the back. My mind however didn’t seem to be as tired as my body. With my eyes shut I could see images…images of the room, and the symbols. They were all images I desperately wanted to push out of my mind. I didn’t want to want to think about them. I didn’t want to know about why they have such a sudden hold on my mind ether.