by Deiri Di
Benjamin and Sarah flirted in the same manner.
It was like they were speaking a language Mari didn't understand made out of touch and laughter, sly smiles and cheeky grins. Their words, though powerful explanations and reflections of themselves, lacked the depth of potential that Mari thought she had with him.
Sarah would never see fairies.
Sarah would network, smile, and exhibit consummate social grace.
Mari finished tying her shoelace in a double knotted bow then moved onto the next one. She couldn't stop herself from lingering. As much as she hated it, watching Benjamin flirt with other girls just taught her that she didn't want him.
She didn't want to be just another girl he toyed with.
She wanted to be the girl he was open with, the girl he saw as a friend, as well as a girl. She wanted to be loved as an equal, not a possession.
"Hey! Benjamin!" Shiva, a junior underclassman, trotted up to him.
He turned away from Sarah as if she was nothing.
The cheerleader stared at his back, her mouth still open from their interrupted conversation. Mari watched as her face flashed from hurt to rage. Benjamin completely ignored her, walking towards the eleventh grader as if the cheerleader never existed. Mari doubted he even realized that he had acted like a jerk.
It was an even worse snub because of one particular thing.
Shiva was a hunchback.
To have a visible deformity at a high school was to have everyone in the school know about you. Shiva was no exception to the rule. It was too bad. She was such a beautiful girl. Her arms were toned and muscular. She had the slightly off normal face expected from any model in a magazine. Her hair was thick and naturally blond and would frame her face beautifully if she didn't pull it back in a braid or ponytail all the time.
She would be stunning if her back wasn't... different.
She wasn't actually hunched over. She just had weird bumps and lumps under her t-shirt on her back. She was awkward and off-balance. The physical education teachers started making her team captain and letting her choose people on the team because she would always be picked last if they didn't.
Mari watched as Benjamin stroked the hair out of Shiva's face, tucking it behind the other girl's ear. They spoke, voices too low for Mari to eavesdrop.
He seemed different with Shiva.
Benjamin grabbed Shiva's hand and led her over to where Mari was furiously finishing up tying her shoe. She'd lingered too long. He'd spotted her.
"Hey Mari, there is someone I want you to meet."
The hunchback held out her hand. "Hi Mari, I'm Shiva."
Mari shook the other girl's hand.
Her skin was warm yet rough with calluses as if she'd spent a lifetime doing things that good little girls weren't supposed to have to do.
Why her?
Why did he care about this ugly girl?
Mari pushed those feelings at the other girl like she had pushed the magic earlier. The thick distaste traveled down her arm and rippled through the blackened fingers of her hand like a wave.
Shiva yanked her hand away.
The deformed girl's face puckered.
"I've known Shiva since we were kids. She's my adventure buddy." Benjamin beamed.
Shiva threw her arms up in the air and sang out: "Aaaaaadventure!"
Weirdo.
Why did he care about this ugly weirdo?
Mari almost wished he'd fall in love with Sarah. At least that would make sense. Him acting super chummy with this freak was just insulting. He should be this way with her!
Mari should be his adventure buddy.
The jealousy felt a lot like choking. It was a pressure in her chest, a solid weight of negative vibes that dragged her down, pulling her heart further into the pain of darkness.
"Listen, I don't have time for new friends." Mari crossed her arms. "I got a lot of stuff to deal with."
Shiva lowered her hands and flushed.
Serves her right being Benjamin's adventure buddy.
"Like what?" Benjamin also crossed his arms.
"Like that thing that we did in the pool." Mari deliberately left it vague. Maybe Shiva would think that she and Benjamin had made out a bunch in the pool or something. She would get jealous then act like an ass and ruin that special adventure buddy bond or whatever. "There will be more of that in three days."
"More dinosaur monsters?" Shiva asked. "Why?"
What?
"You told her?" No. He couldn't have told her. No one would believe him. Why would he tell a girl something that would make him sound like a crazy person?
Benjamin smiled. "Shiva's used to strange. She gets it."
"Ben said you guys see stuff that the rest of us don't, like fairies and monsters and stuff. That is super cool. I wish I could see them."
This girl was clearly an idiot.
No one in their right mind would want to see the strange.
"That is stupid!" Mari spat out. "How can you say you want to see monsters? No one wants to see monsters. They just want to be normal."
"I see monsters every day," Shiva said. "They have claws made out of words and teeth made out of laughter. It would be nice to see a monster that sees itself for what it is, rather than always being surrounded by monsters who think that cruelty is normal."
Oh.
The weight of Mari's own unfair judgment pressed down on her like a weight.
"Why three days? What is going on?" Benjamin brought the conversation back to the most pressing matter. "Tell us what is going on so we can help."
Should she tell him? Should she open up and be honest about the difficulty in her life?
"They're coming for Chase. A shapeshifter warned me and wants me to run off and join some army, but I don't really want to do that either. I don't want to stay. I don't want to go with her. I don't know what to do."
"Shapeshifter?" Shiva asked. "I want to shape-shift!"
"Chase?" Benjamin scoffed. "That willowy little ass kisser?"
