Bad Bloods

by Shannon A. Thompson

  “Just because it’s not completely about you doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing.”

  Violet rocked her jaw back in forth, clenching and unclenching her fists.

  “We’re all just one instrument in an orchestra,” I said, trying to dissolve the tension, but Violet scrutinized me without budging an inch.

  “That’s quite a beautiful metaphor for this ugly city.”

  “Beauty is an ugly thing,” I agreed. “It distracts us from the truth.”

  “So what is the truth?” she snapped.

  Connelly gestured for me to answer this time. “The people on the inside want out just as much as the people on the outside want in.”

  As much as I saw Violet’s side, I saw my own more.

  “Doctors could study bad bloods,” I continued. “They could study stilts more.”

  Violet’s glare softened, but Adam turned to the wall as his own emotions stirred inside—two people I should’ve known well enough to read, but two people I was still getting to know.

  “With more people in the outskirts, more opportunities would arise to help bad bloods get into schools, treated at hospitals, and get jobs.” It was the same reasoning Connelly fed me weeks prior, but only one reason felt genuine to me. “Families could be reunited.”

  Sometimes, literal walls kept people apart. Other times, walls were invisible. But they all had to be broken down eventually, even if it demanded help from strangers.

  That was how Violet reunited me with Adam, after all.

  She broke down my wall.

  “That wall is coming down whether the government likes it or not,” Connelly added. “But if we join in, we can make sure it’s done right. We can make sure Henderson is seen as a hero and not a villain.”

  Violet straightened at the threat. “Why would anyone see him as a bad person?”

  He’d already vouched for bad bloods and for the wall’s deconstruction, but complications were often invisible. This one, however, was not. I’d already seen it myself.

  “There’s a correlation between our attacks and the ocean,” Connelly said, reminding Violet and Adam about my sinking island. “Someone on the inside might know why, or worse, someone on the inside might not know at all.”

  “You need someone on the inside?” Violet deadpanned.

  “I need someone powerful on the inside,” Connelly corrected. “Someone who can get us into the center of the city.”

  Somewhere only a bad blood would be able to reach.

  “If not, people will continue to attack whether we try to stop them or not,” Connelly pressured. “And then, we might all sink together.” And drown.

  Levi’s premonition had never felt closer, but stopping it felt futile.

  The future never listened.

  “I don’t know anyone,” I said, eyeing Adam in the process.

  For the last eight months, he’d lived on the other side, but he also lived in a dead zone. A cabin pressed up against the wall for security was hardly considered the city. But he also knew others, others who’d been in his flock.

  “Michele can’t help us,” Adam decided. “Everything she does is screened.”

  “What about Catelyn?” I asked anyway.

  “No.” Adam cringed. “Anyone but her.” Then, he slipped into a chair. “Besides, she’s in the spotlight, too. It might hurt us more.”

  “And you really want to help these people?” Violet piped up.

  Adam and I looked at her.

  She frowned back.

  “The economy, the doctors, our freedom,” I started, only for Violet to cut me off.

  “Those are all good reasons,” she agreed, “but I still don’t know yours.”

  She stared down Connelly, who stared back.

  “I have a family,” she said, and, for the first time, the old woman seemed sincere. Even her cheeks flushed. “I haven’t seen them in forty years.”

  “And you want in?” Violet clarified.

  “More than anything.”

  “What do I get out of it?”

  “Anything you want,” Connelly promised. “I could fix your school issue, for one. Get you into any facility you want.”

  “How?”

  “Legal documents.”

  The same ones Violet might need if she were to challenge the school’s laws.

  Highlanders had access to more texts, more information, more power than anyone else in Vendona combined. If Violet wanted anything—anything at all—Connelly could probably get it for her, even from our place in the outskirts. Paper, after all, wasn’t difficult to smuggle across. People weren’t either. But getting into the middle of the city? That would take a magician. Or a ghost.

  Connelly needed Violet, but Violet needed Connelly, too.

