The Sway

by Amy Patrick

  “No. I definitely don’t want to do it. I just—I can’t say no to him. It’s what he wants... and I owe him.”

  His face screws up into a comical scowl. “You don’t owe him. He’s your dad. What—you do every single thing he wants you to do all the time? You’re going to have to turn in your teenage rebellion card, young lady.”

  I laugh. “No, I mean, well yes, I guess I kind of do what he says all the time. You know I’m adopted. And... I guess I appreciate that he took me in when most people wouldn’t have. And he probably does know what’s best for me. I mean, he’s practically running the country, right? He’s pretty smart.”

  “Yeah, but big difference between making laws for the masses and planning someone else’s future. For what it’s worth, it’s your life, and I think you should do what you want to with it.”

  If he’s this impassioned about the modeling thing, what would he say about the arranged marriage? I’ll never know because I’m certainly not going to tell him about that mortifying turn of events. In fact, a change of subject is in order.

  “What would you do if you could do anything?” I ask. He’s registered for fall classes at a nearby junior college. He told me he’ll live at home with his mom and keep working to pay for tuition.

  He rocks the chair back then lets the legs fall to the floor again. “Anything? Easy—I’d play for the Braves. But since I struck out pretty much every time I ever got up to the plate in Little League, I’d say that’s out for me.” He chuckles.

  Then his smile falls and he rests his chin atop his folded hands on the chair back. “Honestly, I’d get away from here—go to a good school, you know? Somewhere maybe up north or out west, somewhere nobody knows me or where I came from. And I’d work my ass off to be the top of my class and graduate in three years and get an awesome tech job—maybe Silicon Valley or something like that, make a fortune, run for President. Along the way, buy a cool car, a house or two.”

  The longing in his voice makes my chest tighten. “Why don’t you do that?”

  “You know why. Hey—your turn. What would you do?”

  “If I could do anything?” My heart flutters at the idea of saying it aloud. But what’s the harm? Pappa can’t hear me here. I’m ninety-nine-point-eight percent sure Carter won’t laugh at me. “I’d get away, too, go to art school, sell my paintings, buy a cool car and a house or two.”

  He laughs. “You already have a cool car and a house or two. But seriously, why don’t you do that? I’d kill to have your choices.”

  I shake off his words. “Just because I have money, that doesn’t mean I have choices. My dad is the one with all the money. And he makes all the choices. He doesn’t like my painting. He says it makes me a recluse, and it’s never going to go anywhere. He wants me to make a name for myself, like he did.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t buy it. A girl like you—I think you can do anything—and you don’t need anyone. I mean, if money for art school is the issue, you could do both—model and make your dad happy, then take the money you earn and pay for tuition.” He nods toward my bare legs. “That’s what I’d do if I had stems like yours.”

  I gasp and swat at him, and he jumps back out of his chair, striking a cheesy modeling pose. “And those cheekbones.” Another pose. “And pouty pink lips.” Pose. “And a booty like—”

  He lets out a cackling laugh, dodging as I leap out of my chair and go after him with a loaded paintbrush.

  “Shut up, you idiot!”

  Running toward the door and throwing it open, Carter whips around and backs into the hallway, facing me with his hands up in the surrender pose and laughter still in his eyes. “I believe that’s an unauthorized use of school supplies. I gotta get to my job. See you after break, Tink. Have fun in Never Never Land.”

  He spins around and saunters down the hallway, loudly singing “You Can Fly.”

  Chapter Five

  Wipe Out

  I place the painting on an easel in my home studio, stepping back to survey the finished picture. It was probably stupid to carry it home before it fully dried, but I didn’t want to leave it at school over break.

  As Mrs. White said, it’s probably my best work so far, and honestly, part of me wants Pappa to see it. Maybe he’ll look it over and say, “You know, I can see it now—you’re not wasting your time—you are meant to be an artist after all.”

  Right. And maybe the Hemsworth brothers are human beings and not Elven. Ha.

  Ah—you’re home. Why were you late?

  Pappa’s question makes me jump. He entered the studio without me hearing him.

  I spin around to face him. “Just wrapping things up before spring break.” Stepping to the side so the painting is no longer obscured by my body, I gesture to it. “I was finishing my latest piece.”

  He glances at it. “The meadow near the lake. Yes, well, it looks like it, I guess.” Then he turns and heads for the door. “Don’t waste too much more time in here. You need to pack—you have the early flight out tomorrow.” And he leaves.

  Hope drains from my chest like air leaking from a beach ball with the plug pulled out. Slowly I turn to face the painting again. In the afternoon light coming through the wall of windows, the colors appear even more vibrant than they did in the art room at school. The grasses seem to dance with their own energy, and I can practically smell the breeze across the meadow, hear the tiny insects moving among the spring flowers that dot the landscape.

  I suppose it does “look like” the meadow by the lake near our home. Something any cheap camera could capture.

  Crossing the room to the supply closet, I lift a can of white paint and a roller tray and carry it across the room. I pry off the lid and pour it, filling the well of the tray. Then I go back to the closet and find the tool I need. A roller brush.

