by Gregory Ashe
Chapter 21, Saturday 10 September
After work—half the time with Mr. Wood, half the time on my own—I headed home. Just a quick stop really. I grabbed the bouquet of flowers out of the fridge; Mom had been too happy to go get them. Literally too happy. You know, the fake kind. But she had gotten them. Not roses; I didn’t think Olivia was really that kind of girl. Lilies, a vibrant pink fading to white at the edge, creamy carnations, and fat, blushing daisies. A lot of pink for Olivia, but I hadn’t been there to pick out the flowers. No roses had been my only order.
I left before Mom or Dad could find me; no reason in dragging out another of our interactions. If we were going to pretend to be a happy family, I needed to conserve my energy.
Then the garage. I stopped, admired the results of my morning’s efforts. Nestled against one wall of the garage, practically hidden by Isaac’s Mustang, was my version of a car. In other words, it was what I could afford.
A 2000 Kawasaki Ninja. A motorcycle. Well-used would be a good way to describe it, and since I didn’t know much about motorcycles, I have no idea if I’d gotten a good deal. But it had been a good price, even if it had emptied my savings. My parents didn’t know yet; they hadn’t even walked out when I’d ridden it home. It was something Isaac would have liked. I wheeled it from the garage, started it, and made my way down the hill just as my mom came around the side of the house. I would have waved, but I was still learning how to keep the thing under control.
Riding a motorcycle terrified me. Isaac had always wanted one, of course, but I’d found the idea of leaving nothing between me and oncoming traffic kind of ridiculous. But here I was, riding one, and when I reached the edge of town, I realized that I loved it. I sped up, blazing down the stretch of road between the edge of town and Olivia’s neighborhood. Rippling corn and wheat made waves around me, around the perfect line of road and sky. It made me feel alive, the way quickening had made me feel. And the danger was part of it.
Plus, it beat riding a bike.
I reached Olivia’s house in record time. The bouquet, unfortunately, had not fared as well. I hadn’t thought about what the wind might do to the flowers. I pulled out the broken ones, rearranged it as best I could, but the end result still looked straggled and pathetic. I felt bad, but my nerves about asking Olivia were more pressing.
From the stone path, I could see Mr. Green in his backyard. He was working his way along a row of hawthorns, trimming the lowest branches with a pair of pruning shears. There was something about the line of hawthorns that drew my eye—the density of the trees, the branches so thick and cluttered. A seemingly impossible depth to a single row of trees. He turned and saw me. Right then, I was so desperate that I found myself wishing he’d come over and talk to me. Anything to put off knocking at that door. He just gave a friendly wave before going back to his work. So much for that.
I knocked on the door, flowers hanging from my hand. It took forever before the door finally swung open.
“Hey,” Olivia said with a smile. She stepped in, kissed me on the cheek. I could tell something was wrong.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Everything ok?”
Her smile faded. “Dad’s just not feeling well.”
“I’m fine,” came her father’s voice from the living room. “It’s just the flu.”
I realized that the flowers were still in my hand. Pointing toward the ground.
“These are for you,” I said, whipping them up.
“Thanks, they’re beautiful.”
Petals missing, stems cracked, the bouquet was far from beautiful, but I accepted the comment with a nervous smile. It wasn’t just the smile that was nervous. I could feel my anxiety coiled up in my toes, making me want to bounce up and down. I barely heard her invite me in. I felt like a different person—I was never nervous like this.
She put the flowers in a vase and set it by the window. Shane praised the flowers from where he lay on the sofa watching TV. Pale and sweating, he didn’t look particularly well, but not death-bed sick either. Cheryl came through a moment later, bent to sniff a lily, and said, “They’re wonderful, Alex.”
“We’re going up to my room,” Olivia said.
“Keep the door open,” Cheryl said as she moved to take a seat next to Shane on the couch.
Olivia rolled her eyes, but she took my hand and led me up the stairs.
“I’m glad you came over,” she said. “What happened yesterday? You kind of bolted.”
“Yeah,” I said. “About that—”
“Are you ok?” Olivia said. “Are you feeling ok, I mean? Your hand is super sweaty, and I think you’re shaking.”
I stared at her. She was right, but I had been praying she wouldn’t notice.
We were halfway up the stairs, but she turned me around and gave me a push. “Come on, back downstairs,” she said. “You’ve probably got the same flu Dad has. It must be going around.”
I was down two steps before I turned and stopped her. “No,” I said. For a moment, I panicked—was I spitting on her when I talked? How was my breath? We were so close, I was sure she could see every blemish. All I could see were her eyes, the shape of her mouth—now set into a firm line. “No, I’m not sick. Promise.”
