Another Little Piece (18 page)

Both of his hands clasped my trembling one and squeezed. “I saw you. And I had to see more. Know more. Find out who you really were.”

My teeth were chattering, but not with the cold. “And what did you find?”

Dex’s gaze left the sky to meet mine again. “Not a monster. Nope, not a monster at all. Just a girl. A really complicated, secretive, but also brave and—”

“Brave?” I shook my head. “I ran away. I totally freaked out.”

“But you came back. Lots of other people have run from me, and that’s the last I’ve seen of them. But you didn’t fall apart or hide away forever. You’ve been broken and you’ve survived. I admire you, Anna. And I . . . I can’t get enough of you.”

The rain turned to snow. Almost as if someone had flipped a switch. Snowflakes pinwheeled lazily through the air, drifting down to earth, where they settled softly with a sigh before disappearing completely.

I reached out, finding Dex’s other hand. It wasn’t enough. I stepped closer, pressing my body against his. My hands slid beneath his shirt, finding his stomach, chest, back. His skin felt so hot against my freezing fingers, it warmed me from the inside out. Our mouths found each other. We gorged on kisses. And then we were stumbling down the stairs, still caught up in each other.

Our kissing continued until our chattering teeth made us remember our wet clothes. Then, suddenly shy, we turned our backs to each other and pulled clinging pants and shirts from our bodies. We wrapped ourselves in gigantic afghans knitted in undulating waves of bright color. As one we flopped onto the oversized beanbag chair and curled into each other. The blankets kept us each warm in our separate cocoons, but our fingers poked through the open loops of yarn to find each other.

Fingers intertwined, we fell asleep, as if we’d both come a long distance and had finally found a safe place to rest.

FUTURE

I LOVE YOU

I practice the words

and wonder

where people find

the courage

to ever say them

aloud.

—ARG

CUT

The
brujas
are frightened. I have never seen them this way before. Even when the hurricane came through. The wind shrieked and the walls of our small hut shook. While I cowered, they sat calmly. Tonight, though, they woke me, saying, “He is coming. Run.”

Whoever he is, he is worse than a hurricane.

Under the moonlight, they dig into the garden, pulling up the tomato plants and peppers. A plastic garbage bag finally emerges, and from it a T-shirt and jeans. Faded red blots and streaks cover both garments, but they smell clean like detergent and the freshly churned dirt that kept them hidden. The
brujas
dress me like a child, and I am as passive as one, only watching as they slide the clothes over my body and gently pull them into place. They cluck their tongues in concern when the jeans slide down, barely clinging to my bony hips. One finds a frayed piece of rope, and another slides it through my belt loops and knots it tight at my waist.

Then the hair cutting. Their knives slice and they explain. Spanish words spill out, each saying something different, words and voices overlapping. Yet, as it always is with them, I have no trouble understanding.

I must run. He is coming. The Physician. My hair will be scattered to the wind, and with it my memories. All those hard-earned memories—lost. I will have to find them again later. On my own. Without the
brujas
there to draw away the pain. But maybe this time I will remember it differently. Maybe this time I will see another way. When I came to them, there was not much of me left. Too much time had passed. Too much of me had been lost. But they gathered the pieces of the others. The girls. And with them and what was left of me, they were able to knit me back together. They’d hoped I would stay with them, but had always known it was not to be. We are all of us not quite human, but I am on a different path and must follow it.

They fall silent as the last chunk of hair is lost. I almost wish they would keep on cutting, until I am only bits and pieces, all scattered to the wind.

“What will happen to me?”

Again they answer as one in their varying ways.

“You are hanging by a thread.”

“That was once a thick rope, fully binding you.”

“Many would be content, trapped in eternal life.”

“But you pulled and tugged, never accepting it.”

“Always looking for a way out. Slowly breaking it down.”

“This is good work. This is hard work.”

“And now there is only this thread.”

“Now no more pulling.”

“Now no more tugging.”

“We helped you rest. We made you strong again.”

“Now you must cut it.”

Tears of frustration fill my eyes. “Cut the rope and then what? Fly away?”

They exchange glances. “No.” They say it as one.

The middle
bruja
steps forward, takes my hands. When she speaks, it is in heavily accented English. “No fly away. If you no cut rope, then you swing. Always swinging.” She moves her hand back and forth, indicating the motion. “Swinging above dark and dangerous waters. Or you can cut rope. But no fly. You fall. Fall down down down. Down all the way into dark and dangerous waters. Fall and try not to drown. Your choice. Swing or fall. Now choose.”

“No,” I say. “No.”

They ignore me. They push me out toward the rising sun. A battered Toyota truck waits there, its fan belt already whining in protest against the long ride before us. The driver stares straight ahead. For our entire journey he will pretend I am not there, and when I leave him, in his mind this will become true.

