Forged in Grace (26 page)

I wanted the fire to perform alchemy, to slide me free of the strictures of being Grace and into Marly’s skin, to be bold and lush, intense and unafraid like she was.
“I, um…I don’t know,” I mumbled.

“
Grace, you’re mistress of your destiny.” She gave me a fierce gaze, eyes narrowed. “Come on! Tell the flame.”

I cleared my throat.
“I want to not be embarrassed to bring people over. I want to be...”
Like you.

“
What else?” Marly urged, leaning forward slightly on her knees.

“
I want to look forward to the future, find my talent, make something of myself.” What I couldn’t say was:
Take me away from this crowded life.
As if she had any control.

“
Hell yeah,” she said. Her blue eyes were almost green in the yellow glare of the candles.

“
Think of this as a ritual to shed our skins, Grace. We can still be anyone we want even though others want to control our destinies. Isn’t that fucking exciting?”

“
Yeah,” I said, though a strange feeling was gathering behind my throat.

Marly shook her fingers at me.
“Grace, stay with me. I want to tell you something, okay? We have to always be honest with each other.”

“
Of course.”

“
I’m not a virgin. My first time was with...I didn’t know how to tell you before, but now—Grace. I didn’t plan it. I didn’t even want it.”

She snapped a seal open on a precious vault inside me. How could she have kept this from me? Did she think I wasn’t worthy of her trust? That night in the guys’ apartment I already felt as though she was giving something of herself away, something I could never get back. She was my best friend; we were for each other. The words tasted like bile as I spoke them,
“If you don’t want people calling you a slut, you shouldn’t act like one.”

Marly drew back as though I’d physically pushed her. She took a deep breath and for several beats I thought she was going to storm out of the tree house.
“I’m not a slut,” she said evenly, though her hand shook when she straightened the row of candles between us. “No more than you’re a prude.”

We stared at each other. Her expression changed every few seconds in the shadows of the candles. Now her eyes narrowed, her cheeks softened.
“Let’s kiss on it,” she said. “You know, to seal the deal. Oh wait, that’s right—you’re afraid I might, what, turn you? That you’ll like it? Or worse—that you’ll taste the nastiness in my soul?”

I was not going to let her get away with that.
“I’m not scared,” I said, and I leaned forward across the small city of candles she’d built.

It happened so fast.

The feather-like tufts of the boa drifted into a candle flame. My face was scorched by a necklace of fire. Marly reached for me but flame forced her to recoil. My hair, slick with hairspray, followed my face into petals of fire. Within seconds, fire was everywhere, springing up the polyester curtains, eating the plywood floor, and I was trapped within it.

“
I never knew how to tell you. I was so mad,” present-day Marly says, her voice little more than a rasp. “I tried to tell you about him. Then that thing you said, anger just gripped me, and then it spread so fast—”

“
Stop,” I say.

I don
’t tell her “Stop, it isn’t true” because a little trap door has appeared in my memory, revealing a thing I have kept locked away for thirteen years: with a flick of her hand, Marly
tilted
the candle in at my chest level. Her eyes hooked mine, and before I could pull back or ask her what the hell she was doing, the first petals of the boa kissed the flame below me. “Oh!” Marly had said, a surprised sound, I’d always thought, but now I realize it was a sound of regret a moment too late.

I envy Marly
’s tears now; they look so cleansing, purifying. The act of confession sweeps away corrosion. Her wounds and minor scars are gone, healed at my hands. She’s unraveled her darkness. Does it enter into me? I press my head back into the pillow that now feels too soft, and wish I was back in Drake’s Bay, drenched in ocean mist, cloaked by the coastal fog.

“
I need to be alone,” I say to her imploring face. Marly nods, breath hitching over a sob that she suppresses. She tries to stand up, but has to press her palms into her thighs to do so. It is strange to see her struggle with a body that has always been effortless in its movements.

Chapter Twenty-Five

For the first time since I’ve come to Vegas—six months now—I feel its desolation in the sun-washed buildings we pass as the cab takes me to my little cottage.
Vegas,
the shiny, electric, holographic world that lives on The Strip like some form of alien life left to run amuck, is only a wild distraction from what would otherwise be just one, big, ugly desert town—a watering hole on the way to the lovelier parts of the southwest. I feel a yearning for the lushness of my hometown: nestled in soft yellow hills and their dark evergreen berets of oaks and redwoods.

The driver, Ali, tries to make conversation with me.
“You live here or visit?”

