Red and Black

by Nancy O'Toole Meservier

  “Noel…” I started.

  He dropped his hands to his sides.

  “I need more training,” he said. “Right away.”

  “Okay. Fine. We can push up Saturday’s session to tomorrow—”

  “First thing, then.”

  “Don’t you have class? I thought Amity said it was fine to go back now—”

  “I don’t care about class!” Noel shook his head violently. “Don’t you see I have more important things to worry about now?”

  He stared at me accusingly. And for just one moment, I saw a flash of it, that wildness that appeared in the other drones, the first sign of madness.

  And then he shook his head and backed off. His shoulders slumped, his entire body deflating.

  “S-sorry,” he stammered. “I shouldn’t be getting mad at you. I’m just…”

  “Angry,” I replied. Then paused, shaking my head. “Go to class, Noel. I have to work at Colossus all morning anyway. We can meet after lunch.”

  “Sure,” Noel said. “I’ll see you then.”

  And with that, he left the room, his footsteps echoing off the uncarpeted hallways.

  I let out a long sigh. Why had I made that call? It would take a lot more than a couple boxing classes to make Noel a fighter, and they had been too exposed, too close to a street that wasn’t exactly empty. If Noel had been taken in by the police, there was too much of a risk that he might let something slip. Not only about Calypso’s plans, but about me as well. It may not have been the call that Amity would have made, but it made sense to me.

  Only…that was a lie. Because it hadn’t really been about protecting Calypso, or myself. It had been about protecting Noel. Somewhere in it all, I had started to see him as a friend. And I had done this despite the fact that the kid had already been cursed the moment I met him. The pieces of Noel White had been fading away for days, and it wouldn’t be long before he was just like the rest. Crazy. Obsessive. A drone controlled by nothing more than his desire to please Calypso.

  And there was nothing I could do about that.

  There wasn’t much of a point in hanging around the Grand Bailey any longer, so I drove across the river and headed back home. My house eventually came into view, the front lawn overgrown, the driveway all broken up, and the light to the living room still on. I pulled in and went to the kitchen side door (we had never been a “front door” type of family). I walked into the kitchen, placing my takeout bag of overpriced pasta in the fridge.

  I could hear the buzz of conversation coming from the living room television. I headed in that direction to find Claire sitting on the recliner and Mariah fast asleep on the couch. I blinked. It wasn’t even nine o’clock, and already she was dead to the world.

  Claire gave me a confused look and opened her mouth as if to speak. She paused, looking at Mariah, before jerking her head toward the stairwell. I followed her to the base of the stairs.

  “Why are you home so early?” she asked, voice low. “Please don’t tell me you fucked it up.”

  “Yeah. I kind of did.”

  “Oh…well, sorry.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Do you, um…want to talk about it?”

  “No, not really.”

  Claire relaxed a fraction. I turned my attention toward Mariah and nodded.

  “How long has she been like that?” I asked.

  “A half hour, I guess. Did you know she’s been having problems sleeping?”

  I nodded. Another day, I might have pointed out that Mariah’s sleepless nights were, at least in part, Claire’s fault. She worried that her younger sister, so close to graduation, would end up another high school dropout, just like her big brother. But after everything that had happened with Dawn, and Dana, and Noel? I found I didn’t have the strength for it.

  “What about you?” I said, turning back to her. “Has everything been okay?”

  She blinked in surprise.

  “Um…yeah, I guess,” she said. “If you take away the fact that my best friend hates me and is turning everyone else against me. And I was trying to help her too.”

  “With the fight? The one with Drake?”

  She let out a sniff and rolled her eyes before speaking.

  “I suppose Mariah told you.”

  “She knew I was worried about you.”

  “Yeah…well, you would have found out eventually, I guess.” She glanced off to the side. “Yes, I got into a fight with Drake. But it was for her, you know. For Janice.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t think I understand.”

  “Of course you don’t.” Claire’s voice was sharp. “You always think the worst of me. Psycho Claire can’t keep her head straight. Too ADD to concentrate on class. Of course she’d start picking fights now.”

  Lights flashed at the edge of my vision, urging me to lash out. But instead, I remembered my talk with Mariah last week, about how our screaming matches never solved anything. Sure, Claire was the one doing the baiting now, but I didn’t have to rise to it.

  “How about you tell me then,” I said. “Why did you get into a fight with Drake?”

  She paused. For a moment, I thought she would just roll her eyes at me and storm off. But instead, she took a seat on the staircase, a couple rows up.

  “Drake…well, he’s been hitting Janice,” Claire said. “I know he is…I saw it…but when I confronted him about it, he just laughed it off. Said I was just jealous that Janice was spending all her time with him now instead of me. He told me how he almost didn’t ask her out because he assumed we were more than friends. How I just needed to get over the fact that Janice isn’t a dyke like me. And then I was hitting him.”

  Tears formed in the corners of her eyes as she spoke. I sighed and leaned against the banister, letting her continue.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me sometimes. I just get so mad. And then I don’t even know what I’m doing. It’s like I don’t have control over myself anymore. I don’t understand why. And Mariah…she’s just so good. She can’t relate.”

