by B. F. Simone
As soon as Allison saw her she scowled. She opened her locker and put her books away, all the while acting as if Katie wasn’t there.
“I have your cellphone,” Katie said.
The locker slammed. “You had my phone this whole time?”
“No—I.”
“Unfreakingbelievable.” Allison grabbed it from her.
“I didn’t have it. You left it—forget it.” Katie turned to walk away.
Allison stopped her. “What’s been up with you?” Allison looked a little sheepish, like maybe she was talking about the weather and not worried.
Katie almost lied. But when she opened her mouth, the truth poured out instead. “My best-friend hates me. Tristan told me that he hates me. My dad and Lucinda won’t talk to me. Traci thinks I’m a failure, I can’t see most of the time, I’m tired. I think I might puke again—for the third time today. I have daymares and nightmares without even closing my eyes. And I think the ice cream man is my father.”
Allison stared at her. “Wait. Have you gone to the hospital—Larry? You think Larry is your dad?”
“No hospital. Lucinda says it’s withdrawals. And yeah, Larry. He all but told me just now. My father is the ice cream man. I think I might puke again.”
She did and Allison waited outside of the bathroom stall.
“So before we attack that beast of a reveal, tell me what you’re withdrawing from?”
Allison’s voice was dangerous.
“I’m not on drugs. Is there anyone else in here?”
Allison’s footsteps clicked up and down the bathroom. “No.”
Katie opened the stall and splashed her face with water. “Blood.”
Allison nodded. “You’ve—how long? What’s it like.”
“First time was the last time as far as I’m concerned. It taste like rot and—” Katie couldn’t continue. She couldn’t tell her about Tristan. She could never tell anyone. “It’s been a rough few weeks.” Katie looked at Allison through the mirror avoiding her own face. She had adopted a grayish look about her and tried her best to pretend she was still okay. Still herself. “How about you?”
“Me what?” Allison cocked her head to the side. Was Katie that bad of a friend that Allison didn’t know she was asking, ‘how are you.’ Was that such a foreign concept to Allison? Katie’s stomach tightened.
“How are you handling the—breakup and stuff?” Katie wanted to ask about the divorce but maybe she wasn’t considered privileged enough to bring it up. Allison was keeping her distance and looking a bit nonchalant.
“Oh. Adam and I are talking again. Turned out he thought I stopped liking him because I was snapping at him all the time. I was just mad about my parent’s divorce. If I’d had just told him we could have avoided it all. I probably could have talked to him about it. His parents are divorced too. It’s really not that big of a deal. I mean it’s not like they were the perfect couple or anything. To be honest, I’m kind of glad my dad is moving out. Anyway—”
Katie nodded.
Allison nodded.
“Sorry,” they both said at the same time.
They were never good at making up from fights. They would usually pretend like the fight never happened and move on.
Allison took a deep breath. “So Larry. How—creepy.”
“Tell me about it.”
They were out of the bathroom and walking downtown, making sure to avoid the ice cream shop. Allison brought up good points: it made the free ice cream less-creepy; it was cool to have a vampire dad; at least he was in the picture; and he never specifically said it, so she could be jumping to conclusions, though it’s highly unlikely.
They also agreed on the faults: it was still one-hundred percent creepy that he owned an ice cream shop; her mother left him for a reason; and worse—what he did to Tristan. How could he neglect his best friend’s kid, or any kid for that matter?
Their conversation shifted to Tristan and Katie told Allison about the last time she saw him.
“Wow,” was all Allison muttered. Katie had hoped Allison would tell her something uplifting and reassuring. All she did was confirm Katie’s worries.
“He’ll never forgive me. I know he won’t. I told him everything I said because I knew it would hurt him. Instead—I think I broke him.” Katie sniffed back a few tears.
Allison rubbed her back as they sat down on a park bench in Findley Park. The park where Tristan and Katie spent the night. Now that she thought about it, he probably did put his shirt over her. It was something he’d do but never take credit for.
“He doesn’t hate you. He’s Tristan. He’s in love with you. I’ve never seen him light up for anyone else like he does for you. You’re the only person who ever got him to try food. Everyday, during lunch, he’d taste something because you asked him to. He’s always telling Lucinda you don’t like tomatoes on your sandwiches. If he’s not sitting next to you then he’s looking for you, because he acts like he needs you to breathe.”
Allison sighed. “To be honest, I hated him for a long time. He stole you from me. We used to be that close. About everything. Then I realized he didn’t steal you, he needed you. He still does. If you’re his friend—if you love him—you’ll be there for him.”
Deep down, Katie knew it was true. She should be there for him, no matter what. But How could she when his hate ran so deep? “You weren’t there, Allison. He hates me. To his core.”
“He hates that you’re a selfish-ass. That you don’t see how much you mean to him. Anybody would hate that. You hated it when he was indifferent toward you, didn’t you? When he started treating you like you guys were just friends.”
“But—”
“It’s the same thing, Kay.”
Allison was right. Katie always wanted him to chase her and deliver grand romantic gestures. He’d been chasing her all along. Chasing her, and saving her, and loving her.
