by Gregory Ashe
The woman who picked me up looked like her pink polyester suit and pillbox hat weighed more than she did, and she even had on lacy white gloves like she was on her way to church or a funeral or a royal wedding. She drove a red station wagon that had to be at least fifty years old, and this woman looked like she’d already lived a lifetime before the car even rolled off the line. On its side, the car wore a mixture of chrome letters and the darker outlines of the ones that had fallen off; they spelled out Lakewood. She rolled up next to me, eyed me through the window, and then stopped. When I opened the door, she must have gotten a better look because she squeezed her sequined purse against her lap and didn’t let go of it until she dropped me in the hospital parking lot.
I knew my way, more or less, and I found Tyler’s room, and then I stopped. A man in a Mather County deputy’s uniform stood outside the door. I didn’t recognize him; he might have been the hire who replaced the late Fred Fort. But it wasn’t the fact that he was a deputy that froze me. It was the fact that he was staring into space, the muscles of his jaw relaxed, his hands tucked limply into his Sam Browne belt. I took another step. And then another. He didn’t blink. I wasn’t even sure he was breathing until I saw the slight swell of his chest.
I opened my second sight. Sleeping half a day had done a lot to bring me back to fighting shape, but at some point over the night, that conduit of incandescent power connecting my friends and me had shut off. I wasn’t sure why. But I remembered hearing the sucking, gasping noises in Austin’s chest. I remembered seeing those retro Jordans under the exam room’s curtain. And I thought I knew why I wasn’t connected to my friends anymore. Nothing lasts forever.
In the hypersaturated, textured reality of the other side, a slick of golden energy shone on the deputy’s mind. I recognized that energy, and I recognized its effects, and I thought, briefly, about taking the deputy’s gun. The last time this woman had been free, she had tried to put a bullet in me.
When I stepped into the room, Ginny stood next to Tyler’s bed, her frisbee-disc hands folded around Tyler’s small, pale ones. Ginny’s eyes were closed, her head was down, and the same sheen of an aura surrounded her and Tyler. In tubular chairs next to the bed, Shay sat with her expressionless gaze fixed on the wall, while Hannah stared sightlessly into her mother’s shoulder; both of them had the same goldfoil slick that I had seen on the guard.
“Step away from him.”
Ginny drew a deep breath, a ripple running down her like she was waking from a dream, but she didn’t lift her head or turn to face me. She rotated her hands, turning Tyler’s palm up, and I saw the raw abrasions where the duct tape had ripped the flesh on Ginny’s wrists.
“I can’t undo what they did to him.” With another of those deep breaths, another of those full-body shudders like she was trying to swim up out of sleep, Ginny lowered Tyler’s hands and patted them against the mattress. Then she teased aside the papery collar of Tyler’s hospital gown, exposing a bandage that ran the length of his chest. “The damage was intentional, severing key chakras.”
“She didn’t just sever them. She turned them against him. She made a fortress out of his own broken mind.”
Ginny sighed and tugged the collar back into place, hiding the bandage.
“She made him into a weapon.”
“She did.”
“She did things to those kids that nobody should have done to them. Nobody. Let alone a kid.”
Ginny nodded. Her back was still to me, and again I was struck by how solid she was, built like a cement smokestack, and how she somehow managed to look fragile even with all that mass. Fragile, and broken.
“You taught her how to do those things.”
Once, Ginny’s chin jerked to the side, as though she might shake her head and try to deny the whole thing. But then she caught herself. Her voice was so low you could have swept it under the bed. “I didn’t teach her. But yes, I . . . helped her. I put her on the path.”
“I stopped them when they wanted to torture you. That was a big, fucking mistake. If I’d had any idea—” I bit my tongue and tasted copper sparks. “You were wrong, by the way. The Lady is dead. Urho is dead. They’re gone. Erased. Obliterated. And it’s no thanks to you.” One of my hands was clutching the door jamb now, the other was balled at my side. “You know what I think? I think you knew my dad was going to be up there. I think you knew they were keeping him. Weapon of last resort, isn’t that what they call it? I think you knew, and I think that’s why you were so sure that I’d lose. How am I doing?”