Visit would suggest I came here to play, for pleasure. But didn
’t I? When did it get so serious? “Visit,” I say.

“
You go home?” It’s a question but in his accent it comes out almost like a command, like I’m being dismissed, and it makes me feel defensive. “I don’t know,” I snap. “There, the one with the little bridge over the pond.” We’ve reached Drew’s house, the side gate cracked as though someone has just come or gone.

“
This town, bad for girls,” he says simply. “You go home.”

And you shut up
, I’m thinking.
Learn
some tact
. I lean across to give him his money and as he reaches for the twenty dollar bill, our fingers brush and there is popping sound and a singed smell.

“
What the hell?” he says, rubbing his hand, glaring at me through the rearview mirror.

I pull back, alarmed, my own finger still tingling, and then I am sliding out of the cab, faster than usual, as if I could get away from my own hands. The cab driver peels away, leaving me in a cloud of dust, and, I realize too late, still clutching the bill I meant to give to him.

I can’t quell the shaking, heated feeling in my muscles, like I’ve just finished an intense run and a cup of coffee at the same time and it takes me a moment to calm myself enough to walk through the side gate.

Drew bursts out of his side door, smiling.
“Grace, you’ve surprised me.”

“
And you, me,” I said. “I thought you’d be at work already.” It’s then I note that he’s wearing blue plaid pajamas, slippers on his feet.

He runs a hand over his short blond hair.
“Took a mental health day.”

He glances back over his shoulder and suddenly I feel hot with embarrassment.
“Oh god, is someone here?” I ask
. Marly?

He frowns, fiddles with a button on the top of his pajamas.
“No, I thought I heard the phone. You expecting a client?”

I shake my head.
“Just needed a place to go and clear my head.”

“
Let me get you some coffee.” He ushers me into the house and pours me a cup of coffee so strong it strips the coating on my tongue, but it gives me energy I sorely need.

The furniture in his living room is all so stiff, I
’m afraid to sit on anything. I finally opt for an edge of his grey suede couch, which has the feel of a hairless cat under my palms. I pull back quickly, with the fear that I’ll char the fabric. But that’s absurd.

“
Is something wrong?” Drew asks. He crosses one leg over the other and jitters the foot, as if impatient.

I press my fingertips together. What I want to say is stuck inside me, like smoke in a jar. I don
’t want to influence Drew’s attitude about Marly. She’s going to need somebody’s help to take care of that baby when it arrives, and right now, I’m pretty sure it isn’t going to be me. “I had a bad healing,” I say instead.

“
Marly told me.” I twist in surprise to look at him and he says, “Oh, was I not supposed to know?”

Know?
Does he know the other truth—what Marly did? I feel gypped of the chance to tell my own story, and suddenly defensive that she might have told Drew before she did me. “No, I mean, it’s fine. But what if it’s a temporary thing, this healing? What if it’s even gone?”

Drew seems to gauge his words carefully.
“You mean because you had one client who didn’t believe you could heal her?”

There
’s something to his tone that makes me feel edgy. I realize we’ve never really been alone together, never had a conversation where Marly wasn’t there to referee.

“
I don’t think it had anything to do with whether she believed it. I felt what I felt; she didn’t want me to see into a hurt place inside her. She pushed me away with her energy. The thing is, ever since then I feel like it’s…going bad.”

“
I read a study about the placebo effect,” he says, in a superior sort of way. “It said that healing is most profound when the practitioner and person seeking the healing both believe in the work being done. The results are quantifiably higher.”

My spine stiffens.
“So you think it’s just mind over matter?”

“
Wounds disappear before your eyes, Grace. Tumors shrink. I’d say that’s real. I just question how much is coming from only you.”

“
But you were one of the people who pushed me into this.” My anger is uncorked and ready to flow.

He holds up his hands defensively, as though he is but the messenger of these doubtful statements.
“Like I said—I think you have a gift, Grace, a real gift of helping people toward their own ability to heal. If you’re asking do I think you’re a magician, using some magic force to heal people without their will, no, I don’t think so. Everyone you’ve healed knew they were being healed.”

“
Except Marly,” I counter him. “I didn’t set out to heal her. It just happened.”

“
Yeah,” he says, almost to himself. “But you and Marly have that thing…”

“
Thing?” My voice is strained and high.
A thing, as in some chimera monster formed of desire, jealousy and broken loyalties.

