by Rae, Nikki
I blink a few times. “Really did what?” I ask.
Manny glances toward Jade, who nods. He mouths, “Turned.”
I wasn’t aware that my look had changed that much. No one else has noticed anything–at least I don’t think they have–but maybe it’s something that’s only noticeable when someone knows what they’re looking for.
He touches my arm briefly and it’s extremely warm, even through the trench coat. I’m already almost used to that feeling when people touch me, so I almost don’t take note of it. It’s the fact that when I look at him, all I see is dark red waves rolling over him that makes me pause to catch my breath. Manny must notice how uneasy I am because he lets go of my arm, smiling nervously.
I smile back at him but there’s no life in it.
“I heard you were really sick,” he offers.
“Who told you that?”
He shrugs. “I was bugging Evan.” He smiles to himself. “I needed to know if you were on board for the tour and he finally told me that you weren’t doing so well.”
I nod a little because I have nothing to say.
“Well,” he says, getting the hint that I either can’t or won’t talk about it. I’m not sure which side I’m leaning toward myself. “It’s good to see you,” he says, looking to Jade again. “Both of you. I was kind of worried.”
“Worried?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says like it’s the most natural thing. “Good to know you survived.” The way he says these things makes me uneasy and I don’t know why. It’s probably just that heightened emotions thing.
But I still can’t help asking, “You don’t think...it’s weird?”
He snorts. “Have you seen where we work?” he asks. “And besides, you’re dating a vampire. It was bound to happen eventually.”
It’s quiet for the longest moment then. I stare at the ground, and Jade clears his throat.
Manny takes the hint and changes the subject. “So...you wanna see where we’ll be semi-living for the next two weeks?”
At the same time, Boo and Trei open the door to the bus and poke their heads out. “Are you guys coming or what?” Boo asks.
We climb in after Manny. My stomach flips, worrying if touring is such a good idea. Scratch that. I know it isn’t a good idea. Having a dream about one of Michael’s memories only confirms it. He isn’t going to let me go. He wants to drag me into a deep dark hole with no chance of crawling out. How can I be thinking about leaving the protection of the club right now? How can I even pretend to be at ease with any of this?
I take off my sunglasses and the first thing I see is how big the steering wheel is. When I shift my eyes around the small space, I can see seats, like the ones they have on trains, facing each other with tables between them. Everything is black leather except the floor, which is made out of shiny silver.
“So you’re the one who’s taking up the junk bunk this time around,” Manny says, turning slightly toward Jade.
My brother glances at me. “What?” he asks Manny.
He laughs, waving a hand in front of him. “We usually store extra booze and clothes in the bunk you’ll be using, but that’s okay. It’ll force us to keep neat this time around.”
“Oh,” Jade says, and I can see his muscles relaxing.
“Wait,” Boo says at the head of the line as he stops walking, causing our little train to come to a halt. “What’s he talking about?” He’s looking straight at me.
“Well,” I say, trying to sound as casual as I possibly can. “It was supposed to be a surprise.”
Now Trei turns in our direction. “What’s a surprise?”
“Jade’s coming on tour with us,” I say in one short breath, realizing only now that it probably doesn’t look good that I made this plan without consulting them. “I meant to tell you about it,” I add on, hoping it might help a little.
I’m relieved when they both smile.
“That’s awesome,” Boo says.
“Yeah!” Trei agrees.
Jade places a hand on my back, maybe sensing how I need some form of support. I’m grateful for the small gesture but I have to pull away. I can feel his fingertips through my trench coat as if I’m not wearing it at all, and for a second, everything turns a calming shade of baby blue. As soon as we break contact it’s gone.
“So this is the main area,” Manny says, continuing to point out the bus. “Kitchen, living room, and office all in one,” he jokes. We follow him further into the bus, down a short hallway that leads to what Manny describes as “the bedrooms”.
“Alright,” he says, patting a blank wall at the back of the bus before sliding it open. “So this is where we usually sleep.”
He gestures to three rectangular rows of curtains on either side of us. We take a few more steps. “And then you guys can sleep out here.” He lets us all squeeze into the tight space where there are six more sets of bunks.
“So,” Manny says, bending down. “One for you, Pinky.” He slaps a bottom bunk, “One for Myles,” He slaps the one across from that. “I mean, you can share, but it gets kind of cramped.” He doesn’t pause before patting the three remaining bunks. “And then one for Boo, Trei, and Jade.”
“Actually,” I say, my voice tight. I cross my arms over my chest in case my hands start shaking. “Myles won’t need a bunk.”
Boo is the first to speak up. “He’s not coming with us?”
“Nah,” I try to be casual about it, but I feel like I’m going to explode.
He can follow me if he wants but I’ll be damned if he’s going to do be here, seven inches from me, reminding me that we’re both–all–in this situation because of him.
“Why not?” Trei asks.
I shrug, trying to think of something fast. “He’s got some stuff to take care of here,” I say. But then I decide it’ll look suspicious if they see him, since he’ll most likely be showing up. “He said he’d try to meet us at some of the shows.”
“Well that’s a shame,” Manny says, ending the conversation, and I could hug him for that.
