Standing in the doorway, Heidi covered her mouth. “Where’d you find that?”
“You know damn well it was in the attic. Guess you thought I’d never snoop there. Don’t you know I can’t be trusted?”
My nostrils flared, and I shoved the box into her arms. She dropped it to the floor where the lid popped off. “You weren’t supposed to find this.”
“He was my dad, too! This was my life!” I hollered, inches from her face. “Didn’t I deserve to know?”
I plummeted to my knees and chucked the box lid across the room, narrowly missing Heidi’s head. Bernadette nested in my lap, but the dog’s elderly gentleness did nothing to soothe me. I flipped over the box, dumping paper scraps and photos annotated in Drake’s cat-scratch writing. One note dated a year ago caught my attention. I scanned it before wadding it in a ball and whipping it at Heidi.
Angel—Any chance your brother could stay with you? I’m not well, probably the flu. Congrats on your pregnancy!—Drake
A letter from May was clipped to a photograph. I was sitting on a mattress on the floor, wearing several layers to stay warm. The air wasn’t frigid, but I was. That apartment always left me cold. The drafts and the rats and sounds of sickness all around, and all I’d ever prayed for was for an escape. A cigarette hung from my lip, and I’d buzzed my hair. I looked like hell, skinny with acne on my cheeks, scowling that Drake had the nerve to take my picture.
Angel—Please write back. I’ve been a shit, but I love you. Doc says I’m nearing end stage hep C. Puking blood tons. For Christ’s sake, take Ward. I’m too sick to deal with him. Don’t forget him.—Drake.
I’d known my dad was sick but assumed it was drugs. If I’d known he was dying…I coughed into the crook of my arm. “How come I didn’t know about this?”
Heidi squatted beside me. She and I shared more features than I’d first thought. Her hair was lighter red, almost orange, but our faces were identical, foxlike around large, hollowed eyes and a straight nose. Gathering Drake’s letters, she stammered, “I’d heard Drake’s lies and excuses before. I didn’t tell you after he died because what good would it—”
Her voice broke.
“He begged you to take me!” My throat felt like hands had wrung my airway. “I was alone for months after he was arrested! It was a nightmare! I was hungry and dirty and sick! You left me there!”
Heidi wiped tears off her cheeks. “Try to see my side. I hadn’t seen you since you were a baby. I didn’t know you. I expected you to be a druggie like Drake. You saw the picture he sent. You didn’t look clean, and I couldn’t have that near my child.”
I pulled up the right side of my shirt and displayed a scar below my armpit. The scar had been there for years and hadn’t changed, a shiny pink circle no bigger than a dime.
“You see this? Drake left me with some skank who stubbed out a cigarette on me ’cause I spilled cereal. I was eight years old.” Dropping my shirt, I snarled, “Last winter, I had pneumonia, and the old man decided scoring smack was more important than spending four bucks on my antibiotics. My lungs still ain’t right, and you damn well know it.”
She put out her hand to touch my arm. I swatted her away and stood. No fucking way. She was not going to comfort me.
“You left me to rot with that bastard! He was dying, and you ignored it! No one told me a thing! He promised he’d get clean, but it was another lie!”
My muscles cramped, spent from yelling. Like I’d had enough and had nothing more. Same as when I got the news he was gone. Vacant. Blunted.
Heidi lowered her eyes. “I can’t change the past, Ward.”
Was that all she could say? A new dose of electric venom streamed into my blood. I flung my drawing pad from the top of the dresser. An empty glass I’d forgotten to take out to the dishwasher. Thrown. Smashed. A stack of books. Thrown. Smashed. The pages came loose and fluttered out between Heidi and me. Everything on top of the dresser, from my stolen iPod to a candleholder I’d sculpted, I threw everything until plastic shrapnel, glass shards, and torn papers littered the floor of my room. My breath came in rasps that made a racket high in my throat.
“Get out of my sight,” I managed between huffs.
