The bels rang signaling the end of second, third, then fourth periods. Henry slept through them al without another seizure, and so far, no one had nagged me about getting back to class. The nurse hadn’t caled an ambulance after al, but checked Henry’s vitals a few times, asked me a series of questions about him, if I’d ever seen this happen to him before, if I knew if he had a family history of epilepsy, questions I couldn’t answer because, to be honest, I didn’t know that much about Henry’s life before I arrived in Eaglefern.
And oddly enough—as I sat in that little room, my attention focused solely on Henry, his breathing, the flutter of his eyelids, I could drown out the racket of the people in the vicinity. As if I’d reached over to a volume control and turned it down to 1 or 2.
Thank you…
“Gemma,” a voice behind me said.
“Ted?” I turned, face to face with my two uncles. “Hey, hi…did they cal you? I told them to wait.”
“What—what’s going on with Henry?” Ted said, moving close to the cot’s side.
“He had a seizure or something, during math. I told them to cal you instead of Lucian.”
“No one caled me about Henry.” Ted had a pained look on his face. Irwin’s hand was wrapped around his brother’s upper arm.
“Oh. Realy?” I paused. This was puzzling. “Okay, so, what are you doing here? Where’s Auntie?”
Henry’s eyes flew open and the temperature of his grip fel through the floor. It was like holding a chunk of dry ice.
“Gemma!” he said. I looked at him, then back to Ted, and finaly Irwin. The school nurse had taken up residence in the doorway, her face wrinkled with worry. Ted puled a chair from against the wal and sat down next to me, placing a hand on my thigh.
“Honey, there’s been an accident,” he said.
Somewhere, a switch flipped that caused everything to happen at quarter-speed, like a slow-motion sequence in a film. His words hung in the air like bulets shot from a gun in suspended animation, the lead slugs impotent and sagging, floating slowly toward the ground. Ted’s eyes drifted upward from his blank stare at the floor and met mine.
“What about her? Ted, where is Marlene?”
Everything was moving in pronounced stretches of time, every breath in, every exhale out, the beat of my heart reverberating in my ears.
Buuum-buuump, buuum-buuump.
Henry’s arm reaching for me as I let go of his hand, the cold too bitter for unprotected flesh.
“Where is Auntie? Is she okay? What’s happened?” I said.
“Gemma, I saw it…the seizure…I saw it happen…,” Henry whispered.
“You saw what? What the hel is going on here?” I jumped from my chair and it toppled backwards, the slap of the bouncing plastic drowned by the thunderhead blasting above us.
“Marlene’s been…hurt,” Ted said finaly. “It’s serious.” I edged away from him, from al of them.
“No. NO!” I jabbed a finger at him. “You’re a liar!” I backed away from Ted.
“Gemma, honey, she’s in surgery,” Irwin added. “We were rehearsing. The power went out as Ted threw a blade…the turntable was off its count…”
“You’re WRONG!” I howled, the guttural explosion of sound ricocheting off the wals of the tiny sick room. I heard my voice and yet was deaf to it at the same time, deaf to their attempts to calm and console me, deaf to al but the blistering bass of my heartbeat as it pounded inside my head.
The vacuum ended as instantaneously as it had begun, and time snapped back to its inflexible, cruel rhythm. Henry bounded from the cot and tried to wrap his arms around me, but I punched at him, shouted at him to not touch me. Ted stood and moved toward me as I inched nearer to the door, my escape impeded by the wel-meaning nurse as she witnessed the train wreck in progress, one car slamming into another, end over end, screeching steel against iron ties as they buckled like plastic straws. Henry struggled against me, trying to get my flailing arms under control, though it was only my body he could hold on to. My voice was its own irrepressible entity.
It was my first experience with out-of-body observation. I watched Henry trying to wrap himself around my squirming body, shushing in my ear and stroking the back of my head as he fought against my outburst. I watched Ted tighten his arm around his brother’s sagging shoulders.
“I’m so sorry. I couldn’t help her…,” Henry said, his face wet with hot tears.