Raising both hands, she wiped at her cheeks.
“Don’t cry. You don’t have any right to cry. Am I right?”
She wiped her cheeks again. Fluorescent light glanced off her fingers.
“Am. I. Right. Because if I’m right, if you let me walk up there knowing that my dad was waiting, knowing that he was ready to put a bullet in me, knowing that if I tried to stop him, I’d lose the power I needed to stop Urho, if you knew all of that and still let me go without warning, I’m going to kill you.”
“I warned you about your power. I tried to warn you, anyway. I tried to tell you what would happen if you . . . if you let your anger take control.”
She bent. Her frisbee hands smoothed Tyler’s small ones against the white linens, and the golden aura around both of them shrank and slid and retreated from Tyler until it only wrapped around Ginny. And then it winked out, and she turned to me and raised her head, and the pebbled rash of scabs around her mouth where duct tape had been ripped away gave her face a diseased look, as though she suffered from a plague that would spread with her next breath.
“But, yes. I knew.”
My balled-up fist twitched. I thought of the deputy’s gun. But I didn’t need to sock her in the chin, and I didn’t need to put a bullet between her eyes. I could use my ability. I’d already lost my connection to that river of power from my friends; I didn’t have to worry about my hate and fury burning away the connection. I could bar the doors and lock the windows and leave her trapped inside her own mind, haunted by what she had done to these children. To my friends. To me.
“Vie?” It was Tyler’s voice, and the word had so much dust and creak to it that I barely recognized my name. Tyler was running his hands up and down the hospital gown, as though verifying by touch what his eyes were seeing. Then he swallowed, the movement sending pain flashing across his face, and his little fists gathered handfuls of the cotton. “Vie, I’m thirsty.”
I stared at him. In the hall, somebody shouted, “Bangarang,” and then laughter boomed out, and a wheel squeaked on a service cart, and a machine shrilled out a long beep, and those were all signs that the world was still moving, the clock was still ticking, time hadn’t stopped. But I stared at Tyler and didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t blink.
His head swiveled; he wet his lips. He still looked like a lost kid, the kind on the back of a milk carton, when he said, “Mom?” And then, “Vie, is my mom ok?”
“You said you couldn’t undo it.” My voice sounded like it was six feet deep under talus. “You said—”
“There are many paths in the mind.” Ginny shrugged, and it was like watching an anvil shrug or a bulldozer shrug. “He won’t be the same, but he can find a way back. You can help him find a way back.”
“Vie, I’m really, really thirsty.”
“Yeah, Tyler. Yeah, buddy. I’ll—just a minute.”
Ginny met my gaze for the first time since I had entered the room.
“This doesn’t make it right,” I said.
“I know.”
“If I ever see you again, ever . . .”
“I know.”
She shambled toward the door, and I stepped out of her way. Thank God she didn’t tell me she was sorry or she wished she’d done it differently because I don’t know what I would have done. But she didn’t. And when she was gone, the deputy in the hall cleared his throat, and Shay blinked, shifting Hannah’s weig
ht, and Hannah made a little cry when Shay bumped one of the girl’s bruises. Tyler coughed and said, “Can I have some water, please?” And the please dragged out about a mile long.
“Oh my God,” Shay said, getting up so fast, that she almost dropped Hannah. “Oh my God.”
I snagged the pitcher of water and poured out a cup, and Tyler drank it down in two gulps. When he handed it back, he ran his arm over his mouth and licked his lips and said, “Vie, do you think that TV has cartoons?”
I ATE A VENDING MACHINE sandwich. I drank two Cokes. I spent an hour with Sara, trying to make conversation with her while she played with the volume on the TV, until finally she brushed her cloud of blond frizz back from her forehead and looked me in the eye and said, “Vie Eliot, you are currently the light of my life, but I’m trying to watch my shows, and if you keep talking I might put tape over your mouth.”
“Oh.
“Some of that Gorilla Tape.”
“Maybe I’ll just take a walk.”
“That’s a nice idea, sweetheart.”
