by Gregory Ashe
I let a beat pass; the hum of the old-fashioned bulbs sang along with my pulse. “Say one more thing about Austin—say anything even close—and I’ll beat the living shit out of you.”
Emmett’s eyebrows shot up, and his mouth opened into a shocked O. He even pretended to fan himself with one hand.
“If you don’t get that thing out of my way, I’m going to make you get it out of my way.”
The unmarked side of his mouth twitched.
Just to be sure, I reached back, grabbing at the saw blade, but my knuckles crunched against the same invisible blockade. I spun toward Emmett. His mouth twitched again. Then that twitch spread into a full-on grin.
“You don’t have any fucking idea what I’m trying to do. This is serious, Emmett. I’m trying to save those kids.”
“By cutting your arm off?”
“If you want to help, get rid of that stupid barrier. They’re in danger, Emmett.”
He nodded slowly. “You’re going to cut your arm off to help those kids. Makes perfect sense.”
I sucked air through my teeth. “Fine. If you don’t want to help, I’ll have to make you leave me alone.”
“Yeah, you keep threatening to do that.” His coffee-dark eyes were glitzy in the light from the Edison bulbs. “Go ahead, tweaker. Do me like you did last time. You’re not ashamed of that, are you? You go right ahead. Crawl inside my brain and make me want to kill myself. You want to know how bad it was after Makayla? Dig in and find out.”
“I will. If you make me, I will.”
Color flooded his cheeks. “Or maybe that’s not enough entertainment for you. Maybe you want to tie a string around my dick and use me like your little fuck-puppet. That’s what you did, isn’t it? You liked hearing me beg. You liked hearing me moan when you touched me. Why? I would have fucked you any day of the week. Are your little feelings still hurt because I only want to fuck you? Because you are definitely not boyfriend material, Vie. You proved that today. What you did to Austin—”
“I told you not to say anything about Austin.” I took a step forward, my shoulders going back, my fist cocked.
I hit the barrier in front of me so hard that my nose flattened against it. That white point of pain exploded into fresh intensity, and I staggered back, my ears ringing with the pain, fresh blood drizzling my lips. I shouted because shouting kept me from blacking out—just a long string of obscenities. Every nasty thing I wanted to do to Emmett right then. Every way I could think of hurting him. A lot of them involved shoving one of the Edison bulbs up his ass and then giving him a kick. Let the little fucker shit out bloody glass for a month.
When I blinked away the tears, Emmett had dragged the red footlocker to the center of the basement. He perched on the edge, his ass barely touching the brass studs that outlined the trunk, and he leaned forward with his chin in his hands. His eyes were still so glitzy they looked like something out of a magazine ad. An ad for something cheap. Something like knock-off Hollywood. Glitzy like that. But the scars—the scars were just so fucking messed up that they balanced out all that glitz. And somehow he was even more perfect than he’d been before.
This time, I was smarter. I hammered the air, and my fist connected with the invisible barrier in front of me.
“One last chance,” I said.
He waggled his eyebrows. His chin was still in his hand like a guy in front-row seats to the best show of his life. Those glitzy eyes looked like they’d gone through a hundred rounds of Photoshop just for the sparkle.
“Fine. Have it your way, but remember: you made me do this.”
I took a breath to steady myself. The taste of damp cement mixed with the hot metal of the still-spinning saw. Rust, too—and sweat. Austin. I shut my eyes to keep him out; the last thing in the world I could afford, the last thing I could ever afford, ever again, was Austin. I breathed in, and my jangled nerves evened out like wire snapped straight.
My second sight opened, and I looked out on the rich tapestry of the other side. Emmett was there. The scars on his face shifted, their contours wet and trailing—like ink dropped into water, or like smoke in a rainstorm. The sharp divide that ran along his face, the line that the scars marked out in his flesh from the center of his forehead to the center of his chin, carried over into this place too. Only the divide was . . . deeper. Longer. It went all the way through him, body and soul, like someone had cleaved him from head to crotch. One side was the vibrantly threaded texture of his soul. The other half—swirling ink and smoke.
