by A. G. Howard
The jibe hurt more than it should have. I must’ve been quiet for too long, because Taelor’s giggles faded.
“Actually”—she half coughed the word—“I’m thinking that’s way overused. Underland’s better. You know, since it’s underground. How’s that sound, Alyssa?”
I recall that rare glimpse of regret from Taelor today as I carve the middle of the skateboard bowl beneath the bright neon UNDERLAND sign hanging from the ceiling. It’s nice to be reminded that she has a human side. A rock song pipes through the speakers. As I come down the lower half of the skating bowl, dark silhouettes swoop around me against the neon backdrop.
Balancing my back foot on the tail of the board, I prepare to pull up on the nose with my front. An attempt at an ollie a few weeks ago won me a bruised tailbone. I now have a deathly fear of the move, but something inside me won’t let me give up.
I have to keep trying or I’ll never get enough air to learn any real tricks, but my determination goes much deeper. It’s visceral—a flutter that jumbles my thoughts and nerves until I’m convinced I’m not scared. Sometimes I think I’m not alone in my own head, that there’s a part of someone lingering there, someone who chides me to push myself beyond my limits.
Embracing the adrenaline surge, I launch. Curious how much air I’m clearing, I snap my eyes open. I’m midjump, cement coming up fast beneath me. My spine prickles. I lose my nerve and my front foot slips, sending me down to the ground with a loud oomph.
My left leg and arm make first contact. Pain jolts through every bone. The impact knocks the breath from my lungs and I skid to a stop in the basin. My board rolls after me like a faithful pet, stopping to nudge my ribs.
Gasping for air, I flip onto my back. Every nerve in my knee and ankle blazes. My pad’s strap ripped loose, leaving a tear in the black leggings I wear beneath my purple bike shorts. Against the neon green surface slanting beside me, I see a dark smear. Blood …
I draw my split knee up, inhaling a sharp breath. Within seconds of my crash landing, three employees blow whistles and Rollerblade through the lines of slowing skaters. They wear mining caps, with a light affixed to the front, but they’re more like lifeguards—stationed for easy access and certified in the fundamentals of first aid.
They form a visible barrier with their bright crossing-guard vests to deter other boarders from tripping over us while they bandage me up and clean my blood from the cement with disinfectant.
A fourth employee rolls up in a manager’s vest. Of all people, it has to be Jebediah Holt.
“I should’ve bailed,” I mumble grudgingly.
“Are you kidding? Nobody could’ve seen that slam coming in time.” His deep voice soothes as he kneels beside me. “And glad to see you’re speaking to me again.” He wears cargo shorts and a dark tee beneath his vest. The black lights glide over his skin, highlighting his toned arms with bluish flashes.
I tug at the helmet’s straps beneath my chin. His miner beam is singling me out like a spotlight. “Help me take this off?” I ask.
Jeb bends closer to hear me over the wailing vocals overhead. His cologne—a mix of chocolate and lavender—blends with his sweat into a scent as familiar and appealing as cotton candy to a kid at the fair.
His fingers curve under my chin and he snaps the buckle free. As he helps me push the helmet off, his thumb grazes my earlobe, making it tingle. The glare of his lamp blinds me. I can only make out the dark stubble on his jaw, those straight white teeth (with the exception of the left incisor that slants slightly across his front tooth), and the small iron spike centered beneath his lower lip.
Taelor raked him up and down about his piercing, but he refuses to get rid of it, which makes me like it all the more. She’s only been his girlfriend for a couple of months. She has no claim over what he does.
Jeb’s callused palm cups my elbow. “Can you stand?”
“Of course I can,” I snap, not intentionally harsh, just not the biggest fan of being on display. The minute I put weight on my leg, a jab shoots through my ankle and doubles me over. An employee supports me from behind while Jeb sits down to strip off his blades and socks. Before I know what he’s doing, he lifts me and carries me out of the bowl.
“Jeb, I want to walk.” I wrap my arms around his neck to stay balanced. I can feel the smirks of the other skaters as we pass even if I can’t see them in the dark. They’ll never let me forget being carried away like a diva.