I might have gotten up a little fast because Sara’s thumb was dimpling the rubber buttons on the remote control and I was starting to think she might pitch it at me. My heel clanged against the tubular chair. Sara’s knuckles popped as she jabbed at the volume so she could hear Days over the racket.
“Love you,” she said as I scurried toward the door.
“Oh. Yeah. Um.” I yanked open the door and darted into the hall. “Loveyoutoo.” It wasn’t so much a word as it was a high-speed train shooting out of my mouth.
“Maybe you should keep walking until about four,” she called after me.
In fairy tales, in dreams, there are times when every path takes you to the same place, when every turn turns in the same direction, when a choice isn’t really a choice because everything is running on twin rails toward the same point. So I went left. And then I went right. And I went down the stairs until I hit bottom. I went outside, and I tramped up onto the overgrown shoulder where the wet grass dripped into my sneakers and soaked my socks, and the gravel crunched underfoot. A buttercup on the end of a long, weedy stalk bobbed in the air of passing cars and smacked against the inside of my hand. Before I knew what I was doing I’d plucked it and cupped it and turned my hand toward my leg so no one could see what I was carrying. And for all I knew, I went on like that, walking ten miles, twenty, toward Vehpese.
And somehow, I ended up back in Western Bighorn Hospital, standing outside Austin’s room. Just like in a fairy tale. Just like in a dream. Just like in a nightmare. He was alone, which seemed like a miracle, and he was asleep. He’d gotten so big over the last year, packing on muscle, but with only the thin hospital linens on him, he looked thirteen again, or maybe twelve, the stripped-down slenderness of his face making him look like just a kid.
I took the chair next to him, followed the IV line to where it entered a vein on the back of his hand, and touched the tips of my fingers to his. The roughness of the calluses shocked me; I had to bite my lip to keep from making a noise. His fingers flexed once, and I shot a look at his face, but his eyes were still closed, and his breathing didn’t change, and the white flag of a bandage still showed under the hospital gown. When I brushed the pads of his fingers again, they stayed still. I slipped my hand around his. I tucked the buttercup in the crook of his elbow and wondered if he’d find it when he woke.
How many nights? How many nights had we slept like this, hands linked? How many movies like this, how many study sessions like this, how many dinners when he hooked a pinky around mine just because he could? How many afternoons kicked out on the sofa, how many sleepless midnights when I couldn’t breathe, when that black hole at the back of my head stole away every good thing except this, except the fingers crooked around mine? How much of my life could be calculated by my skin against his?
And then I had to get up because something was trying to claw its way out of my chest, and I let his hand slide across the white cotton sheet, and I stumbled into the hallway and caught the bathroom door with my shoulder and bounced off the counter with my hip and slammed the faucet handle so cold water sprayed out. I scooped up double handfuls and splashed them on my face. I was surprised they didn’t boil off. Those claws were still digging their way out, cracking my ribs, punching through muscle and flesh. My breath had a knot in it every few inches. I scooped more water. I thought maybe I could drown in it.
But eventually the pain in my chest was a little better, and I hammered off the faucet with one fist, and then I was just standing there: the front of my flannel shirt soaked, my sneakers soaked, a puddle around me on the tile. I mopped myself up—and the floor—with handfuls of paper towels. And then I looked in the mirror. And I told myself I had to choose, even if it hurt this bad, even if it hurt this bad for the rest of my life, because if I didn’t choose I’d lose both of them. Then I went back.
In the doorway, I stopped. Kaden sat in the chair I had vacated. His hand curled around Austin’s hand. His hand. Kaden’s hand cradling the hand that I had just been holding. His thumb pressed against the ridge of Austin’s knuckles. His blunt-tipped fingers hid in the concavity of Austin’s palm. The buttercup was gone.
“Get out.”
Kaden shook his head. He tried to smile, and I realized, for the first time, that he really looked like shit. He was in a hospital gown too, and with his other hand he clutched a rolling stand with an IV bag. He’d lost any color in his face except a bruised, greenish tinge under his eyes and around his mouth. He met my eyes. He made sure I was watching. And then he traced the bumps of Austin’s knuckles with his thumb.
