What Z Sees

by Karen Rivers

  Hey, he thinks as clearly as he can, staring right at Zara. Wish me luck.

  She gives him a thumbs-up, pushes her hair back in the same gesture. Puts on some lip gloss. He grins.

  Bear! shouts Sin.

  Good, he thinks. Okay.

  The bell rings and he starts to ride, focusing clearly on his horse. On the next jump. On that oxer. A wasp flies too close to his face and he swats it out of the way, but too late. A sting on his cheek. He sucks in his breath. It hurts, but he can live with it. It’s not a big deal. He keeps riding. Focuses on his posture, his seat.

  It’s then that he hears the buzzing, only it isn’t a wasp buzzing, it’s the crowd buzzing. And he hears Zara screaming.

  Why is Zara screaming? For a second, he’s so confused. The wasp sting throbs and he gets turned around, Detritus crashes straight into the rails in front of him, shit, no. No no no. And there is the thundering of hooves, but whose hooves are they? Axel turns around in the saddle, pulls Detritus up to a halt. What he sees can’t be real, but it is.

  There’s the wispy clouds, a drizzle of rain, steam rising from the ground. The mess of rails that Detritus has just plowed through, the horse himself shaking. Zara running across the ring to him, running and running and a horse, a black horse — what horse is that? — galloping toward him at full tilt with someone on the back who appears to be a knight. A knight?

  Swinging something, what is it? A club? A spiky ball?

  Why isn’t he moving out of the way?

  And then Detritus rears up and the thing, whatever it is, sinks into the horse’s flesh. Detritus is collapsing and Axel is falling to the ground, too. The keening sound coming from the rider, the screams from Zara. And Axel, whose leg is crushed under the animal, throws up.

  SIN

  Chapter 21

  YOU CAN’T BELIEVE what you’re seeing, but you can.

  Waiting for Axel to ride into the ring, you were so happy. He was your boyfriend. Your boyfriend. You wanted to chant it out loud.

  Then he was finally trotting in, looking incredible in his best riding clothes, looking so much like an adult. His perfect tan, the flash of his white smile, you felt your knees turn into jelly.

  Oh you’re all googly over my brother again, says Zara. I guess nothing has changed.

  You wink. Not googly, you say.

  Are so, she says.

  You both laugh, even though it’s not that funny. You notice her twisting her bracelet into her wrist but you avert your eyes. It’s the only thing that works. That’s what it’s come down to. It helps her, she says. Who are you to tell her not to do it?

  The bell rings and Axel starts out. He looks strong. Confident. You feel yourself relaxing, just watching him.

  He looks so determined. Even from here, you can see the set of his jaw.

  It’s then that you see the knight riding into the ring, is he supposed to be there?

  Is that a knight? you whisper and Zara turns and looks.

  A knight, she echoes. People are so ...

  But then she gets a funny look on her face. The bracelet falls loose, then slips off altogether. Sin, she says. Sin, it’s Hamster. What is he doing?

  Hamster is riding a black horse, which he can barely control, over to where they are sitting. Irrationally, your first thought is, Who did he steal that horse from? That’s not his horse.

  He lifts off his helmet and he looks right at them and bows. And in that split second, Zara leaps to her feet.

  You feel nothing but confused.

  Hamster?

  Maman is shouting, What is happening? What is wrong?

  But Zara is gone, running, racing the horse toward Axel, who still hasn’t noticed, and then he does.

  And then.

  Zara

  Chapter 22

  WHAT I SAW on Hamster’s face was black spikes with red. It came past the bracelet. Past everything. I let the glass fall. I needed to see better. It was an instant thing, not conscious.

  Hamster was going to attack Axel. He wanted to kill him. He was making his own snuff film. Somewhere ... where? There was a camera running in the stands. He’s getting his moment of fame. His YouTube moment. He’s starring in his own horror film.

  It was about Sin or it wasn’t really, not anymore. It was like awful butterflies with monstrous faces flying from his eyes, swarming. Hate. It was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen. Even as I was seeing it, it was blacking me out. I can’t describe it other than to say it was like an Etch A Sketch. Every line I saw being drawn erased anything previous. I was being erased. He was erasing my brother’s life. That’s what he was setting out to do. That’s what he was doing.

  I ran. I didn’t have a plan. I just wanted to get to Axel to get him away from there, but his reaction was off somehow. He didn’t know what I meant, he wasn’t on my wavelength. I couldn’t get there fast enough, I couldn’t be clear enough. I was too late for Detritus anyway.