My moans were born anew, endless and primal.
Not Marlene, too…
I forced my way out of Henry’s grip and bolted from the office, blinded by tears, my ears assaulted with conversations and laughter, my heart exploding into a thousand pieces in my chest.
I could do nothing but run.
:35:
Grief has limits, whereas apprehension has none. For we grieve only for what we know has happened, but we fear all that possibly may happen.
—Pliny the Elder
I sprinted away from the school, as hard and fast as my legs would carry me. It was almost as though I were flying, leaping over mounds in the ground and the puddles accumulated during the morning’s storm. The air slapping my cheeks was cold and the forward momentum of my body puled the tears from the corners of my eyes, the salty water running back toward my hairline at the temples, defying gravity. I ran until my lungs were on fire and I was sucking air through pursed lips. The chil made my teeth ache, cold meeting warm.
The outdoors smeled electric and flashes of lightning punctuated the earth-shaking thunder as it stabbed gaping holes in the atmosphere.
The land behind the footbal stadium went on for a few unattended acres, ringed by a road that led into an offshoot of downtown. I ran through the squishy grass, thick with weeds and dormant bramble patches. A stand of poplars lay on the eastern flank, the road on the west. I stopped to catch my breath, contemplating my next move.
First, Delia.
Now,
Marlene. She’s been hurt…it’s serious…she’s in surgery. I contemplated running to the hospital, but to do so would mean seeing her, lying there, a hole in her body from those godforsaken blades. The blades that Lucian pushed them to use.
If Marlene died, another part of my soul would go with her. It would feel like being orphaned al over again. And with my only remaining blood relative a murderous psychopath, it’s not like I could count on Lucian to step in and make things right.
Lucian who wanted me dead, who wanted Henry dead.
Jonah was a warning.
I started sprinting again, moving toward the road, careful to stay out of sight of the cars traveling back and forth, the drivers engaged in their normal lives, worrying about nothing more than what to make for dinner or if the high school basketbal team would make the state finals. My pant legs were drenched, the moisture from the tal grasses saturating the denim and prickling at the goosebumps of my calves. I was shivering but not cold. Exhausted, empty, alone, but not cold. At least out here, I couldn’t hear anyone’s mindless blabbering. It was silent.
And so far, there’d been no shades, not even the three children.
I’d expected to see them in the school, a repeat of yesterday’s fun.
But they’d stayed hidden from view. I wondered if the thunder had chased them away.
The field ended at a sidewalk that led to a smal mini-mal housing a florist, a gas station/convenience store, and a liquor store.
Few cars in the lot guaranteed I’d be able to sneak in and out without wayward glances from local citizens wondering what a girl my age was doing wandering around in a thunderstorm when she should’ve been in class filing her brain with facts and figures to facilitate a bright future.
There was nothing about the future that felt bright.
Marlene…
My stomach knotted in on itself and I fought the urge to cry out for her, to colapse on the asphalt of the parking lot.
Before I puled the gas station door open, I could hear the conversation inside between the attendant and t
he driver of a jacked-up truck. As the driver paid for his gas, their banter was light, friendly.
I walked up and down the aisles, waiting for the cashier to go out and clean someone’s windshield or reset a jammed gas pump.
An old lady with a wheeled shopping buggy stood in the magazine aisle, her face stuffed in a People magazine, catching up on her gossip about the messy divorce of some celebrity. She was mumbling to herself.
Not wanting to make eye contact, I turned down a different row, trying to ignore the old lady’s words in my ears. I checked my pocket for money—a $20 bil. More than enough to buy a Coke.
But it wasn’t sugar I was after. I needed something…stronger.
I picked up a soda and a pack of gum, and put my purchases on the counter. Country music slithered from the truck’s lowered passenger-side window through the gap between the store’s glass doors. I bent down to tie my soaking wet shoelaces, and when I stood, my breath caught in my throat.
