by C. T. Aaron
I don’t, of course, but it feels nice for a moment to say it. I want to just sit here, maybe take a little nap, fall asleep together like we did at her house that time. But now motorcycles are roaring past the building, making yet more adrenalin course into my bloodstream. We need to focus.
“Aison,” I say to her, rubbing my eyes. It feels like I’m grinding beach sand into them. “Pop him out of here before he’s too far to see.”
Mae nods again and sits up, peeking over the top of the lip. “Okay,” she says a few seconds later, dropping back beside me again. “He’s safe.”
I nod, just a little. I can’t tell if I really need to eat or if I’ll never eat again. Good lord, I feel terrible. Need to stay awake. Need to stay up. Need to . . . to . . .
“I came out to my mom,” I blurt.
Maebry blinks. Yes, this admission wakes me up, so that’s something.
“Really?” She scratches my back in that way she does. “You’re not kidding?”
“I can’t imagine kidding about much of anything right now. A little higher, please . . .”
“How’d she take it?”
I fight to keep my eyes open. “Good. For the most part. She said she knew, and that she was more upset that I didn’t tell her sooner is all.”
“B, that’s incredible. Thank you.”
I glance at her, questioning.
“I just mean, we won’t have to hide in front of her,” Maebry clarifies. “Right?”
“No, I don’t think so. But she does want grandkids, so, we’ll have to work on that. Uh, someday, I mean.”
Mae smiles, and I notice then her eyelids are drooping as badly as mine. “Someday sounds good.”
“If we . . .”
I start to say this, but then stop and try to refocus. Got to keep a positive attitude, right?
“When we get out of this, we need to talk about next year,” I say. “After we graduate. You know?”
Mae stops scratching and instead leans in close, sort of draping her body over my curled back. “Yes. I do know. Sounds great.”
She leans into me.
“You asked me if I was bi.”
“Did I?”
“At the coffee shop. I just want to tell you I’m not. When I was with Oscar, I was fifteen and I was worried and confused, and I didn’t know what kind of person he really was, of course. Plus you have to admit he’s nice to look at.”
I grunt. Mae smiles.
“Most people don’t have your confidence, B. I wish I did. It just took finding you to know what I really wanted.”
“If I was that confident I would’ve told my mom sooner than this.”
“Moms don’t count, they’re different.”
Which makes me laugh. Or something like it. “Well, that’s good. Because so far, your taste in men pretty much sucks.”
“I know, right?”
Spark scuttles back over to us. “Okay, the bikes are just driving past,” he says as the last of the motors drone away. “I don’t think they have any idea what they’re doing, just driving around making noise. I think if we sit tight for a bit, we’ll be all right.”
“Um, that’s cool and all,” I say as my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. “But I’d like to point out that we’re technically still in a desert and don’t have any water. And I’m pretty sure my head is really jacked up. We need to get home. Where’s the nearest doorway?”
“That I know of? Presumably whatever one you came through.”
“But there could be one closer,” Mae says. “We’d just have to find it.”
“Yeah, but finding one is the problem,” Spark says. “There could be one in a building next door, or it could be a hundred miles away. We try to guess and we’re wrong, then yeah, we have a major water problem. We start walking from here toward what we know, and dodging these gangsters along the way . . . it’s one hell of a hard, dry hike.”
Spark blinks like he’s just processed his own words, then licks his lips as if noticing how long it’s been since he had a drink of water.
It’s been a long time, for all of us.
Nobody says anything else for a long time.
NINETEEN
We give it a few more minutes, just to be sure the world is silent before we climb off the roof to the desert floor. The air is so still that the dust kicked up by the motorcycles hangs in the atmosphere like fog. When I wave a hand through it, the dust eddies into strange swirls that only barely begin to drift to the ground.