I climb in, and they hand me a plastic jug of water through the open window. My fist clenches around the garbage bag that had held my clothes. I’d taken it, wanting to hold on to the last bits of earth hidden in its folds. Wanting to hold on to this place and time.

As we drive away, I cannot help looking back, hoping for some final good-bye. But the
brujas
have given me their last words. I am on my own.

BE TOGETHER

“Choose.”

The voices echoed in my head, even as my eyes flew open and I jerked upright. Everything was dark, as if my eyes were adjusting from the glare of a tropical sun. Across the room, the screen saver on Dex’s computer glowed, drawing my gaze toward it.

Choose
. That same word bounced from one corner of the screen to the next, never resting. Wrapping the blanket around me, I stumbled toward the computer until the mouse was in my hand. I clicked it and almost sighed in relief as the screen faded away, and the desktop picture took its place.

The computer clock said it was seven p.m. It felt later. Like days had passed. It had only been three hours. The basement door that led into the house creaked open, and then shut again. Locks clicked and clacked back into place, and then Dex came down the stairs, a laundry basket in his arms.

Feeling shy, I pulled the blanket tighter. I had not been myself. Not in the usual not-myself-because-I’m-not-Annaliese kind of way. This was different. I’d been a different self I hadn’t known existed. A truer self. But now that part was gone and without her I felt . . . naked.

“You’re awake!” Dex’s grin was wide and warming. “Sorry, stating the obvious. I was worried you’d still be sleeping, and I didn’t know whether you would rather stay asleep or be woken up . . . but problem averted.”

Dex set the basket in the middle of the room, reached down for a small bundle, and handed it to me.

“I dried your clothes. Hope I didn’t shrink anything.”

I took hold of them with one hand, not wanting to lose my blanket. They were still warm. “Thank you.”

“You have to go, right?” Dex asked while turning away, giving me privacy to get dressed.

“Yeah,” I answered, quickly tugging on my jeans. “If the mom and the dad get home . . .”

“I peeked out when I was up there. Your house looked dark. No searchlights or anything.”

“I just don’t want them to worry.” I pulled my long-sleeved henley on. “Okay, I’m dressed.”

Dex turned toward me, and even though we were both clothed again, I still felt shy and uncertain. I’d told him I was a monster. That was a nakedness that could never be covered up again. I found myself not quite able to meet his eyes.

“Hey.” His soft voice was suddenly close. “You okay? With everything? With us?” He didn’t touch me or crowd me. And just like that, I was fine. Dex was still Dex. And despite all the times behind me when I had chosen wrong, this time my choice had been right.

“Yes,” I said, even as I moved into his arms. “And I’m sorry for running away before.” I whispered the words into his chest.

I felt Dex’s lungs expand with a deep sigh. “Don’t worry, I’ve had worse reactions. In the past, people I’ve told my secrets to have had . . . side effects.”

“Side effects?”

“Well, not side effects exactly. More like contagion. There’s a reason I don’t go around warning people, and it’s not because I’m worried they’ll think I’m crazy. It’s because when I tell someone how to avoid their death, they get this.” Dex pointed two fingers at his eyes. “The all-death, all-the-time channel playing constantly inside their head. And as it turns out, there are people who would rather not subscribe to that station.” He stopped and swallowed heavily. And that’s when I guessed.

“Your mom.”

Dex nodded.

“And your best friend who killed himself?”

Another nod, and a sad, ironic smile. “I saved them.”

I squeezed his hands. “You did.”

“Thing is, some people would rather not be saved.”

I wrapped my arms around Dex even tighter, squeezing as if I could push all the hurt out. “You can save me. No, even better. You can show me.” I grabbed his hands and pressed my palms against his. “Show me something. Like you did with the little girl.”

“No, I don’t think that—” Dex tried to pull away, but I held tight.

“Come on,” I said, not sure why I was pushing so hard for this. I had more than enough nightmares of my own; I didn’t need to be sharing his. Except I could tell that Dex needed to share them, and for some reason he was able to do that with me. “It doesn’t have to be a bad one. Pick a peaceful one. Can you do that? I don’t really know how it works.”

Dex sighed. “It works like a TV that you can never turn off. Once I’ve seen someone’s death, it becomes almost like a channel in my head that I can flip to at any time. Mostly it’s repeats, but sometimes something changes and the death becomes different from how I’d first seen it. That’s what happened with my friend Tim. I told him that I saw him die in a motorcycle accident, and when I finally convinced him that what I’d seen was true—it changed. I saw him die, but now he was old. But then he started having the visions too, and . . . the vision changed again, but it was too late to stop him.”

I peeled my hands away from Dex’s and then, taking a tiny step back, struggled to keep my voice steady. “I saw it.”

