“We have fifteen minutes,” he said to me, to the sun, to the sea, and when all was said and done, he pulled on the motor. The boat nearly flipped as we sped up. “This tugboat has never let me down.”
Sea sprayed up into our faces, the wind biting our cheeks and whipping our hair. I squinted against the sunlight, recalling how the first time I saw the island was in the dark. Ellen, like a beacon, had led us to the shore. Today, Levi’s navigation skills would, and I didn’t know how good those were until a glint shone off the waves.
“There it is,” Levi said, but he paired his announcement with another roar. The engine screamed as he took it to full throttle, his knuckles white. “That old fogey.”
“What?” I shouted, but I kept my eyes on the sparkle Levi believed to be the island. He shouted Caleb’s name.
“He better be outta the Pits by now,” Levi said. As we got closer, I saw what he meant. “The water level’s rising.”
The sparkle—the glint on the horizon—was the glass castle. But instead of it being built in the middle of the island, it was surrounded by water. In fact, half of it was already underwater. The contraption could break at any moment. All the while, Caleb was underground somewhere.
“Bet they blew up a smaller portion for a test,” Levi said, more to himself than me, as he slowed the boat down.
The tip rose, and with it, I did, too.
“Hold steady,” Levi said, though his voice shook.
I grasped the boat’s edge and hunkered down as low as I could, but as we approached the glass castle—a home filled with so much laughter and light and memories—all I saw were the cracks.
The castle wanted to break. Inside, Plato sat in the middle of the floor, his hands over his ears, his eyes shut.
Levi crawled up next to me at the helm and shouted, “Let us in, Plato!”
If anyone could take down the glass ceiling without shattering the whole thing, it was Plato. Other than that, there were no entrances. The door was halfway underwater, and the growing splinters only warned of a potential break.
“Can he hear us?” I whispered, but no one answered.
Levi, as stubborn as me, shifted the boat to the other side. The stained glass we’d made only a few weeks before stared back at us. In the designs, two boys held hands. One had two colored eyes. The other swam in the sea. Brothers.
Levi choked at the sight.
This time, I screamed for him. “Plato! You need to come out.”
In response, the ocean shifted, and the waves rose up and over the brothers’ portrait.
I did the only thing I could do.
As a shadow, I slipped through the cracks, one painstaking centimeter at a time, and when I reformed on the other side, I found Plato shivering.
“Plato.” I kneeled beside him. “We have to go.”
But the child never had a chance to respond.
An explosion rang out, the ocean shook, and the castle walls sang.
When I was twelve, despite Daniel’s warnings, I would sit in front of the bay window in the Northern Flock house and watch our neighbors live their normal, human lives. I envied them that year. Worshipped them, even. But when I began to see how they interacted with us, I studied them. Though the government told us we were monsters, that humans hated us, the neighbors didn’t seem to be able to tell the difference between a bad blood and the boy next door.
On good days, Daniel would mow their lawns, babysit their kids, or fetch their mail and bring them groceries. Twice, the old woman across the street hugged him. Once, when we could barely afford food of our own, Daniel bought a family of four a meal. Not once did they bring us one.
I confronted Daniel, and he knew I had seen because I stared out the bay window. Instead of reprimanding me, he sat with me in front of the window during a storm. Then, he explained.
He didn’t do it to blend in, as I guessed, and it wasn’t to bribe them either, which was my second guess. It wasn’t even to make extra money, though that helped, and he acknowledged that all those reasons were better than the one he had. In reality, he just wanted to help. To be a good citizen. To feel like those in need always had someone watching over them. Even if that person was a teenager.
It wasn’t until half of our flock was dead that we realized the neighbors had done the same for us.
As the news rolled on and on for days, our various neighbors’ faces began to play. The kids he babysat. The family of four. The woman who hugged Daniel twice.
All along, they knew who we were, and they never told. All along, we watched each other through panes of glass.
