Georgina left his head. He could feel his organs scattering in the compound, romping free. He heard the distinctive shriek when his ex-girlfriend Sarah saw his liver, and he registered that his liver was offended.
When Richie cut Jared’s wrists free, he fainted on the dirt, dirt nap, nap of dirt. His hands tingled painfully to life, waking him up.
“Call your organs back,” his mom said.
We’re separated, Jared thought at her. Just wasn’t working out. Sometimes you grow apart, but it doesn’t mean you don’t care. If you love your liver, set it free and if it comes back to you, it’s yours. You can’t force love.
His mom sighed. “Dumb-ass.”
9
SARAH
Maggie put some dogs down, in her words. It’s the first time you’ve ever seen anyone killed. She’d made you stay in the truck, but she’d let you ride her mind so you’d know what was happening. You’ve only seen shootings in the movies, so your brain is trying to tell you it’s just a movie, but your adrenal glands are pumping out hormones that say, Yeah, no. This is not shit you need in your life. Find an exit, please. Now.
So you think that watching Maggie and Richie’s murder spree is as bad as it’s going to get, but then you descend into a deeper level of hell. A root cellar that smells of deep-fried meat.
David, the stalker who tried to kill Jared, is tied up in a chair. His hand is missing and he has a bloody stain on his chest. Dead men are tossed to the side as Maggie bends over Jared and tries to slap him sober.
“Get up,” she says.
Jared doesn’t move and doesn’t seem to be planning on moving. He sounds very faint, like a fridge in another room, and that is not good, you gather from Maggie’s flood of worry and also from the organs running around outside. She’s not a sharer unless absolutely necessary and only after she asks, and she doesn’t like that you know what she’s feeling, so she stops. She never rides into your brain unannounced like some rude people you could mention.
Sorry, Jared thinks at you. But you’re thinking about me and it’s hard to ignore.
You see yourself from his eyes for a moment as Richie carries him past you. Short black tulle skirt and black angel-wing T-shirt with black tights and sneakers. A homage to an anime character that Maggie didn’t know or care about when she handed you a knife before you got into the truck and told you to cut off the red flowers because she said red was a bull’s eye.
You chose your outfit to give you courage, but it wasn’t meant for comfort and you shiver, soaked to the bone, watching Richie wrangle Jared into the truck.
“Don’t just stand there,” Maggie says.
Worst Easter egg hunt ever, you think.
Jared’s organs hide in the crawl spaces and untended thickets of the hellhole Maggie calls the compound. Slippery things, ecstatic to be free. You can’t imagine touching them. Maggie whacks the grass with her AK-15 and you see this getting out of hand easily.
I’m cold, you say to Jared. And I’m scared. Please call your organs back.
Fine.
You watch the organs roll through the long grass and the weird conglomeration of random buildings towards the SuperCab of the dark-blue truck that Richie drives. You slog towards it through the rain. You gird yourself to see the bear curled up in the back. It’s skinny, wretched and moaning. Not a real bear. It follows Richie. You screamed when you first saw it, and then realized it wasn’t earthly. Maggie smacked you.
“It’s a fucking family spirit he inherited,” she snapped. “It won’t fuck with you if you don’t fuck with Richie.”
You got embarrassed because you’ve been shrieking a lot lately, like a girl in a monster movie.
You understand now why Jared didn’t want to see these things, and wouldn’t help you see them no matter how you begged. They’re bizarre and not often friendly. But once you start seeing them, you can’t unsee them. You’ve made your choice about red pills and blue pills and there is no going back. Maggie rummages in a bag by the bear and then goes back to the root cellar and tosses a grenade down the stairs. A muffled kaboom. Why? you wonder.
She’s kind of a pyro, Jared thinks. She likes it when things go boom.
His shirt is a bib of blood. He smells as if he bathed in vodka. He’s slumped against the door and not breathing. “How do you live without your organs? How is that possible?”
“You don’t,” Maggie says. “Not for long. Even if you’re a Trickster.”
