by Indie Gantz
Clenching my jaw, I strengthen my mind’s defenses as much as I am physically capable of. I turn away from my sister and look out the window.
“Tirigan, what’s going on with you?”
“Nothing,” I answer immediately. “You are wasting—”
“No. Talk to me,” Charlie presses. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“Since it’s very likely that I could do both sides of this conversation,” I point out, “I don’t see the need to actually have it.”
“Tirigan, I’ve tried to be understanding. I have. I get that this is all very hard for you, with Avias—”
“Avias is not my concern,” I spit back before I can think not to. Focus. I can’t sound very convincing, but Charlie takes me at my word.
“Then what is? You’ve been out of reach since—”
“I’ve always been out of reach,” I quip back, cutting her off. “I don’t like to be touched.”
“Now is not the time to find your sense of humor, Tirigan.”
“It’s getting rather hard for me to keep up with your contradictory demands, Charlie.”
Silence takes hold, doesn’t release us for some time.
“You’ve been hiding things from me,” Charlie finally says, her voice much quieter than before.
“Yes.” I do not like to lie.
“Why?”
“I no longer trust your capacity to make sound decisions.”
“Have you ever?” Charlie bites back, crossing her arms and turning away from me slightly.
“Yes. I did,” I reply simply. Then I add more softly, “Once.”
“What changed?” she implores. Hurt.
If she can’t deduce what changed, that’s her problem. I’ll give her to the count of ten, and then I’m leaving.
Ten. Nine. Eight…
She shifts in her seat.
Seven. Six…
Her eyes come back to me. They are soft, yet wide. Guilt.
Five. Four…
She looks away, embarrassed. Knowing.
Three. Two…
“This about what I did,” she says. “About the... disappearances.” Charlie says the last word with a slight emphasis, as if she hopes I’ll allow it. I won’t.
“Their physical disappearance is not an accurate way to describe their actual state of existence, Charlie. You killed them.”
“That’s not fair,” she whispers. I can feel her weaken beside me.
“The truth is not bound by fairness.”
Silence again. I wonder how long I’ll have to endure it before I can leave.
“You’ve been talking to Kor about me,” she accuses, deflated.
I let out an aggravated sigh. I can’t sustain this level of disinterest for much longer. “Believe it or not Charlie, there are better things to discuss.”
“Don’t do this, Tirigan,” Charlie cries. “Don’t push me away like this!”
I do not reply. I can’t reply. She won’t understand. She never truly understands.
The car is suddenly much hotter than it was a few moments before. Increased body temperature.
“Tirigan, please. We can’t do this on our own. We need each other. Just tell me what you’re thinking.”
“You won’t understand.” My mouth betrays me. My heart is beating wildly with something… Something. It distracts. It pulls me away from my goal. I only know I am successful in speech because of Charlie’s reply.
“Let me try!” she shouts, throwing up her hands. “How do you know if you don’t try?”
“I have tried!” It bursts out of me before I have a chance to quell it. A flood. A crushing flood. “Caring has gotten me nowhere!” I shout back. Fracturing. “This, right here, what we are doing, it’s distracting. I don’t need distractions, Charlie. When I am distracted, I make mistakes.”
“Mistakes?” Charlie repeats, puzzled and much calmer now. “What mistakes?”
No. Don’t’ tell her. Shame. Fear. Emba—
Focus.
“You know who I am, Charlie,” I reply as steadily as I can manage, ignoring her question. “This is how I operate. This is what is best for me. I do not need your corrupted emotions seeping into my brain and making me believe they are my own. If you want to find Calla, I need to focus. You must understand that.”
“What I understand is that you continue to pretend that you don’t feel, even though we both know you do!”
Her hand is suddenly on mine. Intolerable. I pull it away roughly. Her hands ball into fists.
“I can’t believe we’re back to this, Tir. You’ve come so far since we left, since we met these people. You have to find a balance. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You’ve got to—”
I tune her out. I’m extremely fortunate for this well-practiced skill.
I can’t hear her anymore. It’s just… buzzing. Persistent buzzing that sounds a lot like my sister, but the words are now completely unintelligible. The moment of peace gives me a chance to slow my heart rate, refocus on that which is most important.
My sister may be operating under the delusion that I hold some sort of advanced sentimental attachment to the people we travel with, but they are simply a means to an end. Lies. Sentiment overwhelms. Pulls in every direction. Takes my breath and— Stop. Focus.
I close my eyes. It will signal to Charlie that I am no longer listening, but I need the absence of stimuli.
I can still feel the heat on my cheeks, the beat of my heart, the whisper of Charlie’s breath on my face, but without sight I can find my focus better. No one’s gaze to catch out the window, no one’s mind to inadvertently push against my own. If I could immerse myself in a sensory deprivation tank, I should think it to be highly enjoyable.
What is the problem? Charlie won’t stop talking. What would make her stop talking?
Anunnaki and humans are similar in their reaction to news that is both surprising and extremely distressing. Shock typically has the effect of silence.
As it happens, I have such news for Charlie. Something she has stumbled around the edges of, but has yet to deduce. If I tell her this, she will finally stop talking, and then I can leave. Escape.
