Above The Surface

by Akeroyd, Serena

  I wasn’t upset with her disinterest in me. How could I be? I’d visited with Louisa enough, had checked in and helped out when I wasn’t busy with schoolwork. Her aura spoke to me too, this time unavoidably so because it seemed to shadow the entire room, creeping into the corners, penetrating the walls itself, and what it communicated wasn’t good.

  I didn’t need the cards to tell me she wasn’t long for this world. No matter how hard Emma scrimped and saved to get her meds, no matter how many extra shifts Jon took, the doctors’ cures weren’t working.

  The gift wasn’t a gift in my opinion. Knowing things like that were an inconvenience at best, and cruel at worst.

  Knowing Louisa would pass soon, no matter that she was loved by her parents, no matter that they were killing themselves to keep her alive? It was wrong. So wrong.

  But then, many things in this world were.

  I shouldn’t have lost my daddy in that horseback riding accident, and my momma? She shouldn’t have given up and taken her own life for the loss of him.

  I’d always resented that, but Nanny had said my father was Momma’s One. Capital ‘O’ required.

  Just like Adam was mine.

  My one.

  My only.

  The thought dazed me, and I ground to a halt, the long walk to the house unimportant as I stared up at the bright blue sky—just like Adam’s aura. Until he spoke about Cain, when the glimpse of sadness morphed into his mood, changing him in ways he wouldn’t understand.

  The Majors lived on the border of the good and bad part of town. The community center was in the bad part, so I always hustled out of there and was a little more relaxed on the latter half of the trip.

  My shoulders always drooped when I’d left Laurence behind. Wrecked cars were the best of it. I’d often glimpsed drug deals going down from the corner of my eye and always did my best to shuffle forward, gaze turned downward.

  As I moved toward the Majors’ place, polished homes were more of a common sight than the downtrodden bungalows that lined the roads on the first half of my walk. Lawns were mowed on a weekly basis, there were kids’ toys littering the yard, and in the morning, just as day broke, a paper was tossed onto the front step by a paperboy.

  It was that kind of place.

  The Majors had the most respectable house I’d ever lived in, and as I approached it, staring at the clapboard that was painted and well-tended, the roof that didn’t have any leaks, and the neatly cropped hedges that lined either side of the property, I wondered at the irony of fate.

  Had Louisa fallen ill just so I would be brought here?

  Had my father died so I’d be shoved into the system after my nanny’s death?

  Did it all boil down to my meeting Adam?

  Ones were rare. They went beyond uncommon, but in my line, we had them. The Kinkades were Roma for twelve generations, and I was the first to break that line.

  Adam was the opposite of Roma. A Gadže—he was the American all-star boy with his bright white smile that belonged on a toothpaste commercial, and a body that was made for sports. He was all the more beautiful for it too.

  And beautiful wasn’t an exaggeration.

  I didn’t understand how there could be two of him walking around, yet, when it boiled down to it, Cain wasn’t beautiful. Maybe to others he was. But not to me.

  Adam was light.

  Pure.

  I didn’t doubt he wasn’t pure in the Biblical sense. But his soul? It was good.

  My heart swelled as I thought about him, and when I trudged into the house and Emma saw me, she tipped her chin to the side, a strange smile on her face.

  “You look different.”

  My eyes widened, and my cheeks instantly bloomed with color as my gaze tripped off hers—I saw her sadness without her even having to say a word, and knew Louisa hadn’t had a good day. Face to the floor, I muttered, “I do?”

  She hummed under her breath, and I could feel her gaze flittering over me as she tried to judge why I looked different. As far as I knew, nothing had happened outwardly to make her think I might be in any way unusual from this morning.

  “You look...” I cast a quick glance at her and was surprised with the sight of her smile, which was genuine. “Happy. Good time at the pool?”

  It kind of saddened me that I might be walking around looking like a real miserable bitch all the damn time, but I was glad I looked happy. Glad it had made her smile, because she had enough sorrow in her days with Louisa.

