Above

by Leah Bobet

  No fear.

  And he backs off. He backs down. He puts his hands in his dirty shorts pockets and steps back and says all mild, “I don’t know what the hell you’re on about.” But his eyes are still sharp as rusty curling nails and there’s not a mild thing in the world I can see inside them.

  “You don’t know what I mean?” I ask, biting off every word, and she doesn’t move, doesn’t talk, and I wonder deep, deep down if Darren made the whole thing up; if he drew me away to change the locks, change the blinds, change everybody’s minds, and I’ve made a stupid and terrible mistake.

  The wings shudder. Ariel’s sunshine head, her big wide eyes peek up and over the edges where they meet.

  “It’s okay, Matthew,” she says, barely speaking, and I catch or imagine the tightening of his lips, the taking of a name.

  I look back at him, leaned against a wall now and his face rearranged so it says concern and calm, like nothing sharp or cruel could ever walk across its bones. “This the one that hurt you?” I ask her, soft and snapping, and watch him, not her, for the answer.

  The quiet stretches out. She stares at me and stares at him and don’t say a thing, and the quiet is as good as a picture.

  Yes.

  I walk right up to him. Close enough for breathing. “This him?”

  Silence.

  “This the one?”

  “Hey —” he says, and puts a hand on my chest and I smack it aside, collide an open-handed slap with wrist, arm, bone. And still she don’t talk, still she hides behind her flown-out wings and won’t say a word ’gainst him, a word of truth.

  “Tell me,” I go, pressing up close to him, getting in his face, pushing right back until he has to back off his wall and I can smell him, old sweat and sour shoving right up my nose. I’m gonna make him scared, gonna teach him scared, print every nightmare story of Safe on those bad blue eyes ’til they never again sleep for screaming. “Go on, tell me true. This the one that sent you down to Safe?”

  I can’t look. I can’t take my eyes away from his eyes, his fists. But I hear her give a whimper, like a Beast that’s gonna die. “Matthew —” she whispers. Sick, scared. Vulnerable.

  I throw the punch.

  The hit bursts like fire in my hand, a shudder up my good carving wrist, hurts all the way up to my shoulder and I do not care. The skin gives under my knuckle, dents all the way down to muscle and bone, and it’s good. It puts spit in my mouth that tastes like metal and blood.

  He yells, straightens up with a swear that tells me he is the one, he’s the one that broke my Ariel, broke her down made her Freak made her scared of sweet words or touching so I had to walk slow and careful, talk soft and always be patient and never just kiss her like I wanted to. Took away her want to be kissed.

  “Whitecoat,” I say, even though he’s no such thing, and bring down my arm again.

  There’s a rhythm to hitting. It’s got a rhythm like a Tale, and you match it to the screams your lover is screaming and the sounds you don’t hear from the one you hit, the way your breath rattles in your chest as you yell and yell the Tale of how it’s gonna be from now on. You broke her! is the Tale I tell. You broke her you broke her you broke her and my fists land down and down even though they’re skinny and not strong for fighting, not strong for keeping the shadows away from the ones I love, but strong enough now, hurt enough now to hit and hate and bring up the blood from his body.

  I broke her, he assents finally, when his body goes weak and down on the floor and his own fists don’t rise to fight no more. When he can’t talk to disagree.

  That’s right, I whisper, and shake his blood off my fists.

  I straighten up. My hands hurt. I burn and hurt shoulders to wrists.

  Ariel’s curled up in the corner by the apartment door, knees to chest to forehead to arms, and she’s shaking now, moving alive like shark-swim or bee-flight or other things that stay moving ’til they lie down whimpering to die. Alive, I think, with a strange and stupid relief, and just watch the lock of her wrists, the tight draw of her legs, the shudder of breath that’s trying to be quiet, trying to hide away from bad things, worse things, the very worst; roaring right past you with hurt on their minds.

  “I’m taking you home,” I say again, and scrub the Whitecoat’s blood off my knuckle, onto my knee.

  The wings fall out of her back, shrivel-clean, and whisper to the floor.