“Well, what’s going on then?”
I exploded. “Wyatt and everyone told me that I was late asking you to Homecoming, and then they said that I needed a creative way to ask you, or you’d say no, and then the flowers got all messed up when I was coming over here, and I’ve got no creative ideas, and no good way to say this, and—” I gulped. “Do you want to go to Homecoming with me?”
Olivia stared at me. Those hazel eyes were trying to figure out if I was crazy. I’m pretty sure that that time, I had spit on her. Just a little.
“So, you freaked because you couldn’t come up with a creative way to ask me to Homecoming?”
I nodded.
“And so you decided to go the traditional route?”
Nod.
“The traditional route being give me some bedraggled flowers and ask me to Homecoming on the stairs in my parents’ house?”
“That pretty much sums it up,” I said.
She leaned in and kissed me again. A real kiss. It left me needing air, but also needing more. I moved up a step, wrapping my arms around her.
“Of course I’ll go with you,” she said. “Why would you even worry about something like that?”
The ruins of the subway station, torn apart by quickening. The line of blood running from the corner of Christopher’s mouth to drip drip drip onto the rail beneath us. The way death changed the lines in his face, lines that had once been as familiar to me as my own heartbeat.
“Just nervous,” I said. “You might want to wait on your answer, though, until you see how we’re going to get there.”
“It’s ok,” Olivia said. “I don’t mind driving.”
“No,” I said. “I’ll drive, as long as you’re ok with it.”
“Did you get a car?” Olivia asked with an excited smile.
“Come on.” I led her outside. She hadn’t taken two steps onto the porch when she saw it and let out a squeal.
“Oh my gosh, are you kidding me?”
I shook my head.
“It’s beautiful!”
Black and silver and steel, scuffed, but I’d washed off most of the mud. I realized that she was right; it was a pretty-looking machine.
“Let’s go for a ride!”
“Um,” I said. “To be honest, I’m still kind of learning.”
“Good enough for me,” she said. “Time you learned how to have a passenger.”
She walked over to the bike, got on the back. Her navy and red-striped skirt slid up to mid-thigh. A very nice looking thigh. Suddenly, I wasn’t even thinking about the motorcycle anymore.
“Come on,” she said. “I want to go while the sun’s still up.”
I got onto the bike, started it, leaned back. Those hazel eyes were just inches from min
e, and she was grinning. Her bare knees pressed against my legs. Even making out, I don’t think we’d been quite so . . . close before.
“You sure about this?”
She wrapped her arms around my waist; I barely felt the flash of pain from the cuts on my chest. There were more important things happening in my body right then.
“Alright,” I said.
I took my time; it was definitely different having someone sitting behind me, and there was a moment where the pavement loomed up at us as I turned around, but then everything was back under control. I guess I was a natural, or something like that. I took us back to Main Street, her hair whipping me as we sped up—no helmets, yet—and then I turned south on Lilburn, heading through downtown. In part because the speed limit was low there; natural or not, I wasn’t quite ready for anything too risky with Olivia on the bike. Plus, it was a great spot to show off. And right then, with a hot girl behind me on a motorcycle, with all my demons bottled up because Olivia was with me, I wanted to show off.
We made our way past the high school, then south again, driving past the industrial complexes that made up that edge of West Marshall. When we met the railroad track, I turned west, and we drove into the setting sun, all gold and purple and crimson, and then we followed the river north a little ways before I pulled off into a park and stopped.
I got off the bike first, helped Olivia down. A little regretfully as we separated, even with the heat from her body making my shirt stick to my back. Even more regretfully as the skirt fell down to her knees.
Olivia gave a clap of delight, a little jump, and kissed me on the cheek. “That was amazing! You did a great job!”
“Thanks,” I said. “It’s kind of fun, right?”
“Oh my gosh, it’s wonderful. What made you decide to get a motorcycle?”
“Well, we needed to get to Homecoming somehow.”
“You know I would have driven.”
“I know,” I said. “Time for a change, I guess.”
“Moving across the country wasn’t enough of a change?”
I hesitated; enough of a change to make me someone else? Someone new. No, it wasn’t.
“You sure you’re ok going to Homecoming on this?” I asked. “In a dress?”
“I’m wearing a skirt, actually,” Olivia said. “And yes, it’s going to be so much fun!”
“You already know what you’re wearing?”
She gave me a glance.
“Alright,” I said with a laugh. “You already know what you’re wearing.”
“And what you’re wearing,” she said.
“That’s a relief.”
“I thought you’d like it,” she said with a smug smile.
