Then again, why should I care if he was?
I went to the window and stared out the tiny circle that was still clear of snow. The storm was still so fierce it blocked any view of the ocean, as though the ocean had ceased to exist. The notion that this thing called a blizzard could eclipse a sea so vast and wide it seemed to stretch on forever was stunning. It was incredible how the Real World could transform itself into something so totally other from one day to the next. One afternoon it might be cold, yet sunny and beautiful and at peace, and the next it was brutal and dangerous, even deadly, the sun blocked from the sky and the ground buried under a blanket of ice and snow. A pinch of sadness stung my skin at the thought of how the App World was stagnant, and I wondered why its leaders would choose an unchanging world for its people over one that had a mind and will of its own as this one did.
Then again, we had Apps to change us.
Maybe this was supposed to be enough.
I went to the stack of books on the shelf and grabbed one and began to flip through it, this time paying attention to what was on its pages, then grabbed another and then another. Each of them held some version of the same story: humanity abandons its planet for another world, or to live in space, because the world becomes uninhabitable. All of the books predated the App World by at least a decade. How ironic. These novels had predicted the future fairly accurately: humanity did abandon the world, at least the real version of it, not because it became uninhabitable but because they’d gotten bored of the real and so enticed by the virtual that the real no longer mattered. It was interesting that Kit had chosen to collect these in particular.
Eventually the weak warmth from the stove died altogether as I read. I considered throwing one of the remaining pieces of wood inside but decided against it. Then I noticed a bin shoved into the corner of the kitchen. The threads of a tattered scarf dangled down the side. I set the books back onto their shelf and went to it. In it I saw the bloodied shirt and a length of checked fabric stained with blood. Guilt pressed into me. I took them over to the sink and soaked them in soap and water, scrubbing them until the thick dark stains began to fade. When they were nearly gone, I hung them to dry.
After another long while, I finally heard the latch click on the door of Kit’s room. By then, I was surveying our remaining supplies in the cabinets. My eyes widened when I saw him. “Your face is gray!”
A bright-red mark was spreading across his shoulder.
He swayed on his feet, like he might collapse.
I took his other arm, and together we staggered over to the stove. Gently, I pushed him down into a nearby chair. Then I retrieved two of the three last pieces of wood and shoved them into the dying embers, poking them with the long iron rod until they caught. A fire smoldered and eventually it blazed hot.
A tiny groan escaped Kit’s mouth.
Color returned to his cheeks, but only a little.
I watched him, waited as the warmth transformed his body. When life seemed to find him again, he looked up at me, his eyes soft and unfocused. I reached out to him, my fingers grazing the edge of his sleeve. “Can I?”
His eyes flashed, the whites unusually big and bright. “Can you what, Skylar?”
The mischievous tone told me that Kit would be okay, at least eventually, so I began peeling back his shirt. But when I did, I gasped. The wound was deep and jagged. The seam at the center gaped wide like a mouth and circling it were angry rings of red and purple and yellow. Mrs. Worthington’s lessons raced through my mind, words about infection and amputation and eventual death, yet she’d only ever provided us with warnings and never cures, thrilled only with frightening us.
Kit’s head lolled slightly. “Ugly, isn’t it?”
“Shut up,” I ordered. “I’m trying to think.”
Mrs. Worthington may be of no use, but I’d spent years running through forests while gaming, fighting attackers with swords and knives, left alone to tend my wounds with whatever I could find. Only water from a stream if I was unlucky, but in better circumstances, if I was near a city or even a house . . . I began to open and close all the cabinets in the cottage. When I exhausted those I retreated into Kit’s room, ignoring his protests. I found what I was looking for under the bed, a fairly extensive stash of it. The bottle gripped in my hand, pale golden liquid sloshing about, I returned to the place where Kit sat by the fire.
“Now you’re talking,” he said, reaching for it.
