“Well, it’s gotta be kind of weird, right? With you and Neon and him and Neon…”
“That’s part of it, I guess.” She shrugs. “But honestly, Neon might be the one thing Marley and I do see eye to eye on. She’s about the only thing we have in common.”
“How about Blaze?” I ask. “What’s his deal?”
“Pyrokinetic, like we told you, a bit of a temper. Has been on his own about as long as you have, I think,” she says, turning her gaze onto me. “But, um, how long would that be exactly?”
“What?” I ask, pretending I don’t know the question.
“How long have you been on your own?”
She asks it casually, moving her eyes away from me and focusing on taking another sip of coffee. But I can feel the tension in the air, the stakes of asking about my past.
I wonder if she knows. I wonder if she knows that I’m barely using my ability on her right now, that there’s nothing I really want from her in this moment. After we sat for a while and she filled up on caffeine and eggs, Indah was beginning to relax again, and I started to relax in kind. But tension is starting to creep into her shoulders, like she’s ready to get up and run off at any second. That idea hurts me more than I’d ever tell her. I don’t think she’s wrong for being afraid of me, of what I can do, but the fear still hurts.
“A while,” I say finally, choosing something I’ve never chosen before: vulnerability.
“What’s ‘a while’?” she prods.
“Since I was thirteen,” I tell her, and her eyes widen.
“Oh,” she breathes. “What … what happened?”
I could tell her. Even though I haven’t seen her in months and was just barely beginning to become friends with her before I ran away, I feel like I know Indah. I know that if I told her the whole sob story, she’d listen attentively, nod along at the right parts, and then her heart would bleed all over me. She would be sympathetic, would maybe even touch my arm, give me a hug, tell me how sorry she is that I’ve been alone for so long. And the whole time, even if I were wrapped in her embrace, having soothing words whispered into my ear, I would wonder if any of it was real. I want that affection so badly, but in the cold light of day, that desire feels unseemly. I hate that dark little part of me that craves comfort, craves a soft hand and a warm body, but as much as I despise it, I can’t destroy it. It rules me, and I rule everyone else.
So I say nothing at all. I turn around to put my coffee mug in the sink, hiding my face and trying to bury that ugly desire for pity somewhere deep. When I look back at Indah, her face is blank, waiting.
“Come on,” I say, forcing a smile, “let’s get you to your date.”
* * *
Indah drops me back at my car, still haunting the bar I left two days ago, before driving off to meet Neon. Before she goes, she gives me her number and tells me to call.
“Neon and Marley still talk about you, you know,” she says just as I put my hand on the car door to step out. “They’ll be happy to know you’re okay.”
“I don’t know why they’d care,” I snap, having a hard time believing that she’s being honest. There’s no way Marley is still thinking about me—that’s wishful desire on my part, and nothing else.
“I know you don’t, Rob,” she sighs, and I wait for her to say something else. But she stares silently through the windshield, her foot still on the brake, ready to drive away the moment I get out of the car.
So I do. I go to sit in my own car, where I stare through my windshield, wondering what she meant by that and why I didn’t ask for more. Why I didn’t stick around for the unvoiced questions to be answered.
* * *
“Why won’t you talk to us, Robbie?” my mother coos.
I don’t answer her. She does this every night now. Stands in the doorway of my room like she’s afraid to cross the threshold. Like she’s afraid that if she comes too close to her son, he’ll open his mouth and swallow her whole. So I’ve kept my mouth closed, not said a word in almost an entire week, terrified of what might happen if I express any thought or feeling out loud.
“Please, darling,” she pleads, “just tell us what’s going on.”
But I can’t. I can’t tell her because if I speak, she might end up doing something like stepping off a roof and breaking her leg, and I don’t want to hurt anyone else. I just want to be left alone. I want my parents—I want everyone—to leave me alone.
I didn’t know it at the time, but saying it out loud wasn’t the trick. It was simply wanting it at all. If I had known that then, I would have done everything I could to stop myself from wanting to be left.