  Violet hesitated only for a moment before she cleared her throat. “I know someone,” she said. Before anyone could argue, she declared our next step. “Leave it to me.”

  The paint of her bedroom walls almost looked white in the dark, but an inch of streetlight from the balcony window revealed the truth.

  “Bubblegum pink, huh?” I said, more to myself than to her, but she clucked her tongue at my entrance.

  “I was wondering when you’d visit.” Ameline Marion Lachance, the only daughter of Marion Lachance, and member of the Southern Flock. She used to go by Ami. “Though I should correct myself.” She even spoke differently now. “I was wondering when you’d actually show yourself.”

  I leaned against the bubblegum-pink wall and looked her over. “You could sense me?”

  Ami tilted her head, one of her long French braids falling over her shoulder as she licked her thumb, then flipped the page of her thick, gossipy magazine. Back in November, I had met the fourteen-year-old blonde and thought maybe, just maybe, we could be friends. She was the only girl I knew my own age. But the closer she stood, the further I stepped back. Even in the outskirts, her lilac perfume told me of where she came from—the Highlands—and that made her as untouchable as she was now.

  Nestled between a large bookcase and an alcove of porcelain dolls, the teen looked a few years too late to be sitting amongst toys, but she appeared happy enough. In the past few months, her hair had grown, too, and her brown eyes had softened, like she actually slept now. Her clothes were tailored to her slim frame, too, and the entire ensemble of silk and fine linen made her appear even more doll-like than she already seemed before. And I remained her opposite.

  While she wore pink, I wore black. When she smiled, I frowned. And when I smelled like dirt and soot and smoke, she smelled like a brimming bouquet of flowers. If she were the doll every kid wanted, I was the ghost kids had nightmares about.

  How could I have believed we would ever be friends?

  Still, when she flipped the next page of her magazine, I knew her well enough to understand some of her reality was missing.

  “You can read?” I asked, more curious than cunning.

  Most of the Southern Flock kids were illiterate, including Serena, and she was the second-up. I couldn’t imagine Robert would’ve taught Ami if he hadn’t taught her, and Ami confirmed my guess by dropping the tabloid into her lap.

  “Would it really make a difference with these anyway?” she asked. Without another glance, she pushed it off her knees and onto the floor.

  The pages fluttered about until it settled against gravity. A familiar image faced up. Catelyn, dressed all in white. The same fashion magazine the officer in the hospital flipped through. But only now did I realize Ami wore a similar look—an hourglass, strapless top with a frayed-out skirt—though hers was orange, like the flowers on her windowsill thirty floors up from the ground. Beyond her balcony stood a thousand skyscrapers just like hers. Some estimated the Highlands housed seventy percent of Vendona’s population. Some said ninety. Others refused to count the outskirts all together, because what was the point, really?

  We’re all just instruments in an orchestra, Caleb had said, but he hadn’t clarified the one thing I knew to be
true—even the smallest of sounds were needed to complete a song. And Ami was one of many missing sounds. So was Catelyn.

  I toed the magazine between us. “Do you ever see her?”

  Ami frowned, but right when I thought she wouldn’t speak at all, she continued, “You know, she helped me learn how to braid after I was dropped off.”

  In the days after the election finished, I learned some of Ami’s origin story. Her mother—Marion Lachance, a Highlands politician—had found the Southern Flock and left her there for Robert to raise. Ami spoke French. Ami loved perfume. Ami always wore her hair in braids, even years after her family had ditched her. Why she went back after the election remained a mystery to me.

  “Do you think Catelyn still does hair?” Ami asked quietly. “I guess I should call her Stephanie now.”

  “Should I call you Ameline?”

  Ami hummed, almost as if she hadn’t heard me. To that, I sat on her queen bed and waited.

  What was one supposed to say when all they shared was tragedy? Were words necessary? Was that why some didn’t feel the need to read? Words often didn’t—and couldn’t—express enough. And between Ami and me, too much was lost. But we could bond on one subject.