  I pick them up in one hand and tuck them under my arm. I don’t know where nobody’d look for them Above — the fat dumpsters, or buried underground — but we can’t leave them here. She looks up sharp when I take them, sharp and drawn and frightened, and there’s tears rolling out and down her face to stain her pants at the knees.

  I don’t think she’s ever looked at me like that before.

  “It’s all right,” I say, but I can’t make my voice soft like I should; I can’t unbend it from the rough and foul and screaming. Mad’s burning in my belly. The smoke comes out in every word.

  I go into the bathroom for a bit. Wash my hands clean of the blood and ripped-up skin before I hold one out for her to take or not take, lift her up off the floor so we can run, run, go. She takes it only the littlest bit, staring past me to his body lying crumpled-up and face-broke on the floor. I can’t even tell if there’s whimpers no more. I can’t tell if he’s breathing, if he’s going to ghosts.

  Can’t tell, and don’t care.

  The blinds hang white in the windows. Somewhere far away, a siren sounds.

  Oh, I realize, sudden, clear. Police. Wasn’t quiet enough, quick or quiet enough. Somebody must have heard him scream.

  “We gotta go now,” I tell her, and she doesn’t gather up no things, just slips out the door in front of me and walks silent as something shadow-possessed down the hall, down the stairs, with me out the back to the dumpsters.

  The sirens are getting closer. No time. Gotta go.

  I put a foot up on the ridged metal side of the dumpster. It smells like broiling garbage and blood and hate, but there’s no time to be picky now; no time to stay clean.

  I vault myself up and throw away her wings.

  We start walking, fast. It don’t matter where; we pick a direction and go, walk that street heads down, hands down, as three-no-four police cars rush past us, lights blaring, sound blaring hard and cruel.

  One foot before the other, I tell myself. Walk slow. Don’t run.

  Pass.

  The sun beats down harder outside, this time of morning. The smell of garbage and pigeons mingles into the air and slides over the concrete, and the muffin in my belly rises up touched with sour. I keep it down with eyes closed because it’s no good to waste food, especially not here, not with three-no-four police cars sniffing about behind us.

  When I open them she’s watching me careful, like something she can’t get the measure of. Wary, drawn. Like a Beast.

  “Won’t hurt you no more,” I say, short, clipped. We must be two blocks away now; not far enough, and I’m trying to reach for some love in me and not finding it, not finding anything but why did you run from me, why didn’t you wait for me? Burned and hollow. A burned-down house.

  Why did you run to him?

  “It wasn’t that bad,” she whispers, and presses a hand to the bruise rising on her red-marked cheek.

  I pull it down. I grab her wrist hard as the last crack of my bouncing shoes meeting Jimmy’s ribs and yank it away from her face, ignore the little squeak she gives and the buzz underneath it. The way she’s suddenly shadowed with wings. “Yes it IS!” I scream at her, suddenly tear-blind, throat still dry and screaming nonetheless, the world all washed in red. “It is that bad! He hit you! He broke you all up! How can you say it’s not that bad!”

  Her mouth moves open-shut and she doesn’t give one goddamned answer, got nothing to say for herself. It just makes me madder, every part of me aching through and burning mad, hotter and purer than anything I’ve ever felt.

  “How?” I shout, down in her face, b
reath on her cheek. “How could you let him do that? Why don’t you love yourself good?”

  She stares up at me, and there’s two bright spots in her cheeks under the bruises, under the hitting he did to her. I breathe hard for a second before I see it coming, see that it’s not being scared that’s made her face so hot and red. It’s worse.

  It’s being shamed.

  The wings spring out like a lit match. The wings spring tall and then she’s shrinking into them, going small and yellow-black, dead-eyed and dirtied and ready to run.

  “NO YOU DON’T!” I holler, and close my hands around her.

  If I thought there was burning inside me, I know I was sorely wrong when her stinger presses to my palm. The hurt blossoms like the bright sun in my hand, pain like nothing, pain like a brand to the throat, hot and sharp and unloving. I jerk my hand away just a little before I think and then clamp it shut, clamp it tight, before the burning comes again. It’s not letting her run I’m afraid of now, tears coming down, swearing words my papa would be shamed to hear me know. It’s closing my hands tight. Closing down on the pain and crushing her small and burning inside my palm.

