Falling (Girl With Broken Wings Book 1)

by J Bennett

  I don’t know how to be cool or good about this, so I just tell the truth. “That’s really creepy.”

  Gabe shrugs, “I just kind of zone out while I do it, you know,”—here he makes quotes with his fingers—“compartmentalize.” There’s a note of bravado in his voice while he offers this explanation, and all of this is so wrong, so dark and twisted. How can two guys living out in the middle of nowhere be fighting a war?

  Here’s the part where I would have asked all about Grand and all about Diana and what happened to Tammy and all those other big, mean, skittish questions — I’m sure of it — except that Tarren walks through the door. He’s dripping sweat, face flushed, but it’s his own fault for wearing long sleeves and pants on such a warm day.

  “Practice in half an hour,” he says to Gabe, “but one of us should stay here.”

  “Well, I gotta’ do a ton of work on the websites anyway,” Gabe says. “Did I tell you about the new one I’m putting together? HatersHatingTogether.”

  “Ridiculous,” Tarren mutters under his breath. Gabe doesn’t hear him, but I do.

  “Okay,” Tarren says louder. “You stay, but get in a workout.”

  “Sure, sure, but I’ll probably go easy, you know, the ankle.”

  “Not too easy.”

  It’s 8:00 in the morning, and Tarren is already firing on all cylinders. His aura is taut, ticking up and down like an animal on the prowl. So many dark hues shifting within his blues. It makes me nervous. So do his eyes, and that scar. Actually, everything about Tarren unnerves me. Even Superman had a day job.

  Chapter 21

  After Tarren leaves, Gabe is overly attentive to my needs. I assume this means Tarren tasked him with Maya sentry duty. Probably warned him that I was liable to go on a murderous rampage if let out of sight.

  Gabe wants to know if I’m thirsty, if I want to watch one of his vast collection of Bruce Lee movies, if there are any video games I like or music I want to hear. Do I know any good Chuck Norris jokes?

  The only thing I know is that I want to go home. The only thing I want is Ryan alive and Grand dead but only after lots of suffering. What I say out loud is “I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine infinity plus one.”

  This last assertion wins a chuckle from Gabe, but, more importantly, he stops asking me stupid questions. My turn.

  “When do we find Grand?” I ask. “When do you start training me?”

  “Uh…” Fine yellow hues pulse through Gabe’s aura. “Later,” he says. “Want to go work out in the basement? I mean, I don’t have to just because Tarren said so. He thinks he’s the leader of the team, but it’s like—dude, there’s no team. It’s just me, and I think you’re full of shit.”

  We stare at each other.

  “We got weights and stuff down there.”

  “Sure.”

  * * *

  Groaning stairs lead us down into a musty room with unpainted concrete walls. It is cooler down here, shadowy and bare. An old couch stands in the corner, stained and frayed and looking like it would be comfortable on the porch of a frat house or hanging out on any local curb. I know what a bloodstain looks like, but I don’t ask. Gabe is showing off a scuffed pool table, noting that two of the balls are missing, but since they are one solid and one stripe, it works out just fine.

  A cardboard cutout of Keira Knightley pouts in the corner. She’s in full Pirates of the Caribbean regalia: tight bodice, long skirt, feathered hair and dark, sultry eyes.

  “She likes to watch me work out,” Gabe says. “Can’t say I blame her. It’s not every day you get front row seating at the gun show.” He makes a bicep for Keira and kisses it. I roll my eyes.

  The “gym” consists of scattered free weights and an exercise ball on the floor, a bench and weight rack, and a pull up bar hanging from a door frame on the other side of the room.

  “Fox Cave,” Gabe nods to the door.

  “Fox Cave?”

  “You know, like the Bat Cave. It’s where we plan stuff. Strategize.” Gabe shrugs like this is obvious. “Oh, that other door down there is Tarren’s lab. Don’t bother him in the lab unless it’s important. He’s real pissy about that.”

  I don’t ask what Tarren does in his lab. I’m getting that dizzy-sick feeling again; the one where my brain starts edging toward the door, ready to flee this new, insane reality.

  Gabe lies back on the bench, reaches up and wraps his hands around a bar loaded with weight. The bar is clearly stacked for Tarren, but Gabe sets his face, hauls in a heavy breath and pulls the bar up and out of the rack.

