The Whistle and the Wall
By day six, I’d had enough of the inside of Jamie and Britta’s house. While I couldn’t escape Jamie’s mind, I didn’t have it in me to look at his face anymore. The instant regret he’d experienced after his uncharacteristic mood swing was nonexistent anymore. He was surly and vindictive. I honestly couldn’t understand why Britta was putting out at all.
I retreated to my thoughts, abandoning the people around me who treated my chair as if it was empty. Britta was the only one who gave me the occasional consideration, but I could barely look at her, knowing what I now knew about her love life.
One by one, I attempted to put my horrors into boxes so I could shove them somewhere out of sight. I didn’t need to see Jamie and Britta going at it over and over in my mind. I didn’t need to be sad about Jens being Jens and leaving. I didn’t need to be pissed about Pesta or the whole big dramatic deal. I didn’t need to think about Nik, Tor, Henry Mancini or Alrik dying. I didn’t need to relive Linus’s death over and over. There was precious little I could do about his passing now.
And then it happened. As soon as I put away Linus’s death, my brother came to me in my imagination like a straight up superhero leaping off the pages of my own personal comic book, comforting me when no one else would.
Hey, Goose, he greeted me in my mind’s eye. His laid back smirk shone like all the love in the world was stuffed inside it. When’s Uncle Rick coming? He’s supposed to let me humiliate him at Tekken. He scratched his darker blond hair, and then dragged his fingers across the five o’clock shadow he was always so proud of. It took him about five days to get it that way. I knew better than to tease him about it, though I had about a million jokes on standby.
I swallowed at Linus’s words. The mere sight of him filled me with such overwhelming hope, love and peace, I couldn’t look away. I’d done my best not to conjure up my twin brother. It was painful and felt like the last stab and stop before Crazy Town. My mind must have sensed that inevitability was encroaching upon me, so it let me have Linus, however fake the interaction might be. I don’t think he’ll be coming over today. Uncle Rick died, Line.
The news surprised him, but the grief was skipped over. It was my imagination, so I didn’t have to deal with that if I didn’t want to. Oh. Bummer. Why’s Jamie being a wang?
That seems to be the tune he’s singing these days. He’s pissed at me.
What’s Jens have to say about that?
I shrugged, leaning back against the brick wall and knocking the side of my purple Chuck Taylor against Linus’s indoor soccer shoe. Jens left me. The words hurt to say, but I knew Linus would keep my secret pain.
Linus wrinkled his nose. Jamie’s a jackwagon. Jens and Jamie, both on the jackass wagon train to nowhere.
He wasn’t the sickly Linus on chemo. He was the soccer player jock who made friends as easy as breathing. I never had to make the effort when he was around. He could break the ice even in the chill of the Arctic. He’d know how to handle the freeze that had settled over the house.
I wrapped my arms around my very best friend, tears coming to my eyes at the comfort he represented. He leaned his head to mine. Hey, hey. You’re not alone. I’m here. You want I should kick them for you? I could wear my cleats. Make it nice and painful.
No. I deserve it. I should’ve told them about Pesta’s arv. Now it’s all ruined.
He pinched my arm just to poke at me, like he used to do when he was bored and wanted to start a war. More ruined than it would’ve been if you’d told them in the beginning?
A little. I lied this time. Unforgivable.
Linus rolled his eyes. So dramatic. You breathe wrong, and this happens? Some friends you’ve made without me. You’ve always had a terrible friend filter.
I didn’t care what he said; he was there. I sat next to him on the floor of my mind and cried on his shoulder. My only friend in the world – and he was imaginary. I was a pathetic mess.
I didn’t realize I’d been crying outside of my imagination until wetness dotted my cheeks as I sat down at Jamie and Britta’s dining room table to eat with the others. Lunch was unappealing, though I knew I was starving. My daily hangover limited my food intake, and the fact that they treated me like a prisoner cut me off from additional snacking. Every day I’d eaten dinner only and had too much alcohol for almost a week. The expression “green around the gills”? I was beginning to understand it more and more.
“Lucy, eat something,” Britta urged. “This isn’t what we want.”