As it was, I got my wish.
* * *
“I shouldn’t have just up and left like that,” I say, head bowed in contrition. I don’t know that I completely believe the words I’m saying, but I want them to believe it, so they will. “I just … I’ve never had anyone know about me—the whole truth about me—so I got spooked.”
We’re back at Neon’s apartment, Indah perched on the arm of the couch, looking at me encouragingly, as the yin-yang pairing of Neon and Marley sits silently, arms crossed, giving me twin blank stares.
“I’m sorry,” I finish, the words feeling misshapen and foreign in my mouth.
A long silence follows in which I see everyone’s shoulders and faces soften—my desire for them to forgive me, to let me back in the group, is working, when suddenly—
“Jesus!” I cry, jumping at the sudden zap that hits my arm.
“Sorry, kid,” Neon says, unrepentant. She stands, hand still crackling with blue electricity, and pats me on the shoulder. I try to flinch away but when she makes contact, nothing happens.
“It’s purely decorative at the moment,” she says. “I’m not going to shock you again.”
“Why did you have to shock me in the first place?” I ask, rubbing my arm, which is still buzzing with a phantom sensation.
“I needed to make sure you weren’t using your power on us,” she calmly explains, walking into her kitchen.
“So you electrocuted me?”
“It worked the first time,” she calls out. I look at Indah for support. She just rolls her eyes and follows Neon into the kitchen, pushing her aside to take over drink-making duties. Marley is smiling to himself, the first time I’ve ever seen him look amused. It doesn’t make me any less nervous to be in his presence.
“Everyone’s just cool with this then?” I throw my hands up in the air before flopping down on the couch next to Marley.
“It’s not real forgiveness if you force it,” Marley says.
“Well, how about me?” I snarl, wanting to back away from him any time his gaze shifts to me. “You hurt my feelings too and I don’t see anyone apologizing for it.”
I want to take back the words the moment I say them, but unfortunately my ability doesn’t serve as time travel. If it weren’t for Neon’s electricity still coursing through me, maybe I could make Marley forget that I’ve said them, but instead, unprompted, he gives me something I want even more, saying, “I’m sorry,” and sounding like he means it.
“Genuinely. I’m sorry,” he says again, shaking his head and closing his eyes. “I shouldn’t have used your past like that. As a weapon against you.”
“Can you … can you stop looking?” I ask, a genuine question.
“Mostly,” he says. “But there are times when it just appears before I can stop it. I can keep it to myself though.”
“Yeah.” I nod. “Yeah, that’d be good. Thanks.”
“Can you try to not use your power on us?” Neon says from behind me. I tilt my head up to find her upside-down face looking down at me, her hair falling around me like a curtain.
“I can try,” I say, not sure if I’m telling the truth or not.
“That’s good enough,” she proclaims, handing drinks to Marley and me. “For now,” she adds ominously.
She and Indah come around the couch, Indah taking up her perch on the armrest and
Neon plopping down on the coffee table.
“Look, you’re one of us, Rob,” she says seriously, staring straight into my eyes. “There aren’t a lot of us in this world and we need to stick together. But being an Unusual isn’t a free pass, okay? We all still have to do our best to be good people.”
“Okay,” I agree, even though I’m a little annoyed that Neon, a woman maybe five years older than me, is talking to me like I’m her kid. But the annoyance is crowded out by gratitude that I get to have this again. People who know me—actually know me—and seem to want me around anyway. Getting shocked by Neon from time to time (which I have a feeling is going to be happening semi-frequently) doesn’t feel like such a bad price to pay. And I think that, maybe, deep down, I actually want to be good.
“To the Unusuals,” Marley says with a grin, raising his cup.
“To family,” Neon follows, her signature smirk replaced by a grave expression.
“To family,” I echo, my arm rising as I swallow around the words. I look over at Indah, who is smiling softly at me, and I pledge to myself that I won’t make the same mistakes with this family as I did with my other.
