“Ha, I can imagine.” Neon snorts. “And probably insanely overpriced. Sure you can afford it?”
“I wouldn’t worry about it.” I grin and Neon grins back. She takes another look around the room, whistling low, before moving to the fridge, only to whistle again when she sees the contents.
Meanwhile, Indah is still standing in the open doorway, narrowing her eyes at both me and Neon. I suddenly realize how far the couch I’m on is from the door—Indah might be out of range. There’s plenty I still don’t understand about what I can do, but proximity seems to be a factor. Without the magnetic pull of my ability enticing her into the room, she has space to think about all the pieces of this that don’t make sense—space to make out the shape of the duck when I want her to see the rabbit.
“Do you want anything, Indah?” I say smoothly, rising from the couch and moving slowly toward her as if she’s a spooked animal. “There’s soda and stuff too.”
“Yeah, real fancy shit!” Neon yells, her head still in the refrigerator.
“Robert, what’s going on here?” Indah asks.
Crap, she’s taken a minuscule step back, putting her weight on her heels like she’s ready to spin on them and run at any moment.
“What do you mean?” I put my hands in my pockets, show her I’m not a threat. But I keep moving toward her, slow step by slow step, hardly picking up my feet. Neon seems plenty occupied with the drinks, and hopefully my desire for her to have a good time will keep her there. But even as I inch closer, I can’t feel Indah, can’t tell how much closer I’ll need to get to her to convince her that there’s no reason to ask more questions.
“There’s something…” Her brow crinkles more and her gaze becomes unfocused, giving me the chance to slightly speed up my steps. “There’s something strange about you, Robert,” she finishes, and I fake a chuckle.
“Yeah, that’s been said before.”
“No, I mean, there’s something…” She trails off again and I feel a click inside my body, like I’m finally picking up the tune of a song playing far away.
“Something…?” I prompt, knowing I’m out of danger for now.
“Nothing.” She shakes her head. “I can’t—I don’t remember what I was going to say now.” She smiles at that, like she’s laughing at herself, and her whole body relaxes as she steps into the room.
“Holy shit.”
I turn around to see Neon staring at us from the kitchenette. She’s got tiny bottles of liquor in both of her hands, but based on her ashen face and wide eyes, I don’t think that’s what she’s swearing about.
“What?” I ask, heart beating fast. Crossing the room to work my magic on Indah might have put Neon out of range, but there’s no way. There’s no way she could suspect something about me, other than the general suspicion that I’m some sort of criminal. Which I could hardly criticize her for—the evidence is fairly damning, even if it isn’t strictly true.
“You’re one of us,” she breathes.
One of us.
Chills run down my arms.
“One of who?” I ask, doing my best to keep my voice steady.
“You can do something, can’t you?” she continues. “I don’t know what it is, but Indah—I know what Indah looks like when she senses—and you just—you just made her totally calm without saying anything. Indah, babe, are you okay?”
Indah’s eyes widen in confusion as she looks between Neon and me.
“I’m—” she starts, before shaking her head and starting again. “Nee, he’s—”
“I’m nothing,” I interrupt, starting to panic.
“No, you’re something,” Neon continues. “This place … everything you have, everything you’re able to get … you do something, don’t you?”
“Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, taking a step toward her.
“No, don’t—”
She puts her hands up in warning, the mini bottles clattering to the floor. Light reflects off the rings on her fingers and the hair rises on the back of my neck.
“Don’t come any closer,” she warns.
“Neon, calm down,” I say soothingly, trying to push my ability out as far as it will go.
“Indah, come here a sec,” Neon calls. I look behind me to see Indah’s eyes darting between us, torn between someone she trusts urging her over and the tentative hold I still have on her emotions. I don’t want her to move—I want her to stay behind me, on my side—but reaching out to Neon has meant loosening my grip on Indah, and I don’t know which is stronger: the trust or the power.
“Babe, come on,” Neon pleads, and the endearment snaps the connection between us. Indah rushes to Neon’s side, putting them both in the kitchenette and me still standing in front of the open door. There’s one exit and they have to pass me to get there. There’s still time for me to fix this.
“What did you mean, ‘one of us’?” I repeat, slowly stepping backward to shut the door.
“Don’t you dare close that door,” Neon hisses, but I click it shut softly.
“It’s okay,” I assure her. “You really think I could hurt you? Look at me.” I wave my hands over my body—soft and weak compared to her wiry strength—and give her my best innocent look.
“I don’t know what you can do, Robert,” Neon says. “And that means I can’t trust you, no matter how unthreatening you look.”
“How didn’t I know?” Indah murmurs. “Nee, he’s different. I couldn’t sense anything from him. Not until tonight. That’s why I—that’s why I started asking questions.”
“What are you—‘couldn’t sense anything’?” I echo. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Who are you—” Indah shoots back, her voice sharp in a way I’ve never heard.
“Okay, okay,” Neon shouts over us, “we clearly have some things we need to talk about. Why don’t we all just calm down and start explaining.”
“You first,” I snap, crossing my arms.
“Nuh-uh, kid.” Neon shakes her head. “You’re the new guy in town, you explain first.”
