But Ellie, this Ellie, was amazingly graceful. She patiently crouched, waiting for the car to correct itself before inching forward again. I thought of the hours-ago Ellie from before the change, the one with the subtlety of a bulldozer. Tears welled.
I closed my eyes and swallowed. Alive or dead.
I didn’t care for Libra’s view of the world. I was a potter after all. My sense of balance wasn’t add to this, add to that/take from this, take from that. Balance, to me, was a spinning, growing thing, something that I plunged my thumbs into and pinched and pulled and created and crafted. Something I controlled.
Ellie had oozed forward at a snail’s pace and was now halfway out of the car. Brennan’s breath was shallow puffs. I hoped he wouldn’t hyperventilate. I hoped I wouldn’t join him.
The moment Ellie’s sneakers hit solid ground, she dug The Keypers of the Zodiack out of her messenger bag. She leaned into the open window and read.
“‘Libra, the scales. August 10–September 15. Like the balancing scales that represent thee, Libra, thou art objective, a master of harmony and balance. Thou rarely choosest sides, preferring to shun all judgment, even to the point of crippling thyself in the face of a decision. Thou art a peaceful pleasure seeker who loves beauty and warmth, who loathes loneliness. Thou art an excellent listener, but thou hast a weakness for juicy gossip, and thou art both impressionable and manipulative when it comes to spreading untruths. Know that thy sense of justice—an eye for an eye, no doubt—leaves two blind.”
“Yes, yes,” the pacing Libra said, “dat’s me.”
Agent Cygnus turned his head to Ellie. “What is that? That book?”
Ellie looked at me, but I was too afraid to shake my head. Don’t tell him, my instincts screamed. Don’t!
But she held up the cover of the book. “The Keypers of the Zodiack. The one we used to—”
“Ellie!” I screamed. The car bobbled deeply, the front tires squealed. Brennan gulped air. She looked at me, nodded, and tucked the book away.
“Well, look at dat!” Libra said, throwing his hands wide. He leaned toward the car again. “Such passion from you, Jalen! Don’t you know? Too much passion—it throws you off balance.” He chuckled.
“Where did you get that book?” Cygnus demanded of Ellie. He started to squirm. The car shifted, the left side skidding a little lower than the right.
“Cygnus,” Griffin hissed. “Later, okay?”
Cygnus cleared his throat. “Yes. Right. Jalen, you’re next.”
“No,” I said. “Brennan’s next.” Brennan looked at me with wild eyes.
“If you don’t go next,” I whispered, “I don’t think you’ll ever get out.” My head swirled with dizziness, yes, but Brennan’s fear of the water far below was worse.
Brennan considered that: him, in the backseat, alone. He likely wouldn’t have the guts to try to escape if he was back there by himself. He nodded. This Brennan knew his weaknesses.
He gulped several deep breaths and inched toward the middle of the backseat. Ellie, outside, paced and bit her fingernails. “You can do it, Brennan. I know you can.”
“I love you, Ellie,” Brennan said. “But please. Shut up.”
Libra laughed and hopped up and down. Envy flamed inside me at how easily Libra jumped and gestured and moved, while I was afraid to breathe. Fluid or frozen. This or that. Absolute.
Brennan crept into the front seat, slowly, slowly through the windshield, then finally, finally onto the bridge. Once the weight of his body left the car, the Lincoln swayed violently. Agent Griffin cursed under his breath.
The moment Brennan’s feet were both solidly planted on concrete, he curled into a ball and jammed his eye sockets into his knees. Ellie dropped her messenger bag, wrapped her arms around him, and glared up at Libra. “Get them out of there,” she said.
Libra crossed his muscular arms over his chest. “Dey doin’ fine, girl. Jest fine.”
“Who are you talking to?” Cygnus barked. Ellie chewed her lip.
“You’re next, Jalen,” Griffin growled from the driver’s seat. “Make it quick, huh?”
Sure, right. Quick.
I lifted off the seat, slowly, telling myself do not look down. Virgo’s heavy sapphire birthstone flopped forward in my baggy cargo pocket when I stood. I instinctively grabbed for it. My sudden movement made the car bob. I closed my eyes and took a slow, deep breath before continuing. My head felt fuzzy.