  The glint of that metal ball in the sun, I’ll never forget that. Even through the ridiculous knight garb that Hamster was wearing, the seething mass of grey green hatred pouring out. His strength in throwing that thing. I would never have thought that he could do that. Helplessly watching it in slow motion spiralling through the air; like something being drawn on the canvas of the blue sky. It seemed so high up.

  He missed or he didn’t. The ball sinking into the horseflesh, the animal screams as Detritus fell.

  As Detritus died.

  Axel’s face and thoughts smeared up in front of me like a fountain, all that pain and then he sank away, unconscious. I flick away a wasp hovering near his face.

  Axel, I say. Hang on.

  I think I see him flinch and turn toward me.

  I say loudly, Bear!

  I don’t know if he hears. Then he’s gone in the ambulance, with Sin and Maman. I’m left there, but I’m not alone. It’s so quiet, though; at first I can’t figure it out and then I realize that the extra layer is gone. It’s just me, standing there. A small crowd of people milling around. Just people. No other layers. No other colours.

  It takes me a few minutes to get my bearings. To feel like I’m standing on solid ground. I finally find the car, drive myself to the hospital. By the time I get there, Axel is sitting up in bed, talking to Sin and Maman.

  Hi, he says.

  Hi, I say.

  Thanks, he says.

  No problem, I say. I wasn’t doing anything else.

  Ha ha, he says.

  Are you okay? I ask.

  Yep, he says. No head injury. No butterflies or whatever.

  Ha ha, I say. Then I say, Me too.

  What? he asks.

  They’re gone, I say.

  Seriously? asks Sin. I’d forgotten she was there.

  Yes, I say.

  Wow, she says.

  What do you mean, chere? asks Maman.

  It’s nothing, Maman, I tell her. Because it’s too hard to explain it all. In a way, I feel good that she doesn’t know. She didn’t have to know. We took care of it ourselves. Sort of. I mean, we got through it ourselves. I give Axel a look and I can tell he’s thinking the same thing. Our eyes connect like a current and he nods.

  I lean over and kiss Maman, then I impulsively kiss Axel and he reaches out and hugs me, hard. Hard enough to hurt. Sin reaches up and then she’s hugging us, too.

  Group hug, she says.

  Ouch, I say, toppling over onto Maman’s lap.

  In my pocket, my phone rings. I pause for a minute, flip it over just to see who it is. It’s John. I guess he’s not going to give up. I don’t answer it. Not yet. But I think that maybe, in a few days, maybe I’ll finally call him back.

  Maybe.

  BOOK ONE of the XYZ Trilogy

  X in Flight

  I’M WALKING HOME when it happens. I warn you now, this is where the story gets weird. It does.

  It’s dark. There aren’t any lighted streets running between the range and the trailer. Just the fields, a long, winding gravel d
riveway and the cows. A few ugly old barns, half- fallen down. I don’t know why they’re still standing. In the dark, they look haunted. They look like something from one of those stupid horror movies where teenagers are constantly getting killed in their underwear by crazy homicidal maniacs with a hate-on for youths.

  The moon is pretty small, a sliver with a halo around it from the cold. It’s not exactly lighting my way. I’ve got a headache throbbing deep in my brain, a slow, pounding pain. But, weirdly, I feel really good. The headache reminds me of the crash. And that reminds me of you.

  Ruby, I say out loud. It seems creepy to say your name.

  You make me talk to myself. I’m probably crazy, do you care? I think crazy people are probably generally happier than the sane ones. I’d rather be crazy, if this is what it feels like. I feel light. I feel golden.

  I feel like a jerk for thinking things like “I feel light. I feel golden.”

  I sing your name. Ruby. I don’t know any songs about Rubys but I’m sure there is one. I think maybe I’ll look some up on the internet when I get home. Oh, yeah, we have a computer and all that shit because Deer makes money doing billing for a bunch of doctors who are too afraid of technology to get their own computers. They drop it off on Friday afternoons. I always think it looks like they’re making a drug drop. These guys (okay, and the occasional woman) are wearing their silk ties and driving their nice BMWs and Mercedes and Hondas, dropping envelopes off at the trailer and trying not to step on cow crap on their way to the drop box outside the front door. You can tell it’s beneath them. Deer says they’re mostly scared of computers. I think that’s funny. Yeah. Like they can cut you open and take out parts of you and put you back together again, but they can’t figure out how to press the “on” button on a PC.

