Pet

by Akwaeke Emezi

  “I could come too,” her mother offered, but Jam shook her head, refusing. She could feel their heavy gazes drag across her back as she left the kitchen, and she knew that they’d feel better if she said something, anything, that showed that she understood their decision and had chosen to be on their side, a unit of three again. But Jam was silent as she walked out, because the only thing in her chest was a low kind of bitterness, a sort of feeling trapped and not being heard. They hadn’t cared when she mentioned Redemption, and she’d anticipated that, but it was still a disappointment, to be waved aside so easily. Bitter and Aloe had decided as a unit of two—they could sit with their decision then, just the two of them alone. Jam went up to the studio, feeling close to bursting into tears. She couldn’t tell if it was from fear or sadness or anger or frustration; it was just there, right behind her eyes.

  The studio door was firmly closed, and Jam took a deep breath before turning the knob. It opened silently, and as she stepped in, she felt Pet’s presence accumulate, the loudness of it growling through the floorboards and into the soles of her feet. Jam closed the door behind her and looked around.

  Pet stepped out from a corner, still massive, still gold and streaked fur and hardblood curled horns.

  “Here to banish me, little girl?”

  Of course it already knew. Jam shrugged and stared at the patterns on its face.

  “Here to erase me,” it continued, its voice trailing looped faint smoke into the air. “Here to push me into the black, away from the eyes, I am too loud, too saying loud things, too looking loud. Your parents think if you wipe me away, you can wipe away the inside of my mouth, the things I came with that live there. They don’t even know, they know enough to want me gone, they know the shape of the thing from the edges. What do you think, little girl?”

  Jam gazed at the floor, focusing on a small splatter of blue paint that looked as if the sky had bled and no one had cleaned it up in time. “I think they’re afraid,” she said.

  Pet leaned its head back and forth, horns tipping over, goldfeathered throat exposed and then curved forward.

  “Hmmm,” it said. “What else do you think? You want to say the line, the striking line, the erasing line?” It sat down carefully in front of her, avoiding its own torn canvas in the middle of the floor, folding its great muscular legs and draping its arms in loose lines. Its hands dangled, the metal talons dragging mild grooves as Pet moved to get comfortable on the floor. “What do you want, what will you do, who are you?”

  The studio floor was a distressed brown around the stain of sky. Jam balled her hands up into fists, squeezing tightly. She’d never hidden things from her parents before, not really. It was hard to keep secrets; you had to keep track of them, regulate how they moved through your body, make sure they didn’t swerve and jump out of your mouth. She’d never really disobeyed them before either, not like this, not in a way that mattered like this. It made her feel separate and lonely. Pet kept looking at her with no eyes.

  Jam closed hers and rallied her thoughts, trying to stay focused. She was not alone; Pet was here. If she split from her parents, it wouldn’t really be two of them and one of her; it would be two and two, if she didn’t send Pet away. But more importantly, Pet was here for a reason.

  There was a monster in Redemption’s house.

  Even if Pet was wrong, like Bitter and Aloe thought, that wasn’t a risk she could take. It was too big. It was her best friend; it was Redemption. And if Pet was right, and there was a monster there, then it meant no one knew about it, no one had caught whoever it was, and Redemption was still in danger.

  Boiled down to that, it was a simple choice. Her parents floated away. Jam opened her eyes, and colored spots hovered in the air before her.

  “I need you to stay,” she said.

  CHAPTER 5

  Late the next morning, Jam was twisting her hair in her bedroom, smearing whipped shea butter on her palms and applying it in sections while soca music played over her speakers. Pet was standing in a corner of the room, its head moving in small jerks as it followed her arms, watching her. They were talking without sound; Jam didn’t want her parents to know Pet was still around, that she had disobeyed them, and since Bitter and Aloe couldn’t feel things through the house the way that Jam could, she could hide Pet in a mute cocoon.

  What happens now? she asked. How does this work?