  “I met a girl who can make hair grow,” I started, and when I got Ami’s attention, I pulled out my own ponytail to show her how long it was now. “Her name’s Hanna.”

  Ami’s brow rose. “Bad blood?”

  I nodded. “And all she does is cut, grow, and dye hair—all day long.” I decided to leave out the fact that she worked in a bordel. “But she’s bald.”

  Ami smiled sadly at that. “Bad bloods are weird that way,” she muttered, while staring at her hands. “Serena taught me how to use my powers, but they still come with faults, right?” It was then that I noticed what had happened. Ami’s skin—skin that could attach itself to anything so that she could defy gravity and climb walls—came off. Her palms bled. The magazine on the floor was soaked. “Useless, huh?”

  Before I could muster a word, Ami stood and stepped toward her desk. By using her knee, she popped the top drawer to make it slide out—something, I imagined, her mother custom ordered for her. Inside, bandages filled the storage unit to the brim, and Ami immediately began to work.

  Part of me was tempted to ask her how bandages fixed anything at all. Wouldn’t they also simply stick to her skin? But knowing Ami—knowing any bad blood from the streets—healing wasn’t the important part. Covering up the pain was.

  “It mainly happens when I’m nervous,” Ami said as she moved onto the second palm. “You know how it is.”

  She tilted her hand toward the wall, and there, I watched as my shadows danced.

  We had more in common than I cared to admit.

  “I need your help,” I confessed, knowing my secret concerns were written all over the walls in ink made from shadows.

  “Of course you do,” Ami said as she pushed her desk closed with her knee. The locked snapped into place. “You wouldn’t come by just to say hello.”

  My heart raced at her words. “Why act that way?” This time, my words would be the cold ones. “I barely knew you.”

  For twelve years, our flocks had been apart. In fact, our flocks had only united for a couple of days before both ceased to exist. If Ami and I had exchanged words back then, the simple memories were long lost by the worst ones that drowned everything else out. But an understanding remained.

  “Do we really need to know that much about each other?” she asked.

  I stood. “Tragedy doesn’t always bring people together, Ami.” It certainly hadn’t felt that way to me. Not until recently. But even then, that was between Adam, Daniel, and me. Everyone else stayed at a distance, and Ami moved the furthest away. “Technically, you’re the one who left.” I flailed my arms around the room to make a point. “Do you think I can really relate to this?”

  Ami eyed the décor herself. “Do you think I can?”

  My hands dropped against my sides in a loud thump. “So why go back with her?”

  “Mari—” Ami paused on her mother’s first name. So far, she didn’t call her mom, nor maman, not anything but Mari. “She explained a lot.”

  “I’ve learned a lot recently, too,” I said, trying to put my own feelings aside, “and your mom is why I’m here.”

  Ami raised her brow again. I hated that I learned her tick in less than an hour.

  “We need to speak to her,” I said.

  “We?”

  “Oui, we,” I responded, rolling my eyes. “Adam, me, a few others you don’t know.”

  Ami turned toward the open window as her drapes waved in the summer night. “Is Serena a part of it?”

  I shook my head, though she couldn’t see. “Not Daniel either.”

  “And what’s it about?”

  “The wall.”

  The French girl touched her braids, causing a few blonde strands to escape. Her skirt caught the wind, too, and for once, Ami looked like a girl who would be spirited away. “I’ve seen the news.”

  But she hadn’t seen—or heard—the truth. And I didn’t have time for that, not now.

  “We need your mom’s help,” I said, trying to find the right words to convince Ami without having to get lost in another interrogation. “We can tear it down the right way.”

  As much as I hated to admit it, Marion Lachance might’ve been our one and only political connection to learn the truth and to stop the worst from happening.

  “And what makes you think she’ll help you?” Ami asked.

  “She helps you, doesn’t she?”

  “So, why would I help you?”

  I sighed. “Because we went through it together, right?”