We spent some time there, in the park—not doing anything, really. Just watching the sunset over the river, walking under the trees, being near each other. I could sense them there—the seeds of change, something new. Like we were getting to know each other again. Or, not again, but better. Deeper. And in spite of all my fears, I felt myself opening up; that was what was so remarkable about Olivia, really.
“Let’s go back to my house,” Olivia said. “I want to show you something.”
“What’s that?”
“Some of my art.”
I helped her onto the bike and we started back. I didn’t say anything else; I could tell this was something special for her; judging by the way she had acted when I had first brought up her art, she did not show it to other people often. So I got us back as fast as I could—limited by my skills on a motorcycle more than by anything else.
When we pulled up in front of her house, the sky was that deep purple of evening, the last minutes of sunlight peeping over the horizon. Stars broke out over us, a hundred times brighter, more insistent, than what I had ever seen in New York. Holding hands, we walked up the stone path to the porch.
“Thanks for asking me to Homecoming,” Olivia said.
“Thanks for saying yes.”
Before she could answer, I saw it. A flash of purple-white light, streaking across the sky to bury itself somewhere in the town. A quickener traveling. And then again. Heading west. Toward the cemetery.
Olivia unlocked the door and stepped inside. I needed to go with her; this was my chance to see her art, to see a part of her that she guarded from the rest of the world. But the cemetery, the untrained quickener. What if the sprawls were back? I hadn’t paid any attention to the cemetery since Mr. Wood’s sister had been hospitalized; there was no point. But what if they were back? And if not, there was still the matter of the quickener. Someone Grandfather would have had me kill for being untrained, a threat to the rest of West Marshall.
“Come on,” Olivia said. “What are you looking at?”
The quickener. The last time I had disobeyed Grandfather, it had ended with Isaac getting killed. I wouldn’t make that mistake again. I needed to do what Isaac would have done.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I gotta go.”
And I ran to the motorcycle.
“Alex, wait!” Olivia shouted.
“I’m sorry,” I shouted back. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” I started the bike and peeled out toward the cemetery.
Now a motorcycle isn’t anywhere as fast as quickening, but it’s a hell of a lot faster than a regular bike. Or walking. And last time, I’d still been able to catch up to the quickener. Another sign he was untrained. So I drove fast, then faster. Stupid, stupid, stupid, I told myself. Leaving Olivia like that; she’d be furious with me. And what could I tell her? Sorry, I had to go find this guy using magic, so I can kill him, because that’s what my dead Grandfather taught me to do.
In the first place, that would be a good way to lose a girlfriend. In the second, it would be a good way to get killed myself. A quickener can’t tell any non-quickeners about magic. That’s one of the few things we all agree on. Like killing growers. Start telling people, and any quickener who found out would hunt me down.
I reached the cemetery faster than I realized and screeched to a halt. The gates were locked, of course. And I was wearing, if not exactly a good shirt, at least one of my better ones. I scrambled up the fence though and made it over without ripping my clothes. I sprinted down the path, the gravel sliding under my tennis shoes.
Twenty yards in, I almost died. A sprawl, this one a teenage corpse with piercings across her chest, flew from a nearby tree. Only my attempt to stop, and the gravel giving way beneath me, saved my life. I fell backward, but slid forward, and the sprawl just barely missed me. She hit the ground nearby and rolled to her feet.
I skidded forward, the gravel tearing up my arms and back, and got to my feet. She had come from a tree; that was something I’d never seen a sink do. Maybe sprawls really were different. I kept running, toward the grower’s tree at the center; I could see it, a dark blot against the stars, and it wasn’t far. But probably too far all the same—if this was a new sprawl, full of life, it would be much faster than I.
Another sprawl, barrel-chested and so rotted that I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, stalked me behind the row of trees, keeping pace with me easily. I spotted another lurking in the branches of a tree to my left, but with the sprawl pacing me on the right, I couldn’t do anything but go straight.
Somehow, after another minute, I was still alive. The sprawl that had attacked me first, the teenager, still came behind me, and the one to my right stayed close, but they didn’t move in for the kill. I didn’t know why, but I forced myself to run faster, my breath hot against my cheeks.
Then I saw them: more sprawls, some clinging to tree branches, others waiting in shadows, ringing the gravel path that ran around the tree. Like guards, each at his station. But the tree itself, that way was clear; I’d made it past the guards along my path, and so the way was free for me. I just had to make it a little farther.
And then I smelled it. Sharp and coppery against the smell of grass and moonlight. Blood stained the base of the grower’s tree, visible only by its sheen ag
ainst the dull bark.
I hadn’t broken past the sprawls guarding the tree. I had walked right into their trap.
