“I’ll talk to him,” Britta offered. She got out and walked around, placing her hand on her brother’s shoulder as he fumed. She led him away from the car, beauty that she was, jamming sense into him wherever possible.
“She’ll calm him down,” Jamie assured me.
I yelped when I turned to talk to Jamie, and caught a glimpse of Foss sliding into Britta’s vacant seat. “You were right to leave Jens. He doesn’t understand what we have.”
I cast Jamie a look of warning before answering. “Hey, buddy. Whatcha doing here?”
“I came to get you and take you home. A home for just the two of us. We’ve lived in a group long enough. It’s time we started our married life together.”
His normally harsh voice was gone, and in its place was a poet. A true softy had replaced Foss, and it was so unsettling that Jamie could only gawk, mouth agape.
Thanks for all that help, big brother. I said to Jamie bitterly.
I, um. I’m sorry for not taking you seriously. Then I heard him laughing in his head and letting slip a verbal chuckle.
Foss reached up and stroked my arm, cupping my elbow with gentle fingers. “You shouldn’t have run away from me, though. I’m ready to be with you now. Stina helped me see how good we are together. I think I made it clear in the hotel back there that you can have me anytime you want.”
Jamie choked on his laughter, his face turning red. “Ho! Okay, friend. Let’s you and I go for a walk.” Jamie finally decided to be helpful, so I shot him a look of gratitude.
“I won’t leave her,” Foss vowed.
“Oh, I know. I just want to properly congratulate you on your marriage. Lucy is like a sister to me. I want to hear all the things you have planned for your life together. I want to help however I can. You two are such a sweet pair.”
Foss beamed at finally being taken seriously. He accompanied Jamie outside in the biting cold, but not before kissing my hand and my cheek, assuring me he’d only be a moment.
Stina tapped on the glass with a wicked grin. “Hello, Tribeswoman. Are you enjoying having the best of both worlds?”
I unlocked my door and slammed it into her, knocking the cocky grin off her face. She banged into the car next to us as I hopped out, ready for a fight. “What’s your damage, Heather?” I shouted. “What’s your glitch? If you’ve got a problem with me, deal with me. Leave Foss alone. He’s been through enough, and he’s going to remember this whole thing. He doesn’t need you messing with his head and forcing him to feel things he doesn’t. No one asked you to tag along.”
Stina righted herself, but I’d had enough. I’d long forsaken the peaceful teachings of Martin Luther King, so I felt only marginal guilt when I shoved her hard against the car, her tiny skirt shifting in the scuffle.
I’d never seen Stina’s cow’s tail before, but at the jostle, the foot-long oddity slipped out from the tuck job she’d done under her skirt.
It was the fight she’d been looking for from me. “Oh, honey. You shouldn’t have done that. Your adoring fans aren’t here to save you this time.”
Since the day we’d met, she hated me. Shoving turned into slapping and body-checking, but I got tired of that quickly. My conscience tugged when I threw the first punch, and before I knew it, we were a brawling mess of Jerry Springer theatrics in the parking lot. I was grateful Foss made me learn how to deliver a decent blow. My rage made up for her know-how, so we were pretty evenly matched.
“Break it up, you two!” Jens shouted, running over to us with wide eyes.
“She did this! She messed with Foss’s head!”
Foss’s arms were suddenly around me, yanking me back.
Jens was on Stina, launching her away from me, shocked at the intensity of our hatred for each other.
Her words came back at me with vengeance. “I didn’t bring out anything that wasn’t already there! You can’t have one of the four chiefs, plus Jens following you around like a dog. Now Jens can see you for what you really are!”
“You’re insane!” I shouted. “I’ve never done a thing to you to deserve this! And what’s Foss done?”
“He’s a Grimen. That’s reason enough for me.” Stina’s lips pursed, and I called out a warning. Jens was on it. He cuffed his hand over Stina’s mouth and knocked her to the ground, his knee pressing on her spine to keep her there. “Get in the car. Everyone. Jamie, load up everything that’s ours from Stina’s car into yours.”
