Bad Bloods

by Shannon A. Thompson

  One boy caught all the electricity in the room with the palm of his hand. Another simply had the best handstand. My favorite was a girl with the ability to sing snow into existence, though my heart pounded at the frozen sight. Last time I’d seen snowflakes, my family had died. But seeing it now—while hundreds of bad bloods and humans and strangers and friends surrounded me—I felt safe. Especially when Ami showed how she could climb walls.

  “It’s not fair,” Serah declared from her spot next to me. She’d hardly left my side after I woke up, or while I was asleep for that matter.

  I eyed the tiny blonde, questioning how we went from storming a school hall a few weeks ago to hiding out in a warehouse together. The Ghost and the Angel waiting for a hurricane. It could’ve been one of her quirky poems.

  “What isn’t fair?” I asked, then tucked her escaped hair behind her ear.

  “This,” she said, waving at the show. “Writers can’t participate in a talent show.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because there’s nothing to see.” She lifted her chin. “What am I gonna do? Go up there with a pen and paper and start scrawling about? Half these kids don’t read.”

  “Serah.” Serena warned her sister using her name, and Serah harrumphed.

  Amid it all, I searched for Melody, the normally invisible five-year-old of the Southern Flock. She’d been adopted by Serena’s parents, and she hardly left Serena’s side. Serena hardly left hers either. But tonight, I knew where Melody was when I saw Britney sitting in a corner playing a clapping game with an unseen opponent. The invisible girl had befriended a girl who could make everyone live forever. It seemed suiting.

  “I’m sure there’s something you can do.” Serena continued a conversation with Serah that I had tuned out of by accident, but before Serah could argue, I pulled a piece of paper out of my shadows.

  “Here.” I handed her a poem. “Why don’t you use this?”

  Serah took it but stared at it suspiciously. “What’s this?”

  “A poem,” I answered. “I think it’s called The Mermaid.”

  Serah raised one eyebrow. “On this whole sheet?”

  “Okay,” I started. “Part of a poem.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Serah threw her hands up in the air, but smiled beneath her dramatics. “This is completely bonkers. There’s no symbolism or set up or anything meaningful at all.”

  “There’s not?”

  “Not in a single page,” she argued.

  “Why not?”

  She pursed her lips and pushed them to the side. A challenge. A fun one. One we reveled in.

  “I think you’ll like it,” I promised, though I had a hard time understanding the material myself. Still, it was the way the words moved on the page, the way they sounded, the way Caleb had read them and made them sound meaningful, even though I didn’t quite understand the meaning. Sometimes, the feeling was all that mattered. The confusion. The sense of something else happening beyond. But Serah wasn’t buying it.

  “I can’t write a novel with math,” she said.

  “I’m not asking you to write a novel,” I countered. “I’m asking you to steal the show.”

  Little Serah’s secret. She didn’t want to write novels. She wanted to star in them. She wished to be an actress most of all.

  “Really?” she asked, her face alight. When I encouraged her, she ran off to take center stage. All the while, Serena watched her with a pinch in her brow.

  “I didn’t know…” she began, then shook her head. “I should spend more time with her, huh?”

  I nodded. Serena did, too. But soon, her eyes were back on me.

  “Are you feeling better?” Serena asked as she slid her back against the wall until she sat next to me. I shrugged, and as if she could force me to take it back, she pushed her arm up against mine. “Where’d you get that poem anyway?”

  “Caleb,” I said. “It was in one of his books.”

  She raised her eyebrow. “And you just ripped it out?”

  I nodded.

  “Does he know this?”

  I didn’t nod.

  Serena sighed. “You can’t just rip things out of books, Vi,” she said. “Especially from books that don’t belong to you.”

  “Another lesson I would’ve learned in school, huh?” I muttered, but before Serena could bring up my lack of education, I continued, “I want to talk to you about something.”

  “Anything,” she automatically replied.

