Sleight: Book One of the AVRA-K

by Jennifer Sommersby

  Nothing else.

  Letter number 2 had yet another drawing, this one a different part of the face. Eyebrows and a smal mole on the left cheek. The phrase, “Ego te provoco.” Latin, folowed by its English translation,

  “I dare you,” written in graffiti style.

  Letter number 3: a nose, the hint of a moustache shadow above the contour of his upper lip. These were partial images of a male face. More words—patris, padre, pere, vater, pai, father.

  Number 4: lips, the curve under the lip, indicating the roundness of the chin. Another Latin phrase, its English translation written upside down as if a mirrored reflection: “Filia est pars patris/A daughter is part of the father.”

  Number 5: hair.

  Number 6: nothing but a banner at the bottom that read,

  “Gemma, Honor Not Thy Father.”

  Number 7: eyes. Eyes I’d seen before…

  As I opened each successive letter, I placed them in a stack. I couldn’t stop staring at the last drawing. Those eyes…whose were they? And what did al the references to fathers have to do with anything?

  None of these pages had a ful face on them, just portions, segments, hints of faces. I was more confused than ever.

  As I stared at the sheets, I noticed that the writing on the sixth page was visible through the ultrathin, onionskin paper of the seventh. The banner showed through the bottom, as if lined up on purpose. Like it was supposed to show through. I traded the handwritten note for the stack of drawings and gently ran them over the table’s edge to flatten out the wrinkles from being folded. In chronological order, and when aligned and held to the light, the letter revealed a complete image of a man; al of the words and scribbles fel into their proper places.

  It made a face.

  Lucian’s face.

  Gemma, Honor Not Thy Father.

  I flew into the bathroom and looked into the mirror, examining the contours of my own face against those borne of Delia’s madness.

  The smal mole on the left cheek. The shape of the eye socket.

  The widow’s peak hairline. The detached earlobes.

  The eyes. Jade green with the hint of yelow around the black center. The same as mine.

  Lucian was my father.

  My chest ached, my heart pounding with such ferocity I feared it would break my ribs. Tiny stars twinkled along the periphery of my narrowing visual field, the blackness closing down my pupils. Cold sweat beaded on my brow and upper lip, signaling that forcing my head between my knees to redirect the flow of blood might be a wise idea.

  My mother had been out of her mind. This was her final message to me.

  I stumbled out of the bathroom and back into the living area. A vaporous Delia was hovering near Ted’s bunk.

  “I love you, my baby,” she sang, her words drifting into my head like Alicia’s had in the car. I tried to scream but no sound came out.

  “Mom…?”

  I stepped backward, slamming the bathroom door against its frame. I needed to get out of the trailer, but I couldn’t catch my breath. I was lightheaded, stars flooding my eyes. I bent in half at the waist, hands on my knees. What I would’ve given for a ful, deep inhale.

  Lucian is my father.

  I fel face first onto the floor in a nauseous wave. The pages floated like snowflakes around me; the left side of my head impacted something very sharp. Irwin’s toolbox. I’d left it open.

  The excruciating pain from the tearing sensation above my left eyebrow set me aloft, and I drifted back and forth between here and there, my mind racing in the darkness with the details of Delia’s drawings—Lucian’s face.

  My face.

  Hyperventilating to the point of no return, I flew into the chasmic black hole, miles away from the voices and laughter of the sane, happy people lining up just outside Ted’s trailer for early dinner.

  :21:

  We mortals are but shadows and dust.

  —Proximo, Gladiator

  Someone shouted my name from a great distance. A hand on my shoulder shook me with a pronounced violence; another patted my cheek in a staccato rhythm. The hand was warm and soft on my skin and smeled of expensive hand cream. I shivered, sticky with sweat, as if I’d run a race but chiled without a cool down. Above my left eye, a bass drum pounded against my skul and something wet, viscous, matted my hair to my forehead and cheek.

  “Gemma, honey, can you hear me?” Between long blinks, I could see Marlene’s face above me, her body sparkly in her rehearsal outfit. She stood and holered out the trailer door. “I need some help in here! Emergency!”

