Insidious

by Dawn Metcalf

  Joy smacked him in the stomach. Her brother doubled over, laughing. Her father grabbed the back of his son’s head and smeared his hair in all directions.

  “I love you,” he said roughly. “But you can be a real prick.”

  Stef swiped Dad’s hat and tossed it to Joy. Joy plunked it on her head and scooted backward as her father lunged after her. They played Keep Away briefly before Dad pulled out the big guns, squeezing his water bottle at them like a hose. Stef swore. Joy squealed. The three of them ended up soaked and muddy and laughing, and everything serious went back to being unsaid, but it was a quiet, comfortable, happy unsaid.

  The most important things had just been said.

  * * *

  Joy drove all the way home with her foot on the gas and her mind somewhere else entirely. She was sad to have the weekend come to an end, but grateful to get away from the creatures smiling down from the trees and the lingering glow of the memory of fiery eyes. She nestled in her family’s closeness even as Stef snored in the back.

  They came home in a tumble of travel bags, shucking off packs and shoes like dropping fruit, stumbling into bedrooms and clicking on TVs and laptops, scattering like projectiles heading in opposite directions. Joy went to the fridge. Stef slumped on the couch. Dad opened and closed dresser drawers. Joy made a discreet circuit, checking the wards. At least they were safe in the house. Dad called from the hall.

  “I promised to call Shelley as soon as we got back,” he said. “I’m taking a shower and heading over.”

  Panic squeaked Joy’s voice. “You just got home!”

  Dad’s head popped into the hall with a smile. “Home is where the heart is.”

  She went cold. I don’t have a heart. Do I have a home? Joy glanced anxiously around the kitchen, twisting her fingers in her shirt. It struck her that this would be home for another year or so and then...not. She would be eighteen and leaving, like Stef. What then?

  The shower splashed on.

  “What about you?” she asked the back of Stef’s head.

  “I’ll toss my stuff in the car when I feel like moving, and then I’m headed out.”

  “What? Already?”

  “Yeah.” He turned and looked at her. “Is there somewhere else I need to be?”

  Here it was. Say it. Say it! Tell him!

  Right now he was blissful, giddy, perfectly content. But he was leaving—leaving this all behind, leaving her behind. He’d reunited with Dmitri, and maybe it wouldn’t be so horrible an idea to be part of their world. Joy thought about the past year, what she had endured; she wished she could shield him from the bad parts and let him enjoy the good. Did he really have to know right now? Couldn’t she let him enjoy this not-knowing for a little while longer? Maybe he’d done the same for her, once, writing Keep strong! on a photograph instead of telling her about their mother’s affair. Maybe she understood his motives better now—he’d been trying to protect her. He was her brother, and he loved her. She was his sister, and she loved him.

  “No,” Joy said. “I guess not.”

  Stef turned back to the TV and clicked the remote, flipping channels. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back to harass you soon enough. Just don’t mope around here all day. It’s depressing.” He switched to the Weather Channel. “Why don’t you call Monica?”

  “Monica?”

  “Yeah, remember her? Your best friend?” he said. “Don’t you have things to do?”

  Joy thought about it. Stef was right—she had things to do, things she couldn’t put off any longer.

  “Yep,” she said. “You’re right.”

  “As always.”

  She leaned over the back of the couch and kissed him on top of his head. “Bye, Stef. I love you. Have a safe trip.”

  Her brother turned around, the television light reflecting off his glasses and the etched metal glyphs. His eyes were full of unsaid things.

  “You, too,” he said and turned back to the TV. “See you later.”

  Joy gathered what she needed from her room and grabbed her purse as the shower squeaked off, stopping to scribble a note to Dad. Going out hardly covered things, but I love you did. What else could she say? She pocketed her keys and paused at the door. This was it. This was when everything changed.

  “Dork!” Stef called from the couch.

  Joy laughed. “Dweeb!”

  She closed the door behind her, thinking that wasn’t the worst send-off in the world.