Yes, it is, Jamie pushed into my head. I don’t eat with people I can’t trust. He saw Linus holding me in the corner of my mind and charged over to us, pushing my brother backwards. Linus hit his head on the ground and began deteriorating like a sandcastle in a windstorm, the chemo sucking the fat from his face and breaking him down over the course of ten seconds until he was nothing but a sunken-in pile of the brother I adored.
I screamed in my head and aloud, horrified that Jamie would hurt me so.
I was done with peaceful resistance. I was full-on kamikaze now. I had nothing to fight back with, so I shoved my plate away and slammed my forehead down onto the tabletop. “You mess with my head?” I challenged, jerking all the chins at the table toward me in unison. “I’ll mess with yours!” Once, twice, three times I bashed my head to the table before Foss yanked me backwards and onto the floor.
“Ah! Lucy, stop!” Jamie cried, holding his banged forehead in frustration and pain.
We were dazed, but not out.
“What are you doing?” Foss shouted, getting in my face. He cupped my chin and tried to get my eyes to focus on his. “Something’s wrong! She’s been going crazy since it all started. Is it Pesta? Is she deeper in you than you let on?” When I didn’t answer, he growled to Britta, “Call your stupid brother! I tried him last night, and he’s still not here.”
Britta was distraught. “I called Jens too, but he said he needed to take off for a while to clear his head.”
I sobbed under the weight of the utter rejection from my boyfriend and screamed for my brother. “Linus! Linus!”
“Lucy, Linus is dead. He’s not here,” Foss explained slowly, as if I’d lost my grip on reality.
In all actuality, I was on the brink. I found Foss’s determined gaze and whispered. “Hit me hard. Knock me out, Foss. Please. It’s the only way to stop him.” I tapped my temple. “I can’t do this anymore. It’s not worth it.” My whisper was fierce as tears ran down my face.
Foss released me, horrified at my plea. “Jamie, get in her head. Something’s not right, and she won’t tell me. Is it Jens? He’ll come back, Lucy! Jens always runs away, and then he comes back. He knows his duty’s to your family.”
The pain punched me all over again. I’d been putting thoughts of Jens out of my mind. There was no point in dealing with them. Jens was gone, and I couldn’t handle another thing tormenting me.
Elsa’s whistle floated into my ears, and my agony began to alleviate. My tensed muscles relaxed one by one until I was a limp puddle on the kitchen floor. Jamie was lowered down beside me, and I wanted to screech for him to get away from me.
“Only so we can talk to her,” Foss cautioned Elsa as he sat on the floor and pulled me onto his lap. It spoke volumes of his exasperation with my deterioration that he would allow Elsa to help, given his wary regard of her race. He brushed my hair away from my face and kissed the red spot on my bashed forehead that I was sure would be a lump by morning.
Foss wouldn’t let them hurt me. Foss would stay with me while my body crapped out on me. Foss would guard me until I could sit upright on my own again.
Elsa’s voice was soothing, and it made me want to go to it, despite my non-functioning limbs. “Baby doll, why are you trying to knock yourself out?”
The answers flowed out of me without my permission, and I loathed her for it. Her whistle made me confess things I never would’ve done otherwise. “Jamie hates me. He makes me watch while he has sex with Britta, and I
can’t escape him! He doesn’t let me put up a wall to give him what privacy I can.” My tears fell like hard rain down the sides of my face. “He came into my mind and hit my Linus! He’s all I have left, and Jamie won’t even let me have that! He’s in my head, and I can’t get him out!”
“Are you hiding anything from us?” Elsa asked, arms akimbo.
Jamie began babbling what he’d been doing to me, and Leif intervened by duct taping his mouth shut with some silver tape from the junk drawer a few feet away so Jamie’s confessions wouldn’t drown out mine.