That glass shattered in an ambush—and with it, my knee—and despite my knee being healed today, it ached as the glass castle around me splintered, cracking and shaking under the ocean’s weight.
It would only get worse, too.
As Levi’s boat lifted, Levi’s silhouette moved through the rainbows of stained glass until he appeared above us. The water lapped against the sides. The ocean threatened to take him down. And the castle shook in agreement.
Any moment, when the full strength of the surge hit the castle, all would be lost.
But I was used to being lost. I was used to falling apart.
With all my strength, I held Plato against my torso with one hand and used my other hand to hold the ocean back.
As my fingers cast out into shadows, the sea shuddered away. My body shook, too. A piece of me was only so strong. Soon, a piece of me could encourage the ocean to break me apart.
It had happened before.
We—the sea and me—were enemies as much as we were lovers.
When we touched, it was hard to separate. When we separated, it was hard not to hate. When we fought the forces that brought us together—or tore us apart—the world seemed to break in response.
Above us, the clouds swirled.
Plato watched and trembled. I watched and cried. I can get you, Levi, I promised with my eyes, but he watched us and smiled.
“Take him, Violet.”
“I can’t.”
“You can,” he said, and the sea surged.
My bones ached.
“You can’t get me while holding the ocean,” he said, “and you can’t save yourself if you stop holding that ocean.”
This time, he pressed his hand against the glass. Plato lifted his palm up, as if he could press back. Levi smiled.
“If you turn into a shadow to get me,” he started, “we’ll all just drown.”
“But—”
The cracking of glass interrupted my argument, but nothing stopped Levi. Nothing ever stopped Levi.
“Take him!” he screamed. “Take him now!”
And then, he kicked the crack in the glass.
It scattered.
The biggest crack of them all shot straight down, and, through it, a dozen smaller branches spanned out, splintering into the shape of a flower—like the violet Plato made me.
In November, my bay window broke out of hate. In July, our stained glass would break out of love. Or desperation. Or rebellion.
I didn’t know. Not yet. And neither did the brothers.
“Levi!” Plato shouted, but not for long.
The final explosion of the northern wall erupted miles away, birds scattered overhead, and, in the blink of an eye, I met Levi’s gaze one last time.
The ocean swept him away as we soared overhead.
Before the Pits, before the herd, before even Kuthun’s first kiss and Britney’s life-saving cry-song, there was Nuo.
From the moment my memories began to take shape, Nuo stood among them.
In sickness, Nuo. In fear, Nuo. In music, Nuo.
In my millions of memories, Nuo.
When I was diagnosed with stilts, Nuo hugged me, unlike so many others who shrank away. When I started fighting out of anger, she stitched me up. When I met my almost-deathbed, she sat next to it, and when she realized I would live forever, she smiled.
Back then, she always smiled, but she’d
lost it somewhere along the way. Whether it correlated to when Jia-Li made her start working, I wouldn’t know. I hadn’t asked. I missed asking.
“Nuo?” I said her name, wondering how long it’d been since the last time. When Violet was scared into the shadows? When the east wall blew up and I made it home? When I decided to go to shore to find Levi?
That seemed like ages ago, yet only two weeks had passed.
Levi was missing again, along with Violet and Plato, and I hadn’t succumbed to sleep until Nuo forced me to go to bed. Now, she shook me awake.
“Caleb.” Her silky-smooth whisper told me others were sleeping around us, and the thought almost dragged me back into slumber again. “Caleb, come on.”
This time when I opened my eyes, a small beam of light stretched from the doorway to Nuo and me. Probably Ellen, I thought, our perfect little lighthouse.
But the light glided across Nuo’s cheeks, hair, and eyes. Then, her eyebrow.
The scar on her eyebrow was because of me.