  If Daniel had been my leader, my father figure, and Michele had been my mother figure, Serena was a sort of stepmother. Not quite a stranger, but not quite someone I wanted to consider close. Not until now.

  “There was something Vespasien said to me,” I started, thinking of the vile old man and his pudgy, scrunchy nose. “‘Politics isn’t the place for little girls.’”

  Serena harrumphed. “He doesn’t decide the rules,” she said, “and you’re not a little girl. Serah is.”

  I watched the seven-year-old spin around and shout a line, wielding someone’s teddy bear as a comb. Plato sat in front of the stage, transfixed. I noticed how he occasionally glanced at the front door. Waiting for Levi, I presumed.

  “Out of curiosity,” Serena continued, “what did you say back?”

  I hesitated as Serah encouraged Plato to join the makeshift play. After whispering him a line or two, she handed him the teddy-bear comb. He brushed her hair with it. At some point, she fell to the ground to swim.

  “That little girls didn’t always have a choice,” I said.

  Serena laid her forearm on my shoulder, causing my head to land on her collarbone. Then, she laid her head on mine. She smelled like roses and mint, like Daniel’s sweaters and soap.

  “It’s easy to forget that you’re not alone,” she said, her head on my head on each other’s shoulders. “That you’re not the only one going through something right now.” That Serena was getting harassed at her school. That Daniel was fighting to find bad bloods homes. That Henderson was wrapped up in the Level Powers Act. “When I went to the Highlands…” She paused. “I felt as if I were doing nothing. That I left everyone to complete some mission that was never really there to begin with. And now that I’m in the outskirts, I feel the same way.”

  I leaned away, but where she once touched me now went cold. “Why?”

  “Because politics are done behind those doors—behind that wall—and we’re on the wrong side.” She shivered as if she were cold, too, and I pulled my knees up to hug them against my beating heart.

  “But why does one side have to be the ‘right’ side?” I asked. “Why can’t they both be?”

  “Because our side doesn’t have a voice yet,” she said.

  “I have one,” I argued, “and I use it every day.”

  “Your voice and a collective voice are different things,” she said, “but they’re both important.”

  I moved my lips back and forth, trying to figure out which mattered more or if it wasn’t a matter of which one was more or less than the other. My head hurt. So did my heart.

  “What’s this really about?” Serena asked, and her question tore me from my thoughts. I nearly leapt back into the shadows. Her gray-blue eyes followed the blackness knowingly. “Is this about Levi?”

  His name turned my gut.

  “He…” I swallowed. “He’s gone, right?”

  “Along with many others.”

  “And if we lose more,” I continued hesitantly, “how does that voice go on?”

  She smiled. “You sound like Daniel.” She said it as if she had a perfect dream, but woke up to realize none of it was real. “He thought I could carry everyone’s voices into the future. Into the spotlight, so to speak.” Then, she hesitated. “And maybe I could’ve,” she admitted, “but I imagine it has to go both ways.” When she stared off at the play, she frowned. “If one person can carry us forward, one can push us back. One can destroy everything we built.”

  “Like Lo
gan II?”

  “Or Connelly, or Vespasien, or the sea.”

  The hurricane.

  “It’s when facing a formidable foe that sacrifices become necessary,” Serena continued, but, for once, she sounded as if she read from a book, like her vocabulary had increased from learning how to read. “Daniel sacrificed our relationship to create Stephanie. I sacrificed my family by leaving. And Levi…” She smiled at me. “He sacrificed himself to save someone who mattered to him.”

  My heart lurched at the thought, at all the thoughts I had about the cursing, sandy-haired boy. “When I first met him, I thought he left the herd out of fear. Then, I thought he was selfish. Impudent. But he left the herd to get Plato on land.”

  Serena turned her eyes to Levi’s little brother, an oblivious child despite witnessing Levi’s demise. In the last few minutes, Plato had encased the teddy-bear brush in glass, and now, as the other children tried to get him to let the bear out, he laughed.

