Reborn

by Jennifer Rush

  “My fucking head is pounding,” he said. “Whose idea was it to buy a fifth of Jäger last night?”

  “Um, yours,” Chloe said. “I tried talking you out of it.”

  “Well, you clearly didn’t try hard enough.” He sat up and glanced at me. “Hey, Lis. How come you didn’t come out with us last night?”

  I shrugged. “I fell asleep early.”

  Chloe arched a brow my way, but I ignored it.

  Evan leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs out. “Maybe that was for the best. Considering I feel like shit today.”

  “You look like shit, too,” Chloe said.

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “Why are we friends? You’re always so mean to me, Emily.”

  Chloe scowled in return. She hated being called by her first name. Chloe was her middle name, and she’d been using it as long as anyone could remember. I’d known of Chloe before I started working at Merv’s. She was friends with some of my friends, but we hadn’t been properly introduced.

  I didn’t get to know her until last year, when I’d nearly had a panic attack in the middle of Merv’s while Aggie and I were there for dinner. Chloe had been the one to sweep me away to the bathroom where, by some miracle, she’d been able to talk me down.

  We’d been close ever since. She was the one who convinced me it might be a good idea to apply at the restaurant. “When you can’t stand being inside your own head, getting out, being around other people helps,” she’d said. I hadn’t believed her at the time, but I was a believer now. Though I was nowhere near mentally healthy, I’d been doing a lot better since starting a part-time job.

  Merv, of “Bar & Grill” fame, came into the back room and clapped his hands. “Chop-chop, people!”

  Evan winced. “Merv. God. Too loud.”

  Merv bent over and shouted into Evan’s ear. “Is this better?”

  Evan covered his eyes with one hand and his exposed ear with the other. “I’m calling in sick.”

  “Too late,” Merv said. “You’re already here.”

  Evan rose slowly out of the chair and made his way toward the front of the restaurant. Merv glanced at Chloe and me. “Ladies. That means you, too.”

  Chloe grinned as she breezed past Merv. “I’m off in five minutes anyway.”

  “Then make the most of them!”

  I tied my apron on and slid my order pad into the front pocket along with a handful of pens. They had a tendency to disappear—probably because Chloe liked chewing on them. It was a good idea to have extras.

  “Lissy,” Merv said, and I slowed. “You all right today?”

  I glanced up at him. Merv was six foot four, and slight as a rail. He had warm, kind eyes, and a nice smile, and dark brown hair that went every which way. He was also extremely good at reading people. Like, to the point that it seemed like a superpower.

  Despite the fact that I was damaged, erratic, sullen most of the time, and sometimes so depressed I could barely get out of bed, Merv hired me six months ago on the spot. I didn’t even have experience. I suspected Chloe had had something to do with that, but I wasn’t complaining. And I wasn’t about to let Merv down.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “All right.” He clapped his hands and grinned. “Chop-chop, then!”

  I’d been overwhelmed by waiting tables my first week on the job. The second week wasn’t much better, but Chloe helped bolster my self-confidence to the point that I felt like maybe I could function like a normal person, and have a normal job like every other seventeen-year-old in town.

  Evan helped, too.

  I went over to the bar with a new drink order. Since I was still a minor, I could only place drink orders, not serve them. And whenever a customer placed an order, I got a tiny little thrill in my belly, knowing I’d have an excuse to go talk to Evan.

  He was Merv’s best bartender. Quick. Precise. A good listener, too, which seemed a prerequisite to the job. Evan once told me he’d considered minoring in psychology at the small university in town just to up his bartending game. His exact words. But then he decided he liked welding better, because it required less thinking and more doing.

  “Hey, good-looking,” he said when I came around the bar.

  A smile instantly spread across my face. Evan technically called every girl here good-looking, but it still made me feel something I hadn’t felt in a long time—noticed, in a good way.

  “Hey.” I handed him the drink order, and he got to work. “So Chloe said you guys are going to Arrow tonight?”

