Between the Spark and the Burn

by April Genevieve Tucholke

  Brodie kept talking, even as his face went whiter, even as his hands began to shake, dangling at the ends of his skinny arms like dead leaves on dying branches . . .

  “Or I could turn myself into Freddie and start haunting you, Violet. I can just imagine your face, waking up to find Freddie in your room, telling you to do evil things to the people you love. I have so many ideas. I want River to kill Luke in a duel. I want Canto to murder a child in cold blood. I want . . .”

  Brodie coughed, and dropped to his knees.

  And then River was in the hallway behind him, pushing Luke and Sunshine out of the way, and he was reaching down, putting his hands on Brodie’s head, one on each side, and River screamed, Do it now, Neely, and Sunshine screamed, Squeeze, River, squeeze his wits out, end it . . .

  . . . and Brodie burst out of River’s grip and was on his feet and a blur of red hair and a skinny body flying by and then he was out the window and into the snowstorm and jumping down from the roof and landing in the soft white and back up again and running, running, running, down through the hotel, all of us, out the door, following the footprints, ten long, skinny toes, drops of blood on the snow, like back in Inn’s End, back in Pine’s cemetery, right through the tall pines, right to the edge of an alpine lake, thin ice, newly frozen.

  We lined the edge, panting, shivering, bare feet.

  We watched the flash of red, moving, already halfway across the lake.

  The moon came out and the wind died down, whoosh, all at once, hush, hush.

  The first crack was thin, weak. A pop, a squeeze.

  The second crack was low. Deep.

  And the red grew smaller, smaller, smaller by the second . . .

  I put my right foot on the ice, flinched at the cold, brought my left foot forward . . .

  . . . Luke and Neely, hands on my arms, yanking me back . . .

  “Let me go.” I shivered and shaked and strained. “If he gets away, we’ll never be able to see anyone, anyone at all, without thinking it’s Brodie, sparked up, lying, spying, in the shadows, everywhere, he’ll come to Citizen Kane and pretend to be us, torture us, and it’ll just go on and on—”

  The ice groaned again, snarled, popped, rang out into the night—

  A streak of brown hair.

  River.

  He was flying, feet barely touching the ice, chest out, heart first, closer, closer, gaining, gaining, he reached out, almost, almost—

  He’s going to do it, he’s going to save us, I know he is, Freddie, see, it’s different, it’s not like you and Will, River is—

  The ice creaked again.

  River was there, running, reaching, right arm stretched, grabbing Brodie’s hair in his fist—

  And then . . . gone.

  Snap, blink, gone.

  But the red kept running.

  Neely howled.

  I screamed.

  Neely and me, bare feet hitting the ice with a sting, but he was too far, we’d never make it, he was too far away, he’d freeze to death, drown, icy chunks filling up his lungs—

  The red turned. I saw it through the blur of dark forest and night sky and snow. It turned around, and came back.

  And by the time Neely and me reached the hole, the black hole that had swallowed River up, Brodie had him out again, dripping body spread wide across the ice. He breathed and pumped and breathed and pumped and moved right aside so Neely could take over and then Brodie’s arms were around me and they felt thick and strong and I clung to him and he held me tight and the blood-soaked shirt around his wrist pressed into my neck and the red dripped down my chest and I didn’t care, didn’t care at all . . .

  River coughed and sputtered and shook and opened his eyes . . .

  And Neely was saying, River, thank God, thank God . . .

  . . . and then River was on his feet. He pulled Brodie from my arms . . .

  And he shoved him down to his knees, on the ice, crack, crack, and River put his wet, shivering hands in Brodie’s red hair and I thought there might be strikes of lightning or bursts of flames or clouds of smoke but there was nothing, nothing . . .

  Nothing until Brodie fell backward, all the way, onto the ice, red hair fanning out, quiet, not moving. Still.

  Chapter 22

  IT LOOKED SO beautiful. It looked so where-have-you-been-all-my-life.

  It looked like home.

