by Nicole Thorn
I grabbed my sword, and started walking Jasmine away from the desolation.
I quietly stewed in my anger as I brought her back to my car. I knew I was eighteen, but I never felt young. I saw those fighters as children
I placed Jasmine in my car, and examined her leg one more time. She would be fine, I thought.
I brought her home after stopping for a big ice cream cone to distract her from the fact that a spider lady wanted us dead. Jasmine would remember soon enough on her own, and I would deal with it then. For now, I enjoyed the silence and the thoughts of when I had Jasmine in my bed. Memories were all I could have now, so I didn’t want to deny myself anymore.
When we got home, I carried Jasmine into the house, and three worried people greeted us. But I felt exhausted and ready for sleep. I let Jasmine explain after I set her on the couch. Juniper got to work checking her out while Kizzy started making an ointment to soothe the pain and swelling. Not every day a chimera stepped on you.
I sank onto the other side of the couch, tilting my head back, and closing my eyes.
“Arachne?” Kizzy sighed. “Seriously?”
Jasmine nodded. “Yeah, I wasn’t very happy to hear that. The house is going to get overrun with spiders.” Her eyes widened at the ceiling. “Creepy, crawly little things that get in your mouth and choke you!”
I smiled, and patted her head. “I’ll protect you from the spiders, baby.”
When she grinned at me, Jasper glared. Glare all you want, you handsy monster. I know what you do to my sister at night.Oh . . . we both violate each other’s sisters . . . I suppose that made us even. I still didn’t like it.
“How about I make you something to eat?” Kizzy offered Jasmine. “I can tell you all about how to kill spiders with a special spray I can make you.”
The girls all headed off to the kitchen, and Jasper gave me a look before he followed them. Please, keep staring me down, buddy.
I headed up to my room to change into some non-bloody clothing, and I left my dirty ones in the trash. Once I got cleaned up, I sat on the bed and started getting the gorgon blood from my blade. I liked to keep it pretty. Jasmine could admire it more that way. If I ever tried to get her attention, which I didn’t, because that would’ve been wrong. Very wrong to try and get her to look at me like she wanted to jump me, or actually try and get her to jump me. It would be awful if I made an attempt to get her under my covers, and mostly naked again. I wouldn’t’ve done that . . . because I was a gentleman.
Kizzy knocked on my door, announcing herself before I let her in. She quickly closed the door again, putting her hands in her pockets as she walked over to the edge of my bed. “You are terrifying with that thing.”
I smiled. “Thank you.”
She rolled her eyes, and sat on my bed. “Are you just gonna start taking that everywhere you go?”
“As long as monsters are trying to kill my friends, then yeah.” Damn good thing I had it today, or that fight would have been a lot harder. I should have brought my shield as well, because it would have been useful against that army of gorgons. I really hoped we never ran into them again. They had been hard to fight when I couldn’t look at their faces. Mom would get pissed if I turned to stone. She would want to pull some strings and get me reZandered.
I tucked the sword under my bed when I finished cleaning it, and I waited to hear what Kizzy came in here to tell me. She never talked to me just because anymore. Life wasn’t that easy anymore, and she had better things to do with her time.
“Something wrong?” I asked her when she wouldn’t spit it out.
Kizzy smiled at me as she crossed her legs. “I think we should talk about you and Jasmine. You guys are clearly crazy about each other, and it’s getting sad when you get that puppy dog look on your face when she’s talking.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I do not get a puppy dog look. I am an adult dog and nothing less, thank you very much.”
My sister laughed at me, but she didn’t buy it. “Come on, Zan. What’s going on here? She loves you, right?”
“She does.”
“Good. Then why are you not with her?”
I shouldn’t have had to explain this one to her. She should’ve just known, because she had the same issues with Jasper. For Kizzy, her past made her scared for the future. For me, Jasmine’s future did the same thing. Kizzy came to her choices on her own, and I wanted that for Jasmine. I wanted her to see the light all on her own, and want to get better for herself. Not for me.
