Pretty Monster

by Somers, Jill

  “Getting ready,” she repeated, looking down at the quiet, beautiful island. “So there is a greater plan.”

  “I don’t know about a ‘greater plan.’ But I think we’d be fools to not prepare ourselves for the future.”

  He was right. She would be ‘getting ready’ to exact her revenge on Cole Crowley no matter where she was—no matter how long it took. But it was a comforting thought that perhaps if she stayed, she wouldn’t have to do it alone. “Right. The Joe Strummer question. Should I stay or should I go?”

  He watched her, silently awaiting her decision. And without another word, she dropped his other hand and swan-dove head first back to the very island she had fought being dragged to for most of her life.

  • • •

  The weekend was uneventful. She spotted Reese in the dining hall a few times and considered going over to him, but decided against it. There was something she liked about the privacy of their friendship. And, catching his eye briefly from across the room, she had a feeling he felt the same way.

  She had most of her meals with Rory instead, pity returning for the girl with no friends her own age. Besides, the girl’s enthusiasm was so unrelenting, Quinn was beginning to admire it.

  Quinn didn’t see much of Dash that weekend, and when she did, she couldn’t get a read on him. He almost seemed to be avoiding her, but the moment she thought it, she shook the thought away. What could he possibly have to be upset with her about? They were finally getting along.

  When she got to power tech that Monday evening, Quinn was equal parts excited and nervous. A small part of her wanted to suggest that they work on compulsion again. She had a feeling the results would be the same as the last time, but that was okay with her. In fact, as much as it scared her, she almost looked forward to it.

  But she could tell from the moment she saw Dash that it wouldn’t be so simple. He avoided eye contact with her, deliberately starting a conversation with Tommy and Izzo the moment she came toward him. Her suspicions over the weekend had been correct, she decided. He was upset with her.

  How was this possible? How had he turned from hot to cold, again, so quickly? How were they back to square one?

  She approached him guardedly. He was done talking to Tommy and Izzo, but he still didn’t look up at her.

  “Hi,” she said uncertainly.

  He finally looked up, eyes dark. “You’ll be with Haley today.”

  “Oh,” she said, crossing her arms. “Okay. Something wrong?”

  “Nope.”

  “Right.” Her confusion was rapidly becoming frustration. “I’m sorry. Either one of your seventy abilities is to have the PMS of a teenage girl, or something happened between Friday and today that I don’t know about. Did I do something to offend you?”

  “Look, Quinn, I saw you the other night. With Reese. You want to go on moonlight flights with him, be my guest. But I make a point not to spend time with people who spend time with him. If I’d known you two were so chummy, I would’ve made that point sooner.”

  “Seriously?” she demanded. “That’s why you’re pissed? Get over yourself. It’s a small island. And last I checked, he’s your brother.”

  “Are you really going to tell me you’ve never had a family member you wanted nothing to do with?”

  Her mind flashed to her father—the man who had turned her away the night of the event, sending her wandering, lost and confused, until she curled up into that little ball at the Bank of America building. The man who had looked upon her tiny face, slammed the door on her, and never looked back.

  Well, that wasn’t entirely true, she reminded herself. She had seen him a few times since then. None of those meetings had gone well, either.

  Maybe his point was valid. He didn’t have to get along with his brother. But why didn’t he want to? What was so bad about Reese?

  “Reese has been kind to me,” she told him. “Ever since I got here. He’s helped me. Been nothing but decent. What would you have me do? Choose which brother to get along with?”

  “No. I’ll choose for you.”

  And with that, he turned to the rest of the class.

  “New partners,” he announced, and he began to rattle them off. She didn’t process a word of what he was saying, she was so livid.

  “That’s us,” Haley whispered when Dash called off their names. Her breath tickled Quinn’s ear, startling her so much, she sent an accidental blast of electricity straight at Haley, who shrieked on impact.

  Dash glared over at them, snapping something about practice starting when he said it started. Quinn said nothing, heart still pounding. Finally, Dash told them to begin, and she tried to focus her attention on Haley.