There is no reason to hold the information back anymore. It was an emotionally driven decision that now serves only as a reminder of the mistake my heart allowed my mind to make. Foolish. At the time, it seemed like a brave and calculated choice, but I can admit the truth now. I was a coward.
Slowly, I bring myself back, opening my eyes and hearing Charlie’s voice like a high-pitched version of the gravel we just drove over. My body shivers unconsciously.
“You care, Tirigan, I know you do!” Charlie says desperately. “You’ve shown that these last few weeks, more than ever before. You were growing Tirigan, you were changing!”
I haven’t changed. I am who I am. I have learned, but I have not changed. I cannot change. My mind is what I have. My mind is what I know. Charlie must shut up.
“Tirigan, please, just talk to me,” Charlie tries again, this time her voice more angry than sad. Her frustration pushes me that much harder towards my resolve.
I turn to look at her, my face perfectly placid as I finally acquiesce to her request. “It was me. I did it.”
Charlie’s frustration drains into confusion as she ponders my words. I give her a moment, a chance to understand. It’s not impossible that she would figure it out. She is of above average intelligence, but at this point, it’s improbable. Her current emotional state clouds her memories.
“Did what?” she finally asks.
She doesn’t know that she is proving my point for me. Disappointment. Swallowing, I continue.
“I was the one who moved the knife at the festival,” I tell her steadily. “I stabbed myself.”
My heart is finally calm; the temperature of my skin has returned to normal. Charlie has stopped breathing, so I no longer feel her breath on my face. The vehicle is finally silent.
I open the door and exit.
Day
Forty-Five: Charlie
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The World Continues Without Us
Tirigan’s words confuse more than they enlighten, but he’s out of the car before I can say anything about it.
He stabbed himself.
It wasn’t me. It wasn’t some sinister latent power I had no knowledge of. He literally stabbed himself.
Why? To what purpose? Why would anyone do that?
There’s a knock on the door of the truck. Oleander. I scoot over toward the door and open it, climbing out several moments behind Tirigan. I don’t know how many.
“Everything… okay?” Oleander asks, one eyebrow quirked.
“Um, no,” I respond, eyes unfocused and unseeing. “Not even… no.”
“What is it?” Oleander asks, his hand going to my upper arm and giving it a gentle squeeze before it rests there. His hand is large and warm. It feels like safety.
“Tirigan, he…” I trail off, completely baffled as to how to end the sentence. I realize quickly that I probably shouldn’t. Despite how close Oleander and I have grown over the last few weeks, I think it’d be smart to keep this detail to myself for the time being. At least until I can understand it.
My gaze find’s my brother’s back and settles there. He’s pulled his backpack on and is following an equally befitted Kor up a large sanddune. The rest of our group trails them, each wearing or carrying bags of their own. Kor looks back at Tirigan at an odd time, stopping short as if hearing something he didn’t like. His gaze is stern. My instinct is to run to them and defend my brother, but I know better than that. Whatever Kor and Tirigan are silently discussing, I’m obviously not meant to hear it.
Kor looks at me a moment later. “Charlie, the truck.”
Sighing, I turn back and prepare to use my destructive power for the second time. Erasing a method of transportation can’t be harder than erasing a few people. It feels callous, this thought, so I push it away.
I close my eyes and allow myself to be washed in the cold, empty feeling that accompanies my power. I feel it seep through my body like poison, until I can funnel the energy to the truck. A bone-deep chill runs through me. My heart stutters, skips, stops and restarts again. And when my eyes open again, the truck is gone.
I stare at its absence until Oleander’s knuckles brush against my cheek. “Charlie?”
“I’m sorry. It’s… it’s not nothing, but I don’t want to talk about it. Okay?” His fingers make their way to a stray bit of hair and tuck it behind my ear.
“All right, fair enough,” he says with a smile. His hand travels down my arm and links with my own. “Shall we?”
I give him a small smile in return and nod, allowing myself to be pulled along to follow behind the others.
The warmth of Oleander’s fingers intertwined with mine pulls my mind from the confounding mess that is my brother and reminds me of what it is that has been happening between Oleander and I since we left Pacoa.
There’s the hand holding, which I happen to like. A lot. It isn’t all the time, that would probably get a little annoying, but it happens often enough that I’ve started to get used to it.
There was a shift, something tangible that passed between us the night we left Pacoa, and ever since then, my skin sizzles every time Oleander looks at me. My stomach does a sort of swooping thing that makes me feel like I need to throw up, but it’s actually pretty nice. Butterflies is what the humans called it. Butterflies in my stomach. Oleander gives me butterflies.
I can only imagine the face Tirigan would make if I told him that. Oleander actually has a drawing of a butterfly inked into his stomach, and he has several more markings on his chest and abdomen. I’ve see them when he fails to button his shirts.
The first time he reached out and held my hand was the night after I’d… the night after the battle.
