GreenFrog
I nervously shift my weight on both feet after slipping on Naya’s gray and pink sweat suit. The thick cotton is warm and pleasant against my skin. Hero received a phone call from his sister and he told me he had no choice but to stop by his house first. I didn’t mind. He saved my life. I owe him so much more.
Naya and Hero enter through the door of her room. He has a small hair dryer in his hands. Hero tilts his head in the direction of Naya’s bathroom. “Come. I need to dry your hair and drop you off at Falcon’s house before my mom gets back.”
“I can—” I begin to protest until Hero cuts me off.
“Don’t,” he warns in a low, menacing voice. “Don’t argue with me. Just get over here and let me dry your fucking hair, dammit.”
I flinch from the fierceness of his voice. Naya hugs me from behind, wrapping her arms underneath mine. My muscles unclench in her affectionate embrace. “He’s just pissed right now. He’ll calm down after a while. It’s just easier to do want he wants. Don’t be afraid of him. Hero’s not the one you should ever fear.”
I nod and she releases me. Once in the bathroom, I sit on a small pink plastic stool in front of the mirror as Hero, despite his attitude, lovingly blow-dries my hair. He massages my scalp. His fingers are very skillful there. This cannot be his first time drying a girl’s hair. The heat from the dryer feels like heaven against my flesh.
Naya sifts her slender fingers through my hair. I smile at Naya in the mirror when her woeful eyes meet mine. There such a startling color: purely emerald green, like Tyler’s. The resemblance of Naya and Tyler is very bewildering. It’s not something I can quite process.
Hero’s phone rings, causing Naya to jump out of her skin. He switches off the dryer and places it on the marble sink countertop, then grasps one of Naya’s shoulders. “It’s okay, Naya. I’m going to answer it and come right back.”
“No!” She twirls around and clings and clutches desperately to Hero’s body as if she wants to crawl inside him.
“Shh. It’s okay,” he coos, stroking her dark hair. “I promise. I’m coming right back. I’m promise.” Hero leans back and cradles Naya’s sweet face in his hands, gazing intently into her wide panic-stricken eyes. “I’m going right in the hall, Naya. Right outside your room. I won’t be long, not ever. Okay?”
Her entire body trembles around his. “Not ever?” she mumbles and it’s barely a whisper.
He kisses her forehead. “Not ever. Now help me out and keep Isabel company, yeah?”
She nods against his chin but doesn’t move.
“Naya, did you hear me?” Hero asks softly.
She suddenly lifts her head and stands on her tiptoes to brush her lips against his. She does this repeatedly and he doesn’t stop her. I inhale sharply but they ignore me. He closes his eyes with a heady expression morphing his features. In this moment they don’t appear as brother and sister, they look more like lovers tossed in a difficult situation.
Hero opens his eyes with some kind of resolve. “I’ll be back,” he says, prying her limbs from his body.
Hero glares down at the latest iPhone in his hands as he exits the bathroom. It’s clear that something tremendously horrible happened to Naya to cause her such distress. She’s obviously traumatized. I wonder by what, though. But what’s really got my interest peaked is Naya’s and Hero’s relationship.
Is that just an innocent kiss or is there more to their story?
“Are you going to the Winter Ball, Isabel?” Naya asks, playing in my hair.
“I don’t know. I haven’t been asked.”
The Winter Ball is an annual formal social gathering that the entire town is involved in. It’s held in Cherry Creek Hotel that’s been in the town square since the early nineteen hundreds. The town square is lined with shops and always has a holiday feel to it. The Winter Ball is an event that you go to be noticed, where others go to primarily gossip for entertainment. Drinking, eating, dancing, and conversing while wearing expensive gowns and tuxedos. Yes, it’s a thriving place for liars, cheaters, and killers?
She hums a little. It’s a beautiful melody and the song is vaguely familiar. “Hero is taking me. He was supposed to go with Taylor but she’s going with Rex. He was upset about it. Hero is in love with Taylor.”
“That’s lovely. Did Hero tell you he was in love with Taylor?” I ask curiously, careful not to frighten her any further.
She shakes her head, eyes glued to my hair. “No. But he doesn’t need to tell me. It’s in his eyes. They sparkle like sapphires when he speaks about her. I know that look very well thanks to Hunter. Hunter’s eyes always sparkle when he talks about you.”
My brows crease. I don’t know what to say to that.
Hunter loves me?
“I’m wearing a white dress to the ball,” Naya merrily informs me, threading my hair in an intricate braid down my back. “You should wear white, too. We should match.” She continues to hum. I recognize the song now, “Here Comes the Sun” by The Beatles.
“I don’t know if I’m going, Naya,” I say sheepishly. “I have yet to be asked.” It’s tradition since the beginning of time that the males of Cherry Creek ask the females to the Winter Ball in some absurd way. It’s like a proposal, a statement to the entire town that the couples attending are, in a way, one and united.