  “Are you okay?” Haley asked, eyes wide and concerned. “We can do this however you want, Quinn. Whatever you want to practice on me, and if there’s anything you’d rather I do or not do—”

  “No,” Quinn said quickly. “Please. Give it your all.”

  Haley frowned, glancing down at her hands and making a pushing motion. The ground below Quinn began to vibrate and crumble—something that might have caused a regular to trip and fall, at the most. Quinn took a simple step to the side, not even needing to utilize her abilities.

  “Come on,” Quinn said, rolling her eyes. “That was not your all. That wasn’t even your ten percent.”

  Haley sighed, fingers coming together to form a snapping noise. Quinn heard the sounds of branches snapping and leaves breaking, and she glanced up to see long, skinny pieces of wood shooting down at her. For a moment, she was impressed, thinking the wood pieces were going to come down and impale her. Instead the pieces rooted themselves around her wrists and ankles, forming binds. She sighed, breaking them with ease.

  “You’re not listening,” she said, anger towards Dash getting the better of her. She took a step toward Haley. She could feel Dash’s eyes on hers. She felt an urge to do something that would make him angry. She wanted to make him as angry as he had made her.

  “I said,” Quinn urged, eyes locking onto Haley’s, feeling her power of compulsion flowing as strong as it could get, “give it your all.”

  Before any of them knew what to do, Haley sent them all flying.

  Quinn had only experienced one earthquake before. It had been rated a 5 on the Richter scale, and she’d experienced it during her brief stint in California while on the run. She remembered it scaring her—something she, who could control just about everything, couldn’t control. But, ultimately, she had been fine.

  If that had been a 5, this was at least a 10.

  It wasn’t just the earth shaking, though that was enough to send the equipment and obstacles around them crashing down. It was everything around them, from the leaves to the dirt to the grass, gathering together, magnetizing, smashing into lightning-fast torpedoes that began to tornado all around them. Even the trees began to break apart and uproot themselves from the earth, crashing to the ground along the perimeter of the field, sending everyone running, screaming, terrified.

  And it wasn’t just earth this time—it was so much more. Streaks of light shot down at them from the sky, nearly blinding them; fierce gusts of wind zipped past them, so sharp they could slice skin; even the sounds around them intensified.

  Quinn stood there, dazed, watching the calamity of power that Haley had been sitting on destroy the group of people she had started to befriend.

  She hadn’t intended for Haley’s powers to hurt anyone else—only herself. She knew she should stop her before something terrible happened. But then she saw Dash running over to them, trying to get to Haley, to stop her. He was having to fight his way through the debris, the chaos. She knew she could so easily stop Haley herself. But she wanted to make him do it. She wanted to watch him struggle, dodging all of the obstacles Quinn had created through Haley, as Quinn stood there, protected by some sheer force of will, some self-created shield.

  Her anger had always made her more powerful. Today was no different.

  B
ut before Dash reached Haley, before Quinn got her satisfaction, a crashing tree hit a member of the group who couldn’t protect himself. In fact, he had no physical abilities whatsoever. Drax let out a painful scream before being silenced completely, the weight of the giant tree overtaking him.

  Dash finally reached Haley, eyes locking onto hers, ending it all with one simple, desperate word: “Stop!”

  Trent was already lifting the tree off of Drax; Charlie was already grabbing him, carrying him at breakneck speed to the medical wing. But it didn’t matter. She had done it again.

  Whatever progress she had made here, whatever delusions about her good character she had led herself to believe, this was who she really was. This was who she would always be.

  So she ran.

  • • •

  As she ran, she jumped. She flew. She tried to fly high, high enough to reach above the wall, high enough to fly away. But every time she got close, she came crashing back down. The third time, she landed in the river—a river that was flowing out toward the ocean, toward the wall. She let the current carry her, swimming along with it, pushing harder and faster than she ever had. She didn’t come up for air. She didn’t particularly care if she drowned in that moment. Where the river met the ocean, she would somehow get beneath the wall. That was where she would escape. She had to.