  “It was great,” I admitted. “They raised enough to fix the roof. The senator managed to get a big donation for the place.”

  Emma’s grin widened as she dipped her hands into soapy water and cleared a few dishes in the sink. “That’s brilliant news. I’m not entirely sure what you’d have done with all your spare time if you couldn’t be in that pool.”

  The prospect was a horrendous one. “Me either.” My shudder wasn’t feigned.

  Thankfully, the state therapist I had to visit considered my time in the pool additional therapy, so that meant I could spend hours at the community center without there being an issue, so long as I did all my chores and kept up with my schoolwork. I had nothing in my life except my books and the pool so, of course, neither were a problem.

  The notion that I had something else in my life now, someone, made my heart skip a beat as I dropped my bag onto the kitchen table.

  It was a small room, papered with a cheery yellow pattern that made the north facing kitchen a lot brighter than it might have otherwise been. Old-fashioned, dark brown cupboards graced opposing walls, and the matching table that Emma kept polished and clean stood right in the middle. Just off to the side, there was a utility room, and deciding to duck out of this conversation, I dug through my rucksack, grabbed the wet stuff from the plastic carrier I kept my gear in, and took it in there. There was, as always, a huge wash load.

  Laundry was my chore.

  People didn’t realize how personal laundry was, I didn’t think. They gave it to their kids to do, unknowing what it revealed.

  I knew when Jon and Emma had sex, when she had her period. I knew when Louisa had another nosebleed, and I knew when she’d wet the bed. All personal information, things that I wouldn’t want a stranger knowing about me.

  But then, I didn’t want anyone knowing anything about me.

  That was the Roma in me. We were a secretive group, not because we were shifty like many had been taught to believe about us, but because we were taught that we weren’t safe. Never would be.

  We were destined to travel the Earth, never finding a home, never accepted.

  I’d found acceptance of a variant because I’d blended in. My nanny? She hadn’t. She’d lived her life proud to be Roma, and I knew I was shaming her by shoving our heritage aside and doing what I had to in order to survive. Still, that was her primary lesson. Adapt and move on. She might have clipped me around the ear for ignoring my skills, but she’d have been proud of what I was doing to get by.

  As I shoved the dirty clothes into the washing machine, I remembered the days of Momma cleaning our place from top to bottom. Emma wasn’t as clean. She kept on top of things, but I remembered seeing Momma on her hands and knees, scrubbing the joints where the linoleum in our caravan met, trying to keep it clean.

  Which it had to be.

  She’d done that twice a day.

  In this world, she’d be considered OCD. In ours? That was a woman’s lot. To cleanse and purify the home. It was a duty, to be sure. But more than that, it was an honor. A way of protecting the family, and to be honest, I preferred to look at it that way.

  I bit my lip, wondering why thoughts of my past were brushing at my mind. Normally, when I did the laundry, I thought about school the next day, and classes and exams I needed to work on after I ate. I wasn’t thinking about Momma and Papa. I thought about my nanny more, because she’d been the one to really teach me the cleaning skills required of a Romni—a Roma woman who was married—and there were pl
enty of rules. Rules I was glad I could ignore, even if some of them were ingrained in me.

  I’d lost my parents too young to remember them that well, so thinking of them did nothing more than sadden me. Nanny, less so. I missed her something fierce, but thinking about her made me smile. She’d made me into the survivor I was, whether or not she liked what I’d done to get here.

  After splitting up Kenny’s and Jon’s clothes from the ones Emma, Louisa, and I used, I shoved the women’s stuff into the washing machine and winced at the blood that immediately made the water in the machine turn red. I wanted, so badly, to rinse those sheets, but I’d already been told off about wasting water, and I knew a second wash would be frowned upon considering how much laundry there was. It would also take me all night if I did everything twice, but I still cringed.