Jeb cradles me tighter, which makes it hard not to notice how close we are: my hands locked around his neck, his chest rubbing against my ribs … those biceps pressed to my shoulder blade and knee.
I give up fighting as he steps off the cement onto the wood-planked floor.
At first I think we’re headed to the café, but we pass the arcade and swing a right toward the entrance ramp, following the arc of light laid out by his helmet. Jeb’s hip shoves the gym-style doors. I blink, trying to adjust to the brightness outside. Warm gusts of wind slap hair around my face.
He perches me gently on the sunbaked cement, then drops beside me and takes off his helmet, shaking out his hair. He hasn’t cut it in a few weeks, and it’s long enough to graze his shoulders. Thick bangs dip low—a black curtain touching his nose. He loosens the red and navy bandana from around his thigh and wraps it over his head, securing it in a knot at his nape to push back the strands from his face.
Those dark green eyes study the bandage where blood drips from my knee. “I told you to replace your gear. Your strap’s been unraveling for weeks.”
Here we go. He’s already in surrogate-big-brother mode, even though he’s only two and a half years older and one grade ahead of me. “Been talking to my dad again, have you?”
A strained expression crosses his face as he starts messing with his knee pads. I follow his lead and take my remaining one off.
“Actually,” I say, mentally berating myself for not having the sense to fall back into my silent-treatment bubble, “I should be grateful you and Dad allow me to come here at all. Seeing as it’s so dark, and all sorts of scary, bad things could happen to my helpless little self.”
A muscle in Jeb’s jaw twitches, a sure sign I’ve struck a nerve. “This has nothing to do with your dad. Other than the fact that he owns a sporting goods store, which means you have no excuse for not maintaining your gear. Boarding can be dangerous.”
“Yeah. Just like London is dangerous, right?” I glare across the gleaming cars in the parking lot, smoothing the wrinkles from my red T-shirt’s design: a bleeding heart wrapped in barbed wire. Might as well be an X-ray of my chest.
“Great.” He tosses his knee pads aside. “So, you’re not over it.”
“What’s to get over? Instead of standing up for me, you took his side. Now I can’t go until I graduate. Why should that bother me?” I pluck at my fingerless gloves to suppress the acid bite of anger burning on my tongue.
“At least by staying home, you will graduate.” Jeb moves to his elbow pads and rips off the Velcro, punctuating his point.
“I would’ve graduated there, too.”
He huffs.
We shouldn’t be discussing this. The disappointment is too fresh. I was so psyched about the study-abroad program that allowed seniors to finish out their final year of high school in London while getting college credits from one of the best art universities there. The very university Jeb’s going to.
Since he’s already received his scholarship and plans to move to London later this summer, Dad asked him to dinner a couple of weeks ago to talk about the program. I thought it was a great idea, that with Jeb in my corner I was as good as on a plane. And then, together, they decided it wasn’t the right time for me to go. They decided.
Dad worries because Alison has an aversion to England—too much Liddell family history. He thinks my going would cause a relapse. She’s already being prodded with more needles than most junkies on the street.
At least his reasons made sense. I still haven’t figured ou
t why Jeb vetoed the idea. But what does it matter at this point? The sign-up deadline was last Friday, so there’s no changing things now.
“Traitor,” I mumble.
He dips his head down, forcing me to look at him. “I’m trying to be your friend. You’re not ready to move so far from your dad … you’ll have no one to look out for you.”
“You’ll be there.”
“But I can’t be with you every second. My schedule’s going to be insane.”
“I don’t need someone with me every second. I’m not a kid.”
“Never said you were a kid. But you don’t always make the best decisions. Case in point.” He pinches my shin, popping the torn knit leggings with a snap.
A jolt of excitement runs through my leg. I frown, convincing myself I’m just ticklish. “So, I’m not allowed to make a few mistakes?”
“Not mistakes that can hurt you.”