I held the bottle away from him, grabbed a nearby rag, opened the stopper, and soaked the towel in the alcohol.
“Hey!” he protested.
“Take off your shirt so I can clean that cut.”
He gave me that lopsided smile of his, and I wondered for a brief second if he was delirious. “It’s not a cut you gave me, Skylar. It’s a stab wound.”
I didn’t smile back. “Whatever. Just do it.”
“So forward,” he murmured, and began pulling the shirt over his head.
“Look who’s calling me forward,” I said, ready to tease him further, but stopping short when Kit’s sly smile fell away. As he adjusted his arm to slip his shirt off, the smile was replaced with a look of pain and a groan deep and guttural as a lion’s. Two sweeping tattoos covered his upper arms, all the way to his shoulders. On one of them, a series of dark birds rose in flight along his skin. On the other was a curving sliver of moon amid a sky full of stars.
They were beautiful.
So intricate.
The wound cut across the skin covered in night, splitting open several of the stars.
Kit’s breathing was shallow. “Do me a favor.” He nodded at the bottle in my hand. “Pour me some of that before you use it on my ‘cut.’ I’m going to need it.”
I retrieved a glass from the kitchen and filled it halfway. When Kit shook his head I relented and topped it off until the liquid reached the brim. With his good arm Kit took it and downed the entire thing in a single gulp. Despite my better judgment, I poured him some more, but this time he held the glass in his hand without drinking any.
“Are you ready?” I asked.
He nodded, then closed his eyes.
For one single moment I hesitated.
This could be my chance to escape for real. If I left Kit weakened and dying, when this blizzard finally ended I would be in good shape to get away. But as I stared down at him, so vulnerable, and as I thought about how our stories were so similar, how we both felt abandoned in this life and had done all we could to survive despite this, I knew that I couldn’t leave him like this. I had to help him.
It was the right thing to do.
But in my heart I knew I would help him because I wanted to, not simply because it was right.
I’d have to deal with what that meant later.
I began to clean the wound with the rag. Kit managed to remain silent even as I pressed the towel into the deepest parts of the gash. But the way he gritted his teeth and his breaths became uneven told me that the pain was severe.
“I don’t know why I’m helping you,” I said after the worst of it was over and I’d reached the outer parts of mottled skin. I was careful to keep my attention on the shoulder I was tending, not allowing it to stray to the rest of him.
Kit opened his eyes and they found mine. “I don’t know why you are either.”
Blood trickled from the edge of the cut, and this time I began to wash the wound with a towel soaked only in water. Soon the rag was as red as the very center of the gash. “If I’d been smarter, I would have helped you only in exchange for something in return.”
There came a silence, and for a moment I wondered if Kit had passed out from the shock of the pain. But when I shifted my gaze from the wound, he was watching me.
“I will owe you a favor then,” he said.
My eyes narrowed. “And why would you do that?”
He glanced over to the clothing hanging in the kitchen. “You washed my scarf,” he said, trying for a grin.
I shook my head. “Tha
t’s not why.”
His stare was hard. “For the same reason you’re helping me, Skylar, which is to say, I have no idea.”
I took the bloodstained towels to the sink and ran the water. Red streamed across my fingers and hands into the basin below before draining away. When I turned around again, Kit was struggling to put on his shirt.
“I’m not done yet,” I said, and took it away from him. I waited for a lopsided grin and a comment about how if I wanted to see his naked torso any longer I could just ask, but neither response came, so I knew he must still be in pain. I searched the cabinets for something else that might help Kit’s shoulder heal and pulled out a pot of honey I found. I grabbed a spoon and smeared the ugly gash with a thick layer of the sticky salve. Then I took a clean, thin rag and bandaged the wound, securing it along his shoulder blade. “There,” I said. “You can put your shirt back on.” But it was as bloodstained as the rags I’d used. “Wait, let me get you a new one,” I said, and went to his room before he could protest.