  Louisa’s nose bleeds were getting more and more frequent, and I often heard her sobbing into her pillow at night from the pain. I wished I could do something for her, wished I could help. Nanny could have. She’d have known what to do, and Emma was so sweet and kind, Jon so earnest and hard-working...they didn’t deserve to lose their little girl.

  I set the washer, then retreated to the kitchen. Emma was stirring a pot of something that smelled rich and tangy, and I perked up. She made the best tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.

  Heading to the sink, I switched on the faucet and filled the basin. As that ran, I grabbed a bowl, a set of cutlery, a glass, and a dish and rinsed off the items, then dunked them and washed them again, before giving them another wash under the running tap water. Emma, knowing my ritual, said nothing, just waited until I placed the dishes beside her on the counter, then taking the cutlery with me, I hustled over to the table and waited for her to serve me.

  “What time will Kenny be back?” I asked her as she puttered around the kitchen.

  “He has practice, so seven.”

  I nodded, thinking about what I’d teach him when I tutored him in math. He was a year older than me, but he hated school. I actually thought he was dyslexic. He wasn’t stupid, but when it came to looking at his books? He just got so angry he wouldn’t concentrate.

  If I said a calculation out loud, he’d be able to work it out no problem. But when I made him do a mock paper? That’s when he had tantrums like he was a five-year-old.

  “Did you meet someone at the pool?”

  Her interest stunned me because Emma didn’t tend to ask me personal questions, and yes, to me that was a personal question. “What makes you ask that?” I queried in surprise.

  A smile crossed her lips as she looked over her shoulder at me. “I just recognize that look in your eye. It feels like a lifetime since I met Jon, but I think I was as struck as you were.”

  “He was there for the fundraiser,” I admitted. “I probably won’t see him again.”

  Her brow puckered as she ladled some soup for me, then placed it on the table. Two grilled cheese sandwiches made an appearance on my dish next, followed by a large glass of milk.

  God, I loved being at the Majors’. The food was simple, but it always tasted good, and she never underfed us. Emma always made sure we had full bellies.

  As I took a spoon and swirled it in the soup, she asked, “If he was there today, why wouldn’t he be there again?”

  “He came for the senator’s PR thing.”

  “He’s the senator’s boy?” Emma’s voice shifted an octave. “One of the twins?”

  My lips curved. “Yeah. Adam.”

  “I’ve seen them on TV. She’s doing all those press things for her reelection campaign.”

  I shrugged—having no interest in politics, I didn’t know anything outside of what my classes wanted me to know.

  “I don’t like her,” Emma declared, and because the judgment was abrupt, I looked at her.

  “Why?” It wasn’t like Emma to even focus on anything but her daughter’s health. She ate, slept, and breathed Louisa.

  Emma pulled a face. “She’s uppity.”

  That had me snickering. “Uppity? What does that mean?”

  “Do you know she came from Laurence?”

  I cocked a brow. “Really?”

  “Yeah. Really.”

  Everyone knew that was the worst part of the city—the bit I’d just walked through to get home.

  “But she pretends she’s something she’s not. She only gets in because Laurence is so big. They think they’re voting for one of their own, but they’re not.”

  “I didn’t meet her,” I admitted, “but her son seemed nice. Kind.”

  Emma shrugged, but I could see what she was thinking—like mother, like son.

  I wanted to argue that Adam hadn’t been buttering me up for his mom’s campaign—it wasn’t like I was a voter—but I never bothered explaining about my skills with auras. If I did, Emma wouldn’t believe me anyway.

  They were Christian here. They thought they were doing their Christian duty by taking a Roma girl in, and probably asked their good Lord to forgive them for having a nonbeliever under their roof.

  Far as I could see, their prayers weren’t doing Louisa much good, but I’d never hurt them by saying that.

  We all had to have faith, didn’t we?

  And if their religion was a comfort, then I was grateful. They deserved better than the lot they’d been given.

  But so did I.