  “It?” she repeated, eyeing me. “You mean, the Northern Flock Massacre?” I didn’t have a chance to respond. “Do you ever think about my perspective? About what I saw?”

  I collapsed on her bed again. “No,” I admitted. “I haven’t.”

  Ami’s expression twisted. “I tore off a man’s face, and all I saw was blood and bone.” Right now, all I saw was the blood seeping through Ami’s bandaged hands. “And that’s when I realized how they saw us—as meat—like sacks of blood, bad blood.” Her lips twitched at the last two words. “And I liked that theirs ran in the streets, for once,” she said. “I liked it.” But this time, she said it as if she didn’t.

  Sometimes, we spoke lies even to ourselves simply because it felt right to say them. Sometimes, lies were the same things as wishes. Sometimes, wishes were things to hate.

  “Vendona calls it the Northern Flock Massacre like the Southern Flock didn’t even exist,” she continued, but now, her brown eyes welled up with tears. “Like my family wasn’t there. Like we have already been forgotten.”

  In all honestly, I had never considered what the news called us, but after Ami said it, the problematic situation seemed obvious. They chose to name it the Northern Flock Massacre because it happened in the Northern Flock’s house. But I had always been focused on how they spoke of it in the past tense, since it was in the past, but everyone seemed to speak with little to no regard for those who still lived with the aftermath every day. Even me. I hadn’t considered Ami’s feelings. I’d only focused on my own.

  “You know why I haven’t visited?” I asked, but before Ami could respond, I blurted out the truth. “I ran.” The confession came out in a whisper. “That night, I ran, and that was all I did.”

  In fact, I had been shot almost immediately. Before I could comprehend what happened, the bay window exploded, and, with it, my knee.

  “I can’t tell anyone I ran,” I rambled. “I could’ve—” Saved them.

  But instead, I disappeared into the shadows, and the shadows deposited me in a land far, far away, in the first home I had lost long ago.

  My grave. My biological family. I had found them dead when I left my new family to die, too.

  Blake’s blue eyes filtered through my memory. Then, his teddy bear on his grave
. I recalled the day Ryne gave it to him, and I remembered the glassy eyes Ryne had when he realized Kally had died, too. And Peyton. And Briauna. And even fickle Floyd.

  I could’ve saved any one of them, even those left behind in the Southern Flock, but all I managed was to drag Ron into my shadows by accident. And now? I had no clue where Ron was. I had hardly helped at all.

  “You saved Ryne, though,” I said to Ami. “I remember that.”

  When I had finally managed to return to Vendona, I watched the others find Calhoun’s apartment from my shadows. While Ryne gave Ami directions, she forced him to take the steps he thought he couldn’t make, and they survived together.

  “He has a life because of you,” I said, “and two dads who love him more than anyone else in the world.”

  Ami’s tears released from her eyes, as did a sad laugh. “I don’t even remember which one Ryne is.”

  I couldn’t help but awkwardly laugh with her. “Well, he remembers you,” I said, “and so do I.”

  I was only scared of admitting it, of facing what I had done, and continuing to live on anyway.

  Ami stared at my leg after the story. “Did Daniel—”

  “He healed me,” I told her. “Without my permission.”

  “He does a lot without permission,” she said, and we laughed again.

  “So do I,” I added through it all.

  “Me, too.”

  When our giggles calmed down into something familiar, yet missing, she smiled a smile that wasn’t sad at all.

  “Okay,” she said, standing tall, “I guess it’s time to rescue this stupid city again.”

  “Rescue what?” a new voice asked. When we spun around, a woman met our stares from the doorway. Clips pinned up her usually curly hair, and an eye mask sat on her widow’s peak, but I recognized her all the same. Marion Lachance. “I heard the giggles and thought I’d join in on the fun.”

  “Maman,” Ami said as she stepped forward and took my hand, “I want you to meet Violet,” she said. “My friend.”

  “You’re sure this is the way, girlie?” Connelly peered through a crack in the southernmost part of the inner wall, and hesitated. “It seems too easy.”