by Lisa Beeson
A black rose… the symbol for death…
Sure, they’d had their differences, but when she wasn’t being overtly hostile they’d had a sort of tolerant companionship – a mutual understanding of outsiders. He certainly didn’t want her to die.
Something was swallowing her up so that only some of her face was visible. She was sinking. They were losing her.
Was there still time to save her? Was it already too late? Was she already dead?
Alvaro snatched up the sketchbook with a howl of frustration and threw it over the railing of the back porch. It could rot in the grass for all the good it did anybody.
I couldn’t save Mom. I couldn’t save Enzo. And now Val… He let his head fall into his hands in despair as his body shook with sobs. All the pent up grief and frustration he had forced down and compartmentalized away came rising to the surface, violently forcing its way out through wails and ugly tears. Why hold it back anymore? It was all so hopeless. Why even try to keep the façade of strength? He was weak and useless.
Amidst the sounds of his own weeping, and the construction on the barn in the distance, Alvaro heard steps on the porch, startling him into silence. The screen door to the kitchen opened and closed. He kept his face buried in his hands, ashamed that someone had witnessed his breakdown.
A couple minutes later, he heard the door open and close again. He could tell without looking that whomever it was felt like staying on the back porch with him, and his heart sank. They didn’t say a word, they just stood there. He silently willed the person to go away. All he wanted was to be left alone so he could self-destruct in peace. When they didn’t leave, he took a moment to compose himself. Once the involuntary shudders stopped, he discretely lifted his head to see that it was Hector.
He was leaning against the railing drinking from a juice pouch and snacking on some graham crackers. Alvaro saw that he was looking out over the property at Nina lifting a steel girder as if it weighed nothing.
Alvaro remembered hearing that Hector had type 1 diabetes, and figured that he must be regulating his blood sugar or something. Mercifully, he was not paying Alvaro any mind.
Hector had the inherent confidence of one of those cool, athletic kids that normally wouldn’t give a kid like Alvaro the time of day. So Alvaro had kept his distance. Besides, Hector was always hanging around with Taika in his free time – or more accurately, Taika followed Hector around, begging him to show him skateboarding tricks. It didn’t give Alvaro much hope that Hector wouldn’t tell Taika about this the first chance he got. Taika would tell Ellie, who would tell Sadie – since the two of them seemed joined at the hip now – and they would all undoubtedly roast Alvaro about it later. Which was the absolute last thing he needed right now.
Alvaro took the moment of semi-privacy to wipe the tears and snot from his face with the inside of his shirt, trying to gain some semblance of dignity.
When Hector finished his snack, he slowly turned towards Alvaro, who was now staring straight ahead and rocking in the chair with a steady determination.
“You wanna talk about it?” Hector asked in an off-hand way.
“No,” Alvaro huffed. He wanted to scream and break stuff, then curl up and disappear.
“All right,” Hector said with a casual shrug as he went back inside to throw away his trash.
When he came back out and started to go down the porch steps, the seer in Alvaro couldn’t help blurting out, “I just had a vision.”
Hector stopped and looked back, so Alvaro continued. “I think Val’s dying and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.” He couldn’t stop the pathetic quaver in his voice, but at this point it didn’t really matter. Hector had already witnessed him blubbering like a baby. There wasn’t much Alvaro could do to sink any lower.
Hector slowly walked over to lean against the railing across from Alvaro, forcing him to make eye contact. Surprisingly, there was no skepticism or judgment on Hector’s face. There was only a sympathetic patience. The older boy had a steady presence and an easy-going appeal that was strangely disarming.
Alvaro felt his reticence crack, and that’s all it took for it all to come flooding out. “It’s like someone is sending me these visions just to torture me with my own incompetence. Because even when I do try to help, either it’s too late or no one listens to me. Everything going on is all so horribly big and I’m… I’m not.” He tried to stem his embarrassing flow of tears by rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his palms, but it was no use.
When Hector remained silent, Alvaro looked to him with desperate, swollen eyes. “It’s all so hopeless. Why do I even see this stuff if I can’t do anything about it? What the hell is the point?”
Hector crossed his arms in thought and looked down at the boards of the porch, moving his weight from one foot to the other. He took his time, letting his answer ruminate in his mind, and giving Alvaro just enough time to regret saying anything at all.
After a while, Hector’s eyes finally came back up and he rubbed his face with his hands as if he was gathering strength before speaking. “Look, I’m still trying to understand what the heck is going on right now. Like how Miss Ruby, who has been my mom’s friend for years, evidently has visions and faked Kira’s death to protect her from an evil underground organization. And how Kira, who now goes by Ari, is still alive but missing, is not even from this galaxy and has all these crazy supernatural abilities. And she somehow brought all these other people together, who also have supernatural abilities, to some horse farm in the middle of nowhere, Arkansas.” He motioned around to the property and the others in the distance. “I mean…it’s insane, right? It is ridiculous to fathom, and it is literally insane.” He turned towards the barn, where tiny Nina was lifting another girder by herself and Taika was telekinetically lifting a bolt up to Jamie, which had fallen from the scaffolding. “If I didn’t see it for myself I’d call y’all crazy and get my family the heck outta here in a minute.”