He had abilities. He had gone away and come back in less than twenty-four hours, but somehow more time than that had passed. I had a million questions, and buried deep inside me, rotting under all the dirt I had thrown over it, was the truth. I’d have to face that truth eventually. The dirt would wash away, given enough time, and I wouldn’t be able to hide from it then. But for now—for now, I could pretend I didn’t know. I could pretend I didn’t care.
I reached out across that space between us. It was always so easy. Like dipping my hands in water. No, that no longer felt quite right. Looking at him, at the twisting coils of light and dark that made up the two halves, I realized it was something else now. Like trailing my fingers through smoke. It was always so easy between us, like—
My psychic self crashed into a brick wall.
The shock of it rattled me so badly that I felt my physical teeth click together. My projection began to fade, and I had to scramble to keep myself planted on the other side. I stared at Emmett; I stared at the empty space between us. What had just happened was totally, completely, utterly impossible.
I focused on the space next to Emmett, imagining myself there, waiting for the sudden shift in location that made traveling through the other side so easy.
Nothing.
I stayed right where I was.
In my projected consciousness, I reached out again and clapped against the barrier again.
Emmett’s head came up, and those coffee-dark eyes pinpointed me. Not my body. Me. My projection. The beautiful side of his mouth quirked again, and he said, “You said something about making me leave you alone?”
“That’s not—” I managed to bite off the last word because I knew how stupid it was going to sound. It wasn’t possible. Except, of course, for the fact that it certainly seemed to be possible. It seemed to be very possible. It seemed to be reality. But I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.
Emmett stood and kicked back the footlocker. He cocked his head, studying me, and then began rolling up his sleeves. As he folded back the chambray, he spoke. “I’ve wanted to talk to you for a while. I think now’s a good time.”
“Fuck you. And fuck what you think is a good time. Get this fucking barrier out of my way before I fucking kill you.”
He cocked his head again; that grin plucked at the corner of his mouth, and he shook his head. “Everything’s always on your terms, Vie. Do you ever think about that?”
It took me a moment to realize he was serious, and the shock that he believed what he was saying—honestly believed it—was so great that I actually lost control of my projection. I slid away from the other side and found myself back in my body, gaping at him. “What?”
“Your terms. You make the decisions. You. It’s always you.”
“You’re out of your damn mind. Take this fucking barrier down, Emmett. Right now.”
“You’re the one who decides if we’re friends or not. You’re the one who decides if we’re talking to each other. You’re the one who decides if something’s dangerous. You’re the one who decides if we’re going after a bad guy. You’re the one who decides the next step, and the next step, and the next step.”
“This is bullshit.”
“You decided what was going to happen with Austin. You decided if you were going to date him. You decided if you were going to break up with him.”
“Everybody gets to decide if they’re going to date. He got to decide. And eve
rybody has the right to decide if they’re going to put themselves in danger. And—” I tried to dam up the next words; I tried to stop them before they got loose. I failed. “—Austin broke up with me, in case you missed it.”
The look Emmett shot me held so much scorn it could have withered half of Montana. Shaking his head, he said, “You knew exactly which buttons to push. It was like watching somebody punch in the self-destruct sequence. Jesus, Vie, you basically wound him up and let him go and watched it happen. Bringing up Kaden, throwing that in his face, you knew. You. You always get to make the decisions.”
With the chambray cuffing his upper arm, he paused. Then he extended both arms and turned, displaying them to me. Track marks climbed up and down his veins, clustered most densely inside his elbows. One arm had been butchered with the same scars that marked his face. “Not with me, tweaker. Tonight, you just get to listen. And watch. You want to say anything before we get started?”
“You’re out of your mind. You’re out of your damn mind. I didn’t do anything to make Austin break up with me. And I sure as hell don’t get to decide everything. You think I wanted this? You think I wanted to be here? You think I wanted my life to turn out like this?” Something about the way he looked at me, at that stellar conviction in his eyes like he knew what he was talking about better than I did, dragged more out of me. More than I would have said to almost anyone else in the world. Maybe even more than I would have said to Austin, if he’d still been talking to me. “You think I wanted my mom to burn the shit out of me? You think I wanted my dad to beat me so bad I couldn’t go to school? You think I wanted to have my brain cracked open so I can’t ever have a moment’s peace? You think—”
“All right,” Emmett said. And suddenly the barrier was all around me, cocooning me, so tight that I couldn’t move. My jaw wouldn’t open. My chest struggled to rise and fall. I wanted to throw a punch. I wanted to kick. Hell, I would have settled for a scream. All I could get out, though, was a yowl in my throat like an alley-cat. “That’s enough talking for you. It’s time to listen.”