“I want what’s best for her.” I left it simple and truthful for Kizzy, because I didn’t want to rehash this again. It hurt my head, and Kizzy wouldn’t want to hear a long string of excuses anyway.
My sister sighed at me. “Why do you not think you’re what’s best for her? I think you would be really good for her, Zander. You could help her get better.”
“That’s just it. I don’t want to be the one to do that. Can’t you try and understand me for a little while? You didn’t want to drag Jasper down, and I don’t want to drag Jasmine down.”
Kizzy nodded once. “Yeah, but the difference is that I figured out I wouldn’t be dragging him down. We could make each other better if we tried, and we are. I was taking something away from Jasper when I didn’t want to be with him, and you can’t just go running people’s lives like that. It isn’t right.”
Okay, so no one heard me right. I needed to nod my head and be a good boy, pretending to listen while they ranted at me, like it would change anything. I knew what I did and I stuck to my guns this time. No more slip ups and no more doubts. Jasmine needed a friend, and I would be a friend. She could flirt and bat her eyes, and I would ignore it. It was all I could do to save us both.
“Will you at least think about it?” my sister asked. “I think it would be really good for you too. To have someone like I have someone. Jasmine and you are really great together.”
I breathed out of my nose. “Juniper is fine all on her own. Why can’t I be?”
Kizzy snorted. “You think that’ll last? One of these days, she’s going to get lonely. The thing about being broken, is that even when you’re shattered into a billion pieces, you still want someone there to put you back together. It doesn’t matter how pointless you think it is, or how impossible. No one should be alone.”
I stared at her, wondering how she could be saying all this when not too long ago, it had been me who gave the speeches. She moved past where I started out at and I was proud of her progress. It didn’t mean that I would make the jumps she did. I felt fine right where I was, all alone and dealing with it. Not everyone should have a person. We didn’t all deserve it.
She was wrong.
I should be alone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE:
No More Arguments
Jasmine
Zander seemed to be in a mood. Considering the last few weeks, that shouldn’t have surprised me. He had been in a mood more often than not. I started to think there I couldn’t do anything to cheer him up, and I was good at cheering people up. I acted silly, and loud, and goofy until they smiled, because I didn’t leave them alone until they smiled. But I didn’t think it’d be that easy this time. Zander would remain moody.
Sighing, I took a sip of my hot chocolate. Jasper had made it just after we got home. Kizzy talked with Zander about something, and I waited for him to fall asleep so that I could crawl into bed. That was how this wooing thing worked. You stayed relentless, no matter how stupid the other person acted, you did not let them push you away.
Or maybe I was just a stubborn bitch. There’s a good chance of that . . .
Juniper sat down at the table across from me. She had tea, and quietly stirred some lemon into it, looking thoughtful. “You said that you’d talk to us when you got home,” she said. “Are you ready to talk, or do you want to go bug Zander some more?” She smiled when she said it.
I cocked an eyebrow. “I always want to bug Zander. That’s a great pastime. He always looks so put
out, and so happy at the same time.” I smiled at the memories of his facial expressions whenever I did something he didn’t expect. Like he fell in love with me all over again. Then the smile faded around the edges. It weighed me down, this not being with him thing. Not because we weren’t together, but because of the reasons why.
He was so, so adamant that I couldn’t handle a relationship, but I didn’t think that I was the problem. Maybe it was him. I shook those thoughts away when I remembered that Juniper had asked me something. “Sorry, Juni, what was that again?”
“Are you ready to talk, or do you want to wait until tomorrow? You’ve already had a pretty rough day.”
The chimera popped into my head. Yeah, I’d consider that a rough day. Stabbed a mystical animal in the eye without even hesitating. I never did anything violent before those damn furies lost their minds, and now I had turned into a pro. Damn them. Damn everything.
