The Untimely Deaths of Alex Wayfare

by M. G. Buehrlen

  Porter rubs the bridge of his nose. “If Micki were working for Gesh, she would’ve handed me over to him long ago.”

  “Maybe it’s me he wants, not you.”

  “Then don’t you think she would’ve handed you over by now, too? Instead of working with you? Helping you?”

  I shrug. “Maybe she wanted to watch them hurt me. Maybe this is just another way for Gesh to torture me, I don’t know. But I do know she doesn’t like me, so it makes sense that she’s the one working against me.”

  “She doesn’t have to like you to be loyal. She believes in your ability. She knows what you can do. That’s enough for her. We are your team, Alex. We’re on your side.”

  “No, you’re my team. You alone. And we need to get back to work. I need to go back to China.”

  “Back?”

  “Right now. Take another convoy to another healer. Gesh won’t see it coming. He won’t be prepared like he was this time.”

  “You can’t go back. Now that he knows you’re after that cure, he’ll keep that timeline secure. He’ll station Descenders there. He’ll have soulblocks all across Beijing. It’ll be a minefield.”

  “Then we do what I wanted all along. We go back to 1978 to retrieve the case study files.”

  Porter shakes his head. “I don’t know…”

  My body shivers with frustration, anger, as I try to scramble over the obstacles thrown in my way. “I don’t need your permission. I’ll do it alone if I have to. It’s the only chance I’ve got left, if Audrey holds out long enough.”

  “That’s not what I meant. The seventies mission is dangerous. You don’t know the details yet.”

  I give him a look. “I’ve done dangerous before.”

  He shakes his head. “Not this dangerous.”

  “Porter, I’ve been shot, stabbed, and almost strangled to death. What could possibly be worse than what I’ve already gone through?”

  Porter’s pale, watery eyes meet mine, and he frowns. “The Mafia.”

  Chapter 22

  Preparations

  For the next week, I’m like a caged animal, pacing back and forth in my pen, foaming at the mouth, ready to get back out there. I don’t care how dangerous my next mission is. I’ll walk through fire to get Audrey what she needs.

  Which is exactly what I’ll be doing.

  As I left Porter’s, he gave me a thin file on my past life in 1978. I’ve gone over every inch. In the life before I was Ivy at AIDA, I was Janet McKenzie, one of the many daughters of a New York City mobster. An internet search on James “Jimmy” McKenzie brings up thousands of results about his misdeeds and one very chilling mug shot. Sagging, glaring eyes, and a vicious expression that makes goosebumps bloom across my arms. He was the type of guy who chopped up ex-girlfriends and tossed their pieces across their mothers’ front yards. He was the type of guy who locked little kids in refrigerators to coerce their parents into paying their debts. Porter was right when he said the mission is dangerous. I’ll be heading straight into the lion’s den, right into the middle of a mob family without the proper training. The family’s instinct is distrust. The slightest suspicious look or remark could get a knife to my throat.

  So I’ve got to do my research. Alone this time. Without Micki.

  The only problem is, there isn’t much. Not on Janet anyway. She’s this obscure kid, only mentioned now and then along with Jimmy’s other children, and usually described as crazy. There’s a copy of a letter from one of her siblings recounting a night when they found her wandering down their street stark naked. I frown, feeling bad for her. Living in a family like hers would definitely make someone go insane.

  She died when she was seventeen, obviously, but no one knows how or why, and there’s no exact date. The history records have forgotten all about her. And that makes the goosebumps rise too.

  Is Jimmy the kind of guy who murders his own daughter, then covers it up?

  There are a few scribbles in Micki’s handwriting on sticky notes inside the file. After reading a couple, it looks like she was working on Janet’s cause of death, trying to complete the records.

  When had Micki made the notes? Before I met her? Or did she start working on them after I told her about my plans to retrieve the lost data? Would she tell Gesh what I was trying to do? Had she already? Would his Descenders be waiting for me?

  One of the notes catches my eye. Three words: Ypsilanti State Hospital.

