House of Slide Hybrid (30 page)

“Thanks, but I can drink water by myself,” I said, shaking my head as I stared down at the glass.

“Do you like the flowers?” my mother asked, cocking her head to the side, her dark blue eyes searching mine.

I looked around and finally noticed the roses on every available surface. Red, pink, yellow, even a few blue bouquets filled my room.

“You slept through Valentine’s day,” my mother said. “Lewis will be here shortly to see you.”

I blinked myself really awake, hands suddenly trembling as I put the glass back on the side table, the only table without flowers on it.

“He can’t come here,” I said before I even knew why. I wanted to see him. I ached to see him and touch him, to make sure that he’d recovered better than I had from my tattoo experience. Without thinking, I reached up and ran my fingers over the back of my neck. The runes were no larger than a square inch at the top of my spine, and I could feel my fingers on the runes, as though my nerves still ran through the pattern of metal.

“He’s worried about you,” my mother said, her frown showing her own concern.

“I know,” I said as I buried my fists in my blankets and sank down onto my pillow. “He’s all right?”

She nodded slightly. “Other than worrying about you he seems to have no lasting ill effects from your sampling.”

I shuddered beneath my blankets. “Mom, I can’t do that again,” I whispered.

She sat down on the bed beside me and put a hand on my shoulder. “The most difficult part is over,” she assured me with a smile that didn’t match her eyes.

“But I died. That’s a good sign that what you’re doing maybe isn’t the smartest thing.”

“What do you want to do?”

I shook my head and felt tears well up in my eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t want to hurt anyone else anymore. I don’t want to hurt myself either. I’m tired of the pain, mother. I’m not cut out to be Wild. I can’t handle the thought of going back and having her strap me down again,” I whispered and closed my eyes, welcoming the darkness that pulled me down to sleep.

The next time I woke up I was awake by the sharp thud as my mother dropped the tray she was bringing onto my bedside table.

“You’ve been here almost two weeks,” she said sitting on my feet.

“Okay?” I replied feeling fuzzy.

“You have all the signs of being perfectly healed. With Wild tattoos there is a window of time between tattoos so that it is easier to ‘take’. It would be best if the Life series could be completed in one day, but no Wild would survive that so it has to be broken up into chunks. Each break shouldn’t last more than two weeks.”

I rolled into a ball, pulling my knees up so she wasn’t on my feet. She wanted me to be ready for more tattoos, to lay there and hurt until I wanted to die, and then let everyone else suffer for me.

“I don’t want to go back.”

“Lewis is anxious to see you. He did so much to help you, to make sure that you would survive getting runed. He brought samples of metal for the artist to try. He did research along with Carve, to make certain that you had the best possible chance. If he hadn’t had the Hallow Hall, you probably wouldn’t need to go back. You’d be dead.”

“Then the unfinished bond wouldn’t bother him.”

“He is trying to keep you alive,” she said in a hard voice. “You are not making his job any easier, particularly when you’re willing to lay down and die while he fights for you.”

I sat up, stung. “I didn’t ask for that. I didn’t ask for any of this.”

She pulled back my covers, leaving me suddenly cold.

“If it were only about you then I may let you choose to rot away in your bed, but it’s not all about you.”

“No kidding, because it’s all about Devlin,” I said, trembling from sudden fury.

“What does your brother have to do about any of this?” she asked, frowning at me.

“I thought that I’d be fine getting tattoos. Devlin saw it, and he’s never wrong. Why do I have to trust my dead brother when he took my soul? When am I going to figure out that Devlin isn’t ever going to be the good guy I want him to be? When am I going to accept that everything he recommends is going to cause me and everyone around me pain?”

I sobbed at the end, but my mother stood impassively, the frown smoothed away beneath her cold exterior.

“When is the last time the sun shone, Mother?” I asked, quietly after I had the sobs under control.

She narrowed her eyes slightly, like she had no idea what I was talking about and I rolled out of bed, too quickly so the room spun and I had black specks in front of my eyes for a moment before things steadied. I flung open the curtains revealing the faded daylight of a winter afternoon, bleak, dismal, eternally gray.