And I had. Just like with the little girl, it was like watching through a video camera’s lens. But there were three separate recordings this time. The mix of smashed metal and blood from the motorcycle wreck. An old man in a hospital bed quietly passing away with a sigh. And finally a young boy staring down at a black gun in his hand. The moment dragged on forever and then, so quickly I didn’t even have time to flinch, he brought the gun up and—BANG.

My whole body trembled from it, but this time I didn’t run. This time I saw that Dex was trembling too and I flung myself at him, throwing my arms around his neck. My fingers climbed into his hair, pulling his head toward mine, so that my lips brushed his with my next words. “Save me, Dex. Save me and I’ll save you.”

Then there was kissing. And more kissing. And there might have been more than that too, except we both heard a car drive past.

“Come on,” Dex said, and grabbing my hand, we ran up the stairs and outside. The snow had stopped falling, and only a thin layer that didn’t even cover the grass remained. “Stay here,” Dex whispered. Then he ducked around the side of the house, his footsteps crunching softly. I waited, knowing he would give me some sign if it was the dad.

“Hey,” his voice came several long moments later. “Come on out. I don’t see anyone. It’s all clear.”

As if we’d been separated for years, I flew around the house and back into Dex’s arms. This time we kept the kissing brief. Ten minutes tops before we made ourselves pull away.

“Will I see you tomorrow?”

“I don’t know. It depends what happens with the mom. I’ll try.”

He kissed the tip of my nose. “Try.”

I kissed him back. “I will.”

We stood there grinning at each other a moment longer, neither of us wanting the moment to end.

“Okay, you go.” I gave Dex a little push.

“Traditionally I’m the one who’s supposed to see you to your door.”

“But you’re injured.”

“Oooh, now she remembers. You didn’t seem all that concerned earlier when you jumped me and—”

I placed my hands over his mouth, and he nibbled at my fingers.

“Stop that!” I took my hands back with a smothered giggle.

“Okay, we’ll both walk away. High-noon style. Twenty paces in opposite directions. Except we’ll skip the shoot-out at the end.”

Spinning, Dex presented his back to me, and following his lead I did the same.

“Now walk,” he said. “And no cheating.”

Very seriously, I took careful steps with perfect upright posture, not peeking once, until I reached the fence line. Then, knowing I would dive right back into Dex’s arms if I didn’t keep going, I ran, my feet sliding a little on the slick driveway.

The motion-sensor light flickered to life as I reached the porch, illuminating Logan Rice standing at my front door, a load of schoolbooks in his arms. My goofy smile faded as my mind raced, wondering how much he had heard.

He wore a hoodie. Not the one he’d given me but a new one, with white stripes down the arms that glowed in the dark. But it did little to illuminate his face.

“What are you doing here, Logan?” I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly feeling the cold.

He held out the pile of books. “You weren’t at school. I brought your books.”

I reluctantly accepted them. “Thanks. You didn’t have to; it was only one day.”

“I thought you’d be worried about falling behind again. You’re still trying to catch up.”

It was so thoughtful. Annoyingly so. Why couldn’t he be a dumb jock who’d taken Annaliese’s virginity and never thought of her again?

“Sorry. I mean, thanks again.” I tried to edge around him toward the door. “I should get inside. It’s cold out here.”

Logan didn’t move. “Where were you?”

Even as the guilt squeezed me tighter, I wanted to scream at Logan for ruining my moment with Dex. I could’ve sat alone in the house for at least an hour, hugging that memory, before all the other stuff came seeping back in, but now he’d taken that hour away. The other stuff was here standing on my doorstep.

“Logan, I—”

“Dex Matthews lives over there. Is that who you were with?”

“Why ask, if you already know?”

“Because I want to understand. I told you who that guy is, what he did. He’s a level-A creep. He should be rotting in jail right now. Or just plain rotting.”

“Go away, Logan. My parents don’t want you near me.”

He didn’t budge. “Yeah, from the looks of that fence, they don’t want
him
near you either.”

“Well, I like him. Okay? I like him. A lot. Is that what you wanted to hear, Logan?”

My words went pinging right off him. “Annaliese, listen. I did this backward. But I can fix it. I can make your parents like me. And you too.” As if I was the afterthought. “I want to take you to dinner. At my mom’s. She said she’d cook for us. And she wants to meet you.”

The mention of his mom drained some of my anger away. Yeah, I understood the mom thing. “Logan, that’s nice of your mom.”

“You’ll like her. And you’ll see, I’m not this dumb jock. I’m gonna go to college. For accounting. Or something like that with numbers. I’m pretty good with numbers. And when I get out of college, I’ll have a good job, the kind that can support a wife and a whole family. And a house too. A real nice one, you know, like the kind with one of those really big Jacuzzi bathtubs? And maybe one of those big staircases too, like you see in the movies. I’m gonna get all of that.”