Something about this observation makes me more homesick than I’ve ever been in my life. Things are just too different here. Obviously that’s an understatement of epic proportion. Apart from the monstrous Familiars and terrible bad guys, though, there is this place itself—the odd red tint to everything, the utter lack of wind, the similar but not identical places that are found back home—I’ve been able to push away the nightmarish quality of this place while searching for Maebry and trying to stay alive.
Now that she’s here and safe, and all that’s left is to get to a doorway and go the hell home, it’s harder to disregard what a surrealist painting we’re in.
And Spark lives here?
“How do you do it?” I say as we walk approximately east. “How can you live here?”
“It felt safer, until today.” Spark shoots wary glances around the skeletal buildings we walk past.
I touch the arm of his leather jacket. “I’m sorry I got you into this.”
Spark gives me a look I can’t read. “Yeah, well, you’re welcome.”
“Where do they go?” Mae asks suddenly. “When we pop our Familiars away, where do they go?”
Spark shrugs. “Here.”
“Yes, but where, here? Is it always to the same place? Do they have some sort of home base they go to?”
“Couldn’t tell you. It’s all random, as far as I know. Or maybe they have, like, burrows or something they always return to, like when you respawn in Minecraft.”
Maebry and I blink at him.
“. . . Okay, so you never played Minecraft, never mind. Answer is, I don’t know.”
We keep walking. After a while, because maybe I’m starting to become delirious, I say, “Maybe they have apartments.”
He snorts. “Yeah, that’s probably it. Little condos or something.”
We keep quiet after that, trying to conserve what little moisture we’ve got in our bodies. My headache throbs with each step, and now my feet are joining the cadence. I lose all track of time, and while Phoenix is habitable only due to air conditioning, I’ve never missed the sun like I do right now.
I’ve daydreamed about living someplace else, someplace with actual seasons, or a place with lots of beautiful rain, like Portland or Seattle. But then a few years ago, we had a very unusual stretch of rain in Phoenix and for the first three days, it was awesome. Day four got a little depressing. Day five I got antsy. And by day six, I was really starting to panic that we’d never see the sun again. I hadn’t realized how dependent I’d become on regular sunshine.
So traipsing about in this mirror world without the benefit of the sun for so long—even for less than a day—is starting to give me that same panicky feeling.
Maebry and I hold hands for much of the walk, but after what I’d guess is about an hour, we simultaneously let go. It’s like even having our dry palms together takes too much energy. That’s when I notice our pace has slowed quite a bit, too.
“Are we there yet?” I ask, not recognizing the little-kid tone and then not really caring after I do.
Spark sends me a weak glare, and that’s all.
We keep walking.
Finally I see Camelback Mountain in the distance. It’s enough to give my spirit a boost; Camelback is a landmark in both worlds, I guess. We veer toward it—we’d gone off course by a ways—and eventually reach the base of the mountain. Looking up at Spark’s mansion, I get a flutter of hope in my chest.
I start up the road, but Spark puts out an arm. “Wait here.”
> I blink dryly at him. “What’s up?”
“Just wait. Okay?”
I’m too tired to fight it, so I sit with my back against a rock. Mae joins me, tucking her skirt modestly around her legs. For some reason, that strikes me as funny and I start laughing.
“What?” Mae says.
It sounds like she’s smiling, but I can’t tell, because my eyes are closed. “Don’t know. Nothing. Your skirt.”
“What about it?”
“You’re so modest.”
“Nothing wrong with that.” She bumps her shoulder into mine.
“Uh-huh . . .”
She says something else, but I can’t quite make it out. Then she says it louder. What the hell is her problem? I ask her that, only, I can’t hear my own voice. But Mae’s voice gets louder and louder . . .
“Briar, please!”
My eyes flip open and I gasp, startled. My head says thank you by giving me five big pounds inside my skull.
“What, what?!”
Mae is holding my face, looking carefully into my eyes. “You passed out or something,” she says nervously. “Your eyes rolled back and . . . that was really scary. Are you okay?”
“No,” I say, feeling like I’m being held underwater.
