by Joe Shine
CHAPTER 19
AN EXPLOSION OF VIOLENCE
Embarrassed by what had happened, I hung back extra far, cursing myself.
When Gareth reached the halfway point down the sidewalk-alley, a large figure leapt from behind the bushes to the left, blocking his path. Another smaller figure popped up from behind him and shoved him to the ground at the feet of the larger one. Before Gareth could get up the larger guy punched him in the face and hissed, “Stay down.”
I saw this. I felt it when he punched Gareth. I wanted to rip their heads off, skin them alive, but I couldn’t. The only time a Shadow could intervene was when the possibility of death was certain. For all I knew, this mugging was the catalyst for everything Gareth would become.
So instead of doing what my instincts screamed for, what I had been trained to do, I ducked behind a bush and observed, enduring it. It was torture. I flinched in rage with every kick. One in the ribs. One in the back. Two on the hips. I bit my lip to keep from screaming and tasted my own blood. Just stay down, you idiot! Don’t try to get up!
The larger of the two ripped the backpack from his shoulders and swung it over his shoulder.
“Got it, let’s go,” the larger one said.
“I want his wallet,” said the smaller one.
“We don’t need that, come on,” bellowed the larger one, but his partner ignored him. He bent over Gareth. In a bit of bravery I would never have guessed he was capable of, Gareth blindly kicked and caught him in square in the face.
The smaller guy didn’t go down, but stumbled backward grabbing his nose and yelling in pain. The larger attacker clocked Gareth on the side of the head. Gareth grabbed his face and slumped to his knees.
Gripping his bloody nose with his left hand, the smaller one lurched back over to Gareth. “Now you die.” With his right hand, he reached behind his back, his fingers wrapping around the handle of a pistol.
The blade of my knife punctured his hand an instant later. And I was not much farther behind it. I covered the distance between us before the gun clanged onto the ground. I’d never moved so fast.
I jumped and caught the smaller one in the face with my foot, feeling the satisfying crunch of his cheekbone breaking. He tumbled into the bushes. I landed next to the larger one in a crouch, spun around, and elbowed the side of his knee. As he buckled I continued my spin and cracked him across the jaw with my foot. He was out cold before he hit the ground.
The smaller one was trying to extricate himself from the bush. It took every fiber of my being not to kill him where he stood. Instead, I kicked out his legs, and he fell to the ground. Taking a page out of Cole’s book, I wrenched his arm around to its breaking point and placed my knee across his throat. Except I made sure to break his arm before he passed out. I wanted him to feel it.
After the crack, there was silence.
The incident had lasted mere seconds. Neither of them would be getting up anytime soon. Neither would ever fully recover, either. I turned to find Gareth, his nose and lip bleeding, staring up at me in a combination of fear and shock. My stomach turned. I felt that same blazing connection I’d felt for the first time months ago under the clock tower. Only better. I would have enjoyed it more if the circumstances had been a little different.
“Are you okay?” I asked him.
He nodded, unable or unwilling to speak to me.
Voices floated down from the far end of the alley. A group of kids, some unsteady and probably drunk, were lurching toward us. There was blood everywhere. Two unconscious and battered bodies, and a gun. This was not good.
I gathered Gareth’s backpack and papers as fast as I could and tossed it back to him. Then I grabbed my bag from where I had dropped it in the bushes and slid the bloody knife and gun into it. I quickly worked up some tears, good ones. Lastly, I helped Gareth stand up and put my arm around him to hold him up. He was wobbly, but I had him. Energy coursed through my skin wherever I was touching him. The sensation was so sudden and so intense I got a head rush, stumbled, and almost dropped him. Almost.
I dragged him down the sidewalk-alley toward the group of kids. I could see them clearly now: four guys and four girls. Gareth found his feet and was able to help carry himself as we exited onto a large square with a fountain. I gave a strangled, “Help!”