  I perch on the couch, away from the bloodstain and watch how his energy quickens and turns dark at the edges as he strains to lower the bar.

  Something about being down here, about Gabe and the way his face is flushing red as he tries to show off, eases my tension. I begin asking small, safe-ish questions.

  Between grunts and gasps, Gabe tells me that he is 23. His favorite color is usually blue, but sometimes green and sometimes the bright yellow of highlighters.

  Tarren is 26. Gabe doesn’t know his favorite color.

  When they’re not on a mission, the Fox brothers train almost constantly. They’ve erected a makeshift shooting range in the backyard and take fighting classes in Pueblo and even up in Colorado Springs. Gabe lists them off: Mixed Martial Arts on Monday and Wednesday, Krav Magna on Friday and Sunday, CrossFit on Tuesday and Thursday. Yoga on Saturday.

  On the fifth rep, the bar tilts to the left as Gabe pushes it up with trembling arms. I think it’s going to topple sideways, but with a grunt he gets it up and drops it with a heavy clang onto the rack.

  “You’ve got to reach…muscle failure… ‘S how you bulk up,” he informs me through panting breaths. “If Keira starts swooning…make sure and…catch her.”

  I look at his thin, boy’s body and hide my smirk with another question. “Yoga, really?”

  “That was my idea actually,” Gabe grins and sits up on the bench. “I convinced Tarren that it helps with flexibility and concentration and gave us a day to recover so we could beat the hell out of ourselves all over again the next week.” Deep purple humming bird wings are taking flight in his aura, and I think I know where this is going.

  “And?”

  “And maybe Francesca happens to take the same class. Total coincidence. It seems we both have very centered souls.” The red is dropping out of Gabe’s face but stays in his cheeks.

  “Does her Downward Dog happen to be at the center of your soul?”

  “Oh, you’re dirty. That’s just, well, God, she’s really flexible. And her hair, sometimes it gets loose. You should come with. Just don’t, like, start doing finger pushups or anything. Got to keep the super powers on the down low.”

  I try to laugh. Super powers. Not exactly.

  Gabe moves on to pushups, executes twenty, thirty, forty with ease. I am highly attuned to his energy, how it rises up as he begins to reach his limit. His head drops. Eyes squeeze shut. He’s distracted, vulnerable. A new and dark awareness is awake inside of me. I know exactly how quickly I could leap from the couch, how I would subdue him and connect to his energy before he could counter my attack.

  This is the sense of a predator, the mind of a monster. Gabe rolls over and wipes his face on his shirt. So many moments open for attack. Such blue, bright energy he has.

  Gabe looks at me, tugs his shirt back down and smiles in this awkward, sheepish way. I pretend like nothing’s wrong. Horribly, terribly, irreparably wrong.

  “I still can’t believe you’re here,” he mutters.

  To mask the fact that I kinda want to drain him, I break eye contact with Gabe, thrust myself up from the couch and walk over to the pull up bar. I jump up and hang.

  “How do you get the guns?” I ask to break the silence.

  “Gun shows.” Gabe lies against the ball and crunches up.

  “It can’t be that easy.”

  “Oh but it is…No background checks…Nothing...You can get an arsenal
…with cash and a handshake.” He speaks with the rhythm of his motion. “God bless…paranoid Libertarians.”

  Before, when I was human, I could do exactly one pull up. I was very, very proud of that pull up. Now, my chin rises up to the bar easily as if my body were filled with hollow bird bones.

  “It seems impossible,” I say to Gabe, “that you can just buy all this illegal stuff; that you can kill people without getting caught.”

  Gabe laughs and sits up on the ball. “Remember this, it’s important. Whatever you want, you can get it. Guns, drugs, people, credit card numbers, whatever. As long as they can’t find you, they can’t stop you.”

  “How can that possibly work?”

  “It’s not easy, but it’s doable. Especially online. There are ways to cover your tracks, to be anonymous or to be someone else entirely. If you got the right skill set, you can go anywhere, find anything, do anything and never get caught. As long as they don’t know who you are, they can’t find you.”

  “And if they can’t find you, they can’t stop you,” I finish.