Jamie and Britta obeyed, but I seethed in Foss’s arms as I yelled at my boyfriend. “I told you what she was up to, and you didn’t listen to me! Then you accuse me of sleeping with Foss? I’m not going anywhere with you!”
Jens struggled to keep Stina still, her sexy clothing not the best wear for being pinned to the icy ground. “I got it. You were right. Just get in the car. You can drive.”
“Thanks for your permission,” I jeered. “I’m the one with the keys, you jag!” I stepped on Stina’s bejeweled hand as I got into the car, ignoring her rage-filled howl. I started up the ignition and turned on the radio to drown out the sounds of everyone else. I watched Jens look over his shoulder for witnesses, and then stuff Stina into the trunk of her own car, but the sight gave me little satisfaction.
He climbed into the backseat between his sister and Foss and pulled out his phone. He called a guy named Tucker, gave him our location and asked if he could let Stina out of her trunk in an hour. Very chivalrous.
The classic rock song ended, and the gravel-voiced DJ came on. “Hey, next up we have the newest from Static Neverland. That should warm you up on this chilly November morning. Here’s hoping we stay above freezing a few days longer.”
My mouth dropped open at the DJ’s mention of the month I had not expected to come so soon, and I froze before I could put the car into gear. The next song started, but I didn’t really hear it. Everything was noise. Even Jens yelling at me was just a blur of sound.
I suddenly forgot how to drive. My heart was so heavy, I felt like napping to ease the burden of it. “Somebody else drive,” I insisted, climbing past the console and switching places with a befuddled Jens so I could sit in back. Let Jamie ride shotgun next to his foul mood. Fine by me.
“Well, it’s no fun to yell at you if you’re not going to yell back,” Jens conceded, buckling himself into the driver’s seat.
I squeezed myself between Foss and Britta, staring down at my hands to see if they looked any different. September 3rd had come and gone without a thought. Though it had been true for weeks, in that moment, I felt it.
“What, Loos? Did Stina get one in on you?”
I shook my head. “Let’s just go. Sorry for running. You found me. You win.”
Jens scoffed and pulled out of the parking spot. “No one won this.” He sighed, exhaling his crazy and breathing in fresh perspective. “I should’ve listened to you about Foss. I thought you were exaggerating. Then when I walked in and he was sprawled out on the bed waiting for you, I should’ve let you explain instead of jumping down your throat.”
Jens gripped the steering wheel as he navigated through the winding lot. I knew he hated having these kinds of talks in front of the group as much as I did, but was muscling through the chagrin for the sake of peace among the ranks.
Since I said nothing, Jens felt the need to fill the silence. “Regardless of how much of a jerk I’m being, you can’t run like that. It’s dangerous and doesn’t actually solve anything. I can’t believe you’d just ditch me like that for losing my temper in a pretty confusing situation. Not cool, Loos. I deserve better than that from you, and you deserved better than what you got from me.” He cleared his throat, not loving having a private conversation so out in the open. “So let’s be better to each other. Can we just truce it out?”
I nodded, sullen as he drove us around the vast parking lot, trying to locate an exit in the maze. “Yup. Sorry for my part of it. Next time you find a naked man in my room, I’ll make sure we’re having lots of sex, so when you explode at me, it’ll
be legit.”
“That’s my girl.” He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Foss’s arm around me. “And lover boy should be back to his charming self by tonight or tomorrow. Stina’s not all that powerful.”
“Mm-hm.” I wasn’t really listening anymore. All I could think about was that I’d completely missed September 3rd on the calendar, and that was a crime I couldn’t forgive myself for. I thought I would be different, look different when I pictured myself at the age I now was, and I guess that had happened, just not how I expected it to. I had shorter hair, a black eye and was down too many pounds to look healthy. I guess I was older, much older than I expected to be.
“What’s wrong?” Jens pried, waiting his turn at the stop sign.
“Nothing important.” My stomach was empty, but I didn’t care. I felt empty all over. It really was nothing important, and I felt childish for being so sad about it.
Foss whispered in my ear, “When can we have some time just us?” I ignored him until he sucked my earlobe into his mouth, sending jolts of unwelcome heat through my weary body.
