by Amy Harmon
“Yeah. Not unless you’re throwing someone while you’re spinning.”
“Would I have to punch a bad guy?” Henry asked doubtfully.
“Nah. Judo’s all about throws. An MMA fighter uses a lot of throws and submissions, so judo is a pretty big deal around here,” I said. Henry seemed overly worried about having to punch someone. Which meant I probably needed to teach him how.
“You don’t have to punch anything. Except maybe that bag. Do you think you’d like to punch that bag over there?”
Henry halted and looked suspiciously at the punching bag a couple of feet to the left of where we were standing.
“You could punch the speed bag too. It’s fun. And it doesn’t hit back.”
Amelie was still holding onto Henry’s arm, her stick nowhere in sight. I reached out and gently grabbed her elbow, pulling her beside me so that Henry wouldn’t hurt her if he attempted a jab. I was doubtful Henry had ever punched anything in his life. He was a small, skinny kid, and he clearly had developmental problems. He sounded a little robotic when he talked, and I wondered if he was autistic. On the one hand he could spit out sports trivia like he was a walking record book. On the other, the kid asked for permission to say ass. Not your average teenager.
Henry walked toward the long punching bag, eyeing it like it might transform into something deadly. His left hand darted out and slapped the bag, and he jumped a foot in the air.
Amelie clapped. “Was that you, Henry? I heard that!”
“Try again, Henry. You can kick it too,” I instructed.
Henry’s leg shot out as if he were kicking open a door, and the bag swung back and bumped his upraised leg, sending him sprawling.
“He got me, Tag,” he groaned, and Amelie gasped. I guess I was wrong. Apparently the punching bag could hit back.
“Stand up, buddy. You kicked it hard. You gotta watch out for the swing, make sure you step back a little, time your kicks and your punches.”
Henry rose to his feet as if the bag was going to take his legs out from under him at any minute. He jabbed at it, jabbed some more, kicked a time or two without falling, and then moved onto the speed bag while I threw out instructions. Amelie stayed quiet, listening intently, and I realized that I’d kept my hand on her elbow all along, clutching her to my side as I coached Henry. When Henry seemed to get a bit of a rhythm going on the speed bag, and began chortling happily to himself, she spoke up.
“David?”
I almost looked around to see who she was talking to and then remembered my own name. It sounded different on her lips.
“Yeah?”
“You’re so nice. I didn’t expect you to be so nice.”
“Why?”
“Because all the girls at the bar are either in love with you, and they want to sleep with you, or they hate you, and they still want to sleep with you. I thought you were one of those bad-boy types.”
“Oh, I’m plenty bad. I just try not to be an asshole to people who don’t deserve it. I guess you could say I’m a nice bad guy.”
“I don’t think it works that way,” she said softly.
“Trust me. It does. I’m good with people. But don’t cross me. And don’t cross the people I care about. Or you’ll see my bad side.”
“I’ll remember that,” Amelie said seriously, nodding as if she had been contemplating crossing me only seconds before. The thought of the dainty, blind brunette with the pearly skin and the sweet smile screwing me over was comical.
“You plotting something?” I asked, trying not to laugh.
“I was. But I thought better of it.” She shivered dramatically. “Don’t want to see bad Tag.”
“Bad Tag and Silly Millie.”
“Millie?”
“Doesn’t anyone ever call you Millie for short?”
“No,” she answered frankly.
“Henry and Amelie aren’t names you hear every day. They sound kind of old-fashioned.”
“That’s because we were actually born in the late 1800s, when our names were more popular. We vampires don’t age, you know. And my blindness is just a ruse to make people feel safe.” Her lips twisted in a smirk.
“Is that right?” I drawled, “Well, I’ll be damned. So you and Henry are forever gonna be, what, thirteen and twenty-two?”
“Fifteen. Henry’s fifteen.”
“But you’re actually one hundred and twenty-two?”
“That’s right. We’ll still look this good in another hundred years.” That was a sad thought for Henry, but for Amelie, not so much.
