by A. G. Howard
“Ooooh.” Rabid stands on the mattress and dances through the glowing shapes created by the luminary. I face the mirror, watching his reflection in the glass. He’s like a macabre ballerina in a busted snow globe. So out of place in this room filled with normal, human things.
Then I see my own reflection. My netherling eye markings haven’t fully faded yet. My skin is glistening, and if my hair weren’t caught up in a braid, it would be rustling—alive and enchanted.
I’m an alien.
Come to think of it, we’re all aliens now. Even Jeb. After what we’ve been through and seen, this tranquility seems more dangerous than the chaos we faced. I wonder if this is how soldiers feel after returning home from a war. How do they get past it? How do they learn to belong again? To feel safe once more?
The fuzzy buzzing whispers of a few bugs break through my thoughts, a welcome comfort. I close my eyes for an instant, but snap them open as a high-pitched squeal from the other end of the hallway makes me jump.
I shoo Rabid off the bed and into the closet. “Don’t come out unless we call your name, okay?”
He nods, burrowing into a pile of sewing accessories—scarves, belts, and swatches of fabric—on the floor.
I stand in place, arms at my sides . . . trapped.
Jenara’s hysterical sobs grow closer as Jeb leads her toward the cracked door. He talks in gentle tones, so quiet beneath her crying I can’t make out what he says. My heart hammers in time with the hinges squeaking open.
When they step in, she’s wrapped up in his arms, gripping the lapels of his shirt, head tucked against him and face hidden behind a curtain of wet pink hair—fresh from the shower. Jeb must’ve caught her just as she came out of the bathroon. Her green satin pajamas remind me of past slumber parties and giggling games.
I’ve missed her so much.
“Jen?” I murmur tentatively, without even knowing what to say next.
At the sound of my voice, she turns her head in my direction.
“A-Al?” Her freshly scrubbed pink cheeks bulge as she tries to suppress her sobs. She loses the battle and cries out, running to me.
I hold up my arms to hug her and we crash onto the mattress together, the springs bouncing beneath us. Catching my breath, I bury myself in the citrusy, bubblegum scent of her shampoo. A smile radiates from my heart to my lips and I hold her tighter against me, tears dribbling down my temples. Hers or mine . . . it doesn’t matter. The sensation is wonderful.
Jeb rubs her back. “J.”
“No, no, no, no.” She sobs into my neck. “Don’t wake me up. I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming.”
He puts one knee on the bed next to our embracing bodies, and the concern in his eyes for his little sister is enough to make me forget we ever left.
“It’s okay, Jen. It’s not a dream,” I reassure her. “We’re here.”
Jeb strokes her head, purposely skimming my cheek with a fingertip in the process. He doesn’t want to hurt his sister—he’s spent so many years protecting her. But he knows this is best for all of us, in the long run.
Still, it’s obvious he’s struggling and lost, like that little boy he once was.
I clasp his hand and drag him down so his body falls against me on my right side. He snuggles close enough that his soft breaths graze my ear, putting his arm across me and Jen so I’m sandwiched between my two favorite people. Together, the three of us cry and then laugh until we’re hiccuping.
For the first time in weeks, we’re together again. A family.
This feeling. Maybe this is how we find our way back to normalcy.
Once Jenara calms enough, she sits up, trying to slow her ragged breath. “Where have you been? We looked everywhere for you!” The accusation is directed at Jeb. “We thought you were—”
“I’m sorry,” Jeb rises to his knees, interrupting her before she can admit that they were thinking the worst.
I stay put, spine anchored to the mattress. Afraid to move.
“Al, maybe we should just tell her everything all at once,” Jeb says, his voice wavering.
“Including how I sent you there?” I grasp for the right words and fumble terribly.
Jenara’s watery green gaze falls on me. “Huh?” Understanding crosses her face. “Wait.” She scoots off the bed and stands, wobbly but determined. “The police were right? You knew where he was all along? But why would you . . . ?” She sobs again. “What about your mom? Where is she? And your dad? What’s going on?”
I study her tear-streaked face, her pink hair dripping onto her ruffled pajama top, the three tiny freckles on the bridge of her nose. She looks so vulnerable. Do we really want to bring her into this? There’s no turning back once we do.
