by Carrie Ryan
She looks down. “That? My candle in the shadow.” She touches my chin. “For you, Luc. My light.”
I can’t look away.
For me.
She carries me next to her heart.
Me.
Red lace and fire between her wrists and her hem. Two things I never knew.
I kiss her, hard, but I cannot kiss her hard enough. She pulls away, breathless, and I bury my face in the hollow of her neck.
Near the flame.
“I’m still here. I’ll be right beside you, Adi. I’m not going anywhere.” I hold out my hand and she takes it, threading her fingers between mine.
Her eyes are wet with tears that hang in the fringe of her eyelashes, refusing to fall.
“I know.”
She doesn’t say anything else.
“Luc.”
Her voice breaks on my name.
It is only one word, but it is mine. It is enough for me.
“I’m here.” I kiss the pattern of her fingers. “It’s the only place I ever wanted to be.” I rub her hand against my closed eyes. “Go to sleep, ma belle.”
She smiles. “I’m not afraid. Not now. Not anymore.” She pulls free, wrapping her fingers in my hair, raising her mouth to mine.
I am afraid, I think.
I’m afraid it isn’t happening. I’m afraid I’m not really kissing her, that I’m asleep in my own bed, alone. That I’m going to wake up any minute now, to bad coffee and worse cigarettes.
But I don’t wake up. I won’t.
I’ll never wake up again.
It’s real.
Everything, all of it. She’s real, so I’m real too. Even if only for a moment.
It is peaceful here, in her kiss.
I can rest here.
Finally.
I lay my smile against hers and we don’t stop kissing as the last sparks of the known universe fly.
Our flames climb even higher than that.
V. Adrienne, 15h00, le 17ème Octobre
I stare into Luc’s eyes, wrapping my fingers in his hair. I pull his mouth to mine.
We aren’t kissing anymore, I don’t think.
We’re breathing.
I want every part of our bodies to touch, as long as they can. I want my skin to grow into his, like two webbed fingers of the same amphibious creature.
Heart to heart. Hip to hip. Toe to toe.
Cell to cell. Blood to blood. Bone to bone.
Ash to ash.
They say we all die alone, the Mortals. But I know now it’s not true. Not for Immortals, anyway.
It’s only now that I am dying that I am finally not alone.
We are here now, for this one moment.
Really here.
Mortals and Immortals, the planet and the people.
The dogs and the cats and the birds, Luc and me. Everyone and everything, all history and all time, tous ensemble.
We all go down together.
And when we do, I know what happens. I bring Luc home to the peace that belongs only to us. We take each other into the dark.
It is our first time as much as our last, our beginning, in our end. A lifetime lived in one forever hour.
Love is its own oblivion; death seems somehow smaller.
VI. Luc, 2h00 le 18ème Octobre
We sit in the darkness at the edge of la Cathédrale de Notre Dame, as close to the perimeter as the fire trucks and the police and the ambulances and the shocked crowd will allow.
Adi wears my clothes. I keep my hand fixed to her waist, beneath my old black sweater. We have become one thing. Even so, everything has changed. Her curls are wild, her lips are purple. Her eyes are red, like she herself has been lit on fire.
She has been. We both have.
Our Lady is gone, taking with her la Société de Notre Dame Immortelle, every last one. The end of the universe came, all right. Oui. Le fin.
But not for the Mortals.
Only for everyone and everything we knew.
Our Nostradamus, gone.
My Enigma Machine, gone.
And the prophecy?
Adi points to the distant place, the line where one darkness gives way to another. “La Seine, it’s red with fire, see? The reflection?”
I nod. “L’Ile de la Cité must be burning all the way down to the water.” It’s true. The island where we stand, in the middle of Paris, is going up in smoke.
She looks at me, aghast.
“The prophecy, Luc.” She can barely speak the words.
“Scattered fire from the skies,” I say, remembering. I pass her a paper cup of bitter coffee. Her hands are shaking.