“I’m sure Hunter will ask you.” Her eyes flicker to mine in the mirror and she smiles so purely at me, so much so that I feel it in my core. Naya is a very sensitive soul like Tyler was. She’s so fragile and vulnerable in every aspect that you have to be extremely careful and cautious of how you treat her. Like if you weren’t attentive enough she could just break and shatter before your very eyes. But it’s the beauty within her delicateness that makes her irresistibly sweet and innocent in the most unworldly way.
“Oh, I don’t know, Naya. Hunter and I are only…friends,” I say softly, not wanting to upset her. “The Winter Ball is a very, very serious event for the people of this town. Most people only go with someone they implicitly love.”
Her ear tilts toward her shoulder, her wavy hair cascading down her slim arm. Naya’s green eyes hold mine captive in the mirror, an inquisitive look washing over her expression. “Im-plic-it-ly,” she tests the word on her tongue. “What does it mean?”
“Well, in this case it means,” I say through a smile, “having no doubts or questioning. Let me use it in a sentence: I have faith that sun will implicitly rise every morning.”
“Oh,” she nods her head, understanding, “like I implicitly love my brothers.”
“Yes. That’s a great use of that word. You’re really smart, Naya. You catch on very fast.”
She shrugs, nonchalantly and her eyes drift back to my braid in her hands. “Yeah, but my mom doesn’t think so. She says I’m incapable of proper brain function and that I have the intellect of a pet. I think that’s just a really fancy way of calling me retarded.”
This hurts my heart and bothers Naya a great deal. I can tell. “You are not retarded. No, far from it. In fact, you have more sense than most of the people I know.”
Her lips stretch into an impish smile. “Well, then you don’t know very many people.”
“You have me there,” I tease.
She resumes her humming, but after a while she asks me, “Do you get phone calls from Green Frog too? Hero always gets anxious whenever he receives them.”
My heart plummets to my stomach. “Hero gets phone calls from Green Frog?”
She nods slightly. “I guess they’re more like texts. Hero doesn’t like when Green Frog sends messages to his phone.”
“Hero told you about Green Frog?”
Naya shakes her head. “No. One time, after he read me Pure Illusion, mom called Hero into the hall and he left his phone on my bed. It vibrated and I opened the text. It was from Green Frog. It said something about Tyler.”
My eyes widen. “Do you remember what the text said, Naya?”
“No. It’s been weeks.” She slides the lid off a pale yellow tinted glass jewelry box that rests on the sink countertop. Naya takes out dainty white floral hairpins with tiny diamond studs in the center and begins to decorate the sides and tail of the braid with them. “I like playing in your hair. I play in Hunter’s and Hero’s hair, but they don’t care much for braids and flower pins. Dad gave me these daisy pins. I have, like, a million of them. You can keep these, though.”
I gaze at myself in the wide mirror. My glittering eyes are more of a buttery hazel than smoky green (they are usually sea green with hints of topaz) that doesn’t surprise me though. My eyes change color with the seasons. The top half of my hair is loose and falls in soft waves that frame my oval, delicate face and the other half is threaded into a fishnet braid that has pretty daisies waved throughout it.
I look…attractive.
Realizing that I am somewhat good-looking is surreal and odd.
“I have the perfect dress for you. Maybe you can stay for dinner. It’s always just Mom and me. It’ll be nice to have you at the table for once. Do you think you can stay?”
“Of course,” I whisper.
How can I say no to her?
She smiles and excitedly claps her hands in joy. “Be right back,” she declares. “I’m going to get our dresses and boots.” She briefly disappears from the bathroom and returns with two identical white dresses bundled in her arms and two pairs of black leather riding boots. Naya holds a dress out to me. It’s a basic sheath dress, but it’s sleeveless. I take it from her. Naya places the boots on the floor and throws her dress over the sink. I watch her as she starts to strip off her clothes without the tiniest hint of modesty. I wouldn’t mind doing the same, except I have scars on my arms. But when she drags her blue shirt over her head, I notice several small purplish bruises scattered along the pale flesh of her back. Among the angry blotches there are tiny circular scars or maybe burns.
Burns on her back?
I don’t think Naya would ever do something to harm herself.
If she didn’t do it, who did?
Naya gives me a nervous smile over her shoulder as she steps inside her dress. “Are you going to get dressed, Isabel?”
I tear my eyes away from the appalling scene of her back and remove Naya’s sweatshirt from my body, baring my arms. She moves towards me and traces her fingers along the length of my scars, concentrating a great deal at the task at hand.
“Do they hurt?” she murmurs, her long hair falling into a black curtain around her face.
“No. They did, though.”
“They are beautiful like wild flowers sprouting from cracked concrete. You should not be ashamed of them. They are war badges.”