  She tried to erase her thoughts of Drax as she swam, but she couldn’t. Each time his face flashed in her mind, so did Kurt’s. How many? How many innocent people’s deaths would she be responsible for before someone took her own life?

  The current was getting stronger, and it was carrying her at this point; her strokes were doing nothing; she was smashing against the rocks, falling, drowning, but it felt right; it felt like the punishment she deserved. She embraced every ounce of pain. She was so close to the ocean, she could almost taste it, and—

  She felt a hand on her ankle, pulling, yanking, and she didn’t know what was happening, but the water was everywhere, in her lungs, in her eyes, and she couldn’t see, and she couldn’t breathe, and then she was being thrown onto some sort of grass, and her eyes shot open, and she could see, she could see Dash leaning over her, shouting things at her, but she couldn’t hear him, and she still couldn’t breathe.

  His hands found her chest, and he was pushing down on her, hard, performing CPR, or perhaps trying to kill her—really she wasn’t sure which—and then, before she knew it, his lips were on hers, and he was breathing into her mouth, in and out, in and—

  She shot away from him, sputtering water, sand, and dirt from her lungs and scrambling so far back that she very nearly fell back into the river.

  She looked around, chest heaving, face streaked with tears, dirt, and water. She hadn’t reached the ocean, she realized. She had crashed down a waterfall.

  “He’s not dead,” Dash told her, eyeing her carefully. “Drax. I could hear his heart beating when they took him away.”

  She stared at him, desperate to believe it, but wary.

  “But that tree,” she whispered. “It… crushed him.”

  “Drax may not have abilities like you or me, but he’s not unlike Ridley. His skin is almost like skin of stone. It’s very strong.”

  She exhaled, heartbeat finally starting to slow. She was glad to hear it, and yet it wasn’t enough; Drax could still die from the repercussions. And the point was the same. Haley could have killed any one of them, and it would have been Quinn’s fault.

  “It was stupid,” he told her. “It was. But it was a mistake. And you didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

  She shook her head, attempting to stand up and walk away. Feeling dizzy and lightheaded, she sat right back down. “You don’t know anything about me,” she grumbled.

  He sighed. “So we’re back to this.”

  “Well, what did you expect? You told me you made the choice for me, didn’t you? Decided to cut me out? So what are you even doing here? Why not just let me drown?”

  He groaned. “Quinn, I would never let you drown. I probably couldn’t even leave you alone for more than a few days, as much as I would like to. Look, I’m sorry about how I acted. I know if I hadn’t, we wouldn’t be here.”

  “I don’t know if I’d give you that much credit.”

  He gave her a sarcastic look.

  “Well, what do you want me to say?” she demanded. “That I’ve changed my mind; that I’ll stop talking to Reese? I won’t. That I understand where you were coming from? How could I? You’ve told me nothing. And he’s told me nothing of you. Other than that you’re the momma’s boy.”

  He laughed out loud. “That I’m the momma’s boy? Oh, that’s rich.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Really.”

  “Come on. You’ve met my mother. Clean-cut. Polite. Regal. All about manners and politics. Which son do you think she prefers?”

  Quinn had to admit, when he put it like that, Reese was clearly the son to take pride in. Well-behaved, friendly, accommodating. Dash was pretty much a nightmare. But why would Reese lie about that?

  “How did you even know?” she asked him. “That we went flying. Were you watching me? Were you watching him?”

  “I make my rounds at the top of the wall almost every night. I talk people down a lot. Usually kids, new recruits. People who have decided they can’t fit in here, that they’d rather roll the dice back in the real world. To me, it’s almost like talking people out of suicide. I know they’re safe here. I consider it my job to protect them.” He shook his head. “Meanwhile, he’s up there, telling you to leave.”

  “That’s not what he said. He just told me I had a choice.”

