As Riley pulled the girl toward the bike with a charismatic smile alone, El ran her hands nervously over her injured wrists as if she could feel the restraints. She was following, but she still seemed terrified. It made Riley sad to think that the world must be so dangerous to her, that everything appeared perilous, probably because everything always had been. Did El even have a safe place?
She did. Right here, with Riley. The decision made itself before she could even think it. Riley Vanator, vanguard champion of the oppressed damsel. Her dad would smirk beneath his beard.
El shook her head. “Doesn’t it bother you, that people talk about you like that? How do you come away from that so confident? It would kill me. It does kill me.”
Riley handed her the helmet and tossed a wry glance after it. “Why the fuck do they matter? I know who I am, and I’m not going to let them convince me their opinion matters more than mine. You shouldn’t either. We deal with facts here, not magic. Remember?”
As she waited for El to mount the bike, Riley watched a transformation take place. In the tiny twitches of a body unwinding from years of anxiety and self-loathing, El came to life. There was color in her face, softness in her expression. She lifted her smile to the sky and when she’d finished her salutation to the sunlight, she was actually happy.
“I’ve wasted a lot of time.”
Riley held out her hand. “Let’s make up for it.”
Suddenly, the girl was giggling, and climbing onto the bike, her arms slipping comfortably around Riley’s waist. Giddy with a feeling she’d never had, Riley turned the engine over in an anthem of noise.
El looked into Riley’s sparkling, smoky eyes and felt like laughing and weeping at once. That smile was something she had never witnessed before—so free, so filled with delight. To think it might be her doing flustered El to no end. Emotions bubbled and churned within her, until nothing made sense. She wanted to leap with happiness and shake with terror, but more than anything else, she wanted so badly to sit in silence and run her fingers through the girl’s bouncy hot pink tresses.
With a wicked smirk, Riley shoved the cart conveyance to the end of an aisle, swinging it around so violently that El had to fight to keep her footing on the metal bars.
“Do you always drive like you’re escaping?” she giggled.
Riley screeched to a halt at the metal shelving with a cackle. “No! I always live like I’m running out of time.”
El fought to keep the smile on her face, but it faded as her mind let go and began to wander. A new tragedy was brewing, because these were the moments for which she’d hoped with an absolute fixation . . . and she would never be able to talk about them. She could never turn back to her devout audience and give proof of just how perfect a creature Riley was, teaching her things she’d never known she was missing. She could never defend Riley’s reputation or give joy to the readers who were watching, waiting, hoping. She could never reassure the people like her that she had breached the divide and found friendship, that her story was an example to follow. Not now.
One more thing Mama had stolen from her.
That frustration knew no outlet and had no cure.
The store smeared in a watercolor of bright hues as she stared blankly into space, but warm hands landed on her shoulders, and gently traced the back of her neck. In one instant, El was shivering, and had forgotten she was ever sad.
Riley glanced at her with a soft smile, her gaze so warm it was almost hypnotic. “Keep crying, and I’m going to start tickling you.”
“I’m—”
“And no apologizing either! Yeesh! Your mother has you cringing like a scared but ridiculously cute puppy. Knock it off! It’s killing me.”
Her expression twisted comically, and she didn’t wait for an acknowledgement. Gesturing broadly to the shelves before them, Riley performed a bow. Thousands of little cloth squares in every color of the rainbow were neatly folded and stacked.
“Now!” Riley cleared her throat and crossed her arms. “This is a serious matter. A bandana is a must-have.”
“Really?” El pulled one free and opened it. She’d always wondered why people wore them. It seemed so odd and her mother had always called them “White trash attire.” They weren’t even allowed at school because of supposed gang affiliations. “Are they to keep the sun off your head?”
She draped the scarf over her hair and made a face.
Riley shrugged and plucked a rainbow tie-dyed one for herself, demonstrating each of its many uses with helpful pantomiming. “Well, yeah, if you want. They’re like, multifunctional. They can keep you warm, they can keep smog or dust from getting up your nose, they can carry stuff, they can tie stuff down. You can even knot them to stuff so you can see it better or use it as a washcloth. A bandana is an important camping tool.”
El looked back at the cart, full of an assortment of Riley’s choicest picks. The expense was adding up, but she wasn’t packing to save money. She was packing to run for her life. Besides, her sister would never even notice a few hundred dollars gone missing.
“What color should I get?”
Riley held a few up to her, assessing her so closely that her breath caught in her throat in anticipation. “Well, what’s your favorite?”
She swallowed hard. “I don’t know.”
“What?” Strands of neon coral were blown out of Riley’s eyes. “You’re shitting me, right?”
“No. I don’t know. I like lots of colors, but I guess . . . I just never thought about it.”
At an obvious loss, Riley flailed in impotent fury. “Why, though? It’s a color! It’s easy. It’s like . . . It’s like knowing if something tastes good! Like, why wouldn’t you ever think about your favorite color?”
Her body ached yet again with that painful realization that her way of life had always been a sham, an outlier, a horror no one should ever endure. All this time she’d spent afraid, living day to day, never realizing how much of her existence was just coping. She didn’t even know her own favorite color. And why? Because Mama bought all her clothes and crushed every opinion that deviated from hers. Normal kids knew their favorite colors and foods and music. If she didn’t know anything about herself, then how could she be real?