Maybe she knew I couldn’t take anymore, not now, but she ducked her head and left my room. I patted Bernadette’s head, and she yawned so widely that she nearly unhinged her jaw, her tongue curling like a question mark. I tucked her under my arm and climbed onto my bed. She burrowed between my pillows and touched her moist nose to mine.
Hours disappeared as I slept.
Knocking on my door roused me enough to raise my head. My clock read seven forty-two. I’d missed dinner. Not that I was hungry. The knocking persisted.
“Go away, Chris!” I pulled my pillow over my head.
The door clicked and swung open. I grabbed whatever I could reach on my nightstand, a coffee mug, and chucked it in the direction of the door. No crashing sound followed.
“You’ve got a hell of an arm,” Vayda remarked.
I threw aside my pillow and sighed at the girl closing my door. She held the coffee mug and avoided the shattered remnants on my floor before sitting on my bed. Her hair was loose and wavy, and her shirt was lacey and tight in the right places. The cold had finally gotten to her so that she’d broken out some dark corduroys instead of her long skirts, slung low on her waist to show off the wide curve of her hips. Even as pissed as I was, I could still appreciate the view.
She handed me a thin rectangle wrapped with brown paper. “Happy birthday a day early.”
“It’s been a lousy day.”
“So Heidi said. She called and asked if I’d talk some sense into you.”
I set Bernadette on the floor. The dog snorted at Vayda before flopping onto a towel I left in front of my closet. Vayda consoled her with a chin scratch and took her spot beside me. I mirrored her body with my own. She grazed her fingertips along my forearm, and trembling, I allowed her to draw cool trails over my skin.
My hands traced her backbone under her shirt. Electric shocks. She kissed my neck, arms embracing me, my fingers finding the softness of her thick body and holding her close. I popped open the button of her pants and slid my hand inside.
“Not now, gadjo. Another time.”
Deflating, I lifted my hands from her. Over the last few weeks, we’d gone plenty further than kissing and handfuls of skin. The places our mouths had discovered on each other, places I hadn’t kissed before, we’d treaded the line of sex yet hadn’t crossed it. I wanted to. Badly. I wanted to obliterate that line.
“It wouldn’t be right when you’re hurting so much,” she said.
I rolled onto my side with my back to her. “You have no idea.”
She wrapped her arm around my hips, her chest to my back. Wave after wave of cool splashed against me.
I closed my eyes. “Take it, Vayda. Please. Can’t you make me forget?”
“I could, but you need those memories.”
“Then get in my head. I need to know what it’s like when you’re in there.”
The wait for her to respond felt like an hour but was only a few seconds.
“We need someplace private.”
“We are in private,” I said.
“I mean really private, Ward.”
I knew where to go and tossed her a sweater. Then I retrieved two blankets from my closet before sliding open the window to heave the blankets onto the roof.
“Are you touched in the head?” she protested. “I said private, not freezing. The roof’s slippery from ice. Your ass will fall, and I’ll laugh.”
“Won’t happen,” I promised. My fingers clenched her wrist. “Come with me.”
Hesitantly, she followed as I balanced one foot on the roof outside my window and the other on the sill. Her legs were coltishly unsteady as she adjusted to the slant. I hoisted myself onto the peak above the dormer window and
guided her to my side. We settled with our bodies snuggled under one blanket. The night was bitter cold and clear. The moon was bright. The stars glimmered like grains of sand on a black beach. To the north, shades of green and violet-pink tinted the blue-black sky above the trees.
“Wow, all the colors.” She pointed to the spectral fire across the sky.
“The aurora borealis. Northern lights. Pretty, huh?”
She gazed out across the woods, and a loud ripple of pops burst from her hands as she cracked her knuckles. Powerful hands for a short girl. Powerful hands for anyone, really.
“What kind of boy hides out on his rooftop?” she asked.
“The kind who wants to escape,” I replied. “I did the same thing at my old apartment.”
She piled a blanket behind me and eased me into lying back. I didn’t object or hesitate, especially not when she climbed on top of me to straddle my hips, one hand on my heart.
“Are you ready?” she whispered.
“Always.”
She bent forward until our foreheads touched.
Our eyes locked.