She was a monster.
When Katie got home, she dropped her bags in the kitchen and went straight to the refrigerator. Her dad wasn’t home to hold her hair back and talk her through it. It was her decision and so she had to do it alone.
She pulled down a glass and filled it to the brim with blood. The smell alone almost sent her overboard. There was no going back. If his life was tied to hers, she could at least endure his nightmares with him.
Tristan told her once that drinking never gets better. He failed to mention that each time feels violent and worse. She did it though, and just as she suspected, she was back in the darkness. The darkness where he’d lost his heart.
She spent a week avoiding Larry, but she couldn’t run away from that too. She sucked it up, Saturday morning, and went to his shop. When she saw the sign—Kat’s ice cream—she wanted to gag. The whole time—it had been there the whole time.
Larry looked relieved when she walked in. Katie had rehearsed what she’d say. She’d try to make it as nonchalant and matter-of-fact as possible, but Larry never gave her the chance.
He locked the door, switched the sign, and started off into another story. This time about his travels around the world, and what it was like to see a Shakespeare play on stage for the first time. He told her what it was like coming to America and how it was a different kind of wild than he had ever seen before in his life. And how he had started to question his point in life when he was in Germany.
Katie asked him if he had ever tried to use his gift of healing to help people, and he laughed saying she was exactly like her mother. They sat in silence after that and he pretended he didn’t see her incredibly embarrassing ‘I’m about to freakout’ face.
After a while, he told her that his gift was just as much of a curse.
“I call it healing, but it is really a gift of life and death. I tried when I was young, but quickly realized that I didn’t know whether the person I put my hands on would heal or die. I started only using it when I knew that the person would die whether I intervened or not.”
“Well that’s a
little better,” Katie said, thinking of the lives he could save.
“There is a catch, My Dear Katalina,” Katie cringed. He’d never called her Katalina before. Yet, it sounded too natural. She hoped that wasn’t what he called her mother, but there was no use lying to herself. “The more I heal, the more I die.”
Katie looked away from the window and at him. “What?”
“I didn’t know it until the time I’d healed your mother. I had started coughing up blood and my heart slowed down.”
He shifted in his chair when he’d realized she was intentionally looking away. Why couldn’t he just say, ‘I’m your father’ and be done with it? On the other hand she could say something too, but—
“You know, your mother and—I…”
Pandora’s box needed a padlock. “So what happened to her?” Katie said. She was just as much a coward as he was. Maybe that’s where she got it from? Ugh.
“We were in New York, it was a cold winter that year. She was attacked by werewolves. Ten of them. I did everything to save her. She wasn’t completely happy with the results, but I saved her life. It left me weak and near dead, but your mother was was on deaths door step. Energy is neither created nor destroyed. Do you know what that is?”
“Energy conservation.” And one point goes to Traci.
“When I use my gift, it has to come from somewhere. And it took me a long time to realize that it comes from myself. I give a piece of my life to heal another. And other times, whether I want to or not, I take life from another. That is why mine is a curse.”
“Tristan said his dad felt the same way about his strength. Tristan doesn’t though.” Katie said it, but Larry raised his eyebrow to confirm it. Maybe his gift had passed down to her? If she was his daughter….
Neither of them touched that.
“How is Tristan?” Larry asked.
Katie hesitated. “I don’t know. He’s stopped talking to me.
“I see.”
“I can’t make him hear me either.” She’d tried that. Maybe he was too drunk to hear her.
“If Tristan doesn’t want to hear you, there is nothing you can do. Except apologize for whatever it is he’s sore about.”
Katie sighed. What if she wasn’t brave enough to apologize? What if she never saw him again. “What if one of us died the other would feel it right? What does eliminated mean? I mean—is it true?”
Lawrence frowned and nodded. His eyes drifted out the window.
“What if we never talk or see each other again. Does the bond go away?”
“No,” after a moment Lawrence added, “you are a good person. Good people are always forgiven.”
“Somethings are unforgivable,” she said, looking down at the table.
“Would you like to hear another story?”
Katie smiled. Larry was weird.
“I used to be the leader of a pure blood brotherhood in Europe. I was charismatic, I had common sense, and when it counted, I was kind. I was all those things to everyone except my real brother.”
Katie never picked Larry for someone with siblings.
“My brother was born ten years after me. He didn’t have an easy life. My father refused him because he was halfborn, a product of his kitchen whore. He threw Eshmael out to die. I took him to his mother, our turkish kitchen slave, and she named him and raised him. My father was furious. He made us take the Keepers Vow as a punishment.”
“Why?” Why was his father crazy.
“Because—my father was a demon in a mans body. I’m no better. When I think about my brother, Eshmael, now I wonder if I should have left him to die—don’t look at me that way. In a way, Eshmael and I are the same. We both hated our father, and we both don’t want to be anything like him. The problem is, you can’t escape the demons your parents pass on to you.”
“You can help who you are,” Katie said, not believing Larry. She was trying to change herself now. She wanted to be a better person. Not someone who was too selfish to see when her friends needed her. “Anyone can change.”