  Citizen Kane.

  We drove thirty hours straight, pulling over to the side of the road only once so Neely and Sunshine could sleep.

  A blur. A blur of trees and snow.

  We put Brodie in the back of the bookmobile. He still hadn’t woken up, but we wanted to be sure. We wedged him in between the piles of books that had fallen to the floor in the cross-country trek.

  I swept a lock of red hair off his forehead, and goose bumps broke out across my skin. And then I moved his arms so he would be more comfortable. They were long and bony and Brodie-skinny . . . but when they’d held me on the frozen lake they’d felt strong and forest-boy.

  He’d come back.

  He’d saved River.

  Neely had stitched up his wrist, and it was clean and bandaged tight, and if Brodie never woke up that wouldn’t be the reason why.

  Did we even want Brodie to wake up?

  Who knew.

  The spark. The glow.

  It made the whole damn world spin upside down and walk backward and nothing made much sense anymore.

  Nothing except how much I already missed Finch.

  It was three in the morning when we arrived in Echo. Neely parked the car in the exact same spot that River had on that day last summer, by the front steps. Sunshine parked the bookmobile right behind it. We stood there in front of my home, sleepy, dazed, stiff, the cold hitting us like a smack after the warmth from the car.

  I contemplated kissing the snowy ground in front of the Citizen, I did. It was melodramatic, but I get that way when I’m tired.

  Still, the smell of the sea. The sound of it in my ears.

  We went inside and stood in the foyer and kind of swayed in that way you do when it’s really late at night and you’ve been traveling in a car, drifting in and out of sleep.

  Neely and Sunshine, who’d done all the driving, all of it, looked like hell. Neely was so tired he was leaning against the wall for support, his head rubbing against the sagging art deco wallpaper.

  I never knew that the Citizen had its own smell. I guess you have to leave for a while to know that about your house. I breathed in and it was old books and Freddie’s French perfume and coffee and pine trees and . . . vanilla, for some reason. It was the smell of me, and my life.

  I thought we might wake someone up with all our sleepy bumbling and swaying, but no one came down to investigate, not even Jack, who was a light sleeper.

  Luke and Neely and River carried Brodie upstairs and put him in one of the Citizen’s guest rooms. His tall body stretched all the way from one end of the bed to the other. His face, in sleep, was peaceful. Quiet. Calm.

  My parents’ bedroom was empty.

  I found Pine sleeping on the sofa in Jack’s room.

  So she’d come to Citizen Kane after all.

  I kneeled down beside her. I touched her arm and her eyes flew open.

  “It’s not Finch,” she said. “They found the real Finch in the forest, in a deep sleep, it’s not Finch who went with you, who you rescued, I came to warn you, I came all the way to warn you—”

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” I whispered. “I know. We figured it out. It was . . . someone else, pretending to be Finch, but it’s all right now. It’s all going to be okay.”

  Jack yawned then and sat up and saw me and saw me next to Pine and saw Pine’s look of relief.

  “She hitchhiked all the way,” he said, rubbing sleep from his eyes and flashing a pr
oud smile. “She’d never left Inn’s End or the forest before, but she came all the way here on her own to warn you. Isn’t she something?”

  ≈≈≈

  “I crushed him.” River ran his hands through his hair. “I crushed him from the inside out, like he crushed Finch. I didn’t even know I could do that.”

  It was a sunny winter’s day, the sky looking all the more blue for the white snow beneath it, my house looking all the more beautiful for how long I’d been away.

  My parents were gone. They’d hopped a plane to Italy, according to Jack, off to hunt down their muse again. They didn’t mention when they were coming back.

  I was used to it.

  Luke, River, Neely, and me stood in a half circle in the red guest room, yellow sun streaming in the three big fat windows with their view of the sea.

  Sunshine said she wouldn’t step foot inside the Citizen until Brodie was gone. She went home the night before and hadn’t come back, not even to get the bookmobile.

  “She’ll change her mind,” Luke said.