  “I can.”

  Claire’s eyes flickered up to mine.

  “And how do you deal with it?” she asked.

  By working for a woman who was slowly building an army of brainwashed drones? By kidnapping and hurting people for money? By taking on a job doing something I knew my mother and sisters would never approve of?

  But of course, I couldn’t tell Claire that. So I gave her the most honest answer I could.

  “Very badly.”

  She let out a snort.

  “You give the best advice, big brother,” she said.

  “It’s part of the job description.”

  In response, Claire shook her head and wiped the snot from her nose on the sleeve of her sweater. And I found myself thinking about how if Mom had been there, she would have thought to bring a tissue box, or something.

  “So…are you ready for the meeting tomorrow?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Mariah and I talked about it. About how I’m so sorry, and so thankful Drake’s parents aren’t pressing any charges.” She shook her head. “It’s bullshit, but if it means getting back in…”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “You want to go back?” I asked.

  “Well…yeah. I mean, I hate being at school, but I have less than a year left. I want to be able to say that I managed to make it through. No offense.”

  “None taken,” I said with a sigh. “Having only a GED hasn’t helped me all that much. You deserve better, Claire.”

  My sister shifted uncomfortably at the praise.

  “Yeah. Well…you did, too.”

  She moved to her feet.

  “Time to numb my pain with more reality television,” she said.

  I let out a chuckle and nodded, pausing to watch her take her seat. After that, I headed back up to my room.

  As I threw my dress shirt into the hamper, I found myself thinking back. Way back. Ten years ago, to the last time I had seen my father. I had skipped school
, putting off going home as long as I could, if just to delay seeing the disappointment on Mom’s face. But eventually, I got hungry enough to face the music.

  I remember pushing open the kitchen door and seeing the back of my father’s large, hulking form. That had caught me off guard. Dad was constantly away for work and hadn’t been expected home for days. Then I saw what he was standing over—my mother, on the floor, clutching the right side of her face, her eyes open in a mixture of fear and shock.

  It took me embarrassingly long to figure out what had happened. My dad may have been a dick, but he had never hit any of us. Hell, I don’t think I had ever heard him raise his voice. He just wasn’t an emotional guy. So when he turned around to look at me as I stood in that doorway, and I saw the fury in his eyes, I found I couldn’t move.

  And then he had left our lives forever.

  Mariah had confessed, years later, that she and Claire had witnessed the whole thing. How our mother, who had never asked for anything, had confronted Dad about how often he was away. In return, he had snapped, talking about how much he did for us all and how no one ever appreciated it.

  They had left the room right before he had hit her, but had been close enough to hear the impact.

  So I could completely see why Claire had taken a swing at Drake. Hell, had I been in that situation, I probably would have done the same thing. No matter what, it wasn’t right to hit someone you cared about. It didn’t change the fact that you had stabbed someone in the back who had put their trust in you. That just made you a villain.

  I should know. I worked with them every day.

  13

  Dawn

  “Let me see the text message.”

  Sunshine sat on the couch in my living room, surrounded by papers and photographs. Over the past hour or so, I had watched this arrangement spread from the couch where Sunshine was sitting, to the coffee table, and then the floor. The only free surface was taken up by Lockheed, who had jumped on the couch mid-expansion and had quickly decided to take a nap.

  A local designer had expressed interest in partnering with her blog, which meant Sunshine had to figure out a way to balance her double major with what was basically a business transaction. The long-term goal was to turn this partnership into an internship next year. When she had mentioned this to me on Friday, I had offered up my place as tribute, given that it allowed more space to spread out than her tiny dorm room. Plus, I still had a ways to go on my presentation, now due on Thursday.

  In deference to Sunshine’s more space-consuming task, I had taken a spot on the floor, perched on a throw pillow. In order to salvage any space on the coffee table, I had needed to move the ever-growing pile of mail that had built up in my mother’s absence. The collection of bills, credit card offers, and flyers now sat on the floor, our unopened invitation to the annual Harvest Charity Ball perched on the top.

  While not a slob, I wasn’t exactly the best housekeeper.

  As we worked, the television played the news in the background, the volume on mute.

  Sunshine held out her hand, waiting for a reply. I hesitated until those expectant dark eyes forced me into submission. I reached into my pocket for my phone.

  It was true that today’s session was supposed to be about getting work done, but I was also looking for a distraction from the memory of my failed first date with Alex.

  Sunshine’s lips pursed as she read over Alex’s text, relying heavily on her vast experience of failed first dates to guide her judgment. At least that’s how I imagined it.

  “And when did he leave?”

  I frowned. The answer—somewhere between chatting with my brand-new hacker buddy and a brawl with three masked thugs—didn’t really feel appropriate. I wasn’t quite up for letting Sunshine in on my nighttime antics. It was nice to have something that was just mine, after all, a secret no one else could know. That, plus it granted her precious, precious plausible deniability. Actuals might have forged understandings with law enforcement in other cities, but here in Bailey City, it was still pretty illegal.

  Of course, that meant she couldn’t get the whole story.

