“Well, yes,” Auden replied. “I thought that was clear?”
“Listen up, you fucking bastard—”
“I’m not a bastard,” Auden interrupted irritably, as if Billy were interested in the nuances of legitimacy and had simply committed a factual error.
Billy was not interested in the nuances of legitimacy, it turned out, and Auden’s interruption twisted the tension even higher, as Billy struggled for a response and Auden raised an eyebrow. “Well?”
Billy didn’t have a chance for verbal revenge, though, because another boy came forward and swiped St. Sebastian’s phone off Auden’s sketchbook, jumping back before St. Sebastian could reach him, and causing a chase that only lasted four steps as St. Sebastian’s options caught up with him and he froze.
The options were:
1) Chase the boy while the others laughed and possibly played keep away (and then still not get the phone.)
2) Chase the boy and get the phone but then get roughed up for his trouble.
3) Stop chasing and beg for them to give it back because it cost so much money and was the nicest thing he owned. . . which would probably signal to them how important it was (and therefore be a mistake).
4) Stop chasing the boy and hope they all got bored.
So St. Sebastian froze as the boy darted behind a screen of the other boys and started tossing the phone in the air and laughing. But Auden didn’t freeze.
He stepped forward, his jaw tight and his eyes flashing. “Give that back to him,” he said quietly.
“Or what?” the boy jeered. “You’ll call your mummy on us?”
“No,” Auden said. “Or I’ll make you.”
“Oh, is AHHH-dn gonna make us?” Billy said, seeming to shake off his funk at being verbally bested by Auden before. “They teach you how to fight in rich-boy school?”
“Of course not,” Auden said, annoyed. “Well, unless you count fencing, but that was elective.”
God, Auden, really?
This obviously did not impress them, and the boy with the phone started throwing it higher and higher until Auden snapped, “Give that back—” and the boy said, “Oh, you want it back, do you?” in a tone any kid who’s ever been bullied knows means trouble. Then he threw the phone as hard as he could—not to Auden or St. Sebastian or even to the ground, where the grass would cushion its fall—but right at a gravestone.
There was the dull crack and clatter of a shattering screen, and before St. Sebastian could go for it—or even react, really—Billy got to the phone where it lay dark and spiderwebbed on the grass. He drove his heel down against the phone, again and again and again, so that St. Sebastian wouldn’t just have a screen to replace, he’d have everything to replace, and it was like everything was shattering inside of St. Sebastian just like the glass screen, and each crack was his mother’s disappointed face, his secondhand clothes, his voice that would never sound like money in any of the three countries he could claim as his own.
“Fuck,” he whispered, only to himself, the single moment of weakness he’d allow himself before he figured out how to extricate Auden and him safely. But Auden heard, and pure, possessive protectiveness blazed from those hazel eyes, and Auden stepped forward and shoved Billy off the phone.
“Don’t you ever fuck with him,” Auden growled.
“Why,” Billy asked, furious, panting, “cause that’s your job?”
Auden went to shove him again, and that’s when Billy swung—a punch that clipped Auden’s elbow as Auden expertly blocked and dipped, changing his shoving hand into an uppercut at the last minute, aimed right for Billy’s solar plexus.
St. Sebastian was already moving even before the punch landed, because it didn’t matter if Auden could fight Billy and win, it wasn’t just Billy, there were six more of them, and they wouldn’t fight fair, they had no interest in fighting fair. Auden had just given them a reason to lose any last shred of decency when it came to that, because their only code was loyalty, and Auden had just humiliated and then hit one of their own.
The only way this would end without the both of them in hospital was with them jumping the far wall and getting to the village before their attackers did. That was it.
He grabbed Auden’s hand right as Billy fell to his knees with a grunt, right as Phone Stealing Boy and the others swarmed them.
“You pissing bastard,” one of them hissed.