They were goofing off before, but came running toward us at my call. I pretended to be in near hysterics when they reached us.
“Call the police. These guys tried to rob us back there. Some … guy saved us, and then took off chasing one.” The tears were streaming down my face. Oscar, anyone? I even did the wobbly lip bit as I pointed toward the alley. “There are two back in there, I think they’re, like, knocked out, or something.”
The guys took off to check it out. The girls stayed with us.
Gareth started to say something, but I quickly covered his mouth with my hand and gave him a cold, hard glance. It was long enough for him to get my meaning. The girls had been too busy watching their men take off down the alley to notice. I quickly returned to the scared freshman routine.
One girl asked, “Are you okay? Do you need us to call an ambulance?”
I shook my head. “We’re fine. Just scared.” I hoisted Gareth up. “He rolled his ankle and hit his head. Our dorm’s right there, and I’ve got ice.” I pointed toward a building that was most definitely not our dorm.
Gareth didn’t try to speak up this time. In fact, when I started to drag him away, he played the part and conjured an exaggerated limp.
The moment we were out of sight, I picked up the pace. Each step made Gareth wince, so I gripped his belt and half-carried him. About halfway to our dorm, I heard the telltale scream of a girl who had chosen to be brave and seen two unconscious bodies and blood. Neither Gareth nor I spoke the whole way back to the dorm. Sirens wailed in the distance.
I dragged him up the stairs and down a thankfully empty hallway. He didn’t fight me as I opened the door of my room and took him inside.
“Sit.”
He did so without question, perching on the edge of my bed. He watched me go over to my closet where I took out a first aid kit. I placed the kit next to him.
“Please stop staring at me,” I muttered.
“What … who are you?” he asked.
“Nobody. Now shut up and stay still.”
I proceeded to check him out for any major injuries. I started with his arms and back. Each time I touched him that same tingly feeling of warmth flowed through me. Everything I checked was fine until I got to his right knee. He winced.
“That hurt?”
He nodded. I rubbed my hands over his jeans around his knee. It was swollen, but nothing felt broken. Then I bent it a few times, testing it.
“It’s just a sprain. You’re fine.”
His lip and nose had stopped bleeding. But the gash over his left eye was still slowly leaking. I gently grabbed his face so I could look at it. His skin was smooth and soft. His eyes, green with blue speckles, were slightly dilated. Concussion. I didn’t want to let go, but any longer and it would get awkward. I dropped my hands, opened the medical kit, took out a cotton swab, and doused it with hydrogen peroxide. Then I gently dabbed the cut over his eye.
“Ow!” he yelled, pulling his head away.
I rolled my eyes and sat there, swab at the ready. “Whenever you’re ready, champ,” I said flatly.
Hesitantly, he leaned back toward me. I cleaned the wound and then handed him a fresh swab. “You can do the rest of your face yourself.”
While he dabbed his nose and lip, I took out some butterfly bandages and put them on the cut over his eye. He never took his eyes off of me.
“Thanks,” he murmured.
I looked at him, our faces inches from each other, our eyes locked. His breathing was slow and intoxicating.
He continued, “For, you know, helping me.”
“Forget about it.” No really, forget about it. Forget the whole thing. Never happened. I closed up the med
kit and put it back into the closet.
“How’d you do it?”
I looked at the med kit and said, “Discovery Channel?”
He was acting a bit loopy as he smiled and laughed. It was half giggle, half laugh and 100 percent adorable. “No, how’d you, like, absolutely destroy those guys?”
“Oh, that. My dad owns a Muay Thai gym. Guess I just picked it up.” One of the many well-rehearsed lies they’d trained us to tell if we were ever caught in combat in the open.
“Just picked it up?” he said, raising his eyebrows. “That was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.” There was a pause before he added, “And it was sort of hot.”
Awkward. Must be the concussion talking.