We’d been playing in a back alleyway behind the bordel when Nuo slipped and fell. I didn’t even know what her face hit, because all I saw was her blood. When I took her back to the bordel, someone stitched her up. But it was the one time Jia-Li hit me. Because Nuo had to stay pretty—not because she was hurt—and it was my job to keep her safe. That was when I started fighting. It was when Nuo started yelling at me just as much as I yelled at her.
I wanted enough money to escape. She thought escaping wasn’t worth my death. I disagreed.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Thank you.” All was spoken by resting my palm gently on her cheek. She took a moment to hold me there, and my thumb moved across her brow.
“You haven’t done that since we were little,” she said, her voice cracking. “You must be tired.”
I hummed in agreement, but she grabbed my arm and tugged.
“Come on, wake up,” she said, but she smiled. In all our years together, I knew this smile the most. The sad one. The broken one. “You have to come with me.”
As my foggy mind cleared, I sat up. Nuo took that time to make her way to the door where, sure enough, Ellen led the way in the night.
It was late, really late, and all around me—curled up in beds and sprawled out on the floor in sleeping bags made from sweaters—were kids. Most were bad bloods; some weren’t. But all lived on Vendona’s streets.
How many times you gotta put us in one spot for them to slaughter?
I wished I could take back my words now.
But once said, words lingered in the air, in the heart, in the very memories we wanted to forget.
I could only hope the storm—the sea—wasn’t listening, and then I made my way out of the room, shutting the door behind me as quietly as I could.
“What’s going on?” I asked groggily, but Nuo and Ellen had gone on ahead of me.
I hurried to catch up to the girls, but found myself frozen in the hallway when I saw Plato sitting on the floor next to Serah. The miniature version of Serena giggled at something the seven-year-old glassmaker said, though Plato kept siphoning bits of sand from one hand to another. When he raised his fist into the air and dropped it in a steady stream, it looked like an hourglass minus the glass.
It was rare for Plato not to turn every bit of sand he touched into something beautiful.
But seeing him made my heart lurch.
If he was back, then—
“Come on,” Nuo insisted as she pushed open the nearest door and yanked me through. I didn’t even have time to talk to Plato. But I looked forward to seeing the others. What I hadn’t expected was for there to be so many others.
Yasir, Hanna, Kat, and Frankie.
The whole group had woken up for Violet’s return.
“Did everyone decide to throw a midnight party without me?” I teased, but no one laughed. My stomach squeezed. “What?” I looked at all of them. “What’s wrong?”
When the herd parted, I found the cause seated in the middle.
Violet. Crying. Violet. Who didn’t even cry about the Northern Flock. Violet. Who I didn’t know could cry. Not like that. Not like her whole body could sob.
Worse were her shadows.
The blackness Violet normally controlled shuddered up the walls, then melted down to the floors. Whole clouds of dark fog rolled around her knees. Inside, I thought I saw a streak of purple lightning.
Did she have more power than she realized?
Power that could hurt us all if she kept losing control. Power that even forced me away.
While my feet froze to the floor, Kuthun moved forward. He wrapped his arms around her, kept holding her, and kept comforting her. Kept doing what I never could.
When she looked up to see me, my heart stopped.
Her bright purple eyes—her violet irises—glowed. Tears of the same color ran down her face. The jet-black hair she normally wore in a ponytail rose around her like snakes. Then, her eyes would flash back to black, her hair would deflate, the tears would dissipate, and I would see the girl I thought I knew.
“Levi.” She sniffled, only to squeeze her eyes shut, as if she could shut the shadows out, too. “Levi didn’t make it.”
“He made it,” Kuthun insisted, though I recognized his tone for a lie. “The ocean’s a big place.”
If Violet hadn’t seen him surface in twenty-four hours, the chances were slim. Levi was dead. Levi, the boy who found the herd for his brother. Levi, the boy who left the herd to get his little brother on land. Levi, who could breathe underwater, but not forever.
“He’s alive,” Kuthun continued with the lie anyway, probably in the hopes of calming Violet down.
