by Bre Hall
She picked up the voice of a woman. Accent different. British, perhaps. Familiar, too. “…has been too long. Stop putting this off, Peter.”
So, he was home. Why hadn’t he come to find her? How long had he been there? Days? Was he avoiding her? No. She tried to calm her racing mind. He had just returned. Hadn’t been expecting company. That was it. Had to be.
“We would see results if you’d both stop interfering,” Peter said.
Ren’s nose wrinkled, like she’d smelled one of Grams’ essential oil concoctions gone wrong. What results was he talking about? The experiments? And who exactly was interfering? And how?
“Face it,” said the woman. “Your experiments haven’t worked. They were never going to work on the girl.”
It was clear to Ren they were talking about her. Her cheeks flushed. Her breath caught. She glanced at Alfie for calming reassurance, but his face was twisted like hers, fists clenched at his side.
“And they never will if you don’t give them time,” Peter said.
“We don’t have any more time.” That voice belonged to a man, but it wasn’t new. She had heard it before, but where? “We need to act and we need to act now.”
“I’m not giving up on this,” Peter said.
“Sometimes the old ways are best, Peter,” said the man again.
“I know that voice,” Ren whispered to Alfie. She popped up to peek over the windowsill. Peter sat in the arm chair, still covered in newspaper. Across from him, on a newly cleared velour sofa, sat the woman Ren had had heard. Her heart stopped. The woman sported a black bob and had grey eyes that shined silver, almost. She was the woman Ren had run into at Roast several days before. No wonder she had acted so strange. Beside the woman was a man. Bald, shining head. Sharply dressed. Joe. Her father’s farmhand. No wonder he had seemed off-kilter during their encounters. He wasn’t a farmer at all.
“Who are they, exactly?” Ren wondered aloud just as the woman spun toward the window. Before Ren could be seen, Alfie jerked her out of sight. Held his arm across her collarbone, holding her back.
“Be careful,” Alfie whispered.
Ren’s pulse thumped hard against her skin. She nodded stiffly. There was a silence inside, a slight creak of the floorboards. Footsteps getting so close they vibrated the house’s paint-stripped siding.
“What is it, Beverly?” asked Joe.
“I thought I saw…” the woman trailed off.
“Give me a few more days,” Peter said. “I know it will work. You’ll see.”
“Fine,” said the woman. “But if you’re wrong—”
“Trust me,” Peter said.
The house shifted again and the footsteps shuffled away. Voices turned once more to murmurs. The shriek of hinges. Boots on the porch. Ren and Alfie kept hidden, both of them pressed so tightly against the house she could feel her heartbeat in the warped wood.
“Finish this.” Joe’s voice shattered the stillness in the air.
“I will,” Peter said.
Beverly spoke next, a warning. “You’d better.”
A crunch of grass, of gravel. An unnatural gush of wind, accompanied by a screech. Then, Peter’s voice rising up over the yard.
“Spying on me now?” His voice was flat.
She couldn’t tell if he was angry or amused.
Ren walked around to the front of the house, Alfie not far behind. Peter sat on the top step of the porch, a cigarette already lit. It rested casually between two slightly curved fingers.
“Who were they?” Ren asked. “Really. Because I’ve seen them both before.”
Peter shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Um, yeah it does,” she said. “I heard you. You were talking about the experiments with them. They must be Auxilium, right? Are thy like you? Are they on our side?”
Peter’s eyes were drowning in an inkwell of darkness. “You sound five-years old. Good guys versus the bad guys.”
She could feel her jean jacket growing bulkier at the sound of his words and she slipped deeper into her shell, shrinking. It made her stomach twist, her skin crawl. She wanted to punch something or scream at someone. Alfie beat her to it.
“You’re an asshole.”
“How do you figure that?” Peter took a long drag off of his cigarette. Exhaled the smoke through his nostrils.
“Ren, let’s just go.” Alfie tugged on her jacket sleeve.
She wriggled herself free of Alfie and took a step toward Peter. She stood up tall. Pushed her shoulders back. Her jaw tightened. “Are they the ones who tried to kill me the other night? Or not?” she asked Peter.