Jeb forces me to sit up. “You’re the only one who can show her. Make her understand.”
I gulp. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“Somewhere right around here.” He trails a finger down the slits in my dress that reveal my bare shoulder blades. My wing buds tingle at his touch.
Heat scorches my face. “But, I can’t just . . . we need to prepare her.”
Jenara inches backward toward the door. “Prepare me? You guys are freaking me out. I’m calling Mom.” The doorbell rings and she stalls, her face brightening. “Corbin,” she mumbles, and turns toward the hall to let him in.
“No, J.” Jeb tries to stop her but she shrugs him off.
“Wait, Jen!” I jump off the bed. “Corb can’t be here for this.”
“Why not?” She spins, hands on her hips. “He’s been here while Jeb’s been missing. And while you were committed. He loves me, Al. He’s been taking care of me and Mom. Anything you can tell me, you can tell him.” She turns and marches through the bedroom door.
“We-we’ve been to Wonderland!” I blurt, stopping her in her tracks. She does an about-face midway into the hall, her mouth agape.
“Show her your wings,” Jeb adds, narrowing his eyes. His long lashes cast shadows across his cheeks and the luminary lights sparkle across his skin, making him look as much like a netherling as me.
“Wings?” Jenara snaps, stomping back into the room. “Seriously, bro? You want her locked in the asylum again? You have no idea what she went through while they were trying to knock the Wonderland out of her. Don’t enable her delirium!”
“Al . . .” Jeb guides me toward her. “You’re gonna have to own it. There’s no gentle way to make someone believe. It took me a crash course via the rabbit hole.”
Upon hearing the word rabbit, Rabid bursts from the closet, his skeletal form tangled in scarves and belts. He stumbles into Jeb and knocks them both to the floor. Rabid inches along toward me on his belly, looking like a demented caterpillar with only his antlers and pink eyes showing.
“Rabid of White, I be!” He announces in his hissing voice as he rolls around, trying to get liberated.
Jeb curses and Jenara screams so loud all sound deafens to a dull roar, as if my eardrums are stuffed inside a seashell.
The front door slams open and footsteps pound down the hall. Jeb scrambles up to shut Jen’s bedroom, but too late. Corbin arrives at the threshold, panting, reddish-blond hair shimmering in the soft light. He clenches a house key in his hand. His eyes fall on Rabid, who’s managed to peel off the accessories from Jenara’s closet and is standing there, baring all his netherling creeptitude.
The little creature opens his arms in a grand flourish. “Ta-da!” he shouts, froth spritzing from his mouth. I scowl at his showmanship. Morpheus must’ve taught him that move.
“What the hell?” Corbin drawls in his deep Southern accent, grasping Jenara’s elbow and backing her trembling body toward the hall with him.
Jeb frowns, intent on the key chain in Corbin’s hand. “I was about to ask the same thing. Why do you have a key to our house, Corb? Since when are you living with my sister?”
I stare at Jeb. The netherling side of me laughs out loud before I can stop it, reveling in the ridiculousness of the entir
e situation. It seems we’re all driven by instincts. For Jeb, giving his sister and best pal the shock of their lives takes a backseat to protective-big-brother mode.
Hearing Jenara’s sobs reins my wicked side back in. I grab her robe from the chair by the nightstand and toss it over Rabid. He growls and the smell of singed fabric sharpens the air as his eyes become two glowing red orbs underneath, making smoky holes in the terrycloth.
“No fires, Rabid!” I scold.
He turns off his eyes and hunches lower to the floor.
“Jeb? Al?” Corbin mumbles, as if he’s just now noticing us. He looks dangerously close to passing out. The freckles around his nose appear dark against his pale face. His intense blue gaze stays nailed to Rabid’s hunched and wriggling form beneath the terrycloth robe. “Where’ve you . . . how did you . . . ? That thing. It’s gotta be a robot . . . right?”
“Rabid no robot be!” My royal advisor screeches from under his covering, offended.
“Into the closet,” I command. Rabid mumbles something indecipherable and hops out of sight, dragging the burned robe behind him like a wedding train.