He raised his hands and then dropped them to his sides in helplessness, then shook his head as if to bring himself back to the point. “But anyway, what I’m trying to say is that all this stuff is new to me, and I can’t even begin to claim to know what you’re feeling or what you’re going through right now. All I can tell you is what I’ve gone through and what I’ve learned from it.”
He dug his hands into his pockets and leaned back against the rail, looking at Alvaro expectantly.
When Alvaro realized he was actually waiting for his permission to go on, Alvaro quickly nodded for him to proceed.
“Back when we were first told that Kira had been murdered, my whole world fell out from under me. At first, I was like a numb sleepwalker, going through the motions but nothing seemed real. Then the anger built up inside me like a bonfire and burned through the cold numbness. I was angry with the people who had supposedly done it to her, but mostly I was angry with myself. I was the one who was supposed to pick her up after practice. I was the one responsible for her. She was–is,” he corrected himself, “my little sister. I was supposed to protect her. She needed me and I wasn’t there.” His eyes started to tear up, but he blinked them away. “I was so mad that in a fit of rage I destroyed everything in my room as some kind of messed up way to punish myself.
“Then when the anger passed, the guilt became completely overwhelming. I couldn’t eat. I went back and forth between barely sleeping to sleeping too much. I was just…stuck – frozen in that dark painful moment. I was useless. Nothing mattered anymore. Everything was all so frivolous and meaningless. Then, she came to me in my dream – which is a thing she’s able to do apparently,” he said shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head at the craziness of it all. “And she told me that she didn’t blame me for what happened and that none of it was my fault. Then she made me promise, as a way to honor her memory, to keep trying and not lose who I was to the sadness and guilt. I promised her that I would, but when I woke up, I had no idea where to even begin. Pulling myself out of the pi
t of grief and moving on felt like a herculean task that I wasn’t qualified for.
“That’s when I remembered back to when I was trying out for JV soccer. The coach wanted everybody to run three times around this neighborhood by the school to test our endurance. No walking or we were out. At first I was good, not in front, but not in the back either. If it had just been one or even two times around that neighborhood I would’ve been fine, but Georgia summers are brutal and I’d never continuously ran that long before. My levels were fine,” he said, pointing to the insulin pump attached to his abdomen. “But I was done. I wanted to be on the team so badly though. I wanted to prove that I could do it, and that I was just as good as everyone else out there, if not better. I just needed the chance. But the thought of running one more time around that stupid neighborhood seemed impossible. It would’ve been so easy to slow down and walk, but then I wouldn’t make the team. I felt defeated. There was no way I could run another whole lap. But you know what I could do,” he said slowly. “I could make my legs run another ten more steps to the street sign ahead of me. And once I did that, I could make it another ten or so steps to the hydrant past that, and the crack in the sidewalk past that. And so on and so on, until I finally finished that last lap. I kept my eye on the goal, but my focus was only ten or so steps ahead. Was I the fastest one out there? Nope. Not even close. But I beat the guys that gave up, and I ended up making it on the team.
“My Mom likes to say that hope only dies when we stop trying to move forward. Even if we get pushed back, or beaten down, as long as we keep trying to move forward there is always a reason to hope. Even if all we can manage to do is crawl, the hope will live, bright on the distant horizon.
“Making the team and proving myself was important enough to me to keep moving forward. Keeping my promise to Kira to live my best life was important enough for me to keep trying; even if it was only one tiny step at a time.” He paused to look Alvaro in the eyes. “Is Val important to you?”
“Of course Val’s important,” Alvaro said with an indignant scowl.
Hector took out Alvaro’s sketchbook from his back pocket. He must have seen it in the grass and picked it up on his way to the kitchen. Walking over, he held it out to him. “Then what’s the next step, Alvaro? What can you do right now?”
Alvaro sighed, understanding that if he sat there crying and doing nothing, there really would be no point to it all. Val needed him. He had to at least try or he’d never forgive himself. “I guess I can go tell Cass what I saw,” he suggested as he took the book from Hector’s hand, then tried to smooth out the crumpled pages as a means of apology to it.
Hector gave him an approving smile. “Then let’s go, man.”
Surprised that Hector was actually sticking with him, Alvaro stood up and they both headed towards the stables.
*****
A gentle breeze stirred the leaves shading the hill where they buried Old Enzo in the old Lennox family cemetery.
They had tidied up the little plot of land when they decided to put Enzo there, but it still had the feel of a forgotten place.
Skylar brushed away the wilted blossoms that she had placed the day before around Enzo’s polished brass grave marker. His brand new marker stood out amongst the weathered hunks of stone marking the Lennox’s pioneer ancestors. Most of the writing on the gravestones had been worn away with time, with only bits of names and parts of dates peeking out through the lichen and grime.
As Skylar laid the new buttercups, dandelions, and purple clover she had picked – making sure they all looked just right – she thought about how much she missed Enzo. Probably not as much as George and Alvaro did, she figured, but enough to make her heart hurt from his absence. He had been her friend, and he had protected her the best he could. To honor him, and show him that she’d never forget him, she did her best to decorate his grave every day with the prettiest wild flowers and the most interesting treasures she could find on her excursions around Paradise Glades.