“You’ll pay for that, you fucking knobhead—”
If St. Sebastian had been afraid before, the fear was all over him now. It was in his marrow and swimming in his blood and flooding his brain and squeezing his heart. His lungs felt five sizes too big and his legs felt too long, he was too high off the ground, everything was distorted and wild.
And then all of this in ten terrible seconds:
St. Sebastian yanked Auden backwards just as the first grubby-trainered kick came from nowhere; it caught the side of Auden’s knee and he buckled, but St. Sebastian hauled him up, already running, half-leading, half-dragging until Auden got his feet under him again. They just had to make the wall, they just had to make the road after it—but both seemed so far away as to be in another world, in another life, a life where you didn’t get your own body broken for wanting unsanctioned bodies.
They were just behind them, dogging their steps, clipping their heels with their feet—but St. Sebastian could run fast and Auden could run tall with his long legs—and for a few seconds, there was hope. Not a lot, but enough to fuel him along with the adrenaline, and just beyond the top of the low stone wall that bordered the graveyard was the lift of green and then the reassuring ribbon of road beyond, and St. Sebastian could see it. He could see their way out, he could see their jumping the wall and running for the road, bursting into the sleepy, leafy cloister of Thorncombe, breathless and panicked but unharmed.
And then St. Sebastian would spend the next million hours screaming at Auden for being so pointlessly stupid, so unhelpfully stubborn—
He never got the chance.
They were to the wall and St. Sebastian let go of Auden’s hand so that he could vault over, which he did easily, planting his hands on the top and swinging his legs around. He landed with a soft thud, and starting running again, expecting to hear the answering thud of Auden behind him.
He didn’t.
One long, running step. Maybe Auden landed silently because he’s so graceful.
Another long, running step. Maybe he is having trouble with the wall.
A third step. Maybe he went another way.
St. Sebastian turned, still moving and saw the image that would be etched into the bloody flesh of his heart for the rest of his life: Auden, still in the graveyard, backed against the wall with his fists tucked to his cheeks and his elbows tucked to the side as blows from every side rained down on him.
He hadn’t jumped the wall, and St. Sebastian somehow knew, he knew, that he hadn’t even tried.
“Run,” Auden yelled when he saw St. Sebastian looking at him. “Fucking RUN!”
And then there was no doubt in St. Sebastian’s mind. Auden hadn’t stayed to prove a point—Auden stayed back for him, to protect him. Auden stayed so St. Sebastian could run, he turned to make himself a target so that St. Sebastian would be safe.
It was a martyrdom that a boy named for the saint of martyrs couldn’t comprehend, couldn’t believe, felt unworthy of. It was a sacrifice worth sacrificing back for.
But.
But.
The fear had a mind of its own now, it was chemical, it was animal, it was millions of years of evolution saying flee, run, live, and St. Sebastian’s legs were moving faster than his brain, yes, he was seeing and comprehending all as he kept moving, but even so, even after he really, truly understood what was happening—
He kept running.
Six more steps. Six steps that he’d remember for the rest of his life, his thirty pieces of silver, the price of his soul. He realized Auden had stayed to fight for him, his mind registered it and t
he heavy, global weight of it, and still it took him six steps to stop. Six steps to choose between saving himself and saving someone else.
In the bleak and solitary years to come, St. Sebastian wouldn’t blame himself for the running, nor the fear, nor the urge to survive. He wouldn’t even blame himself for those heart-pounding instants after he jumped the wall and hadn’t realized he was alone, not even for the moments he was looking back and still trying to make sense of what he saw.
But those six steps? When he knew and kept running anyway?
He’d punish himself for those six steps for the rest of his life.
But he didn’t know all that yet. What he did know was that he had to go back and help, even though he’d just get beaten too, and he was angry and resentful and scared as he spun around to dash up to the wall, where Auden was bravely swinging and kicking and then all of a sudden grappling with Phone Boy hard enough that his shirt rode up on his back. St. Sebastian could hear the grunting, the cursing, the rowdy encouragements from the other boys, and then Auden and Phone Boy tripped or stumbled or something, and fell right out of sight.
