Heartsick

by Dia Reeves

  “You care what I want?”

  “You know we like you. You say what you mean and you like to get naked. If you didn’t have such commitment issues you’d be perfect.”

  “Commitment issues like your mother had?”

  Rue mentally kicked herself as soon as the words were out. She didn’t want him to turn all that anger on her. She still couldn’t believe he’d said he liked her.

  We like you, blowing over her skin, a second breeze.

  But Sterling didn’t get mad.

  “Her issues were worse than yours. She ran away to go live with the Bastard. You called Kissy that, but there’s only one of those. Mother ran away with him because I wasn’t old enough to stop her. But I’m not a kid anymore. Neither is Stanton; he’s sure we can fix everything.”

  “How?”

  “Why do you care? Are you offering to help?”

  Rue hadn’t realized how closely she and Sterling had been walking together until she had to put several feet of space between them. “It would be pointless. As soon as my six months are up, I’m taking Nettle to Europe. I might stay there. I might even go to college there. In Liechtenstein. I can’t do anything for you from Liechtenstein.”

  “Adele all over again,” he said. “If you can’t do anything for us, why’re you so interested in our secrets?”

  “What secrets?” Stanton said.

  Sterling and Rue had come full circle, back at the steps where Stanton was spraying Karissa down with the bug spray.

  “Family secrets,” Sterling said. “You can go play, Kissy, but you have to stay on the concrete, you hear?”

  “Okay!”

  Karissa ran off.

  “How did he kill Elnora? Chop her head off, or stomp it in like Shirley’s?”

  “He pushed her off the family room balcony.” The pain in Sterling’s voice, that he was volunteering information instead of forcing her to dig for it, cooled her fevered pacing. “Dad talked her into coming home, but he didn’t know she’d had a baby. She hid Kissy from him for years. Me and Stanton helped. So did Shirley. Especially Shirley.”

  “That’s why Karissa’s so good at hiding.”

  “She is now. Back then she used to slip up. One day Dad found her playing on the balcony in the family room. He took one look at her and knew. Kissy has Mother’s eyes, but she looks just like the Bastard.”

  “Dad wanted to throw Kissy off the balcony. He would have, but Mother interfered.”

  “And he hates being interfered with,” Rue remembered.

  “She broke her neck when she hit the ground. Then Dad burned her body in the incinerator. He designed that thing to burn so hot, nothing would remain. Not even bone. Not even smoke. He would have done the same to Karissa, but she hid. Real good that time; no one saw her again for nearly a month. Not even us.”

  They watched their sister twirling among the sweetbites; their wings fluttered with a sound like polite applause as they swarmed her, landed on her, fanciful barrettes resting in her hair, gaudy jewelry weighing down her tiny fingers.

  “We want her to grow up right. Not hiding from everyone or thinking she doesn’t have a right to live. We want to heal the family, but we really want to heal what we’ve done to Kissy.”

  “Karissa’s growing up all right enough,” Rue said. “Even in a good home, you can’t go through life unscathed. I mean, look.”

  Rue pointed at the corpse she and Sterling had discovered earlier. The corpse that was inching nearer to the concrete square where Karissa stood, watching with great interest.

  “That’s not the face of a girl that’s traumatized.”

  “Holy shit, Rue! Do something,” Sterling said as Stanton rushed over and snatched Karissa into his arms. Ran her over to the car and locked her in.

  “It can’t get on the concrete,” she reminded him. “What’s the fuss? Besides, I’m surprised the fungus was able to live so long in such a decomposed body. Like Karissa said, seems like it’s earned the right to live.”

  Sterling stormed over the concrete, stopped near the edge. The corpse crooked its body at an unnatural angle to gaze at Sterling, and so was splashed in the face by Sterling’s urine.

  “You could just use vinegar.”

  “You have some? In your pocket maybe?”

  Sterling peed as far as he could aim and soaked the red tendrils, like insect legs, growing out of the corpse’s orifices that enabled it to creep about. As the urine splashed on it, the red tendrils withered and grew still and the corpse collapsed under its dead weight.

