Towering - By Alex Flinn Page 0,62
reached the top, the window was open.
“You’re here!” She ran to me. “And early! I’m so glad. You have no idea how it feels, wanting to see you, wanting to say your name, yet having to hide it, having no one to talk to.”
I kissed her. “I get it. Once, when I was about twelve, I had a crush on this girl, Caroline, and all I could talk about was Caroline this, Caroline that, and do you remember when Caroline said that, until my friends wanted to kill me.”
Rachel frowned. “Were you in love with this girl, this Caroline?”
“Of course not.” I didn’t want to upset her. “It was a crush. Every guy in school had a crush on her.” I held her tighter. “The only girl I love is you.”
“I’m sorry. I haven’t—I’ve never felt this way about anyone else, never known anyone else, except the characters in books I read.”
The sun had almost risen. I had a fleeting thought, that maybe she just thought she loved me because she’d never known anyone else, that once she escaped her tower, she’d find someone she liked better.
But, no. She was right. I had found her for a reason. It was meant to be.
“Besides,” I said, “I barely remember anything about Caroline, except that she wasn’t as beautiful as you.”
She led me to her sofa and sat down, then kissed me. “I wasn’t worried. You are my destiny. I have seen your face in my dreams.”
“I’ve seen your face before too, but not just in a dream. Let me show you.”
I opened my backpack and removed the carefully folded yearbook page. “Here. I found this. I think . . . I’m sure this is your mother.”
She stared at it, stunned. “It is me . . . just like me.” She shook her head, then looked back at the photo. “Who is she? Where did you find it? It is me! But it cannot be me because I have never seen this place.” She pointed to the background, the school.
“Her name was Danielle Greenwood. She was the daughter of the woman I’m staying with. They say she disappeared about seventeen years ago, right around the time you were born.”
“That is so sad.” She touched the photograph with one finger, reverent as if it was one of the religious icons in the churches I’d visited on vacations. “But to have her picture, like she was a truly real person, a mother who might have given me cookies when I came home from school instead of a pretend character in a book. I can’t quite believe it.”
“She was real all right. She kept a diary—I brought that too. And I think your mama is right to protect you, to tell you to stay hidden. Okay, the tower’s a little weird, but . . .”
She tore her eyes from the photo. “I know, I know. But I wish I could be a normal girl, like everyone else. Go to school. Would your friends like me?”
It was hard to look at her without wanting to touch her, to stroke her hair. But it wasn’t like our relationship was only physical. “Of course they’d like you. You’re so sweet, and . . .” I stopped, wondering if that was true, if people would see her as I did, or if they’d just think she was odd. Sometimes, people at school wanted everyone to be the same and think the same. But she was so beautiful, and somehow, her very strangeness was what I loved about her, that she made me feel less weird.
I wondered, maybe, if everyone felt weird sometimes, if they just didn’t tell anyone.
“And what?” she asked.
“And you’d have me. I think the coolest thing about you is that you didn’t go to my school. You’re different, unspoiled.”
“Of course.” She touched my hand. “But tell me about it, your school. The books Mama brings me, they seem very old. I worry that it might not be the same.”
I tried to think how to explain school to someone who’d never been. It was strange. I wished we could watch a movie or something. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything. Start with the first thing you do in the morning. Do you walk there?”
Somehow, I knew she was picturing Little Women or Little House on the Prairie, one of those books girls liked. “No. I live too far. I drive now—I mean, when I went, but when I was younger, I took the bus.”
“And a bus is