  Pet slowed the movements of its head to focus on her. The first step to seeing is seeing that there are things you do not see, it said.

  Jam paused and frowned. I don’t understand.

  The creature sighed and rustled its fur a little. If you do not know there are things you do not see, it said, then you will not see them because you do not expect them to be there. You think you see everything, so you think everything you see is all there is to be seen.

  So, there are things hiding? Jam said. And you can’t find them unless you’re looking…like there’s the stuff I can see but there’s more?

  Pet tilted its head in approval. Yes, it replied, there is more. There is the unseen, waiting to be seen, existing only in the spaces we admit we do not see yet.

  Jam went back to her hair, dabbing castor oil on her ends as she worked through a few tiny knots. So you’ll go looking for the unseen things, since you’re the hunter and all that.

  Pet fell silent, and a vague unease began rolling off it.

  Jam turned, wiping her hands on her jeans. I said, you’ll go looking, right? That’s your job, that’s the whole point of you being here. I bring you over, and you take care of Redemption.

  Pet grunted. Not exactly, little girl.

  What do you mean, not exactly?

  A hunter, yes, Pet explained, but a hunter alone? No. The child they call Redemption is important to you, and you are important to the hunt for the monster in the house of Redemption.

  Jam backed up. I don’t want to hunt anyone, she said. That’s supposed to be your job!

  Pet shrugged, its metal shoulders glinting as the feathers slid over each other. I am not allowed to move so freely in this your world, it said with a trace of bitterness that pooled, oily, in the air between them. That is why you are important: there must be a hunter like me; there must be a hunter who is human, who can go where I cannot go, see what I cannot see.

  Then what do you do? Jam snapped, her words heavy with contempt laid over a skeleton of fear. She didn’t want to call Pet useless, not directly, but the word was hidden under her words, and Pet picked it up.

  The creature growled low in its throat and changed its body language, small shifts that bled naked menace into the room. Jam flinched—she had become used to the toned-down version Pet had been showing her, a version that allowed her to forget, even while looking straight at it, what exactly it was. A terror that had climbed through the night and into her life.

  I will, Pet snarled, do what you cannot do.

  Jam looked away; it was impossible not to. Her hands shook a little as she turned back to her mirror, trying to play it cool and not glance at Pet’s reflection. She didn’t want to show it she was scared. The soca music played on as she worked on another section of her hair, hectic steel pan and percussion thumping through the air, her spine prickling. Pet heaved a sigh and pulled itself together, sheathing the threat it had been sending out. The air settled into a hesitant peace.

  I know it is difficult, little girl, it said. Our concerns are aligned in this: you want the safety of the child they call Redemption, and I want the monster who threatens that. A hunt can take a long time. A hunter must be patient. For now, we do not know enough. Your job is to find out more, and all you have to do is be willing to see, to admit that there are unseens waiting to be seen. Do you understand?

  Jam nodded, even though the fear was still a tangled necklace in her stomach, heavy and iron. Pet came up to her in a single step, its weight sil
ent, like it was both there and not there. It put her mother’s severed hand on her shoulder, and its claws curved over her collarbone.

  I am sorry I made you afraid. I never mean you any harm. I am here to protect you and the ones you love.

  Jam looked at its face in the mirror and nodded. It wasn’t really Pet she was afraid of but the job that lay ahead of them, the responsibility, the way she would have to hide it from her parents.

  It’s going to be fine, Pet said. All you have to do is look. If there is something to see, you will see it.

  But where do I look? Jam asked. I don’t even know what I’m looking for.

  Pet’s voice rolled through her head, deep and resonant: It is simple. Start with your friend. Look for something you have not seen.

  They were interrupted by Bitter’s voice, carrying down the hall and through the bedroom door, piercing into their small, secret world. “You still want a ride, Jam? I heading out now.”

  “Where’s she going?” Aloe’s voice was faint from the living room.

