by Brindi Quinn
“Oh man!” Rye threw his hands about emphatically. “You were like a trapeze artist or something! It was sick!”
“Ready to give it a shot?” said Tide, pleased.
“Che-yeah!”
But it wouldn’t be so, for the first of those raindrops had given way to more. As Tide descended the climb, more and more began to fall, turning the peak into a slippery mess of mismatched metal relics. It was fine for her. It would’ve been fine for Jobe. But for someone like Rye . . . she couldn’t chance it.
“Looks like we’ll have to come again,” she said when she reached the bottom. “I don’t think it’s safe for any climber right now.” She pushed her climbing goggles up and let them rest upon her forehead.
“You’re probably right.” Rye wasn’t disappointed, though. It was worth it to watch her climb again. He’d been impressed with her before, but now he was . . . “Wow,” he said.
“Stop,” said Tide. “You’re embarrassing me. I’m a freak, huh?”
“You’re something.”
“Something?” said Tide. “Great.”
“Yeah, something GREAT!”
“No, that’s not what I-”
Rye laughed. “I know.”
Tide grinned in spite of herself. “Well, should we head back?” she asked, looking into the glooming sky. “It looks like it’ll get worse. What do you think?”
“That depends.” Rye held his chin in his hand. “Has your boredom been lifted?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Then we’ve accomplished our goal, haven’t we?”
“I suppose we have. Okay, then.” The princess turned to leave, but as she did, she grew very angry with the rain that had intruded. Truthfully, she wanted to stay. Truthfully, it had been a much shorter outing than she had anticipated. Truthfully, she wanted to spend more time with the boy that made her grin.
“There’s just one problem,” said Rye.
Tide looked over her shoulder. “What’s that?”
“I don’t really want to go back yet. We just got here.”
A smile of delight crept onto the young mouth of the princess. Rye felt the same way she did. There was something so satisfying about that. “We could wait for the storm to pass?” she proposed.
Rye nodded. “Kay!”
And just like that, both of them were given what they wanted. More time. Just a little more time.
The girl and Second backtracked through the old city ruins that were very near the Gustway Peak. Rye let out a snort when more rain began to fall. Then it fell harder, turning the dusty ground to mud and turning Tide’s boots from tan to murky black in a matter of seconds. She didn’t care. She was having fun. They were quickly becoming soaked, and their unpreparedness was something they could only laugh at. With Rye in the lead, the two of them searched the area for a suitable place of shelter, somewhere that looked stable and had maintained a roof throughout years of abandonment. Rye’s hood was up, but it stuck to his head like a matted shroud – a funny sight to the lagging-behind Tide. With each new burst of rain – and consequently, each new level of his discomfort – she struggled to keep moving in the midst of wild fits of giggles. This was quickly turning into a beautiful disaster.
Eventually, they came upon an old office building that still had its roof. They found a way in through an opening that had once been a window, and there they waited in the part of the city that was deserted by even the underlings of society.
The air was hot and damp. The princess and the Second were drenched. The sky let out a crack!
After catching his breath, Rye slumped against the wall and chuckled. “So, I guess it’s getting a teensy bit worse out there than we expected.”
“Yeah,” said Tide. “No kidding. Guess we should have checked the paper.”
They shook as much water from themselves as possible and scoped out the driest place in the joint, which ended up being an ovular chamber a few feet away from the building’s center. It had been a conference room of some kind . . . maybe. Remnants of non-Bororore furniture scattered the dirt-coated floor.
Rye leaned against an old-metaled bookshelf. “Well, that was fun,” he said.
“Yeah, but too bad we didn’t get to do much climbing,” said Tide.
“Yes, but how often do you get to go play in the mud? Eh? Eh?” He elbowed her in the side. She swatted him away, but they were both a little giddy. For each other, they were both . . .
Rye’s face fell into something serious. He continued, “You know, I’m really glad you kept my number. I wasn’t sure after the way we . . . er . . . the way things ended last time.”