“The King of Terror?” She glances at me from the corner of her eye. She already knows the answer. She has, I think, since the first moment she saw her words themselves could bring on an apocalypse of their own.
I shrug. “Who knows. Does it matter?”
She shivers. “It does to me.”
I see the last flickers of doubt and wonder on her face. Who was at the other end of the machine? The Great Enigma himself? Can anyone ever be certain?
She shakes her head.
She is certain. She knows.
And she knows I am certain too.
I pull off my jacket, wrapping it around her.
“C’est moi.”
“It’s me.”
Fate
SIMONE ELKELES
––1––
CARSON
As I step off the bus with my duffel, I stare at the sign across the street welcoming me to my new home. Seaside Campground and RV Park. I never thought I’d be homeless at the age of eighteen. Well, I was homeless. Today, I’m the proud owner of a crappy RV on the smallest piece of land at Seaside RV Park.
With the hot Florida sun at my back, I enter the general office and find the property manager at the front desk. I already know the guy from the phone conversation I had with him, and it’s pretty obvious he doesn’t have a stellar work ethic.
The dude is sitting beside a big box of half-eaten donuts. “What do you want?” he barks in what he probably thinks is an intimidating voice. He has no way of knowing that nothing intimidates me.
“I’m Carson Miller,” I tell him. “The new owner of the RV on lot twenty-six.”
“All right.” He takes a clipboard with a bunch of papers attached to it and hands it to me. “Fill out all the info, sign the agreement, then give it back to me with your deposit for the monthly rent on the lot.”
After filling out the forms and giving him the cash, I’m officially a resident of Seaside.
I sling my duffel over my shoulder and walk down a winding dirt road lined with campers, tents, and RVs. I stop in front of an RV that looks like it’s seen better days. Lot 26.
Home.
The red and orange sunset painted on the side is faded and dirt-encrusted, and a banged-up screen door is lying in the dirt next to the RV like it’s the door’s final resting place. A bunch of bright yellow and red flowers perfectly outlining the rectangular lot looks out of place. I walk up to the door and put the key in the slot, but realize pretty quick that the lock doesn’t work. I probably should’ve checked it the first time I came to look at the RV, but all I was interested in was finding a cheap, permanent place to stay. I got lucky that the woman selling the RV just wanted to get rid of it, fully furnished with dishes and utensils and everything. Supposedly it was her father’s place and he’d died recently, so she had no interest in keeping it.
“Are you moving in?” I hear a squeaky, excited voice from behind me.
I turn around and see a red-haired girl wearing dirty, ripped jeans and a football jersey that’s seen better days.
“Yep.”
“Where are your parents?” she asks.
I stand frozen for a second before answering. “Don’t have any.”
She gives me a look of disbelief as she walks toward me. “Of course you have parents. Everyone has parents. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be alive.”
“Thanks for the biology lesson,” I mumble.
“That’s okay if you don’t want to talk about your parents. Half the time I don’t want to talk about mine, either. By the way, I’m Willow. Willow Baxter.”
I wonder how Willow hasn’t gotten the not-so-subtle hint that I’m not in the mood to talk. I don’t intend to make any friends while I’m living here. My goal is to work and save up so I don’t have to worry about paying off the rest of the loan I got for the RV or paying rent on this small piece of earth that my RV is on. I open the door and catch a whiff of some nasty odor coming from inside.
I walk into the place, feeling a small sense of pride. This is mine, and no matter how crappy it is, nobody can take it away from me.
I drop my bag on the bed and start opening the windows to let the place air out. Who knows how long it’s been since someone lived here.
“What’s your name?” Willow practically yells through the ripped screen as if I’m hard of hearing.
“Carson.”
“Were you named after someone? Because I was named after a tree. And before you go thinking it was any old type of tree, it wasn’t. It was a tree that my parents carved their initials into when they fell in love.”
“I wasn’t named after anyone … or anything.”
“Oh. That’s too bad.”
Is this chick for real? “Not really. Listen, I’m gonna clean up the place and start unpacking. See you later.”
She knocks on the side of the RV, the sound echoing inside. “Need help?”
“Nope. I got it.”
“Okay. See you later, Carson,” she says, waving wildly.
I watch Willow until she turns around and disappears. Alone now, I lean on the edge of the small kitchen counter. I sigh, and it feels like I’m releasing a bunch of demons. This is a new beginning, a place to start a new life and forget my past.
––2––
WILLOW
“I met our new neighbor today,” I tell my parents as we sit down for dinner. “His name is Carson.”
“That’s nice,” Mom says.
“I think we should invite him over for dinner or something.”
Dad reaches out and grabs one of the cornbread muffins that I made. “That sounds like a great idea, Willow.” He takes a bite, then turns to my mother. “This is delicious. Our daughter has a talent, Betsy.”
“Yes, she does,” Mom says, smiling at him. “She’s also got a green thumb. Have you seen what she’s done next door?”
“I sure have. I hope that Carson fella appreciates all the hard work you put into his property.”
After Mr. Yates died, I’ve made sure that his yard is taken care of. He used to pay me to do it, but it wasn’t like a job, because I like to garden. I don’t know if Mr. Yates appreciated the well-groomed yard, or if he just liked having me come over so he could have someone to talk to. He was lonely and his family didn’t come around much. I wonder if Carson is going to be just as lonely as Mr. Yates.
• • •
Carson’s lived next door for two weeks when I decide to make a housewarming cake for him. It’s a special recipe I made up two years ago one day when I was bored. I call it Creamy Apple Pie Upside-Down Cake. I sold the recipe to this bakery called The Cakery Bakery in town, and it’s one of their best sellers.
I find Carson outside his RV, sitting on a folding chair in front of Mr. Yates’s old fire pit. He sits alone every night like this, staring into the fire as if the answers to life are gonna jump out of the flames and smack him in the face. I don’t want to burst his bubble and tell him that’s not gonna happen.
“Hi, Carson!” I say cheerfully as I walk toward him. “I made you a housewarming present.”
He eyes the cake in my hand.
“Here,” I say, handing it to him. “Take it.”
“Thanks,” he mumbles before putting the cake inside his RV and coming back out.
I sit on a stump a little ways from the fire. “I’m glad you moved in. It was sad having no neighbors after Mr. Yates died. He was a nice man, and had the most awesome stories about when he was a teenager, like the time he dressed as a girl to get into his girlfriend’s dorm room.”
Carson watches the fire without responding.
I say something to fill the void, which I figure is better than uncomfortable silence. “How old are you? You know, if you don’t mind me asking.”
“Eighteen.”
“Oh. I’m sixteen. I have a cousin Tracy who’s my age, and she’s dating this guy Jake who’s eighteen.” I laugh nervously. “Jake’s really different from you, though. He’s really rude. And he’s got his ears pierced with lug nuts. Tracy told me that once his ear got infected by the lug nut and all this pus started oozing out of it. She said that—”
He looks up at me and shakes his head, as if he’s completely uninterested in the pus-infected lug-nut ear-piercing story.
“TMI, huh?” I say.
He nods.
Okay, so I guess Jake’s oozing ear probably isn’t the best conversation starter. “You don’t talk much, do you?”
Carson leans forward on his elbows. “Listen, Willow, I’ve got to be honest with you. I probably won’t be as good of a neighbor as Yates, so don’t go having high expectations.”
“Why not?”
“Well. Like you noticed, I don’t talk much.”
“I don’t mind,” I tell him. “I can talk for the both of us until you’re ready to, you know, reciprocate.”
He picks up a stick and tosses it into the fire. “I may never reciprocate.”
I pick up a stick and toss it in the fire, too. “You need to talk to people, Carson. You might not know it yet, but you will.”
“What I need is money. Lots of it.”
“For what?”
He looks up at me again, the yellow fire flickering in his green eyes. “Did anyone ever tell you that you ask too many questions?”
“I’m curious by nature,” I say proudly.
He gives a cynical laugh. “Yeah, well, I’m not.”
We sit for a while. Carson stares into the fire while I study his face. I don’t think he realizes how good-looking he is. I can’t pinpoint his best feature. He’s got a straight nose, a strong jawline, and eyes that are so piercing he could probably attract any girl he wants. I can’t look at them for too long or else I get all tingly inside. I’ve never seen him smile, but I’d bet that if he did it would brighten up whatever room he’s in.
I’m about to tell him I was chosen to be the head debater on the debate team at school when he looks up and asks, “How did your dad lose his arm?”
I don’t really think about it much, although I guess it’s obvious to the rest of the world that my dad only has one arm. He doesn’t walk around with a prosthetic limb or anything … he said it’s no use trying to hide or be ashamed of it. It’s been three years since he came back from the Middle East. At first I couldn’t stop staring at the place where his arm should be, and I was afraid to hug him. Eventually it became a nonissue, and now I don’t even remember what he was like before. “The army. He was serving in Iraq and he kind of ran into an explosive.”
“That sucks.”
“He’s alive. That’s really all that matters.”
“You always look at the positive side of everything?” Carson asks.
I think about it for a second before answering. “Yeah, I do. I just don’t see any use looking at things in a negative way. It’ll only make you sad. Why be sad if you don’t have to be?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. It seems to be the theme of my life lately.”
“Well, you need to change that.”
He laughs. Not a small, polite laugh designed to make me feel good. It’s a real laugh, the first one I’ve ever heard come out of his mouth. It’s so genuine it makes me smile just hearing it. “I don’t know if anyone can change, Willow. Especially not me.”
“Everyone can change, Carson,” I say. “Even you.”
&
nbsp; ––3––
CARSON
I’m building wooden pallets from scrap wood when Willow walks past me on her way home from school. She’s got her backpack slung over one shoulder and her eyes locked on the sky above. Willow isn’t a classic beauty, but she’s definitely got something about her that makes you look her way. It could be her long red hair and the headband that she always wears, showing off a freckled face that looks so innocent you wonder if she’s for real.
“Yo, Willow. Talk to me.”
It amuses me that she doesn’t hesitate. She’s not cautious and skeptical, like me. In fact, she’s the exact opposite.
“Need help?”
“Maybe. Want to help me make these pallets?”
“Okay, but first you have to tell me what a pallet is.”
With hurried steps, Willow comes over and hangs her backpack on one of the thick low-lying branches of the only tree on my lot.
The first time I met Willow, I thought she was the most annoying girl I’d ever met. I mean, seriously, the girl cannot keep her mouth shut for an entire five minutes. If she did, she might instantaneously combust. And she’s got this annoying habit of being upbeat and optimistic about everything and anything.
Every instinct in my body tells me to run and hide whenever I see or hear her. Instead, I find myself being strangely amused by my red-haired neighbor. I’ve gotten used to her hanging around.
“This is a pallet,” I say, showing her the square structure I’ve nailed together with wooden slats. “I sell ’em to companies for nine bucks apiece. It’s not much, but I make enough to pay for this place.”
“What do you want me to do?”
Truth is, I really don’t need her to do anything. I can practically build these pallets blindfolded, but I figure hearing Willow and her crazy stories will stop me from thinking too much. I need to stop thinking.
“Set up the wood pieces in a square pattern and I’ll come around and nail them down.”
“Okay.”
It doesn’t take long before Willow and I get into a rhythm and we’ve got a pretty good assembly line going. Maybe I was wrong and I do need her to help me so I can finish faster. Forty-five minutes later, Willow announces that we’re out of scrap lumber and we’re done. We finished a stack of ten pallets in record time.
