Mya leaps nimbly from the ledge, grabs my hand, and leads me around the side of the house, ducking low to avoid being seen from the windows. I don’t relish the idea of facing my parents, but they’re less likely to launch into a tirade if I’ve got a friend with me. More than anything, I want to show Mya my book. Maybe she can help me make better sense of it all.
She’s tugging at my hand, dragging me backward through the sand. The crippled stand of piñon to my left breaks apart like the head of a dandelion, shattering as I turn around to face Mya, but Amy the psychologist shoves me up against the door of her office instead.
Chapter Ten
Shira’s dead
“Kyle, just calm down.” Amy’s breath is rancid with chili and garlic. She’s strong for such a small woman, all muscle beneath the buttoned blouse and pleated slacks.
Bright bands of pain constrict my head, driving nails into my brain. Blood spurts from my nose as I crumple to the ground, battling to breathe through the pain in my ribs.
“Please, don’t send me to the loony bin,” I say as Amy passes me wads of tissue.
“I’m not sending you anywhere, but I do have a legal obligation to inform your parents if you’re suicidal.”
I tilt my head back and blood runs down my throat. “I’m not going to kill myself.”
“That’s not what you said a moment ago.”
“I didn’t mean it. Sometimes it just gets too much.”
Amy slides down to sit beside me. “The loss of Shira?”
“Yeah, the whole situation is just so fucked-up, with Daniel in the chair, you know?” I cast her a sidelong glance. She’s nodding and rubbing her chin.
“You’ve been through a lot, Kyle. It’s only normal that you’d be having dark thoughts, that you’d be feeling a whole array of emotion. It’s important to know it’s not your fault.”
“That’s what everyone keeps telling me.”
“You don’t believe them?”
“They weren’t there. They don’t know.” I cough, the taste of metal on the back of my tongue, and tears pricking my eyes.
“Don’t know what?”
“That I think I might’ve started the fire.”
“You’re not sure?”
“Not yet.”
She nods in silence. I’m not surprised. Not a lot someone can say to an admission like that.
“Can I at least give you ride over to the clinic, get you checked out?” Amy asks, getting up.
I accept her outstretched hand, wincing as she hauls me to my feet.
Thankfully, my mom’s not working at the clinic, else she’d have been fussing around me wanting to know all the details. Nondisplaced rib fractures, so nothing serious despite the agony. They dope me up and give me a box of pain meds to take away, telling me to breathe as deeply as I can as often as possible. The other injuries are just scrapes and bruises that’ll heal on their own given time.
When they ask what happened, I don’t get into details beyond falling out of a tree. From their raised eyebrows and muttering, I know they don’t buy it. The joy of living in a small town; they all know my dad drinks.
“You’re eighteen now,” one of the nurses says, a friend of my mom’s with warm brown eyes and a Mexican accent. “You can press assault charges.”
Even pressing charges against Benny wouldn’t do me any good. My word against theirs with no impartial witnesses. Getting the cops involved will likely just get me knifed next time. Easier to pretend it never happened. All I have to do is stay asleep in this reality to live in the other one.
Amy drops me off at home, telling me I can come by the center any time. She even gives me her cell phone number before departing with a wave and a smile.
“What the hell happened to you?” Dad asks. He’s sipping coffee at the kitchen table, a pack of aspirin beside his cup. There’s a new book of matches on the table from the Throbbing Strawberry.
“Jerks outside Black Paw,” I say. Dad nods and looks relieved. His gaze meets mine briefly.
“Hope the other guy looks worse.”
“There were four of them. Not exactly fair, but they’ll be hurting.”
Dad smiles. “That’s my boy.” He fiddles with the matches. “You been screwing some tourist at this motel?”
“Hell, no.” By the look on my dad’s face, it might’ve been better to say yes. Only I’ve never been out to the motel before.
“I’m guessing those aren’t yours, then?” I ask.