“We can talk now,” I said cheerfully. “I gotta wait for Zander to fall asleep before I sneak into his room anyway. Otherwise he might send me away, and I can’t have that.” I beamed, and ignored how Jasper looked so, so sad. He stood in the doorway of the kitchen, having returned from talking with Kizzy about something. I smiled at him, and he did not smile back.
Spoilsport.
“You wanna go outside?” Juniper asked. “That way we won’t wake up the demigods.” She said it casually, but with a tightness around her eyes that most people wouldn’t notice. But I shared a womb with her and Jasper, and then an awful childhood with the two of them as well. There wasn’t anyone on this planet that knew either of them as well as I did. Not even Kizzy.
“Sure,” I said, drawing the word out. “Why not?”
Our backyard hadn’t been anything special before Kizzy came along. Now we had pots all over the place, overflowing with beautiful flowers and other plants. We had to introduce them slowly, so that Juniper didn’t freak out over the change. Just like any plants inside the house would have to be run past her first.
The ones outside could be anything that Kizzy wanted them to be, as long as she didn’t mind keeping them in the pots, and off the grass. The ones inside had to be real plants, that could be found in a book. I didn’t know why Juniper insisted on this, but I didn’t question it either. She could be weird about certain things.
Jasper plopped down on the porch without hesitation for the damp. He had gotten used to being outside with Kizzy, so that didn’t surprise me. I sat down next to him, hoping his bigger body could shield me from some of the wind. It wasn’t raining, but the wind chilled me.
Since Jasper had been eating more lately, his body had gotten bigger and wider. To the point that he could probably scare some stranger, and be used as a windshield. Not that he seemed to mind.
Juniper wandered around the backyard for a little while, trying to find a place to sit. When she couldn’t, I grabbed a towel from inside, and draped it across the porch. She settled on it, a pained expression on her face. Then she smoothed it away, and took a deep breath, let it out slowly.
I watched the battle in her eyes. The one where she fought not to freak out. It could have been over anything. Eventually she won, and breathed a sigh of relief. Then she turned back to us.
“All right, what was this talk supposed to be about?” I asked, huddling into my sweater. It was cold outside, but I didn’t mind. I liked the winters . . . most of the time. Now that I didn’t live with our father, and have a dog kennel hanging over my head every day. “Is it about Zander?” I asked. “I’ve thought of many ways to woo him, and I’m not too worried about it. I think I’ll just need time. It’ll wear him down, and his resolve will get weaker, and he’ll finally let himself be happy.”
Juniper smirked. “I’m sure you will, but no. This isn’t what we’re talking about. First of all, how is your face?” She reached forward, and laid tentative fingers against my bruised cheek.
I winced, not from pain, but from the memory. “It’s okay. I’m all beat up right now, but I’ll heal pretty quickly. I’m sure Daddy didn’t mean . . . ” I trailed off, surprised at myself. How many times had I done that? Made excuses for him so that I didn’t have to admit that he did something wrong? For the second time in two days, I felt my world shift, and I couldn’t stop it.
Sighing, I looked at my sister.
“Yeah,” she said, offering me another sad little smile.
“He meant it,” Jasper said behind me. “He always means it. There’s too much calculation in what he does for it to be anything but on purpose.” My brother balled his hand into a fist, and looked at the ground. “We just didn’t want to see it, because that would mean admitting that the only person in our life that we thought cared was actually using us.”
A wave of sadness hit me, and I let it. It was okay to be sad that my father hadn’t been a good father. It was okay, because that wasn’t my fault. I hadn’t known any better, and we had escaped as soon as we could. I wiggled around where I sat, and said, “What are we going to do about him? I know that he’s a bad father, but . . . I don’t like the idea of never seeing him again.”
Juniper frowned. “That’s never bothered me,” she said. “When we moved, I had hoped we’d never see him again, and then I felt so guilty that I buried those thoughts.”
Jasper shrugged. “If he shows up again, there’s a good chance that Kezia will wrap him up in vines, and suffocate him.” It sounded like he quoted her. I tried to picture sweet little Kizzy talking like that, and I simply couldn’t. I knew she hated our father, but I didn’t think she hated him that much.
