Flytrap
Page 21
Her voice is subdued. “So… that’s it? All of this, and you, would be a bad dream?”
I close my eyes. “A bad dream. Yeah. Just a bad dream.”
She drops her head, her hair falling over her face to close her off from me. I keep my eyes trained down into my lap, trying to give her space. There it is again, the gnawing hollow in my chest—loneliness, even just the anticipation of it. There’s nowhere I can hide, no more life vests, no more distractions. So I just sit with it. It’s okay, I tell myself. This is okay. The pain won’t kill you. It never has, and it never will. I let it cover me like a mantle, and because I don’t fight it, it doesn’t hurt quite so sharply. It won’t kill me. It’s okay.
I’m so caught up, I almost miss Kate speaking.
“…I have a different offer.”
I blink. “Offer? An offer for what?”
She wipes some running mascara from her cheeks, her eyes focusing on me. “An option that isn’t us never seeing each other again.”
Hope kicks in my chest—down, girl. I keep my face neutral as she meets my eyes, swallowing, her lips parting.
“Teach me. Teach me about… all of this. Teach me magic.”
That can’t be right, I think. I process the syllables over and over again, going through every which way I could have misheard her. But no, she really said that. Teach me magic.
“That's it? That's it?” I start laughing, and then crying, and then crying and laughing. I want to kiss her, I want to kiss her so bad—in the face of everything else, this just sounds so easy, and so good. “Yes! Yes! Of course I’ll teach you magic!”
Her exhale clouds the air, and I feel her hand curl around the back of my neck, catching loose strands of hair. “Don’t—don’t think I’m not still mad at you, because I am, and—and—” It starts to rain. She sputters, losing steam. She stomps her foot on the pavement, shouting up to the sky, “Goddammit! I moved all the way to the East Coast and it can’t even snow?”
I laugh—so when she grabs me and yanks me in for a kiss, her teeth click jarringly against mine.
“Oh, ow,” I say, even though that didn’t hurt, not really.
“Quit being such a big fucking baby and kiss me properly—”
So I kiss her in the rain that shouldn’t be rain, as the sirens blare around us, as Behemoth races across the city to kill its tow-headed sire, as the world lines up just right. She feels like velvet, smells like vanilla and brown sugar, and tastes like home.
…When we both come back up for air, our foreheads pressed together, freezing rain soaking our hair and streaking down our cheeks, I remember something.
“Ah, crap. I’m going to get fined for that U-haul I rented.”
***
I spend the twilight hours of the day in a hospital, shaking and holding Kate’s hand as a doctor winds a bandage around my thigh and a cast around my broken arm. A small TV in the corner of the waiting room announces that there’s been a fire at an art gallery—something to do with the electrical grid, which also messed up any and all direct footage of the event.
“I don’t remember there being fire,” Kate murmurs.
The TV doesn’t have the best image quality, but I can still make out shapes emerging from the smoking wreckage: firefighters in uniform, their bodies banded by neon yellow stripes, heads encased in brimmed helmets. As one of them approaches the news crew, I see them turn a face toward the camera—but a shadow from their helmet falls across their eyes, blurring their identity.
“The cover-up is starting,” I say.
Was that the flash of a mandible at the corner of the firefighter’s mouth, or just a smudge of soot? Are those paramedics wearing cloth masks because they’re Council agents, or are their gloves hiding chitinous, beetle-clawed fingertips? The next news segment is about an Indian rhino that escaped containment while being transported to the Bronx Zoo. A trembling eyewitness is interviewed, their brow furrowed in utter confusion under their knitted hat.
“Rhinos are way bigger than I thought,” they mumble.
They even show helicopter footage of the rhino being tranquilized on a bridge, the whole area blockaded by cops and wildlife experts alike. “Where the hell did they get a rhino?” Kate sputters, scrolling through social media on her phone. “Listen to this—‘lmao, this rhino said fuck the police. #RunFreeRhino, #thuglife.’ ‘A fire and a zoo escape in one night? #ISmellAConspiracy, #Illuminati, #BushDid911.’ Oh, great, PETA’s already doing a press conference.”
“What a night, huh, folks?” the news anchor trills. “Next up, the governor of California…”
***
That night, I don’t dream. I sleep like a baby, and I wake up naked in a blue-sheeted bed, auburn curls in my mouth and Kate’s ankles tangled in my knees. I’m not drunk or high or anything, but I don’t particularly want to be. I only remember warmth, and the feeling of being wanted.
I smile and go back to sleep.
HARRIETTA LEE: CUTTHROAT
COMING 2021-2022
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Also by Stephanie Ahn
Harrietta Lee
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Flytrap