I shake my head. “Like being stuck here doesn’t hurt. At a school I can’t stand, with classmates whose idea of fun is making cracks about the white rabbit tail I’m hiding. Thanks for that, Jeb.”
He sighs and sits up. “Right. Everything is my fault. I guess your eating cement in there was my fault, too.”
The strain behind his voice tugs at my heart. “Well, the slam was kind of your fault.” My voice softens, a conscious effort to ease the tension between us. “I would’ve already aced an ollie if you were still teaching the skateboard class.”
Jeb’s lips twitch. “So, the new teacher, Hitch … he’s not doin’ it for ya?”
I punch him, releasing some pent-up frustration. “No, he’s not doing it for me.”
Jeb fakes a wince. “He’d sure like to. But I told him I’d kick his—”
“As if you have a say.” Hitch is nineteen and the go-to king for fake IDs and recreational drugs. He’s a prison sentence waiting to happen. I know better than to get tangled up with him, but that’s my call.
Jeb shoots me a look. I sense a talk coming on about the evils of dating players.
I flick a grasshopper off my leg with a blue fingernail, refusing to let its whispers make the moment any more awkward than it is.
Mercifully, the double doors swing open from behind. Jeb scoots away to let a couple of girls through. A cloud of powdery perfume wafts over us as they pass and wave at Jeb. He nods back. We watch them get into a car and peel out of the parking lot.
“Hey,” Jeb says. “It’s Friday. Aren’t you supposed to visit your mom?”
I jump on the subject change. “Meeting Dad there. And then I promised Jen I’d take the last two hours of her shift.” After looking at my torn clothes, I glance into the sky—the same striking blue as Alison’s eyes. “I hope I have time to drop home and change before work.”
Jeb stands. “Let me clock out,” he says. “I’ll get your board and backpack and drive you to Soul’s.”
That’s the last thing I need.
Neither Jeb nor his sister, Jenara, have ever met Alison; they’ve only seen pictures of her. They don’t even know the truth about my scars or why I wear the gloves. My friends all think I was in a car accident with my mom as a kid and that the windshield messed up my hands and injured her brain. Dad doesn’t like the lie, but the reality is so bizarre, he lets me embellish.
“What about your bike?” I’m grasping at straws, considering Jeb’s souped-up vintage Honda CT70 isn’t anywhere on the lot.
“They predicted rain, so Jen dropped me off,” he answers. “Your dad can take you to work later, and I’ll drive your car home. It’s not like it’s out of my way.”
Jeb’s family shares the other side of our duplex. Dad and I went over to introduce ourselves one summer morning after they first moved in. Jeb, Jenara, and I became tight before sixth grade started the next fall—tight enough that on the first day of school, Jeb beat up a guy in the breezeway for calling me the Mad Hatter’s love slave.
Jeb slides on some shades and repositions the bandana’s knot at the back of his head. Sunlight hits the shiny, round scars peppered along his forearms.
I turn to the cars in the lot. Gizmo—my 1975 Gremlin, named after a character in the eighties movie Dad took Alison to on their first date—is only a couple of yards away. There’s a chance Alison will be waiting in the lounge with Dad. If I can’t count on Jeb to back me up about London, I can’t trust him to meet the biggest nut who’s fallen from my family tree.
“Uh-uh,” Jeb says. “I see that look. No way you can drive a standard with a sprained ankle.” He holds out a palm. “Fork ’em over.”
With a roll of my eyes, I drop my keys into his hand.
He pushes his shades to the bandana at his hairline. “Wait here and I’ll walk you.”
A burst of air-conditioning hits my face as the door to the complex slams shut behind him. There’s a tickle on my leg. This time, I don’t swish the grasshopper away, and I hear its whisper loud and clear: “Doomed.”
“Yeah,” I whisper back, stroking its veined wings and surrendering to my delusions. “It’s all over once Jeb meets Alison.”
Soul’s Asylum is a twenty-five-minute drive outside the city limits.
Afternoon sun beats down, glaring off the car’s hood. Once you get past the buildings, strip malls, and houses, there’s not much landscaping in Pleasance. Just flat, dry plains with sparse growths of shrubbery and spindly trees.