  “Bingo, Yahtzee, and Connect Four. You just learned a very important life lesson.” Gabe’s enjoying himself. Everything he just said terrifies the piss out of me.

  “But if you do get caught…” I venture.

  “Not an option.”

  “But if you do…”

  “How many is that?”

  Throughout our conversation, I’ve been steadily pulling myself up to the bar.

  “I don’t know.” I drop down, brush my hands on my jeans.

  “No, no, keep going,” Gabe says, but I shake my head. “It’s okay Maya, it’s cool.”

  I look at Gabe, at his free smile and bright elf eyes. He does think it’s cool. Little boy lost in his comic books.

  * * *

  Tarren returns to the house in the evening and unloads groceries from the car. Relieved of guard duty, Gabe steps outside and is soon arguing with his cell phone.

  The last item that Tarren brings in is a dune-colored guinea pig. It’s a small thing and huddles in the corner of its cardboard box. Poor little dinner.

  “Nah man, Smith and Wesson, SD40. No baggage on it.” Gabe’s voice carries to my sensitive ears. “I don’t got a week.”

  “Don’t kill that at the table,” Tarren nods toward the guinea pig.

  Shame unfurls in my chest. Yes, I would have killed the guinea pig at the table. It’s everything I can do to hold myself back this long. I want to grab its soft body in my fist and squeeze.

  I look at the animal now, concentrating on the shivering body beneath its bright, energy. I had a guinea pig once. She was a tawny orange color, so I called her Cheez-It, my favorite snack at the sophisticated age of seven. I fed her pellets every morning and then mixed salad and chopped carrots at night. I remember taking her out after school and putting her in my lap, amazed that I owned this living, breathing, wonderful creature.

  I pick up the box. “I’ll take it upstairs.”

  “Well, okay,” Tarren shrugs.

  Later, when the little brown guinea pig is iced and tossed out the back window, I hear a soft knock on the door. I would have expected Gabe, except that I feel Tarren’s ticking energy waiting on the other side.

  I let him in, but he pauses at the threshold. Tarren is very good at keeping his face calm, but there are things he cannot hide from me. Little by little, I am learning to read secrets in the ever-frayed patterns of color and movement within his aura.

  Tarren doesn’t give away his exhaustion, but I can see it in how low his energy lays across his frame. The rib is killing him; each breath stitches red through the murky blue. I wonder why he is so relentless in his concealment of vulnerability.

  “Come in,” I tell him softly.

  Tarren sees the sympathy on my face, frowns and steps into the room, dropping several bags at the foot of my bed.

  “We got most of the clothes and things on the list,” he says. He is looking straight ahead. Not at me or the pictures. “And this. Gabe picked it out. He said you were a Mac. Probably not a good idea, but…” he trails off as he hands me the box tucked beneath his arm.

  Tarren’s fingers brush my wrist. He flinches. The hunger is everywhere, drawing me to him, and we’re standing so close. My hands grow hot, and I fight to keep my skin down over the slits. Tarren’s heart is picking up beats, and so is mine, but only I can hear their discordant melody.

  “Thanks,” I turn away from him.

  “Maya, you can’t…”

  “Can’t contact anyone, I know.”

  “You have to be careful about everything. No logging into old email accounts. No social media things.”

  “I get it,” I say putting the computer box on the bed and wrapping my hands around my waist. “Nothing. Nada. Nusquam. Old life, gone, gone gone…and more gone.”

  We stare past each other at odd angles of the room. Tarren pretends to gaze out the window. I look at the empty wedge of space in the middle of the bookshelf. The silence roams wide circles around us, teasing. I assume he still wants to kill me. I can’t blame him, I really can’t. This realization hurts. Would I kill me too?

  Tarren rescues me from my thoughts.

  “Is everything…uh, comfortable. The room? There’s extra blankets in the closet.” He actually mumbles like a real person.

  “Tarren, you don’t have to…” I can’t help myself, “act like you want me here.”

  His mouth grows tighter. “We have a responsibility for you now.”

  We both just let that hang there for a while. Tarren’s got those arctic eyes on again, and they wander away from my gaze.

  “There’s uh, one more thing, Maya. I left it in the hall.”