  “I dunno…it was before the food arrived,” I finally answered.

  “Well, then,” she said. “I can’t really say if he’s being honest here, but you don’t dine and dash and forget to take the food. This wasn’t some elaborate scheme to get a free dinner out of you.”

  “I would have paid anyway.”

  “If he had made you pay on the first date, then he’s not the kind of guy who deserves a second one.”

  Sunshine passed back the phone to me. I accepted it and placed it on the table.

  “It just…doesn’t make sense,” I said. “A family emergency. That’s a perfectly valid reason to duck out of a date, but why wait so long? Why not tell the waiter to fill me in when I got back to the table? Hell, he could have texted me earlier, even if he didn’t have time to tell me the whole story.”

  Not to mention it would have clued me in on how long he had waited at the table for me. I mean, was this actually a “family emergency,” or was this solely because I had left for so long?

  I shook my head and sighed. After a moment of silence, Sunshine spoke up.

  “You know why I don’t go on a lot of second dates?”

  “Because most guys are dicks?” I said, echoing a previous conversation of ours, even though I didn’t really agree with the sentiment.

  “Well, there is that. But it’s mostly because no matter how straightforward a guy acts, no matter how nice he may seem, it doesn’t change the fact that you don’t really know him. So you’re going to be overanalyzing little things. Like, he pulled out my chair for me. Does that mean he’s just trying to be respectful, or does that indicate he might have outdated ideas on gender?”

  I nodded.

  “Now, combine that with the fact that you’re super-sensitive about the types of messages you’re putting out—‘if I text too soon does that make me look overeager’ syndrome—and the first few dates, while fun and exciting, also take a lot of mental energy. And that’s a whole lot of work for someone who isn’t worth it. So I guess the question you need to ask yourself is, does Alex seem like he’s worth it?”

  I frowned, not sure what to make of Sunshine’s thought process. The first handful of dates did take a lot of mental energy, and who would want to waste that on someone who wasn’t worth it? But how could you know if someone was worth it after one date? Especially if you didn’t know the person all that well to begin with? It took more than a single dinner (or, in my case, cupcakes and the promise of dinner) to really understand someone.

  At the same time, I had been given a crazy perfect opportunity for a clean break. Sure, I would probably have to take a different route to Northwest Comics to ward off any awkward encounters, but if I didn’t want to pursue things any further, I didn’t have to do anything, not really. And if I decided I wanted to try again, all I had to do was send a text. It should have been so easy. After all, he was a nice, friendly guy, who clearly cared a lot about his family. When was that not a positive?

  Unless, of course, it had been a lie. Maybe he hadn’t left because of a family thing, but because I had abandoned him to talk with Dana? Maybe he was just trying to be nice, cushion the blow? And while analyzing his texts took a lot of “mental energy,” as Sunshine had put it, so did putting up with my social awkwardness long enough for me to get comfortable with a person. Had Alex realized he had bitten off more than he could chew? Was I doing him a kindness by cutting him free?

  “Hey,” Sunshine said, bringing me back to the present. “Your mother’s on TV.”

  I paused and turned toward the flat-screen to see my mother sitting in an interviewer’s chair. She nodded, eyes focused on whomever she was speaking to. I reached for the remote and turned it up. Her voice filled the room.

  “—was fortunate enough to grow up in the San Jose area, which is why I chose to base my books here. Unfortunately, some things have c
hanged in the past twenty-five years, which many residents have been so kind to point out during my tour here.”

  Her lips spread into a small, amused smile as she spoke. She was dressed in a black blazer over a burgundy dress shirt and dark slacks, her only jewelry being a gold chain and her wedding ring. Her hair and makeup were low-key but perfectly applied, giving her the appearance of someone who looked well put together, but not frivolous. This described my ever-practical mother to a T.

  My mother and I had never been hugely close. Growing up, it had been Dad who was there for me when I needed someone, or comforted me when I was upset. He seemed to have a sixth sense for picking up on distress in his children, an ability clearly cultivated after years with my more emotionally closed-off older brother. When he died, that role had fallen to Mom, who, for the first time in her life, found herself unprepared for a job.

  I don’t mean to make it sound like she was a crappy mother. We had always gotten along well enough. Mom had never been cruel or overly strict (well, at least compared to some of my peers’ parents), but the words “warm” and “nurturing” just never described her. So, when forced into these roles, things often came off as awkward between us. It was why we texted instead of called, and usually kept our conversations to things that didn’t involve a lot of emotional involvement: school, work, doing the dishes, etc. It had been especially difficult in the weeks following my abduction, making her book tour feel like a godsend, at least to me.

  “But the question that must be on everyone’s lips is the real mystery that has dominated your life for the past few months,” the interviewer, a small, white woman with dark hair, said. “The disappearance of your own daughter.”

  I froze and saw the smile fall from Mom’s face. It was a small change, and I couldn’t help but wonder if the interviewer noticed it.

  “Our family is so pleased to have Dawn back at home,” my mother began after taking in a breath.

  My finger reached for the power button on the remote. I pressed down and turned the TV off.