I hated her with everything in me for forcing out my secrets. “I want to run away from all of you. I love Jens and Foss, and they both hate me. I hate me! I hate peas, but I pretend to like them. I stole a Mustang to take Linus on a joyride when we were fifteen! He always wanted to drive one, and we knew he was getting sick again. I returned it all gassed up a few hours later! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I miss my mom, but I hated her vegetarian lasagna! I said I liked it, but I lied! I don’t understand Moles in trigonometry. I found Jens’s stash of lavender powder in the floorboards! I liked Vin Diesel in XXX, but I told Linus I thought it was stupid! Tonya’s a terrible cook. I kissed Foss in the orchard and I think about it sometimes when Jamie’s not in my thoughts! There’s a black fog inside Jamie, and I don’t know what it is! I want to run away. I want to run. I want to run.” My brain started skipping when Elsa’s command hit a wall I had not constructed. Every time I said the worst thing I could admit to, my left eye twitched and my body jerked like someone was poking me in the side. “I want to run,” I repeated over and over, though I didn’t feel this as strongly as the repetition suggested.
The whistle that had seeped in through my ears began attacking a translucent wall I’d never noticed before next to the brick one in back. Deep behind my agony over my family and the horrors of the day was a wall I hadn’t constructed. The whistle poked at it, and without knowing why, I started screaming and clawing at my face. “Charles Mace! Charles Mace! Charles Mace!”
“Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” Britta yelled, her knife at Elsa’s throat. “You’ll kill her!”
Foss lowered me to the floor in alarm, where I convulsed as my body rebelled against the Huldra whistle. I was unable to control the madness that was possessing me. I began drooling as my body twitched unnaturally.
Foss bellowed, “Undo it, Elsa! Mace put something in her mind to protect her, and you’re touching it!”
“No!” Elsa shouted above the din, the thrill of a presented challenge steeling her resolve. “I can break the barrier. I’m the strongest of my kind! No one’s stronger than me!”
Britta plunged her knife into Elsa’s thigh, but I was still stuck on repeat. Jamie was convulsing at my side.
Unbeknownst to me, something primal exploded out of my fingertips, shooting out from me in a burst of electricity and heat. Three-inch sparks like the ones Pesta used to attack me with leapt through my gloves, burning holes in the fingertips and singeing my jeans. Everyone shouted and jumped back, and I lost reality through the chaos.
It was Leif who saved me. He threw his body over mine, putting himself in Elsa’s line of vision. It’s enough, he signed to her.
Hand over her bloody thigh, Elsa conceded, whistling Jamie and I back down to a short slumber.
Twelve.
Desperate Measures
I awoke in my own bed, the softness of the golden comforter easing my transition into wakefulness. My body was so sore, I was afraid to move it. The curtains were drawn in the dark room, so I couldn’t tell if it was night or day. Taking advantage of my few moments of solitude, I wept bitterly into my sparkling hands. Someone had removed my gloves for me, forcing me to see the scars that looked like stars and felt like the remnants of war. I felt robbed and naked, my secrets exposed for people who didn’t even like me to examine at will.
I stood on shaking feet and moved to the windowsill where I knew Jens kept a knife concealed. There were guns downstairs hidden around the house, but a gun didn’t feel like the right choice. Jens had made me get my CPL license so I would understand how to use the weapons around the house “just in case”. I didn’t like those training days. I wasn’t built for combat. I was built for the Partridge Family, or I used to be, anyway. Now I was in a life where there were guns and knives hidden around the house. Super.
I felt around on the underside of the brightly painted sill and pulled out the blade, begging the steel for answers. I tested the tip on my stomach, but wasn’t sure I’d be able to cut through to a place that wouldn’t take me hours to bleed out. I tested it across my throat, but didn’t think I’d be able to do that one without chickening out. Finally I dragged the serrated edge across my wrist, cooing with relief when I felt the tension abate there.
Out of nowhere, the knife was yanked from my hand and I was pushed backward.
“Jens?” I whispered as he materialized out of thin air. Our room always had his scent in it, so I hadn’t picked out that he’d come back.
“This isn’t the way,” he breathed, pocketing the blade with a shaking hand. “No one wants you to die.”
“I don’t care what other people want. I’m going crazy.” The sight of his silhouette left me breathless with relief at his return. “I won’t go out like that. Pesta’s in me.” I recalled enough fragments of the Huldra-induced meltdown to remember the feeling of Pesta’s power forcing itself to the forefront of my DNA and pushing my humanity aside. “If I don’t kill me, one of you will have to. You wouldn’t be able to live with yourself.” I knew the dirty work generally fell to Foss or Jens, and despite our rocky relationships, I knew neither of them could handle that blow. “We all know I have to die. I’d rather get to it sooner than later.”