Behind the counter, next to the cigarette display, stood a man with a huge hole in the front of his neck. He was shirtless and the skin around his ribcage had been peeled away, exposing blackened lungs and mottled bones the thickness of paper. He laughed and rancid smoke spewed from every hole in his head.
“Nice day for a walk, ain’t it?” When he smiled, his gums were missing teeth. I covered my mouth and nose with my sleeve to keep myself from throwing up.
The doors jingled as the cashier scurried back inside. He walked right through the smoking shade. “Some storm, huh?” Thunder rumbled overhead, as if in response to his comment.
“Yeah.” I tried to control the tremor in my hand as I paid and kept my head low.
“Stay dry,” he said, handing me my change.
“You come back again soon, sunshine,” the shade said. He coughed and another plume of smoke bilowed from his fissured body. The cashier picked up a can of air freshener and released a hearty spray in the space behind the counter. I was tempted to tel him that no amount of Febreze was going to clean up the mess festering in this place, but there would’ve been no point.
The driver of the monster truck was hoisted up on the impossibly tal front tire, washing his windshield, humming to the “my baby done me wrong” tune blaring from his speakers. The entire vehicle was encrusted in mud, and the guy was making a dirty mess, the soapy water mixing with the crap caked around the edges of his window. I heard him cuss under his breath as I rounded the front end of the rig.
“Hey,” I said.
“Wel, helo, there.” He jumped down from the tire.
“Can you do me a favor?” I nodded toward the liquor store. He smiled at me.
“What’s your poison, sweet thing?”
“I dunno. I’ve only got, like, $17. Whatever you can get that’s cheap. Whiskey, maybe. Keep the change.”
“You finish washing the side window. Look busy. I’l be right back.” He winked at me as I handed him the money.
I took the squeegee and gave the driver’s side window a half-hearted swipe with the already dirtied sponge. The guy was fast. I’d barely wiped the last of the soap off when he reappeared beside me.
“Thanks.” I took the plastic bottle and shoved it in the waistband of my pants, puling my coat over it to conceal the bulge.
“You’re not driving, right?”
“You see a car?” I gestured at the lot behind me.
He chuckled. “Smartass, huh?” extended his arm to hand me the change.
“Keep it.”
“Be safe, kid.” He stuffed the remaining dolars into his wel-worn Levis.
I chuckled under my breath. “Sure thing.”
At the edge of the gas station property, I surveyed the area to find a place to go hide. I could backtrack into the woods behind the school, but that was too close for comfort. I knew kids snuck out there at lunchtime to make out and smoke dope, and the last thing I wanted was an audience. A dirty shade was digging around in a dumpster along the side of the building. He snarled, one of his eyes missing, the back of his skul flattened. When he stood upright, a tire track stretched across what was left of his torso.
I can’t see you. Go away.
I headed north along the sidewalk, the bottle sticking to the dampness of my skin. Once I’d rounded a corner, I puled it from my waistband and shoved it into the pocket of my jacket. The sky was black except for a single break in the clouds. The sun poured through, painting a rainbow in the mist. A hundred yards ahead, I saw the gravel driveway for a park, the brown wooden sign announcing its presence tucked along the outskirts of Eaglefern.
My head was thick, the weight of this new reality pinging the sides of my skul with a force equal to that of the thunder knocking around in the sky. My cel phone buzzed in my pocket, but I ignored it. There was no one I wanted to talk to. It would be Henry or Ted, and I’d left them fighting against my escape in the nurse’s office. I didn’t want to hear if Marlene puled through the surgery because I knew the likelihood was, she wouldn’t.
“Leave me alone,” I said to no one.
A covered area in the middle of the park was nicely hidden from view of the road. I scraped my feet through the gravel, grime coating the top of my shoes, until I came to a picnic table, green with moss from the long winter months. The canopy would keep the rain from soaking me any longer, though the tal trees surrounding the picnic and playground areas were sure beacons for lightning strikes. I didn’t care. If I’d had the energy, I would’ve climbed one of those trees to the very top and tempted Zeus to strike me down.
