The Walls of Orion

by T. D. Fox

  The sympathetic look she received made her wonder if she really sucked at lying as much as W and Dina said she did.

  21. THE BEST LIES

  A FOREIGNER. THAT’S what Courtney was.

  Those little bells jangled above the door. Plates clinked on tables. Coffee beans screamed in the grinders, dull jazz music hummed beneath the voices, and her coworkers’ sharp, “Mocha for Emily!” and “Doppio espresso for Dave!” sliced through it all.

  Not unfamiliar. The opposite, somehow. They belonged to a world that she knew inside and out, but didn’t fit into anymore—like a worn pair of jeans that had grown too small.

  She found Jess standing with her arms crossed behind the counter, glaring at her as she walked in, about thirty minutes early for her shift.

  “Yeah, I got your call about coming in today,” her boss had said. “But you didn’t appear to get any of mine.”

  Courtney wavered on the other side of the counter.

  “You got something to say to me?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said meekly.

  “You don’t show up for any of your shifts for three days straight. No calls, no texts.”

  “Am I fired?”

  Jess looked at her, long and hard. “What sort of trouble are you in?”

  “Trouble?”

  “You talk straight with me, missy. You’ve never done anything like this before. Your cop boyfriend and your friend came by here looking for you. Said you vanished. If you’re mixed up in any of the sort of trouble Max got himself into—”

  “No, Jess, I promise it’s not that.”

  “Tell the truth.”

  “I’m telling the truth.”

  Jess sighed. “Come around the counter.”

  Courtney did, and before she could say anything Jess pulled her into a tight hug.

  “I thought you were dead in a dumpster.” She let her go. “Now you go get back to work before I change my mind and fire you. Try anything like that again, and I just might. I can only take one Max around here.”

  Courtney helped Jess tidy the station. Her coworkers approached her one by one, and she greeted them in a daze. The same story, over and over. She began to piece it together.

  I was visiting family uptown.

  I caught the stomach flu. Actually—food poisoning. From the Thanksgiving turkey. Uptown. Where the power fizzles in and out, sometimes, and cell service sucks. Sorry I couldn’t call in. You know how that happens, right?

  The tale got smoother every time she told it.

  She kept her head down, and her pace fast. Turned out there really was a stomach flu going around, because a lot of the regulars weren’t there, and the few that did show asked for herbal teas and plain toast, looking green. Nobody stopped to chat with her over the cash register. For that, she was grateful.

  Well—grateful as was possible with her insides grinding like the coffee beans.

  “Are you okay?”

  Madeline touched her shoulder, where she’d paused with one hand in the cash drawer, frozen over the tray of nickels.

  “Yeah.” The word caught on itself. She twisted on a smile. “I guess I’m not one hundred percent yet. That flu’s a real killer this year.”

  “Maybe I should take register.”

  Courtney stepped aside while Madeline finished counting out the customer’s change. She took her spot at the coffee grinders.

  The Change was still there. It growled beneath her skin. A beast fighting her, tugging at her fragile grip on control from the inside.

  Maybe that was why she felt like such an outsider. Any second, she could slip, and they would turn around and see her for what she really was.

  And what was that now?

  “Court. I said two double-shots, you awake over there?”

  “Sorry.”

  Shake it off. Breathe. She set to work pulling the shots, pouring every ounce of her focus into the espresso.

  Why had it seemed so much easier to control two days ago? In W’s apartment, she’d thought she’d conquered this. She’d reached a place, on the last day, where she no longer felt perched on a tipping point. Now the edge was back—a constant awareness of the chaos brewing in her bones, simmering and ready to boil over.

  But... it was more than that. She was a foreigner in her own skin, yes. Adjusting to the Change was a fight she’d never prepared for; but adjusting back to life in the coffee shop felt somehow worse. Her old routine: the floors never quite mopped clean, always another pot needing to be refilled, more beans to grind. Nothing felt... urgent enough.