“I guess we’ve got a junk bunk again.” He sounds pleased with that fact.
Boo and Trei smile, believing my story and moving on.
Maybe lying gets easier in my new life. God knows nothing else is.
Once we’re done touring the bus, we part ways, Boo and Trei explaining that they need to go home and pack, and Jade and I saying something similar. When we’re alone in the car, I can’t conceal the emotions anymore. Before Jade is even behind the driver’s seat, a wave of dizziness stronger than I’ve ever felt washes over me and I have to rest my head on my knees to make it stop.
Instead of asking if I’m okay, which I’m grateful for, Jade says, “How the hell are we going to pull this off?”
I take a few more moments of calm, just resting my head against my legs before sitting upright. “I don’t know.”
He wraps his hands around the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white. Then he relaxes them and turns towards me. “I mean, is it even safe out there?”
The backs of my eyes burn. Is it safe anywhere? Is it safe to do or say or feel anything anymore?
I swallow the unshed tears. “Let’s just go.” My voice is thick. “Myles wouldn’t let me go if we wouldn’t be okay.” As I say the words, I believe them in every fiber of my being, yet… he lied. Who’s to say what he won’t lie about?
Jade takes a deep breath, thinking to himself before he starts the car. “Listen,” he says. “I’ve got to go home for a few hours to pack.”
“Okay,” I tell him, not sure if I’m ready for him to leave.
“You should come with me,” he says. “Or maybe you can hang at Mom’s for a little? See Laura and Adam and Leena...and maybe Mom before we leave?”
My first instinct is to say no, that if I go to New Jersey, I’ll just go to him and Stevie’s apartment. But I haven’t seen my family in a long time and for some reason, now that everything’s different, I can’t think of anythin
g nicer than seeing people from before—even my mother.
I nod. “Are we leaving now?”
Jade glances at the dashboard, like he’s just realized that we’ve been sitting in a stationary vehicle this whole time. Without another word, we pull out of the parking lot.
Jade lets me blast the radio most of the way there since both of us are tired of asking questions that we have no answers for. He turns it down as we’re turning onto our old street. “Something else you should know,” he says.
“Okay.” My voice is hoarse.
“Laura’s moving into your apartment.” He takes a quick breath before continuing. “I’m sorry, it happened a while ago but I never had the chance to tell you. It’s just that with all of this shit happening…”
“Jade,” I say, filling in his unfinished sentence. “It’s cool.”
“Okay,” he says, obviously relieved.
Jade drops me off and says he’ll be back in an hour to hang with the family. He seems anxious to get back to his house and I don’t blame him. Being alone is rare for both of us lately.
I don’t have to knock when I get to the door because it’s open, and I swear, my mom would be able to know I was in her house if she was in Thailand. “Sophie?” she yells from the kitchen. “Come on in, I’m making lunch. You want anything?”
My hands fumble with the buttons of my trench coat. I’m suddenly nervous to be back here but it’s not the normal gut-wrenching nerves I’m accustomed to. The familiar feeling that at any moment Mom will snap and the illusion of a family she’s kept together for however long this time dissolves. I’m scared that they’ll know. I mean, she’s still my mother, right? Aren’t there some maternal-instinct rules on this type of thing?
Leena finds me first, slamming into my legs and nearly knocking me over.
“You smell funny,” she says.
I bend down to get a good look at her. She still has her chubby, little girl cheeks dotted with freckles but she’s taller. “Funny?” I ask.
She nods, grabbing my hand. “Like mud.” She tugs me forward. “Want to play with Beanie Babies?”
Maybe she’s noticed something different about me but at least she doesn’t seem to dwell on it.
“Maybe later,” I say. “I have to talk to Mommy for a little while.”
She shrugs before heading back into the living room.
Mom is standing over the stove when I enter the kitchen, her hair swept up in a ponytail. Surprisingly, she’s wearing jeans and a simple top; something I haven’t seen her wear in a long time. Then again, ever since the accident–well, both of them. Mine and Stevie’s–she’s done a lot of things I’ve never seen her do. Like tell me to come into the kitchen because she’s making lunch, for example.
“So?” she asks, turning only slightly away from a pot of boiling water. Her voice isn’t too intense and I’m grateful. It sounds like bubbles being blown past my ears.
“What?” I ask.
“You want any?” she asks, opening a cabinet and shaking a box of pasta in front of her. “Because if not I won’t make it all.”
“No thanks,” I say, pushing away the fact that I haven’t been hungry or thirsty since yesterday when I woke up.
“Well, sit down,” she says, pointing to the table without looking at it or me.
I sling my coat and bag over a chair and sit, declining again when Mom asks if I want anything to drink. She ignores me.
“Where is everyone?” I ask.
“Adam’s at work.” She shrugs. “If I’d known you were coming sooner, he would have been able to take off. And Laura’s off running errands.”
My heart sinks. I miss them, and now I won’t be able to see them until I come back.
If you come back, silly girl. Michael’s voice echoes somewhere in the back of my head and I’m reminded for the first time today about the dream. Was it only a memory? Is it just his remaining blood in my system doing this or is it something more, something worse?
“Sophie?” Mom is asking, waving a hand in front of my face.