  “The minute it went after my sister, it lost its living privileges.”

  “I guess Karissa is pretty scarred now. After having to watch you pee on a dead body.”

  Sterling looked over his shoulder. Saw Karissa’s face pressed to the passenger window.

  “Damn it.”

  “Emotional trauma,” Rue said. “If it’s not one thing, it’s a penis.”

  Chapter 17

  Rue entered the kitchen and was assaulted by the smell of burned popcorn. She gagged. God, she could still taste that charred bitterness in her throat. But this time Karissa wasn’t trying to force feed Rue; she was removing a scorched popcorn bag from the microwave.

  “Just make some more,” Stanton said, wearily. “And watch it this time.” He wandered over to Rue at the sink as she washed her hands.

  “What did you kill?”

  “Nothing. I was helping a backstabber give birth.”

  “Oh that’s nice. Because the world needs as many backstabbers as possible.”

  “It was the one I blinded for you. I owed her.”

  Stanton gave Rue a look she’d never seen before, like he was sad for her but liked her anyway? Such a useless expression, no need to remember that one.

  “Come watch the movie with us,” he said. “Sterling’s setting up the projector in the family room. It’s some martial arts thing; Kissy’s obsessed.”

  “Lady Kung Fu!” Karissa exclaimed, sitting on the counter to reach the cupboards.

  “I don’t want to get sucked into all that again: family pretending to care about you, but secretly plotting your demise.”

  “I was no good at pretending, even as a child. I care.”

  Rue would have kissed him then—how could she not?—but he stepped back and glanced meaningfully toward Karissa. Rue grabbed him, but Stanton was more than tall enough to stay out of reach of her mouth.

  He laughed at the look on her face, holding her at arms-length. “Sterling would get mad.”

  “It’s none of his business.”

  “It is. We share everything, you know?” Like he was warning her.

  “I don’t even like Sterling.”

  “No?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes. But not like you,” she was quick to add.

  He let go of her arms and held her face. Eyes roaming, like she was a favorite book. “I should kiss you first and not tell him. I’d be justified since I know he’s working on something for you and not sharing. Sharing is caring. But I won’t be like that. When we kiss I don’t want it to be petty. Go check on Sterling, see if he needs help setting up.”

  Rue didn’t move.

  “I made a choice once,” she whispered. “I still don’t know if it was the right one. I hate choosing.”

  “You don’t have to choose.”

  And he meant it. Rue felt herself melting, hadn’t even known she’d been tense. Everything rushed out: “Sterling wants to make me a heart. That’s what he’s not sharing.”

  “A heart. Is that what you want?”

  “Maybe. It doesn’t matter. Sterling wants to make me a heart. I didn’t think I liked him, but now…”

  Stanton turned her around and pushed her in the back. “Go tell him if he talks to me about it, I’ll help him. And then tell him to hurry and kiss you so that I can get my turn.”

  Rue raced up the kitchen stairs, weightless; the burden of confessing had left her feather-light.

  You don’t
have to choose.

  It looped repeatedly like the most annoying pop song in the world, but with lyrics she’d never get tired of hearing: You don’t have to choose.

  On the second floor, random knocking chased off the weightlessness, brought her down to earth. Knocking. Like she’d heard that day against the door of Westwood’s lab. But this was coming from the family room.

  Rue ran down the hall and charged inside; buzzing assaulted her ears.

  The room was dark but for the glow from the projector against the back wall. Sterling on his belly in the pool of beaming light, stark and still, face shiny and swollen. Swelling. A hand with fingers the size of sausages, a foot splitting the seams of his shoe. Because of the wasps.

  And dozens more filling the room, flying low and slow as airships over a stadium. This is what would have emerged from the pupae had she not destroyed them; what the sludge had portended. What eclosed without love and bedtime stories to keep genetics at bay. Hideous segmented things with opaque wings the color of spoiled milk and bloated bottle-green bodies. Three of them curled on Stanton’s legs, back and shoulders, big and as docile as cats, inch-long stingers dripping poison like piss. Bigger than the flying wasps. Wingless. And just lying on him.