  Evan grabbed a shaker. “Are we? I hadn’t heard.”

  I leaned against the counter. “I wish I was eighteen.”

  Where did that come from? I sounded a little too whiny and needy, two things I absolutely hated.

  “Why?” He nodded at the cut lime wedges behind me, and I handed one over, stuck between the claws of the silver tongs. “Would you go out with us?”

  I shrugged. “Probably. Maybe. I don’t know.”

  He smiled as he shook the mixed drink. “That is three non-answers.”

  “Yes,” I said. “The answer is yes.”

  “Then we can change our plans. Arrow will be there tomorrow night. And the night after that. There’s plenty to do around here that doesn’t require you to be eighteen.”

  I straightened. “I didn’t mean you had to rearrange your night for me.”

  He handed Merv a tray with the finished drink and an open beer. “Table twelve,” he said, and Merv nodded as he left.

  Evan came closer. My face warmed. I couldn’t help but wonder if my makeup had held up since I put it on, or if my pores were huge, or if my teeth were clean. I quickly ran over in my head what I’d eaten for lunch. Apple, peanut butter, string cheese. Nothing that should have been stuck in my teeth.

  Someone called for Evan down the bar, but he ignored it.

  “I want to rearrange my night for you.” He leaned in even closer. “Besides, I go out with the same people every single night. It’d be nice to have someone else to hang out with.”

  He winked and turned away to wait on the customer who was nagging him at the other end of the bar.

  I lingered for a few seconds longer, listening to Evan greet the customer with as much cheeriness as he greeted everyone, despite the fact that the older man was still scowling, clearly frustrated with being ignored.

  When the bell dinged in the kitchen, signaling a finished order, I turned away and hurried to check if it was one of mine.

  The smile on my face remained the rest of the night.

  6

  ELIZABETH

  “YOU REALLY DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS,” I told Chloe as she tore clothing free of its hangers and tossed it at me.

  “Yes, I do. Because I’m your best friend and best friends do not let their friends go out with boys they like looking”—she turned to me and waved her hand in the air, gesturing wildly at me—“like that.”

  I glanced down at my Merv’s uniform. “I just got off work. Besides, I had planned on changing.”

  Evan was right, Chloe was mean, but it wasn’t the kind of mean that was born out of malice. At least not with me. Since we’d become friends, she’d been on a mission to improve my life. If it wasn’t for her, I never would have had the courage to speak to Evan, let alone go out with him and his friends.

  I owed her a lot.

  But really, did I need a makeover?

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said as she handed me a tank dress with a silky polka-dot skirt.

  “What?”

  “You’re thinking I’m thinking you need a makeover if you’re to impress Evan.”

  I blanched. That was exactly what I’d been thinking. Or at least, something like that.

  “But I’m not doing this for Evan,” she said.

  “You’re not?”

  “No, silly.” She laid her hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “I’m doing this for you. I don’t think you need a makeover, but you keep telling
me how you’re beneath Evan, so I figure the better you feel about your appearance, the better you’ll feel in your own skin.”

  I hung my head and let out a strangled laugh. “I’m not sure I could ever feel comfortable in my own skin.”

  Chloe sighed and led me to the bed. “Sit.” I did, and she went on. “I know what you went through must have been…” She trailed off, and when I glanced at her, her eyes were unfocused and watery. “Well”—she took a breath—“it must have been terrible.”

  She said it with such conviction, it was almost as if she knew everything I’d gone through and just how bad it’d been. As if she understood every broken part of me and didn’t think less of me because of it.

  But then she blinked and asked quietly, “What was it like?”

  No one had ever expressly asked me that before. They’d asked me what had happened, and they wanted to know right down to the minute details. But they’d never asked what it was like. It was as if they wanted the experience pared down to a bulleted list without any of the emotion, as if they wanted the horrors that filled the spaces in between to be forgotten, never mentioned. Even my therapist skirted the conversation, focusing instead on the present, and how I was feeling now.