“Not,” Peter said, eyes trained on Alfie. “They’ve been helping keep an extra eye on you. Making sure you’re safe.”
“That’s why Joe started working with my father.” She unraveled slightly. She should have known. Should have guessed. Instead, she’d arrived at the worst possible scenario. She felt so stupid.
“What a load of bullshit,” Alfie said. He turned to Ren. “Please tell me you’re not believing anything this guy has to say?”
“And who should she come to for the truth?” Peter asked. He looked Alfie up and down. “You?”
“As a matter of fact—” Alfie clamped his lips down hard. Stopped talking. He ducked his head. Studied his sneakers, the toes twisting on the brittle lawn.
“That’s what I thought,” Peter said, flicking the butt of his cigarette into the grass. He closed the space between himself and Alfie. Stood practically on his toes. “Nothing left to say.”
Alfie’s fist curled. Peter’s shoulders stiffened.
Despite what Peter had said about her being a five-year old, she knew he would apologize. She hoped, at least. But she couldn’t choose between her best friend and the boy that made her Lizzie-and-Michael-dizzy. She didn’t want to watch them beat each other bloody on the lawn. Especially since Peter had that not-so-human quality about him. He’d probably scoop Alfie up and fly him high enough so that when he dropped him, he’d break both legs, or worse, flatten him completely.
“You’re right.” Alfie leaned toward Peter. Noses so close. Knees bending. Fists tightening. “There’s nothing left to say.”
“Stop,” Ren said, inserting herself between them. She could feel the heat radiating off of both of their bodies. She put her hands on their chests and pushed against them until they both took a step backward. She looked up at Peter. “I want to regress.”
“What about this asshole?” Peter said, glaring at Alfie.
“This isn’t about him,” she said. “It’s about me and Lizzie.”
Alfie squeezed Ren’s shoulder. “I’m going to go.”
Ren twisted toward Alfie. “You don’t have to.”
Alfie looked past her, to Peter. “I think I do. I’ll see you later, Ren, okay?”
“The best thing I’ve witnessed all day,” Peter said as Alfie climbed onto his bike and started up the driveway, standing on his pedals. Alfie flipped Peter the bird and kept moving. Peter laughed. “That’s right. Keep going, pal.”
Ren rolled her eyes and climbed the steps to the porch. Stopped short of the door and stared out across the grass, up the driveway. A cloud of dust from Alfie’s bike shivered in the wind. He was the speck pedaling just ahead of it.
She wanted to call out to him. Bring him back. But she didn’t. He wouldn’t. She turned and walked into the house. Peter followed her.
“Are you mad at me?” he asked.
She slid into her usual seat in the kitchen. “Don’t be an asshole to my best friend.”
“He’s annoying.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “And don’t treat me like a child.”
“I didn’t.”
“Where’s the tooth?” Ren asked, looking around.
Peter reached into one of the cupboards and pulled out the tea tin. He uncapped it and slid it toward her. “I’m sorry.”
“You should be,” she said. “I waited for you for the last three days, then I jus
t happen to stop by and find out you’re home?”
“You just happened to stop by? Really?” Peter’s face was a Ramones song. Tight. Angry. “No, I see it in your eyes. You wanted Lizzie. Not me.”
“That’s not,” she said, pausing a beat, “Entirely true.”
She pried the cap off of the tin, her skin tingling at the sight of the glowing tooth. The feeling was like the starburst of adrenaline you get at the tippy-top of a rollercoaster. It was all she could do not to let her hand fall inside so her fingers could run over the smooth surface of the relic.
“I can see it in your eyes,” Peter said. “I can see how much you want—no—need to drop through the world between and sew yourself into a life that is so different from your own. So much more exciting. It makes your head spin. Your knees go weak. It’s better than being with me.”
She swallowed loudly. Her voice was a forgotten goose feather. “You’re wrong.”
“Go ahead.” Peter threw up a hand, tore away from her, so that she couldn’t see his face. “Escape this hellhole. I wish I could.”