Each time Jeb starts to talk, I mumble a monosyllabic response, then crank up the volume on the newly installed CD player.
Finally, a song comes on—an acoustic, moody number I’ve heard Jeb listen to when he paints—and he drives in silent contemplation. The baggie of ice he brought for my swollen ankle has melted, and I move my foot to let it roll off.
I fight drowsiness, knowing what waits on the other side of sleep. I don’t need to revisit my Alice nightmare in midafternoon.
As a teenager, Alison’s mom, Alicia, painted the Wonderland characters on every wall of her home, insisting that they were real and talked to her in dreams. Years later, Alicia took a flying leap out of her second-story hospital room window to test her “wings,” just a few hours after giving birth to my mom. She landed in a rosebush and broke her neck.
Some say she committed suicide—postpartum depression and grief over losing her husband months earlier in a factory accident. Others say she should’ve been locked away long before she had a child.
After her mom’s death, Alison was left to be raised by a long line of foster parents. Dad thinks the instability contributed to her illness. I know it’s something more, something hereditary, because of my recurrent nightmare and the bugs and plants. And then there’s the presence I feel inside. The one that vibrates and shadows me when I’m scared or hesitant, prodding me to push my limits.
I’ve researched schizophrenia. They say one of the symptoms is hearing voices, not a winglike thumping in the skull. Then again, if I were to count the whispers of flowers and bugs, I hear plenty of voices. By any of those measurements, I’m sick.
My throat swells on a lump and I swallow it down.
The CD changes songs, and I concentrate on the melody, trying to forget everything else. Dust slaps against the car as Jeb shifts gears. I glance sideways at his profile. There’s Italian somewhere in his bloodline, and he has a really great complexion—olive-toned and clear, soft to the touch.
He tilts his head my way. I turn to the rearview mirror and watch the car freshener swing. Today’s the first day I’ve had it hanging in place.
On eBay, there’s a store that sells customized fresheners for ten bucks apiece. Just e-mail a photo, and they print it onto a scented card, then snail-mail the finished product to you. A couple of weeks ago, I used some birthday money and bought two of them, one for me and one for Dad—which he has yet to hang in his truck. He has it tucked in his wallet; I wonder if it will always stay hidden in there, too painful for him to see every day.
“It turned out good,” Jeb says, referring to the air freshener.
Jeb nods, his unspoken understanding more comforting than other people’s well-intentioned words.
I stare at the photo. It’s an image of a huge black-winged moth from one of Alison’s old albums. The shot is amazing, the way the wings are splayed on a flower between a slant of sun and shade, teetering between two worlds. Alison used to capture things most people wouldn’t notice—moments in time when opposites collide, then merge seamlessly together. Makes me wonder how successful she might’ve been if she hadn’t lost her mind.
I tap the air freshener, following its sway.
The bug has always seemed familiar—eerily fascinating yet at the same time calming.
It occurs to me I don’t know its history—what species it is, where it lives. If I found out, I would know where Alison might’ve been when she shot the picture and could feel closer to her somehow, but I can’t ask. She’s sensitive about her albums.
I reach behind the bucket seat, dig my iPhone out of my backpack, and open a search for glowing moth.
After twenty-some pages of tattoos, logos, Lunesta ads, and costume designs, a moth sketch catches my eye. Not a perfect match to Alison’s, but the body’s a bright blue and the wings shimmer black, so it’s close enough.
Clicking on the image turns the screen blank. I’m about to restart the browser when a strobe of bright red stops me. The screen throbs as if I’m looking at a heartbeat. The air seems to pulse around me in synchrony.
A Web page flickers to life. White font and colorful graphics stand out vividly against the black background. The first thing that hits me is the title: Netherlings—denizens of the nether-realm.
Next follows a definition: A dark and twisted race of supernatural beings indigenous to an ancient world hidden deep within the heart of the earth. Most use their magic for mischief and revenge, though a rare few have a penchant for kindness and courage.