  A memory flashes through my mind. It was no ordinary hospital; it was an asylum, plain and simple. I remember walking the halls, the long corridors stretching out as far as I could see. Me, shuffling along in slippers, a nurse guiding me to my room. Moving slowly, so slowly a spider could spin a web from my shoulder to the ceiling. My mind blank, my emotions dulled.

  It isn’t a welcome memory.

  Micki said I would start remembering my past lives. I guess she was right.

  On Saturday morning, I’m pulled away from more Janet McKenzie research by a knock on the front door. It’s Jensen, grinning like a loon. I completely forgot I promised we’d work on his car today. His shaggy hair is tucked under his beanie. His black jacket hangs open over a faded flannel shirt and fitted white henley. I shake my head as we head to the garage, wondering if he knows how perfect he always looks.

  Knowing him, he does.

  Erasing the Lines

  “Try it now,” I say, peering around the hood of Jensen’s Corolla.

  He turns the ignition, and the car rumbles to life. His eyes light up through the grimy windshield. “You did it.”

  “Yeah, but we’re not done yet.” There’s a wheezing sound coming from the fuel injectors, and the belts are whining more than Claire when she doesn’t get her way. “There’s still a lot of work to do before she’s ready to race.”

  He cuts the engine and climbs out of the driver’s seat to join me under the hood. I flatten myself across the engine and the mess of tubes and connectors, reaching down to the timing belt. My fingers run along its frayed length. “This needs replacing. It’s too brittle to last much longer. Can you hand me that socket wrench over there?”

  He slides between me and the workbench, his hand grazing the side of my hip as he squeezes past. It’s the third time he’s touched me like that this afternoon, and it’s starting to weird me out. Earlier, when he handed me a pair of pliers, his fingers brushed mine in a way that seemed intentional. Especially when he could’ve just dropped them in my hand. Then later, we bumped into each other as we both rounded the front fender at the same time. I raised my arms so I wouldn’t get grease on his shirt and squeezed by on my tiptoes. He, on the other hand, placed both hands on my waist and “helped” guide me past. I didn’t think friends touched each other like that, but I’m not exactly well versed in the friendship realm. He probably doesn’t mean anything by it. He probably touches all the girls like that. But even so, each time it happens, I become hyperaware of him, hypersensitive to his touch, and lose my concentration. I can still feel that spot on my hip like he seared a mark on my skin.

  “How long will it take to replace it?” He hands me the wrench, then leans back against the workbench, resting his elbows on it.

  “Not long.” I loosen the alternator bolts to I can get to the timing belt pulleys. “We can do it Saturday, no prob. Should only take a few minutes.”

  When he doesn’t say anything for a while, I glance over my shoulder and totally catch him staring at my butt. He snaps his eyes to the garage ceiling and rubs the back of his neck like nothing happened, but I know what I saw. I stand up so fast, so surprised to catch anyone, let alone Jensen, checking out my Base Life body, that I smack my head against the hood, drop the wrench, and spit out one very long, very bad word.

  Jensen leaps to my side. “You OK?”

  I press my hand to the top of my head, feeling a bump forming, biting my lip.

  Jensen snares me around the waist. “Let me look at it,” he says, trying to pull my hand down.

  I don’t
want him to look at it. I don’t want to drop my hand, because pressing it against the pain is the only thing keeping me from stringing another long line of profanities together. And I don’t want him to stand so close or have his arm around my waist. It’s too dangerous.

  I wriggle out of his grasp and put some distance between us. “I’m fine. It’s nothing.”

  “What happened? What spooked you?”

  “You did. You were checking me out.” Maybe it’s the pain, I don’t know, but something inside doesn’t want to filter everything I say anymore.

  “So? I check you out all the time.” He gives me this wry smile and steps closer, but I back away and bump into the workbench. “What’s the big deal, Wayfare? We’re both hot. It’s only natural to want to enjoy the view now and then.”

  I can’t decipher if he’s really saying what I think he’s saying, or if I’ve knocked my head so hard I’m hallucinating. “Did you just say I was hot?”

  “You make it sound like that’s news.”