How could El protect a life that had no substance to it?
All El had was this baffled and ferocious girl standing next to her, and she couldn’t even spit out what she’d always dreamed of saying! It was ridiculous! It was stupid! And it hurt, so, so much.
“Hey, I’m sorry.”
Riley grappled her into an embrace. She went willingly and suffered through every painful breath of it. Riley’s hair smelled like grape popsicles. The skin of her neck was soft beneath El’s flushed face and even the spiked choker didn’t bother her. In a dull agony, El wondered what Riley would do, if she just brushed the flesh with a kiss, but it was pointless to consider, because it couldn’t happen.
El could never be that selfish. She could never play risky games when it came to Riley’s safety. She may not know her favorite color, but she knew that much about herself.
“Look, it’s cool if you don’t know which color you like best! Lots of people don’t have favorite colors! Look at me! I can’t even decide what color hair I should have! I’ve dyed it four times this month!”
Riley’s tone tugged a moist laugh from her. “Okay.”
“Do you like blue?” The girl held El out at arm’s length and stared narrowly into her eyes as if trying to read her mind in her gaze. “What about purple? No. No purple, okay. What about green?”
Wiping her face, El managed to nod. She was released and in a flurry of movement, Riley had snatched down every shade of green and was modeling them like a couture clown. In an exaggerated accent, Riley discussed the various attributes of each tone, furiously dismissing the lime-colored one when it dared to clash too harshly with El’s eyes. Before long, El was laughing again, and Riley had narrowed down their choices to a single bandana.
“Wha
t do you think? Is this the bandana?”
“Yes. Definitely.”
“Good, because I am pretty sure that is the last thing you absolutely have to have for a survival trip in the woods.” She looked into the cart and whistled low. “This is a lot of stuff. Your mom gonna be okay with this?”
El shrugged, but her nerves were acting up again. As they wheeled the cart to the register, she tallied up the bill, clutching the card in her hand. If it didn’t work, she wasn’t sure what she would do, but she hadn’t heard anything from Rose about cards going missing, and that seemed the sort of thing that would have gotten back to her, if her sister had noticed.
While the clerk rang up and bagged the items, Riley carried on a conversation with him about hunting knives. He jabbered, ignoring El as she ran the card through the machine. As if it were choreographed, he didn’t even look twice at the person committing credit card fraud, instead laughing at Riley’s jokes and asking about her dad as he handed off the receipt reflexively. Forging the signature, El tried to quantify Riley’s easy and engaging demeanor with science.
Surely, with all the attention she’d paid, she could mimic Riley’s confidence.
The idea soothed her like magic, weaving a warm image of wearing the memory like armor or a mask, passing through the world clothed in every aspect of her affection, without needing to make a single confession.
Adrenaline seeping from every pore, she followed Riley to the parking lot with a bemused smile. She was officially a criminal now. There was no going back, but in some strange way, that too was comforting.
As light as air and on the brink of hysterical laughter, El knew that her path was what she had made it. Finally, she was her own master and her future was going to be of her own making, because there were consequences for what she’d just done.
Mama couldn’t hide her from the world anymore, because she’d gone against the world.
Opening the purchases, she and Riley secured them into pockets and spaces in the new backpack, throwing the cardboard and plastic ties into the dumpster. When the fasteners were too strong to rip apart, Riley produced her knife and flicked it open casually, cutting things with its gunmetal edge as she made jokes about nothing and everything.
“Does your knife have a name?” El wondered aloud. When Riley looked at her in astonishment, she could feel her face run hot. “I mean . . . Because you named the rifle.”
Grinning as if she’d been discovered in some sort of prank, the girl handed off the knife. “I like to name things that are useful to me. Tools are important. They’re what make us human, so I guess I kinda feel like by naming them, I’m treating them with respect? Is that weird?”
“No.” El turned the knife over and over. Folded up, it was only about five inches long and unembellished, but the deep charcoal of the handle and blade absorbed light as if breathing it in. Heavy like nothing she’d ever held, it seemed to resonate with function and purpose. It whispered in the air with the curved teeth of a shark and opened with a smooth flick as if waiting. This knife was probably the most basic of tools, the sort of thing a person like Riley would own, but something about it was warm and alive.
It deserved a name.
“Tizóna. It’s the name of a famous sword. I guess it means ‘firebrand.’ Which is what my dad called my mom.”
The words woke her from her trance. Licking her lips, El held out the knife with all due reverence. She knew it was a relic of some kind, definitely something she had no right to hold.
“Tizóna. She’s beautiful.”
To her surprise, Riley pushed it back. The carefree smile was gone, and Riley was blinking furiously. “Keep it. I can buy another one. They won’t sell you a knife, because you’re a minor, but you’ll need one.”
“I . . . I can’t keep this!” El protested so quietly, she could barely hear herself. “This is—”
“It’s okay. She’ll take care of you.”