“Sorry,” I say. “What?”
Mom leans back in her chair. “So Jade told me how you’re going on tour,” she says, her voice dripping with excitement. Only I don’t think my mom knows how to be excited for me, so it comes off kind of fake and odd-sounding. “When do you guys leave?”
“Sunday.”
“Next Sunday?” she asks.
“No, this Sunday.”
“Well that’s soon, isn’t it?” Mom smiles. “Is Myles going too?”
I stare down at the mug she set in front of me. It’s got a rainbow painted on the side and a chip in the handle. I’ve used it since I was in middle school.
“No,” I almost whisper.
Myles knew who my family was, every one of us, before I even knew about his existence. I wrap my hands around the mug.
“Oh, that’s a shame, dear!” She reaches out and tucks a piece of hair behind my ear. My body still stiffens when she tries to touch me; I don’t think I’ll ever get over that. “But you’ll still have a great time!”
I thought that seeing my mom now, like this, as the new me, would be somehow different. Maybe she would sense something about me that told her I was stronger than she thought, that she wouldn’t be as inclined to prove how much she cares by skin to skin contact. But I was wrong. To her, nothing about me has changed and though I can’t say I’m exactly surprised that she hasn’t noticed when something about me is irreversibly and undeniably different, I still have a hard time believing it.
“Can you tell me who my dad was?” It leaves my mouth before it’s even fully formed in my mind. It’s out there, hanging between us, and I know I’ve probably ruined everything by asking this one question I stopped asking when I was little.
I can see every muscle in my mother’s face tighten underneath her tanned skin. Her biceps clench and then relax. Her lips tighten and her eyes get wide. It all happens in the span of a few milliseconds, but I see it all as if it were a feature length film.
“Why would you want to know that?” Mom attempts smiling again but it’s useless.
I trace the paisley design on the tablecloth, trying to appear casual. “It’s just that I’m starting this new phase in my life...” I start. “I want everything from the previous chapter tied up.”
I chance looking at her and surprisingly, she doesn’t look like she wants to tear my head off and throw it across the room. “I don’t feel like I can move on with my life not knowing this huge chunk of it, you know?”
Mom’s hands flatten on top of the table and she brings them in front of her, pretending to stare at her nails before looking back at me. “Your father...” she starts, but she can’t seem to find the words. “Are you sure you want to know?”
For a moment, I think about retracting the question. If I really wanted to know, I could in theory, ask Myles. But I don’t think I’d be able to do it and even if I could, would I trust anything that came out of his mouth?
“Yes,” I say.
She takes in a deep breath, picks up her mug a few times without drinking anything. “He left when you were very young,” she finally decides. “Without telling me. Without leaving any phone numbers or addresses, but you know all that.” She looks down at the table. “He didn’t have any relatives I could call. He didn’t have any family that I knew of.” Her eyes are back on mine. “He just vanished. Completely.”
“Why don’t we have any pictures of him?” I ask.
“I threw them all away.”
I blink a few times. “Every single one?”
She lets out a huff of a breath. “I might have kept one.”
I gulp. “Do you know where it is?”
Her mouth screws up in a twist of sadness and maybe even fear. “What do you want to see that for?” she asks. She’s trying to sound like her normal, semi-bitchy self, but the words are heavy with unshed tears. “He doesn’t care about you,” she says. “I told you, he just left. What kind of a fathe
r does that?”
I have to hold back my own tears now. She has no clue. Not a single one as to what actually happened to him. That he died. That he left his family and died never seeing them again because he wanted to protect us. Me.
“I’d just like to see it,” I say. “That’s all.”
I’ve asked her in the past, but every time I did, she told me that there were no pictures. Now, suddenly there is one. I can place a face to the other half that made me.
“Alright,” she says. “But you have to give it back.”
“Sure,” I say.
Mom stands and pushes her chair out from the table. “It’s the only one,” she reminds me. “It’s all there is left.”
She reaches above the stove, over the cabinets hanging above it, and takes a small book that must have been lying flat so no one could see it. When she comes back to the table and flips through the pages, I can see that it’s an empty address book. She stops turning the pages when she gets to an old, faded photograph. I can tell how hard it is for her to not look at as she hands it to me but I think it might be harder for her to look.
It’s hard enough for me. The man staring back at me has green eyes, like me and Jade, and light blond hair sticking out from a baseball cap. He’s wearing a sweatshirt and standing on some kind of a dock, a grey sky behind him as darker grey waves surround the rest of the background. I think he has a nice smile, something warm that I’ve seen in Jade a few times, when he’s been really happy.
“His name was Ryan,” Mom says.
I glance at her, and she’s gone back to the stove so she can drain her pasta. Steam flows from the pot and into her face as she pours the boiling water out into the sink. I look back at the photo.
“I’m sorry, Ryan,” I whisper, just low enough so she can’t hear.
Once she has food on plates, she takes the picture from my hands and puts it away in the address book, placing it above the stove again. “Don’t think about him anymore,” she says, setting down two plates, one for her and one for Leena. “He doesn’t think about you, so don’t think about him. Okay?”
“Okay,” I choke out. I’m sorry, Mom.