“
That old childhood caretaker thing. You took care of her, she held on by the skin of her teeth to sanity so long as she had you. So even though you didn’t stand up and say, ‘Now, I heal thee!’ I think it’s clear that the dynamic between you was still in effect.” His strained tone, delivered through tight lips makes me think he’s angry, but not at me.

“
What if I tell you it’s changed?” I decide to trust him. “Turned into something dark. What would you say if I told you I have the power to harm people as well?”

He shakes his head.
“That woman rattled you, clearly. I’m not bashing what you do, Grace. I think you really do have a talent. I’m just saying, maybe you give it too much power, maybe you could ease up a little on yourself.”

He
’s backpedaling now, and I can’t decide if it’s because he thinks I am capable of harm, or because he just wants to end this conversation. I laser in on his bouncing leg. “You seem anxious,” I say.

“
Sorry. I was expecting Marly to call.” His shoulders sag and he leans back into his chair, his limbs so long they all but hang over its edges. “I shouldn’t blame her.”

“
Blame her for what?”

He stands up suddenly, as if his feelings are too big to be held down by gravity.
“For being undecided about me, about that fucking ex.”

“
She’s undecided about a guy who
beat
her?” I want to stand now too.

Drew straightens a stack of books that is already straight.
“I’m afraid he’s working very hard to convince her that he can change, that he has a genetic right to be in his child’s life, seeing as she has no proof of that beating.” When he looks at me, I read accusation in his eyes.

“
You’re afraid as in you know it, or you fear it?” I ask, heart pumping.

“
There’s very little I know for sure when it comes to Marly,” he says. And with that cryptic finale he claps his hands together. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to get a shower now.” He moves a step toward me, as though he intends to come give me a hug, but then stops, eyeing me the way you might a suspicious salesman who appears on your door late at night. “I smell terrible,” he says, and I know a lie when I hear one. If he didn’t sound so convincing a few minutes ago, I’d say he was afraid I might hurt him.

I refuse his offer to get me a cab and walk serenely, as unruffled as possible, out of his house though my fingers twitch with the urge to toss knick-knacks off shelves, pry paintings from his walls.

I have every intention to call myself a cab but it feels good to walk. I feel like if you could see me from a distance I would be giving off wisps of smoke, clouds forming over my head warning onlookers not to touch me, not to come near me. Sadly, even my scars are not enough to keep others safe from this slow-building reaction inside me: one part betrayal, one part fear; I can taste its copper tang on my tongue. I’m lethal.

I don
’t want to go back to the apartment just yet either, so I find myself in the mini-mart at a Chevron station, the cab driver’s twenty still clutched in my hand. I’m not hungry or thirsty but maybe a cool drink will drench this heat that seems impossible to cool. A forty-ish man in khaki shorts and loafers stands contemplating beer on my way to the non-alcoholic cooler. Almost any other time in my life I would wait, hiding in the corner for him to move, but not today. “Excuse me,” I say, tilting my chin up. This is my face, may it frighten or inspire, but I don’t feel much like waiting. He turns toward me with a start and then freezes, emotions turning his pale cheeks red. I feel bad making him sputter and stumble to get out of my way for only a second—but then I shove past him, my arm brushing his arm, and there it is again, the spark, the jolt, this time not even from my hands, but as though my entire body is an electric fence. It feels almost good, the way an I.V.’s quick plunge used to bring a kind of release of adrenaline, almost a relief.

“
Hey!” he says and scans my hands as though I’m holding some kind of weapon. I just shrug, like I’ve got no idea what his problem is. His eyes light on my bulky thumbs and he shakes his head slightly and bolts away without even picking out a beer. A feeling is growing inside of me, not unlike the way the air becomes charged before a thunderstorm, like I am becoming bigger, more fierce, more potent. Like nothing could hurt me.

I pull out a Gatorade and go to pay for it at the counter, letting my hand touch the tiny female cashier, who politely avoids looking at me too closely. When our hands make contact there is an audible snap, and she gasps, and I don
’t know why I do it, but I caress her fingers for a second and she moans like I’ve crushed bones.

It
’s then that fear takes hold. I mumble an apology and leave my money and my drink on the counter, running out into the heat of the day as though I can escape whatever’s building inside me.

The dark truth is finally freed, or rather, released, surly and starved, from its cage. The thing kept pressed down into a corner of my mind all these years so that I wouldn
’t have to feel the sear of it. My best friend sought to burn me to ash, to reduce me to something that she could manage. For a moment, no matter how brief, Marly wanted to hurt me.