Dread pooled deep and sick in St. Sebastian’s stomach. Everything he’d learned about fighting he’d learned watching his cousins tussle and spar back in Texas, and it wasn’t much but he knew this: the ground was the worst place to be. A fact that was confirmed an instant later by the jerks and braces and pivots of the boys still standing.
They were kicking Auden.
With a renewed burst of energy, St. Sebastian ran the rest of the way to the wall, making to jump over again, but he tripped at the last second, only avoiding landing face first into the stone with a twist and a shove that had him landing on the ground instead.
Breath knocked clean out of him, St. Sebastian tried to grope his way back up, he had to get to Auden, he had to help—
And then pain, blunt and crushing, fractured through his chest, and from his chest it jangled up and over every single nerve in his body, and he collapsed back to the grass, rolling over onto his side.
He’d been kicked in the ribs.
For a moment, he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, but he could hear—God, he could hear what they were doing to Auden on the other side of the wall. He wished Auden would just play dead now, maybe then they’d get bored or guilty or nervous . . . it was supposed to work with grizzly bears or something . . . he’d heard that somewhere . . .
Was he himself playing dead now . . . ?
Oxygen came in slowly, like a leak in a balloon, only in reverse, and he realized he’d been skirting unconsciousness only when he opened his eyes to see two fastidiously clean trainers in the grass in front of him. He looked up and up and up to see whom the shoes belonged to and encountered Lee’s emotionless, cold-eyed stare.
“They say,” Lee told him quietly, “that when you get hit in the head, your brain smashes against the inside of your skull. Did you know that?”
St. Sebastian still couldn’t speak—he’d find out later that Lee had cracked a rib with that kick—and so all St. Sebastian could do was moan. Don’t do this, he wanted to beg. Don’t hurt me. Don’t let them hurt my Auden.
He would have begged for days, he would have done any humiliating, degrading thing Lee asked—so long as they would stop hurting Auden, so long as those clenched, trying-to-be-brave noises of Auden’s stopped coming from the other side of the wall.
Lee wasn’t interested in his begging however, because he merely tilted his head and said, “Let’s see what happens to your brain, Martinez. Let’s see if it smashes hard or soft.”
St. Sebastian threw up his hands just in time—if he hadn’t, then he didn’t even know what would have happened to him, he’d be dead, probably—and Lee’s foot was deflected just enough that it didn’t connect with St. Sebastian’s forehead with full force. But whatever else happened—whether his brain smashed or Lee stayed to watch his handiwork or what they did to Auden next—St. Sebastian wasn’t aware of. The kick connected and St. Sebastian’s neck snapped back.
And the world vanished into inky darkness.
Part II
Equinox
Chapter 18
St. Sebastian
Equinox
* * *
During those bleary, delirious days when his mother went from sick to dying to dead, St. Sebastian invented a game for himself.
If he could count every second for one minute, one two three four and so on until sixty, when the minute hand on the hospital clock ticked over—and if he could count each second perfectly, pronouncing the number clearly and loudly inside his head—then he would be given a new minute for each second he counted. So if he counted one full minute, he would be given a new hour, another hour. She would be given another hour.
There was an important rule, however. He would only be given an hour of time equivalent to the minute he had counted; that is to say that if he counted a minute when his mother was writhing in pain in between morphine doses, then the rewarded hour would also be an hour of pain. If he counted a minute while his mother was sleeping, then he would earn an hour of her in peaceful rest, breathing slowly between the beeps and whirrs of the machines around the hospital bed. The best was if he could count a moment when she was happy and awake and pain-free, which he tried to do as often as he could, although those minutes became fewer and fewer between, like islands in a dark and sterile sea, until they didn’t exist at all, and all the moments left were moments of either unconsciousness or misery.
He still kept counting even then, kept trying to earn hour after hour even if they were miserable, trying to earn more time of any kind because the alternative was no time at all, and he wasn’t sure he could survive that.