  As I dip the roller into the tray and rock it back and forth, a tear plops into the paint, raising a tiny splash. Lifting the brush, I roll it across the center of the canvas. Vertically. Horizontally. Diagonal slashes back and forth, up and down, until the meadow scene has disappeared entirely behind a wall of blank visual silence.

  Some masterpiece.

  Chapter Six

  Questions

  They look so young. My mom. My dad. Though I know they would have appeared no different today, I still smile at the youthful images of my parents, the photos five years old now, and imagine them looking more mature, like the parents of kids at my school, like Mrs. White.

  I touch my mom’s image, my throat tightening with a familiar ache. She was beautiful. Well, all Elven women I suppose are technically beautiful, but to me she was especially so. My platinum hair came from her. She wore hers in its natural curls while I usually opt to straighten mine to better fit in with my human classmates. Her bright blue eyes smile at me as if to say I approve of you. I love you just as you are.

  My dad was tall, of course. He seemed like an oak tree to me back then. Now, I guess I’d be only a few inches shorter than him. His loose chocolate brown curls frame his smiling face in this photo taken out by our pool in California. Carter would probably have been impressed with that house, too, if he could’ve ever seen it.

  I haven’t told him who my parents were—he might recognize their names from the oldies radio station and start asking questions. Questions are bad.

  Anyway, I took Pappa’s last name—his human one—when he adopted me shortly after their deaths. He was the head of the Council at the time, third in line to the throne, after Nox’s father and mine. Obviously, he’s a politician not a musician, but he knew my mom and dad well, just as he was close to Nox’s parents, who died with them in the plane crash.

  Sifting through the pile, I come up with a photo of Nox and me. We look about eleven in this one, maybe twelve. He towers over me, though we were the same age. His black hair shines in the bright sunlight as he grins and makes bunny ears over my head for the camera.

  I was so mad at him after the photo was taken, and I turned around to d
iscover his split fingers in the air behind me. I remember wanting that photo to be perfect, having just come to the realization of how much I liked him like that. I wanted a memento to keep with me, to look at in between our family get-togethers.

  We lived on different sides of L.A., so we didn’t attend the same school, and sometimes it would be weeks in between visits. I remember toward the end... before the crash... thinking I’d just die of longing before the next time I saw him. It had probably been only a couple of weeks. But now—now I’ve gone for more than five years without seeing him. And I’m still alive. At least on the outside.

  Tears well up inside my eyelids and prick at my nose. I drop the photo back into the box, fishing out another one of our two families together. It’s still hard to believe all of them are gone—wiped out in one terrible moment on a sunny Southern California day.

  Studying my own tiny, smiling face in the photo makes me unspeakably sad—that little tow-headed girl, so carefree—has no idea her life is about to change forever. Because of all the people in that happy photo, she will be the only one to survive.

  I scoop up the rest of the photos from my bedspread and reach for the tissue box on my bedside table. At the sound of a throat clearing, I startle and twist toward the doorway.

  “I’ve come to say goodnight.” Pappa steps into the room and comes to my bedside. “I thought maybe you were up here reading, but now I see... are you all right? You’re crying.”

  I swipe at my eyes and blow my nose, shaking my head in a stupid denial. “No. I’m fine. I was just—I don’t want to forget what they looked like, you know?”

  “You miss them,” he says, sitting down beside me on the coverlet. “That’s natural. I’m sure no one feels it’s time to lose the ones they love, but it’s even harder for us, I think. It’s unnatural.”

  Accidents and violence are the only things that can end Elven lives. Human illnesses like cancer and heart disease and even flu don’t affect us. We age, but only to a certain point. At full maturity, Elves stop aging and stay the same in appearance and health and fitness for eternity. Pappa himself is more than two-hundred fifty years old, though he looks no older than thirty.

  “Can you tell me a story about them?”

  “Your parents?” Pappa shifts, looking uncomfortable, like he hates discussing death even more than I do, but he manages a small smile. “Well, I can tell you about the night you were born. Of course, you know your father was our leader and your mother our queen, so your birth was quite a big deal. A ballroom full of our people gathered at your parents’ home once the word went out that the blessed event was imminent.”

  He pauses, but seeing my smile and nodded encouragement, he goes on. “Even the human media got wind of it, since your parents were famous musicians, and there were cars lined up around the block outside the gates of the estate. Your mother was attended by our physicians up in her quarters, and the house was quite large.

  “But shortly before midnight, even over the music and noise of the crowd, we all heard your voice as you came into the world. You were so loud, it was as if you were in the ballroom with us. One by one, people started laughing. Someone next to me turned and said, ‘That’s some set of lungs. Another singer, for sure.’” Now Pappa laughs.

  I give him a smile, like I know I’m supposed to, but I can’t share his amusement. The story leaves me even more melancholy than before. I’m not a singer like my parents, much to Pappa’s disappointment.

  Was I a disappointment to them as well? I have vague memories of my mother praising my drawings and paintings and of my father hanging my artwork in his office, but I suppose all parents do that sort of thing.

  Still, I never doubted their love for me. I belonged to them. I was part of a real family. And I had a true friend in Nox. The stupid engine failure took away everything and everyone I ever cared about. It seems impossible an event with such a devastating impact could be caused by something so stupid and random.