  The thrill, staring down the barrel of a semi-automatic. It’s almost addicting.

  Cold raced through her as W’s words did.

  Was she truly so different from everyone else?

  I don’t want to become one of you, she’d told him.

  But what if she already was?

  Was that why she couldn’t cram herself back into her normal life? Nothing felt real enough anymore. Dina’s gentle teasing about her fatal curiosity, her draw to the unknown, the desire to inch right up to danger and look over the edge—it had all been there from the beginning. The frightening rush in her veins when she’d stepped in front of Max that day, into the line of fire. The thrill of being part of something real, watching her own act of instinct change the course of events.

  No. It was wrong. Whatever he’d awakened in her—it had to be wrong; he was changing things the wrong way, he was a killer, he was...

  The tap, tap, tap of the espresso shots in the little metal cup stilled her thoughts.

  Who was she kidding? This thing building in her chest—the burning desire to lift her head, to become an active player in this twisted game of justice and survival in the Wall’s shadow—that ember had been there long before W strode through that door.

  He’d only tossed it some dry kindling.

  “I’m sorry, sir, what did you say you wanted?”

  “Nothing. I’m here to speak to the blonde barista,” said a familiar voice.

  Courtney looked up. Jasper stood on the other side of the counter.

  “Hey,” he said. She could feel the weight of that one syllable.

  “Um—I’m sorry, Maddie?” Courtney turned. “I need to step out for a minute, can you cover for me?”

  “What? Jess is already mad at you for ditching this weekend.”

  “Please. It’s slow.”

  Madeline’s eyes swung between her and Jasper. “I guess so, for a minute.”

  Courtney slipped around the counter, the knot in her stomach growing with every step. She caught Jasper’s eye and nodded toward the back of the café. They moved toward one of the empty booths.

  When they sat, she felt his eyes on her face. She couldn’t lift hers from the table.

  “Why do you look like a suspect I just brought in for questioning?”

  Courtney wiped her palms on her jeans. “Because I feel awful.”

  “About which part? The original disappearing act, or the whole avoiding your boyfriend when you finally show up again bit?” A low, growling sigh. “What did you do to your hair?”

  The chopped ends of her new cut skimmed her clenched jaw as she lifted it. “I didn’t mean to avoid you. I called Dina last night because I needed my best friend. Not... a boyfriend.”

  “Seems like I’m not needed much at all these days. Michael said you went to stay with another friend. Not Dina, either.”

  “How is Michael? Is he okay?”

  “Peachy. Just your regular eleven-year-old who just lost his dad.”

  Courtney crumpled a little. “I went over there this morning, but he’d already left for school.”

  “He’s pretty upset about getting dumped by his big sister, without even a text, when his only other family just vanished.”

  Here it came. Forceful, sharp, knifing its way up her bones and into her muscles. She shut her mouth, forgetting any sort of reply, and clenched her teeth. Tears gathered at the backs of her eyelids.

  Fi
ght it. For Michael, you cannot Change here, in this café, in front of a cop.

  A cop. Was that all Jasper was now?

  “Hey.”

  A warm hand covered hers, anchoring her to the table. She couldn’t open her eyes, not yet, but she felt Jasper’s other hand on her forearm.

  “I’m sorry.” His voice softened. “Of course this must be hard for you. I get it, if you needed some time. If you needed to run, to escape, to deal with this on your own... I’m just sorry you felt you had to face it alone. I know we fought before everything happened...”

  His voice went in and out, sometimes far away, sometimes much too close. Courtney focused on her breathing.

  “You scared me,” he said. “I thought you were... It looked bad, Court. Your apartment door hanging open in the rain, your dead phone on the carpet, the TV on with nobody home. Anything could have happened to you.”

  Courtney finally got a hold of her breath. She opened her eyes. Jasper looked blurry for a moment. She blinked away the heat. She hated herself for crying. Now was not the time. She had to get a handle on this, for Michael’s sake.