“Damn straight they aren’t.” He slurps his coffee and grimaces before popping another aspirin. I leave him hungover in the kitchen, contemplating the mystery of the matchbook, and escape to my bedroom.
I force myself to take a deep breath. It hurts, but not nearly as much as before. Retrieving the book and pens from under my bed, I fill in a few more boxes, connecting them with colored lines. For the first time, I wonder if dying in one reality would let me live permanently in the other.
No messages from Danny. He’s still pissed then. I try calling, but he doesn’t answer. I give up after four tries.
This reality sucks. Danny hates me, Shira’s dead, my dad’s a violent drunk, Mya’s a bitch… But in another two months I’ll be out of here. Rice, Texas—my whole life ahead of me. If the world doesn’t end.
The other reality isn’t exactly wonderful either. I’m scarred and without a high school diploma, but at least I have Shira and Mya.
I flip through the half-drawn comics, adding a few details here and there, but my heart’s not in it, and I shove the book back under my bed.
Sometimes I wish I had a beagle and not bugs. I scoop Shatterstar out of the terrarium and let him scuttle across the back of my hand, shepherding him with a pencil.
Boring. Even harassed, the bug doesn’t bite me. Disappointed, I drop him back in his tank. I try Danny again, but now he’s hanging up on me after half a ring.
I flip open the book of matches. Only two left, taunting me with their pink heads. They’re just dying to burn. Scrunching up a scrap of paper torn from my drawing book, I contemplate fire. The terrarium’s still open, the bugs sluggish. It takes three strikes to light the match. I inhale the aroma of burning phosphorus.
It takes a moment for the paper to catch. Flames licking at my fingers, I drop the fire into the terrarium and close the lid. The vinegaroons scuttle away from the heat, seeking out the cool, damp spot beneath their driftwood. It will take them a while to die. The paper turns to ash, the flames extinguished.
If the matches aren’t mine or my dad’s, that means they’re Mom’s. That means two things: that she’s smoking again and going out to the less than salubrious motel. Not wanting to think about what Mom’s doing at some seedy by-the-hour establishment, I try Danny one last time. It goes straight to voice mail.
Searching through the pockets of my jeans, I find a half-crushed tea leaf cigarette. It’ll do. My left forearm is mottled with scars, the freshest still pink and oozing around the edges of the blister. I light the cigarette with the last match, watch the flames, then stare at my skin until my arm is no longer my own. As I touch the smoldering tip to my flesh, I expect to feel something more than just a jolt of pain. Nothing. Nothing but the searing ache in my arm and the fragrance of burning tea, like potpourri.
I chuck the remains of the cigarette out my window and blow a stream of cool air on the new crater in my arm. Danny has a home phone. I dial the number, but hesitate before calling. What if Gabriela or his mom answers?
Sleep seems like the only decent option. I knock a few painkillers into my open palm. It’s not that I want to die. I just want to sleep, a numb, senseless sleep that’ll keep me in the other world for longer. A few more pills then, just to be sure I don’t wake up for a while. Maybe permanent sleep would be best. I chug down most of the bottle.
Waiting for the drugs to kick in, I lie staring at my ceiling, taking deep, aching breaths. How the hell did I not get hurt? Shira and Danny were trapped inside…
Trapped.
/>
For a moment, the memory is as clear as the New Mexico sky. Hands shutting the barn door, their screams ripping through the night as flames made kindling of the dry roof. My hands covered in their blood.
My ceiling ripples, peels open like an orange, revealing the sapphire surface of Obscura. I try to lift my arm, to reach out and touch the planet filling my vision, but I can’t move. There’s a moment of panic at my paralysis before the orb descends in a rush of blue, smothering me in a cool blanket.
Chapter Eleven
Danny’s dead
“Kyle?” A hand waving in front of my face.
I blink and the blue mist clears from my vision. “I’m alive?”
“Yeah, silly. You stopped midsentence too.” Mya’s voice. Sunlight, blue sky. My house crouched on the corner beneath the withered oak tree. I’m on my knees as needles of pain skewer my head. Blood pours out of my nose and I spit into the sand.