She was particularly proud of the tarnished old brass button with an eagle on it she had found. When she had showed it to Hugo, he said that it was from the uniform of a Union soldier in the Civil War. Her second and third favorites were the shiny snail shell she found under a log, and the rusty horseshoe she found by a fence post. She was sure Enzo would have appreciated them.
Skylar’s gaze gravitated to the small marble block near the trunk of the old weeping willow tree that caught her eye every time. The once white stone looked like a loose tooth breaking up through the ground. It had only one date on it: July 29, 1895. Skylar knew that it must have been a baby. The poor thing’s life was so short that it didn’t even have a name. There was no one to remember who it had been and that it had lived, if only for a day. The thought made Skylar so sad that she took one of the blossoms that she had picked for Enzo – knowing he wouldn’t mind – and crawled over to place it onto the top of the stone block.
I’ll remember you, baby Lennox. You were here. You aren’t forgotten.
Nero let out a curious meow as he watched her from his sunny patch in the grass. With a massive stretch and yawn, he rolled over to expose his soft, black belly to a beam of afternoon sunlight, inviting her to pet him. Skylar broke free from her momentary melancholy and smiled as she crawled over to stroke his belly exactly two times, which was the deal they had agreed upon. Any more times and he’d nip her hand in warning.
Skylar looked up to the willow branch where Enzo’s parrot friend, Armand, was perched watching over the property. He and Nero never traveled very far from Enzo’s grave. It had been a pain for Cam and his friends to get them here, but Skylar was glad she had insisted on it. They were much happier here than they would’ve been back at that empty old building or out on the streets of Toronto.
Skylar was much happier here too, and as long as she stayed visible, was on time for meals, and came in before sundown, they allowed her to run free around the acres of property. Phil Riley had given Skylar his wristwatch so she could keep track of the time. It had been too big at first, but Jamie used one of her tools to put more holes in the leather band so it would fit snuggly around her wrist. Skylar didn’t quite have the hang of telling time with the old-fashioned hour and minute hands yet, but Tess made sure that she knew where the big hand and little hand should be when she was supposed to come in.
Even though the Rileys were incredibly nice, and she was curious about Ari’s old family, whenever she was around them her jealousy would inevitably rise up and poison her against them. What if Ari came back and chose them over her and Soren. What if Ari went back to Georgia with Sadie, and they had all kinds of fun sister-times together, making her forget all about Skylar? What if Ari left them behind forever? It hurt too much to think about, so she tried not to and avoided the Riley’s as much as possible.
Skylar looked over to where Jamie was on top of some scaffolding, welding pieces of the metal structure together for George’s new greenhouse on the back of the old barn. Jamie seemed like a cool adult to Skylar. She was an artist who had a whole bunch of neat tools. She owned all this land with her brother, and she didn’t care what anyone else thought about her. Skylar could see herself being like that when she grew up. They even had similar blonde wavy hair, though Jamie’s was much neater than Skylar’s tangled mess could ever be.
Skylar watched as the others helped with the building, looking like ants in the distance. A part of Skylar wanted to go over and help too, but she didn’t want to have to feel everyone’s feelings of fear and worry on top of her own. She tried to keep her distance as much as she could to give herself some peace. Enzo had it right all along. It was better to mind your own business and do your own thing. People only made things complicated.
Cass had told her that she and Soren were empaths, and that she’d help Skylar learn how to control it better. But she had been too busy to do it yet. Skylar didn’t mind too much. She loved the freedom of playing outside all day.
Every morning, as soon a
s the sun came up, Skylar would sneak downstairs from her room in the farmhouse attic, grab a banana to make Nina and Kauri happy, go out the back to check on the chickens Lanette had brought with her from Texas, and then head out to explore. Only coming back in to grab quick gobbles of food or to use the bathroom and then head out again until sundown.
Hugo and Wyatt use to take the kids out on the front lawn at Scion’s Keep every once and awhile when the weather was nice, but that was just a boring flat field of grass. Here, there were hills to roll down, fruit trees to climb, a pond to swim in, and woods to explore with all kinds of animals and insects living in it.
No matter how amazing this place was though, it wasn’t as good as it would be with Soren by her side. The specter of her missing twin followed her around like a sad shadow. There had been a weird feeling in her chest since just after lunch. She had felt Soren’s fear, but then it had suddenly cut off and now there was nothing. It was as if he wasn’t feeling his feelings anymore, and she didn’t like that at all.
Another breeze blew by, and a couple small twigs that were tangled up in her hair began irritating her face and neck as it was blown around. She must have picked them up when she’d been chasing after a couple big black crows in the woods. It had felt as if they were in on the game, because whenever she thought that she had lost them, they would make a sound like they were laughing and she’d find them again. She liked the crows. Sometimes they would bring her things. And if she was truly honest, it was really them who had found the eagle button. But Skylar had found it on the stump they had left it on, so that kinda counted.