* * *
Neon isn’t sure she trusts Robert. He smiles sweetly and says sorry and it sounds like he means it, but she’s still not sure she can trust him. Anyone else and the little scuff-up they all had would have been long forgotten. Hell, Neon’s said worse things to Blaze’s face, gotten into it way worse with Marley, but they’re her family. They fight and they scrap and they forgive each other.
Neon doesn’t know how to be family with the kid. She likes him, thinks he’s clever and funny, unpredictable and smart, in a way that makes him feel like a kindred spirit. But she’s lived in LA for years now, has met plenty of charming, quick young men who don’t have to face the ugliness of the world. She knows what that can do to a person over time.
Still, when he apologizes, contrite and so clearly wanting to be forgiven, Neon can’t help it. She was a lost soul too once, angry and alone, and it was only Marley’s acceptance that started to soften her edges. She could have written Marley off—a stoic white guy three times her size with a skinhead haircut and silent, unwavering stare—but she didn’t. She didn’t write him off because he was special, like her, and trusting him turned out to be the best decision she’d ever made.
If she could accept Marley despite his menacing appearance, simply because he was Unusual, surely doing the exact reverse with Robert is another good decision.
* * *
Tentatively, I’m folded back into the Unusuals’ lives. It occurs to me that I really didn’t know anything about them before blowing the whole thing to hell—I walked out on the very first night I even met Marley. That same night, I found out that Neon didn’t actually make a living from looking badass and smoking in back rooms of music clubs, so I start spending time at the bike shop, watching her do repairs.
“You like doing this?” I ask, watching the grease climb up her arms over the course of an hour.
“Hell yeah, dude.” She grins. “I’ve always loved taking stuff apart and putting it back together, and then when my, you know”—she looks around to make sure no one’s listening—“thing started up, I figured out how to use it to fix the things that no one else could.”
“But it’s so…” I crinkle my face in distaste at the scene around me. We’re in a garage, its large door open, a cool breeze fluttering in, carrying dust and leaves with it, that mingles with the smell of oil and exhaust. Neon’s hair is bundled at the back of her neck, tied with a bandana, and the grease on her arms has left trails on her neck and face and clothes. She’s a mess and she looks thrilled about it.
“Ooh, I didn’t realize I was dealing with such a dainty young man,” she teases.
“I just don’t like getting my hands dirty,” I say.
“Didn’t you grow up in the Midwest?” she asks. “Doesn’t everyone there, like, milk cows or whatever?”
“And you guys think I’m ignorant,” I joke, and she huffs a laugh. “No, we didn’t all ‘milk cows or whatever.’ There’s plenty of cities in the Midwest, you know. The coasts didn’t invent urban living.”
“You know what I mean,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I thought you grew up in the country.”
“What made you think that?” I ask.
“Everything about you,” she says, her voice getting lost in the inner workings of a motorcycle as she leans forward to reach her hands back inside.
“Well…,” I start, not sure why I contradicted her in the first place. “Yeah, you’re right,” I sigh in resignation, and she pauses her work to look over the bike at me. “I grew up in a little nowheresville in Nebraska. My family didn’t have cows, but we did have acres and acres of cornfields.”
“See?” She smiles. “I knew you were a country boy. Here, come down and hold this for me.”
The clinking of metal starts up again as she dives back into the bike, and I breathe deep, swallowing in relief and surprise. In the past thirty seconds, I told Neon more about myself than I’ve ever told anyone. And she took it all in stride like it was nothing. Maybe it is nothing. The circumstances of my upbringing aren’t at all extraordinary. I recognized that on some level, but to have my biography so casually received, especially by someone who knows the truth about me, is comforting all the same.
I join Neon down on the floor and she hands me a bent bit of metal, covered in grease. I grimace and she laughs, which makes the slippery oil on my fingers easier to bear.
