The Fake Heart (Time Alchemist Series) Page 8

  Compared to the rest of St. Mary’s grounds, which was always beautiful and lush with the greenest grass and the brightest flowers, the church really looked like something out of a horror movie. The outer walls where a bright almost blinding white, despite its damage (and save for the few cracks and spray-paint) and some of the glass windows were broken and had fallen apart. In fact, all the windows on the second story were boarded up. Even the front doors were shut tight so nobody could get in.

  Unless you were a stupid drunk trying to pull off a dare, or somebody (like Dove) who could easily jump through one of the first floor windows where the bottom half of the window was missing; there really was no possible way to get inside without help. The jagged pieces looked sharp and dangerous, and I’d imagine nobody would be dumb enough to try and crawl through without cutting themselves up. But Dove made it look easy as pie.

  She was in and out before I reached window, and she landed gracefully at my side, holding an old book in her hands.

  “I—do you live here?” I asked, standing on the tips of my toes to peak into the window. My eyes barely come up to the sill, but if I tilted back just enough I could try and see the mysteries held inside the old, abandoned Chapel. But all I saw was an inky black darkness. There was a heavy wet and musty smell coming from the hole, and I swear I heard something small skittering near the floor. Scary.

  “Temporarily,” she said, brushing dust off the brown book and handing it to me, “This is a book that my father used to read to me when I was a child. It’s a bit…how do you say, old fashioned, but it should do well. It might be easier to understand.”

  I gingerly took the book, feeling the dust stick to my fingers. The book must have been old. I couldn’t even make out the title; let alone what kind of symbol was etched onto the cover. “What is it?”

  “An old alchemist text,” she said, “It’s very old, so be careful with it. But it should help us study the basics of alchemy and find a way to trigger your own alchemic element.”

  “Hey, Dove—”

  “It’s getting late. We’ll start trying to find your certain element tomorrow. I would recommend starting with earth. It’s the easiest and most common compared to the other three.”

  “Dove—”

  “Either way, we need to hurry,” she kept on, ignoring my outbursts even as I handed the book back to her, which she rested carefully on the window sill. “Read up, rest up, and be ready. Meet me here again tomorrow night, same time.”

  “Enough!” I screamed. The angrier I felt, the more my fake heart was hurting but at that one moment I didn’t care, “Stop avoiding my questions, Dove! Why aren’t you being honest with me?! What’s wrong with me knowing who this Leon guy is anyway? What are you trying to hide?”

  Maybe I shouldn’t have been so pissed, but I was. It seemed that I would get one step closer to all of this alchemy stuff and then get dragged back from reasons I couldn’t control. Couldn’t understand. I didn’t want any of this to happen.

  Dove is the only person here who can answer my questions and give me a little stability in this stupid alchemy and Elixir and fake heart matter. Was it so wrong of me to get mad like this? I want to trust Dove, but—

  “I’m just…tired of this,” I said, my eyes wet, and I felt like a stupid baby for getting teary eyed, but I was just so exhausted like you wouldn’t believe, “You’re the only person I can ask of this stuff! I can’t even tell my own Dad why I’m so on edge and worried and hurt all the time. I can’t even tell him that the last conversation we had might be the last time I ever get to speak to him again! I’m scared, okay? I’m scared of everything that’s going on right now, but I need to know so I can get through this, okay?” There was a painful tightness in my chest and I forced myself to breathe. My heart felt like it was being crushed on; the slightest breath made it difficult to even move.

  “Dove—” My voice began to crack. “Please—”

  “He’s my brother.”

  She said it just so out of the blue that it didn’t click. I was still standing there, clutching the hem of my shirt knuckled finger, glaring at her and breathing heavily, like a bull about to be set loose in a china shop.

  Then, like an ice cube sliding down my spine, her words seemed to sink into my skin, burrowing into the muscles and veins, settling into the marrow of my bones. I sucked in a breath, feeling my heart slow down.

  “You shouldn’t have done this, Dove. None of this would have happened if you had just listened to me.”