  “I don’t know,” I said, my voice raw. I cleared my throat. “It was… scary.”

  Chloe nodded and took my hand in hers. Hers was warm and strong. Chloe always came off small and harmless and bubbly, like a chickadee chirping for no other reason than to chirp. But right now, the hardness in her eyes and the sure way she held herself, shoulders rigid, forearms tense, it was like she’d flipped a switch. I realized, suddenly, that there was nothing small about her, no matter what she looked like.

  “Then this is what you do,” she said. “You take that fear, you take those horrible experiences and you lay them at your feet, and you build yourself a throne on top of them. You survived. You lived. It makes you special, Lis. No one else in this godforsaken town is as strong as you.”

  I blushed, for a moment believing every word she said. That surviving did make me special. But then the horror of the experience rushed back in, and I remembered that I was nothing more than a victim who’d barely survived at all.

  “If you hate this town so much,” I said, “why do you stay?”

  Chloe lived alone in a small studio apartment. She’d once told me she’d moved to Trademarr when she was thirteen, and that her parents had homeschooled her. I’d never met them though, and as far as I could tell, they no longer lived here.

  If I had the resources to leave Trademarr, I would in a heartbeat. In fact, I dreamed about it, and sometimes it was the only thing keeping me going. I wasn’t sure about my plans after high school—I still had one more year to complete before graduating—but if I was able to go to college, then I was going as far away as I could.

  When I was young, my mother had always talked about moving to California. To the land of permanent summer, she’d called it, and sometimes, in my heart of hearts, I entertained the thought of escaping there, too.

  Chloe stood up, still considering my question, and returned to the closet, giving me her back. “Let’s just say I have a lot of history here and leaving it has been harder than I thought it’d be.”

  “Oh.”

  When she turned again, all traces of her earlier hardness had disappeared, replaced with her wide smile and glittering blue eyes. “Look at this! I forgot I had it. You should wear it.”

  She handed me a silky peach-colored dress. I was fairer skinned than Chloe, like bleached sand. The dress would disappear on me.

  “That’s the point,” Chloe said when I mentioned it. “It’ll look like you’re naked without actually showing anything.”

  I frowned. “I’m not sure that’s what I want.”

  She screwed up her mouth as she thought. “Okay, fine, then how about the dress with the polka dots?”

  I grabbed it from the bed. “I do like this one.”

  “Good.” Chloe set her hands on my shoulders and steered me toward the bathroom. “Now hurry. Evan said he’d be here to pick us up in less than twenty minutes.”

  My stomach thrilled at the idea of spending the night, outside of Merv’s, with Evan. Twenty minutes seemed like an eternity, and like no time at all.

  7

  NICK

  I THREW A FEW T-SHIRTS IN MY BAG AND went back to the closet for a pair of jeans.

  “Let us come with you,” Sam said.

  I ignored him and grabbed the jeans from the floor of the closet, then tore a flannel from a hanger.

  “Nick,” Anna said. “Stop for a second and talk to us.”

  Cas dropped onto my bed, even though his was right across the room. Of course, it was hard to sit on his bed when it was piled so high with shit; you’d need a fucking shovel to clean it off.

  I hated sharing a room with him. I needed to get out of this place. I needed to go. It’d been over twenty-four hours since I’d had the flashback where the girl had called me Gabriel, and it’d taken Anna and me over fourteen of those hours to find the information I needed in my files.

  Now I had the name of a town—Trademarr, Illinois—and I wasn’t going to sit around any longer. There was only five or so hours of driving between me and the answers I needed.

  “I don’t want you guys coming,” I said, and stuffed a few more things in the bag before zipping it up.

  “He’s secretly running off to join the circus,” Cas said. He propped himself against the headboard of my bed. “What’s your act going to be, Nicky? Oh, wait, I got a good one. The Surly Man. You’ll scowl the crowd to death.”