A slice of white flame—I yelped as she entered my mind. Flesh pulled taut and prickled with thousands of shivers. The cold filling me was all-encompassing, a good cold, like being five years old and pitching my whole body into a snow bank. Skies rumbled with lightning as storms crashed inside me. The chill of Vayda’s mind spread me open, a collision that rocked and groaned.
I had to close my eyes as she slid inside my head. Her feet carried her along a floor in a hallway lined with doorways shrouded by tattered curtains. Her arms stretched out and fingers snagged each curtain, snapping the fabric to the floor. I breathed harder as she plunged further inside and found my sharpest memories.
How my lips pressed against Audrey’s. She was my friend Louis’s girlfriend. I helped her find the condom tucked in my back pocket and made quick work of unbuckling my belt. She tasted of weed and Sprite. I hoisted her onto the worktable in her dad’s shed. In the darkness that smelled of gasoline, I fumbled for her body when a crack of pain in my forehead killed my hard-on. Somehow, I hit my head on a shelf, and she cackled as I lumbered outside into the afternoon sun in her mom’s rose garden.
How I held the phone in the kitchen of the apartment. I had dialed the nine and a one but couldn’t push the second one. A spray of blood had squirted from Drake’s arm, and he curled up beside the fridge devoid of food with foamy vomit dribbling down his chin. I sighed and pushed the one button on the phone. The dispatcher asked my emergency, and I muttered, “My father shot up on smack. Again.”
Vayda pulled aside one more torn curtain, but she was already in the room with me. Her eyes crinkled as she sang an old Mickey and Sylvia song, “Love is Strange,” the two of us playing guitar together. I kept picking the lead melody but my beat slowed while I watched her, and I wondered if I was weird for wanting to stare at her—
“Stop!” I shouted, gasping as she receded from my mind, and warmth gushed in my skull to fill the void left in her wake. In my head, she restrung the curtains to close the doorways. She never smiled or frowned, only took in the things I’d endured.
My eyes opened.
The roof of Heidi’s house felt like an iceberg beneath me, unyielding and frozen, the northern lights dimmed by clouds moving across the moon. Vayda was still astride my hips, but she searched my face, concerned. “Are you okay?”
After several cleansing breaths, I drew her into an embrace, resting my head in the slope of her neck. In-fucking-tense. My body hummed with the flutter of thousands of magpies’ wings swarming inside me. She kissed my cheek, feather-light, and I laughed. Unintentional. Embarrassed. Relieved.
“I’m cold,” she said. “Time to go inside.”
Back in my room, she offered up the gift she’d brought for my birthday. She clapped and urged, “Open it.”
My mind remained cottony from letting her into my thoughts. I tore open the paper. A book. The Little Prince. I once had a copy and misplaced it when I left Rochester. She probably already knew that.
“It’s awesome,” I said and set it on my nightstand.
Vayda dragged over the trashcan and picked up some fractured plastic and shredded papers. I sat across from her, and our fingers reached for the same mangled book. We caught each other’s eyes, smiled, and kept cleaning up the mess.
Somewhere in the house, the phone rang. Chris entered my room and handed the phone to Vayda. She listened, her brow pinched and fingers twirling her hair.
“What is it?” I asked as she switched off the phone.
She rose to her feet and brushed off her pants. “I need a ride to pick up Dati from Fire Sales. His car’s tires were slashed.”
“Why would someone do that?”
Her expression was frightened yet fatigued. “It’s what always happens. Every place we’ve lived, it’s the same story.”
My head dizzied. Vayda held my hands and helped me up, and I sensed a distinct electric field building between us, feeding the currents joining us together. “You’re honestly afraid someone might hurt you?”
“Gadjo, I’ve looked over my shoulders for two years,” she replied solemnly. “It was merely a matter of time before Black Orchard became like Montana and Georgia. We were supposed to move to Vermont, but then Mom died and we ran. Each time we find a new home, the time we can stay grows shorter. And once people find out what we can do, it only gets worse.”