I gently pushed him away and wiped my ear off, ashamed at how readily my body responded to his seductions. “Tomorrow night, alright? Can you wait until then?”
Foss beamed a truly triumphant grin, and I felt a little guilty at putting off our encounter until after his joy juice ran out. “I can wait.” He brought my head to his chest, and despite Jens’s eyes on me in the rearview mirror, I sank into the comfort. Foss’s thick arm wrapped around me like a warm blanket I’d gone too much of my life without. I felt like crying, but was too sad to commit to the effort, and didn’t want to deal with the questions. So I let Foss be my comfort, as he had so many times before back in Undraland. I’d missed him, but most of all, I missed myself.
Jamie did his best to distract Jens with conversation, but after a few noncommittal grunts, the prince gave up and pried into my brain. “What’s September 3rd?”
Jens swerved for a second as he added up the months in his head. “Oh, shite! Just shite. A steaming pile of it.” He glanced at me in the mirror. “I’m sorry, Loos. I’ll turn around. Let me buy you something at the mall.”
“It’s fine. Just drive, Jens,” I said tonelessly.
When Linus and I were small, we begged like gypsies for our parents to take us to the circus for our birthday. What kid wouldn’t? The next year was the same until we had four straight years of birthdays celebrated at the circus. Sometimes Mom and Dad even drove us across the state just to make sure we could find one to go to relatively near our birthday.
When I turned eight, I asked Mom and Dad if we could have a real birthday party. They were hesitant, but if Linus and I were good at anything, it was wearing down the parentals. They finally agreed, and we were all set with invitations and everything.
Now that I understood Pesta and the whole mess, I knew it wasn’t their fault we had to move two days before the party, but when you’re a kid, the only people to blame are yourself and your parents, and I knew that one wasn’t on me.
We had circus birthdays until our sixteenth.
For my sweet sixteen, I again wanted a real birthday party. Linus had given up on the idea of birthdays being a big deal, but I had not. I was determined to redeem the day and make it an event. I bought streamers and balloons and even got a cake with clowns on it so we didn’t miss out on the whole circus experience, in case any of us actually enjoyed it still.
That’s the thing about always being the new kid. No one comes to your birthday party.
I spent my sweet sixteen crying in my brother’s arms. I was embarrassed and ashamed that my parents now knew I didn’t have any actual friends.
I had Linus, who died three years later.
My twentieth birthday was a bleak affair. I’d sprinkled the ashes not two months prior and still couldn’t bring myself to speak. Linus had programmed my phone to play a special song about farts sung to the tune of Happy Birthday that woke me to commemorate the first day I was no longer a teenager.
So I did what we would have done. I took myself to the circus.
Suffice to say, I was the only twenty-year-old woman sitting by herself at the circus that day, and probably every day before or since. I studied the clowns, desperately trying to find the best fake smile so I could practice it at home in the mirror. I cried silently through the entire show, and when it was over, an old lady who sold cotton candy took pity on me and gave me a hug. Sweet gal.
It was probably best I’d forgotten my birthday this year.
Jens was frantic. “Pick anything. Any store you want. Name the present, it’s yours.”
I don’t think I could’ve felt worse as we chugged along on the freeway, but listening to my boyfriend try to pull a belated gift out of his hat definitely pushed me down further into the muck. I cleared my throat and feigned indifference. “No, thanks. It’s fine. I told you it wasn’t anything important. And Jamie? If I say it’s nothing important, you don’t need to go picking around in my brain to fish it out. Total violation.”
“I’m sorry,” Jamie said, though I didn’t believe him.
Foss stroked my arm, and I wanted to punch him for being sweet to me when I was on the edge of bursting into tears. “What’s the significance? What’d I miss?”
“There’s no significance,” I answered succinctly.
Jens was visibly sweating as he turned off the freeway toward a cluster of generic stores. “It was her birthday. It’s a human thing. Every year, they celebrate the day they were born. They have parties, cake, gifts. It’s a lot like our coming of age parties, only theirs happen on a smaller scale every year.”
