Sleight (31 page)

“Gemma…” The nurse glanced over her shoulder at me, and then back to Henry.

“Your friend is here, Henry. Can you walk? Can we get you into the medical room?” Henry didn’t speak. His eyes were glazed and his mouth slack. I was afraid for the principal or the nurse to touch him; what if they discovered the sensation coming out of his hands?

“I’l help him,” I said, grabbing his hands so no one else could.

The frost persisted. “Get him under the arms, around the waist.” The adults listened to me and helped me pul Henry to his feet.

The principal supported the majority of Henry’s weight as we shuffled out of the classroom and down the semi-darkened halway.

I moved into position on Henry’s right side, pushing the nurse out of the way. I kept hold of Henry’s right hand, his left hand upturned over the principal’s shoulder so as not to make contact. A few curious onlookers stared and whispered as we walked past.

“Gemma…,” Henry slurred. He turned his head toward me, his eyes troubled and yet somehow clearer than they’d been just a few moments prior.

“I’m here. I’m right here. I’ve got you,” I said, helping him onto the cot in the medical room. The nurse and Mr. Hardy engaged in a brief discussion about whether they should cal an ambulance.

“No, please, no ambulance,” Henry said. The nurse relented and agreed to wait a few moments. Instead she’d cal Lucian.

“Mr. Dmitri is out of town,” I said. “You should cal Ted, my uncle.” Because Ted is Henry’s real dad, I wanted to add, but of course, I couldn’t. “Ted wil come take him to the hospital if he needs to go.”

“No,” Henry managed. “No hospital.” He sounded drunk.

“Stop being so stubborn,” I whispered to him and then turned to the nurse. “How about I just sit with him for a little while and we see how he is?” The nurse flashed a penlight in his eyes, and I watched his pupils dilate and contract without pause. He had a goose egg rising on the side of his head where he’d smashed onto the floor, but there was no blood and he was coming around with each passing minute. The nurse quizzed him about past seizure activity, took his blood pressure, checked his pulse.

Another rol of thunder exploded overhead.

The nurse brought an ice pack for Henry’s head, and in consultation with the principal, agreed to give him some time to recover. She’d check on his progress in thirty minutes and make the decision as to whether he should be sent to the hospital.

“Gemma…,” Henry started.

“Close your eyes. I’m the boss right now. No talking,” I said, placing my finger over his lips. He kissed it and closed his eyes. A tear roled down the right side of his turned head, across his temple, landing on the rough paper pilowcase.

I overheard Mr. Hardy talking with Ms. Spitzer and the nurse in the halway. They were stil debating if they had made the right decision to hold off on the ambulance.

Henry opened his eyes again, implored me with the depth behind them. His lips parted again, as if to speak, but I just shook my head at him and mouth the word no, shushing him quietly as I wrapped my fingers around his clenched fist.

Soon his breathing slowed and the warmth began to seep back into his fingers. He was resting, despite the booming from the heavens. I sat motionless, Henry’s protector, just as he had done last week after I’d split my head open. My free hand found the line of skin on my forehead where yesterday had been stitches. I examined the back of my fingers, where there had been blisters from the open flame. Until Marku had touched me. Now there was nothing but smooth skin, forehead and fingers, zero evidence that there’d ever been injuries.

The bels rang signaling the end of second, third, then fourth periods. Henry slept through them al without another seizure, and so far, no one had nagged me about getting back to class. The nurse hadn’t caled an ambulance after al, but checked Henry’s vitals a few times, asked me a series of questions about him, if I’d ever seen this happen to him before, if I knew if he had a family history of epilepsy, questions I couldn’t answer because, to be honest, I didn’t know that much about Henry’s life before I arrived in Eaglefern.

And oddly enough—as I sat in that little room, my attention focused solely on Henry, his breathing, the flutter of his eyelids, I could drown out the racket of the people in the vicinity. As if I’d reached over to a volume control and turned it down to 1 or 2.

Thank you…

“Gemma,” a voice behind me said.

“Ted?” I turned, face to face with my two uncles. “Hey, hi…did they cal you? I told them to wait.”

“What—what’s going on with Henry?” Ted said, moving close to the cot’s side.