She shoos the organs into the cab, where they shiver like excited little dogs. When they press themselves against Jared, they are reabsorbed. He’s in your brain, but passively observing, just wanting to be outside his own head. Away from things he doesn’t want to think about. Places in his mind he doesn’t want to visit.
That’s basically why you used to cut yourself: to get outside your own brain. Maggie, at least, externalizes her rage. Your mother measures hers out in calories allowed. Six almonds for a snack. Five hundred calories for supper. Punishing the three percent left of her body fat with gruelling sessions on the treadmill at 5 a.m., before the careful ritual of hair, makeup and clothes. Hot lemon water for breakfast with cayenne pepper and sugar substitute.
Your mother always asked you in that tone, “What are you telling the world about yourself with this outfit?”
“Fuck you, World,” you liked to respond, just to get a rise.
Your mother’s not exactly breaking out the AK-15s and killing her way to get to you. When you had her served with your emancipation papers, you seem to have reached the natural conclusion of your relationship. You didn’t want to go back to the body-positive gulag she foisted on you, blind to the irony of putting you in treatment for self-injury while she wandered free. You didn’t think you were telling her to fuck right off completely, but apparently you were. Your dad has always been more of an absentee roommate who leaves you Post-it Notes about cleaning your egg off the cast iron frying pan that you used to make some breakfast and suggesting you might want to re-season it to be respectful to the house you share.
“You’re a good tracker,” Maggie volunteers.
“Just with Jared,” you say.
“When you’ve got juice, you have to be careful who you bone.”
This is not awkward. Not awkward at all. You are not ashamed of your sexuality or the fact that you are sitting in a truck with your ex’s mother, sharing each other’s thoughts. Richie glances at you in the rear-view mirror, a man who gives new meaning to rough around the edges. Frayed T-shirt and frayed jeans and messy beard and shaved head, a bent boxer’s nose and wild eyebrows. You are not going to imagine their sex life. You are going to think about anything else. You’re grateful Richie can’t share thoughts.
Richie starts the truck and pulls out on the highway, putting distance between you and the compound. Jared suddenly leaves his body and you scream because you think he’s died, but Maggie informs you that he’s travelling and please shut your fucking hole she needs to think.
“What’s up?” Richie says, reaching over to put a hand on her thigh.
Maggie squeezes his hand. “Jared’s travelling. He just left his body.”
Richie pulls over to the side of the road. They can see Jared walking away, strolling down the shoulder as if he’s going to start hitchhiking any minute.
Maggie presses her fingers against her temples. “Can you get him back in his body?”
“I don’t know,” you say. “How’d he even leave it?”
This is as far as I can go, Jared thinks.
Thin, dewy threads connect him to you and to Maggie. Maggie wants him back in the truck. Now. There’s shit they have to figure out before the rest of the coy wolves organize.
You’re getting a headache from having so many people in your head. Maggie tosses you a half-empty bottle of Tylenol Extra Strength and a bottle of no-name water.
Jar
ed, please, you think.
He is suddenly in the truck bed, sitting on a metal cooler, reaching down to pet the bear. It groans in obvious pain and Jared pulls his hand back.
What happened to your bear? Jared thinks.
Not the time, his mom thinks back.
“Drive,” Maggie says to Richie.
* * *
—
Jared’s eyes don’t blink. It’s creepy. His body stares at the ceiling as it lies on the motel bed. Travelling Jared is on the roof, watching traffic.
You’ve never given a lot of thought to souls. The idea was always an airy abstract to you. How do you make someone inhabit their body when you know what it’s like to hate every imperfect millimetre? All the vague pull-up-your-bootstraps slogans and plaster-a-smile-over-your-existential-horror bumper-sticker cheerleading made you feel worse for not being able to buy into the bullshit everyone else seems to be shovelling with gusto.