  I’ll google the name “Ruby.” I’ll make you a CD of Ruby songs. Yeah. I like that. It’s romantic, like a mix tape. Of course, I can’t give it to you. Smile and say, Hey, I saw you at the range, here’s a CD I made for you. Sure. That could happen. Not. You’d see right through me. You’d see what I wanted, even though I don’t know myself.

  I just want you to see me.

  Maybe I do have a head injury. You’re like a song that’s stuck in my fucking head. I can’t stop. I can’t get you out.

  I should make a CD for Cat, I decide. Not that she’d want me to.

  I can see the lights of the trailer in the distance. I’m about a thousand yards away when I sort of stumble. I don’t even know what happened. Maybe I tripped on something, but I look down and I don’t see anything. It’s like the world just tipped a bit and I didn’t tip with it. I fall forward and try to catch myself, and then the most fucking bizarre thing of all time happens. I’m not making this up. It sounds crazy to me, too, so don’t sweat it.

  Ready?

  It’s like suddenly I have wings on my shoulders. You know that feeling when you take a big feather and wave it up and down and you can feel the whoonrp as it pushes against the air, the pressure that birds must feel when they fly? I felt that.

  Whoomp.

  And then I was up. Not just up, but UP. I felt it in my shoulders. It was like I was a goddamn bird or something. I realize there is no way of saying that so it sounds like anything other than the effect of a massive head injury. Hey, maybe I had a brain hemorrhage and didn’t know it. I’m not saying that’s not as much a possibility as any other thing. All I know is that I was falling, and then I was up so far above the trailer that it looked like a tinker toy.

  Then I got scared. I’m afraid of heights. Very afraid. That’s ironic, huh? First kid who can really fly, and he’s afraid of heights. So I came down. Somehow I knew how, like the wings that I couldn’t see were guiding me. Sounds fucking ridiculous, don’t I know it. But I know what I felt. That was it.

  What would you have done?

  As I glided down, night air leaking off my wings like water off a paddle, I just knew how. I knew how to glide. I knew how to land. Which doesn’t change the fact that I missed the spot I was aiming for, and when I landed, I did fall. Hard. On my knees. Like a baby bird can pretty much fly right away, but you see them falling off the wires when they’re learning how to land.

  Of course, I fell right in a stinking heap of cow dung. But who cares? My heart was beating loudly, like a thousand drums, I can tell you that. I thought it was gQing to explode out of my chest. I thought I could taste blood.

  My body felt so unbelievably weird. No kidding. But weird in a familiar way, like it feels when you run a few miles or like it did when Cat made me go bungee jumping. A rush.

  I feel wild.

  I feel alive.

  Author’s Note

  In this book, the character of Axel drinks. An awful lot. Axel is clearly an alcoholic and if you aren’t an alcoholic, you might not recognize his behaviour. I hope you don’t. I hope that all the people you know are untouched by alcoholism. But the truth is that you probably know someone (or know someone who knows someone) who is in the same situation. You might not know what to do. After all, how could you know? It’s hard. I know it. If you read this book and recognized someone you care about, you can help them to help themselves. I’ll post some links on my website, www.karenrivers.com, to places that can help you help someone (or yourself) take a step to get help. One step leads to another, but you know what they say — the first step is the hardest.

  It’s hard to write this sort of note without sounding like a Public Service Announcement. I don’t mean to sound that way. So I’m not going to tell you one way or another whether you should or shouldn’t drink. I just want you to know that one drink doesn’t always have to lead to so many drinks you don’t remember what you did. It’s so so so seriously not pretty. Be kind to yourself.

  Don’t let other people push your limits. Don’t drink away your self-respect, like Axel did. Know when enough is enough. And know, please, that it’s okay to ask for help when you need it.

  KAREN RIVERS has published ten previous young adult and juvenile books, including Surviving Sam, which was nominated for the 2004 White Pine Award, and the Haley Andromeda trilogy {The Healing Time of Hickeys, The Cure for Crushes, The Quirky Girls’ Guide to Rest Stops and Road Trips). The Healing Time of Hickeys was nominated for the 2003 Canadian Library Association’s “Young Adult Book of the Year” award, is a Children’s Book Centre Our Choice selection and was a featured title for Barnes & Noble and Amazon.ca.

  Karen lives in Victoria, British Columbia.