Along the Indigo

by Elsie Chapman

  “You guys are cleaning out the fridge?” Marsden looked up at Karey, knowing she’d only repeated him, wondering what she might have missed.

  A sun-kissed grin. “Too many well-meaning casseroles from too many well-meaning ladies—they’re going bad.”

  Of course. After Rigby’s funeral and wake, the days immediately following would have been too full of difficulty and pain for his brother or father to even think about cooking. The town would have kept Jude and Leo fed out of the goodness of their hearts, because that’s what people did; they would have also wanted to get a glimpse of the tragic Ambrose household for themselves, because that’s also what people did. Glory brand kindness—it came with a price.

  Karey motioned for her to follow him down a hall. “Ironically, Rigby hated casseroles. He’d be pitching in and helping us toss everything.”

  Marsden heard some of Jude and Owen’s conversation as she and Karey neared the kitchen.

  Jude first. “—talk about it. Not yet, anyway. It’s . . . complicated.”

  “Isn’t it always?” There was the sound of cutlery landing in the sink with a plunk and then Owen continued. “She’s got a sweet face, but man, she sure does keep to herself.”

  “Can you blame her?”

  “Not really. So, when are you going to ask her out for real?”

  Someone shook out what sounded like a large trash bag. “Drop it.”

  “It’s not like we can’t already see it happening from a mile—”

  Karey cleared his throat loudly as he stepped into the kitchen. Marsden followed, her face feeling like she’d just consumed an entire ball of fire.

  “Marsden?” Jude held a casserole dish in one hand and rubbed his eyes with the other, as though he were just waking up or was seeing things. He blinked at her, his expression thoroughly confused. She thought he looked childlike, innocent, way too beguiling. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m sorry, I should have called first.” She took in the mess that made up the room. Black garbage bags were strewn all over the floor, some of them lumpy with contents, some still completely flat. The kitchen counter was covered with tin-foil containers full of food, the table with a plate and fork and even more containers. “I was just . . . out for a bike ride. And thought I’d drop by. To say hi.” She couldn’t have thought of a flimsier excuse if she tried, and she stiffened with embarrassment.

  “And we were just leaving.” Owen, even more handsome than she remembered him, slid a pointed look in Karey’s direction and smiled at her. It was a nice one, real and open, but she didn’t think she was imagining the question there, the slight wariness that made her recall his twin’s words: Don’t be someone else disappearing on him. “Hey, sorry about this mess. Make sure Jude cleans it up on our behalf.”

  She waved, did her best to smile back. “Really, it’s okay, you guys don’t have to leave.”

  “Yes, they do,” Jude said mildly, his gaze on her blatant and direct and making her stomach slowly curl up in a semi-painful knot. He threw the entire tin-foil dish he’d been holding into one of the garbage bags, moved on to do the same with the rest of the containers on the counter, and smirked. “But first, Owen, tell Karey what you found.”

  “Dude.” Owen picked up the dirty plate from the table and placed it into the sink. “That bacon and zucchini melt you just inhaled half of? We found blue fuzz on what was left.”

  Karey snorted unconvincingly. Then he muffled a burp with the back of his hand and looked so queasy Marsden nearly laughed. “Seriously?”

  “Like you wouldn’t believe.” Owen gathered all the garbage bags from the floor and finished clearing the table of tin-foiled sympathy. “How are you feeling? Want to go grab some air?”

  “Air? I don’t want air. I want to puke my guts out.”

  “Not in here, you’re not.” Jude shoved the now very full garbage bag at Karey. “Mind tossing this into one of the cans by the back door on your way out? Thanks.”

  Karey took it with an overly morose look. “Can I at least grab my basketball? I left it over by—”

  Owen shoved him toward the front room. “Tomorrow.”

  Karey slung the bag over his shoulder and grinned at Marsden and then Jude as he headed into the short hallway. “Behave yourself, kids. And, please, Jude, keep my basketball safe until I can bring her home, where she belongs.”