Maggie has left you here with a loaded gun. The safety is off. She needs space. And pizza. Richie went with her because he won’t let her drive this angry. Too many payments left on the truck to let her grind it against all the fuckers of this world too stupid to follow basic traffic rules. So you are all that’s standing between more violence and Jared. You are not up to this. This is not your jam. You are shaky terrified.
You can leave, Jared says in your head. You can walk away. It’s my shit, not yours.
Please, Jared. Please.
I don’t want to get you killed. I don’t want to get anyone else killed and I don’t want to kill anyone.
You don’t have to.
I killed Dad. I got him killed.
That wasn’t your fault.
If the coy wolves come, you either shoot them or they’ll eat you alive, one limb at a time, while you scream. So you better shoot them.
Deep, trembling breath. At least Jared cares if you live or die. There’s no one else who does.
You could go back to your uncles.
But their houses are places where you edit yourself constantly. Places you have to be careful to not be too weird. Dead or fake. If those are the options, you’re staying put.
10
MAGGIE
You and Richie drag Jared’s stink ass to the tub. Richie skitters away, not willing to help peel the clothes from your giant baby. That is a bridge too far for your knight in shining armour. He’s off to hit the casino and mindlessly play the one-armed bandits until he feels ready to come back to a motel room with two dramatic teens and the fucking love of his life. Blended families are not for the faint of heart.
Jared isn’t in the body you’re washing the blood and puke off of, but he is watching Netflix with his ex on her laptop, laughing at The Office, an episode the girl knows well enough to recite the lines. Which is progress, right? He’s not moping on the roof anymore.
This reminds you of bathing him in the kitchen sink when he was the size of a kitten. You do an inventory. Light bruising around the wrists. A bump on his forehead. Scars from the otter cave. Scars from David. Scars from stupid shit he did during drunken parties. Bruises around his neck fading to an ugly purple with a piss-yellow halo. But otherwise he’s whole. His black hair floats in the water, waving as you lift his neck and squirt his scalp with shampoo. His face wears the blank expression of an empty vessel.
For the love of Christ, Sophia had texted. Jared’s not Wee’git. That Trickster’s moping in his house in Kits because Jared won’t talk to him. Get your head out of your ass, Maggie.
And then, after tracking you down, Sophia personally delivered the news about Phil and Shirley. Sophia with her thousand-yard stare, the deep croak of large, man-eating birds sounding like a morning jungle around her, an assembly of invisible creatures ready to eat your brain out of your eye socket or crack your skull like a soft-boiled egg. She is old-school magic, unforgiving and bloody. You don’t want to be the target of Sophia on a tear. Thank fucking Christ she has other things to hate.
But once she lets loose, you’ll need to worry about the coy wolf stragglers, who will have nothing to lose and hearts full of vengeance. Them and the soft targets like Mave, la-di-da-ing through the world thinking she’s so political and that she knows how things work. Jared at least knows when he’s in deep. Mave won’t know until they’re eating her face. It was so much easier when you didn’t give a rat’s ass if she lived or died.
Did you find him? Mave had texted.
You pause to let your giant baby soak.
Yes, you finally text back. He’s still in shock about Phil. We need some time to work things out as a family.
Things you want to add but don’t: stop fucking posting every goddamn thing about this on Facebook, you clueless civvy.
Thank the Creator. Maggie, I’m so sorry. Let me know if I can do anything.
Will text more l8r.
K.
Give all of him a light scrub with a wet face cloth. Unplug the tub. Pat the body dry and heave him up. Call for the girl and you both wrestle him into a bathrobe and back to bed. People surprise you. You blew her off as twitchy, but she’s handling death and mayhem like a champ. You don’t know what to make of her fashion choices—who wears tulle on a raid?—but she’s steady in a crisis. Didn’t balk when you left her alone with a pistol she didn’t know how to use. She led you to the compound, able to hear your son when you couldn’t. None of you knew what you were walking into, but she didn’t hesitate. The compound was big. Surprisingly empty. Fuck-all for security, the dumb bastards.