  “I’m sure Levi would gladly make that sacrifice again,” Serena said. “Because that’s what’s necessary sometimes. That’s what heroes do.”

  Levi, a hero.

  “A heroic act is not always followed by glory and parades and forever freedom,” she said. “It’s often small, disregarded, or forgotten. But it matters.”

  “Like my voice and a collective voice?”

  “Just like that.”

  The play ended. When Plato removed the teddy bear from its fragile prison, the crowd of gathered children erupted into cheers and shouts and even laughter. But a louder sound met my ears. A more important one.

  Outside, where my shadows danced with the night, the blackness called to me. First as a whisper, then as a howl. But when others began to react to the sound, I realized it wasn’t my shadows at all. It was the world. And the world wanted everyone to hear it.

  Rain began to fall, tinging and pinging against the metal roofs and lampposts, and the Western Adoption House creaked in response. At some point, the walls even seemed to groan.

  The hurricane.

  It had arrived.

  The power went out over night, but it remained dark, even after the sun should’ve rose. Still, no one dared look outside. Most bad bloods knew darkness. Most traveled by it. But darkness brought out more than bad bloods. Being stuck in the right place could be as dangerous as wandering into the wrong place, and because of that survival tip, the kids were restless.

  Exhaustion had halted some, but groups huddled together and talked. Some told stories. A few played games. But soon, the rain roared, and all we were left with were the sounds of a torrential downpour.

  The only one at home seemed to be Violet.

  She stared at the chipped wall as if she could make her own windows and see through the walls. Every now and then, her fingers fogged out and felt the shadows. Sometimes, I wondered if she talked to them, but mostly, I wondered if they spoke back.

  “We met here, huh?” I asked her as I casually leaned up against the very wall she stared at. I hoped she would look at me instead. When she did, my heart leapt, and I smiled. She, for once, smiled right back.

  “I guess so.”

  I tapped the ground with the toe of my boot. “It’s funny,” I said, “how sunny it was that day, and now…”

  Violet curled in on herself, as if she reveled in the midnight-day.

  I loved the way she leaned to the left more than the right, even though her leg had been healed weeks ago. It reminded me of how she distributed her weight on my toes when we danced. It reminded me of the storm that happened that night, too, the same storm where her shadows first appeared as people she once knew. And now, I had listened to them speak.

  “What do they think about the storm?” I asked, then clarified. “Your shadows?”

  She squinted. “How’d you know?”

  “That they talk to you?” I guessed. “If you’re a shadow and you can talk, I don’t see why they can’t.”

  She hummed, but kept her thoughts about the telepathic incident to herself for a long while. In her silence, the wind—or the shadows—moaned.

  “They feel…free,” she said, “and alive.”

  I couldn’t help but chuckle. “At least someone’s having a great time,” I said. “But what about you?”

  Her fingers twitched at her sides.

  Restless, I heard her voice in my head, then questioned if I imagined it.

  By the way her eyes moved over me—studying me—I wanted to ask, but couldn’t.

  I’d known a hundred bad bloods in my lifetime. But I had never known one like Violet.

  Most bad bloods developed powers at a young age, and though some had frightening abilities—even dangerous ones—I’d never seen a bad blood’s powers develop or change significantly over time. If her crying episode had been any indication, Violet couldn’t just control the shadows, she could manipulate light, too. And now, telepathy?

  Maybe she was right when she said she wasn’t a bad blood at all.

  Considering she was the oldest bad blood alive, she could’ve been something far more ancient. Like a vampire. Or a mermaid. Or a shadow person with the ability to move through time.

  “The kids are calm.” I changed the subject. “For now.”

  “Maybe we can have another talent show,” Violet joked, but her tone lacked any enthusiasm. “Though I’m not sure Daniel appreciated the mini-fire.”

  Toward the end, when the hurricane started, one frightened girl accidentally set the stage’s stairs on fire. Apparently, she could create miniature fireworks in the palm of her hand. But it often resulted in more damage than beauty.