“Hey, sunshine.”
Both Neon and I look up to see a handsome, impeccably dressed man grinning down at us.
“Hey, Nick,” Neon replies, turning back to her task.
“Nice to see you,” he says, and Neon just “mm-hm”s in response. He glances quickly at me, the smile still on his face as he runs his hand through his floppy blond hair.
“Do you know if my bike is ready?” he asks, staring at the back of Neon’s head like that’s going to will her to pay attention to him. God, to be an ordinary person. I might have a complicated relationship with my ability, but sometimes I really do feel bad for the suckers who don’t have it.
“I think so. Check with Cal.”
He nods and moves through the garage and into the shop behind us to talk to the owner, a burly man who seems to communicate exclusively in two-word sentences but whom Neon speaks fondly about.
“Who’s that?” I ask, jerking my head toward the back of the man, Nick.
“One of our regulars. He has a vintage bike that he does not know how to take care of, so he’s in here a lot.”
“Hm.”
“What?” Neon asks, squinting at me.
“Nothing.” I shake my head. “I don’t know, I don’t like the way he was looking at you.”
“Whatever.” She snorts, her attention centered on the motorcycle in front of her instead of on me.
I sit back on my now-dirty hands, watching Neon use tools I don’t have names for like they’re extensions of her own limbs. Every now and again, I catch sight of a tiny blue spark, lighting up the inside of the bike and the smirk on Neon’s face when she sees me noticing. With every lift of her mouth in my direction, my stomach swoops and my heart rate picks up. Suddenly, I don’t mind the grease on my fingers so much.
Eventually, Nick comes back—apparently his motorcycle needs another day before it’s fully repaired—and starts to ask inanely about what Neon is doing. I may not know anything about motorcycles, but even I can tell that this guy knows less than me.
“It’s pretty sexy, you know,” he says, smiling slyly at Neon. “A woman who looks like you and knows her way around a hog.”
My body is grappling with the warring impulses of gagging, rolling my eyes, and sticking my leg out to trip Nick when Neon responds.
“Yeah, my girlfriend thinks so too.” She grins up at him and I’m disappointed to see that it just makes Nick smile more.
“Girlfriend, huh?” he croons. “D
oes she look anything like you?”
“She’s the pretty one,” Neon says, refocusing on the bike, and Nick takes a smooth step toward her. I’m suddenly keenly aware of the fact that we’re in a pretty vulnerable position—both seated on the floor, Nick older and bigger and stronger. Neon doesn’t seem at all concerned, but she’s also not looking at his leering eyes and sharklike smile.
“You don’t say,” he flirts. “Well, how about you and your girlfriend…”
Neon’s shoulders are tensing, her jaw clenching, and I suddenly remember exactly who we are. Nick may be towering over us, but we’re us and we have no reason to be afraid.
Just as I’m about to stand up and tell the guy to get lost, I realize the garage has gone silent. Nick trailed off without saying whatever slimy thing he was about to say, and Neon’s looking at me with inquisitive eyes.
“I, uh,” Nick stammers, “I don’t remember what I was going to say. I think I should probably go.”
“I think that’d be smart.” I grin back, showing him all my teeth in a mockery of his smile that I know he probably considers to be charming.
Nick just nods and turns on his heel, walking toward the edge of the garage. But before he crosses out of the shade of the garage door, he pauses and calls back.
“I’m sorry for being such a dick all the time,” he says flatly. “I’ll try to do better.” And with that, he walks away, his increasingly distant footsteps only interrupted by Neon’s bursting into laughter.
“Oh my god, Rob,” she cackles, “that was priceless. Did you make him do that?”
“I wanted him to leave,” I say simply, shrugging one shoulder.
“You know that’s not what I meant.” She sighs happily, the laughter loosening her whole body.
“He was being a creep,” I explain. “And I have the feeling that’s not the first time he’s done that to you.”
“It definitely was not.”
A Neon Darkness Page 10