“No,” Mae repeats softly. “Stupid question.”
Footsteps crunching on the gravel make me lift my head. Spark walks toward us with a paper grocery bag in his hand. Mae stands, and helps me to my feet. I’m feeling wobbly, but I can stand.
Spark hands the sack to Maebry. “Water. You know where you are from here? You can find the portal you came through all right?”
I try to wipe mental cobwebs out of my brain. “You’re not coming with us?”
“I can’t.”
“Dude . . .”
“‘Dude,’ nothing. I did my part, kid. I went above and beyond the call of duty, in my personal opinion.”
“He did,” Mae says softly.
“And I now owe one very large, very dangerous man one Harley Davidson motorcycle,” Spark adds. “Doctor B might not have the pull here that Alexander does, but he’s also not someone you want mad at you. So I need to sort that out post-haste before parts of me get mailed to my family.”
He has a point.
Feeling a little silly, I put out my hand. “Thanks, Spark. You did go above and beyond. I appreciate it.”
He shakes my hand, and when he does, I don’t feel quite so silly anymore. “Suck down that water. We’re all dehydrated. Get back home as fast as you can. And for what it’s worth, I strongly suggest you don’t come back any time soon. Or ever, if possible. That’s just my two cents.”
“Got it.”
“Thank you,” Maebry says, and, of course, hugs him. Because she’s Maebry. “You did save us. Thanks.”
Spark grins a bit and nods at her before turning on his heel and marching up the road to his house.
Mae hands me a bottle of warm water. “B, come on, drink this. We still have a hike.”
Whatever my feelings for Spark—and they are mixed—I slurp the water down hard, finishing half of it in one go. Maebry does the same, but with a little more grace than I can muster.
“Ready?” she asks.
“Yeah. Let’s go home. You know how to find the doorway from here? I don’t know how much help I can be.”
“I have a pretty good idea. Come on.”
We start walking. It’s not easy, but the water helps. I try to look out for landmarks that led Ezzy to Spark’s house in the first place. I know roughly where we are in relation to our world, but it’s still going to be a bit of work to get to the doorway. Not to mention sheer miles, and lots of them.
“Why did he help?” Mae asks as our feet crunch over rocks and sticks.
“I don’t know. Ezzy took me to him. I’m not even sure how Ez knew of him to be honest.”
“Well,” Mae says, “he did help. No matter what else.”
“You always have to look on the bright side, don’t you.”
She smiles a little. “Yeah.”
It takes another hour, at my best guess, to reach an area I recognize with more certainty. “We’re almost there,” I say, and actually find the energy to move a little quicker.
“I think so,” Mae says. “This way!”
We pick up our pace, not quite running but walking pretty fast. The preschool building comes into view, and I could cheer I’m so happy to see it. Mae actually does, sort of, letting out a thrilled little squeal. The doorway is visible from quite a distance, a jagged circle of absolute black.
We find each other’s hands again and break into a jog. We’re here, we made it!
Then we slide to a stop and Maebry moans miserably as Alexander and a group of a dozen men walk casually around one corner of the building, blocking our path to the doorway.
“Girlies,” Alexander says. “We have some unfinished business.”
TWENTY
I catch a glimpse of a motorcycle parked behind a half-ruined building some distance away. Dammit, of course. They weren’t riding around at random, hoping to run into us; they were driving here, specifically, the closest likely doorway, or at least the one we’d be most likely to look for since it’s how Mae got here.
The ten or so men standing behind Alexander all carry weapons. A couple have pistols, the others random stuff like the bat Alexander had given us earlier. A few are grinning, but most actually look a little uncomfortable.
And I know one of them. Mae and I both do. Oscar. He looks half furious, half cocky.
I scream at the top of my lungs at Alexander, bending at the waist from the force of it. Naturally, he only smiles back.
“No Fams,” he says, coming closer. We’re still about thirty yards from the doorway. “Keep ’em away and maybe I don’t shoot you. Maybe can make this work out. Maybe.”