“Jalen!” a voice wailed. I opened my eyes.
My…mom? Standing beside Libra?
“Mrs. Jones?” Ellie whispered.
Yes. There was my mom, twisting and untwisting the handle of her purse. She shook, and rivers of mascara ran down her cheeks. “Mom?” I whispered.
“Jalen, I can’t find him! We need him, Jalen. I have to leave you.” Her voice wavered as she said this last part. Hearing her upset over the phone was one thing. Seeing her upset was another.
“Why are you here?” I asked her. I was numb. Why was she telling me this now? Why wasn’t she helping me?
“What?” Agent Griffin growled at me. “Believe me, I’d rather be anyplace else.”
Mom swiped at the tears on her cheeks, smearing black mascara across her skin like war paint.
Mascara? I knew then it was a trick. Another of Gemini’s twin tricks. My mother never wore makeup. And I didn’t think this new version of her would pause long enough to freshen her face.
“Listen to your mama, Jalen,” Libra cooed. “She leaving you. Don’t dat make you sad?”
My anger flared. Libra and Gemini were a team, trying to throw me off balance. They knew the best way to do that was to use my mother. The weight they’d just added to the scales was a heavy one.
I crawled between the two front seats, the car dipping and swaying the whole time. My mother—Gemini’s version of my mother—sobbed and cursed as I did.
“I couldn’t stay with your Nina,” I heard my mom’s voice say. “I left her, too.” I inched forward, determined not to let her upset me. I wasn’t sure I would win.
As I climbed over Agent Cygnus’s feet, I raked my scalp across a screw in what remained of the rearview mirror. I whimpered. The car dipped, flinging my stomach into my mouth.
“If you’d never gotten sick,” Mom’s voice said, “your father would still be with us.” I wanted to scream, “Shut up!,” but I knew if I did, the force of my anger would push this car into the chasm.
I crunched across the glass of the windshield over Agent Cygnus’s head and stepped on his finger. The whole time, I reminded myself that balance was not an either/or. Not to me. Life was not a series of absolutes. It was a mystery, a blissful mystery, one that can’t simply be chosen. No, life must be crafted.
At last, I lowered myself onto the bridge. The moment my shoes touched concrete, my mom’s twin disappeared with a wail. The weight of her sadness lifting away made me sway, because my weight was still here and still very, very heavy.
Libra applauded again, clap, clap, clap. He sauntered up to the edge of the chasm, next to the teetering Lincoln. He threw his arms wide, tilted back his head, closed his eyes.
“Push me, Jalen,” he whispered. “You know you want to.”
My orange anger screamed at me: Do it! It would feel so good, that kind of revenge. He won’t get hurt—he’s a Keeper. Do it! Push him!
I cracked my knuckles. This was another absolute, an eye for an eye. “No.”
He chuckled, a deep, gurgling laugh, and tossed me his birthstone—an opal. He was done here. I’d lived. It didn’t matter to him if Griffin and Cygnus survived.
I lifted the milky blue-white stone to the skies, but Libra surprised me, hugging me before I chanted.
“Dat’s a smart girl,” he whispered. “Most tings, dey not good or bad. We make dem dat way. You understand.”
I nodded. I think I did. “Sic itur ad astra.”
Libra’s mirrored sunglasses morphed into shiny brass weighing platforms, his dreadlocks turned into t
he chains supporting them. His lithe body and muscled arms hardened into metal. He lifted into the skies, a set of scales swaying and swirling, perfectly off balance.
I shook off the experience as best I could and turned to make sure Agents Cygnus and Griffin were okay. Griffin oozed forward, trying to inch around the steering wheel. Cygnus looked over his shoulder at him, checking to see where his partner might be.
And then Cygnus rolled off the hood of the car.
The wheels screeched and the car swayed.
“Agent Griffin!” Brennan yelled.
Griffin’s eyes grew wide. He scrambled up and out the shattered windshield, arms and legs flailing as the car groaned backward. The tip of his toe pushed off the falling car’s front bumper. He leaped, and the front half of his body made it onto the bridge, but his legs dangled far, far, far above the river. The hum of the car’s engine grew quieter. And then, a faint splash.
