Ask Me by Kimberly Pauley Page A

flashlight on its base so it was pointing towards the sky, a makeshift searchlight towards the emptiness.
    He laughed softly, bitterly. “What, do you think I’m going to bite you?”
    “What long teeth you have,” I said, grateful for the darkness. I kept saying the strangest things, even by my abnormal standards. If I didn’t know better, I’d think my “gift” was out to get me. Maybe it was.
    “The better to eat you with,” he said and slipped down unsteadily from the tree to sit next to me. “Don’t worry, I don’t actually bite. And look, now we’re on even ground.”
    I doubted that would ever be true.
    For a few peaceful moments, the only sounds I could hear were the croaks of frogs and the gurgling bellow of a nearby bull alligator. There was no other noise quite like it. I shivered a little despite the warmth of the Florida night and Alex’s closeness. Primeval was the only word to describe the sound. Even after all these years of living out here, it made my heart race a little.
    “What was it you said when you first got here?” asked Alex. “I didn’t quite catch it.” His words slurred at the end, turning the last two words into one.
    I was hoping he hadn’t noticed that.
“La voix de la vérité,”
I answered. Wait,
was
that what I’d said before? It didn’t sound the same.
    “What?”
    “Ağizin gerçeğini konuşuyor.”
    What was with all the languages? The first time had sounded a bit like Spanish, which I’d taken in school, though I was completely awful at it. Maybe it had been Italian? Then French? But I had no idea what this one was.
    Alex tried to whistle but gave up to take another quick drink from the bottle instead. “How many languages do you know?”
    “One,” I said.
    He laughed again. At least someone thought I was amusing, even if that someone was obviously drunk out of his mind. “You are one strange girl, Aria.”
    “Truer words were never spoken,” I said. Close up he smelled of alcohol and some kind of musky body spray. Or maybe it was just him.
    “But then, I’m strange, too. We’re the same, you and me. Just the same.”
    “Oh?” I said.
    I’d heard there were a few different types of drunks. He was obviously the maudlin kind. At least he wasn’t angry or violent or amorously inclined. Sad and introspective I could deal with. He held up a single finger on the hand that wasn’t clutching the bottle. “No one wants us,” he said. He added another finger to the first. “We’re both on the outside, looking in.”
    “You’re not,” I said, surprised. “Or you weren’t anyway.” Before Jade.
    He grunted or maybe he laughed. It was hard to tell. He simply held up another finger to make three. “We want to get out of this shithole town.”
    “And go where?” I had nowhere else to go. At least, notuntil my curse was gone. Here was bad, but there wasn’t anywhere that would be any better, not for me.
    He ignored what I’d said and stretched all his fingers out. Five now. He’d skipped four. “And we’re both alone,” he said.
    I shook my head. “I have my grandparents. And you have your dad.” I wanted to say that he’d had Jade, too, but that would have been rubbing salt in the wound. Was it really better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?
Had
he loved Jade?
    “Right,” he said. “My dad.” His voice was flat and dead. “I suppose I ought to drink to that.” He raised the bottle, but I grabbed it before he could get it to his mouth and took it away.
    “Have a sip,” he said with a crooked smile. “Be my guest.”
    “No, thanks. I don’t think you need any more either.”
    “Probably not,” he slurred. He slumped down against the tree, using it and me to prop himself up. “It’s my dear old dad’s, you know. Stole it from him.”
    “Yeah,” I said. “I guessed that.”
    He picked up my flashlight and shone it directly on the bottle. For a second it was like a prism of fireworks going off in my eyes,