  “If you don’t stop,” Owen said as he walked out after him, “they’re going to give your basketball to the neighbor’s kids. The scissor-happy ones.”

  Then the front door shut. Their voices faded through the open kitchen window. Other typical summer sounds trickled inward, breaking up the fresh silence that filled the kitchen—a dog barking in the distance, the faint shouts of kids running through a sprinkler, the low buzz of a neighbor’s lawn mower.

  But there was a quiet that went deeper than that now, and it was wrapped around Marsden and Jude. It was the quiet of a house forever changed, its makeup altered without repair. It was also the very opposite of the boardinghouse, a hive kept busy with meals, Wynn, Nina’s girls, the push and pull of Marsden’s schemes against those of Shine’s and Nina’s. Jude must have noticed it over their dinner of waffles and too-sweet lemonade, and she wondered what had gone through his brain. If it’d been close to pain, or simple grief—if he’d even been able to let himself care either way.

  Small but sure signs of Leo’s drinking also riddled the kitchen—missing panes of glass from the cabinet, a fist-size dent in the pantry door, a small, crescent-shaped gouge bitten into the outer corner of the wall that led to the hallway.

  “A thrown beer bottle,” Jude said. She’d felt him watch her as she’d looked around the room, had seen her notice the curved indentation, had then obviously felt the need to explain. “My father’s way of asking Owen and Karey to leave. It’d been a long day at work.”

  Marsden peered more closely at the drywall, and her stomach flipped. “Good thing he has bad aim.”

  Jude touched the back of his head, the motion so practiced it seemed done without thought. Then he leaned against the kitchen counter, his hands sliding into his pockets. His face said he was still utterly surprised to see her in his house.

  “Owen and Karey love thinking they’re funny,” he said, smiling, “but it’s pretty pathetic, right?”

  She smiled back. “They are funny.”

  “They wouldn’t even try if they thought you weren’t cool.”

  Marsden knew she had never been cool. “Sometimes I forget we’ve known one another since we were all kids.”

  His expression was neutral as he shrugged. “We all hung out in different circles.”

  He wasn’t saying what they both knew—she hadn’t hung out in any circles except the one she kept closed to everyone else at school but herself. It’d been too crowded already, with her mother, her sister, everything to do with the boardinghouse and the covert.

  Longing swept her then, an acute ache that beat painfully at her wrists, in the back of her throat, as she dared again to imagine the upcoming fall. They would be strangers to each other. Jude might wave as he walked past, or he might not. She might meet his eyes, or she might not. He would be thinking about schools in the East, how to best put distance between himself and Glory; she would keep stealing from the dead and surviving life in a brothel. How could there be room for anything else?

  “Your dad’s at work?” Marsden guessed. Now that she saw firsthand how Jude lived, she wondered when Leo would be back. How long Jude could breathe freely each day.

  “He works late on Mondays—catching up after the weekend.”

  Her shoulders relaxed a fraction. Still, the rest of her remained as tight as a wound spring. She hadn’t pinpointed her reason for coming over until she was already here. And she still hadn’t figured out how to wipe away the person he saw in the covert, the monster who could touch the dead so coldly. She recalled the weight of Lucy’s blood-soaked braid and shuddered.

  He moved from the cou
nter to stand closer to her. Marsden smelled ginger and earth and him. “I didn’t know if you wanted me to say anything earlier, with Owen and Karey here, but I’m really sorry again. About Lucy.” Jude’s eyes were dark as he held hers, soft with concern. She felt them like a touch. That kindness—it could almost make her cry again.

  “They’ll find out soon anyway,” she said. “If they know to look for that column about the covert that’s in the paper.”

  “I don’t know if they do. Or they do, but they don’t check it.”

  The idea of not checking was alien to her, but she also understood it. They didn’t live with the covert as she did—it didn’t shadow everything they did. Sometimes, she forgot that. How her land, as much as it colored and shaped Glory, was still only a single physical part of it. Why would two regular guys like Owen and Karey ever want to know what was happening in the covert unless they had no choice? They would have done it for Rigby, but that was all.