“You’ll outlive us all.”
Amelie’s face fell a smidgeon and her smile slipped. If I hadn’t been looking directly into her face I wouldn’t have seen it. But I did, and I realized Amelie had already outlived someone she cared about.
“Are your parents among the undead too?” I asked lightly, wondering if she would abandon the banter.
“No. My dad isn’t in the picture. Haven’t talked to him in years. My mom died a while back.” She shrugged, the fun completely ruined by reality.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart.” It was an endearment that I used easily. I’d called more women sweetheart in my life than I could count, but Amelie’s cheeks pinked and her chin dipped almost shyly. People must not call her sweetheart very often. “My dad didn’t handle it very well when I went blind. Two kids with issues was one too many for him, apparently.
“So you take care of Henry . . . by yourself?” I was stunned and tried not to let it show, but she heard it anyway, from the set of her chin and the stiffening of her back.
“Do you really want to know, or are you doubting me?” She turned her face toward me, as if confronting my question head on, and when I stared down at her, I felt a quaking in my chest that was instantly familiar. It was a jumping-off-a-cliff kind of feeling, a heart-swelling, chest-bursting sensation, and I’d stumbled across it a few times in my life.
I felt it when I watched Moses hold his new baby girl for the first time. He and Georgia were so happy, so deserving, and the joy in his face had spilled over and filled my heart with wonder. I felt it two years ago when I came back in the fifth round to win my first big fight. I’ve actually felt it a lot of times over the last few years, seeing Moses at work, seeing people weep at his gift. But the first time that feeling took my breath away was in Venice. It was a year after I’d gotten out of Montlake, eight months since Moses and I had taken off across the globe. I’d been so sad and so lost for so long that I’d gotten used to not feeling anything else. But there, in a little boat in Venice, as I watched the sun set—a fiery, hellish, red ball turning the water and sky into shades of heaven—my eyes had filled up with tears at the violent beauty of it all. In that moment, I realized I wanted to live again. For the first time in a long time, I was glad to be alive.
Looking down into Amelie Anderson’s heart-shaped face, her mouth set in a stubborn line, I had that feeling again. It rushed through me, taking my breath with it.
“I really want to know,” I said, and it came out in a husky whisper.
“We take care of each other,” she said simply. “He helps me with the stuff I have a hard time doing. He even cooks sometimes. I mean, not gourmet, but between the two of us, we get by. I may never truly know if my clothes match, or if the house is actually clean, or if there’s a fly in my soup, but Henry takes as good a care of me as I take of him.”
Right. It was pretty obvious who played parent and who played child. This girl was a surprise a minute.
“Henry and I are a team. You’ve got Tag Team, right? You understand. Everybody contributes something different.”
“Oh yeah?”
“He’s the eyes. I’m the heart. He’s the hands, and I’m the head. That’s what my mom used to say.”
We were silent then, my mind reeling, Henry back to fighting an epic battle with the huge punching bag, and Amelie standing straight and still, listening, as if by doing so she could actually see her brother’s attempt to take d
own an impossible opponent. What she didn’t know, what she couldn’t have known, was that she’d leveled me. I may have been standing next to her, but I was already falling.
(End of Cassette)
Moses
HE’S THE EYES. I’m the heart. He’s the hands, and I’m the head. The words rang in my ears. Millie could have been describing me and Tag. I was the eyes and the hands—the artist who could see what others could not, what Tag could not. But he was the leader, the head and the heart, and his head and his heart had provided for my eyes and hands time and time again. Tag was all heart, and sometimes it got him in trouble, it got us in trouble, but more often than not, it led us in the right direction. He’d taken care of me. I don’t know if I had taken care of him, though. I hadn’t thought I needed to.
“Why did he leave, Moses? Where did he go? Nobody’s seen him for two weeks. Nobody knows anything. If he was falling for me, like he says, then why did he leave like that?” Millie was close to tears and I had resorted to drawing, my fingers flying over a sketch pad so that I wouldn’t go crazy listening to my best friend saying goodbye.