  Junie’s voice was the next on the scene. “Oh my God! What happened? Oh, there’s so much blood! Oh, God, is she dead?”

  “Juniper, calm down right this minute and look at me,” Marlene grasped Junie’s face with one hand and puled a cel phone out of her coat with the other. “Cal 911. Tel them there’s a medical emergency at the fairgrounds. Then go find your brother—”

  “Marlene, I’m right here,” Ash holered from outside the trailer.

  “Okay, good. Ash, you go wait at the edge of the lot and show the paramedics in.”

  I heard everything that was going on around me but struggled to speak. I had to fight to open my eyelids.

  “Gems, it’s Auntie. Can you hear me? Can you see me, hon?” I smiled softly to affirm that I was conscious, despite appearances to the contrary.

  “Owwww.” I wiled my arm to move from the floor to touch my head.

  “No, no, don’t touch,” Marlene said, rubbing my clammy hand between her palms.

  “What the hel happened here?” Ted was out of breath after running from wherever he’d been.

  “Everything’s fine. Gemma took a little spil, that’s al,” Marlene said, calm and cool, just as she always was in times of crisis.

  “What was she doing in here?” he said. Marlene didn’t answer him but looked around the space. She reached for one of the letters scattered on the floor next to me.

  “Gemma…honey…,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” I could only give her a half-hearted smile. My eyes wouldn’t stay open.

  She stood and scurried into the bathroom. I heard the tearing of paper and ripping of plastic. She returned to my side, fresh gauze in hand. It stung like hel when the sterile padded fibers made contact with my opened skin.

  Sirens in the distance grew closer and I began to come around, feeling more than a little humiliated to be lying on the floor with a captive audience at my feet. I needed to sit up, show everyone I was okay, just a bump on the head. Show’s over for tonight, folks.

  I pushed up on my elbows to tel Marlene I was fine but was sideswiped by instant wooziness. Upon looking at the floor where my head had been, I saw a very dark, gooey patch that shined in the light pouring in from the outside. Blood. My blood. A lot of my blood.

  “Wow…,” I said. My arms shook and gave way under the weight of my upper body.

  “That’s right, honey,” Marlene said, easing me back to the floor.

  “You lie stil until the paramedics arrive.”

  “No hospitals, Auntie, please, it’s only a bump,” I said.

  Marlene smiled, her face tense with worry, and rubbed the back of my hand while we waited for the sirens in the distance.

  Ted handled crowd control, though my extended family hung around outside, a quiet murmur drifting in the open door. Marlene finaly stood to make way for the paramedics who parted the sea of onlookers.

  “Looks like somebody took a tumble, huh? Do you know where you are, sweetie?” the first paramedic asked, kneeling next to me.

  He flashed a penlight into my left eye, then the right.

  “I’m okay, I smacked my head…seems on something sharp.” My tongue felt thick in my mouth. Spots floated in my field of vision from his light but I tried to focus on his face.

  “What’s her name?” he asked Marlene. I answered for myself.

  “Gemma.”

  “Wel, Gemma, I’m Mike, and I’l be your EMT this even
ing.

  Care to take a ride in my very fancy limousine?” Nice. A comedian.

  “Only if you promise there wil be karaoke,” I slurred. The second medic, a woman younger than Mike, talked into a radio fastened to her shoulder.

  Mike secured a neck colar around my throat, though I protested.

  “Sorry, gorgeous, standard operating procedure. Besides, Angie here has a lead foot and she’s our chauffeur. Sometimes I wear one of these, just for safety.”

  “Mike taught me to drive, Gemma,” Angie said. Their banter calmed me, but Junie stil sobbed into her brother’s side. Despite her bravery thirty feet in the air on nothing but a strap of nylon, she was a total weenie when it came to blood.

  The EMTs did their thing and scooped me onto the gurney for a very bumpy rol across the grounds to the waiting ambulance.

  “Hang in there, Gems” and “Get better soon, Gemma” came from random company members, my friends, as they watched Mike and Angie whisk me away.

  Once I was in the back of the ambulance, Marlene climbed in to hold my hand for the short trek to the hospital. Ted promised to folow behind and meet us there. I wanted to tel everyone to go back to dinner, but to be honest, the respectable spilage of blood had wigged me out a little.