  “I know,” she whispered. “I know it looked really bad.”

  Jasper’s thumb smoothed over the back of her hand. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded.

  He hesitated. “Where did you go?”

  For one heartbeat, looking into his eyes so blue and open, surrounded by the warm fog of voices, the safe weight of his hand on hers, Courtney wanted to tell him everything. She’d heard somewhere, a long time ago, that the best lies were told with kernels of truth.

  “I had a breakdown.” The truth slid out of her like a weight releasing. Jasper’s hand tightened. “When I saw the news about my dad, I left my apartment and wandered uptown. I didn’t know where I was going. I felt awful, like it was my fault. I don’t think I was really thinking straight. All the streets started blurring together, I don’t remember where I was, but somewhere along the way I ran into an old friend.”

  “Past midnight,” Jasper said flatly. “Who did you run into?”

  “Someone I used to know, before... from nursing school. They caught me wandering around barefoot in the middle of the night, probably looking like I was having a nervous breakdown, so they brought me inside. I ended up staying with them until I got my head on straight. It took a couple days. My friend wouldn’t let me out of the house until they thought I was mentally stable. Since I’d left my phone behind and everything, I couldn’t call anyone.”

  Jasper’s eyes had narrowed, at some point in her story, but she wasn’t sure which lie he’d caught because he focused on a truth:

  “You called Michael, on Saturday.”

  “Yes. His is the only number I have memorized.”

  “Not Dina’s?”

  Courtney hoped he didn’t feel her hand sweating under his. “I wasn’t really up to making many phone calls. I only called Michael to check that he was okay.”

  “I guess you didn’t think about anybody else who might be worried you weren’t okay.”

  “I didn’t think about anything. I wasn’t in a great headspace.”

  Jasper looked at her for a moment. He sighed, and squeezed her hand. She wished he’d let it go.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

  “I’m sorry,” she said back, more strongly. “I know I must’ve worried you guys a lot.”

  He shook his head with a strained chuckle. “Your friend Dina and I bonded quite a bit over how freaked out we were this weekend.”

  “I hope you can forgive me.”

  Jasper leaned over the table and kissed her forehead. Oddly, she had to fight the urge to lean away from the touch. He started to say something, then paused, brushing her hair back from her temples. He pressed a palm to her forehead.

  “You’re burning up. Do you have a fever?”

  “Uh... I was out in the rain a long time Thursday night. Maybe I caught something.”

  He frowned. Lifting his other hand from hers, he laid it against her temple. “You should take the day off.”

  “I can’t. Jess is already mad at me for skipping work without notice.”

  “You’ve had a hell of a weekend. I’m sure she’ll understand.”

  “She doesn’t know. I told everyone I caught the flu.”

  “Then tell her you still have it. That takes a while to get over. Come on.” He stood up, pulling her with him. “I’m taking you home.”

  “Jasper...”

  “No buts. You need to rest. I’ll talk to your manager. Let’s go.”

  She was too tired to fight him. Irritated that he wasn’t entirely wrong, either; she was frayed to the end of her last nerve, but not for the reason he thought. She wasn’t fragile, breakable, something to be protected. She was fighting for her life with a monster she could never reveal to him. But she was winning.

  You are learning control, faster than most. W had been impressed by her strength. If only she could somehow show Jasper just how strong she was, for just a moment; maybe he’d see her, for the first time. But telling him about the Change was out of the question. She didn’t want to put to the test where she stood in relation to his badge.

  Trapping Courtney’s hand in a firm grip, Jasper said something to Madeline, who looked at her in surprise. Maybe she really did look sick, because Madeline nodded, and said something about talking to Jess. Then Jasper escorted her out the door into the cold gray morning.

  ⬥◆⬥

  The days passed. Courtney wasn’t sure when they started blending into each other, but each morning began to feel the same. She got up, went to work, slogged through the monotony of the coffeehouse routine, and came home. On her days off, she saw Dina.

  In every space between, she saw Jasper.