  “I don’t know,” I teased. “I liked the last one, especially the play.” As I smirked, Violet cringed. “I wondered where that page went.”

  After reading to her from the book, I woke up only to find the last page missing, but I didn’t bother to ask.

  Bad bloods often stole objects they needed most, but I never suspected Violet had a story of her own.

  “Kuthun gave it to me,” she said, surprising me with the details. “And I think I know why he did.”

  “Why would Kuthun…”

  “Why wouldn’t he?” she countered. “He showed me our strings.”

  “Showed you?” I asked, flabbergasted. “You’ve seen them?”

  She blinked. “Haven’t you?”

  “No.” My mind raced with why and when and… Out loud, I finished my thought. “How?”

  “He—” She paused, then refused to answer. “Let me ask you something instead.”

  “Anything.”

  “Why’d you think I was a shuǐ guǐ instead of a mermaid?”

  The person who saved me from drowning—the demon or girl or shadow of the sea—was Violet all along.

  “Jia-Li told me,” she said, “and Kuthun must have seen it in our strings.”

  We were connected more than once.

  “Would you rather be a mermaid?” I asked, unsure how to give her an answer just yet. “I thought you liked the shuǐ guǐ anyway.”

  Violet smiled more to herself than to me. “I’ll replace your book,” she promised, then she reached out and held my hand.

  At first, her ice-cold touch startled me, but quickly, I held hers back.

  In all my years, I had held a countless number of hands.

  From teaching instruments to newcomers, to comforting the younger members of the herd, to falling in love with Kuthun years ago, I had touched palms and laced fingers and went on walks while doing so. Each one held a heartbeat and a story and a future. But Violet’s hands were different. They were strong and weathered, small and remarkable. And I had no clue what could happen between us, no matter how much time we spent together. She enthralled me as much as a song did. Even more so.

  I wanted to hold her hand for as long as she would allow, and if that was forever, so be it—but time passed too quickly for two immortals.

  “It’s working!” Daniel shouted, interrupting any peace Violet and I h
ad managed to find in the perils of a disaster, but his words were worth it.

  Because the power went out, the phone lines did, too.

  The Western Adoption House was unable to contact anyone on the outside. As the storm grew, that knowledge only got worse. But someone had brought a broken weather radio, and someone else had fixed it.

  “It won’t work long,” Daniel said, while shoving the radio in Serena’s hands. “It’s Catelyn.”

  She plugged in headphones to keep the conversation private. “I’m here,” Serena said, then started to repeat what Catelyn told her that she deemed appropriate. “It’s Category Four. Winds at 136 miles per hour. Major home damage. Roofs can be ripped off, and the surge…what?”

  As Serena listened, a knot in her brow appeared, and I took control of the situation.

  “Make sure Frankie’s on floor eleven,” I told Nuo, but before she could run off, I added one last stipulation. “Make sure everyone is on floor eleven.”

  As older kids began to direct younger ones, Hanna appeared from the crowd and took Violet’s arm. “You’ll come with us, right?”

  I nodded for her. “Go.”

  Violet refused. “I’ll stay right here, thank you.”

  This time, I didn’t argue.

  I’d learned when to try that, and it wasn’t often.

  After Violet hugged Hanna good-bye, the last of my herd disappeared upstairs. I hated to think what could’ve happened to them if Levi hadn’t tricked us into coming ashore, if Violet had given up on me earlier in the month.

  We’d all be underwater by now.

  “The water’s coming up over the levees,” Serena whispered, only loud enough for a few of us to hear. “The surge can be as high as twenty feet above normal sea level.”

  Twenty feet.

  “We’re safe here,” Daniel said, calculating how tall the building was, but no one considered the possibility of the structure collapsing. Or, no one said it out loud.

  “And it’ll only get worse if Connelly knocks down the western wall,” Serena added.

  “In this weather?” I scoffed. “Yeah, right.”