Tide knew exactly what he was referring to.
“Right,” she said. “Sorry about that. I know you aren’t a ‘fan’ of over-apologizing, but I AM sorry about how weird I was getting.”
“It’s okay. It was because of this, right?” Rye lowered his wet hood and pointed to his neck. Even in the near-darkness, the red was painfully apparent. Tide tried not to look at it.
“Yeah,” she said. “I don’t know why.”
“Curiosity?” suggested Rye. He left the tattoo uncovered. He was gaging her reaction to it. Tempting her, but not in a devious way. It was just that HE was the curious one. Curious about its effect on the pretty girl before him.
They were alone. It was quiet inside the building, though the rain outside pelted with fury.
“I wonder what it means?” said Tide. “The design.”
Rye shrugged. “Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.”
“I wonder.” Tide brought a hand to her own bare neck. Though she tried to focus on other things, her eyes were disobedient. They kept finding their way to the tattoo. RED was calling. RED was baiting. Tide’s hand longed to move from her throat to his.
Rye saw it. He saw the struggle, yet he left it uncovered. Although he knew as little about the brand as she did, he’d noticed a trend. Nearly everyone stared when he left it exposed, but there were certain people that did more than stare. There were a few, like Tide, who were affected abnormally by the sight of the design. If he could understand just a little bit better what it meant, maybe he’d be able to figure out exactly WHAT he was. The truth was, he wanted her to touch it. He wanted to hear her thoughts. More than anyone else he’d observed, he wanted it to be her. That was because –
“Anyways, there’s something I wanted to ask you,” said Rye.
“Yeah?” said Tide, eyes still defiant.
“Doesn’t it seem like we’ve known each other a long time?”
“Huh? But we just met.”
“I know, but for me, it’s like . . . maybe it’s just your personality, but it feels like-”
But at that moment, the sky cracked again, and the surrounding ground, which had long been a place of tremors, gave a shake. It upset the structure of the weak building enough to dismantle a pile of rubble that had been resting on an above ledge left by the last quake. A few of the rubble bits fell. Tide was in no danger. She was agile and reflexive and would have moved out of the way on her own, but Rye reacted anyway. “Yo!” He gave a shout and hopped out of the way even faster than Tide did. He pulled her aside and out from beneath most of the pieces. Then, while the stunned girl observed, he kicked the last of them midair with the bottom of his foot and sent it flying into the wall. He turned to Tide, “You okay?”
The princess WAS okay. But she was shocked. She was shocked and impressed. “Whoa! You’ve got skills too!” she said. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“What?” Rye wrinkled his nose.
“That! You were all whoosh whoosh pow!”
“Oh!” he laughed. “That! Yeah, that was instinct. I was in martial arts before-” But Rye couldn’t finish because he wasn’t able to talk about him without feeling detached from the earth.
“You mean before you split from-”
“Yup.”
Tide wanted to know more. Of course she did. But she couldn’t bring herself to ask. There was silence for a time while th
e two of them settled onto the ground against the wall and listened to the murmurs of rain. The muggy air was making Tide sleepy. Rye tilted his head and twisted a rogue lock of hair between his fingers. Tide stared at the ground and tried to think of a safe, non-Foster-related topic.
“Something weird happened to me,” she said after several minutes.
“Weird?”
“When I was on my first hunt with Jobe. There was a snake.”
“A snake?”
“Or something.” But the memory was too dreamlike to discuss further. Tide’s lids drooped.
“Tide?” murmured Rye. He, too, was growing tired. He cleared his throat to muster a bit of energy for what he was about to say. He had to get it out, no matter how difficult it was, so that she understood. He needed her to understand. “I feel bad,” he said. “I want to talk about him with you, but it’s too hard to stay grounded if I do. Sorry. Maybe when I’m stronger, okay? Maybe when I’m more solid. I . . . like you, so I want you to understand that it’s not because I don’t trust you or anything. Does that make sense?”
