The news ripples through Brambleburg like pebbles skidding on the lake. The town whispers with thoughts of leaving. Of Ethan breaking the curse.
He sits opposite me at the kitchen table, eyes half shut. He smiles sleepily.
I move a waffle around my plate. 'Everyone's...been thinking.'
'Oh my god.' Ethan covers his face. 'It's about me, isn't it? I didn't know they could read my mind!' That's so embarrassing!
'Well, ye-es,' my tired eyes crinkle in a slight smile, 'but what I mean is, everyone's thinking of leaving.'
Ethan looks at my face, somehow reading my thoughts with just his gaze. 'Is that a bad thing?'
'I just...I don't want them to get their hopes up,' I say quietly. 'The town let you leave, but I still...couldn't.' I shake my head. 'I'm sorry, I don't mean to be glum.' I reach across the table and take his hand. 'I'm glad we finally, um, talked.'
'Talked?' Ethan asks teasingly. 'We sure did talk all night.' His thoughts shift to the recollection of my body under his, my hand bringing us both to the edge, and my face heats bright scarlet. Ethan leans forward and this time, I don't need to read his mind to press my lips to his. And I don't think I can ever get enough of it.
When we pull away, Ethan hesitates. 'So this thought occurred to me last night, and I was far too busy to pay it any heed,' he pauses to allow for my polite cough, 'but thinking of it again....' Ethan chews on his lip. 'This town is a little...strange, isn't it?'
'That's a massive understatement.' I smile despite myself.
'What I mean is,' he twirls his index finger around a whorl in the wooden table, 'that Brambleburg is stuck in time. And it's not too long ago.'
I frown. 'What do you mean, stuck? Time moves perfectly normally here.'
Ethan looks strange. His teeth worry his bottom lip. I get the sense that he's trying to hide his thoughts, but they seep through the cracks anyway. I see snapshots of tall buildings and glass screens.
I look down, trying to block his thoughts. I don't want to pry into anything he's not ready to share.
Ethan takes my hand. 'I'm just trying to think of how to say this in a way that won't freak you out.'
'Ethan! That freaks me out more!' I protest.
He laughs lightly, though it doesn't quite reach his eyes. 'You know how technology improves with time, right?' When I shrug, he continues, 'Brambleburg looks about a hundred years old - and the point I'm trying to make is that that's not that old.'
'I'm not sure I still understand you,' I confess.
'What's the history of this place? Where did everything come from, for instance, the record players downstairs? The electric ones wouldn't have been invented till the 1920's...about a hundred years ago. So were they...invented here? Were they brought in?'
I shake my head. 'I'm sure they were always here. I've never heard of any other kind. It's not like we have anyone living here who's over a hundred years old.'
Ethan stares at me. 'You don't keep history books?'
'No?' I press my lips together, feeling discomfited for some reason. 'All our knowledge is passed down through thoughts. I know what Oma knows and Oma knows what her grandparents knew...and so on.' Even as I say it I already know Ethan's next question. And I already don't have an answer for it. 'I don't have a tracked history of the invention of record players,' I say quickly.
'I didn't mean to upset you.' Ethan's gaze drops to his hand covering mine.
'I'm not upset.'
'You look uncomfortable.' He interlaces our fingers.
'I'm just...' I flounder for the words. 'I don't know what this has to do with anything,' I finally say. Although that's not what I want to say. I don't quite know what I want to say.
Ethan looks at me carefully. 'Well...the point I'm trying to make is that, somehow the electric record player magically got invented - but phones didn't?'
'I have a phone,' I object, pointing to my robin-egg blue rotary sitting on the side table. I try to shake the feeling, but the banality in Ethan's tone against the suspicion of his mind somewhat wrankles me.
'You don't have smartphones here. I lost my own in the woods before I found Brambleburg.' A rectangle lit up in a bright glow flashes across Ethan's mind.
'Wait! I know that!' I point at him. 'You thought about it earlier, when you said you listened to my record. You thought about that...uh, what's it called?' I snap my fingers, trying to recall. 'Spotify? It was in that rectangular device you just thought of.'
Ethan's eyes fly wide open. He snatches his hand back from mine, looking spooked. 'You're right,' he says faintly. 'I did.' But I'm certain I lost it. Or perhaps lost signal. Or maybe...it died?
'What do you mean it died?' I feel the colour drain from my face, too worried to try not to listen to his thoughts. 'It was alive?'
'Um, no. No.' Ethan blinks. Shakes his head. 'Just a figure of speech.' His thoughts make me think I've said something funny somehow, but Ethan still looks dead serious. 'I don't know how I forgot that. I was sure I lost it.'
I run a hand through my hair. Tug the strands at the nape of my neck. 'So...what? You were using your...what's it called, smart? Your smartphone, all this time, and you couldn't remember till I brought it up?'
Ethan balls his fists, rubbing colour on to his cheeks. 'No, I remember using Spotify. And I remember losing it.' Though those two things feel distinctly unrelated somehow. 'No, wait! That's not right. I remember not being able to call anyone because I lost it. When I got to Brambleburg - and thought I finally had signal - I still couldn't call anyone from the tour company because I remembered I lost my phone. I didn't even check my backpack, I was so sure I lost it.'
'But you don't remember actually losing it?' My thoughts feel slow as I try to piece it together with him. Almost foggy.
Ethan shakes his head. 'But then later, when I wanted to use Spotify, I just took the phone out of my backpack - and I remember this part very clearly - I pulled the table lamp out of the socket, plugged in my phone, paced around for fifteen minutes, and then opened Spotify. But the strange thing is,' here Ethan pales again, 'all while I was doing this, I still remembered, or had the memory of, losing my phone. And I didn't think it was strange at all that I was using the phone that I remembered losing.'
His thoughts are confused, and I can't make sense of them. It makes my skin prickle. I force myself to speak through my dry throat. 'So...what are you saying, Ethan?'
His next words make me feel sick to my stomach.
'Lukas, I don't know if I can trust my own mind anymore.'
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A/n: so part 2 has an exciting new arc!! I'll be posting weekly chapters on wattpad, but the full book is complete and ready to binge on my Kofi page :D
Find me at @itsmeimthevampire or click on this link in the comments! â>