  He was a constant shadow, wherever she went. He watched her like she might snap, or run off again, teetering on the edge of a breakdown. It was annoying. She didn’t want to spend her time holed up in her own apartment, but Jasper’s place felt even more claustrophobic. He was on her every second, checking to see if she needed anything, questioning her every impromptu outing into the city. His paranoia was probably her own fault. She should have come up with another lie. Something other than “nervous breakdown,” even if that wasn’t far off from the truth. Jasper had turned into a badge-wearing helicopter boyfriend. She found herself rearranging her shifts at the coffeehouse so her free time coincided with his shifts at the station.

  The days grew shorter. Nights swept in early, long and dark. She picked up an odd new pastime. Walking had always been a minor inconvenience, an unavoidable part of her commute. After a decade’s Quarantine turned cars into a commodity, with all the maintenance it took to keep old models running, most single women took the bus or recruited a friend to walk with. But Courtney’s apartment lay at an odd intersection of narrow side streets and alleyways. Walking seemed her best option, most days, so long as she kept a full can of mace in her handbag.

  But now, it became something different. She didn’t make a beeline from one place to the next. She wandered. Often, she didn’t have a destination. In the glimmering, misty gridwork of pavement and high rises, she discovered the space to breathe. Rain soaked the city streets. The cold bit at her cheeks. People shuffled past in smart suits and baggy raincoats, heads down, sometimes tapping on their cell phones, sometimes muttering to themselves with no one around.

  Courtney didn’t know why, but she no longer felt afraid of walking alone. Her instincts were still there. She sized up men walking toward her, and passed them by. Her pulse never increased. No one seemed to be a threat. She even passed a pair of hoodlums she swore she recognized, either from a wanted poster or a personal encounter. But they gave her one glance and walked right on past.

  Did she carry herself differently?

  Or was it just that no one, in this entire city, would ever come close to W?

  She didn’t like that idea. The thought that she’d go looking for danger, for that little spark of r
eal to inject into her old, everyday life, to snatch back that sense of every action being charged with purpose, with real consequences—that was crazy. Anti-survival mode.

  Yet she circled it like a magnet drifting toward its counterpart.

  It’s gravity. Always his words, slinking back to her. Just another law in the universe.

  She shook the toe of her boot, where a puddle had soaked into a little hole at the bottom, and kept walking. Her breath made little clouds on the air. It was four o’clock. Nobody who worked more than minimum wage was out on the streets. She’d moved her shift tonight up to five, so she’d be heading into work when Jasper got off. A twinge of guilt tugged at her, but she didn’t have time for it. He’d be at the café asking for her the moment she clocked out, and she needed these precious minutes to catch her breath before those helicopter blades descended once again.

  She pulled out her cell phone. For the eighth time today, her thumb hovered over the call button on her speed dial. She pressed it.

  The ringing drilled in her ear. Five long trills, carving little holes in her stomach each time they rang. On the sixth ring, she prepared herself for the beep.

  “Hello?”

  Michael’s voice stopped her in the middle of the sidewalk.

  “Mikey, it’s me. I’m so glad you picked up.”

  “Yeah. I saw your four voicemails.”

  Courtney closed her eyes. Somewhere, beneath her dimmest thoughts, she wondered if this was what her father felt like when she’d deleted his messages without listening to them.

  “Can we please talk?” she begged.

  The phone was silent so long she worried he’d hung up. If so, why had he answered in the first place? She braced herself for the monotone, No, I’ve gotta go, and grimaced at the gray outline of her face in a puddle on the concrete.

  “Okay,” came the unexpected response.

  “What?”

  “I said yeah, talk.”

  “Are you okay?”

  A silence. “What do you think?”

  “Is Joey helping? Being with your friend?”

  “I’d rather be with you.”

  The words rocked the pavement under her. She fought with her voice for a second. “I’ll come get you right now. You can stay at my apartment, I’ll tell Jess I’m taking the day off.”