“So, we’re hoping he never comes back?” I asked.
Jasper shrugged again. “That’d be nice. Whenever he does come around, he just wants money. But that’s not what we’re out here to talk about, Jazz,” he said.
I blinked. “Oh?”
Jasper grew thoughtful for a few seconds, and then started talking. “When the furies were still after Kezia and Zander, she and I went to Dad’s. I think we had to drop off money, or something. I can’t really remember that part. Anyway, he was out. Probably doing something he shouldn’t have been doing. Kezia and I went in, and I wasn’t paying attention. She found the photo album.”
Juniper and I both went really still. There was only one photo album that he could’ve been talking about, because my father only took pictures of us when we had done something bad. So, that we would learn not to do it anymore. My heart tripped against my chest just thinking about someone seeing a history of all the fuckups we’d ever done. Seeing every time we screwed up. Even knowing that Zander already knew this part of our history, and it came from Kizzy didn’t stop the uncomfortable feelings.
Jasper kept talking. “She was . . . appalled by it, if I want to put it mildly. The thing offended her so much, and she looked at me like I was the most broken thing she had ever seen. She asked if I understood how wrong it was. If I got how messed up it was. And I did. I had understood before she asked me, but I had never acknowledged it. It was this little tidbit that lurked on the edge of my thoughts every day, waiting to spring, and the second she asked, it did. It hit me, just how cruel our father was. And I suddenly could see how messed up I was.”
I blinked at him. Dumbfounded. “What?”
“How messed up all of us were,” he continued, and then smiled at me.
I blinked again. “What are you talking about?” I asked.
Juniper leaned her shoulder against mine, offering a little comfort. “He’s right, Jazzy. We’re all very fucked up. Just look at us. Look at me, and everything that I have to do to maintain my sanity, and you all put up with it, and that shocks me. You shouldn’t have to put up with it, but you do.”
I stared at me sister. She smiled sadly.
Then I looked at my brother, and he watched me. Quiet, calm. Controlled. My brother had always fought a quiet war. He lost every single battle, but all of his people came out alive. The strength that gave him was there in his eyes, willing me to see what they wan
ted me to, but I couldn’t.
“If not for Kezia, who knows how long I would have continued like that,” Jasper said. “I wasn’t eating, hardly anything. I wasn’t sleeping. I was slowly killing myself, and was perfectly content to keep doing it, because it hadn’t occurred to me that I was doing it,” he said.
I swallowed, and looked back at both of them. “I don’t know what you want me to say, because there is nothing wrong with me.” My hands shook, and my stomach hurt. I could feel something on the edge of my mind, trying to break through, but I wouldn’t let it. I didn’t want to look at it.
If I looked at it, then it would all be too real. I was so sick of all the pain. I had to see it every day for so long. People in agony because of something they couldn’t stop. People being mean to each other, and tearing each other down. And I had to live in a house that was no better, with only two people who would die for me, die to make me happy. It had been in too much pain, and I couldn’t let the thoughts form, because then I would know that he had been right. I was a mess of a person, never cheerful. Always needing someone to take care of me, because I couldn’t handle it on my own, turning to things better left alone to make me happy. I couldn’t face that.
Except I already did, hadn’t I? I thought about it, so I knew, right? I knew that all this cheerfulness sometimes acted as a mask I wore to keep people at arm’s length. I had to be cheerful, because that was what I did. Cheerful, and always there to make somebody feel better because my father told me to. I knew that the pain inside me was like a monster trying to crawl through my skin, leak down my sides and infect everyone around me, because it felt like so much. Everything I saw felt like so fucking much, and I couldn’t handle it, so the monster ate well.
It fed on things that would make me stop thinking. Fed on tequila and beer. I drowned it in the stuff until it stopped fighting. It would go to sleep, in a happy stupor, and leave me with the consequences, but oh, I couldn’t blame the monster. Monsters know not what they do. They were only doing what monsters were made for.