  * * *

  Monica approached Joy in polka-dot pumps, her eyebrows crinkled in that way that said you better not be messing with her because she was so not in the mood. Joy pushed the caramel latte across the table as a peace offering. She couldn’t help but smile, even though her insides were knotted up tight.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be sending Stef off right now?” Monica said. “Not that I’m complaining, but I thought you were calling to check in, not bug out.”

  “I just got here,” Joy said truthfully. “I needed to see you.”

  Monica took a delicate slurp of syrup and foam. “So you said.”

  “Yes, well, first of all—here.” Joy handed the letter opener back to Monica. She’d tried to clean every fleck of Graus Claude’s blood off of it, because wouldn’t that be something fun to explain? “This is yours. Thanks for letting me borrow it.”

  Monica took her knife back, her expression a question. “Sure,” she said slowly and tucked it into her purse.

  “Okay, second,” Joy said, holding her iced coffee in both hands, “I wanted to apologize for not telling you everything when you asked me to the first time. You’re the person I trust more than anyone and I didn’t—” Joy stumbled, and the sentence sat longer on her tongue than it should until Joy realized how true it was just like that. “I didn’t.”

  Looking chilly, Monica sat up straighter. “Okay.”

  “No,” Joy said. “Not okay. Not okay at all.” This was harder than she’d thought. All the planned lines she’d been practicing in her head snuffed out like smoke. She sipped cold caffeine through her straw. “Look, you are my best friend and I’ve been acting stupid and afraid and it’s not worth it—it’s not worth risking your trust, your friendship. For anything.” That sounded scary. It was scary. Joy rattled the ice in her cup. “Anyway, I came back to tell you.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes,” Joy said. “Everything. Starting now.”

  Monica blew gently across the coffee’s surface She took a sip and set the cup down on the table with a papery clunk.

  “Well,” she said finally. “It’s better than IM-ing.”

  Joy frowned. “What is?”

  “This is,” Monica said. “Are you gay?”

  Joy’s brain stalled. “What?” she stammered. “No. Uh. What?”

  Now Monica looked embarrassed. “You’re not gay?”

  Joy shook her head. “No.” She paused, confused. “Are you?”

  Monica snorted. “No.”

  The two girls looked at each other for a long moment and burst out laughing, cackling in a bizarre mix of snark and silliness, love and humor, and above all...friendship. It was what Joy needed most, and even though she had doubts, it was undoubtedly there. This was Monica, after all. What was she thinking? Joy wiped at her eyes with a napkin and tried to compose herself.

  “Then what’s with all the drama?” Monica asked, relieved. “Jeez, you had me wondering about it all the way here. I kept thinking—is she pregnant? Is she coming out? Has she been abducted by aliens from outer space?”

  “No,” Joy said. “None of those.” She handed Monica a plastic to-go top. “C’mon. Let’s take these on the road.”

  Outside was warm and sunny with a nice breeze that tossed Joy’s hair and barely moved Monica’s, combed straight and curled inward like chocola
te shavings on a cake. Walking helped bleed off some of Joy’s nervous energy, but Monica was still with her—that was a good sign.

  “So you know about my Great-Grandma Caroline,” Joy said.

  “Is this a Personal History lesson?” Monica asked.

  “No,” Joy said, taking another sip. “But I told you how much she freaked me out, right? Not her, but what happened to her.” Joy watched her own feet on the concrete. It was strange to feel how normal it was, but how unlike the touch of her toes in the earth. Is that why it took me so long to notice? Shoes? “I thought that I could end up locked away—like maybe crazy was in my genes.”

  Monica shrugged. “Is it?”

  “Sort of,” Joy said, wondering why the words hadn’t hurt—it wasn’t a lie, exactly, but she was scared to discover how close it must be to the truth. “There is something that she and I have in common, but it’s—” unbelievable, difficult, scary, insane, true “—weird. I know how you feel about your aunt Meredith, and I don’t want you feeling that way about me.” She dropped the dregs of iced coffee into a trash can and continued walking up a quiet side street. “So, can you just listen and not say anything until I’m done?” Joy felt herself tearing up; her precious Sight-filled tears. She’d paid off Vinh with only twelve drops—what would a total breakdown be worth? Joy checked to make sure Monica was still with her. “I really need you to believe me.”