Ellie, Brennan, and I darted forward to drag Griffin onto the bridge. His legs pumped and kicked, and I ignored the dizzy sensation of being on the edge of the world. We pulled him safely onto the concrete.
Griffin didn’t even take a moment to catch his breath or to thank us. He sprang to his feet and ran at Cygnus in tackle mode, who was thumbing through The Keypers of the Zodiack, eyes shining. Griffin growled and flattened Cygnus against the pavement. Griffin yanked the book out of Cygnus’s hands and tossed it aside, throwing punches and swear words.
Brennan dashed forward and grabbed the book, Ellie scooped up her messenger bag, and the three of us ran.
My pounding feet drummed a realization into my pounding heart: Those agents didn’t care about casting the Keepers away. They didn’t care about anyone’s personalities, about world peace, about destroying the stone to ensure the safety of humanity. They just wanted Ophiuchus’s stone. The power that comes with the stone, the power to control death. If those Keepers were to be cast away, I would need to do it on my own.
We dashed away from the wreckage, heading back down the hill of the bridge, back to the same ridiculous West Bank we’d left. What an obstacle this river was! I felt like a pioneer, someone trying to navigate this “brave new world” on horseback.
And I was still shaking from Agent Cygnus nearly sending Agent Griffin to a watery grave, and from seeing my mother. It hadn’t really been her, of course, but it had been so real. Did my mom blame me for my dad leaving? No, she was smarter than that, kinder than that. Wasn’t she?
All of this made me think of that huge claw they’d used to scrape the bottom of the Gulf, searching for my dad—it stirred up some ugly, muddy things.
Gemini fell into step beside me. “I told you not to trust them.”
My anger flamed. “You didn’t tell me the whole truth. Ophiuchus is more powerful than you said, right?”
Gemini didn’t answer my question.
“So why, then, should I listen to you when you tell me who to trust? How do I know you’re not just another Challenge, some tricky trap or something?”
Gemini looked back over her shoulder, I assumed to check where the agents were. She grabbed my arm but didn’t stop—she knew we needed to keep moving.
“Jalen, I didn’t tell you the truth because I didn’t know if I could trust you with that knowledge,” she whispered, an edge to her voice. But it wasn’t anger, I thought. It was more like…desperation? “A stone that can reverse death isn’t exactly the kind of thing we Keepers want a lot of humans to know about.”
I cracked my knuckles. She had a point. Still, the small amount of trust I’d placed in her was now a fragile thing.
By the time we reached the entry of the bridge, the construction workers were tossing the barrels into the back of a dump truck. Ellie tapped one of the workers on the shoulder.
“Those barrels need to stay,” she said. “No one can drive across that bridge.”
The huge man in overalls shot us a funny look. “Boss man says we’re done here.” He gestured at the bridge. We followed the point of his finger.
There was no hole. The expanse of the Crescent City Connection was a single, complete span. In perfect balance.
The construction worker turned to us, his look now sour. “Where’d you come from?”
“The ferry,” Brennan said. He pulled our elbows. “Headed back there now.”
“Jalen!” The voice came from on top of the hill, on the bridge. Agent Cygnus.
“Hey!” The construction worker in overalls marched up the bridge toward him. “What’re you doing on this bridge?” He whipped out his radio and said, “Boss, looks like we got us some trouble here.”
We saw our opportunity. We turned to run, back toward Algiers Point. But we only got three or four yards before we saw the convenience store worker from earlier. His head was bobbing, earbuds blaring. Capricorn had returned.
He morphed like lightning into a goat and charged us. I sidestepped, but Ellie didn’t have the chance to do the same. Capricorn butted Ellie in the gut with a sickening blow. I heard the air escape her. The goat galloped away. It was still not time for Capricorn.
Brennan and I scooped Ellie up, each of us taking an arm and running. She shrugged us off once she got her breath back. She stopped.
“Capricorn!” she shouted, her fists tight balls. “Could you be more passive-aggressive?”
Gemini threw her head back and guffawed, her black hair shining in the now bright sun. I reached back to take Ellie’s hand. But I didn’t know whose hand to grab.
Two Ellies. Again.