Toward the end, and he can’t remember exactly when this started happening, only that it did and it made some kind of soothing sense at the time, his numbers began to change into words. It started with stay. Not one two three four, just stay stay stay stay to the rhythm of the ticking clock for an entire minute . . . and then over the next two days it changed to please—please please please—although to whom he was saying please, he didn’t even know. It was probably God—fine, he could admit that—but maybe it was to her or to the doctors or to some universe-as-benevolent-energy bullshit that he normally didn’t believe in. He was past caring about what he believed in, nothing about who he was outside the hospital room mattered, what mattered was that Jennifer Martinez was not allowed to die, not for any reason, especially not from some innocuous scratch on her arm made the day after Christmas. She couldn’t leave him, and if he had to count every second of every minute for the rest of his life to make sure, he would.
He would have done it gladly if only he’d been given the chance.
And at the end, that last agonizing day and a half when no amount of oxygen through her mask could keep the machines from beeping their alerts, when strange bruises bloomed under her skin and her lips began to slowly blue, stay and please melted away just as the numbers had, and it was just her name.
Mamá.
Like a child who’s woken up in the dark, alone and afraid, crying out for the one person who can always make the darkness go away. Mamá, Mamá, Mamá.
“Mamá,” he whispered as he clutched her hand. “Mamá.”
In the end, the counting had given him nothing. Jennifer Martinez, forty-five, had died of septicemia after getting a scratch on her arm, and she’d died without a chance to update her will, finish her unpublished articles, or say a lucid goodbye. She had died and revealed St. Sebastian’s counting game for what it was—a superstition, a vacant, futile shibboleth, a charm against monsters to be clutched by a child in the dark, a child too stupid to know its shabby contours and its cheapness.
Saint was twenty-two when she died. Too old for charms.
And yet sometimes, more than a year after her death now, St. Sebastian found himself playing the counting game again. Not for his mother, but for him, to earn more hours for himself to have.
So whe
n he’s sitting in Thornchapel’s library on a day off—rare now that Uncle Augie is this busy and needs his help, but when he does get a free day, it’s more precious than gold—he’ll look up from whatever stack of books he’s helping Poe annotate in the catalog and see the sunlight catching the hidden gold in her dark hair and listen to her humming to herself as she pages expertly through the books and he’ll start counting. One two three four . . .
He’ll count as many minutes as he can to be given more hours exactly like these, quiet and unflashy as they are, because sometimes when he’s in them and he sees how sweetly pleased Poe is just to be near him, just to chatter at him or work next to him—or very often, lay on the sofa with her head in his lap and take one of her deep, coma-like narcolepsy naps while he stares down at her lovely, sleeping face and counts and counts and counts—he thinks he might be so happy himself that he’s overflowing with it. Like a cup left out in the rain, such an extravagant fullness that it’s brimming over, that it’s running off him in glassy rivulets to pool at his feet, a lavish, wasteful flood of happiness because he can’t possibly hold it all, he can’t possibly save it all up for the dry and lonely days surely to come, and yet he still tries, he still counts, like the greedy man he is.
When he’s sitting in the library on one of those nights when everybody’s home, listening to Becket and Rebecca argue about God and gardens, listening to Poe talk about her struggle parsing the Record of Thornechapel Customs’s section on Beltane with its strange references and unfamiliar words, listening to Delphine and Auden gossip companionably about people they grew up with, gossiping so familiarly and lightly and affectionately that it’s almost impossible to believe that they have a broken engagement between them, that they’ve been anything more than best friends since the beginning—then St. Sebastian counts too. Each second is another minute, each minute is an hour of being with these people, beautiful and smart and so longed for by him that he wishes a giant storm would come and trap them all inside Thornchapel and they’d have to stay there forever, drinking and arguing and gossiping and laying all over each other like puppies in a cardboard box.
Feast of Sparks Page 19