She hadn’t seen this side to Peter yet. Not when his belligerence was directed at her. What happened to the gentle touches, the swoon-worthy kisses, the late-night rescues? What happened to the Peter she had been falling for?
“You’re being an ass,” she said.
She didn’t give him time to answer. She reached into the tin and found the familiar slopes of Lizzie’s tooth. The kitchen vanished and she began to freefall through a tunnel of color. She felt herself weave into Lizzie’s skin just as a wisp of cool air pricked goosebumps over her arms. Both eyes opened as she was ducking through the opening in her bedroom window and onto the roof. Lizzie’s brothers and sister were tucked into the blankets of their shared bed, which took up most of the square room, sectioned off from the main living space by a piece of fabric on a string.
Lizzie stepped onto the roof at the back of the building. The stars floated faintly above, shrouded in a haze of light from the city. The wind was strong, as usual, but the slight chill pricked her flesh, reminded her she was alive.
“Well, well, well,” came a voice from the shadows. Her heartbeat quickened. Kept beating wildly in her chest even as Mary stepped out of the darkness.
“Jesus, Mary,” Lizzie said. “You nearly frightened the curl out of my hair.”
“Baby,” Mary teased.
“You were supposed to meet me on the street corner.”
“I know, but I was hoping to borrow that necklace of yours? The one with the real-looking pearl.” Mary drew her fingers across the high neckline of her best dress, the grey one with ruffled lace on the hem of the long skirt. “I thought it might look well with this ensemble.”
Lizzie sighed. “What I do for you, Mary Keogh.”
She slipped back through the bedroom window, still open, and tiptoed quietly across the slipshod pattern of wooden floorboards. Just as she passed her sleeping sister, Siobhan, the floor creaked loudly. Lizzie froze. Siobhan rolled toward her. Out of all of her siblings, eleven-year-old Siobhan wouldn’t hesitate to run into the main room, where their parents slept on a mattress on the floor, and tell them what Lizzie was up to.
Lizzie waited for an eyelid to rip open. For Siobhan to look up and see the window. For her to find Mary standing just outside on the roof.
But Siobhan didn’t wake.
Even so, Lizzie held her breath and knelt down in front of the cigar box she kept under the bedframe with her most precious belongings: A silver hairbrush she’d found abandoned in an alley one day, the rose, pressed and dried, that Mary had stolen for her one day near the river, and the necklace her grandmother had gifted her before she died. The faux pearl gleamed up at her in the dim light and, as Lizzie reached into the box to take the necklace, she could hear her grandmother’s boisterous laugh echoing in her memory.
The bed springs squealed. Siobhan’s tiny fingers wrapped around Lizzie’s wrist.
“When are you coming to bed?” Siobhan asked, her voice thick with sleep.
“Soon,” Lizzie whispered. “Now, go back to sleep.”
With necklace in hand, Lizzie stood up. Hovered over the bed. Siobhan’s eyelids fluttered once, twice, then, she rolled over. The deep breathing that comes only with sleep picked up again as Siobhan joined the others in the room like a choir.
Lizzie moved silently toward the roof, slipped out into the cool night air, and closed the window behind her.
“What took you?” Mary asked.
“What do you think?” Lizzie laughed. She wrapped an arm around Mary’s shoulders and guided her toward the drainage pipe that snaked over the edge of the roof and down the side of the building toward the street.
“Siobhan,” Mary said through clenched teeth.
“Mammy’s ears, we call her,” Lizzie said. She handed Mary the pearl necklace before she hiked a leg over the roof’s edge and gripped the pipe firmly with both hands. She planted her boots on the bricks and began to slowly walk down the side of the building. Hand, hand, foot, foot, repeat. They’d been shimmying down the drainage pipe for nearly seven years. She could have done it in her sleep.
“She only wants to be included,” Mary said as she took the same position as Lizzie.
“I don’t think so,” Lizzie called up to her. “She enjoys being Mammy’s favorite far too much.”
“Forget about sisters and mammys for a few hours, Liz,” Mary said. “We’re going out with strapping young lads. The city has opened its gates—wide—to us for the first time. We will not be bogged down by familial travesties.”