Having had plenty of concussions, I knew what they were like. You act kind of drunk, and don’t have full control of your inner monologue. Stuff tends to slip out and you say stupid things. They’re usually true, would-never-normally-say-out-loud things. He wouldn’t remember he had said it in the morning. It wasn’t his fault, but it was still embarrassing.
I cleared my throat. “Well. You have a concussion, for sure, so you shouldn’t fall asleep for a while. Go play video games with your roommate and tell him you have to stay awake for a few hours. Tell him you could die if you don’t.”
He looked at the wall between our rooms as he said, “That would suck … wait. How do you know I play video games?”
Because I know everything you do and have cameras in your room. “Can hear it through the wall,” I said, which wasn’t a total lie.
“Oh, sorry.” He got up gingerly, keeping his weight on his good leg. “I’ll keep it down.”
“Doesn’t bother me. Really.”
“Well, anyway, my roommate’s not here. Went home to Dallas.” He yawned as he started to limp toward the door. “It’s cool. I’ll drink some Dew, eat a candy bar or something. I’ll be okay.”
When he reached the door he turned and asked, “Can you check on me in the morning and make sure I’m alive?” He finished off the question with a crooked smile.
CHAPTER 20
BEBTEST BUDDIES
It felt like a dream. A good one. Except I was doing something really, really bad in it. Something that, dream or not, could have world-changing consequences.
I had no business whatsoever being in his room and sitting on his roommate’s bed. But what choice did I have when he’d started to leave? Wasn’t the threat of dying from a concussion equally as viable as the threat of a gun? I guess I could have stayed in my room, watching him through the monitors and banging on the wall whenever he dozed off. Yeah, that wouldn’t have seemed strange at all. Couldn’t risk it. Once he fell asleep there was always the risk he couldn’t wake back up again. I had to be with him; it was the only way to ensure his survival.
So here I sat. I think I had officially broken every rule (of a pretty short and simple list, mind you) there was to break. Direct contact? Check. Dialogue? Check. Physical contact? More please, and check. Allowed into living quarters? Check. I hadn’t let him die, which was rule number one, but about everything else on the list was a goner at this point. Had I screwed up the future beyond repair now? Were the future human beings now living in a Waterworld, or a Back to the Future Part II one with cool floating skateboards? And was it all my fault?
What was done was done. How would, or could, this make it any worse? That’s what I was telling myself. Deep down though, I also knew I was here because I liked being this close to him. I was the junkie and he was the drug.
He sat on his bed across from me. The thump of music from down the hall tried to disrupt the silence, but it wasn’t doing a good job. I knew every poster, note, and lost hair in the room—but it was still weird to see it all in living color. The roommate’s comforter was exactly like the one I had back at the FATE Center, and surprisingly I felt a twang of homesickness. Hey, go through what I did and see if you don’t come out a bit messed up too.
“Would you like a drink?” he asked me.
“No, thanks.”
He stood up and walked over to the mini fridge in the corner of the room that was full of soda. Mine was full of reserve blood packs, vials of poison antidotes, and adrenaline shots. He took out a Mountain Dew.
“You sure? They’re delicious.”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Well, they’re in here if you want one.”
He had barely sat down on his bed when he cracked open the soda and asked me, “Wanna play a video game?”
To be honest, the answer was no. Hell no, actually. I was terrible at them, for one thing. They looked stupid, and when you played them, you did too. Your eyes glazed over; your mouth drooped open; it wasn’t exactly a turn-on. But compared to sitting on his roommate’s bed doing nothing, even playing a video game seemed like a good idea. Plus, I was here to keep him awake, so if this is what it took, so be it. I would die for the kid, but I wouldn’t play a video game with him?
I shrugged. “Sure.”
“All right!” he said, full of nerdy excitement. He slumped to the floor and crawled over to the entertainment system to flip it on. “Coming at ya.” Blindly, he tossed a controller at me over his head. It was nowhere close but I snagged it out of the air before it could go straight through the open window. (You know, the one with the birds and leaves? Sigh.) He held up two games.