Now that I wasn’t blind with exhaustion, my hands and feet throbbing from frostbite, I noticed how bare and utilitarian everything was, save a tiny glass jar that sat atop a set of drawers.
Sea glass. Kit had a jar full of colorful sea glass.
I picked it up and turned it around in my palm.
A dozen shades of blue and green winked back at me in the lamplight.
I shook my head.
Nothing I knew about Kit added up. He was a bounty hunter who rode a motorcycle in the middle of winter, someone with hardened eyes and a practiced blank expression. Yet he was also someone who walked along the ocean picking up pieces of pretty glass and saving them in this jar.
I returned it to its place and began opening and shutting drawers until I came to one that was full of neatly folded shirts. I grabbed the shirt on top and the entire stack shifted. The corner of something flat—a paper maybe—stuck out from underneath.
No, it was a photograph.
The old kind that people used to take of one another and keep in special boxes and books before technology made it so images only appeared on screens.
I shifted the stack of shirts farther.
The photograph was of a girl.
She was beautiful.
I picked it up and studied it.
Did Kit have a girlfriend?
Her eyes were big and blue and they stared out at whoever was taking the picture, her skin nearly translucent, her hair long and blond and wavy, and cascading down over her left shoulder. She was maybe a year younger than me when the photo was taken.
I put the picture back and in one swift motion I buried it underneath the stack of shirts. I didn’t want to look at the girl’s wide blue eyes any longer. The drawer shut with a loud bang. I didn’t realize how hard I’d pushed it. By the time I returned to the living room, the fire had died and Kit had finished off his second glass of whiskey and was pouring another. He held out the bottle to me. “Want some?”
I dropped the clean shirt into his lap and took the bottle from him, but instead of drinking any I set it on the kitchen counter. “No, thank you.”
“And why not?” His tone was a challenge. “It will help keep you warm.”
I eyed the last lonely log sitting on the floor. “So will a blanket.”
Kit began putting on the shirt I gave him and groaned in pain. For a moment I wondered if he’d faint, but then the life returned to his eyes and they sought out the bottle of whiskey. “Just try it.”
Suddenly I wondered, why not? We were snowed in, there was nowhere to go, and maybe a strong drink would keep me from dreams that sent me out to my death. I grabbed a small glass from the cabinet, plunked it on the counter, and filled it, then spun around and poured more into his.
“Thatta girl,” Kit said.
I held up my glass to his. “To favors.”
His eyes grew wary, but then he nodded. “All right. To favors,” he agreed, joining me in my toast.
I took a big gulp and nearly spit it out. Between the fumes that burned so intensely they could likely kill and the feel of it going down my throat, I honestly didn’t know if I was up to Kit’s challenge of joining him in this drink. “What in both worlds is that made of? Gasoline?”
Kit had a hand on his stomach, laughing, his whole body shaking, occasionally wincing from the pain in his wounded shoulder. “Yes, well, sorry if it’s not up to the same standards one might enjoy from a Whiskey App.”
I cupped my throat with my hand. It still burned. “What standards? There were standards used when making this? Are you sure?”
Kit winced harder. “Stop making me laugh. The pain is shocking.” He took a deep breath, then another. “You were right to use it to clean that gash. Whatever infection was trying to settle in there, that stuff surely burned it off.” He let his hand fall from his stomach. It dangled along his side. “Pull up a chair and try again.”
First I retrieved the blanket from the couch, and then I dragged the second chair from the kitchen over to Kit, taking the scarf that had been drying across it and draping it around the back of his neck. It was strange to see him without it, and I gained some satisfaction returning it to its rightful place.
He blinked up at me, surprised, maybe by the familiarity of the gesture, or maybe at the affection in it.
I sat down, pulling the blanket over my lap. The liquid in my glass was the same deceptive color as the honey I’d spread into the wound on Kit’s shoulder. I tapped the bottle sitting between us. “You were at least right that it would warm me. You didn’t mention the part about how it would set my insides on fire, though.”