  At the hospital, Mike and Angie introduced us to the friendly doctor behind curtain three. He inspected my wound and ordered a bunch of stuff in doctor speak while a nurse took notes and nodded appropriately. Another nurse swabbed some of the dried blood off my face so the doc could prod at what felt like a massive cleft in my head. I winced at the touch of his probing Q-tip and hoped they’d numb the wound before poking me with anything sharper.

  “Are you her mother?” the doctor asked Marlene.

  “Her legal guardian, Marlene Cinzio,” she said, offering her hand for a proper introduction.

  “Do you know what happened tonight, Gemma?” he said, using his own penlight to repeat the inspection of my eyes. Again with the spots.

  “I just passed out and hit my head, I guess.”

  “Do you know what may have caused her to faint?” he said to Marlene.

  “I don’t know. She doesn’t eat very much, she jogs a lot. And she’s had a stressful couple of days.” Yeah, you might say that.

  As I listened to them talk about possible causes for what the doctor caled syncope, I thought back to the events leading up to the blackout. The letters…Gemma, Honor Not Thy Father.

  Lucian is my father… A wave of nausea roled over me.

  “I think I’m gonna throw up.” The nurse was fast on her feet and shoved a smal basin under my face as I vomited whatever liquids my body found to dispense with.

  “Wel, to be on the safe side, we’re going to start an IV and get a CT scan, just to be sure the head injury isn’t causing the vomiting,” the doctor said. I couldn’t keep my eyes open long enough to see what was going on around me. A roaring in my ears drowned out the sounds of their voices, but I managed to hear

  “stitches,” “consultation,” and “plastic surgeon.” It was promising to be a very long night.

  The nurse started an IV in the top of my left hand, and in it she injected something that eased the nausea and softened the pain in my head. I lay stil, floating above the din of the busy ER, comfortable and relaxed, when I heard Ted in conversation with someone new, the man’s voice familiar. In the haze, I was having a hard time matching it up with a face.

  Ironic, considering his face was the only thing I could see in my head. Lucian is my father…

  Someone took gentle hold of my right hand in its position on top of the thin, coarse blanket, and I knew from the rush it was not my aunt.

  “Hi, Henry,” I said to his worried face standing over me.

  “If you realy wanted me to come over for dinner, al you had to do was ask.”

  I smiled at him but the influence of the painkiler made my eyelids feel like 100-lb. shutter doors. I struggled against the effects of the medicine, terrified if my eyes slammed shut, they would stay shut, and Henry would disappear.

  “Don’t go,” I said.

  “I’m staying. Close your eyes and relax.”

  I did as I was told, indulging in the warmth he channeled through my hand. Through the fog, Marlene spoke to the voice. “Good of you to come, Lucian. Thank you so much for your concern.” My heart jumped. It was Lucian’s voice I heard. I didn’t know how to react. Did everyone—except me—know the truth about this, too?

  “I’ve caled in my private surgeon, the best plastics guy on the West Coast,” he said, promising the miracle doctor would be on site within the hour to stitch up my head. “Nothing but the best for family.” Oh my God. He called me family.

  His voice moved to the side of the bed. “You hang in there, Gemma,” he whispered to me. I felt short of breath as Lucian moved away and rejoined Ted.

  “Henry,” I said, my throat raspy. “The letters. There were letters…”

  “Sshhh. We’l talk later,” he said, squeezing my hand. His warmth cascaded through me.

  “How’d you know I was here?” I knew as soon as I asked. No one had caled him. “Henry…please…I need to tel you…” He enclosed my hand with both of his and softly shushed me again. My eyes were fused and the words sluggish off my lips—the IV drugs made quick work of evaporating the discomfort but my lips were numb and I felt drunk, tingly. It reminded me of the singular time Junie and I stole a of bottle of Irish whiskey and downed it in one of the horse stals we were supposed to have been mucking out. I hoped the hangover from this medicine cocktail would be more forgiving than the head-thumping torture Junie and I experienced the morning after.

  An attendant came to take me down for a CT scan. Henry promised to wait, though Lucian had bid a polite goodbye and departed. I was relieved he wasn’t there. A whole new can of worms had been opened with my discovery of Delia’s letters.