I wished more than ever I knew which Ellie was which, although it was probably good I didn’t know which one could morph into my family members. No telling what the orange inside might make me do if I did know.
So instead, I sighed. “Gemini, your twin is a real piece of work.”
Because we didn’t know where else to go, we headed back to Algiers Point. “Least it’s daytime now,” Brennan said, pointing at the bright sun. Yes, daytime. It was at least 11 a.m. I held in a few cuss words.
The skies now shouted a loud winter blue. Those skies! They looked so cheery, so friendly in the daylight. All that sunshine, all that blue, hiding all those starry secrets. What a lie, blue skies! At least the nighttime sky tells the truth.
Just as the orange inside me started rising, I heard it: PSSSSSHHHHTTT!
A rainbow-colored hot-air balloon kissed the top of a nearby grove of trees, then rose higher against that lying sky. It had just lifted off.
Brennan and I exchanged a look. He grinned and nodded. I nodded back, but bit my lip. Those things flew so high. Could I do it?
The Ellies must’ve felt our plan formulating. One of them dropped the hand that had been shading her eyes.
“No. Unh-uh.” One Ellie spoke up. “No hot-air balloons. Are y’all insane?”
But the other Ellie glared at her. “Do you have a better idea how we’re going to cross that river?”
The first Ellie blinked, then turned to me. “A hot-air balloon? Jalen, you can’t be serious. You shook like a leaf just climbing the stairs of the ferry. You really think you could handle a hot-air balloon?”
My forehead wrinkled. I could easily be talked out of this plan.
But the second Ellie took a step forward. She was face-to-face with her twin. “What is it with you, always trying to sabotage Jalen’s plans?”
Ellie One shook her head slightly. “No, I—”
“Because if I was Jalen, I’d be thinking you were a Keeper about right now,” Ellie Two said.
Ellie One’s hands shot out. She shoved her twin so hard, Ellie Two stumbled backward onto the sidewalk. The downed Ellie looked at her bleeding palms, at the tiny bits of gravel imbedded in them, tears pooling in her eyes.
Brennan stepped between the two of them. “Cut it out! This only makes it worse.”
My eyes darted between the Ellie who still stood and the Ellie who had fallen. A guess burbled through my brain as to who was who, but it was still just that: a guess.
/> The balloon launching pad was farther away than I thought it’d be; we ran another mile or so before we found it tucked between two warehouses. It looked like a huge parking lot. If it weren’t for a tiny woman in a drab olive jumpsuit struggling with a hot-air balloon basket, we would’ve missed it altogether.
The woman grunted and pushed the heavy basket, sweat dripping off her face, swear words dripping off her lips. Her hair was bright white, her skin tight but wrinkled. She had to be sixty, maybe even seventy years old.
An Ellie stopped cold. “Her? No way. She’s a Keeper for sure. C’mon, guys—”
“You wanna rent a balloon?”
We spun around to a massive guy with hair everywhere—a beard, shaggy mop hair, a single bushy eyebrow. Hair peeked out of his shirt collar and poked out of his knuckles. He grinned, and a toothpick punctuated his smile like an exclamation point. I thought of a huge teddy bear.
“You kids interested in a balloon ride?” he repeated.
Ellie swallowed. “Yes,” Brennan said. “You work here?”
“Proud owner for almost twenty years,” he said.
We walked toward the basket attached to the base of the balloon. Over the open basket was a metal framework that held a fan, which filled the balloon with air, and a flame, which made the balloon rise. I remembered studying weather balloons in science class. Weather balloons had those same gadgets.
The woman in the jumpsuit grunted and shoved the basket over on its side, with the wire framework jutting out to the left. She began unfurling a New Orleans Saints balloon on the ground. The woman prepped the balloon, cussing and kicking fabric the whole time. She turned and spit on the ground. One of the Ellies grabbed my hand.
The woman. She looked so irate, so intense, so…imperfect, like a human. If she was human, I wondered what she’d been like before: Had she been a delicate, polite person who sipped her tea, pinkie out? Or is she the same person now as she was then, and now just expresses her feelings differently? What parts of us are changeable, and what parts of us are simply us?
The 13th Sign Page 12