  “Lucy . . . She and Peaches loved each other,” Marsden told him. Nina had insisted on being the one to tell her, and Marsden—cowardly, the feel of Lucy’s skin still on her hands—had let her. “And they were best friends.”

  “How is Peaches?”

  Broken. Lost. “Not really here.”

  “I’m sorry.” Jude sighed. “She could talk to someone.”

  Marsden knew he was remembering his own first days, after his brother. The way time must have stopped, even as it didn’t. How it might have been like trying to find your way out of the dark, with your eyes shut. “Who did you talk to?”

  “No one, really. I didn’t want anyone but my friends. It hasn’t changed.” His gaze sharpened. “You, too. I want to talk to you.”

  She nearly smiled. “Do you think you might need someone later?” Glory had its share of doctors hoping to help people like Rigby before it was too late, to help people like Jude when it was. They left flyers all over town.

  He shrugged, frowning. “I don’t know. Maybe. I have the number for the school counselor if I need.”

  “That’s really good.” Marsden pictured the school counselor, how she would see him at assemblies and in the halls, his expression as overwhelmed as it was welcoming, and somehow helpless. She wondered about Peaches talking to someone like that. Peaches, who always used clients as much as they used her. Now that Lucy was gone, Marsden could imagine Peaches coping simply by developing more teeth.

  But Marsden hadn’t talked to anyone, either, after her father washed ashore. Or been made to talk to anyone, anyway, since she’d been a kid. She’d eventually gone to the covert, seeking answers there. Jude’s anger with his father had been shattered by Rigby’s death, and so he sought out his friends. He went to Theola, to her, to the covert to search.

  Sometimes, Marsden felt the place breathe, made so alive by how much they needed it.

  “Rig could have talked to me.” Jude’s voice was a harsh whisper. “Do you know how many times I’ve wished I’d been better at saying something to him when he’d been alive? How many times I said nothing at all when I knew?”

  Marsden was the one who moved this time. She stood so closely, she could see each of his lashes. “I don’t know, but I’m sorry.” Had her mother sensed it in her husband? Had she, even as a kid, sensed it in her father in some small way?

  “God, we’re both so full of sorrys right now.” His eyes crinkled just the slightest at the corners when he smiled, she saw. “I can’t imagine how hard it must be to listen to us.”

  She had no choice but to smile back. “I’m counting on not having to say it much soon.”

  “Hey, so why did you come over? Is it about tomorrow? I totally get it if you want to stay away from the covert for a while. I just feel bad that you didn’t call. You could have saved yourself a trip.”

  “No, tomorrow’s fine. The covert—it’s always there, and so am I. It’s just . . . I was already out.”

  Slowly, Jude leaned his forehead down against hers. “Marsden, why are you really here?”

  The light in the kitchen had gone weak, melting its way toward dusk. It let shadows dance over Jude’s face and her head run wild with all the things she could not say but longed to.

  What you saw today in the covert, I’m not the monster I might have looked like.

  But when you find out what I’m hiding from you, I might as well be.

  She fumbled for his hand and held on. “I felt like making you listen to some Shindiggs with me.”

  thirty-four.

  “I know he’s just a fish, but I think he’s lonely,” Marsden said as she peered through the glass. The beta’s blue-and-black fins flashed in the water, iridescent and hypnotic, a bruise come to life.

  Jude tapped gently on the outside of the bowl. “Nah, Peeve’s a fighting fish. It’s safer for him to be alone.”

  “Poor guy. Unless a Mrs. Peeve comes along?”

  “No can do. He’s just going to have to be satisfied with seeing my pretty face from now on instead of Rig’s. I was always the better-looking brother anyway.”

  The fish had been Rigby’s, and now he was Jude’s. Marsden leaned down and looked at Jude through the fish bowl. His dark waves became a blur, his features smears of burnished amber, someone familiar and yet not.