  “It is news. I’m not…I mean…no one ever…”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  I stare at him, my head swimming, my eyes watering from the pain. Is he being serious? No guy, not ever, has told me I was hot, or beautiful, or attractive in any way, shape, or form while in my Base Life body. And as completely pathetic as it sounds, I’ve wanted to feel the tiniest bit desirable for such a long time. In my own skin. As Alex, not as Susan or Shooter or Lo Jie. And here’s Jensen, one of the hottest guys at South View High School, saying I’m hot. He must be teasing.

  “I’ve been checking you out for years. You’re telling me you just now noticed?”

  “I…”

  He reaches for me. “Let me look at it.”

  I step up to him, frowning, making sure he sees I’m frowning, and drop my hand. I don’t like the way he flirts with me when he knows I have a boyfriend, and I really don’t like the way I enjoy it. I can’t slip up and let him think I’m into it. Into him. The way he moves and touches me, with all his confident moxie, like no girl on earth would refuse him. I frown even harder, my expression reaching scowl territory.

  “Smashed up pretty good there, Wayfare. You need ice.”

  He guides me to the house and into the kitchen, opening doors for me along the way. Gray winter light seeps in through the windows, and soft, grainy shadows sit in the corners of the room. All is quiet as he snags an ice pack from the freezer and hands it to me. I sit on one of the barstools at the kitchen island, ice pack pressed to my head, frowning down at a crusted splatter of spaghetti sauce on the counter from the night before.

  “Did Gran run to the store?” Jensen asks, looking around.

  I shrug. “I guess.”

  “So we’re alone?”

  My breath hitches in my chest. The smack on my head must’ve knocked me into an alternate reality, one where everything Jensen says makes my stomach do a backflip. Or maybe I’ve descended back in time, before I met Blue, when Jensen was the only boy I ever thought about. “I guess,” I say again.

  He leans against the counter beside me, his arm brushing against mine. “How long do you think she’ll be?”

  I shrug again. “Ten, fifteen minutes?”

  “Plenty of time to do the dirty.”

  My eyes snap to his. “What?”

  “Dishes.” He laughs and heads toward a stack on the counter. He fills one side of the sink with sudsy water.

  “Oh.” My shoulders slump. I totally thought he was going to make a move. The move I could feel coming, inching closer each day. The move I didn’t know I wanted him to make until right that instant, when disappointment filled my chest.

  Turns out he just wanted to do something nice for Gran.

  What the hell is wrong with me? I toss the ice pack back in the freezer and join him at the sink, working grease from my hands under a stream of warm water. I don’t need ice. I need pain. I need a throbbing headache. Anything to distract me from my few moments alone with Jensen.

  He scrubs at a plate, and I grab the spray nozzle, press the trigger, and shoot it full-blast in my side of the sink. My frustration eases slightly.

  Jensen hands me the squeaky-clean plate, I spray off the suds, then I place it in the dish rack to dry. Again and again, he passes me a dish and I blast it with water. Killing the bubbles. Dulling the thrill that dared bloom inside me a moment ago.

  I’m a horrible person.

  Blue deserves better.

  And maybe I’ll be better the next time around. In my next life. I’ll write a letter, give it to Porter for safekeeping. I’ll remind my future self to find Blue and apologize to him for all the hell I’ve put him through.

  “I can pick up a new timing belt after school tomorrow,” Jensen says.

  I nod and blast more suds. Warm mist sticks to my cheeks. My forearms. The kitchen windowpane.

  “What time should I get here next Saturday?” he asks.

  “Whenever.” Blast, blast, blast.

  “Ten?”

  “Sure.” Blast, blast.

  “Anything else I should pick up?” He hands me a bowl this time.

  “A new fuel injector wouldn’t hurt, but I’ll try cleaning this one first. Sometimes they just get gunky. That would save you about sixty bucks.” I spray the bowl and balance it behind the plates.

  “Yeah, cool. That sounds good.”

  There’s all this awkward silence between us, and I hate it, and I hate myself, and I’m frowning so hard at the dishes I could probably scare the dirt and grime straight down the drain.