“He had a seizure or something, during math. I told them to cal you instead of Lucian.”

“No one caled me about Henry.” Ted had a pained look on his face. Irwin’s hand was wrapped around his brother’s upper arm.

“Oh. Realy?” I paused. This was puzzling. “Okay, so, what are you doing here? Where’s Auntie?”

Henry’s eyes flew open and the temperature of his grip fel through the floor. It was like holding a chunk of dry ice.

“Gemma!” he said. I looked at him, then back to Ted, and finaly Irwin. The school nurse had taken up residence in the doorway, her face wrinkled with worry. Ted puled a chair from against the wal and sat down next to me, placing a hand on my thigh.

“Honey, there’s been an accident,” he said.

Somewhere, a switch flipped that caused everything to happen at quarter-speed, like a slow-motion sequence in a film. His words hung in the air like bulets shot from a gun in suspended animation, the lead slugs impotent and sagging, floating slowly toward the ground. Ted’s eyes drifted upward from his blank stare at the floor and met mine.

“What about her? Ted, where is Marlene?”

Everything was moving in pronounced stretches of time, every breath in, every exhale out, the beat of my heart reverberating in my ears.

Buuum-buuump, buuum-buuump.

Henry’s arm reaching for me as I let go of his hand, the cold too bitter for unprotected flesh.

“Where is Auntie? Is she okay? What’s happened?” I said.

“Gemma, I saw it…the seizure…I saw it happen…,” Henry whispered.

“You saw what? What the hel is going on here?” I jumped from my chair and it toppled backwards, the slap of the bouncing plastic drowned by the thunderhead blasting above us.

“Marlene’s been…hurt,” Ted said finaly. “It’s serious.” I edged away from him, from al of them.

“No. NO!” I jabbed a finger at him. “You’re a liar!” I backed away from Ted.

“Gemma, honey, she’s in surgery,” Irwin added. “We were rehearsing. The power went out as Ted threw a blade…the turntable was off its count…”

“You’re WRONG!” I howled, the guttural explosion of sound ricocheting off the wals of the tiny sick room. I heard my voice and yet was deaf to it at the same time, deaf to their attempts to calm and console me, deaf to al but the blistering bass of my heartbeat as it pounded inside my head.

The vacuum ended as instantaneously as it had begun, and time snapped back to its inflexible, cruel rhythm. Henry bounded from the cot and tried to wrap his arms around me, but I punched at him, shouted at him to not touch me. Ted stood and moved toward me as I inched nearer to the door, my escape impeded by the wel-meaning nurse as she witnessed the train wreck in progress, one car slamming into another, end over end, screeching steel against iron ties as they buckled like plastic straws. Henry struggled against me, trying to get my flailing arms under control, though it was only my body he could hold on to. My voice was its own irrepressible entity.

It was my first experience with out-of-body observation. I watched Henry trying to wrap himself around my squirming body, shushing in my ear and stroking the back of my head as he fought against my outburst. I watched Ted tighten his arm around his brother’s sagging shoulders.

“I’m so sorry. I couldn’t help her…,” Henry said, his face wet with hot tears.

My moans were born anew, endless and primal.

Not Marlene, too…

I forced my way out of Henry’s grip and bolted from the office, blinded by tears, my ears assaulted with conversations and laughter, my heart exploding into a thousand pieces in my chest.

I could do nothing but run.

:35:

Grief has limits, whereas apprehension has none. For we grieve only for what we know has happened, but we fear all that possibly may happen.

—Pliny the Elder

I sprinted away from the school, as hard and fast as my legs would carry me. It was almost as though I were flying, leaping over mounds in the ground and the puddles accumulated during the morning’s storm. The air slapping my cheeks was cold and the forward momentum of my body puled the tears from the corners of my eyes, the salty water running back toward my hairline at the temples, defying gravity. I ran until my lungs were on fire and I was sucking air through pursed lips. The chil made my teeth ache, cold meeting warm.

The outdoors smeled electric and flashes of lightning punctuated the earth-shaking thunder as it stabbed gaping holes in the atmosphere.

The land behind the footbal stadium went on for a few unattended acres, ringed by a road that led into an offshoot of downtown. I ran through the squishy grass, thick with weeds and dormant bramble patches. A stand of poplars lay on the eastern flank, the road on the west. I stopped to catch my breath, contemplating my next move.