  “So you know what you’re doing as a responsible new pet owner, right?” She sat up again. In the background, his stereo played a Shindiggs song. They’d gone to Rigby’s room and found his Burn Out tape.

  “Being a pet owner, I think I’m good with—it’s the responsible part I’m still working on.” Jude slid the fish bowl farther along his desk, away from the edge. “I keep thinking I’ve forgotten to feed him, so I’ll rush in here, sure he’ll be belly-up, too late to save. If you dream more than once about a fear, does that make it a full-fledged phobia?”

  “Technically?”

  “Sure.”

  “No clue. But I don’t think it really matters.”

  He looked at her. “Because the dream’s still there.”

  She nodded.

  Too many times she’d dreamed her fears, in all their different forms. The dead suddenly not so dead as they caught her skimming, as they buried her beneath heart-shaped leaves. Her father, stumbling from the river, soft and gray and still hating her. A teenage Wynn in Shine’s clothes and makeup, telling Marsden she could leave Glory, there was no point in staying behind for her any longer.

  A new restlessness filled her, as strong as a tide, and she walked away from Jude’s desk, scanning his room to take it all in. She didn’t even care if her curiosity bordered on nosiness, or that he would notice. She wanted him to notice, wanted him to be aware of exactly how much she longed to see, examine, not miss a single detail about him. That she could be selfish enough to no longer care what it might mean for him, being with her.

  Want.

  Was that what it was, then? To get close enough to someone that it would be hard to breathe, even as it also, somehow, got easier?

  His desk at one side of the room, with Peeve in his bowl and papers and pens and one of his friendship bracelets on top of it. The bracelet courtesy of Abbot, Marsden still assumed, with her pixie hair and loud laugh and blazingly protective eyes.

  A chest of drawers next to his closet, with textbooks from just that past school year piled on top—Jude had forgotten to return every single one before school let out for the summer.

  A single framed photo sitting next to that pile of textbooks. In it, Isabel Ambrose, her eyes huge and luminous and not entirely happy, her brown skin shades richer and darker than her son’s. Marsden thought it was Glory she could see in her gaze, doing its best to crowd out what she’d left behind, maybe making her feel as out of place in the town as Marsden still often did.

  At her side was Rigby, a much smaller version of the teenage boy Marsden had seen that day in the library. Her being a witness suddenly felt fated, her memory of those moments what convinced her to let Jude into the covert, with the hopes of then hearing Rigby, to then
hear her father. How else to explain where she was now, standing in Jude’s room and looking at a photo of him as a baby sleeping in his mother’s arms, and feeling not in the way at all?

  “Wait, sorry.” He grimaced, started scrambling to pick up dirty socks, an open bag of Pirate cookies, a damp towel from the floor. “This place is kind of a landmine, lately.” He grabbed a plate with a half-eaten sandwich on it, then a jug of Tang, mouthed the word sorry again, and piled everything into one corner of the room.

  She laughed. “It’s fine. I’m no inspector.”

  “If you were an inspector, I’d be lighting up quality control with hits.” He shoved his hands into his shorts pockets and watched her watching him.

  He looked, Marsden decided, like someone thoroughly cornered, dissecting the best way to turn.

  Guilt nibbled at her. She’d given him no warning about showing up, was clearly being nosy. “I’m so rude, I’m sorry.”

  “Why are you sorry, and how are you rude?”

  “For intruding. I’m actually kind of wondering if I should leave.”

  “I was wondering how I could convince you to stay.”

  Her chest went achy with knots, and fire painted itself along her cheeks. “That was pretty smooth.”

  “Trying.”

  Marsden walked over to his bookshelf, trying to act casual. “You have a lot of books.”

  “Most of them are Rig’s.” He came over to stand next to her. “He usually gave them to me once he was done reading.”

  She ran her fingers down the spines, wishing she could have asked Rigby about his books. Why he’d chosen to read one over the other, why he kept the ones he did, how he decided which ones were then good enough for his brother. Horror, lots of sci-fi. “King, Adams, Butler—have you read any of them?”