  “I want to know about the accident,” I say, almost before I realize I intend to ask about it. There’s always been a shroud of mystery surrounding the crash. Probably everyone decided it would be less painful for me not to know the details.

  If my parents had been the only ones to die that day, I have no doubt Nox’s parents, Gavin and Sylvie, would have taken me in. They would have raised me as their own child, as a sibling to Nox.

  But as I’d lost all of them, and Pappa was the highest ranking Council member and next in line to the throne, he was the one to raise me. And the one to give me the news.

  He shared only the bare minimum at the time—terrible accident. All dead. Loved you very much, you’ll always have their memories. Now you’re leaving this place and moving to Atlanta with me.

  “What do you want to know?” His tone is wary.

  But he shouldn’t be. I’m not that fragile pre-teen anymore. I’m nearly eighteen now. And if I’m old enough to marry, surely I’m old enough to know the details of the event that took my family from me. He doesn’t have to be so close-mouthed about it anymore.

  “Just... how it happened. How you learned of it. If they... if they survived for any amount of time afterward or—”

  “It was instantaneous,” he interrupts. “They didn’t suffer. We think there was probably some sort of explosion in the air, shortly after takeoff. Perhaps a bird got into one of the engines and caused a fire.”

  “I thought it was engine failure.”

  “Yes, well, it might have been—it wasn’t determined conclusively—as far as I know. I was grieving, too, you see. I had little patience for the details at the time, and since then, I’ve been so focused on you and my job.” He pats my hand, and his fingers feel cold. “It’s best to just leave it in the past.”

  “Why wasn’t I with them?” Something I’ve always wondered about, sometimes even wished for. Wouldn’t it have been better to die and go to Alfheim with my family than stay here and live without them? Certainly it would have been easier. “You said Nox was with them. Why not me?”

  “I’m not sure. Who can say? Actually, I thought you were with them until later on, when the parents of the girl you were spending the weekend with contacted my office, wondering what was to be done with you.”

  “Oh.” That’s a new detail. I always imagined Pappa immediately seeking me out when it happened, rushing to comfort the tragic orphaned girl. But the way he said it just now sounded more like I was a loose thread he’d found sticking out of an expensive scarf after getting it home from the store and cutting off the tags.

  “Of course then I rushed over and picked you up,” he adds hastily. “And you know the rest.”

  He begins to stand, but still hungry for details, I press further. “It must have been hard for you to become an instant parent to a hormonal tween girl, not to mention one going through post-traumatic stress.”

  He relaxes again. “I’ve always said it was my honor to bring you into my home. You know I never married and can’t have children of my own, so...”

  “Why not?” Another thing I’ve never dared to ask but always wondered about. I know not all Elven couples can have children. Those who do are usually able to have only one—on rare occasions, two. But if he never married and never... well, how would he know he couldn’t...

  Rising from the bed and once again wearing the detached expression that’s his usual demeanor, he answers, “That’s a personal matter. All you need to know is that you are my daughter. And my daughter needs to get some sleep. She’s got an early flight—and an exciting week ahead.”

  “Yes Pappa,” I say, reading his conversation’s over tone and sliding off the bed myself toward the bathroom adjoining my room. “See you in the morning.”

  I turn on the water, and as it warms, I allow myself a tiny bit of anticipation for the week ahead. In less than twenty-four hours I’ll be back in the city of my birth, the place I lived with my family and childhood friends. Maybe I’ll run into some people who knew them, people wh
o can tell me more stories about them.

  My spirit lifts like the steam beginning to fill the room. I might even be able to find out more about their accident and gain a greater sense of closure about it all.

  As I step into the shower, another exciting possibility hits me. One of the art schools Mrs. White recommended is in Los Angeles. I tip my head back into the hot stream and smile.

  I’ll take this trip and do what Pappa wants me to do. But while there, I might just do a little of what I want as well.

  Chapter Seven

  Roommate

  “I feel like we’re in a movie,” I tell Ava as our car passes the iconic Hollywood sign sprawled across a distant hill. “It seems like so long ago that I lived here, it’s hard to remember that was my life and not just something I dreamed.”

  Rolling down the window, I let in the warm, but somehow still crisp, air. So different from Georgia in every way. It feels right.

  “Welcome back, California Girl,” she says, her plump lips stretching over a wide, toothy grin.

  Following Ava’s instructions, our driver turns up the radio volume. Maroon Five’s high happy melody fits the vibe of the day perfectly. Now that I’m here, I’m even more hopeful about the trip. Being away from Pappa’s ever watchful presence has me feeling giddy and free, like a kid let loose at Six Flags for the day with a pocketful of money and no parental supervision.

  Ava has turned out to be a great travel companion. Only two years older than me, she’s far more experienced and navigated the huge Hartsfield International Airport with ease. Same story at LAX. She knows her way around the city as well, having worked and lived here since she was seventeen. The flight passed quickly as she filled me in on her modeling career and life in L.A.

  I turn away from the sun-drenched scenery to glance at her. “I can’t believe you have your own house.”

  “Well, I have roommates—I’d be too lonely living in that huge place alone.”