“Don’t call me ‘kid,’” I mutter, annoyed that I have to say it out loud.
“That’s what you are though,” she continues. “You’re eighteen, you somehow got Indah to serve you the moment you met her, you’re staying here without paying a dime, and—and weren’t you running from something in Vegas? There’s a lot you haven’t told us and you better start.”
“Why should I? I barely know you two, why would I tell you anything?”
“Because in the past month, it’s become pretty clear that you’re a curious kid and I have a feeling you’ll do what you need to to find out what I meant by ‘one of us.’”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I concede, clenching my jaw. “But, as you’ve guessed by now, I’m not in the habit of playing by other people’s rules.” I start to stalk slowly toward them. These two are clearly no strangers to conflict, but even if they wanted to fight their way out of this, by the time they try, they’ll be in range for me to do my thing. “So if you’ll just do me the very kind favor of telling me exactly—”
I take another step and Neon’s hands go up again. There’s a flash of blue light, searing pain, and then darkness.
* * *
She was sixteen when it first happened. It started small. A static shock on her fingertips. A current up and down her spine when she held her tongue. The smell of lightning in the air that comes before a storm, except there never was a storm. The storm was her all along.
It didn’t stay small. The more upset she got, the more she held in her feelings—tried to fit in, tried to appease her parents, her friends, her school—the higher the static would rise. She didn’t know it needed a release. If she had, she would have found an outlet, somewhere safe to discharge all the electricity, before it was too late. Instead, it burst out of her like a supernova. She never let it build up again. She couldn’t risk it. Couldn’t risk being found out, hurting someone, burning another
building down. She couldn’t risk any of it.
The moment she could, she left her small Arizona town and moved west. To somewhere she wouldn’t be looked upon as strange. Her town had always seen her that way and they didn’t even know about the electricity. She stuck out like a sore, sparking thumb. At least in Los Angeles, her run-of-the-mill weirdness—her love of punk, her hair, her sharp wit and steel spine—would be just that. Run-of-the-mill. Los Angeles could accept her. Los Angeles was a place for lost people to find themselves.
She found herself, all right. She found Neon.
* * *
“… he’ll be fine, Indah. Don’t treat me like an amateur.”
“He’s been out for five whole minutes. You know that’s not good.”
“He spooked me, okay? I didn’t mean to discharge that much.”
“Is he—”
“Oh shit—”
“Robert? Robert, are you okay?”
“What the fuck happened?” I groan as I blink open my eyes. I’m lying on what I assume is the floor, Indah and Neon bent down on either side of me. Indah’s eyes move around my body, while Neon squints at me with a guilty grimace.
“Sorry, kid,” she says, and I cringe internally. I wish she’d stop calling me that. And it’s a little weird that she is when she’s right next to me. My ability should be taking care of that, even if I am still half-conscious.
“Here, let me help you up,” she continues, and Indah nods in agreement as they both grab on to my arms. Something is off. There’s a low hum in my ears and my skin feels overly sensitive, like it’s been sunburned. I shake my head back and forth, like that will clear it, as they lead me to the couch.
“Okay, really, what the hell just happened?” I croak, settling back into the couch.
“I shocked you,” Neon says, sitting down on the coffee table across from me. Indah settles on the arm of the couch, crossing her arms and looking down at us like a disapproving schoolmarm.
“What do you mean, you shocked me?” I ask.
“Like I said: you’re one of us. And people like us … well. We can do a lot of different things.” She gives me a small, soft smile, like we’re in on a secret. “I still haven’t figured out exactly what it is you can do, though.”
“I can make people do what I want.”
I don’t know what compels me to tell her. Maybe it’s feeling like I’ve been microwaved and then struck by lightning; maybe it’s that, for once, I feel completely powerless, and even worried and shaken, Neon radiates that commanding confidence that I want to bend to. Maybe it’s just because I think it’s the only way she’s ever going to give me more than vague statements.
“Huh,” she says, not at all the reaction I expect. “I thought it might be something like that. But how does it work?”
I’m thrown by the question, expecting an outcry of disgust or disbelief or something.
“I, uh … I don’t really know,” I admit. “I’ve been able to do it a really long time and it’s just—I just want something and people around me want it too. I don’t really think that much about it most of the time.”
“What do you want right now?” Indah asks softly from her perch.
“I want you to explain who the hell you are, but…” I concentrate on the part of my feelings that always feels like an old bruise. The place I poke at when I do what I do. The bruise is silent, un-aching.
“It’s weird,” I continue, “I can’t—you’re not explaining. And I can’t really feel the want.”
“Does that happen a lot?” Indah asks.
“Never,” I say, moving my gaze back to Neon. “What did you do to me?”
“What I do,” she says, leaning back and lifting her chin in pride.
“And what exactly is it that you do?” I spit. “Knock people unconscious?”
“Sometimes.” She shrugs. “I try not to make a habit of it.”
“But you’re…” I trail off. Not sure how to ask for it. Not even knowing what word to use. Feeling self-conscious about this conversation still.
“God, I need a smoke.” Neon stands abruptly, digging into her pants pockets. “You got a light, babe?”