“Crap, Kyle. What’s happening?”
I can’t think beyond the pain. I’m going to explode. Blood spatters the neighbor’s flower beds. The agony slides down my spine and blossoms across my side, raking fire across my ribs. I’m gulping air and tasting blood. Surely there are easier ways to die.
Mya’s holding me, stroking my hair, mumbling soothing words.
I can barely hear her over the pounding in my ears. The pain recedes, leaving me a shaking, sweating mess in its wake.
For long moments, I remain on my knees with Mya’s arm around my shoulders.
“Can you stand?” she asks, and with her help, I manage to rise. “What just happened?” Her eyes are full of fear. She clamps her top incisors on her bottom lip to stop it from trembling.
“I shifted.” Deep, shuddering breaths that taste like blood and sand.
“But you were right next to me the whole time.”
“How long did I blank out for?”
“No idea. We’ve been chatting the whole time.”
“I don’t remember anything after jumping out your window.”
She catches her breath. “What?”
“Nada, sorry.” I wipe my nose with my shirt.
“Nothing about our almost hour-long conversation?”
“What about?” Just breathing is an incredible feat at the moment. I can’t think beyond in, out, repeat.
“My outfit for the dance and Nicholas, my ex.”
I shake my head.
“Is it always like this?” she asks.
We amble across the road toward my house. My hands are shaking.
“It’s getting worse.” I open the screen door for her. My mom’s in the kitchen; my dad’s not around.
“Kyle.” Mom hesitates when she sees Mya and plasters on a smile, although I can see she’s been crying.
“This is Mya.”
“Lovely to meet you.” Mom shakes Mya’s hand. “Would you like some lunch? I was just fixing up some sandwiches.” She glances nervously at me. It’s easier if we both pretend this morning didn’t happen.
“No thank you, Mrs. Wolfe. We just ate.” Mya replies with a smile that splits her whole face in two.
“Well, you just shout if you want anything.” Mom looks at me, a look that says we’ll talk about things later. I grab two sodas from the fridge and head upstairs to my room with Mya in tow.
“Seriously, Scarface?” Mya leans over the terrarium. “Vinegaroons and…” She picks up the jam jar. “You feed them live crickets?”
My heart stutters with regret. I killed my pets in the other reality. Pushing past Mya, I examine the bugs for signs of life. No ash on the sand. Twitching antennae and masticating mandibles; they’re alive.
“People have pet snakes and tarantulas. What’s wrong with these guys?” I tap the glass to agitate them, double-checking their status. “And they prefer hunting their meals.”
“How about a puppy or a guinea pig?” Mya taps the glass too and is rewarded with a defensive display by Rictor. They’re almost identical, but Rictor is the slightly larger of the two.
“Rictor and Shatterstar are so much easier to deal with.” Although sometimes I wouldn’t mind being adored by a bouncing beagle. I shudder, wondering what I might’ve done in that other world if I’d had a puppy and not arachnids.
“You named them after X-Men?” She settles on the bed, her gaze lingering on the terrarium. “That’s kind of cool, actually.”
“You like comics?” I’m impressed she recognizes the names, and I’d rather talk about mutants than continue thinking about mutilated pets.
“Ben and I loved them. Oh, wow.” She notices my bookshelf and bounces off the bed toward my comics. She runs a thumb across their plastic sleeves. “We used to read them together, before he grew pubic hair and turned into an asshole.” She pries a thin volume of Avengers from the shelf. “I prefer graphic novels these days.”
“Feel free to check them out,” I say before going into the bathroom and shutting the door. Blood fills the toilet bowl. That’s not good. That means problems with my kidneys, but telling Mom means panic and doctors, the ER and needles. Better to just ignore it. Probably just from Benny kicking me in the back. I rinse my mouth out and wash my face. Feeling better, I return to the room and find her engrossed in the comics.