“That’s kind of sweet,” Britta remarked. “I should like to celebrate the people I love every year, not just once.”
Jens cringed. “Twenty-one is a big deal, the most important birthday to a lot of people, and I forgot hers.”
I pushed a curl behind my ear, and Foss held me closer. Of all the times for the jerk to sense my pain. “It’s not a big deal, Jens. I forgot it, too. We were in Undraland when it happened. I was probably in that jail cell, which is how lots of people end their twenty-first birthday bashes. I just took the direct route there.” I shook my head into Foss when Jens paled. “Could we just drop it?”
“Is there anything you wanted for your birthday? We’ll make a stop, babe. Whatever you want.” He pulled into a lackluster strip mall that had a tobacco store, a beef jerky outlet and a children’s shoe store. He pounded his fist on the steering wheel. “This sucks! I swore after I sat next to you at that terrible circus you went to last year that if I ever had the chance, I’d take you somewhere amazing.”
That was the punch in the gut. Worse than my parents knowing I had no friends, my boyfriend had witnessed me sobbing alone at the circus on my twentieth birthday. The utter embarrassment pushed me down lower yet. The depression was seeping into my pores, weighting my shoulders. I caught an unbidden sob in my hands, trying to stuff it back into my mouth, lest the entire car knew how childish I was being.
Jamie grabbed his chest, astonished at the devastation I felt. “I think that was the wrong thing to say.”
Jens shook his head and let out a grunt of frustration aimed at himself. “I know it was.” He looked in the rearview mirror at me, and I forced a smile. “The first year I get to buy you a present that Linus doesn’t have to pass off as his, and I blow it all over the place.”
I choked out a response that sounded light. “I’m dead, remember? Dead people don’t age, so I get to be twenty forever.” I pumped my fist in the air, trying to force a celebratory moment that fell like a deflated party balloon. Tears slid down my cheeks, but I kept my tone even, hoping they would go unnoticed, invisible against my pale and bruised skin. I practiced one of the clown’s painted smiles to pass off how okay I was with everything. With nothing. “C-Could you just turn on some music or something? I really, really, really don’t want to talk about it. And please don’t buy me anything. I’d just rath
er forget the whole thing. It’s not a big deal.” I wondered if my twenty-first birthday was when Linus came to me in that horrible dream. Perhaps we had spent it together, as much as we were able.
Jens looked like he felt about as low as I did, so he obeyed with no taunting, turning on a station that wasn’t too annoying. He drove us further north, and none of us spoke for hours as Foss stroked my cheek, keeping my few silent tears that fell onto his shirt between us.
14
Bits of Normal
We pulled into the next hotel on our stop just as the sun began to dip down below the horizon. No one had spoken the entire way, and I’d cried myself to sleep on Foss’s shoulder sometime before we crossed states.
“There’s a Huldra colony I trust not too far from here,” Jens informed us as he unloaded our overnight bags, and then helped his sister out of the car.
“Define ‘not too far’,” I yawned.
Jamie murmured, “Define ‘trust’.”
Jens shrugged, offering up his most evasive answer. “We don’t have to cross an ocean. So, you know, big plus. Can you imagine this lot on a plane?”
Foss awoke and pushed me away when he realized I was resting on him. “Get off me, Lucy. I’m not your pillow.”
I stretched, ready to put the last couple days behind me and start afresh. “Good to have you back, darling husband.” I kissed his cheek just to make him mad. He shoved me, and I shoved him back. Business as usual, thank goodness.
Jens held his hand out to me, but it felt too distant to take it. Instead I wrapped my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist, collapsing into him. I was tired of the chasm between us.
“That’s the stuff,” he sighed, kissing me once. “There we are. We lost us for a little bit there. I didn’t like it.”
“Me neither. Let’s never fight again. That sounds doable, right?”
“I’m nothing if not doable,” he teased, waggling the eyebrows I loved. Foss pushed passed Jens in a huff. “Suzy Sunshine’s bunking with you tonight, Jamie. I’ve seen enough of Foss Junior for a lifetime.”
The Other Side: A Fantasy Adventure (Undraland Book 5) Page 7