I’d called Tag’s dad, who called his mom, who in turn called his two younger sisters who were away at school. Millie was right. Nobody knew anything. Nobody had seen or heard from him since he’d left.
“Did he say or do anything that seemed off? Anything that you can think of that might give us a clue where he went?” I asked helplessly. Listening to Tag had filled me with hopelessness. He was clearly telling a love story. And my experience with love led me to believe this story would not end well. Love stories tend to be tragic.
“No. I mean, he had seemed tired, which was unlike him,” Millie answered, interrupting my depressing train of thought. “Tag never seems tired. Have you noticed that? He has more energy than anyone I’ve ever met. But he was tired. He’d been training so hard for the Santos fight. A couple of nights he fell asleep on the couch watching TV with Henry. Once, I woke him up at about midnight because our couch is small and he had to have been uncomfortable. He was disoriented and so out of it that he was slurring his words a little. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was drunk. But he hadn’t had anything to drink. He’s never had so much as a beer the entire time I’ve known him. And he’d been asleep on the couch for three hours.
“I didn’t want him to drive. I told him he was too sleepy to be driving. Even if it was just a few blocks. But he said he was fine. I walked him out to his truck, and he made a joke about the blind leading the blind.” Her voice broke.
“Was that the last time you saw him?”
“No. The last night I saw him he . . . he and I . . .” Millie’s voice trailed off and her cheeks grew suspiciously pink.
Son of a bitch. I didn’t need any further explanation. Once again, I was at a complete loss. I excused myself to call Georgia, and she answered on the first ring, her voice sharp with hope and fear.
“What’s the news?” she said, foregoing a greeting for the obvious. That’s Georgia—take the bull by the horns. It was one of the things I loved most about her, one of the things that had saved us when our own love story took a few tragic turns.
The phrase awakened a memory and instead of answering I said, “Do you know that Tag actually grabbed a bull by the horns once? I saw him do it.”
Georgia was silent for a heartbeat before she pressed me again.
“Moses? What are you talking about, baby? What’s going on with Tag?”
“We were in Spain. In San Sebastian. It’s Basque country, you know. Did you know there are blond Spaniards? I didn’t. I kept seeing blond women and they all reminded me of you. I was in a horrible mood so Tag got this bright idea that we should go to Pamplona for the Running of the Bulls. He said a shot of adrenaline was just what I needed to cheer me up. Pamplona isn’t that far from San Sebastian. Just an hour south by bus. I knew Tag had a death wish. At least he did at Montlake. And I knew he was a little crazy. But he actually waited for the bull to run past him. And then he chased the bull. When the bull turned on him, he grabbed it by its horns and did one of those twist and roll things that cowboys do at rodeos.”
“Steer wrestling?” Georgia still sounded confused, but she was listening.
“Yeah. Steer wrestling. Tag tried to wrestle a bull. The bull won, but Tag got away without a scratch. I still don’t know how. I was screaming so loud I was hoarse for a week. Which was fine. Because I didn’t talk to Tag for two. That son-of-a-bitch. I thought he was going to die.” I stopped talking, emotion choking off my ability to speak. But Georgia heard what I couldn’t say.
“What’s happening, Moses? Where’s Tag?”
“I don’t know, Georgia. But can you come? I need you. And I have a feeling that before this is all over, Millie’s going to need you. There are certain things you can’t talk about with a man. Even if he’s your lover’s best friend. Especially if he’s your lover’s best friend.”
I WAS PARKED in front of Amelie’s house Monday morning, waiting for Henry to leave for school. I’d coaxed the information out of Robin when she came to pick up Henry from the bar, determined to figure out who had bruised up his face. Henry had gone to the bathroom to relieve himself of a bladder full of Sprite, and I’d grilled her. I hadn’t said anything to Millie that night or even at the gym Saturday, but it wasn’t okay to ignore it, and the thought of someone making Henry’s life miserable, of someone putting their hands on him, gave me the itch to hurt people. Bullies and bitches. Hated ‘em. So I took it upon myself to intervene, beyond just teaching him a few moves at the gym.