  “You know she and that boy go see a movie every weekend.” Bitter raised her voice to call out again. “Jam!”

  Jam closed her eyes and groaned. She hated having to yell, but she didn’t want her mother coming to her room either. “Coming!” she called back, then opened her eyes to look at Pet, half-formed questions lumpy under her tongue.

  The creature had already disappeared, leaving her in the empty room with greasy fingertips. She finished her last twist in a hurry, then grabbed her phone and rushed out to meet Bitter.

  Her mother touched her face gently. “You doing okay, doux-doux?”

  Jam nodded, but Bitter kept looking at her.

  “You vex with us for making you send the creature away? It’s a lot to deal with, what happened. You want to talk about it?”

  Jam shook her head, not meeting her mother’s eyes, even as she felt Bitter’s worry sing against her skin. She hadn’t quite forgiven either of her parents for being so dismissive of Pet’s warning, for not being with her in this hunt. Maybe she wouldn’t forgive them until Redemption was safe, and maybe not even then. The drive to the movie theater was quiet, with only the wind breaking against the edge of the windows.

  When they pulled up, Redemption was standing on the sidewalk, waiting, tall and whipcord lean. Relief burst large and bright through Jam when she saw him. He was okay. Even if Pet was right and something horrible lived in his house, right now Redemption was there, and he was okay. Jam let her mother kiss her cheek, and then she hopped out of the car and into her best friend’s arms. His hugs were her favorite, solid and strong and never halfway. She locked her arm in his as they went into the theater, feeling the flesh of his bicep. He’s safe, she told herself. Right now, he’s with me and he’s safe. If she said it over and over, she wondered if the words would become a spell that would hold true even after he went home.

  Jam exhaled when they sat in their seats, welcoming the dark of the large room, the artificial light of the screen that stretched from floor to ceiling, curving in on them. It was a beautiful secret and public place. Redemption reclined his seat and glanced over at her. You okay? he signed.

  I’m fine. She smiled back, but she knew it didn’t look convincing. They’d been friends too long.

  Redemption raised an eyebrow and reached over to squeeze her hand. “Whenever you’re ready to share, I’m here,” he whispered. The light played blue off his dark skin, and Jam patted his cheek, stroking a thumb over the razor of his cheekbone.

  Thank you.

  She had no idea how she could even start sharing everything that had happened at her house, how she would explain Pet or the warning it had dragged over. How was she supposed to explain that a creature was coming to hunt at his house? Or that Pet’s arrival had tossed her out of the world she used to live in and left her floating in an uncomfortable nowhere. Everything looked the same, but nothing was. Being at the movies was an escape into a large cocoon of a story, a step away from the outside. The sound drowned out everything else, the walls were insulation for the next few hours, there was no need to talk or think. Jam could pretend that everything had stopped, and in the space of that pause, she could breathe.

  * * *

  —

  Jam rubbed her upper arm as they stepped outside after the movie; the theater had been chilly, and sometimes the hormone implant in her arm ached when she got cold. Redemption yawned and stretched. “Wanna come over?” he asked.

  Sure, she said. They exchanged a quick smile and set off down the sidewalk, Redemption whistling, his arms loose by his sides. Jam put her hands in her pockets, grounding herself in the soft cotton. It was weird to be going over to his house now that she knew what she knew, like she was a spy, almost. Gathering intel for Pet. She didn’t like keeping a secret from Redemption, but it wasn’t time to tell him about Pet, not yet. Not that telling would even work—you had to see Pet to accept that it was real in this world; the telling would never be enough. Words are never enough for a lot of things. Besides, Jam wanted to be sure that there actually was someone dangerous in his house—not like Pet-dangerous, which felt like a righteous-sword-of-fire kind of danger, but old-school dangerous, monster dangerous.