Mari blinked. She'd never seen Chase that way. He'd always seemed wiry and strong to her. Guess when you're six feet plus of prime quarterback, you see people from a different angle.
"Why are they coming after Chase?" Shiva asked.
Mari stared at these two people that she barely knew and wondered how much of the rabbit hole they could handle. What was the turning point? How much could she tell them before she hit that invisible marker where they would decide, just like everybody else, that she was insane.
Telling the truth frightened her.
Mari didn't want to be ruled by her fears anymore.
"He's now heir to the elven throne, but his older brother was the one trained for it. He lost something over here. They're completely nuts over there, and if he hasn't found what he lost in three days, they're going to come to beat him up. They don't like me, so if I'm here, they might try to kill me or drug or kidnap me again. I just don't want to be on their radar. Benjamin, if you act like you can see what’s going on, it won't be good for you either. You don't want them to know that you know. They'll probably kill you."
That wasn't a very detailed explanation, but it would have to do.
"Chase is an elf?" Shiva asked.
"Drug you – again?" Benjamin asked.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Chase asked.
He was behind her. She hadn't seen him walk up.
"You kidnapped Mari?" Benjamin's hands were fists. "What the hell did you do to her? Why would you do something like that?!?!"
"It was my brother!" Chase snapped. "I just… I didn’t know. I know that isn’t an excuse but I thought Mari wanted it."
"But I was drugged." Mari felt so very small. "I didn't want it."
Benjamin made a noise that should have come from a gorilla rather than a man. He lunged forward, wrapped two hands around Chase's neck, and lifted him up off the ground. "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!"
"Benjamin put him down." Shiva put her hand on his arm.
She was calm, so calm, like the wave of an ocean moving steadily towards the shore, self-assured with the force of her own purpose.
Mari wished she was like that.
She wished she didn't feel so small.
She wished she didn't feel so empty.
Benjamin set Chase back down on the ground. His mouth twisted into a snarl. "You sick piece of filth."
"Why are you listening to her lies anyway? She's crazy. She thinks I'm an elf. Wouldn't I have pointed ears or something?" Chase pulled back his hair to expose his pointed ears.
"They look normal to me," Shiva said. "They look normal to you, too, Ben."
Benjamin glared at the ears and said nothing.
There was a pressure in her chest, a burning that had gone beyond pain and range and shifted into the pure flame of fire. She didn't know how to channel it. The feelings were too complex for her to understand and process in such a tense moment, and so they coiled in on themselves, broiling into a supernova that had nowhere to go but inward.
Inward or into someone connected to her.
She felt the prick of the claws through the fabric of the backpack before she heard the rip of the zipper. She felt frozen at that moment, physically trapped by the twisted, burning mess that was the mixture of her mind and heart, unable to react to stop the worst thing that could happen at that moment.
Soft skin slithered against her cheek.
A wing cupped around the back of her head.
Miss Kitty planted her back feet on Mari's shoulder, placed her front talons on the top of Mari's head, reared up, expanded her wings out, and hissed.
Chase's eyes narrowed.
Benjamin's eyes widened.
Shiva stared at Mari's shoulder, a confused look on her face. "Is that a cat on your shoulder?"
"That is so cool," said Benjamin.
"Give me back my dragon," said Chase.
"Looking at the cat makes my head hurt," said Shiva.
"MRAAAAWRRRSSSSSssssssss," said Miss Kitty.
"She belongs to me!" Chase stepped forward, his hand stretched out.
Out of the muddled mess of constricting emotions came one thought, one clear decision. Mari didn't want Chase to die. She didn't want to be around him, but she also didn't want to cause him any further pain or unhappiness.
She didn't want Miss Kitty to kill him.
"No." Mari lifted her foot, planted it in the middle of Chase's abdomen, and kicked out with the full weight of her emotions. She twisted at the hip, letting the rotation of her body strengthen the blow.
Chase staggered backward.
There was something in her that would always love him.
In the middle of that nest of twisted confusion, there was a spot that he would always hold. It was made from memories. It was Chase bloodied and broken, putting his body in the way of a stone golem to try to save her. It was the warmth of a snowed-in night. It built out of his efforts to teach her through books the things he couldn't say directly.
It was the hints he dropped, the clues that helped her save herself.
It was him screaming her name when his brother's dagger drove deep.
Mari would remember all of those moments.
The scared boy before her wasn't the sum of those memories. He was the sum of a lifetime of deceit, of cruelty and brutality. He held the trauma of his entire race within his bloodline, and when he looked at her, he didn't look at her with the eyes of a person who could surrender to the service of love.
He looked at her with fear.
Mari didn't want to exist beside his fear.
Mari wanted to learn how to fly.
"If you come near Miss Kitty, she will kill you." Mari held up her hand, the one blackened by the dragon's poison. "She stays with me because she can't kill me."
"Yet," Chase said. "She can't kill you yet. You don't know what you're dealing with, Mari. You have to give her to me. If you give her to me, then I can take her back, and none of this will ever come near you again. I'll make sure of it. If I have the dragon, I'll have the power to protect you."