Tide didn’t really get it. She still didn’t know how the whole ‘Second’ thing worked, but she did know one thing. Since her mother’s death some years earlier, Tide had felt brittle, but there was something about this shell of a person that made her feel less fragmented. It was ironic, but that’s just how it was, and at some point, she’d realized that being around him was better than being around Jobe. It was better than being around her father and his lawyer. It was better than being around Y, even.
She looked over at the boy who’d never been born, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes with his. His head was downward so that his messy hair shrouded them entirely. She waited, though, and when he finally looked up, his lashes were long and his eyes were dark.
Tide didn’t look away. And she didn’t shift her eyes to the red that fought for her attention.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “I like you too.”
The moist air was still. The thunder was distant. Rye swallowed, and his Adam’s apple danced. “You can rest your head here if you want.” He patted his shoulder. “I’ll watch for falling stuff.”
The idea of it turned the skin of Tide’s face red, but she was too sleepy to protest, so she laid her head against the soft, wet fabric there. His shoulder was hard beneath, but it was fine. It was comfortable. Rye wondered about the girl’s sensitivity to the tattoo, but more than that, he wondered about his quickly growing fondness for her. Since splitting from Foster, he hadn’t experienced emotions like those on his own . . . until that day in the café. At that time, an overwhelming craving had made its way under his skin. He liked the loneliness, but he liked the fondness now too. The Second put his arm around the princess, and she drifted into darkness. Safely. Cozily.
Tide was nearly asleep, but Rye couldn’t help himself. Everything inside of him wanted to yell. To scream. To dance. But of course he could do none of these things, so he fought to squash them. To hide them. But he wasn’t strong enough to bury them all. He allowed one impulse to stay and have its way. Slowly and carefully, he brought his mouth to the side of Tide’s face, just above her temple where her hair was still wet, and brushed her skin with his lips. And his stomach toppled. Heavily. Tide’s did too, but she was on the edge of consciousness, so it mixed with a strange half-dream in which she was falling upwards through an abandoned stairway while a black, slithering thing trailed ahead of her.
The princess wasn’t fully aware of what had happened, but she was happy. So was Rye.
But somewhere across the city, there was a boy – a Main boy with bluish hair and boxy glasses – that was experiencing utter despair over his Second’s elation.
“No,” said the voice that was Foster’s. “I won’t let you. Not with her.”
When Tide awoke, the sun was out and Rye was gone.
Chapter 7: The Disappearing Second
The gray boy had to see her. At least once more. Their meeting would either solidify his existence or declare his defeat, but he didn’t care anymore. Two long years had made him thin, and even though he tried to hold back, there was no stopping it. Their meeting was inevitable.
“So he was just gone? He just left you?! Well, that’s probably because . . . But that doesn’t matter! What if you’d been crushed by another tremor?! How irresponsible! I KNEW it was a bad idea for you to . . . and not to mention, you fell asleep in front of him?! He could’ve done something nasty to you!”
Y and Tide were in Tide’s bedroom, and Y was hyper.
“He’s not like that,” said Tide.
“So, you spend one day with him and suddenly you know what he’s like? Dude, you are such a weirdo!” Y threw a pillow at her irresponsible friend. “Have you even talked to your dad, by the way?”
Tide caught the pillow. She hugged it and rolled onto her back. “No, why?”
“He was here! And he was looking for you! He even came to my place asking if I’d seen you. Did you even leave some sort of excuse or something?”
“Shit.” Tide threw the pillow at the wall.
“Yeah. You think? It’s like, the second you turned eighteen he loosened his reigns, and I understand that you want to explore, but cut him a little slack, okay? He was worried sick. Okay, I’ve said my bit. Now let’s just drop it.” True to her nature, Y dismissed the topic. “Gross Seconds are out of bounds, too, by the way.”
“But, Y, I like-”
“NA NA NA NA NA!”