You were not sure how you and Richie were going to find your missing, trouble-magnet son in the maze of buildings when something came lurching out of the dark. The shock of seeing Jared’s liver bouncing like a demented football, showing you the way to the root cellar like a skinless Lassie, just in time to see more hopping organs coming your way, being chased by three very angry coy wolves in human form.
Jared moves as far away as he can get from his body in this small motel room, fading, visibly fading, alarming his little witch. Ignore him and eat cold pizza, plain cheese because the girly-girl can’t stomach animals.
Of Jared’s crew, Hank looks as though he could do some damage. Plus he’s dating a fucking Donner, who turns out is an otter in human form. Neeka. Your source for all the things Jared wouldn’t share with you. Neeka knows the score.
It was the crew we suspected who had him, you text her.
Jared?
Alive. Problem dogs on the rez tho.
I’ll get Mave to stay with us.
Thanx Neeks.
No worries.
Jared’s annoyed. You feel that very clearly, because he wants you to know he’s not happy about you knowing Neeka. You’re not braiding each other’s hair, but you recognize someone who’s been through the same grind, life having had no mercy on either of you. You’re more allies of convenience, both wanting Jared to get a goddamn grip before he gets himself killed.
Jared can fuck off to the Land of the Dead if he wants to go there so bad. You can’t stop him.
“Maggie,” the twitchy baby witch snaps at you, a warning to go easy.
Not many people snap at you. She has spunk, you’ll give her that.
“Imagine Sarah in that chair where David was,” you say to your son, and he goes so faint he’s almost gone.
“I don’t think this is helpful, Maggie,” Twitch says.
Mave. Justice. Kota. Hank. Neeka. Hank’s nephews, the fuckboy brothers, Pat and Sponge. Eliza, that little lighthouse of power.
Jared turns around as you think about all this and you feel his concern.
“You didn’t mean to make them targets, but they are,” you say.
“It’s not his fault,” Twitch says. And stop calling me Twitch.
Twitchy witch, I am going to teach you everything I know, once you learn basic weaponry.
; Jared does not like that. Does not want Sarah in any deeper.
Twitch is trying to smother the hope and excitement surging through her.
Shit or get off the pot, you tell your son. She’s already in up to her neck. If you, precious sonny boy, aren’t going to fight for Twitch’s life, then I’m going to arm her so she can do some damage.
“No,” Jared croaks, voice raspy as he tries to rise out of bed. That got him back in his body.
“It’s not your call, sonny boy. You don’t own Twitch.”
“I would really appreciate it,” Twitch says, “if you stopped calling me that name. It’s denigrating.”
“Oh, Twitch knows all the fancy ways to say fuck right off, bitch,” you say. “But Twitch’s gonna take it, ’cause she wants to tap her juice so bad I can feel her thirst like a horndog seeing his first hooker.”
“Mother,” Jared says.
“Welcome back,” you say.
11
DAY DRINKING WITH MAGGIE AND JARED
Sarah had had enough of Pistols 101 with Richie and began posing like a Bond girl, singing the theme song as she hopped on and off furniture.
“Da da, da daaaaaaa,” Sarah sang, spinning around to aim at Jared.
“Don’t fucking point at people unless you want them dead!” Richie barked.
Sarah said, “See? No bullets.”
“I can’t work like this,” Richie said.
Maggie tossed him a bottle of Kokanee. He twisted off the top, glaring at Sarah, who tried to somersault off the bed and ended up whacking the wall.
Jared could hear all the TVs on in all the rooms around them. Cheap walls in a cheap motel.
Maggie held a Kokanee out to him. The sweat rolled off the bottle, moist from sitting in the ice bucket, the welcoming, yeasty glory of beer. Sarah was laughing herself silly on the floor, too stoned to get up. Or maybe it was E. E is for everything that aches. They’d started their party while Jared was still getting used to being a part of his physical body again, and he’d zoned a bit. He took the bottle. Twisted off the cap. Didn’t think too hard, hardly thinking, just drinking. Day drinking with Mom.
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