He studied the insides of his arms again, the scars on one, the track marks, still holding them out to me, and he bit his lips. “It was bad after Makayla. After I—after what I did to her. I knew I was doing the right thing even when I was doing it. I still know it was the right thing. I’ve never wondered about that. She would have killed everyone. She would have killed you, Vie, and whatever else you think about me, you need to know—” His eyes had lost some of their glitz. They were liquid now. Ready to spill. They were dark as the bottom of oceans. “Jesus. Things are so fucked up I don’t even know how to say it. When I look at you. When I hear you bitching. When you swagger around like you’re Godzilla planning on knocking down a city. You’re so goddamn clueless most of the time, and that’s fine. I like when you’re walking around thinking you can knock down a city. I don’t mind because I’m enjoying the show. But then, out of the blue, you’ll turn around, and you see me like nobody’s ever seen me before, not this—” He brushed his knuckles along the unmarked side of his face, and then his hand dropped. His eyes were the bottom of the Pacific. His eyes were miles deep, and I felt that same old flop in my stomach like I was falling—like I’d been falling for a while, maybe, and it had only just caught up to me. He shrugged, and even his shrug was like an A-lister’s. “Makayla meant to kill you, and I wasn’t going to let that happen. I couldn’t let that happen. So I’ve never regretted it; I’d do it again right now.”
This was what I’d wanted. I’d wanted him to talk to me. I’d wanted him to tell me how he was feeling. I’d wanted to know—I’d needed to know—that he was ok after what had happened with Makayla. I’d needed it desperately because I’d known that he wasn’t ok, that when he had killed Makayla he had killed some part of himself, and I needed to know that the rest of him, the part of him I loved, was going to come back.
But not like this. Not with me paralyzed, unable to touch his cheek, unable to catch a tear with my thumb, unable to turn his chin so that the breath between his parted lips caught my cheek, so that my mouth could find his, so that I could tell him in the only way that meant anything that I loved him, loved him, loved him like the sun coming up over the Bighorns. I groaned. I thrashed against the bonds locking me in place.
With one hand, Emmett traced the track marks to his elbow, and his fingers rested lightly in the crease, as though he could hide the past. “But even with no regrets, I . . . I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I’d see her when I came around corners, or when I blinked, or when I tried to close my eyes. I’d feel the knife in my hand, and the way it cut into her like she was a tough piece of meat.” Another tear slid down his cheek, and he jerked his head once to dislodge it. “I’d feel her blood. It was hot. And slippery. And it was everywhere. One day I couldn’t get out of the shower, and . . . and I just couldn’t stop crying. And then Austin and Becca showed up. And we talked.” He smiled, but the tears were running freely now, drip-drip-dripping from his jaw, darkening his shirt and jeans and the cement. “We talked about you.”
The next yowl threatened to tear my throat. I flailed inside Emmett’s prison, trying to break free, but I couldn’t move: physically, psychically, I was trapped. This wasn’t fair. This wasn’t right. Telling me like this, telling me when I couldn’t touch him, talk to him, hold him, kiss him—it wasn’t fair. It was cruel. It was beyond cruel, and he knew it, and the fact that he knew only made it worse.
“Becca talked the most. She’s very smart. Too smart, maybe, for her to keep getting involved in stuff like this. She pointed out that Urho and the Lady weren’t done with you. She pointed out that you were too stubborn to let the rest of us help you. She pointed out that, whether you liked it or not, you needed us. When they came at you again, you were going to need all the help you could get. And she pointed out that this time, we had to be the ones who made the first move.”