  I count the stings, grit-teeth. Crying, standing still like dead things, like statues, much too close to three-no-four police cars. I count stings like they’re steps. “Ariel,” I whisper, whimper, moan. “I loved you good. I came for you and came and you didn’t wait —”

  It’s five. It’s six and seven and eight and nine and ten before the crawl and flutter of her moving in my hands slows down, before it rests on the bottom of my right palm like a mourning cry, and somewhere in the stupid pain that’s hazing the world all colors, I feel her stop hitting.

  I’m still holding on when she starts to grow.

  When she does I let go, finally can let go, catch on to her wrist and hold on tight as she goes long and soft and into a girl again. Don’t and can’t let go when her feet hit the ground and she pulls away even though my stung-up hand burns, burns so I want to cut it clean off at the wrist to make the hurting stop.

  “Don’t run from me,” I say hoarse, seeing my free hand gone red and swollen, the marks bright as bruises puckering up on my palm. I stare at it, suddenly scared, and bring it limp and burning toward my chest. “Please don’t run.”

  “Let go,” she whispers, still just as pale, eyes big and terrible and dark as cages.

  “Just don’t go,” I get out. The world’s moving dizzy. I can feel my heart go.

  “No,” she says faint, and I don’t know if it’s no she won’t or no, she will forever.

  “Swear,” I whisper, and her lips move, and she swears.

  Finally I let go. Finally I let go loose enough to see how tight my hand’s been holding, circling the place where the new bruise is.

  Where my hand went to make it.

  The red abandons me like a shadow burning down.

  “Ari,” I choke out after a moment, hands aching, heart aching, and fall down on my knees. “Oh no, shit, Ari, I’m sorry —”

  And she’s crying. She’s weeping full-on frightened tears, and it ain’t him she’s scared of.

  It’s me.

  She don’t talk to me all the way to Doctor Marybeth’s house.

  I don’t ask her to. I sit beside her on one bus, two, and don’t touch her hand or wrap my arms ’round her. I can’t touch her hair to give some reassurance or say I’m the same old quiet Matthew that brought her in, that held her when she was up all night screaming.

  There’s still tears on her face, and I can’t stop shivering.

  My hands are red and lumped and tight, and where they aren’t straight burning I can still feel the ache, ten little match heads lit bright and stabbed through me. I sit real still with them in my lap, touching nothing, and try hard to breathe.

  “Can you knock?” I ask when we get to the front door, subdued and my mouth scarce moving. My hands are big as Jack’s now, tight and red-shot. The dizzy comes every time I even look at them.

  She don’t look at me. She knocks on Doctor Marybeth’s door like she’s scared, like she’s little, like she’s Freak and don’t belong.

  “Not like that,” I say, soft, slow. “Three and two. Dum-dum-dum dum-dum.” It’s signal-knocking, the kind that Jack and Whisper might answer. The kind that they’ll know is friends.

  She makes the knock. Quiet, watching me with both her eyes and the set of her back, the set that’s Ariel ready to move. I count seconds and pray someone comes to the door before her patience breaks, before she runs away to somewhere I’m too burned to reach.

  And thank everything the door opens, and Jack looks out from behind it with eyes dark-circled and a hand on his metal bar.

  “Teller,” he says, surprised a little, and steps back fast to let us in.

  I kick the door shut behind us once we’re through, and Ariel runs right up the stairs and slaps her knee on the landing and keeps going. The door to Doctor Marybeth’s attic room slams a few seconds later. I lean back against the closed door and cover my eyes from the light. They sting. They ache.

  “What happened?” Jack says, cautious and soft, the kind of voice that knows it’s liable to step on a shadow-trap.

  I look up at him. He’s haggard and hazy to my hurting eyes.

  “Jack, I think I’m Killer,” I say, and limp to the sitting-room couch before I fall for good.

  They bandage up my hands while I sleep.