“I really li-”
“NA NA NAAAAA!”
“Tch. Fine.”
Y flicked her hair away from her chin. “Let’s talk about that hunter of yours instead. Jabe, right?”
“Jobe. Speaking of, I finally got another fax from him. He wants to go out tomorrow.”
“Ooooh, OUT, huh? Sounds fun,” said Y.
“Ehh. Not ‘out’ like that. I mean he wants to go after our next mark.”
“Poo. Try to fall in love with him, would you? A nice NORMAL boy like that is a better fit for you . . . even if you are a weirdo.”
“He’s far from normal.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing. Sushi?”
Y smiled cheesily. “Okay.”
Tide smiled too, but it was fake. She was hurting. Because Rye had left her there, she was wounded.
~
Tide peeled an orange and sighed. Another muggy day waited outside of her palace. Jobe would be downstairs soon. Now that he knew who she was, there was no need to hide it. He’d never be allowed into the lift, but at least they’d probably let him as far as the boulevard. Tide’s place wasn’t that far from the mines, so it was a fine place to meet, she supposed. The young girl went to the window, but it was no use. She was far, far too high up to see anyone at street level. She’d just have to trust that Jobe would arrive on time.
The princess threw a piece of juicy citrus into her mouth and sighed again. There’d been no fax from Rye. No explanation. No anything. He’d left her in that abandoned building, and he hadn’t bothered to say why. And he wasn’t the only one. Despite Y’s claims that Tide’s father had been ‘worried sick’, there’d been no sign of him. No note either. In short, Tide was feeling abandoned. She looked to the clock on the wall. At least she’d get to see Jobe soon.
Knock! Knock!
The princess had just started to gather her things when an intrusive rapping alerted her to someone outside the door. She hadn’t been expecting anything like that, so the pounding of fist on metal nearly made her choke.
“Dad?!” The princess ran to the latch, assuming to find her king, but on the other side stood a chiseled man with shiny shoes. It wasn’t her father.
It was his lawyer.
“Miss Yondo?” The lawyer slammed the door behind him. “What are you wearing? Are those goggles on your head?!”
“Y-you!” Tide stammered, taking a backward step. He was the last person she’d expected to see. He was also the person she’d least hoped for.
“Yes-” But something was wrong. Tide couldn’t remember his name. She’d seen him a hundred times or more, but she couldn’t remember his name. Her brain was fuzzy, so she settled on, “Yes, Sir.”
The lawyer drummed his fingers against the old-metaled table at the couch’s side and stared at her. He was frightening. Tide didn’t like him at all. He’d done nothing to offend her, but the feelings she had for him were only negative. She wondered why.
“Is my dad coming?” she asked meekly.
“Your father? No. He’s at the office. There’ve been some complications with his invention. The civic dogs are riding him hard.”
“Dad’s invention?”
“Yes, it seems some of his test subjects have- no, it’s unnecessary for you to know. What’s more important is that you st-”
But the cuckoo clock on the wall interrupted him, letting Tide know that Jobe was due to be at street level. She anxiously glanced at the window.
The lawyer frowned. “Expecting someone?”
Tide’s throat caught itself. It was in no way acceptable for her to be out with a hunter, let alone for her to BE one. The lawyer couldn’t find out about Jobe. If he found out, it would be all over. The deceitful princess struggled to find a suitable lie.
“A-actually, yes. Um . . . Y! Y is coming! She’s, er, painting me?”
“Painting you?” said the lawyer. “You don’t sound very sure of-”
“For one of her classes. That’s why I’m dressed like this. She said she wanted something rogue.”
“Rogue? Hm. Well, I suppose it fits. Anyway, I’m here to check up on you in place of your father.”
“Check up?” grumbled the girl, glancing at the clock again. “Wonderful.”
The lawyer nodded. “For starters, how have you been feeling, Miss Yondo?”
“Feeling? Fine, I guess.”