Jeb and I exchange glances. “There’s always forgetting potions,” I offer.
He huffs, studying Corbin and Jenara where they’re propped against the wall outside the room, confused and shaken beyond words. “Losing your memories isn’t all it’s cut out to be. Trust me.”
“So we tell him, too,” I offer. “It’s that, or he forgets and we send him home.”
“I’m not going anywhere without Jen,” Corbin grates out, the color returning to his face. He holds Jenara against him as she buries her nose into his button-up shirt, struggling to breathe normally.
Jeb’s lips turn on a slow, daring smile. “Not going anywhere tonight? So, you plan on being devoted to her for another day or two?”
Corbin’s jaw clenches. “Try forever.” His embrace tightens, drawing Jenara so close her pajama pants cling to his jeans, popping with static.
“Forever’s a long time,” Jeb says, and the twinge of sadness in the statement tugs my insides, as if they were a harp strummed by his fingertips. Sniffling, Jenara turns to look at her brother, her expression bewildered. Jeb’s mood shifts again as he shakes his head—an affectionate gesture. “Looks like you have yourself a regular white knight, sis.”
I catch Jeb’s wrist where a raised scar has replaced his tattoo. “You would know a little about how stubborn those can be. Yeah?”
He chuckles softly and winds our fingers together. “So, Corb. You want to be a part of our family? What say we make it official?”
Corbin and Jenara both squint at us, holding their breath. The house falls deathly quiet. Nothing can be heard but a few whispering insects—on a frequency only I’m attuned to—and Rabid’s grumbles from the closet.
Jeb lifts my hand and kisses my engagement ring. “The thing you both need to know about Al?” he says to our audience. “That asylum never had a chance at curing her. See, you can take the girl out of Wonderland, but you can’t take Wonderland out of the girl.” My hand slips from his as he steps back to give me room. “Show them what you got, fairy queen.”
I put on my most regal smile. And there, in the middle of the pink-striped bedroom, with my best friend and the love of her life staring wide-eyed, I free my netherling wings, and confess all my lies.
MEMORY TWO: SEASHELLS
Four years later . . .
PLEASANCE, TX., JUN 29 — Two Pleasance locals who were reported missing four weeks ago, along with two others who vanished last Wednesday, were discovered alive early Saturday morning, with only a few scrapes and bruises, trapped within a collapsed mining tunnel beneath a condemned activity park.
Another local, a sibling and close friend of the missing persons, had reported suspecting their whereabouts after receiving a tip via her Ouija board, according to Officer Riley Hughes.
“Normally, I don’t put much stock in spiritual hokum,” Hughes said. “But the girl had been fully cooperative with police during our monthlong investigation for her missing brother and next-door neighbors. She was insistent we at least look. Since several cave-ins took place at the park on the eve of the Pleasance High prom weeks earlier, and considering it was the missing persons’ last reported whereabouts, we thought it was worth a follow-up. We went there expecting to find nothing. Score one for hokum.”
“Al, are you kidding me?” Jenara’s piqued voice pulls my attention from the four-year-old newspaper article. An ornate glass bottle filled with the stones I collected during our “rescue” from Underland sits next to me on the wicker couch. I rub my temples, fuzzy from my trip down memory lane.
Jen rushes across the threshold and shuts the door behind her. “I can’t believe you haven’t even put on your underskirt yet! What’s with you? Twenty-one years old today and already showing signs of senility. Maybe you need some fresh air.”
She cracks the window behind me. A salty breeze drifts in, stirring the turquoise starfish-patterned curtains above my head. My hair flutters, the platinum waves skimming across my bared shoulders and lacy white corset.
I trace the hem of my matching lacy boy shorts, surprised to be sitting in nothing but my underthings. What was I doing before I sat down? First, I ate the birthday cupcake Mom left next to her card on the bedside table.
As if triggered by my thoughts, the paper cupcake liner flutters to the floor on a gust of wind and blows over to Jen’s bare feet. She picks it up and frowns at me. “Ummm?”
“Cupcake from my mom.” I smack my lips, still tasting the bright blue, cloyingly sweet, honey-anise icing.