  “You’re…brother?”

  Dove refused to look at me. “He is...technically my half-brother, but we share the same father.”

  Dove and Leon…were brother and sister. Half-brother, step-brother, it didn’t matter.

  Leon had tried to kill his own sister—his own flesh and blood—for what? An Elixir that may not exist?

  And he would have succeeded if I hadn’t jumped in the way to save her.

  CHAPTER 11

  I wish I could say that after that night, I amazingly discovered my true element of alchemy and totally trained my butt off, kicking the mysterious Leon’s ass, and Dove and I scurry off to find the Elixir like a pair of true adventurers, and my life finally returns to normal!

  If wishes were horses, beggars would ride, wouldn’t they?

  But it wasn’t like that. Far from it actually. We spent every night trying to discover my certain element. Nothing would work. And every time it felt like I was getting there—the tight and warm feeling inside my gut—my fake heart would suddenly go crazy. In worst case scenarios, it actually stopped for seconds. It was the most terrifying experience to literally feel and hear your heart just…stop. Almost like a ticking time bomb.

  Like, one minute it would be thumping so fast I passed out from the exhaustion, and then the next I would be laying on the ground, gazing at the stars as I felt the hands of the fake heart crawl to a stop. It was like, in that moment, I was paralyzed, Dove leaning over me, trying to resuscitate a heart that didn’t want to function.

  It only happened three times—and those times I cried myself to sleep, wishing for everything to be over; wishing I could wake up from this nightmare and just be the plain old, boring, stick-by-the-rules Emery Miller again.

  But I wasn’t going to give up. Crying never solved anything; sure, I could snivel a little after a failure, but if I let it get to me, I really was going to lose this battle.

  Dove was clearly losing hope for me, and I was getting severely frustrated that this wasn’t going easier than I thought. Every night I would tromp through the woods fully determined to succeed, then come trudging back to my dorm in the wee hours of the morning walking in shame, sweaty, dirty, and exhausted. After that, I would scan that old alchemic text or the books Jack had loaned to me, over and over, to see what I did wrong, but it was all just a foreign language to me. None of the textbooks ever explains how to tap into your alchemic core or even find it. It was like a manual to a new microwave when you had just purchased a vacuum.

  School wasn’t going so great, either. The few moments I saw Jack were only at a distance—him, gorgeous as always, like a ray of pure sunshine, surrounded by his classmates; pretty girls like Mallory clinging to his arm like busy little bees. They fit so perfectly together it was like two pieces of a puzzle being put back together. The rumor mill swirled around them, and the fact that I heard not once, but dozens of times that Jack and Mallory had once been an “item” before I had come to St. Mary’s made my cheeks flame with a mixture of humiliation, unfairness and jealousy.

  Heck, even my studies weren’t going well. I couldn’t concentrate in class, my mind always replaying the events of the night before. Why couldn’t I do it? What was I doing wrong? Even the fun Humanities Club wasn’t helping my stress at all. Half the time I felt like I could just curl up in the chair and fall asleep, which was what I caught myself doing one warm Wednesday afternoon; it was an accident of course.

  Somebody shaking my shoulders stirred me out of
my sleep induced coma and I looked up to see one of the senior members, a boy with thick black framed glassed and curly black hair, staring at me with worried eyes.

  “You alright, Emery?” he asked, and it took me a full minute to remember his name. Oh, that’s right. I remember him now. He did that really neat introduction of Helen of Troy which sparked a debate on whether the Trojan War really did happen or if it was all some elaborate make believe story told by a blind man.

  “Oh! Yeah, I am,” I said, rubbing the sand out of my eyes, “I’m just real tired. Sorry about that, John.”

  He gave me a pointed look, “It’s Josh.”

  “S-Sorry—” I tried to apologize but he just stomped off to the other side of the room and sat back down in the far corner where the others were listening intently to Karin’s newest debate. Josh glowered from his seat. God, dude. Take a chill pill. Yeah, I was a bit guilty for forgetting his name, but he didn’t have to act like that.