“Get the fuck out. I don’t care if you’re still not well. I’ll throw you out the fucking window if you don’t get out.”
“Sit down.”
They sounded like the first honest words, the first really honest words, I’d ever heard from Kaden. None of his granola, buddy shit that he usually injected into every sentence. No posturing. No threats. Just two flat words while his thumb scaled the strong, hard lines of Austin’s hand.
I took a seat by the door.
“You’re not gay.”
“Maybe I’m bi.”
“You’re not. You’re not gay. You’re not bi.”
“I kissed you.”
He had kissed me in the basement dungeon at Belshazzar’s Feast. And, for a straight boy—hell, for any boy—it had been a real whopper of a kiss.
“One kiss doesn’t make you gay.”
He shrugged. That was somehow worse than everything else—even worse than the slow rise and fall of his thumb. That shrug. That total dismissal of me. Like he’d already erased me.
“Why do you hate me so much?
His thumb froze. Then a hint of the old Kaden came back, a megawatt smile that blinded me. “Jesus, Vie. I don’t hate you. I . . . I meant what I said. At the motel. I’m your friend. I care about you. There’s this part of me that does love you; that’s the truth, whether you believe me or not. What we went through at Belshazzar’s Feast, that’s everything. That’s my whole life, and you saved me. You got me out of there, you gave me a second chance. Even after the shit I did, you gave me a second chance. You’re a good guy. If half the stuff Austin told me about your life is true, you’re a pretty fantastic guy. If you want me to walk into hell behind you, I’ll do it.” That megawatt smile flashed out, and then he winced and touched his head, and the smile died. “I think.”
“Hell.” Those knots in my breathing were tighter now. Closer together. “You’d follow me to hell. Ok. And you’re not gay. Don’t even fucking try to tell me you’re gay. But you’re going to play this game out with Austin—why?”
“It’s not a game.”
“It’s bullshit.”
“It’s not bullshit.” The words came out in a shout, and Kaden clamped his mouth shut after them. Then, in a voice so low I had to lean forward, he said, “I care about you, Vie. I do. But you’re . . . I don’t know,
you’re messed up, ok? You’re dangerous. And you’re toxic. Austin’s not himself when he’s with you, ok? He worries. A lot. And he gets OCD about stuff with you. And I get it: he came out, you were part of that, he’s got a lot of emotions tied up in the whole thing. He’s not thinking clearly. But I am.” Kaden’s eyes pinned me. “I see the whole thing clearly, and I know how it’s going to go.”
“How’s it—”
“I know it’s going to get worse and worse. I know you’re going to hurt him. Maybe get him killed. I know it. You want to talk about lying? You want to talk about playing a game? Fine. Truth. I’m not gay. That’s the truth. But you need to admit that you’re not good for Austin. You need to admit that you’re too much of a risk. That he’s better off without you.”
Shaking my head, I said, “You’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Yes. I do. I’ve known him my whole life. He’s my best friend. And you know what?” Kaden paused, chewing something over, his whole body tensed. “I do love him. I mean, I love him. And if I can save him—honest to God save him, Vie, save his life, save his sanity, save his future—then you know what? I’ll take it up the ass for a few months, and then I’ll break it off, and yeah, his heart will be in fucking pieces, maybe, and yeah, he’ll hate me for the rest of his life, maybe, but at least he’ll be alive. At least he’ll be able to move on. With you, he’s never going to get that chance.”
“You’ll take it up the ass? No straight guy takes it up the ass just because his buddy needs it.”
“Whatever, man. Tell yourself whatever you need to. You can run off with Emmett, right? Fuck around with him for a while. Or are you bored with him now that he’s not pretty anymore?”
The air was doing funny things. The lights were doing funny things. Everything was contracting to the size of a penny, and a corona of light glared off it. That ring of light was the color of snow. It was the color of the bandage on Austin’s chest, where a knife had gone in and cut through his lung like it was a ribeye. All I could hear in my ears was the sucking, gasping sound of a straw at the bottom of a rapidly emptying cup, and that was the sound Austin had made when he tried to talk with a hole hacked into his lung.