The corner of her mouth twitched, but Riley wasn’t happy. The unspoken was looming over them, colder than any shade. El had always longed to know, but there had never been a time to ask before this stolen moment.
“Where . . . Where is she? Your mother, I mean.”
Riley’s eyes were cast to the ground, her blackened lashes sweeping her lightly freckled cheeks. “She died when I was little. I never really knew her. It’s just been me and Dad all this time.”
All this time . . . while El complained about her mother, Riley had never had one. Regretting her unthinking cruelty in a single gasp, El stepped forward to comfort. When Riley’s arms came up around her, her entire body reacted with a jolt. Clutching the knife, El searched for words that weren’t a useless apology. The girl in her arms deserved more than that. Finally, Riley freed her, and El could breathe again, but she still had no idea what to say.
Riley smudged the kohl under her eye. “Like I said, Tizóna will take care of you. I want you to have her.”
“Thank you,” she whispered. “I’ll take good care of her too. I promise.”
In an instant, Riley dashed the sadness aside and found her smile again. “So what are we doing with all this stuff?”
El had been pondering that explanation since she’d straddled the bike at Riley’s back. She was already a spy and a thief, why not become a liar too? The next few days were going to be full of such things. She ought to get used to it.
With a look at her phone, she put on a smile. “I’m going to call my sister. She’ll take me home since she is on the way to my house anyway. You need to get to work, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess.” But Riley continued to stand there, as if there was more to be said. She was chewing a purple lip and tapping every surface with her gaze, in the most adorable display of awkwardness El had ever seen.
“What?”
Riley ran her chipped nails through her hair and let out a huff. “Yeah, okay, I’m just going to say it, even if it sounds weird. Okay?”
El’s stomach tightened involuntarily. “Okay.”
“Even when you’re laughing,” she said quietly, her hands outstretched, “it seems like you’re about to cry and it really bothers me.”
“I’m—”
“Don’t apologize! I’m not telling you it’s your fault. I’m telling you that I know that it isn’t you. I’m telling you that I want to help you, because I want it to stop.”
Though the air shimmered with heat, El trembled. The knife was still clutched in her hand, burning the palm in the sunshine. She moved her fingers around and around, squeezing it for all her strength, just to keep her self-control. If she didn’t remember that she was in this body, standing in this moment, her mind would be propelled from the atmosphere by this bittersweet joy.
It took a long time for her to clear her throat, while Riley looked on expectantly. “It’s okay. You are helping. I know this is something I have to fix and that some of it isn’t my responsibility. I do know that. You don’t have to worry. I’m going to do better.”
Riley threw up her hands. “You don’t have to do better, El! You are just fine! You have to tell them to shut the fuck up! You have to protect yourself!”
The multicolored frustration on her behalf was both charming and inspiring. El couldn’t help a chuckle as she held up Tizóna in a solemn vow.
“I swear to you, I get it. I understand. You are right, and I am going to take your advice.”
Riley’s palms jangled together in a prayer. “Thank you. And I am here for you, any time you need help. Just ask me. Anything! I am telling you, there’s nothing your mother could ever do to me that I could give a fuck about.”
El’s smile faltered yet again. There was no way to focus on what she wanted to express when she was so anxious about things she couldn’t predict. The longer they stood there, the more it stung.
“That’s because you don’t know what she’s capable of, but thank you. I’ll remember.”
“You’re sure?” Riley’s askance was made sassy by the curve of a
tilted hip, the crook of strong fingers at a pointed chin, just below a full plum mouth.
El’s tongue seemed to swell as she contemplated how truly stunning Riley was and that their time together was at an end.
She could only nod.
Backing away, Riley shot at her with finger guns. “See you tomorrow!”
When the motorcycle roared from the parking lot, El put Tizóna into a zippered pouch on the outside of the backpack. Shouldering the burden with a sniff, she cut a path to the church that took side streets. At the back of the sanctuary, there was a row of classrooms used for Bible study. The key was hidden on a specific ledge near the back steps. Retrieving it, El stowed her pack beneath the counter in the tiny bathroom. To it, she pinned a note indicating that the luggage was being held for a parishioner. Locking the door, she knew it would be safe there for a few days.
A few days were all she needed.
When she turned on her phone, it was to find nearly thirty text messages. Scanning them, all her misgivings were confirmed. Jay had done precisely as she knew he would, sharing his version of events with his employer and in typical fashion, the witch had decided the fault lay with El. El, however, was finished accepting blame for the weaknesses of others.
Tucking the phone into her schoolbag, she set out on the long walk home, giving the ice cream parlor a wide berth.
Soon, she would be free from everything that had ever plagued her. It would be the most difficult thing she’d ever done, but also the most important. It would cost her everything she loved, but she could always learn to love new things.
It was time to discover who and what she was.
Riley looked up at the parlor window. There stood the girl, positively gaunt and laboring beneath a heavy pack. It took her a moment to recognize the enormous eyes and small stature, because Elyrra Glasse was wearing clothes more fit for hiking. As she took off her apron and rounded the counter, it occurred to Riley that she’d never actually seen the doll in anything but dresses, even in the winter. What would Mama Glasse think of flannel and denim?
Love Under Glasse Page 9