  He leaves the room, and I wonder if he will come back. It might be better for us both if he doesn’t. Gabe needs to be here. He is a circuit breaker, grounding the tense currents that run between Tarren and me. As far as I can tell, Gabe’s face always follows his energy. No hidden emotions. No secret nightmares.

  Tarren returns, carrying a long roll of paper in his hands.

  “On that first night, after you, uh, fell asleep, I went back to the campus.” He pauses to lick his lips. I watch the scar move as he speaks. “I was in your apartment when Grand snatched you. I’m usually careful, but when Gabe called I left without cleaning up. So, I had to get back before the cops started dusting the place.”

  The expression on my face stops his rush of words.

  “You think we’re crazy. Yeah, so do I,” Tarren says, and he must be more exhausted then I realized, because his face breaks into a shy smile that is so endearing I almost lose the seethe of my anger. In that smile I see the little boy from the photos. The way he ducks his head, has no idea how handsome he is. I still hate him though.

  “You’re mad, of course, but we were trying to…and, I didn’t mean….well, it doesn’t matter. We didn’t protect you. We failed.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” I finally break in.

  “Because,” Tarren holds out the roll of paper to me. “I shouldn’t have taken it, but I just, it seemed like something special…”

  I unroll the paper, slow at first, then faster and faster as I realize what it is. I kneel on one corner and push the paper wide. Avalon opens below me, and I drop into the magical island. I find myself wandering the interlocking pathways, making sure the trains are still running, the buildings are stable and humming with productive work. Bikes whiz past, and I run to the great knotted trees in the center park. Ryan is here, everywhere, in the tall silhouette of each building, in the wind-powered turbines rotating lazily in the breeze, in the shimmer of the sun over the ocean.

  I ride up the elevator of the tallest building and step out onto the roof. A figure stands just out of my view. I keep my eyes forward, knowing that he will disappear if I turn my gaze. Instead, I look out across the island, taking in its beauty. Ryan comes up behind me and wraps his arms around my waist. Vanilla. Hot bubbles. I lean my head back to r
est it against his chest, but he is gone.

  “Oh,” I say. “Oh, thank you.” I look up. The bedroom is empty.

  Chapter 22

  My new body requires little sleep. This night I ache with memories, with the vision of my path in life all blown to dust. There is nothing ahead of me except Grand’s blood. All that I have lost stands behind me, and the weight of it sinks hooks into my back and traps me here in this painful, throbbing fever of grief.

  When I work myself up into a masochistic zeal, I open my new laptop and Google myself online. The hits are surprising. I’ve made most of the local publications throughout the Northeast and even some of the larger ones. Chances of my survival are slim. The police found my purse and vomit-stained shirt in the storage unit along with shell casings, pools of blood from an unknown assailant and a broken needle. Investigators propose that I was a victim of a drug gang, cult or some terrifying madman.

  Despite these bleak circumstance, Karen and Henry are quoted again and again begging for my return. There is a video clip of my story on a local news website. Karen looks terrible. Her makeup is skewed too heavy, and pouches bulge beneath her eyes. She is wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with my face. It quivers as she takes a tear-soaked breath. Henry holds her hand looking uncomfortable. His skin is gray, his suit rumpled.

  There I am, grinning stupidly in the upper right-hand corner like I’m enjoying the spectacle of my parents eviscerating themselves on television. Karen has the big purse slung over her shoulder, the one I called her medicine bag because it can only mean she’s hit the apex of her cyclic breakdowns and requires all possible psychiatric, pulmonary and homeopathic medications to be on her person at all times.

  The genuineness of their shared misery strikes me. I lean in close to the computer screen, studying their pixelated faces, comprehending the full scale of the disaster I have wrought and will never be able to make right. As I fumble to click off the website, I hear Karen’s voice.

  “Please, we just want our daughter back.”

  The tears are dripping off my face. Each breath carries a thousand particles of sand, rubbing away the lining of my throat. I should stop, but I don’t. I find Ryan’s obituary, stare at his face, at that hint of a smile he always teases the camera with. I knew he was dead. I did. Ryan in a tux. Ryan in a coffin. Ryan with his arms folded over his chest looking so unnatural while his family limps by, oh god.