“Neon,” Indah chastises.
“What?” Neon asks around her cigarette as Indah jerks her head toward me. “Oh, right, is it cool if I smoke in here? This whole situation is, you know, kind of stressful.”
“What the fuck do I care?” I shrug, annoyed that the conversation is getting waylaid and I’m apparently completely powerless to control that. Neon should be sitting, telling me all of her deepest, darkest secrets, and instead she’s kissing Indah on the cheek as she takes a lighter from her hand and completely ignoring me.
“Um, excuse me,” I snap, “I think you were just explaining why I was unconscious on my hotel room floor a few minutes ago?”
“Right, sorry.” Neon pulls the lit cigarette from her mouth and sits back down on the coffee table, leaning toward me, her elbows on her knees. She takes one more long drag before meeting my eyes as she exhales, face serious, the cigarette dangling from her fingers.
“I’m an electropath,” she says, like I know what that means. “I can make things go all sparky with my mind,” she explains, before I can ask for more clarification out loud.
She rests her cigarette on the edge of table, brings up her arms in front of her and suddenly the air crackles with electricity. Lightning comes from her hands, twisting around her fingers, kissing her wrists.
“No, it doesn’t hurt,” she says dreamily, gazing at her hands with affection. She’s so calm, so comfortable in herself, that I can’t tell if she’s answering my desire—still distant in my body—or anticipating the natural question you have when seeing someone essentially electrocuting themselves.
“How…,” I breathe, not even knowing what I want to know.
“How long?” she ventures. “How does it work? How do I use it?”
“How did you know about me?” I blurt, my lips making the rare move of forming words without my brain’s careful crafting of them first. “How did you figure it out so fast?”
“It took us a month. I wouldn’t say that’s exactly fast,” she grumbles. Then, seeing my unsatisfied expression, she rolls her eyes and continues. “When you’ve been around the block as much as I have, you learn how to recognize other Unusuals.”
The way she says it, I can practically hear the capital letter.
“Unusuals?”
“That’s what I call people like us. No one I’ve met has ever had a word for it, so that seemed as good as any.”
She picks the cigarette back up and takes another drag and I want to inhale the smoke she lets out of her mouth, like breathing in her exhale will give me all the knowledge she’s ever gained about people like us.
“I—” I start, “I didn’t know. I thought it was just me.”
“In all your Kerouac-ing around the country, you never ran into another Unusual?”
“I, um…” I rub my hands on my legs. “I never really got to know anyone well enough to find out.”
“God, that’s sad.”
I don’t know what to say to that. I don’t know how I could possibly disagree. So I don’t say anything at all.
Another drag. We sit in silence as she exhales.
“You don’t just…”
I sit up straighter, unused to Neon trailing off.
“What?” I push.
“Ask people?” She raises her eyebrows at me. “I mean, not ask people outright but … you know … ask in your unique way of asking. Want them to tell you,” she finishes, like I didn’t get the point.
“I can’t ask what I don’t know to ask,” I tell her softly, embarrassed to admit that I don’t know something.
“You never wondered if there were other people like you?” she asks, lips moving around her cigarette.
“I just never even thought about it,” I say. “I never … I’ve never had a name for what I can do. At first I thought I was going crazy.�
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“Yeah, me too.” She snorts, smoke curling out of her nose. “But, well, it’s hard to deny this.” The tips of her fingers crackle and spark in emphasis and I flinch involuntarily, making her smile.
“Don’t worry, it can’t hurt you,” she says, smiling proudly as she takes the cigarette out of her mouth, the electricity briefly flirting with the lit end.
“I think I have pretty solid proof to the contrary,” I retort, sinking farther into the couch.
“You’re fine, aren’t you?” she quips. “A little singed maybe, but … fine.”
“I’m actually…” I search for the want deep inside of me and am uncertain about what I find there. Things usually just happen. But this conversation isn’t going at all as I want it to and I don’t know why. It’s different from the unbalanced feeling I had standing in front of the tall man earlier tonight. This isn’t being disoriented or frustrated. This is empty.
“I think maybe you did something to me,” I finish, hoping Neon will fill in the blanks.
“You mean with your ability?” Indah asks, twirling a cigarette between her fingers. I’ve never seen her smoke but she always carries them with her. I don’t know yet if Indah is an Unusual like Neon, like me I guess, but she’s already an enticing enough mystery on her own.
“Do you guys…,” I start. As I struggle to find my words, I realize that I don’t normally talk this much. My interactions with other people are often short and always dictated by what I’m feeling. I don’t say much because I never have to say much. My wants find their way to the people around me so that I never have to voice them out loud. Even with Indah and Neon so far, the point has been to make them laugh, hear them joke, make them like me without revealing too much about myself. But here we are being honest and it’s new and terrifying territory.
“What, kid?” Neon prompts, and I grimace.
“That.” I jab a finger at her. “That’s what I’m talking about. If I was at a hundred percent, you wouldn’t be calling me ‘kid.’”
“You don’t like it,” Neon breathes, leaning back on her elbows and putting the cigarette back between her lips.
A Neon Darkness Page 5