  Anna crossed her arms. “Stop it, Cas.”

  “What?” Cas said. “I’m being serious.”

  “You’re never serious,” she replied.

  “Am, too.”

  “Out,” Sam said to Cas. Cas groaned, but didn’t argue. He was obedient like a dog.

  Sam stared at Anna for a second, and she caught on. “Me, too?” she said. Sam didn’t answer the question, which was answer enough.

  Anna paused for a beat, as if she meant to challenge him, but finally gave in. “I’ll be downstairs if you need me.” She closed the door behind her when she left.

  “I don’t want a lecture,” I said to Sam.

  “I didn’t plan on giving one.”

  He crossed the room, his boots thudding heavy on the floor before he sat on the edge of my bed. He balanced his elbows on his knees and folded his hands together as he looked over at me. His right eye was circled in deep red and purple from the punch I’d caught him with yesterday. I was still feeling the ache of the fight in my ribs.

  “What are they about?” he asked.

  “What are what about?”

  “Nick.” Sam gave me the look he always gave me when he knew I was being a dumbass on purpose.

  He’d meant the flashbacks.

  “What, Anna didn’t tell you?”

  “She didn’t.”

  I sighed and leaned into the dresser behind me. “A girl.”

  “You know who she is?”

  I’d been thinking about her for days. No, weeks. But the flashbacks never gave me anything important.

  “I don’t even have a name,” I answered. “Nothing. She’s like a ghost.” I scrubbed at my face, closed my eyes, and saw her again. “I have to know if she’s real. Or alive.”

  Sam glanced at me, catching what I didn’t say. “She was part of a mission, wasn’t she?” I didn’t answer. He nodded, like he already knew anyway, like it all made perfect fucking sense. “What if you go there,” he said, “and you find out you killed her? Or what if you find out she’s nothing like you thought? You think filling in the blanks is somehow going to fix everything?”

  “Maybe.”

  “It won’t.”

  “This is starting to sound like a lecture.”

  He looked away and let out a half laugh. “You’re right.”

  What I didn’t tell him was that I needed to know if I
’d killed some innocent girl only because the Branch had told me to. I needed to know once and for all if I was just as bad as my dad. Maybe I’d been following in his footsteps all along, hurting people because it was in my blood.

  “If you won’t stay for me or Cas or even yourself,” Sam said, “stay for Anna. You have no idea what she’s like when you’re gone.”

  I frowned. “What’s she like?”

  He thought for a second. “Restless.”

  I pushed away from the dresser. “You never told me this before.”

  “That’s because you always came back.”

  I let out a grunt. “I’m not leaving for good, you know. Anna’s a big girl.”

  “Don’t be a dick. You can’t promise that. Not when you’re messing with things that trace back to the Branch.”

  What he meant was, You can’t promise you won’t be dead in a week.

  I pictured my body rotting in a shallow grave in the middle of nowhere, and Sam, Cas, and Anna waiting for me to come home, wondering if this was the time I wouldn’t. The guilt nearly changed my mind. Nearly.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  Sam cracked a knuckle and thought for a second. Finally, he stood up. “What’d you pack, then?”

  He wasn’t asking about the clothes.

  “A couple of knives. A Glock.”

  He took a few steps toward me as he reached behind him, beneath his T-shirt, and pulled out the Browning. He dropped out the clip, checked the bullets, and slammed it back into place. “Take it.” He handed it to me.

  “I got the Glock.”

  His expression never wavered. “Take it. You’re on your own, you’ll need more guns. Just in case.”

  I gave in. The Browning was his gun. If he was offering it to me, then it meant something important. “Thanks.”

  “If you need us, call. We’ll be there in a second.”

  “I will.” I wouldn’t.

  He clapped my shoulder. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “The shit I do can’t be half as stupid as the shit Cas does.”

  Sam laughed and shook his head as he turned away. “I’m not going to reply to that.”