  “So sleepy headed Emery!” Karin pointed at me, her rainbow colored ribbon swaying from her ponytail. Her bright hazel eyes were wide with interest, “Tell us your opinion.”

  “I…” racking my brain, I blurted out the last thing the club met for, which was: if slavery really was the main factor of the Civil War, and if the Confederates had won, would slavery still continue to this day? “I think that it’s…wrong.”

  Silence, then the whole room burst into giggles. Even moody Josh cracked a smile and I felt my face flush with humiliation. But it quickly faded and I laughed too, although I still felt painfully stupid inside. Humanities Club was fun. I loved history! What was wrong with me, falling asleep in here like that?

  “Oh Emery, Emery, Emery,” Karin clucked her tongue, “What’s so wrong about secret tunnels hidden underneath the streets of Savannah?”

  Secret tunnels? “Like the Underground Railroad?” I asked. She nodded, turning on a borrowed projector and flicking off the lights. There was an old map of Georgia with thick red lines running through its divided counties. Karin took a bright purple eraser marker and circled the area of Savannah, right next to the East Coast.

  “You’re kinda close there, Emery. True, there are a couple of spots where the Underground Railroad still exists here in Savannah, but I’m not just talking about those kinds of tunnels,” she began, and once Miss President Karin Foster started her speech, nothing could stop her. “I’m talking about tunnels hidden underneath bars and old hotels for transporting slavery. Has anybody been to the Pirate House recently?”

  A few hands shot up. I had heard about a famous local spot called the Pirate House but I never got a chance to see it. Actually, I haven’t had a very good tour of Savannah itself except when I rode the taxi from the airport to the school. I certainly felt out of place here, being the only Northerner in the room (and possibly the entire school).

  “Long ago, when pirates still roamed the high seas,” she put on her deep, spooky voice as other kids tried suppressing their grins, “Unexpected travelers would come to the Pirate House to relax and take a drink. But the bar heads back then had made horrible deals with the pirates—they drugged the unsuspecting victims and dragged them down the hidden tunnels into the harbor, where they sold the kidnapped slaves to the pirates. Could you imagine waking up the next day to find yourself miles and miles away from shore, stranded on a pirate ship and forced to do their bidding?”

  I felt a chill swept through me. This was new, but judging by everybody else’s faces, it seems that hidden tunnels really did exist and people were sold to pirates. It was cruel and frightening to even think about it. It sort of reminded me of my own fate.

  “Are those tunnels still used?” I asked.

  “Not as often, but yes. Mainly for researching purposes, of course,” she said, “And it’s not just underneath the Pirate House, but it’s all over Savannah, spreading far and wide throughout the lands of Georgia and its neighboring states. Why, there are even tunnels underneath the school, haunted by the poor souls who were taken from their loved ones, wondering through the endless darkness to find their way home—”

  The lights came on so suddenly we all jumped. The librarian, Mrs. Callaway, scolded Karin before reminding us we only had five minutes until we had to leave. Everybody began gathering their things, but I went up to Karin who was unplugging the projector. I offered to help and we both rolled it to the next room.

  “Were you serious about lost souls traveling in the underground tunnels?” I asked with a tease in my voice.

  “Certain as I am Martha Stuart!” she chirped, but then lowered her voice, leaning close to me as she whispered in my ear, “Now don’t tell anybody I told you—‘cause I got in serious trouble for scaring a bunch of freshman last year about it—but I know for a good solid fact that the sororities around here use the tunnels underneath St. M’s for their initiation ceremonies.”

  I stared. That was new info. “St. Mary’s has…sororities?”

  She gave a short laugh, “You betcha! Although it’s very top secret—supposedly only junior and senior members can get in, let alone hear about its existence. It’s supposed to be practice for college sororities and whatnot.”

  We walked and ducked around groups of people and carts stacked high with books. The library had gotten much louder since the meeting had started, and already I could see nearly every space on the floor was occupied by students balancing their laptops on their knees and sipping iced tea or fruit juice.