Think, think, think, I chant to myself. Please for the love of God, Briar, think of some way out of this!
But my head . . . God, my head is killing me faster than anything. I can barely make my eyes work, let alone whatever tiny piece of brain power I can bring to bear.
Oscar marches to me, his face inches away from mine. “Not so mouthy anymore, huh? Come on. Say something funny.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Mae says, and at first I assume she’s talking to me. But she’s not. She’s swinging her head to glare at Alexander and Oscar both. “What is so awful about your souls that this is how you live your lives?”
Wow. It’s a bit churchy for my tastes, but it actually does have an effect on Alexander, who drops his smile.
“Come on, Oscar!” she says. “I know you. You’re better than this. You’re better than them.”
His eyes leave mine and search the desert floor. “No, I’m not.”
Maebry’s temerity gives me a boost. I straighten up a bit and shout back into Oscar’s face. “How does attacking two teenage girls make you so bad-ass, huh? We’re the best you can do? How very masculine of you.” I stop, consider the ramifications, then add one more word anyway, because I know it’s the one word guys like him cannot stand: “Pussy.”
Well, that works.
“Shut up!” Oscar screams, and spins away, flicking a hand in the air. “Just kill them, Dad.”
“Why don’t you kill us?”
The words come out of my mouth on autopilot. And my feet move all by themselves. Apparently, if I’m going to die, it’s going to be while being myself, and myself is one who absolutely will not put up with this kind of shit. Not from him, not from anybody any more, ever again, even if “ever” only goes for the next couple of seconds.
I’m not strong enough to run toward him, but I definitely march. Maebry hurries to come to my side as I keep ranting.
“Huh?” I shout at Oscar. Then over Oscar’s shoulder, I yell at Alexander. “How about you? If you’re such a big old tough guy, you do it. Coward.”
Alexander stares at me, like he can’t believe anyone, let alone me, would dare tal
k to him this way. The other men shift around, watching, waiting for an order. None of them are Counterparts. While they are still holding their weapons, of course, none of them are pointed at us. The men dart their eyes between him and me. They’re just as surprised as he is, but are awaiting orders. Because that’s what followers do—stand around and wait for someone to tell them what to think and do. They make me sick.
Well, that, or this very probable concussion.
“So?” I demand of Alexander. “What’ll it be, tough-ass? You wanna go hand-to-hand with me or what? I mean, come on, you only outweigh me by a hundred pounds. That’d be a pretty square fight, huh?”
A creepy smile crosses Alexander’s face. “Girlies, you have cost me a lot of money today. And I mean a lot. But because I’m such a nice guy, I’m gonna give you a choice. You can either both come back with me right now, and fight your boys next week, and take your chances. Maybe you live, huh? You go home. Or, I fucking gun you down right now. What’ll it be?”
Well, threatening us is better than straight up killing us. I have to keep him talking, think of some way out of this . . .
“I don’t understand you, there’s this whole world,” I say. “This whole other world that most of Earth knows nothing about. Maybe it’s heaven or maybe it’s hell or maybe we’re on freaking Mars, but it should be studied. Just the fact that this exists changes everything we know about science.”
“. . . Yeah, and?”
“And you don’t care?”
“Nope. C’mon, girlie! Grow up. Maybe there’s some guy at NASA or someplace that really does want to be all Star Trek and explore the universe just for the hell of it. But you poke around a little, I dare you. Find out the real reason. The real reason is money. Always has been, always will be. They wanna mine asteroids and shit for minerals. What, you think Elon Musk is some kinda . . . what’s the word . . . altruist? Come on. Look, we go to Mars, guess what—in a few decades it looks just like Earth! Coke cans tumbling around in the dust storms and a plastic garbage pile bigger than Nebraska. No thanks. I’m here to make my money and keep this place on the down-low. Trust me, girlie, the last thing you want is for this place to become common knowledge.”