  But I wasn’t so sure.

  Brodie had lost a lot of blood, but that wasn’t the reason he was so pale and still and empty, with his eyes open and blinking but nothing in them, just like Gianni and Sunshine’s parents and the islanders on Carollie and all the glowed up, sparked up people I’d seen since River first came to my damn town.

  Yes, Brodie had opened his eyes, sometime in the night. But there was nothing in them. No spark of intelligence. They were blank as the sky on a hot summer day.

  “He was already weak from Vi slashing his wrist,” River added. He took his hands out of his hair and started tapping his fingers on one of the bedposts. “And then I went in with my glow and I squeezed . . . it felt like squishing a rotten apple in my fist.” River paused. “But it also felt like stomping on a bright red butterfly . . .”

  “You saved the damn day, River,” Luke said, eyes half full of worship again, like they had been on the first day he met River, last summer, in the guesthouse.

  But River didn’t look like he saved the damn day. He seemed . . . thoughtful. Thoughtful and unsure and a bit lost. No arrogance. No sly smile. No nothing of the old River at all.

  I looked at Brodie, took in his green eyes and his red hair and the unnerving, lifeless, still, still, still.

  “He saved you from drowning,” I said to River, quiet. “He drowned you on Carollie and then brought you back and then you were drowning in Colorado and he saved you again.”

  River nodded. “I guess that was the lingering forest boy in him.”

  “Finch is still in there somewhere,” I whispered. “He is. I can feel it. Feel him.”

  “Brodie will need to be looked after,” River said. “We can’t just leave him like this.”

  “I’ll take care of him.” Pine stepped into our little half circle, her white-blond hair sweeping her shoulders, her thin arms straight at her sides. She had a scarf on, a silk scarf of a soft blue that she’d no doubt found in the attic. She looked half naive, and half sophisticated somehow. It suited her really well. “I took care of my father, after he got sick and lost his wits. I don’t mind.”

  “Maybe you should,” I said.

  She looked at me, and shrugged her tight shrug. “It’s got to be done and I know how to do it.”

  River crooked-smiled at her, and leaned his panther hips against the dresser. “Where did this girl come from? She’s like an angel sent from heaven, here to help us in our time of need.” And then River waved his hand in the air, in a circle.

  That gesture . . . it reminded me of someone.

  Brodie.

  It reminded me of Brodie.

  What if . . . what if River had taken on a bit of Brodie when he glowed him into a vegetable, just as Brodie had taken on Finch when he put him in a coma and then sparked himself up as the forest boy . . .

  If you think about that, Vi, you’ll go mad. Just push that back and forget about it . . .

  “I wish you’d killed him, sis. I do. ” Luke put his arm around me and looked so worried it broke my damn heart a little bit. “What if he wakes up and nothing’s changed and he’s still the mad Brodie from last summer? What then?”

  I met my brother’s eyes. “If Brodie wakes up and he’s still very much Brodie, with no trace of Finch at all, then . . . then we’re no worse off than we were before we found him in Inn’s End.”

  Luke paused. And then nodded. “I still wish you’d used your knife on Brodie’s heart instead of his wrist. I wish you sliced it in two and stopped it dead. Even if he saved River. Brodie tried to kill you. He almost did. I don’t care if he’s got a new spark or he’s un-witted or lobotomized or half Finch. I don’t like that he’s here.”

  “You wouldn’t say that, not if you knew.” Neely was by the windows, the sunshine making his bruises sing, up and down his arms, over his neck, everywhere. “Not if you’d known Finch.”

  “How can a person be so good and bad at the same time?” I asked, out loud. “How is that possible?”

  But no one answered me because no one knew.

  ≈≈≈

  We went down to the kitchen for breakfast. All except River, who said he wanted to stay with Brodie for a while, and Canto, who was buried in some corner of Citizen Kane, mourning Finch, and Roman. Neely made coffee on the stove and suddenly looked tall and pink-cheeked and clear-eyed and a whole lot better despite the bruises. I nestled up next to him on the counter and let my arm brush his as I whisked Dutch pancake batter. Luke held the cast iron for me to pour it in while Pine and Jack took turns twisting oranges over the little glass squeezer.

