Page 2 of Run, Starlight (The Royal Ballet Presents #3)

MARCELLA

Fabrizio stands in my doorway with a soft smile on his face.

He reminds me of our mother. His features are so much like her it’s funny he’s a boy.

Brown curls and eyes so dark they’re nearly black.

The mischief behind his eyes always makes me giggle, and when he laughs, it's contagious, but there aren’t any laughs today.

His eyes are flat, lacking his normal spark.

Something feels off. I haven’t seen him in almost two days, and that’s strange too.

He looks around the room, finding me lumped over my homework at the desk.

I have a bad attitude this afternoon, or so Mom and my teachers tell me, but I'm just tired and not in the mood to talk to anyone.

Fabrizio is the exception. When my big brother comes in, I feel just a little better.

He stands several feet back and stares at me until I put my pencil down.

“What’s going on?” I ask, excited for whatever he has to say. It’s always a good day when I have my brother’s attention. “Where have you been?”

He doesn’t say anything, and the dark circles under his eyes stand out to me.

“Fabrizio, are you okay?” I ask, starting to really worry now. This isn’t like him .

“I just wanted to look at you,” he says, but I’m not sure what that means. His voice sounds all wrong, not just too deep but filled with sorrow, some pain I don’t understand.

“Fabrizio, please,” I say, not even sure what I’m asking for. Maybe for him to step all the way inside so he can tell me about whatever is bothering him. I know he was having some problems with bullies at school, but his face looks like he hasn’t slept in the whole time since I’ve seen him.

“You’re a good sister, Marcella. I love you.”

His tone raises every alarm I have, and I’m already standing from my desk to walk over to him, but before I push out the chair, he smiles at me, that goddamn soft smile.

I didn’t realize before his hand was behind his back, but it’s so clear when he pulls out a gun that he was hiding it on purpose.

What the hell? Why would he have a gun? I’m not even afraid for myself because he would never hurt me.

I'm still smiling back, not understanding what he would need that for.

It could be a fake gun until the moment he opens his mouth and sticks it inside.

POP. The shot fires, a blast that rings in my ears and rips everything I have right from inside me. It happens too quickly, the flash like the light of the camera he used to take pictures of me on my birthday just a few weeks ago. My own screams merge with everything else.

One second he’s smiling, and the next, his brains are all over my My Chemical Romance poster. I drop to my knees beside him like I can shove them back in his head and get him running again, but he’s not coming back, and neither am I.

The scream scratches my throat on its way out, like vomiting nails from between my cracked lips, and they taste the same every goddamn night.

“You did it again, Marcella.” A voice comes from the darkness, and I almost scream again when I don’t immediately recognize it. My eyes open to the dark room, finding the fine outline of light from the streetlamps outside my window. One thing I can see to prove the dream isn’t real.

“Marcella?” Anna, the most recent of my roommates, demands.

Two, something I can hear. I must have woken her again with my screaming.

There's a distinct lack of sympathy in her voice. Cars pass on the street below, and I look for something I can taste or smell to help my body calm and realize it wasn’t real and only a dream.

My sweat-covered body is cold. I’m shaking like a leaf, with the distinct scent of fear-filled sweat, and I guess that counts as number three.

The room is too small for these types of disruptions, and my roommate isn't happy living with me, and this is probably not even the worst part. She’s the third one I’ve had this season, though, and I know she won't last much longer. They never do. I don’t blame her really.

I know I’m hurting her sleep as much as my own, maybe more, and she was patient for a while.

“I'm sorry,” I say as I settle back in bed. “I’ll make it up to you.”

“I don’t know how you can give me back my missed sleep,” she says.

There’s more than anger in her voice. There’s a hint of tears starting.

I feel really bad that she’s tired, but I’m not doing this on purpose.

I don’t want to see this horrible shit over and over.

The company housing only has so many available options, and I have to sleep somewhere.

“Neither do I,” I agree, but I'll still try.

“I really don’t want you to make it up to me,” she spits, and I’m sure our time together will be coming to an abrupt end. “I want you to get a therapist.”

Her words sting despite how many times I’ve heard them, and it's a fair assessment from an outsider.

She thinks I haven't exhausted all possible treatments. That I haven’t spent years with doctors, working, hoping, and dreaming toward being normal again with little progress.

She just moved into my room three weeks ago and has no idea that this is the healthiest I've ever been.

A couple of nightmares a week is nothing.

“I have two,” I answer, never having learned when to just shut my mouth in an argument.

“Well, they suck.” She’s getting even meaner the less I react, and this is another thing I’ve seen before. Sleep-deprived people are the angriest people. I should know, I’ve been one of them for years now.

“Just go back to bed. I told you I’m sorry.”

She humphs, but she rolls over to get comfortable in her blanket, and I stare at a warm halo of light in the distance as I wait for her breathing to turn heavy, and I'm sure she's back asleep. Once she’s out, I get out of bed, finding I can’t shake the horror of the nightmare.

It’s all around me, the smell of gunpowder thick in my nostrils like Fabrizio really just died.

I very carefully open the door leading to the balcony.

The cool night air sweeps over me, washing away the phantom smell.

The blood and brains still stain the back of my eyelids, but I stare at the stars and blink until they clear.

I pull my phone out of my pocket. My notifications are in the thousands, but not even my double life as an internet sensation can keep my interest right now.

The dopamine hit I usually get from going viral doesn’t even faze me, and I simply close the phone and put it away.

My hands and feet go numb with cold as I wait for my system to accept that it’s today, not ten years ago.

The sky is lightening by the time it works.

My eyes drift from the sky to the sidewalk, and I find a dark shape a half block down.

It looks like a man, but it doesn’t move, and I stare for a while, wondering what it could be.

A shiver runs through me when he finally moves after a very long time, revealing that it was a man standing completely still on the street all along.

I don’t have any real reason to think he was watching me back.

I couldn’t even tell which way he was facing, but for some reason, I can’t shake the feeling that he was.

Chills cover my body, a mix of the too cold night washing away my nightmare, and the fear of realizing he might have been watching me.

Leaving them both behind, I tuck back into the room just in time to catch my roommate waking up for the day.

She gives me a dirty look as I climb back into bed.

I’m so cold my whole body shakes, but at least my mind is close to clear.

“I’m staying with a friend tonight,” she says, just as angry as when we last spoke despite having slept.

“Okay,” I tell her, the weight of my exhaustion already pulling me under.

“I don’t know if I can keep living here.” Her foot taps impatiently on the floor like she’s expecting more of a reaction.

“Okay,” I say again. I could argue or beg, but I’m tired, and everyone is entitled to their own limits. If I could choose to be with someone other than me, I’d take that opportunity in a heartbeat. How can I begrudge her?

“You know, Marcella, people said you’re a freak, and I didn’t want to believe them, but it’s true, and it has nothing to do with the way you dress.”

The door closes behind her, and I know she meant her statement to be scathing, but how can anything anyone says matter in comparison to what I’ve been through? I’m worse than a freak. I’m broken beyond repair.

I’ve spent ten long years trying to understand what my brother did and why. I’ve given up on ever knowing the answer, but I can’t help but feel that’s the only thing that will free me from this torture. How could he do that to both of us?

The blue sky shines as my eyes finally flutter closed, but I know I won’t sleep for more than an hour before I’m forced to wake up again.