  I wake with the sun low down in the sky. Both hands are wrapped tight, white-gleam and padded-up in the orange light, stiff and sore and hard to move. There’s a plastic bag sealed with water between my palms, water that maybe once was ice, ’cause there’s a chill in my hands through the bandages that ain’t part of the thick-backed summer heat. I set the bag down on the table, let it list and take its shape, and though my hands hurt in ten prickle points like a deep bruise or heartbreak, they don’t burn no more.

  The water magnifies the sunset-light, brings up sharp the shape of something pointed and wicked-thin behind it: claw-metal and black and distorted wet white. I get the bag between two fingers, clumsy, and set it aside so I can look.

  It’s a dish topped with tweezers, old metal sharp-end ones, filled with band-aids and cotton swabs and the smell of medicine left out against the air. Sitting right on top of them all is a withered black stinger, bloody and sharp.

  I touch it and it flakes into nothing.

  ARIEL’S TALE II

  Ariel didn’t run. Or she did. But she meant to come back, before she got caught.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d done running, because her papa was big and broad and never smiling and seldom outdoors. Indoors he trod like a storm cloud grown heft and measure: groan and creak and silence on the loose floor tiles. Ariel stayed in her bedroom and learned to move heel-toe, one foot before the other, without making a sound.

  (I know this story. I’ve been told this story before, in the way Beak’s fingers rub together though it’s a warm day or Scar’s chin tilts down into the shadows. I can recite it to the word.)

  Maybe she had a mama and sisters. Maybe she had brothers too scared to stick up for her, or little enough to need their own sticking-up; little enough to shove into your best hiding-place when only the dark was safe. None of that’s what counts. What counts is that Ariel got big enough that she couldn’t hide herself from her papa no more.

  She curled up late nights around bruises and cursed her own stupid self for being anywhere to be seen. She made excuses to be out: out at school, out at jobs, out at things that meant going nowhere but straight to sleep when she set foot through her papa’s door.

  And it didn’t matter. She realized, one night (at fifteen, or sixteen, or seventeen years old) it would never matter. She couldn’t stay here and keep herself safe and whole.

  It came quick after that (or so they always tell me, faces hot and shamed). Her nerve had been slow and hard in bending, but when it broke it broke quick. She ran into the night and came to rest, huddled up knees-to-ch
est and arms-to-knees, forehead to them all, in a too-small kid’s park playhouse (or a washroom with chipped-paint stalls, or a bank-machine house still warm enough in November to not freeze by midnight). She thought of all the places she might run to. Found nothing.

  Found night coming on, and cold.

  So Ariel lighted in a place that was only just good enough. She ended up with Jimmy.

  Jimmy was big and broad; all the better for keeping her papa away. Jimmy was seldom smiling; well, it mattered more when he smiled just for her. And Jimmy had a place down in the city, lock and key secure between her and the world, and nobody looking in or telling where she’d gone.

  This is the way the Tale goes, that it’s good for a while. That there’s someone to hold you at dusk and a quiet space to stay, someone to careful, careful drag you back from the nightmares and glittering cut-sharp edges of your smashed-up broken nerve.

  It’s good short of forever.

  It gets real bad. It gets bad in ways you know on your skin, and this time you picked it. You didn’t look close enough, so this time it’s just you to blame. So it’s bag on back and shoes in hand to tiptoe late-night out the door, and no time for somewhere to run to; no time to wait for the real thing. There’s only time to go.

  There’s running and running ’til you can’t outrun your skin.

  But here’s the problem, here’s the knot:

  My Ariel came to me from her papa’s house, then Jimmy’s house, then Bea’s, and in none of those places could she get a Whitecoat bracelet on her wrist.

  (She squeezed her eyes tight shut when I picked up the knife. “S’okay,” I whispered, took her wrist; laid it palm up, straight and fine, and sliced the white plastic away. “See?” I told her. “We won’t hurt you. I won’t hurt you.”)

  This is all guessing. It’s the ends of others’ Tales wrapped together; the kind you tell ’cause you wish it were true. Nothing.

  I made all this up.

  This is what I know. This is what I know for true: