Three Sides of a Heart

by Natalie C. Parker

  Enter freshman Tatiana. Shunned for my “weird” accent and “city attitude.”1 Unable to bite my tongue when I proved myself a better mathematician than the subpar Pre-Calc teacher and he called me “uppity,” I found myself in detention my very first day. Where I met the boy—there for defending some bullied kid, of course—who would change everything.

  He wasn’t normal. Glen Creek wasn’t normal. These were facts everyone seemed privy to but me. Including my mom.

  NOW

  Jermaine’s body, I wanted to touch it, to feel him again. I wanted that now more than ever. Isn’t there some saying about that? We should show the ones we love how we feel while they’re still here. Before it’s too late.

  I pressed the back of my hand to his forehead, the way my mother used to when I was feverish. He wasn’t cold, exactly. Cooler than a person should be. The pool of blood slowly seeping from beneath him, soaking my papers, oozing to the edge of my desk, reminded me of thawed hamburger meat on brown butcher paper. I snatched my hand away. There’s another saying: better late than never. That one’s wrong, though.

  Around me, the lair shook. Plaster dust rained from the aged ceiling. I considered running and letting Niya bring this place down on her head alone. But let’s be honest, if I could leave here—him—I would’ve long ago.

  “Stop it, dummy!” I said. “That’s a support column.”

  Niya delivered another punch to the beam. A new set of cracks webbed out from beneath her bloody knuckles. It was Jermaine’s blood, from where she had carried his corpse, not hers. Physically, Niya’s kind2 had strength and durability that were more than a match for mere concrete. Emotionally . . . she broke well before the pillar did. And that was dangerous.

  What had she seen out there?

  With maximum will, I kept my gaze fixed on her, not letting my eyes dart to the half-dozen puncture wounds along Jermaine’s chest and abdomen. Or the shard of bone jutting from his right leg just below the knee. Or the agonized grimace etched on his still face.

  Niya roared, whipping her black braids, flinging tears off her sloppy cheeks. When she punched the column that time, the vibrations opened a hole in the ceiling. A dusty display of DVDs fell through. It crashed onto the sparring mat, and low-budget horror/sci-fi movies spun in every direction. A faded yellow sheet of paper that I knew to be a 5 FOR $15 clearance flyer drifted down, arching back and forth like a leaf on the wind.

  The punches stopped. Niya watched the flyer until it reunited with the broken display, then faced me. “I couldn’t stop it, Tat. I couldn’t save him.”

  “What happened?” I said, noting how detached I sounded. I couldn’t help it, yet I wondered if I should make myself sound more emotional. More raw. Wasn’t that what I should be feeling, with him lying dead behind me? Was there a protocol for losing your kind-of-a-superhero best friend who you loved with every fiber of your being?

  If there was someone to ask, it was Niya.

  “I don’t know exactly,” she said. “It was a routine patrol. Cemetery, hospital, high school. Checking for ghoulies3 in all the usual spots. Not a damn thing popping all over town. We were planning to call it early, go back to his place, and . . .”

  My shoulders slumped like a few of my bones had suddenly gone missing. I gazed into a dark corner, swallowing my hurt the same way I had the first time I saw him stare at her in a way I only dreamed about. Or like when I had a revelation on that Trickster God threat and ran to the lair, only to find them sweaty and kissing against the very column she now tried to destroy.

  Niya, being as kind as she was capable of, rephrased. “We were done. Heading home. Then . . .”

  She made spastic gestures with her hands; her mouth gaped. As if she was simultaneously trying to recall the unthinkable and describe the unspeakable. Maybe she was.

  I still didn’t know what the protocols were here, but I was a trial-and-error girl. So I crossed the room and embraced the rage-grieving girl who could easily snap me in two with her bare hands. After a moment of stiff surprise, she hugged me back, and dissolved into hiccups that were really sobs. She lurched against me like her legs might buckle. I spun her toward a nearby chair and made sure she wasn’t facing the corpse she’d brought here in a fireman’s carry.

  “Tell me.” I pushed my glasses higher on the bridge of my nose, insistent.

  “It . . . it wasn’t like anything we’ve seen before. It cut us off on the way to the car. This big Jabba the Hutt–looking blob. I could barely make out details because it was like . . . like . . . the shadows moved with it.”

  Normally, I’d be half listening, half indexing. Breaking down descriptions into categories and eliminating possibilities. Big—not a leprechaun, sprite, or dwarfish creature. A blob—so, not humanoid. Rule out vampires, zombies, werewolves, or our old nemesis Gentleman Gaunt. Cloaked in shad—

  The top of Jermaine’s skull. I could see it from here. Saving Niya from the sight meant I was the martyr. God, someone would have to tell his mom.

  “It don’t make sense, how it took him!” Niya said, drawing me back to her. “Jermaine’s almost as strong as me. A little faster. I held its attacks off fine, but it tore through him like paper.”

  “I . . .” Think, Tatiana. He’s dead, but you have to focus on what’s next. “I never thought I’d say this, but you’re correct.”

  She sneered, a good thing. Our old routine of barely there civility would help her focus.

  I turned to a bookshelf, thankful to be looking at anything other than him. “Your power sets are similar. The strength and the speed. That you made it back, and he didn’t—”

  Something collided with the back of my head. It pistoned my face forward so my nose and mouth smashed into the spine of my Saharan histories tome. Niya’s fingers palmed the back of my skull with uncomfortable firmness. “Are you blaming me? You think it’s my fault?”

  “Listen to my actual words, Niya. I didn’t say anything like that.” A trickle of blood salt-slimed from my nostril.

  “Tat, Tat, the reasonable gnat. Why the fuck are you so calm right now?”

  I ripped away from her then. Left chunks of hair behind. I screamed into the face of the girl who once tore the head off a gill-man with no effort at all. “Because one of us has to be! One of us has to think, and lead, and do something now that he’s gone! You can’t, so it has to be me. Always me with the solutions, always me with the plan. I don’t want to plan, I want to mourn and scream and cry. I’m the rock! The one you both come to when you can’t punch your way out. So that’s why I’m calm. I’m not allowed to be anything else.”

  Shame masked her, and she flicked loose strands of my hair to the floor. “You are, you know.”

  “Are what?”

  “Crying.”

  “I—?” Dabbing my fingers at my eyes, I felt the moisture.

  Her crazy-ass tantrum seemed at its end, and she handed me two tissues plucked from a box near my computers. I mopped the blood from my lips first.

  “I’m sorry,” Niya said. “I know you loved him too.”

  That startled me. Because I could tell she didn’t mean platonically.

  She kept going. “I’m sorry if I harmed you, and I’m sorry for asking you to find the solution one more time.”

  “I need to know more about that creature, and we may need to call in help. Maybe the Dusk Thrashers, or the Salem Knight. If that thing’s as powerful as you say—”

  “I’m not talking about that thing. That thing can wait. I’m talking about Jermaine.”

  “You mean telling his people?” In my gut, I knew that wasn’t on her mind.

  “No, Tatiana. I mean resurrecting him.”

  THEN

  It took four times of Jermaine saving me from some unexplained, fantastical threat before he gave up his lame deception and confessed what I already knew. Monsters were real, they ran rampant in our town, and he fought them.

  I’d actually deduced it after the first time he swooped in wearing that ridiculo
us modified football helmet and motorcycle leather (a costume I eventually convinced him to retire), calling himself the Garrison (we benched the name too).

  He started in on his origin story. Ancient bloodline, strength and speed, our town built on a broken ley line4 that draws the Arcane, and so on. He seemed shocked when I cut him off.

  “Got it,” I said. “I’ve had it for a while. That costume doesn’t change your height, your build, or the way you move. I’m sorry to tell you, but your Garrison voice sounds just like your read-aloud voice in English class. Only gruffer.”

  “The costume didn’t fool you? Even a little bit?”

  I patted his thigh, crusty with the green blood of the wood-skinned spriggans5 he’d slaughtered saving me. “You read the comics; it worked for Batman. I know. It’s okay.”

  “Now I wish I had told you sooner. Your mom made it seem like—”

  “My mom? What’s she got to do with any of this?”

  Silence. No eye contact from a boy who’d just stared down a tree demon. I hadn’t been as observant as I thought.

  The three of us had a long conversation that night in my mother’s study, a book-crammed room once reserved for my grandma. We talked about what the Historian of Glen Creek really did.

  If Jermaine was Batman, Mom was Alfred. Dutiful assistant to the town’s protector. Jermaine’s bloodline wasn’t the only one with obligations. When Mom ran away from home as a teen, it wasn’t to escape an overbearing mother. She ran from destiny.

  But Grandma barely formed sentences now and couldn’t tell me and Mom apart most days. The Historian must be whole and present.

  The way Mom explained it, she made it seem like a burden. I guess, for one person, it could be. That’s when I said, “I can help.”

  It made sense. Many hands make light work, and all. Two heads better than one.

  My offer hung between us. Her answer took too long, so I knew it wouldn’t be the one I wanted.

  “No,” Mom said. “Out of the question.”

  “Why? It’s, like, genetic, right? I’m going to have to do it eventually no matter what.”

  “We’re talking about forces beyond comprehension. Dangers to the body and soul. Get something wrong, and the consequences echo into eternity.”

  “I’m not afraid.” I looked to Jermaine for backup. “You’ve seen me out there. You know.”

  He sat silent. Forearms resting on his knees, hands clasped, counting cracks in the floor.

  Mom said, “If you don’t feel fear over the horrors in this town, then I know you’re not ready.”

  Jermaine stood. “I should go.”

  “You don’t have to,” I said.

  Mom immediately countered. “No. Get some rest. You’ve got school tomorrow, and I need to research what’s brought the spriggans here. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He leaped nimbly to the windowsill. “Bye, Tat.” Then he dropped into the night. It occurred to me that he must’ve come and gone that way many times as he and Mom kept each other’s secrets.

  “Mom—”

  “You’ve got school too. Good night.”

  She turned her attention to some dusty volume.

  The next day in school, Jermaine did a clumsy job of avoiding me. Going as far as changing desks in English. Toward the end of the day he saw me coming, dipped into the boys’ bathroom. I followed him in.

  “Oh, crap,” he said.

  “This would be the place for it.” I sniffed, then decided mouth breathing was a slightly better option. “Why are you acting weird?”

  “I was born weird.”

  “Weirder?”

  He threw up his hands, a frustrated surrender. “I gotta stay away from you. All right?”

  No. That wasn’t all right. Pretty damn far from it. I didn’t bother asking why. “My mother doesn’t control you or me.”

  “Except she kind of does. The Garrison needs the Historian. That’s time-tested. I don’t understand half the shit I end up fighting. Without her, I might mistake a vetehinen for a merman6 and get my arm ripped off. You know?”

  My vision was pulsing; anger had me disregarding the nuances of monster anthropology. “Fuck her and her books. You’re my friend. The only one I have here. She can’t take you from me.”

  “I’m sorry for making things tense between you two. Everything’s heated right now. It’ll have to get better. Like you said, the job’s coming to you eventually. Give it time.”

  I tried. There just wasn’t much time left.

  Spriggans murdered my mother in her study the very next week.

  NOW

  “Resurrection? No. Absolutely not!” I swept papers and a few flimsy notebooks into my satchel and retreated up the stairs. Niya bounded behind me. We emerged in the surface level of our lair, an abandoned video store once known as Movie Meridian. From the moment I arrived in Glen Creek, I had wondered how such an outdated store survived in the age of streaming and digital downloads.

  Easy. Magic.

  Run by two warlocks for over a century—first as a general store, then a record shop, finally movies—the Meridian was a safe haven for supernatural beings who fought on the side of good. The couple sacrificed their lives buying Jermaine a few critical moments to close a dimensional breach during last year’s Imp Siege. After, we found a will, gifting the store to us.

  There we were, in a fully stocked time capsule of VHS tapes and DVDs (not even Blu-rays) that looked like an empty, abandoned storefront to unknowing observers. I circled the Titanic cardboard display and skirted the hole that Niya’s earlier tantrum had produced. Not fast enough to escape her words.

  “Fine. Don’t help me, Gnat. I’ll do it myself.”

  I faced her, as irritated by that nickname as her ludicrous proposition. “Really? You needed a flowchart and a coloring book to understand Captain America: Civil War. Now, you’re going to do universe-altering magic on your own? Please.”

  She was across the room. I blinked, and she was an inch from my nose. “That movie had a lot of characters. And for Jermaine, I’ll do whatever it takes. I’m surprised this is a hard sell for you.”

  “You and I are irrelevant in this. It shouldn’t be done. By anyone.”

  “Shouldn’t and can’t are two different things. Is it possible?”

  I could’ve lied. Instead, I hesitated.

  “I knew it!” Niya said. “Thank you, Tatiana. I’ll find out how myself. I’ll comb the earth. You can go back to your life. I’ll take care of this.”

  My head tilted. “You think it’s that easy for me? I can feel his gravity pulling on me through the floor. Go back to my life. Him”—I motioned around us—“This has been my life longer than it’s been yours.”

  Niya shrugged me off. As usual. “What then? Because I’m thirty seconds away from going on a quest. With or without—”

  “I’ll help.”

  She grinned, and her sharp canines seemed overly pronounced. “Dope! Brains and brawn, always a good combo. Now, we have to figure where to start.”

  “I know where.” I made the first steps on our quest and pushed through the Meridian’s entrance, triggering the tinkling chimes. “My grandma’s house.”

  THEN

  “I don’t know how those things got to your mom, but they’ll never hurt anyone else like that again. Not if you help me. Just always know I’m here,” Jermaine said. “It’s me and you.”

  We stood before my mother’s tombstone, rain pouring, drenching us. He wouldn’t leave until I was ready. He endured.

  For the next two years it was as he said, me and him. Together we tracked the spriggans and eradicated them for what they did to my mother. Then it seemed like every week after, there was some new threat. Sorcerer, monster, god. Creatures from all of our world’s myths, and worlds beyond. Some good, some vile. All drawn to the power seeping from the town’s bedrock.

  Most of the baddies we killed; some escaped, only to return with a new nefarious plan to take their revenge. As
I got better at my inherited Historian role, nothing seemed a match for us. My knowledge, with his strength, was a no-lose combination.

  Then, last year, the circus came to town.

  The Ringmaster was an earth angel with designs on the Throne of Heaven.7 He’d taken his show all over the country, into different realities, anywhere he could potentially snatch a creature of the Arcane who might serve in his treachery. While he gathered his forces, he subdued his recruits with magic, and used them as attractions.

  COME SEE THE TUMULTUOUS THUNDER LAD!

  DO YOU DARE STAND EYE TO EYE

  WITH THE GREEK GORGON?

  YOU WON’T WANT TO PET THIS KITTY!

  SHE’S THE CANTANKEROUS CAT WOMAN!

  The Ringmaster wanted Jermaine for his collection. He actually succeeded in capturing him, and he was ready to hop to another reality when I brought in an old ally, Father Reagan. A priest who caged exorcised demons in his own soul, drawing on their powers to fight darkness.

  Father Reagan and Jermaine defeated the Ringmaster and freed the exhibits. Most of them scattered. One stayed.

  The Cantankerous Cat woman.8 Jermaine befriended her while he was the Ringmaster’s captive. Her real name was Niya.

  He welcomed her with open arms, saying we could use her help. It was no longer just me and him. That was the first promise he broke.

  It wouldn’t be the last.

  NOW

  My house was on the other side of town. Not a long drive, three or four miles through empty streets lined by old shops and older trees. While the scenery scrolled by quickly, tension in the car has a way of stretching time. I wrenched my hands on the steering wheel, willing our destination closer.

  Niya couldn’t sit still, shifting restlessly the whole time. Part of it may have been her feline nature. Part of it had to be second thoughts. She was an idiot on so many things. Even she couldn’t feign ignorance when it came to the forces of life and death.

  “What’s at your house? Spell books? Potions?” she asked, a tiny plastic shaving curling from the door handle where she nervously dug one claw.

  “No,” I said, resisting the urge to bop her on the nose so she’d quit treating my car like a scratching post. “The Historian isn’t a sorcerer. I have reference books there that mention the sort of magic you’ll need. There are incantations in some of my books, but that’s not enough.”