  St. Mary’s really was like a pre-college school. Sometimes even now, it was still overwhelming.

  “Why would such…clubs need to use secret tunnels anyway?” I asked, curiosity peaked, and a meager attempt at stalling the mountain of homework that waited for me at the dorm.

  Karin grinned, looping an arm through mine and dragging me behind a bookshelf, “Because I’m part of a sorority here. And I know firsthand where the tunnels lead to.”

  I stood there staring, bouncing on my foot as I waited for her dramatic reveal. Her eyes widened like a cat’s. “Bonaventure Cemetery.”

  “Bona—what?”

  She laughed again, the tons of jangled beads on her bracelet clacking against each other, “It’s only one of Savannah’s oldest cemeteries! Ever heard of Johnny Mercer? Juliette Gordon Low? They’re just a few of the really important people buried there.”

  I shook my head.

  She tsk-tsked me, shaking her head, “Weren’t you ever a Girl Scout, Miller? We’re gonna have to brush you up on good ol’ Savannah history! Now I bet Mr. Hogan would be thrilled to schedule a long overdue field trip outside St. Mary’s stuck up gates, don’t you think?”

  I laughed, “So you’re really just prepping me to help you get a free ticket out of here, aren’t you?”

  She winked, “You’re a sharp one, Emery Miller. I like that about you.”

  We walked out of the library together, and then separated by the pond. It wasn’t until I was halfway across the lawn when I realized. Turning back, I raced back in Karin’s direction and called out to her.

  “Wait!” I said as I caught up to her. “I get that you’d tell me about the secret tunnels and where they lead, but why even mention all this to me?”

  She didn’t say anything as I watched the ribbon in her hair sway like a mini rainbow hammock from the warm breeze. Her eyes, a beautiful green, like a gem’s, twinkled with glee.

  “You’re a sharp one, Emery Miller. I like that about you.”

  Then with another wave, she floundered off, joining a group of girls gathered underneath a large oak tree. Their laughter carried all through the grounds, even when I reached the stone steps of Moore Hall.

  She never answered my question. And I never really got a chance to find out what she really meant. Karin Foster was as mysterious as the non-existent alchemy inside of my heart.

  CHAPTER 12

  September eventually ended, and the brisk, cold wind of October reminded everyone that winter was fast approaching. And if there is one thing I learned liv
ing in the South, it’s that the seasons don’t gradually change—its sweltering hot one day then bone chilling cold the next. Even though there were no signs of snow approaching (again, reminder of living in the South), the freezing winds made me wish I had packed a heavier coat and gloves.

  Even Dove seemed to be affected by the sudden temperature changes. Her mood was constantly sour and she snapped. A lot. Often, our nightly sessions were cut down to a mere half hour practice since the night was brutally cold. Her tone would go from a “Try harder, Emery.” To “Stop trying so hard, you’ll exert yourself!”

  Lather, rinse, repeat.

  We tried every basic element there was. Earth did no good, no matter how long I envisioned making flowers pop up from the soil or trying to make the trees dance to my own grove. I couldn’t throw rocks with my mind either, or make holes in the ground. There was dirt stuck under my fingernails and I swear I smelled like manure for days.

  Next was water (the worst), because the only largest water source around was the lake in front of the library. That wasn’t much of a success, either. We tried everything from moving the frozen-like surface of the water to seeing if I could manipulate the water around me when I tried to breathe underneath the inky surface. And it didn’t help that I came tromping back to my dorm soaked to the bone nearly every day those few days.

  Fire was just out of the question—even Dove said that it was impossible unless I wanted to suffer third degree burns. That was really the only thing we agreed on, despite our stiff and awkward meetings. I wasn’t really a fan of fire to begin with; and I certainly didn’t want to find out if my alchemy actually was fire and accidentally burning down the woods. Dove said if all else failed we would try moving outside of St. Mary’s for a trial run.