Jenara crumples the paper and tosses it into the trash. “So, this is you coming down from a sugar high?”
“Maybe?” I attempt to recall the rest of the afternoon’s events. After my snack, I took off my robe to get dressed. While digging through my suitcase for the brand-new choker necklace I had borrowed from Jenara for today, I was sidetracked by the keepsakes I’d packed. Somehow, I ended up on the couch under the window with scrapbook and bottle in hand.
I study the newspaper clipping again. Is this me crashing from a sugar rush, or is it something else?
I feel so strange. My body and mind are relaxed, but my blood is the opposite. It races through the veins under my skin—white-water rapids branching off into a thousand tributaries.
“Come on, zombie girl, let me see some sign of life,” Jen says, only half-teasing. “It’s one hour to sunset, and we still have to fix your hair and makeup. And FYI, that icing stain around your lips does not count as your ‘something blue.’ That’s what the garter is for. How are we supposed to get that off?” Her gaze falls to the bottle of stones beside my thigh. She picks it up and rattles it in front of me. “Unbelievable. Jeb’s out there with Corbin getting sand between his toes, pacing the shore to check every little detail. And here you are, reminiscing.”
Jenara’s wound up about more than just the wedding details. She had to leave a fashion show in New York two days early to get here for this. She’s been in constant contact with her design partner, and their line is stirring up quite a buzz. I have a feeling her career is about to take off big-time. We tried to plan the wedding around her schedule, but this was the only week the beach house was available. So we compromised and made it for the tail end of the fashion show. I told her she didn’t have to come, but she said she’d die before missing it.
Even now, when she’s hitting me with her harshest green-eyed glare, I can tell there’s no place she’d rather be. She’s a vision of softness in her shin-length, flowing periwinkle sundress. Her pink hair sits atop her head in a chic chignon. Dark blue pygmy roses are tucked in at strategic intervals, forming a halo. A few stray pink tendrils coil at her neck.
“You look perfect,” I tell her, dreamily.
She fights a grin and rolls her eyes. “Wish I could say the same for you.”
“Has Corb seen you yet?” My question is rhetorical. The two have been joined at th
e hip for years, and now that Corbin has almost completed his bachelor’s degree in advertising, he’s planning to move with her to New York by the end of the summer.
Just last month, he asked for “her hand in marriage.” Dressed in medieval chain mail, he rode up to our duplex in a horse-drawn carriage. Jeb had helped him refinish an old Chevy they found in a junkyard. Jeb took the body and scrapped all the clunky, unnecessary parts, making it a shell lightweight enough to be pulled by the two white horses Corbin borrowed from a friend. After adding a sturdy harness, replacing the tires with buggy wheels, and painting the body a glossy white with red trim, they had the perfect Texan knight’s carriage. When Corbin pulled up in Jen’s driveway with three dozen roses in hand and asked her to ride off with him into the sunset, she nearly fainted.
It was old-fashioned—yet modern—and oh so sweet.
Lost in her own nostalgic haze, Jenara admires the sparkly engagement ring on her finger. Her grin breaks loose, along with an attractive blush to her cheeks. “Well, yah. My betrothed approves of my latest creation. But you’re the one who’s about to be in the spotlight.” She tosses the bottle of stones into my opened suitcase and then reaches into the closet for my dress. Jeb and I had decided Jenara’s beautiful creations got a bad rap at prom, and deserved the spotlight in a good memory.
Over the past few weeks, Jenara did a masterful job stitching rips and patching holes with sequined appliqués—one of which she’d found in an antique store, so it was also my “something old.” Any stains were masked with airbrushed periwinkle dye followed by a sweep of glitter. Now the strapless white dress looks brand-new. Or as new as a vintage wedding gown can look when it’s been modified to resemble shadowy, moldering fabric fresh from the grave.
“Come on, Al, get the lead out,” Jenara scolds, losing patience.
I grunt in response.
She tosses the sheer purple-gray underskirt my way and it drifts over my head, surrounding me like a perfume-scented cloud.
“I’ll prep the makeup,” she says. A loud clatter follows as she dumps her cosmetic bag onto the table next to Mom’s birthday card. “Maybe nail polish remover will work on your lips.”