  Any stars in her eyes at my having a crush had disappeared by my mention of who Adam’s mom was. Emma cleared up the kitchen and pretty much left me to eat on my own, and I was okay with that.

  The clock ticked, echoing around in a restful way. In the background, I could hear the rumble of the washing machine, and I sighed, enjoying it, knowing the peaceful hum would be broken with Kenny’s ebullience when he returned home.

  I’d get a recap of just how damn great wrestling practice had been, then he’d go off his rocker when I made him sit down and study.

  Fun.

  But at that point, when I wanted to headbutt the table then headbutt Kenny, I knew I’d think of Adam.

  And I’d smile.

  ADAM

  The community pool was forty minutes away from my house, and to say it was in a bad area was an understatement.

  As long as we did our studies, trained hard, and never rocked the boat, Cain and I had a lot of freedom. Of course, I usually had less than him because of the shit he pulled that got me grounded, but that was as much a part of my life as having to swim.

  Thankfully, Mom never punished me by stopping me from training.

  While I was being ‘watched’ for a B in biology, and Mom had slapped the shit out of me for that particular failure, I was still allowed to focus on my workouts, so with no one questioning me, I cycled to the community pool at six AM the following day. It was freezing, and the more I rode through it, the more I saw just how much of a shitty part of town it was, but I carried on, going faster when some creeps began heckling me from a back alley, not slowing until I was approaching the center. Fear did slither up my spine a little. I was used to the taint of evil thanks to Cain, but he was never violent with me.

  At least, he hadn’t been thus far.

  Those creeps? Yeah, they’d have pulled me into the alley just to strip my bike and my pockets. Only God knew what else.

  The parking lot was empty, even if the lights were on full blast, the glare breaching the predawn gloom and filling me with a little relief to be out of the dark. With only a few streetlamps dotting the entrance, though, it made me hate the idea of Theodosia having to walk here, which she said she did every day. Sometimes twice a day. That was a level of dedication that made her skill in the water make sense.

  The place was utilitarian at best, ugly at worst. Built in the seventies, it was no wonder it was falling to pieces, but it was beloved by the locals—that much was evident.

  Yesterday on the notice boards, I’d seen how many activities there were at the center. Most of the classes were no longer accepting students because they were full. Ther
e was a timetable that would match a country club’s, because people wanted to come here and do stuff. Whether it was to learn how to salsa or do aquafit.

  The place, though small, was in Laurence, my mother’s main electoral area. She’d only come to know about the fundraiser yesterday by chance, but I thought it had been a success for her.

  While she’d dragged herself from the gutter into a position of power—something I was proud of her for doing—she had stopped connecting with the people. Laura, the woman in charge of her reelection campaign, had insisted we make it to the fundraiser as a family, show the people that Mom still cared about the community she’d been raised in.

  I figured from her buzz last night at dinner, it had worked.

  Mom didn’t give a shit about anyone but herself. Then Cain. Then Dad. Then me. I came in last because I was the ‘problem’ child. At least, in her eyes.

  The thought had me tensing up with irritation as I locked my bike to the rack, unfastening my coat because, though it was cold, I’d burned up a sweat on the ride over, then I headed into the center.

  We had a nicer gym closer to us with a full-length pool, but that place didn’t have the one thing on my mind since I’d put my head on the pillow last night and since I’d awoken.

  Theodosia.

  She was all I’d been able to think about, and yeah, it was weird, but also, it was harmless.

  She made me smile. I appreciated that she saw through my brother’s BS, but more than that, watching her in the water was a joy.

  So I paid for a card that would let me in for the next three months from the yawning attendant in a strange booth that made me wonder if they had issues with armed robberies, and headed into the men’s changing room.

  It was all nineties era gear, proving there’d been a refurb at some point since the building had been constructed. Still, it was low-tech. Nothing fancy at all. No swanky soaps and lush towels at the side of the sinks, no speakers piping in calming music. Nothing luxe at all.