The ball of rage-love-confusion bubbled up and out of her mouth.
Mari laughed.
It wasn't a little laugh. It was the kind of laugh that comes from the freedom from the burden of needing to save others from the horrible darkness of the world. Mari let it go into the sound. She laughed like she had never laughed before, her sides aching with the physical effort of it. Miss Kitty's claws dug into her hair as the dragon shifted her weight to balance with her mount's movement.
Chase stood there in silence.
Mari took a deep breath back to the center.
"I protect myself," she said.
Miss Kitty growled from her shoulder.
Mari took another breath and relaxed. She could feel the tie, the connection of blood and venom, of magic, and the momentum of a universe that just wants to create beautiful stories of connection.
She slipped sideways, and her vision doubled.
She lifted her small, reptile chin, and aimed above Chase's head.
"I am," Mari said.
She exhaled.
Fire shot out from the mouth that was both her and not her and flowed out above Chase's head.
He ducked, falling to the ground and rolling away from the danger.
They didn't want to hurt him.
She would never let him separate them.
"WHAT THE HELL! IT BREATHES FIRE?" Benjamin waved his hands in the air. "THAT IS SO COOL!"
Mari came back to herself.
It was skin peeling from skin – the painful stripping of one soul from another. The connection she made with her dragon wasn't on purpose; neither was the separation from it.
It stabbed her in the eye like eating ice cream too fast.
"AAUGH!" Mari buckled, collapsing into a fetal position as she pressed the heel of her hand against her eye socket. She felt rather than saw Miss Kitty crouch down on her shoulder, preparing for a launch.
She knew what the dragon was going to do.
"NO!" Mari swung her arm up, still blinded by the pain.
She caught Miss Kitty across the stomach, interrupting the claw first leap towards Chase. One bite... one bite, and all of the problems that Chase posed would be gone. She clutched the dragon tighter, holding that mass of squirming, snarling death within a grip that the dark side of her couldn't release.
She would protect him from herself.
You don't let your darkness touch the ones you love.
When the pain subsided, and Mari opened her eyes, Chase was gone.
He was gone.
"That's a dragon. A baby dragon," Shiva said.
"I thought it looked like a cat to you," Benjamin had calmed down a little bit, relaxing after the burst of fiery excitement.
"Just because all I can see is a cat doesn't mean that there is a cat there." Shiva waggled her eyebrows. "Just because all you see is a cripple doesn't mean there is a cripple there."
What did that mean?
Mari didn't want to think about that.
She didn't want to think about anything at all.
She didn't want to think about the fact that Chase's only salvation was to tell the ones who were coming that he’d found the dragon. He would tell them to save his own skin. He would tell them in less than three days.
She didn't want to stay there and fight.
She had to leave.
"I'm going to go home and cook dinner for my family," said Mari.
"Can we hang out tomorrow? You're really cool!" Shiva asked.
Mari looked at the deformed girl, a girl who, minutes before she had looked at with the weight of jealousy and insecure possession. "I have to leave the area within three days. I can't stay here and let Miss Kitty be taken."
"Miss Kitty? You named her Miss Kitty?" Benjamin laughed. "What? What kind of dragon name is that? Couldn't you call her Bone Cruncher or something like that?"
"Talk to Mrs. Brown," Shiva said.
Mari
wasn't interested in talking to anyone right at that moment.
"I'm going home."
So she did.
#
The smell of smoke filled the kitchen.
"What on earth are you doing?" Cathy shouted from the living room.
Mari moved the pan off the heat, the blackened mess of unrecognizable food crusted to the metal. How had that happened? She hadn't left the kitchen! All she did was read her book and sit on a stool.
Ugh!
First attempt at cooking – partial fail.
There were still the kale chips in the oven. She put a timer on those. Just thirty seconds left, and she would pull them out, and they would be perfectly done the way the recipe said they would be.
Mari turned the heat on the stove from high to off.
She knew that health wasn't a one-step procedure.
Mari didn't want to think about all the other things there were to think about, so she focused on something else. Something simple. Something easy, like reformatting her habits so that she could look good in a bikini.
Yeah, something simple to think about.
She couldn't just jog (more like shuffle and huff) to school and back every day and expect everything to work out just fine and dandy. Her diet had to change, too. She couldn't live off of over-processed tv dinners and fast food take out any more. She had to learn how to take those fresh vegetables she had access to at the school community garden, and in her own little five by five square of cramped backyard space, and turn them into something edible.
Not that she was going to get to stay there much longer anyway.
The oven timer beeped.
Mari grabbed a mitt and-
WAAAAAAARRWAAAAARRRWAAAAAR
"WHAT IS GOING ON IN THERE?" Cathy screamed over the fire alarm.
WAAAAAAAAARRRWAAAAAAAAARRRWAAAAAAARRR
The fire alarm must have gone off because of the smoke from the burnt food. It was too high for her to reach and shut off.
WAAAAAAAARRRWAAAAAAAAARRRWAAAAAAAARR
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Cathy came into the kitchen, still shouting. "WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO BURN THE HOUSE DOWN?"