Let me out. The words came from a wound deep inside me. If I’d been able to move even an inch, I would have rattled that invisible barrier like the bars on a cage. Let me out, let me out, let me out. His eyes met mine and skated away. Let me out, please let me out, please don’t do this to me.
“And Becca pointed out that I could do what none of the rest of them could.” A smirk teased the corner of his mouth, and he wiped his wrist through the tear tracks. “Your boyfriend didn’t like that. He didn’t like that at all. But he manned up. For you, Austin manned up. And he asked me to do it. And I said yes, tweaker. Because I can’t imagine a world where you’re not bitching and stomping around and raising hell.”
Behind me, the whine of the saw was the only noise in the basement.
Emmett returned to the stairs, and canvas scraped on the wooden steps, and he swung something into view. My backpack. I thought I’d lost it at the hospital. Had Austin grabbed it? Or Becca? The questions vanished when Emmett dropped the bag; it landed with a thump, and he kicked it across the floor. It slid to a stop against the invisible barrier at my feet. I thought I heard metal shift against metal beneath the canvas. The saw buzzed; a yowl was building in my throat again.
Squatting, Emmett unzipped the front pocket on the backpack.
No, I thought.
He tossed aside a handful of change, a pair of mechanical pencils, and a rubber band that had gotten knotted around two paperclips. Then he brought out the small cardboard box and lifted the lid.
No.
Folding the cardboard back, he eyed the row of blades as though he were trying to spot the best one. He plucked out one and let the box fall. He turned the blade, and the weak, yellow glare of the Edison bulbs flashed along the edge.
No, no, no.
“Austin said you’re still doing this. Becca said she couldn’t get you to stop. Me,” he paused, flashing me that mocking smirk that twisted the ruined half of his mouth. “I figure nobody’s going to make you stop. It doesn’t work like that, does it, tweaker? The shit we do to ourselves, nobody
can take it away. Not unless we let them.” He hesitated, casting a glance at the inside of his arm, at the track marks up and down scarred flesh he wore. The glance was so fast and so furtive that I wasn’t even sure he knew he’d done it. Then those bottomless black eyes were on me again, and he spun the blade in his fingers, and his voice came out low and soft. “Nobody can take our shit away, can they, tweaker? Nobody, not unless we let them. And you’re not going to let anybody take your shit away from you. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? No matter what else people do to you, nobody can take away the fact that you get to cut, you get to burn, you get to do whatever you want to yourself. That’s power, isn’t it, tweaker? For a long time, I bet that’s the only power you ever had.”
I wanted to kill him. If the barrier had been gone, if I’d been able to move, I would have killed him. The fear inside me—that shriveling, stomach-clenching fear—was so strong that it drove out rational thought.
“Austin probably wanted to love you out of it. Am I right?” He cocked his head, pulling his mutilated lip between his teeth, those dark eyes swimming again. “And Becca, well, Becca probably wanted to talk you out of it. She really believes in all that. But you know what? I know I can’t get you to stop. I’m not even going to try. I just think you ought to know what it feels like, watching someone you love do a thing like this.”
That word, love, smoked at the back of my brain like fire ready to catch, but I didn’t have time to consider it. Pulling in a jagged breath, Emmett set the blade against the inside of his arm. His face looked like cold ashes. He drew the razor from wrist to elbow, and blood spilled and branched across pale skin.
Someone was making the worst fucking noise in the whole universe. It was a scream, a strangled scream, like the sound couldn’t get out. It was like a cat going through a meat grinder. It was me, part of my brain knew, but it was so strange, so shockingly loud, that it seemed impossible that I was the one making that noise.
The color had washed out of Emmett’s face, and he wavered and then drew himself up straight and planted himself like he was walking into a storm. He transferred the blade to his other hand, dragging the blade across the whorl of scar tissue on his other arm from wrist to elbow. Blood spattered the cement. It sounded like rain. It sounded like the nights I had spent in Emmett’s room when rain pelted the glass, or the night Emmett had snuck into Sara’s house and the rain hammered the windows, or the nights I had driven in Emmett’s car and the rain had drummed on the roof. I was still screaming that horrible, mangled-cat noise the entire time as he drew the blade up the second time.