Give it your best shot, I’d scream.
Instead, I broke the seal on the whiskey and took a long, painful gulp. It seared my taste buds and burned like hel as it slid down my throat. I had to breathe through it to keep from gagging, and the shudder from that first swalow made my head spin. I alternated between hits of Coke and whiskey, chasing the sweet with the vile.
My cel rang and rang, muffled in the fabric of my pockets. I leaned back, puled it out, and turned it off.
I polished off the Coke before the whiskey was emptied, but my tolerance to the taste, to the burn, had improved. The thunder had stopped, the sky dotted with the leftovers of angry clouds. Sun broke through in wider swaths and exposed huge patches of blue, inviting birds from their hiding places. Chirps and whistles decorated the silence of the park, hinting that spring was just around the corner, and with it the chance for new beginnings and fresh growth.
It was usualy my favorite time of year, everything beautiful and new and alive, like a deep breath in after a long time asleep.
But if Marlene died, whatever optimism I had left would die with her. Overcome with grief, I cried in rib-crushing sobs. I wanted to walow in my agony, revisit the individual horrors of the last week, as if stopping along a road to take in the dead flowers, one shriveled, decaying blossom at a time. I couldn’t make sense out of the senseless of it al. It was too much.
I cried for everything I’d lost, and for the bleakness of a future that held only the promise of additional loss. I cried for my mom, for Alicia, for Marlene, for Ted and Irwin, and most of al, for Henry, for the future we’d never know together. I cried until my reservoir of tears had been drained and abandoned to bake and crack under a cruel, hot sun. I was helpless, forsaken, empty.
The effects of the alcohol were swift and dizzying, but I welcomed the fuzz. It quieted the world, duled the excruciating pain scratching behind my eyes, in my chest, in my gut. I stretched out across the table’s surface and wiped my snotty nose on the remnants of tissue puled from my pocket. My eyes were so tired from crying, the muscles in my body sapped of energy. I was surprised that no one had folowed me when I bolted from the nurse’s room. It was unlikely that Ted could’ve kept pace with me, but I thought Henry would at least chase me out of the school. I was glad he hadn’t.
The whiskey spun the world like an out-of-control top. Ground and sky flip-flopped, and the trees mushed into a haze of green and brown. Bird screeches rattled my eardrums an
d pecked at my grip on reality. I was no longer capable of focusing my eyes on any one thing. Sleep. I needed to sleep.
A soft hand on my cheek puled me from the darkness of a forgettable dream. It was stil daylight, and the earlier storm had given way to a muggy warmth, the air close and moist.
“Gemma,” the voice said. I peeled my eyes open and squinted from the glare of the sun. The face standing over me was silhouetted by the brightness of the day. I was looking into a vision, light spiling around the person’s head like a halo.
The stranger helped me into a sitting position on the table, his arm under my shoulders. I wasn’t afraid, instead filed with a sensation of resolute calm. I’d seen him before…a shade. In the meal tent.
“Gemma, this is for you.” He puled a thin rope from under his coat and over his head. He reached toward me, stretching the rope until it hung around my neck. For a moment, I held my breath, wondering if he was going to strangle me with the line puled between his hands. Instead, he lifted my hair from under it, the damp curls faling down my back. He had given me a necklace.
“It wil keep away those who want to hurt you,” he said, his accent thick and exotic. “Separate it from your heart at risk of great peril.”
I looked down at my chest and touched the pendant that hung from the leather strand, cradling the cold, triangular-shaped amulet in the palm of my right hand. The design on the surface of the triangle was in a language I didn’t recognize, the scrol not Roman letters but definitely in the form of a pattern, diminishing from left to right:
“What is this?” I said, lifting my head to look into the man’s face.
But he was already walking away, his black trench coat disappearing into the trees.
“Keep it close.” His voice drifted into my head, the way Alicia’s had done that day in Henry’s car, the way the littlest shade had begged for my help. He then vanished from sight.
Sleight: Book One of the AVRA-K Page 25