“You could make the sun shine if you wanted, if you could let go of your grief and see that you’re not dead and there are people in this world that love you.”

She raised a perfect black eyebrow at me. “You are not alone in your frustration with your brother’s promises, however, you’re not dead. You’re right, neither am I. I’ll make you a deal: you take a shower, eat a full meal, get to school, and I’ll make the sun shine.”

She left me there, standing at the window, feeling wobbly kneed and angry when the clouds parted and a beam of light shone through my window onto the swirls of paisley in the old rug I’d permanently borrowed from my dad’s house. I stared at the colors, for a moment absorbed by the play of light on color, the richness and beauty of it before I crumpled on the floor, burying my face in my knees while the sun warmed my hair. It reminded me of Lewis, of how I felt with him, and I couldn’t quite be as sad, but at the same time I felt more hopeless than ever. How could I possibly protect him from me when I needed him to keep me alive?

I went to school the next day, bright and early—bright because true to my mother’s word the sun did shine. I felt half dead while the living part was a cold weight in my chest that didn’t want anything to do with the mockery of food the cafeteria served for lunch. I noticed that everyone else in the cafeteria seemed particularly happy as the sun shone on. I scowled at the congealing gravy on my mashed potatoes when Smoke sat down beside me, somehow energetic even when he was depressed, and he was depressed. I could feel it bounce out of him in all directions however hard I blocked it out.

“So, what happened to asking Ash to the dance? He’s in school today. It took me, you wouldn’t believe what it took me, but he’s here. Do you want to come talk to him?”

I stared at him blankly, feeling a lurch as I thought of Lewis, of his voice when he asked me to the Valentine’s dance. I’d never told Ash that I would go with him, but by the looks of it, Smoke had.

“Where is he?” I sounded tired even to myself.

Smoke let out a relieved breath he’d been holding. “He’s kind of zoning out in his car. Eats lunch there, well, if he ate then he’d eat lunch there.”

“He’s not eating?” I asked even as I thought I could relate. Smoke shrugged uncomfortably. “How long has he been out of it, not eating and stuff?”

“After Christmas, I think. His mom says it’s normal for kids his age to change, to be less physical or whatever, but it’s freaking me out. He can sit there and stare at you, but he’s not really seeing you. It’s like he just doesn’t care. At first it pissed me off, but now I’m worried.”

It was like the boy Orrin from the market, the one who the girl thought was going to die. I got up and dragged my tired body out of the cafeteria while I ignored the stares I got from other people who had the impression I was worth staring at. They had no idea.

Ash didn’t notice us coming, didn’t seem to notice anything where he sat in his little beat up red hatchback, a blank look on his face that I recognized. The cold thing in my chest tightened, making it hard for me to breathe. He reminded me of something besides Orrin, something that I wanted to forget; it was me, how I’d been without a soul, so…empty, and not only then, now, hiding in my blankets like I could forget about this world if I tried hard enough. I hadn’t known Orrin before he went all comatose, but I knew that Ash wasn’t supposed to be like this.

My footsteps slowed as we neared the car, worried that he’d do the Orrin thing, where he didn’t see me, just stared through me, but Ash gave me a slight nod when he finally noticed us, and even bothered to smile slightly. It reminded me that I should be smiling, but mine probably wasn’t very good.

“Ash, you’ve got to be freezing in here,” Smoke said, pulling open the creaky door and squeezing through the narrow opening behind the front seat into the back. “Come on, Dari,” he said, gesturing to me. I gave Ash a slight smile while he scooted over, not bothering to respond to Smoke. Ash probably didn’t feel the cold; probably didn’t feel anything.

“Hey, I’m sorry about Valentine’s dance. I was going to ask you…” I shook my head confused because if I could go with Lewis, I would go with Lewis.

“Dance?” He looked puzzled, but only slightly, like he couldn’t be interested enough to be really confused.