Mary started to giggle as she finished her haphazard speech. Lizzie couldn’t help but laugh along with her.
As they reached the ground, the domed steeple of King’s Inn loomed over them in the dark, like an ominous shadow. They’d grown up beneath that dome. Played under it as children. With sticks and rocks and whatever else they could find for makeshift bouts of hurling or cricket.
The girls headed up the thoroughfare and turned the corner onto Sackville Street. Even though it was long past nine at night, the street hummed with dozens of walkers and trolleys alike. The girls bobbed and weaved through the masses as they made their way toward the river. Lizzie’s mind drifted to the night ahead. To Michael and his wide hands engulfing hers as they twirled to a fiddler’s medley until all hours. Until they were long out of breath, minds dizzy from drink and excitement.
“Jesus, would you look at that,” said Mary as a rumble filled the air. Lizzie focused on the street once more, her eyes tracking a wide carriage propelled by a noisy motor. Panhard cars, they were called. She had heard her father talk of them in an ostentatious way. The horseless carriage: Automobiles: The future.
“Don’t look too long,” Lizzie said as Mary kept an eye over her shoulder, the car passing by quickly. “It’s not like you’re ever going to own one yourself.”
“Neither will you,” Mary said, then gave her a playful shove. Lizzie stumbled into a group of men in sharp tweed suits and bowler hats striding down the pavement. She tried to turn sideways, slip out of the group, but she bumped into one man’s shoulder.
“Excuse me, Miss,” he said, his voice deep.
“Lizzie,” Mary squealed, her voice mixing with the bell of an approaching trolley.
Still trying to find her way out of the crowd, Lizzie caught Mary staring into the distance. Lizzie followed Mary’s stare and saw the top of Michael’s shaggy head. Even from far away, she could see the gleam in his eye. Her heart sped up. So did her feet. She was just about freed from the flurry of bodies when a thick hand connected to her back and someone pushed her out of the crowd.
She stumbled across the pavement, her balance severely damaged. A trolley bell rang out shrilly as Lizzie caught her toe on a loose paving stone and fell into the cobbled street.
In that moment, a single, half-breath of a moment, when Lizzie was falling, she snatched a glimpse of what she was leaving behind: Mary, red hair flung out sideway
s as she leaned forward to try and catch Liz by the arm, the march of several dozen Dubliners—thin noses pointed forward—heading home, and lastly, as the approaching trolley lights engulfed her, she caught sight of a man. Not too tall. Not too old. Tweed suit fashioned tight around his body. Thick black curls rolled out of his head, looking like Siobhan’s jump rope when she twisted it through the air.
Lizzie didn’t have time to think of Michael. Nor of her family.
The trolley slammed into her with so much force, her vision went black. She heard a high-pitched scream—the bell, maybe Mary—before every, single piece of herself shivered and fell numb. An electric shock pulsed through her once, and then, Ren began to fall, leaving the sweet scent of sea-drenched wind behind to sizzle through a broil of color. Crimson, indigo, goldenrod, seafoam green.
Ren crashed back into Peter’s kitchen and her body with a sharp gasp. Her breathing turned heavy, for she could still hear Mary screaming. Slowly, Mary’s voice faded and Ren tried to steady herself in her own world, but her mind rushed back to Sackville Street. To the last image she saw before things went dark.
As Lizzie, she didn’t have enough control over her present-day memory to make the connection, but as Ren gradually came back to her full reality, she recognized what Lizzie hadn’t.
The man on the sidewalk. The one with the black curls. The one she suspected to have pushed her in front of the trolley.
It was Peter.
Though she didn’t want to believe it, she couldn’t help not. Because, as Peter slid into the chair across from her and pushed those jump rope twisted curls out of his eyes, there was no denying it. It was him.
Peter had pushed Lizzie in front of the trolley.
Ren’s fingers curled into fists at her side and when she gave them a quick squeeze, a loud pop and a blue spark, like a volt of electricity, ripped skyward, shattering the lightbulbs above. Her eyes widened. Her fists loosened. She looked at her hands, normal as ever.