  Feeding on him? Laying eggs in him?

  The wasps knocked into the walls, then jabbed the walls with their stingers, as if the wall had attacked them. They knocked into Rue.

  An evil green rainstorm suddenly swept her up.

  Rue battled her way through the storm and kicked the wasp off Sterling’s back. It burst from the impact. She kicked the other two with similar results and grabbed hold of Sterling’s limp arm.

  The rainstorm became a hurricane, stinging flashes of pain in her back and arms and sides like lightning strikes that she had to ignore. Rue wasn’t sure what had enraged the wasps: killing the wingless ones? Moving Sterling? Some creatures were territorial about their kills.

  But Sterling wasn’t dead. She had his wrist, could feel his pulse. It was strong.

  She dragged him into the hall and slammed the door. A couple of wasps followed her out, leading with their stingers, but they were slow, and Rue easily sliced them out of the air.

  Sterling lay in the hall, his head now as big and round as a cackler’s. Snorting and snuffling, as if he couldn’t breathe very well. Eyelids reddened and sealed tight.

  Rue sliced the dead wasps again, but they didn’t die a second time.

  The smell of unburned popcorn preceded Stanton and Karissa’s arrival. Karissa dropped the bowl at the sight of Sterling.

  “What happened?”

  “The family room’s full of wasps. Giant ones.”

  “His face.”

  “I know, but it’s his breathing I’m worried about.”

  “You’re swelling too.” Karissa pointed to various parts of Rue’s body. “You’re swelling everywhere.”

  Rue was. She felt it, the buttons on her uniform uncomfortably tight. But her soul would take care of it; she had to focus on important matters.

  Stanton pulled his sister close. “Stay next to me. We have to get Sterling in bed. And then Rue.”

  “Not me. I need green wood.” Rue ran off, crunching through the spilled popcorn. “In the meantime, keep everyone out of the family room and get Sterling to a doctor!”

  She found some unseasoned logs beneath a tarp in the garage and was back in the family room within minutes. The bottle-green storm was still raging, and she was immediately set upon, but Rue dumped her armful of logs on the fire, making sure to close the flue so that the room would fill with smoke.

  As the air thickened, the hurricane downgraded to a rainstorm, and soon even the rain stopped as the wasps thumped to the soft carpet. They squirmed like drunken worms, even over Rue’s feet. She kicked them. Stomped them. Some of the wasps pleaded with her. Bristly limbs clasped before them like they knew what that gesture meant. Scores of them mirrored the posture. Buzzing at her in a pattern that almost made sense. A speech pattern. They were intelligent just as she’d originally thought. Higher functioning lifeforms with large brains.

  That Rue thoroughly crushed beneath her feet.

  When she was done, she opened the flue and then the balcony doors, coughing, eyes teary and burning. Refusing to look down at what she’d done, refusing to think about it. Not while Sterling lay hurt. Dying.

  Dead?

  When she’d caught her breath and the smoke had cleared, she went out into the hallway, leaving greenish-black footprints in her wake. She crouched before the overturned popcorn bowl, let the poison leaking out of her drip into it. When she made her way to the twins’ room, Sterling was in bed, barely breathing, while Stanton talked to Westwood. Karissa, as usual, was nowhere in sight.

  “So I called Adele and she gave me a list of ingredients that’ll fix Sterling right up,” Stanton was saying. “I already sent the servants for what we need.”

  “Where was Rue?” Westwood asked.

  “I’m here.” Rue came further into the room. “But why are you? Why aren’t you on your way to a hospital?”

  Westwood whirled on her. “How could you let this happen?” Westwood must not have been interested in the answer because he punched her so hard, one of her canines popped free and she fell to the floor. Because the poison had left her slow and wobbly, not because she was weak.

  “All you had to do was protect them! But no. You think it’s more important to wallow in your own family drama than pay attention to my sons.”

  He was right, but Rue lashed out anyway.

  “I know I burned every one of those pupae,” she said, the loose tooth rolling in her mouth like hard candy. “Those particular wasps must have come through your lab door, the one you refuse to allow the Mayor to close the way any sane person would.”