He turned on the lamp we used for late night reading. The faint light cast shadows about the room, giving his face a fair enough glow that I could see his eye had been blackened.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Foss found my stash.” He raised his hand to fend off my explanation. “I know you didn’t mean to rat me out. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have had any to begin with. Tuck brought me my regular order, not knowing I’d quit. I tried it a few times when my back got to be too much, but I haven’t touched it in weeks. Honest.” He scoffed at himself. “Not that that word has any meaning anymore. I swear, I do love you. I used to be an okay guy. Sucks you get this version.”
I was shocked at his apology. “Um, back atcha?”
“Then let’s be better to each other. I’ll let you know if I’m slipping next time. I know you won’t come down hard on me. I don’t know why I hide it from you, like you can’t handle my flaws. I know you can.” He sat on the bed and pulled me to stand in front of him, lacing his fingers through mine. “And you have to tell me things I don’t want to hear. I don’t care if you still have feelings for Foss. I’d rather you tell me and we can deal with it than you live a lie and resent me for it. We’re in this for the long haul, so we have to tackle stuff together, or all this means nothing.” He gestured around the big house we loved. “You should’ve told me about the arv.”
I nodded. “You shouldn’t have left me.”
Jens mulled this over and slowly bobbed his head up and down. “I guess you’re right.”
I scoffed, which he totally deserved. “You say you want me to tell you stuff, but when I did, you bailed. Absolutely bailed. I had no idea if you would ever come back!”
Jens went on the defensive, which was a mistake. I had too many bullets locked and loaded. “You waited months to tell me the truth!”
“And when I did tell you? How’d you handle it? You ran, like you always do when things get tough. I don’t need someone who’s only with me when I’ve got it together.”
He glared at me. “You know I was going to come back. I’m standing here, aren’t I?”
I laughed, and the sound tasted bitter. “If you don’t want to be in a relationship, the quickest way out is through the door, which you made
good use of when I screwed up.”
“I do want to be with you!” His protest had an edge of frustration to it.
“Then here’s a hint: don’t run out the door! If you want to be with me, be with me! Like, in the same zip code!” I shook my head. “I’m telling you, this was it for me. You ran in Bedra and I found you high in a whorehouse. You ran here to who knows where. I won’t bother to ask you, since you lied to me in Bedra about where you were then. You run again, I’m out.”
Jens reared back. “Are you joking?”
“I think it’s pretty basic, what I’m saying here. You run, you’re out. I won’t wait for you next time. I love you, but I don’t actually owe you any sort of loyalty when you run out on me.” My heart was pounding, and I tried to keep from telling him that I didn’t trust him, that he’d broken something precious, and I wasn’t sure I wanted him repairing it.
“You want to talk about running around on someone? How’s Foss lately? This shiner had more to do with you than it did the drugs.”
“How’s Foss? Foss is fine. He and I got into words about what happened, and we worked it out. He stayed with me when it was hard.”
“Say it,” Jens spat. “Tell me you’re in love with him.”
My fists were clenched as I fumed. “Why? So you can storm out again and bail on me for another week?”
“Just say it!”
“Tell me where you went when you left.” Yup, I’d officially become the “where were you” wife. Super.
Jens took a step back, his cagey glance giving me a clear hint that he wasn’t ready to actually be a grownup just yet. “I just needed to blow off some steam.”
I turned off my rage that wanted to tackle him to the ground and wail on him. I closed my eyes and donned a quiet, pleasant tone. “Oh, good. I was so worried you’d be vague about it.” I was determined to stop the stupidity we were both drinking heavy doses of and bring reason to the mess. I waited for a few beats, and then sat on the bed, making the first move to show I didn’t want to fight anymore. I was silent as I tucked away my boxing gloves that were too ready for a takedown. I counted to ten. Then twenty. Then fifty. “Well, that could’ve gone better.”
Lucy at Peace Page 8