We’d finally soothed Cal enough to get him to fall asleep, and then I found my hand full of Oleander’s before eventually drifting off myself. We didn’t talk about it. I don’t know if that’s what people typically do when they start these things, but we didn’t discuss it. We actually haven’t discussed this new piece of our relationship at all. I hadn’t really intended on pursuing a relationship of a romantic nature, seeing as how split my focus already is, but with Oleander, it’s just easy. I haven’t felt distracted by his presence. Well, not overly distracted. He can be quite distracting at times. I don’t think Tirigan would like that aspect of… whatever this is.
Oleander leads me over the sanddune behind the others, revealing the open ocean. I haven’t had the chance to really prepare myself for the view. The sounds. The feelings. The taste.
“I love the ocean,” I say simply, stopping just a moment to gaze out at the crashing waves.
“Hmm,” Oleander responds, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. “Me too.”
The wind tousles his long loose curls around his face as it pulls into a smile. The sun is low in the sky, just enough to illuminate the Gyan in pinks and oranges. His chest rises and falls as if he’s breathing the ocean’s air for the first time. His eyelashes fan down along his cheek and cast a shadow that I can’t help but want live in.
It suddenly occurs to me that Oleander himself has begun to feel like home. Not as much as Tirigan, but close. It’s a dangerous thought that pulls my hand from his.
“Come on, we should keep pace,” I say as casually as I can manage. “Bo will have our heads.”
If Oleander is bothered by my release of his hand, he doesn’t show it. He opens his eyes and lets out a short laugh.
“She has been rather disagreeable lately, hasn’t she?”
“You’d know better than I, but yeah, I’d say so.” I keep walking, and Oleander takes up stride beside me. I walk faster than usual, eager to catch up to the others. “Any idea what that’s about?”
In lieu of a reply, Oleander makes a soft humming noise, leaving me to wonder on my own why Bo has been so testy lately.
A small child runs quickly toward us, a bucket of sand in one hand and a shovel in the other. A man trails behind her, smiling and waving at us in apology when she barrels between us. Oleander laughs and waves back. I manage a polite smile. I hear the man chastise the girl, telling her to slow down, but my mind is already back on the bucket and shovel she’d just blown past us with.
When Tirigan and I were little, our parents took us to the beach off of what was once Sydney’s coast. It took Tirigan an hour of quiet contemplation and examination before he would step onto the sand. Then, once he’d worked through it, it took him several long minutes to make his way out to where we set up our blanket. He didn’t like the way his feet sunk in the sand. The sensation was very difficult for him to overcome, but he did eventually. We didn’t pressure him. John and Calla offered to wait with him while he assessed the situation, but he wouldn’t allow it.
When he finally joined us, I was in the middle of making my very first sandcastle. John had presented each of us with a bucket and shovel right before they told us where we were going that day. My bucket was bright red, the shovel yellow. Tirigan’s were purple and green. Before Tirigan joined me, I had use of both buckets, creating a large castle in double time, but once he arrived, I was forced to hand his over.
An hour later, I had made a very large, but very messy looking sandcastle and Tirigan had accomplished one perfectly turned over bucket of sand. There wasn’t a single grain of sand out of place. I remember him looking between our accomplishments, his grin smug, before presenting his creation to our parents. They ‘oohed’ and ‘awed,’ and I kicked his castle over. Tirigan didn’t even cry, which kind of made it worse. He just looked at me like I was crazy for a few moments, before his features were clouded with disappointment.
I’ve seen that look thousands of times in my life. I saw it today, in the truck, just moments ago.
I’m constantly not living up to my brother’s expectations. I don’t know how I was supposed to deduce that Tirigan stabbed him
self, but, apparently, I was. I could see it all over his face. It was obvious to him. Everything is always so obvious to him. I don’t usually let it bother me, but our circumstances are a lot different than when we were making sand castles, our parents within arm’s reach.
“Charlie?” Avias’ calls out to me. “Have you gone and left us?”
I didn’t realize that we’d already caught up to them. Kor and Tirigan still hold the lead but are only a few paces ahead of us, with Calor and Celosia looking down at their feet as they follow behind. Bo and Oleander speak quietly between me and the sea, as Avias takes up my other side.
“No, sorry,” I reply. “I was just thinking.”
“Obviously,” Avias drawls. “Care to share? I could use something to think about.”
I laugh at the irony. Tirigan would rather die than be distracted, and here’s Avias, requesting it.
“Just the first time I came to the beach. Making sand castles. Running around with Tirigan in the surf. I really loved it.”
“Hmm.” Avias nods and lets his eyes flit up to my brother for a moment before settling on a group of young people sunbathing. Their music pumps loud and insistent, building up and falling away just as quickly. It’s all sharp notes and unheard melodies. I don’t really care for it.
Avias must agree because the music is gone a second later, his nose curling up in distaste.
“Not a fan?” I ask.
“It’s no Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique, that’s for sure.”
“Tchaikovsky? Really?” I tease, letting out a laugh despite the heaviness of my heart. “Do you only listen to classical music?”
“No.” Avias smirks. “But my tastes are limited.”
“I still haven’t heard you play,” I nudge his side with my elbow. “Did you bring your violin?”
“Couldn’t bear to leave it behind,” Avias responds. “I’m sure you’ll be silencing me in due time.”