  The room smelled like joe and juice and melted butter and snow.

  Every time Jack caught sight of me he grinned.

  I’d missed him, that long week I was gone.

  “Isn’t she pretty,” Jack whispered to me, standing on tiptoe so he could reach my ear. “Isn’t Pine pretty?”

  And she did look pretty. She was wearing some of my old clothes, which were Freddie’s old clothes, plus the blue attic scarf. I watched her for a second, standing in the center of my yellow kitchen, her blond hair and her gray eyes and no one knowing much about her, not yet. It was so strange to see her in the Citizen’s kitchen, this girl from the hidden, grim Inn’s End. It was like seeing a figure from a nightmare, up and making breakfast in your kitchen the next morning.

  “She said she’s going to stay here, and go to school, and on weekends I’m going to teach her how to paint,” Jack added.

  “Good,” I said. And meant it.

  Luke put sliced bananas and maple syrup on the puffed-up pancake, and we ate standing at the table. The winter wind howled through the window cracks, but the kitchen was warm from the oven and all the people and it couldn’t touch us.

  River came down in the middle of our breakfast. I saw a flash of red behind him.

  He told his half brother to sit down on the yellow kitchen sofa, and Brodie did it, just sat and stared. River went to the stove to pour himself a cup of coffee.

  I watched River. We all did, out of the corners of our eyes. Him and Brodie. We waited for what would happen next, like a pot about to boil, or a bomb ticking down, or a record on the last song.

  I remembered back to last summer, to that first day. River had made me eggs in a frame in this very kitchen . . . and then asked me to curl up next to him and take a nap on the yellow couch. I still didn’t know if I’d done it because he’d used the glow on me, or if I’d done it just because he was River, a mysterious stranger who knew how to cook almost better than he knew how to lie.

  Both maybe.

  Chapter 23

  BRODIE WANDERED INTO my bedroom one night. I woke up and found him standing at the end of my bed, staring down at me, tall, gaunt, red hair glowing in the moonlight like it was lit from within.

  But
when I got up and took his arm he followed me back to the red guest room meek as a lamb.

  Sometimes I thought I could feel evil coming off of him, invisible and subtle but potent all the same, like the scent of something rotting in the garbage, underneath all the pleasant kitchen smells. He slept when he was told to sleep, ate food when he was given it, seemed nothing but a biddable shadow.

  And yet . . . I was worried. I was.

  Pine was often at Brodie’s side, when she wasn’t in school or with Jack. Walking around Citizen Kane meant finding Pine and Brodie in corners, white-blond and red, tall and tiny, neither talking.

  Sometimes I thought about leading Brodie outside, across the road, to the cliffs, gentle, gentle, shove, shove, over he goes . . .

  But then, in the right light, Brodie would . . . shimmer. Shimmer in a Finch way.

  One day he was standing by the front door with Pine, limp and still as she dressed him for his daily walk outside. That’s when I saw it. Brodie had a dimple. A dimple in his left cheek, a little dip that hadn’t been there before.

  I felt a little better. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I did.

  Canto left.

  “I’m going to find Finch,” she said. “The real Finch. If he lives. If he isn’t a vegetable, like Brodie. I’m going to find him.”

  I tried to warn her. Tried to get her to change her mind. Even Pine pulled her aside and told her that the last time she’d seen Finch he was in a sleep so deep no one could wake him. But Canto would do what Canto wanted to do. I packed her a picnic basket full of food and gave her maps and a pair of warm mittens and a bear hug.

  “Neely can drive you,” I said.

  “No, I’d rather walk. Really. I’ll take the train to that university town in Virginia and hitch from there.” Canto stood in the doorway with her curly black hair blowing in the winter wind and the ocean behind her like she was posing for a Leonardo.