  Monica drank her hot coffee, licked her lips and nodded. “Okay, shoot.”

  Joy let go. She let it all go.

  * * *

  “—and tonight, I’ll be formally presented to the Council,” Joy said through a parched and scratchy throat. She’d started talking about that night at the Carousel back in February and ended up all the way here. She should’ve kept her ice cubes. “And there are a lot of Folk who don’t like it—one of them, in particular—and he knows about you.” She looked at Monica. “He knows that you’re my best friend and what you mean to me, and I don’t want him coming anywhere near you.” They were almost at the old play-scape with the squeaky swings and the single, sun-bleached slide. “I needed you to know everything, because I don’t want anything to happen to you ever again.”

  The words funneled out of Joy like the last swirl of bathwater down the drain. She felt emptied and cold. The confession had wrung out all the tension inside her. No more stupid. No more lies. She wanted to lie down and rest. Her hiking boots and Monica’s polka-dot pumps together made the only sound, a harmony of footfalls.

  “That’s it?” Monica said as she finished her latte and chucked the empty cup into a bin. It was thick, rusty metal with a minimum of forty flies.

  Joy nodded, emotionally spent. She couldn’t look up, in case Monica had that look—the look that said that Joy was dangerous, unstable, not-to-be-trusted, and should be locked away for her own good behind thick, padded walls. Monica was a SADD leader and a peer model; she knew all about drugs, drinking, bulimia and self-delusions. She knew how to look for the signs. Would she see any of them in her? This was the moment Joy had feared her entire life.

  “And Mark is...Ink?” Monica said slowly. “This ‘Indelible Ink’?”

  “Yeah,” Joy said. “Ink is Ink. Mark is Ink.”

  “And this is real?” Joy tried to interpret how Monica said it, but it was hard to tell. Was she going to bolt? Was she quietly dialing 911? Was she careful not to make any sudden moves? Joy simply nodded. Monica kept walking. “And you’re not supposed to be telling me this, right? This is what you couldn’t promise to tell me before?”

  Throat tight, Joy nodded again. She missed the sound of her own heartbeat in her ears. The world was too quiet without the background rhythm that let her know that she was alive—she’d never noticed it before, and now it was gone.

  “I promised I’d only tell you the truth.”

  “But why wouldn’t you tell me before?” Monica said. “You wouldn’t tell me anything about what happened!” Was that frustration or fear, anger or hate? Joy couldn’t tell. “I was scared, and Mom was scared and you were acting weird and I didn’t know why!”

  “I didn’t want you to think I was crazy!” Joy said. “I didn’t want you to hate me—to think that I was a freak! That I was dangerous, delusional...” But that wasn’t it, not all of it. Joy felt her breath stutter. “I didn’t want you to know how badly I’d messed things up, that it was my fault you’d been hurt,” And the truth blossomed like a briar full of thorns. “I couldn’t take it if you left me, too!”

  Monica glared, her mouth a small o of disappointment.

  “Now you’re being stupid,” Monica said, eyes watery. “I thought we’d agreed, No Stupid.”

  “No Stupid,” Joy said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry.”

  “Come here,” Monica said and pulled Joy into a hug—not a stupid polite hug, but a real hug—the one reserved for family and loved ones and very best friends. Joy wondered what number Ink had given this hug. She squeezed Monica’s shoulders, surprised to be shaking; she’d forgotten what it was like to live without the fear of someone finding out, of someone deciding that she was insane—it bubbled out of her like laughter and crying, sounding something like “Thanks” and a lot like “I love you.” Joy held on to her friend for all she was worth—which was a heckuva lot.

  “You believe me?” she muttered over her friend’s shoulder that was damp under her chin.

  “I believe in you, even if I don’t quite get the rest of it,” Monica admitted as she patted Joy’s back and pulled away. “It’s a lot to take on faith.”