  Never mind the fact that Marlene had been hiding the letters in the first place; I’d deal with that later. I could only wonder when they were going to drop this bomb, tel me the truth about my father.

  How long had they’d known? Would they have told me if I hadn’t made the discovery on my own?

  As the attendant was wheeling me back toward the ER, my stomach clenched.

  If Lucian was my father, that meant Henry was…my brother.

  Omigod, omigod, omigod…

  The plastic surgeon was waiting for us back in curtain three, just as Lucian had promised. He had a prominent accent, Russian perhaps, and a steady, quick hand. Twelve stitches in two layers and a rather painful tetanus shot later, I was cleared for discharge, with a prescription for penicilin.

  I need to talk to Henry. The thought played itself over and over through my thick head.

  With the discharge papers signed, a nurse appeared to remove the IV and help me into a wheelchair. An elderly woman stood nearby, watching as I moved from the bed. An orderly walked right through her. A shade. She smiled at me, but I pretended not to see her.

  “A wheelchair? Realy?”

  Marlene smiled at me.

  “Hospital policy, miss,” the nurse said.

  Ted had come to the hospital in his work truck, a dirty, uncomfortable pickup with only two functioning seatbelts, one of which was for the driver. He and Marlene began bickering about his decision to drive the truck instead of her rented sedan, and Ted insisted we wait at the hospital while he ran back to the grounds to swap cars.

  “Ted,” Henry interrupted, standing with his hands on the handles of the wheelchair, “I drove separately from Lucian, so I have my car here. If you’l alow it, I’d be more than happy to provide Gemma with a ride home.”

  Ted wrinkled his forehead and stared at Henry’s expectant face.

  “Gemma, is that okay with you?” Ted said. I nodded and gave everyone a lazy thumb’s up. Yes. It wil give me a chance to ask him why the hel he’s been carrying on with me if he knew we were related.

  “Wel…okay, then. But folow me and Marlene, an
d drive safely,” Ted grumbled. “We’ve had enough trauma for one night.” Henry wheeled me out, past the elderly woman. She smiled again and waved, her fingers bony and wrinkled. His pace was slow and deliberate to avoid jarring me with any unseen bumps in the pavement. I couldn’t help but feel annoyed at his exaggerated caution.

  “I’m not an egg.”

  “Zip it. You’re mine now.” While his tone was playful, it bugged me. I wanted to jump out of the wheelchair and scream at him, “I can’t be yours! You’re my brother!”

  Henry helped me into the car and although I felt weird with his hands on me, upon standing, I found that I was stil pretty unsteady on my feet. After he belted me in, we eased out of the parking lot behind Ted’s rust bucket and made our way back to the fairgrounds. Henry rested his hand on my leg. I wanted to enjoy it…I wanted to drown in the warmth and the protection flowing from his hand into my body. But it was wrong.

  Henry was my brother.

  “Henry…”

  He shook his head and shushed me again. “Just rest, Gemma.

  We can talk tomorrow.” I was sleepy. Maybe not talking would be better. Who knows what crazy stuff I would’ve said. Instead, I began to fantasize about my soft pilow and heavy quilt…

  It was wel after midnight when we puled in. The lights around the perimeter had been dimmed, and the grounds were quiet. Henry parked as near to my trailer as possible. Marlene materialized at the side of the car to help carry me in, though she and Ted were left walking behind us when Henry scooped me out of the car into his arms. He held me tight against his upper body as he walked across the grounds with gentle, sure footing. I nestled my head, the uninjured side, against the angle of his jaw and breathed in the sublime scent from his skin and coat. I was pretty sure that if heaven had a smel, this would be it.

  That’s wrong, Gemma! Pull your head out! I righted my head and forced my eyes open. It was gross for me to think of my brother that way.

  The effects of the medication had begun a slow retreat, lifting the sedative blanket I’d been wrapped in for the prior few hours. Henry carefuly set me on my bunk as Marlene checked the discharge instructions and fretted about the precise position of my pilows, the warmth of the trailer, the dosage requirements of the antibiotics and pain medication.