Robin said Henry walked to and from school most days. It was only a few blocks, and sometimes Millie walked with him. He went to regular classes in a regular high school and, according to Robin, he got decent grades. Apparently Millie was in frequent contact with his teachers and was on a first-name basis with the administration. I wondered how much he participated in his classes and how well he got on with the other kids. Robin said he didn’t have any friends that she knew of. Judging from his lip, he was getting some attention from someone. I told Robin I would handle it. She seemed a little surprised and then shrugged.
Henry left the house at seven-thirty, and I was idling at the curb, my truck warm, two cups of coffee in the drink holders. I didn’t know if Henry liked coffee, but I did. I felt like a creeper, waiting at the curb for a kid, but I rolled down my window and greeted him easily and asked if I could talk to him for a second.
“And I’ll take you to school so you won’t be late,” I added when Henry looked at his watch.
He smiled widely, like my presence was welcome, and trotted around to the passenger door without protest. I made a note to talk with Henry about stranger danger and creepers. He shrugged his back-pack to the floor and took the coffee I handed to him with a grateful groan. I chuckled and we sat, doctoring our brew for a few minutes before I jumped into the conversation that needed to be had.
“Henry? You need to tell me what happened to you. Why was your lip swollen? And who put that bruise on your cheek?”
Henry blushed a deep crimson and choked a little on his coffee. He set it down and wiped the back of his hand across his lips uncomfortably. I felt my temperature rise a notch.
“You know, the reason I wanted Millie to bring you to the gym was so I could teach you how to defend yourself. But that’s going to take a while. And in the meantime, I want to know if someone is giving you trouble at school.”
Henry wouldn’t look at me.
“Henry? Whose ass do I need to kick?”
“You can’t.”
“I can’t what? Kick a giant’s ass?” I said softly, remembering his cryptic talk of giants.
“Not a giant. A girl,” Henry whispered.
“A girl?” I wouldn’t have been more surprised if he told me Millie had punched him in the face.
“My friend.”
I shook my head. “No. Not a friend. Friends don’t smack you around.”
Henry
looked at me and raised his eyebrows doubtfully. Touché.
“Well, they don’t smack you around unless you ask them to,” I amended, thinking of all my friends at the gym who regularly slapped me around.
“What did you do?” I asked, trying to understand. “Did you say something that upset her? Or is she just a bully?”
“I told her she was like a sumo wrestler,” Henry said softly.
“You said that to her?” I yelped. “Ah, Henry. Don’t tell me you said that to her.” It was all I could do not to laugh. I covered my mouth so Henry wouldn’t see my lips twitching.
Henry looked crushed. “Sumo wrestlers are heroes in Japan,” he insisted.
“Henry,” I groaned. “Do you like this girl?”
Henry nodded.
“Cool. Why?”
“Sumo wrestlers are powerful,” Henry said.
“Henry, come on, man. You don’t like her because she’s powerful,” I insisted.
Henry looked confused.
“Wait. You do?” Now I was confused.
“The average sumo wrestler weighs over 400 pounds. They are huge.”
“But she’s not huge, is she?”
“No. Not huge.”
“Does she look like a sumo wrestler?” I asked.
Henry shook his head.
“No. But she’s big . . . maybe bigger than other girls?”
Henry nodded. Okay now we were getting somewhere.
“So she punched you when you told her she reminded you of a sumo wrestler.”
Another nod.
“She blacked your cheekbone and split your lip.”
Henry nodded again and smiled slightly, as if he was almost proud of her.
“Why did you say that, Henry? She obviously didn’t like it.” I couldn’t think of a girl who would.
Henry gritted his jaw and fisted his hands in his hair, obviously frustrated.
“Sumo wrestlers are awesome!” he cried.