“Which one?” he asked.
“Which one is better? Wait, no, which one is easier?”
I had apparently posed a pretty complicated question because he furrowed his brow and studied both of the games while having a quick conversation with himself. He then looked up at me and then down at the controller in my hand, which I was pretty sure I held both upside down and backward. He gave me a pitying smile before dropping both of the games and gently taking the controller out of my hands.
“How about this?” He held up a new game. “No controllers. It’s all motion sensors.”
“I’ve never played one of those.”
“It’s easy, all you have to do is stand up.” He said. He pointed out the motion camera sitting on top of the TV and said, “This will do the rest. Just, you know, be normal.”
Ha! Normal. Would he still have wanted to hang out with me had he known that my idea of “normal” was what had happened back in that alley?
He navigated through the video menu with hand gestures and before I knew it we were playing ping-pong. I felt silly swinging my hand through the air at a ball on TV, but before I knew it I was actually having fun and laughing. I lost spectacularly, but wanted to play again and again.
And so it went for the next few hours. I, who had previously hated video games with a deep passion, not only played, but actually liked it. He beat me most of the time, but I demolished him in all of the fighting games. We laughed, drank Mountain Dew, I clobbered him virtually. It was the closest to fun I’d had since I’d sparred with Junie.
When Gareth got tired, I told him I was going to stay just in case, even though he was safe to sleep now. He grinned and said, “Awesome.”
I prayed he wasn’t reading it the wrong way.
I curled up in the other bed as Gareth flipped off the light. The sun was coming up. The movie Gladiator was on TV, but the volume was practically on mute. He lay down in his bed on his back. His breathing was deep and tired. I wanted go over there and curl up next to him. Again, the drug and addict. I had a pretty good feeling he’d be totally okay with it too, but for entirely different reasons.
“You still awake?” he asked quietly.
“Yeah.”
He rolled over on his side and faced me.
“You feeling okay?” I asked with a smile.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“Good.”
“Are we still going to be friends tomorrow? Or will you go back to being a ghost?”
The question took me off guard so I didn’t really have a good answer. “What do you think?”
“What do I want or what do I think?” he asked
.
“Both.”
He looked away, avoiding eye contact as he said, “I want to be friends, but I think you’ll be a ghost.”
And with that he rolled over and turned his back to me. “Good night, Julia,” he said.
“Good night, Gareth. And my friends call me Ren.” The moment I said it, I knew I’d messed up—for more reasons than he could ever know. He’d given me an out, a way to end this quickly, and I’d passed on it. He slowly rolled over to look at me. I smiled at him, and he smiled back. I felt warm inside; his happiness meant my happiness. I didn’t care if I’d violated the rules. He could never know what Ren meant, other than it was a nickname only my closest friends knew—and now he was one of them. In a way, that was true.
“Now shut up and go to sleep,” I added.
I rolled over, my back to him. I could feel his bliss. It seemed to radiate from him and rolled over me in waves. I waited for him to fall asleep before rolling back over to keep an eye on him.
I DIDN’T SLEEP MORE than an hour, so when Gareth’s alarm went off I made a good show of waking up. You know, the big yawn, the arm stretch.
“You stayed,” he said to me as he swung his legs over the side of the bed.
“Good morning to you too,” I said with another fake yawn.
“No, I just figured you would have left.”
While stretching I asked him, “How do you feel?”
“Okay. Last night’s kinda fuzzy though.”
“That’s a concussion for ya.” I stood up.
He giggled.
“What?” I asked. Self-consciously checking to make sure I hadn’t taken off my clothes or something. No nippage either, phew.
“Nothing,” he added, but was still smiling.
“What?” I said again.
“Nothing, really,” he replied again.
I hate it when people do this. HATE IT. Maybe because nobody ever did it during training. It reminds me of the life I had when I was fourteen. There was something; or you wouldn’t have giggled.