  “I know,” Joy said, sniffling. “And I can prove it, but it’s a one-way ticket. It’s your choice, but you can’t ever take it back.”

  Monica glanced at Joy’s purse as if it might hold a gun or a syringe. Joy took out the tiny plastic saline bottle and handed it over. Monica held it up in the sunlight, perhaps noticing that the scintillating liquid inside didn’t look normal, or maybe that was something that could be seen only with the Sight.

  “Is it a drug?” Monica asked, turning it over, watching the droplets hug the sides. “Some sort of hallucinogen?”

  “You read too many pamphlets,” Joy said. “It’s an elixir. It’s made from tears.”

  “Tears?” Monica said. “You mean like pH-balanced?”

  “Not exactly,” Joy said. “They are made from tears like mine. It’s an elixir that will give you the Sight.”

  Monica’s gaze shifted. “Permanently?”

  Joy shrugged. “As far as I know.”

  “I’d be able to see everything you see.” Monica said each word slowly. “This whole Twixt world full of magic, but I can never not-see it again, is that right?”

  “That’s right,” Joy said. “But it’s your choice. I just wanted you to know everything, to have every option available, in case something bad happens.”

  “To you?”

  “To either of us.”

  Monica splashed the liquid around. She couldn’t know how much that vial had cost Inq or the damage it had done once Aniseed realized what having a Scribe’s signatura could do. Joy didn’t know the consequences for giving a human the Sight, but since the Cabana Boys had all used it, she figured there must be a rule about it somewhere.

  “Does it hurt?” her friend asked.

  “No more than Visine,” Joy said. “And a lot less painful than a broadsword to the face.”

  Monica nodded. “Fine.”

  “Fine?”

  “Yeah,” Monica said. “I’m in. If I’ve already been smacked upside the head by something down the rabbit hole, I’d rather see it coming. I want to see it for myself.”

  Joy shivered halfway between excitement and terror—to drag Monica into the world of the Twixt was unthinkable, but to not be so alone, to share this thing together, was amazing. But to do so mig
ht risk them both. She hesitated, barely allowing herself that greedy, selfish hope.

  “Are you sure?” she said.

  “Honestly? Half of me thinks this’ll prove that you’re as crazy as you say you aren’t,” Monica said, which made Joy go cold, but then her friend winked. “The other half of me hopes that you’re right, and the world has just been pretending to be normal all this time.”

  Joy grinned and pointed to a nearby park bench. “Okay, then. Sit down.”

  “Now? You mean right now?”

  “Yeah,” Joy said. “I have to go soon, and I want to be sure you’re okay.”

  Monica sat down, tucked her skirt under her legs and put her purse primly to one side, crossing her feet at the ankles and straightening her short-sleeved shirt. She blinked a couple of times in anticipation as Joy walked behind the back of the bench. She popped the saline bottle top and took a deep breath. This was it.

  “Are you ready?” Joy asked.

  Monica leaned her head back, brushed her stiff hair across her forehead and stared straight up, eyes wide—the scar through her eyebrow pointed straight at Joy, an arrow to the heart that wasn’t there.

  “Hit me,” Monica said.

  Joy squeezed out a single drop, sparkling with color. It dangled before it fell and hit Monica’s eye in a peppery burst. Joy carefully dripped another droplet into her left eye and capped the bottle. Monica closed her eyes and leaned forward, pressing her knuckle gingerly under her lashes. She wore waterproof mascara.

  Monica didn’t say anything as she blinked, wide and owlish. Joy didn’t say anything as she held her breath.

  “Did it work?” Monica asked.

  Joy tapped her on the shoulder. “You tell me.”

  Monica glanced up and saw Ink standing on the path, looking both curious and shy. Without his glamour, he was timeless and otherworldly with his almost-human shape and his fathomless, all-black eyes. Monica frowned, trying to decide whether or not to believe what she was seeing. Joy sympathized. The first time she’d seen Ink, she’d thought he was a Goth kid with Halloween contacts.