“Yeah. It was going to be super fun what with all those volleyball players.” I frowned as I remembered Osmond and the volleyball girl. I’d been so out of it that I hadn’t really thought about Osmond. “She seems really nice, talked to me in the hall this morning about something, not sure since I wasn’t really listening, but she seems really nice.”

“You said that,” Smoke chimed in.

“Right. Well, sorry about the dance,” I said lamely. It was obvious that Ash couldn’t care less about the dance, or me, or anything. I slumped down in the seat, giving up on bringing him into a world I didn’t understand. Maybe it was better to let it all fade, like Grim had said. Ash put a hand on my shoulder before I could really sink back into the comfortable despair that fit so well on me.

“If you feel sorry for yourself I’ll be forced to compare your life to that of a cow, livestock that lives and dies in a cesspool for the everyday consumer. They don’t move, don’t live, all for the sake of the hamburger.” His voice was getting stronger, more animated as he talked about the sad fate of the cow while I stared at him curiously.

“At least cows don’t hurt everyone else.”

He shook his head. “People can’t consume that kind of misery without it affecting them. Perhaps in the end it’s humanity that suffers most. You don’t hurt anyone intentionally. Although,” he said thoughtfully, “People don’t mean to create the stockyards full of sick and rotting cows when they order hamburgers, either.”

“Right on,” Smoke said automatically, like he’d heard this before and knew that it could go on indefinitely.

“Right on,” I echoed, still kind of staring at Ash. He didn’t talk that much when he was self-conscious about those around him, but now he didn’t seem to notice anyone else. “Do you want to go to class?” I asked, thinking that the bell was about to ring.

Ash shook his head, no. “I’m not going to waste this sunshine inside of a building.”

“Let’s go to the cemetery,” I said, then bit my lip wondering where that had come from. “I want someone to teach me to drive.”

Smoke started laughing while Ash looked at him like he was slightly insulted then began to chuckle too. His laugh sounded rusty but still compelling as ever.

“Smoke is one of the worst drivers in high school,” Ash said in a low voice while his gray eyes actually focused on me. “I’m probably the worst driver.”

I smiled at him and took his hand instinctively. His cool skin was smooth, his fingers jerked while his whole body kind of stiffened up. I put my hands back where they belonged but couldn’t help smiling at both of them, feeling a little more calm, relaxed, chill.

“Finally, people who aren’t impossibly good at everything… Let’s go!”

Smoke whooped and Ash started the car, at least after a few painful sounding cranks. He was not kidding about being a bad driver.

With Ash and Smoke, mostly just Smoke giving me instructions, it was a close thing that we didn’t die, but as Smoke pointed out, at least we wouldn’t hurt anyone else alive maneuvering on the small roads between gravestones, even if there was ice. Towards the end when I was getting the hang of the sticky shifter thing we came over a hill and I saw a headstone that made me gasp and put my foot wrong and kill the engine. I sat there in the sudden silence while I stared at Devlin’s grave.

It was muddy bare earth in patches of dirty snow where lightning had struck it, like nothing dared encroach on his grave, the same way nothing could cover up his memory. He was with us in Sanders as much as he would be if he were alive, reaching into all our lives to make them over into whatever image he wanted.

I gripped the steering wheel tightly before I wrenched the door open and got out. The two boys held back while I stalked towards the grave, wishing I had something to throw. I stood there for a moment more before I shook my head with nothing to say, and headed across the grass, around the tombstones to take the shortcut to my mother’s house. I heard Smoke yelling something so I waved back but didn’t watch to see if he drove off. Ash would know that I wanted to be alone, wanted to find somewhere I could figure things out.

I meant to go home but somehow my feet found their way a different direction towards the grassy spot over the river we used to go, the same spot Lewis had given me his soul.

It was cold, even with the sun shining as brightly as it could I shivered as I sat on a fallen log at the edge of the clearing keeping my distance from the cliff and the cold water. The cold inside me was worse, a reminder of how I’d been without a soul, a reminder that life didn’t have guarantees of a happy ending.