Kit placed his hand flat on the iron stove. It had already grown cool enough to touch. Not a good sign. “You’ll be happy to feel that fire in a couple of hours.”
“If I’m still drinking this in a couple of hours, I won’t be feeling anything.”
A smile spread across his face, the most genuine I’d seen so far. Or maybe it was more wistful. “Exactly the idea.”
I laughed and we clinked glasses again.
Soon an hour had passed, Kit slowly draining his glass, filling it, and draining it once more, alternating with bigger and bigger gulps of water. His entire demeanor changed, softened, as though in retreat from something, and I asked my question without thinking. “What, exactly, are you trying to escape?”
His expression darkened. “What do you mean?”
“Why else would you want to drink until it renders you unconscious? Until you don’t feel anything anymore?”
“To forget the cold for a while,” he answered quickly.
“I don’t think that’s it.”
He took a big gulp from his glass and swallowed it easily. Impressive. “You can think whatever you want, Skylar.”
I took a small sip from my drink. The fumes still burned my nose, but not as badly as before, and Kit was right, the flame rippling across my throat felt good. The image of the blond girl I’d seen in the picture flashed in my mind. “Is it love that has you running?” I tried to sound playful, but my words sounded far more serious than I wanted so I clarified. “I saw the photograph in your drawer. I wasn’t snooping, I was just looking for a clean shirt.” Kit didn’t answer. “So?” I pressed, after his silence grew long.
“So what?”
“So who’s the girl?”
He stared into his glass like it might tell his future. “No one.”
My heart squeezed and I took a sip from my own. “So it is love.”
He looked over at me. The wind shrieked outside and the cottage groaned against it. Sadness danced across his cheeks. “I do love her, but not how you’re thinking.”
The temperature was dropping, though I hardly felt it. “Then tell me how.”
Kit went silent again. It was getting dark inside the house, and barely any light was left around us. His eyes went to the iron stove. He flipped the latch on the door and pulled it open, watching as the last embers, orange and fading, died out. I
t was growing as cold in here as the snowy air outside. Kit got up without much trouble, the whiskey working its magic numbing his shoulder, and began opening and closing cabinets in the kitchen.
“Tell me what you need and I’ll find it,” I offered. “You should rest.”
Kit took down an armful of candles and set five, no, six of them onto the table, another two onto the stove, and a few more around the room. He began to light them, his back to me. “The girl you saw is my sister. We’re twins.”
There came a flicker in my chest that seemed to match the flames of the candles. “But you look nothing alike . . . and I thought . . .” I trailed off, trying to figure out what, exactly, I was really thinking.
“Before, when you asked about my family, I didn’t mention her.”
“Why?”
Kit returned to his chair again and picked up his glass. “Because of everyone, she hurt me the most. So I left that part of my story out.”
My mind went to Jude. “Sisters do that,” I said with a heavy sigh.
Kit eyed me, then clinked his glass against mine. “I suppose you, of all people, would know.” He took a sip. “My parents abandoned us both. Two children in exchange for two adults’ passage into the App World. For years it was just Maggie and me—that’s her name. We took care of each other, stood by each other’s side. But even though she and I are twins we’re still so very different, and not just in terms of looks. There’s something right about how Maggie is all light—light hair, light skin, light eyes—and I’m all darkness.” He laughed a little sadly. “I never wanted to leave the Real World, but she longed for it our entire lives. She hung on to this romantic belief that our parents were waiting for us to join them in the App World so the four of us could live happily and virtually ever after. I never had the heart to tell her the truth.”
I pulled the blanket higher. I was starting to shiver. “But didn’t she know?”
Kit shook his head. “I lied to her. When I figured out what our parents had done, I was sure it would break her heart, but I worried it might break her altogether. Maggie was the sweetest girl I’ve ever known, but she was fragile too.”
The Body Market Page 6