Nuo grabbed my hand and leaned against me—like all the times Jia-Li yelled at us together—and she explained as quietly as she could.
“The glass castle,” she said. “It exploded before she could take him, too.”
Levi had begged her to save Plato instead, and Plato—now in shock—didn’t seem to understand that his older brother might be, and probably was, dead.
Plato, who was outside befriending Serah.
Plato, with the fragile heart, who needed his brother more than anyone.
“But Plato needs him,” I managed, numb.
“And Violet needs you,” Nuo countered, then nudged me forward. When I looked back at Nuo—the girl I considered my sister, the same one who hated Violet when they first met—she nodded.
This time, she didn’t bother with a sad smile.
Instead, she wiped away tears of her own, and I held back mine as I focused on Violet’s.
Her eyes flashed back to purple when I kneeled next her. The shadows flickered, and Kuthun let her go so that she could face me fully.
I managed a tilted smile. “Didn’t know your eyes turned that color when you’re sad.”
Violet’s stare widened, and as I thought of every time I had seen the striking hue. I imagined she did, too.
“You were sad when you met me?” I asked.
She bit her lip but nodded. Around us, the shadows began to sway.
“And back then, too? When we danced?” I guessed.
She nodded again, but this time when her tears came, they were normal, translucent, and wet. Not sparkling and purple.
“And when we spoke about the past?” I continued. With every memory, Violet seemed to breathe more, calming down with every passing moment.
“That’s okay,” I promised, but she didn’t seem to understand. “I was sad, too. Still am.”
At that, she curled against me, and either she held me or I held her or we both held one another.
“I should’ve taken Levi inside with me,” she whispered. If I had, if I had…
Her voice filled my mind, loud and clear, and though she never told me she was telepathic, I didn’t doubt I heard her. Or her shadows. They whispered more than she did.
If we had, if we had…
She definitely had more power than she realized. At least, up until now.<
br />
“Shhh,” I said, though I was half-certain she’d passed out during it all. As I brushed her black bangs back and watched her shadows sink into the floor, I felt her fall asleep.
We were all exhausted, but she was worse.
The last time she’d stayed in the shadows for more than a day was when the Northern Flock was ambushed. Now, Levi was gone. How gone he was remained a question.
“She’s out,” Nuo said, half-surprised, half-relieved.
I relaxed, but met Kuthun’s eyes. In my stare, he saw my question about Levi, then shook his head.
Levi wasn’t just dead. His life purpose was fulfilled.
That was how Kuthun’s strings worked, after all.
Sometimes, even the dead’s strings kept moving, changing, affecting those left behind, but other times, the dead were gone altogether.
If Levi’s string had dissipated, then he was done, even in the afterlife—whatever that may be.
But could someone’s life purpose be to die for someone else?
I hated the thought.
“Shhh,” I said to Violet again, though it was more for me this time.
Tears pushed into my eyes for losing Jia-Li and now Levi, but the sadness came because we gained, too.
Skeleton was here, safe and sound, and so was Calhoun.
I’d lost two relationships and gained two. Soon, we could lose it all.
“How are you doing?”
Every single person I ran into asked me the same question repeatedly, and while I normally would’ve resented such attention, I didn’t mind today.
In my sixty-four years in the shadows, I hadn’t cried. Not truly. I hadn’t allowed myself to. And now that I had, I felt drained. Relieved, but drained.
Today, all I wanted to do was watch others live their lives while I tried to sort out my own.
Being a shadow was much easier sometimes. But I recognized why Daniel cried now—why he let himself let go of all the pain and fear and hurt he hauled up inside his heart—and why Serena comforted him.
That was friendship, love, family, freedom.
And tonight, we celebrated those things by hosting a talent show of sorts.
Nuo started it off as a way to distract the kids, to entertain those feeling anxious about the approaching hurricane, but after Nuo played her violin for what seemed like the umpteenth time, other kids began to feel confident enough to show off their talents, too.
Bad Bloods Page 11