“Take a look.” I toss my book at her. The bloodstained drawing flutters to the floor. Ditching Batman, she retrieves my meager attempt from the carpet, studies it, and frowns.
“This is intense.”
“Yup.” The hero of my story is scarred and behind bars, fighting for his freedom after being wrongly convicted of a crime he’s trying to prove he didn’t commit. At least, that’s how it starts. I’m not sure how it ends yet.
Mya flicks through the book, sitting on the floor, legs outstretched, leaning against my bed.
“These are great,” she says without looking up as I settle beside her.
“They’re not finished.”
“Obviously, but these are really good.”
The compliment makes me wish a lot about my life was different.
“Your hero got a name yet?”
“You got any suggestions?” I let myself smile, not too broadly as to be frightening.
“Scarface.”
“Could work.” Although I’m not sure I want to turn him into some warped alter ego.
“You should be an artist. The perspective, the movement and facial expressions…these are really good.” There’s a hint of reverence in her tone that makes the blood rush to my cheeks.
“In the other world, I’m set to study art history at Rice. What are you doing in the fall?”
An expression of pain flits across her features, diminishing my smile.
“I always wanted to be a lawyer, but I was late with applications so I’m off to community college. Majoring in psychology.”
“Really? I thought you’d be jetting off to the Ivy League.”
“As if my folks can afford Harvard or Yale.” She snorts and then gives me a wan smile. “Maybe in a different life, right? So you’d rather be living in the other reality, Rice and all?”
“Not really.” I turn the pages to the colored boxes and give her a moment to read the latest entries.
“What? You overdosed?” She stabs a finger at the last box and looks up at me, furious.
“I didn’t want to die exactly.” I shrug. “But I think I might’ve. Won’t know unless I wake up there again.”
“Jesus, Kyle.” She shuffles away from me.
“What? Chances are I’ll wake up just fine.”
“And if you don’t? Then you just destroyed that reality. Daniel, Rice. All of that gone.”
Her words hit me like hammers as ice settles in my veins. “G-g-guess I wasn’t thinking clearly.” I’m an idiot. Did I really just toss away a life with Daniel by swallowing a handful of pills?
“I’d say.” She traces the lines from the boxes with two fingers, intersecting, crossing, weaving from box to box. I blush as she reaches the box about Shira and me sle
eping together, but she says nothing and continues along the separate routes, all the way back to the night of the fire. When she lifts her head to look at me, her eyes are wet.
“I’m so sorry,” she says.
“Why?”
“You’ve been through hell and had no one to help you.”
I shrug; again there’s a lump in my throat I don’t dare try talking around.
“Also, thank you.” She takes my hand and squeezes it. “Thank you for trusting me with this.” I miss the pressure of her fingers when she lets go and starts tapping the page instead.
“April sixth.”
“The night of the fire.”
“I know,” she says. “The whole town knows.”
“Do you know any details of what happened?”
“Not really. Only what the newspaper reports said. You know Obscura first showed up on April sixth?”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know, but I think it’s significant. Obscura showing up the same day you get deep-fried.”
I swallow hard and can’t meet her gaze.
“What else happened on that day?”
“Danny and I had a fight. Then I ended up at Shira’s, and well…” I sigh, dragging fingers through my hair. “We went out to Ghost Town, the three of us. Not sure why.”
“Interesting.”
“That I’d screw my boyfriend’s best friend?” I’m not sure why I get so defensive.
She rolls her eyes at me. “What’s interesting is that the decision to screw your boyfriend’s best friend, as you say, led you to Ghost Town and thus to the fire in the first place.”
“So there’s another reality where I didn’t cheat on Danny. Where I didn’t feel like a dick and get drunk and start the fire?” The enormity of the possibility is too huge to contemplate.
“Maybe.” She closes the book. “How can you be sure any of it is real?”
“I just have to look in the mirror.”
“No, I mean… Obscura showed up on April sixth, so maybe she started messing with you before you and Daniel even had the fight?”
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