  “I’m not the one with a soft spot for rampaging beasts. That would be you. Did you kill every one of those pupae? Did you?”

  “Stop it,” Stanton said. “Arguing doesn’t help Sterling.”

  Westwood’s pocket watch chimed at him and he ran his fingers through his hair. Reset the watch. “I don’t have time for this. I just need to know that he’s okay.”

  “He will be, Dad.”

  A servant rushed in with a bowl of various items. “We found everything except the bone fragment.”

  “Dig up the back yard,” Westwood yelled. “The dogs are always burying things. Hurry! Or I’ll take the bone fragment from you.”

  “You can have this.” Rue stepped before the frightened servant and spat out the broken tooth. “It’s sort of like bone.”

  “Will that work?”

  “Let’s see.” Stanton took the tooth and ground it in the big bowl with the other items and made a gooey brown paste, which he quickly slathered over his brother’s swollen face, rubbing it in like lotion.

  The results were immediate. Stanton wiped away the venom that drained from Sterling’s ear, collecting it in the now empty bowl. Slowly, slowly, Sterling’s body returned to its normal dimensions, just as Rue’s had.

  When Sterling was resting comfortably, Westwood relaxed, then tensed again when his watch resumed chiming.

  “Sterling’s fine, Dad. You can go to the lab. Everything’s fixed.”

  “Not everything. Not yet.” Westwood glared at Rue. “Maybe there’s a filter…a screen of some sort that will fit over the lab door.”

  “Maybe I can kill things more…thoroughly.”

  Stanton squeezed Rue’s hand.

  “Thanks. Both of you. That’ll be a real help.”

  Westwood eyed his watch a final time and then left the room.

  After the door closed behind Westwood, Karissa appeared on Sterling’s bed, head on her brother’s chest as though listening to his heartbeat.

  She asked Rue:

  “Does the tooth fairy give you money for knocked out teeth?”

  “No.”

  “The twins will give you a dollar. That’s what I get when I lose mine.” She show
ed Rue all the gaps in her mouth.

  “She doesn’t need money.” Stanton touched Rue’s jaw. “She needs a dentist. Or maybe a doctor.”

  “I can heal myself, remember?” She showed Stanton the white point of the canine already filling the gap. “But why not take Sterling to a doctor?”

  “Doctor exams might raise questions Dad doesn’t want to answer, but it’s okay. Adele told me what to do.”

  “The one who wants to take Karissa camping?”

  “She’s good with medical stuff. She delivered Karissa.” Stanton said that last as though it proved Adele’s expertise beyond a doubt.

  Sterling smiled at Rue from the bed. “I feel your tooth inside me, gnawing at my pancreas.”

  “What’s wrong with Sterling?” Karissa sat up, concerned when Sterling wouldn’t stop giggling.

  “I’m made of very potent stuff, it’s affecting him, I guess.” She sat next to Sterling on the bed. “You have to relax, give in to it. Let it help what it can, while it can.”

  Sterling’s breathing evened out and the fits of laughter subsided. “You’re really amazing. Have I told you that? But why can’t I feel your heart?”

  “Because you’re touching my back.”

  “Let me touch your front.”

  “Sterling. Kissy’s right there.”

  “There’s nothing to feel,” Rue said.

  “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  “Sterling!” Stanton choked back whatever he’d been about to say. “Kissy come over here and help me tidy up.”

  “Okay!”

  “I mean my heart,” Rue explained when Sterling put his hand over her chest. “All that poison just now, all the other damage I’ve taken working here. It’s barely beating. I’ll have to get a new one soon.”

  “Take mine. I got your tooth, you get my heart. Fair trade.”

  “That’s not fair. I can regrow my tooth; you can’t regrow your heart.”

  “But we owe you.”

  “I screwed up, like Westwood said. Too caught up in my own problems. Too weak to do what needs to be done. I didn’t kill all the pupae. Your death would have been my fault. It really would have. So you don’t owe me. There’s nothing I want anyway.”

  “You said you wanted a heart.”