“Perhaps, but you can’t help what you believe to be right and wrong. When we were still boys, I used to be ashamed of Eshmael. He called that slave woman his mother, he was a brat, and he even had a slave name. He used to follow me and Ivan around playing tricks and making my life hell.”
“Isn’t that what all younger siblings do?” she said.
“Eshmael spent his life trying to kill me. We were hardly siblings. He always failed because I was smarter and stronger than him, and because I could heal myself. I’d always rub it in his face that he was nothing and I knew I was wrong for it. —I take that back, Ivan always told me I was wrong for it. Sometimes, Eshmael would hurt himself in one of his own traps and I’d heal him—not because I loved him, but because I wanted him to see how much more powerful I was compared to him. I was as bad as our father was to him. The only good thing I did for him was kill our father.” Larry sounded regretful, but of what, Katie wasn’t sure. Every time he said his brother’s name distain followed.
He continued. “When Eshmael was still fifteen, he saw our father rape and kill his mother. She was the only person he ever loved. I heard her screaming and when I went, Eshmael was unconscious on the floor and my father had just killed her.”
“Why? Why would he do that?”
Larry looked deep in her eyes. “Because he could. Maybe he saw Eshmael laughing with her, maybe he saw how she loved him. It didn’t take much for him to end a life, he spent most of his life in the shadow.
I killed him then, with my bare hands. I didn’t understand why he had to pick her. The only thing Eshmael had in the world, there were plenty of women throwing themselves at him everyday, yet he had to take the one who didn’t belong to him. When he was dead I told myself I did it because of a prophecy—but I really killed him because I thought it would rid us of his evil,” he said more to himself than to her.
“I was wrong. Eshmael became more of a devil, and I—who should have shown him the right path—let him make his own of death and destruction. I never reached out to him like a brother should have. Though we came from the same father, I had a friend to keep me from a life of abhorrence. Ivan forced me to live an honest life. I should have done the same for Eshmael—we were flesh and blood brothers, yet I casted him aside like he were a peasant—I was a fool. I was envious.”
Larry didn’t look at Katie and she felt his shame. “Envious of what?” It seemed to her that there was nothing to envy Eshmael for.
“Because a brother always wants what the other has. I had power and I never wanted him to be able to take that from me. He had a mother who loved him….”
“What happened to him?”
“He lives to destroy me.”
“He’s trying to kill you? That’s a bit…much.”
“No. He doesn’t want to kill me. Just everything I love. Everything that brings me happiness. It’s my job to forgive him and show him that it’s possible. That even now he can also forgive me.”
“If he keeps trying to kill everything you love, I think you guys are past forgiveness.” Eshmael was dangerous. People like that were labeled as sociopathic today. Didn’t Larry know that?
“That is my retribution, Katalina. At least my father cast him out to die, I saved him and showed him a life full of hate and inhospitality. In a way, that makes me more of a demon than my father. If I can hope for forgiveness from my brother, you can hope for forgiveness from Tristan.”
The sun blinded Katie as it settled just above the window. A few rays slipped directly into the shop. “Do you like to paint?”
Caught off guard Katie shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve never really tried.”
“How about tomorrow we go to a studio. It’s next door.”
Katie agreed, but she felt a little guilty. Like she was cheating on her dad with her maybe real dad—who wasn’t exactly her dad, but someone who knocked up her mom. Maybe.
Painting was fun. They did it often. It helped
to talk to Larry. Slowly she’d tell him about how hard it was sometimes to see things Tristan saw, but she never went into detail and he never asked her to. He’d tell her to try painting the good things she saw. And sometimes she did. She had never realized it before, but sometimes Tristan did flood her with good memories. They just seemed like nightmares because they’d always sent him drinking. Especially the ones of her.
“What is that?” Larry asked once.
Pointing at a yellow-gold blob, Katie had replied, “a honeypot.”
She was becoming numb though. As numb as he was.
The only thing that brought a little ease to her numbness was painting with Larry. She let out all her anxieties into bad sunsets, and lopsided oceans. She wasn’t good at it, but there was something about blending colors that made her less numb on the inside.
“You’ve forgotten to drink haven’t you?” Larry asked signing the bottom of his painting of a landscape with a castle.
“Are you painting that from memory too?” Katie answered. Before he had painted a picture of a boy that looked just like him, with gray eyes, mud colored hair, a look of contempt sitting on his face. He told her it was Eshmael when he was fifteen.
“Yes. It was where I stayed in Germany. Where I met your mother. Why aren’t you drinking?”
“You always drop ‘mom bombs’ and never stay for the fallout,” she half-chuckled.
“What are mom bombs?” he said, watching her and telling her to add shadow to a tree that was really an accidental blotch. He was using his father tone again, but she had grown used to it. He did that without knowing it.
“You just mention my mom but you never talk about her. Like how you knew her.”
“You know. You’re really not so good at painting,” he said, shaking his head. A laugh caught in her throat. “I met her in Germany.”
Katie put another black glob on the canvas. Careful to pretend she wasn’t paying attention so he’d talk freely.