  “You already knew that—you didn’t need him to tell you,” Dash said, frustration rising. “And he knows that, which is why it’s so absurdly brilliant. Can’t you see that he’s trying too hard to get you to trust him? Can’t you see that he’s trying to manipulate you?”

  “No. I can’t. But that’s fine, because I don’t trust him, and it’s not because of what you’re telling me, Dash. It’s because I don’t trust anyone. I haven’t in years. So, if that’s what you’re worried about, don’t.”

  He watched her, a mixture of confusion and understanding clouding his eyes. “Just…” He sighed. “Just be careful.”

  “I could tell you I will,” she said, holding his gaze. “But I’ve found myself doing this strange thing lately where I’m honest with you.”

  And they stared at each other, silent.

  Finally, he spoke, changing the subject.

  “How about we go for a swim?”

  She glanced down at the river, where minutes ago she’d had near-death experience. The thought came with the dark reminder of the Drax-Haley event that had led to it. “I should go check on Drax,” she said hesitantly. “I should… see if there’s anything I can do.”

  “There’s nothing you can do,” he told her gently. “Drax will be fine. Dr. Donovan is a miracle worker—and his skin already worked the real miracle.”

  She bit her lip. It did help, hearing that. But she still wasn’t convinced.

  “It’s okay,” he said, grin playing at the corners of his lips. “Probably wasn’t a good idea, anyway. I did just finish giving you mouth-to-mouth after your last attempt at swimming…”

  “I would have been fine,” she said, unable to conceal her own matching grin. “You just knew it was the only chance you’d ever get to ever kiss me.”

  He laughed, but from the silence that followed, it was obvious that neither of them believed that. She could even feel her lips tingling at the thought of—

  Lips tingling? She stopped her train of thought before she wanted to slap herself.

  “Oh, come on, then,” she said, standing up and stripping off her soaked clothes, leaving only her underwear on. She set her clothes in the sun on a nearby tree branch, grinning coyly at him as he watched her. “Unless one of the many rules on this island is not to have any fun.”

  He peeled off his own shirt, revealing an impre
ssively sculpted chest underneath. She knew from her own experience that his perfect body had more to do with his visible affectations and less to do with how much he worked out. But she still enjoyed the view.

  She jumped in first, foregoing a swan dive in such rocky rapids and opting instead for a nice cannon ball. He followed suit, landing quite nearly on top of her; she shrieked and laughed out loud, shoving him off her. Their combined powers had the water splashing and waving at more accelerated rates than usual; it was like they were creating their own water ride.

  When the waves settled, they turned to face each other, contented expressions on both of their faces. Dash was the first to speak.

  “Since you think I’m incapable of having fun, might I make a suggestion?”

  “You can try.”

  “Have you ever played the game ‘I Never?’”

  “As in the high school drinking game? I guess I played it a few times. Is that your suggestion?”

  “You’re clearly a woman of mystery. I’m guessing you might feel the same way about me.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” she said automatically, even though he was right.

  He clearly didn’t buy it. “What do you say?”

  “I say there’s no drink in either of our hands. Isn’t that the penalty in the game? Drink if you’ve done it?”

  “I have a better penalty. Go all the way underwater if you’ve done it. Stay up if you haven’t.”

  She was enjoying seeing this side of him, she had to admit.

  “Fine,” she said. “You first.”

  He kicked his feet up and leaned back, treading water easily with his arms as he considered his statement. Finally, he returned to an upright position, deciding. “I never had a pet.”

  “Really,” she said, surprised by this. Even she had had a pet, and she hadn’t exactly had a white-picket-fence upbringing. She closed her eyes, sank into the water, completely submerged herself, and resurfaced.

  “What kind of pet?” he asked her.

  “A dog. Just for a few years. I didn’t buy him or adopt him or anything. He just started following me around one day, and we stuck together for a while. He was a scruffy thing, scarred from head to toe. I think someone had tried and failed to turn him into a fighting dog. I called him Dumpster Dog—never really had a real name for him.” She regretted not giving the poor creature a better name. She realized she was surprised by the memory, and by how much of it she was sharing with Dash.