First, Delia.

Now,

Marlene. She’s been hurt…it’s serious…she’s in surgery. I contemplated running to the hospital, but to do so would mean seeing her, lying there, a hole in her body from those godforsaken blades. The blades that Lucian pushed them to use.

If Marlene died, another part of my soul would go with her. It would feel like being orphaned al over again. And with my only remaining blood relative a murderous psychopath, it’s not like I could count on Lucian to step in and make things right.

Lucian who wanted me dead, who wanted Henry dead.

Jonah was a warning.

I started sprinting again, moving toward the road, careful to stay out of sight of the cars traveling back and forth, the drivers engaged in their normal lives, worrying about nothing more than what to make for dinner or if the high school basketbal team would make the state finals. My pant legs were drenched, the moisture from the tal grasses saturating the denim and prickling at the goosebumps of my calves. I was shivering but not cold. Exhausted, empty, alone, but not cold. At least out here, I couldn’t hear anyone’s mindless blabbering. It was silent.

And so far, there’d been no shades, not even the three children.

I’d expected to see them in the school, a repeat of yesterday’s fun.

But they’d stayed hidden from view. I wondered if the thunder had chased them away.

The field ended at a sidewalk that led to a smal mini-mal housing a florist, a gas station/convenience store, and a liquor store.

Few cars in the lot guaranteed I’d be able to sneak in and out without wayward glances from local citizens wondering what a girl my age was doing wandering around in a thunderstorm when she should’ve been in class filing her brain with facts and figures to facilitate a bright future.

There was nothing about the future that felt bright.

Marlene…

My stomach knotted in on itself and I fought the urge to cry out for her, to colapse on the asphalt of the parking lot.

Before I puled the gas station door open, I could hear the conversation inside between the attendant and the driver of a jacked-up truck. As the driver paid for his gas, their banter was light, friendly.

I walked up and down the aisles, waiting for the cashier to go out and clean someone’s windshield or reset a jammed gas pump.

An old lady with a wheeled shopping buggy stood in the magazine aisle, her face stuffed in a People magazine, catching up on her gossip about the messy divorce of some celebrity. She was mumbling to herself.

Not wanting to make eye contact, I turned down a different row, trying to ignore the old lady’s words in my ears. I checked my pocket for money—a $20 bil. More than enough to buy a Coke.

But it wasn’t sugar I was after. I needed something…stronger.

I picked up a soda and a pack of gum, and put my purchases on the counter. Country music slithered from the truck’s lowered passenger-side window through the gap between the store’s glass doors. I bent down to tie my soaking wet shoelaces, and when I stood, my breath caught in my throat.

Behind the counter, next to the cigarette display, stood a man with a huge hole in the front of his neck. He was shirtless and the skin around his ribcage had been peeled away, exposing blackened lungs and mottled bones the thickness of paper. He laughed and rancid smoke spewed from every hole in his head.

“Nice day for a walk, ain’t it?” When he smiled, his gums were missing teeth. I covered my mouth and nose with my sleeve to keep myself from throwing up.

The doors jingled as the cashier scurried back inside. He walked right through the smoking shade. “Some storm, huh?” Thunder rumbled overhead, as if in response to his comment.

“Yeah.” I tried to control the tremor in my hand as I paid and kept my head low.

“Stay dry,” he said, handing me my change.

“You come back again soon, sunshine,” the shade said. He coughed and another plume of smoke bilowed from his fissured body. The cashier picked up a can of air freshener and released a hearty spray in the space behind the counter. I was tempted to tel him that no amount of Febreze was going to clean up the mess festering in this place, but there would’ve been no point.

The driver of the monster truck was hoisted up on the impossibly tal front tire, washing his windshield, humming to the “my baby done me wrong” tune blaring from his speakers. The entire vehicle was encrusted in mud, and the guy was making a dirty mess, the soapy water mixing with the crap caked around the edges of his window. I heard him cuss under his breath as I rounded the front end of the rig.

“Hey,” I said.

“Wel, helo, there.” He jumped down from the tire.

“Can you do me a favor?” I nodded toward the liquor store. He smiled at me.