  It had taken the angels a long time to get rid of that kind of dangerous in Lucille; it was a fight that had started decades before even Bitter was born. The revolution had been slow and ponderous, but it had weight, and that weight built up a momentum, and when that momentum finally broke forth, it was with a great and accumulated force. This force washed out the monsters who worked in public spaces, allegedly for the public, but it carried farther, into the homes and schools. It touched everyone; it made change. People started by believing the victims, and once this was apparent that it was safe to report monsters now, more and more people did so. The monsters always tried to apologize when they were caught, using the same slippery words that had worked for them before. They thought it would be enough, that some time would pass and they would be welcomed back as if nothing had happened. They were wrong. There was no twisting away from the repercussions that the angels brought, justice rising like a sun over the hill in a loud morning.

  There had been so much counseling, so many treatment programs, so much rehabilitation to be done. So many amends to be made, the makings of how different justice could look. It was no small thing to try to restructure a society, to find the pus boiling away under the scabs, to peel back the hardened flesh to let it out. Jam had heard stories of how horrifying it had been to see the truth of how many monsters there were in Lucille—the public ones, the private ones, the chameleons, the freestyle solitary ones, the charismatic smiling ones. There were so many challenges, like how finding them was one thing but keeping more from forming was another. Like how the work of addressing the wounds they had caused never seemed to end. Bitter had told Jam a little about it, but only a little. The stories seemed to scald her mouth.

  “You can’t know how happy your father and I were,” she’d said to Jam, “to bring you into a life where you eh have to go through things like that.”

  Jam had thought herself lucky then, and maybe she was still lucky now, but lucky meant very little when there was a chance that a monster had slipped through the cracks, or that one had formed despite all the dismantling the angels had done. They’d done their best to tear apart entire structures, things that made monsters. “We must kill the structures all the way to their roots,” the angels had said, “and only then will Lucille be safe.”

  But something must have been missed, something must have gone wrong, because now Pet was here, an exterminator hunting down the rogue monster plant that had grown in Lucille’s reformed garden, a stray and secret kind of dangerous. The seed and stems of it were winding through the walls of Redemption’s house, and Jam had no idea how she was now supposed to tell which bits were okay and which bits were monster, if they look
ed the same as they’d always looked her whole life.

  By the time they got to Redemption’s house, Jam had pulled up every ounce of courage she could find. This was a mission, and all she had to do was what Pet had suggested: try to see more than she’d been seeing before. Look harder for things she maybe wouldn’t have thought existed. It would be like having new lenses put into her eyes, shifting the filter through which she took in everything around her, but Jam was ready. This was her part to play in helping her friend, and she was determined to do it well.

  Redemption opened the front door, and Jam followed him into the house. They were almost knocked down by his little brother, who was running full tilt across the foyer while holding a skateboard, his coiled hair squished by a helmet.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Redemption grabbed his brother’s shoulders. “Why you running in the house, Moss? You know Mama doesn’t like that.”

  Moss tilted his head up and smiled, a tooth missing. “Mama busy in the kitchen, Mama not noticing nothing! Whisper said I can show my new tricks after dinner, I going to practice now.” He twisted out of his brother’s hands and waved at Jam. “Hi, Jammy. Bye, Jammy.”

  Redemption sighed as he watched him hurtle out of sight around a corner. “Boy can’t slow down,” he said, shaking his head.

  Maybe when he breaks his arm again, he’ll learn? Jam said.

  “Ha! If the first time didn’t teach him, another one won’t.”

  They took off their shoes and shoved them into the already overflowing shoe rack. Music and voices poured out of the kitchen, pulling them in. Jam could already feel the familiar warmth of Redemption’s house wrapping around her like a soft, fuzzy blanket she’d known for years. She let out a breath, and tension she hadn’t realized she was still holding unfurled, an open petal in her shoulders. She’d been worried that the house would feel different with what Pet had said, that maybe there’d be a malevolent thread spiking through the air and it would needle its way into Jam’s head and she wouldn’t be able to hold herself together long enough to find out where it was coming from. But everything felt the same, and same was good; she hadn’t been having much same in the last day.