Chapter Twenty
Vayda
According to the news, January reigned as the worst winter month Wisconsin endured in a decade. Canadian clouds unloaded thirty-two inches of snow, and the cold was harsh. With the first storm, Rain flew back to Georgia. Over two weeks, the days of cancelled school were endless, and the snow kept coming. I squinted at the piles outside the house. Fresh sleet crusted the mounds with ice. Ward warmed himself by the woodstove, the door open and fire reflecting like hammered bronze in his hair.
I went into the kitchen and set a pan on the stove to warm milk and sugar. A hard-milled flour sifted through my fingers. I added the yeast and some golden eggs, barely thinking as I pulled together challah dough. After a bit, Ward leaned against the doorway separating the kitchen from the living room, eyes focused on my hands working the dough.
“Think your dad wants us at Fire Sales?” he asked.
“Dati closed up shop early.” I shaped the dough into a ball and set it into an oiled bowl, covering it with a towel to rise. “This sleet’s gonna become a wicked blizzard.”
He nodded in the direction of the front door. “Speaking of a storm…”
“What?” I washed my hands, dried them fast on my apron, and hurried to the living room where headlights from a car parked outside shone through the windows. I pulled my violet sweater over my hands and noticed Jonah on the stairs, also keeping an eye on the headlights. His sling was gone, and while I knew he was anxious to stretch his limbs again, he wouldn’t extend them to Chloe waiting for him outside.
Ward gestured to the car lights in the window. “Isn’t there something you can do about that?”
Jonah shook his head. “I could try, but—”
“—that would show you learned nothing from what you did,” I muttered.
“Vayda girl, if I wanted, I could already be with someone else, but I’m not. What I did with Chloe, no matter why I did it, was wrong. There’s my confession like a good Catholic.” He leaned against the banister and ran his hand over the polished wood. The dark flame in his eyes died down, and his voice changed to something more sober. “Maybe it is a confession ’cause only God knows how sorry I really am. I tried making things right with Chloe. It didn’t work, and you’ve made it more than clear that you think anything else I try will make it worse.”
No. Absolutely not. He might’ve been sorry, but he wasn’t about to push the responsibility for what Chloe was going through onto me.
“Things are already worse!” I yelled. “You wrecked another human being! You know what happened when Mom messed around in people’s heads—Cardinal rule: It always comes back to you, Jonah. Always.”
“And how many times do I have to tell you? I’ve done what I’m allowed to do. Maybe if you weren’t constantly shaking your finger at me, I could get a handle on this. We’d be golden.”
He jerked away from the stairway and stalked toward the front door.
Ward, who’d stayed out of it as Jonah and I argued, cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Jonah hung his head and moved back to guard his post by the stairs, pausing before taking the first step. “I didn’t know this would happen to Chloe, and I wish you’d let me try to fix it. You’re the one who said she’d get better with time, but it’s plain as day that nothing’s changed.”
“Please don’t do anything,” I begged.
“I gotta do something, Vayda. Don’t you agree? Can’t you help me?” He waited for me to say something. I lowered my eyes. “Fine. Do nothing. I guess I’m gonna have to figure things out without you, and if it doesn’t work, then at least I tried.”
The heat from my brother’s frustration was unbearable, my skin absorbing rays of scorching power. As he ascended the staircase to head back to his room, his fire freed my barriers, letting my mind uncoil.
“He’ll calm down,” I muttered.
Ward dusted his fingers over my palm, comparing the bones of his thin fingers and his palm’s breadth to mine. “Your skin is hot. Normally, you’re cold.”
“It’s him. Me taking his feelings as mine.”
I exhaled. The lamp hummed and shuddered, dark then bright, dark then bright.
Ward reached over to still the lamp’s swinging pull chain, and the flickering settled. He lifted my hand and traced the outline of my fingers. I closed my eyes, enjoying the prickle running up my spine from his touch.
“Are you afraid of your Mind Games?”
My eyes blinked open. “Yes. The way people react to them is worse. I told you before we’re chased away wherever we lived. Georgia last time. Before that, it was Montana.”
A Murder of Magpies Page 19