  When I turn back toward him to grab the next dish, he leans down and touches his mouth to mine. Softly. Barely. Lightning quick. Just like that.

  Everything stops. My breath, my heartbeat, my whirring mind, my throbbing head.

  My pent-up frustration dissolves on his lips.

  He gives me this sheepish look, like he’s worried I might be upset. But when I don’t scold him or push him away, or do that frown-scowling thing, he leans in again. He kisses me softly, gentle and sweet, but then, before I know it, I’m caught up in his arms.

  And it’s good. Oh, is it good. Better than I ever imagined.

  His hands are soapy and wet, and the water soaks through the back of my shirt, but I don’t care.

  It isn’t perfect and effortless and fluid like it is with Blue. It’s awkward, and our mouths don’t move in rhythm. It feels childish, almost, like two kids trying it out for the first time. But that doesn’t mean I want it to end. It feels like jumping from a tire swing into the water, like finally having the courage to let go, fall through the air, and trust yourself enough to go under.

  My first real kiss in my own skin.

  He stole it, but I’d never dream of asking him to give it back. It belongs to him now, and that’s fine by me.

  On the surface, I’d kept the lines of our friendship clearly drawn. But down deep, way down in the shadowy places of my heart, behind doors I’ve been too afraid to open, the lines are smudged. And even though I pretend, even though I hope, there are no constants when it comes to Blue. Just the ebb and flow of variables, rubbing against the constant that is Jensen. Blue is a sea of unruly waves, choppy one moment, still as glass the next. Jensen is a stone, weathered, maybe, but always solid, firm, there. The same. It’s one thing that keeps me grounded. One thing that keeps me from losing my ever-loving mind. And each time Blue changes direction, he wears away the truth, smearing those thick black lines until there is only gray.

  Do I pull out a Sharpie and re-ink the lines? Or do I wrap myself in gray?

  My thoughts tip and turn, warring over whether I should stop kissing Jensen. Maybe it should be an easy decision. Maybe it would be for anyone else. Technically, I’m still with Blue, at least until I get a chance to talk to him, explain why I’m giving up, why I need to move on right now, and that maybe we can pick back up in the next life. That’s why my body is tense, my hands curled into fists as my lips melt into Jensen’s, half of me w
anting, half of me angry.

  Angry at both of us.

  My body makes the decision for me. I’m still holding the spray nozzle. My angry fist closes around the trigger, and Jensen and I are blasted apart by a stream of water. He jumps back, completely soaked, jaw dropped, hands out, looking at me like I shot him.

  “What was that for?” He swipes water from his face, laughing, thinking I meant it as a joke, or maybe an accident.

  But honestly, I think it was the only way my subconscious could stop what was happening.

  “I have a boyfriend.” I say it firm, lay it right out there.

  His playful expression clouds over. “Come on, Wayfare.”

  “Come on what?”

  “We’re not at school. You don’t have to keep pretending about the boyfriend thing.”

  At first it takes a minute to realize what he just said. Then I feel sick, like when Audrey and I used to ride the Tilt-a-Whirl at the county fair. My stomach churns, my hands shake, and I’m tempted to spray him again. “You think I’m making him up?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  I’ve never felt truly mortified until this very moment. I thought Jensen was my friend, but this feels like something Tabitha would do. This feels like the worst kind of high school humiliation, like his friendship and flirting was simply setting up the pins so he could knock them down.

  “I think you need to leave.” I move toward the kitchen door.

  “If you have a boyfriend, then where is he? Why isn’t he here instead of me? If he’s so real, why doesn’t your family know about him?”

  I stop and spin around. “How do you know my family doesn’t know about him?”

  “I asked Audrey.”

  And the hits just keep on coming. “You talked to Audrey about me? Behind my back?”

  “At the hospital, when you were in the bathroom, I just asked her if you had a boyfriend. She said no. I thought you told her everything. I just figured—”

  “You figured what? That I couldn’t possibly get a boyfriend? Because I’m Wayspaz the Fix-It Freak?”

  His brow furrows. “That’s not at all what I’m saying.”