“Yes, but—”
“And look at you! You’re covered in dirt!”
“Yeah, but, Mrs. McKenzie please, I swear I’ve done all my homework for tomorrow. I’ll catch up for what I haven’t done today, I swear—”
“You’ll do it today. Those are the rules. Now, sit down,” Mrs. McKenzie said, pointing at the kitchen table.
Damien stood there, frozen. He felt dizzy with the turn the day had taken. Had it only been a few hours ago when he had been in the sunshine with Hakan and the twins and Koko? That felt like a mere glimpse into an alternate universe, constructed to show him what he could have, if he were different. If he were better.
“Damien,” Mrs. McKenzie said, a warning now as Damien stood there. For a moment, Damien imagined himself saying no. Telling her to fuck off, standing up for himself, running away. But he knew that Mrs. McKenzie would revoke her permission to see the Salgados. She’d tell them what he was really like, what he deserved. They wouldn’t be able to do anything about it even if they wanted to, which was doubtful.
Damien dragged his feet across the floor and sat.
The ropes, when they wound around him like a spell, felt more malicious and constraining than ever.
Mrs. McKenzie sat down next to him when she was done. Despite it being much later than seemed normal to start homework, she pulled his homework diary out and eyed it critically before taking the necessary materials out. Damien said nothing, a white, blank space.
“Damien,” Mrs. McKenzie said, but he was too far away. He felt sick. He felt wrong. There was thick sludge coating the inside of his throat and lungs. The signals between his brain and his arms had been cut. He had no control over his body.
“Damien!” Mrs. McKenzie snapped and, suddenly, there was a hand around his face, squeezing his cheeks as he was wrenched forwards and to the side so that he was facing her. He stared into her eyes, a soulless blue that couldn’t be compared to the sky that had sheltered him earlier that day.
“You will follow the rules of this house. When I say you sit, you sit. When I say you stay, you stay. When I say you don’t, you don’t. When I say you do, you do. Do I make myself clear?” she asked, each sentence a quick and precise cut. Damien remained silent. His hands were gripping the arms of the chair, but it still felt like he was slipping away. “Do. I. Make. Myself. Clear?”
“Yes,” Damien responded, word garbled by the fingers digging into his cheeks.
“Good. Now, work.”
Damien worked.
**********
Damien and Hakan took advantage of the warming weather to sprawl over long, flat cushions on the porch.
“Your face would fly off if you could run that fast,” Damien said, flipping the page of the graphic novel they were reading.
“She’s not going that fast.”
“How the hell would you know has fast she’s going? Look at all these speed lines. And how long did it take her to get from one point of Manhattan to the other?”
“I could do that.”
“Oh, please. As if you’re that fast.”
“Faster than you.”
“Oh, excuse my humanness, Mr. Howly McWolf-Man,” Damien teased. He tensed for a moment, looking at Hakan to see if the nickname had offended him. Hakan rolled his eyes.
“Race you,” he challenged, raising his eyebrows at Damien.
“Fine!”
Damien jumped up and Hakan followed him away from the house, nearing the forest where a stretch of grass made the perfect racing track.
“Alright. First one to get to that big boulder over there wins,” Damien said, pointing. Hakan nodded, smirking and rolling his shoulders. Damien didn’t bother tamping down the roll of his eyes.
“One…two…three!”
Damien bolted forwards but he needn’t have bothered. Hakan streaked past. It wasn’t like in the movies, where the person becomes a complete blur. Damien could see Hakan’s body strain forwards at an inhuman speed until, all of a sudden, he was at the finishing line.
“Wow…” Damien couldn’t help but say. Hakan walked back, shrugging in false humbleness. “Let’s try again.”
“You sure like losing, huh?”
“Shut up,” he dared to say. Hakan didn’t tell him off. “Let’s go.”
They got into position. At the Three!, Hakan bolted past, turned around, raced back, and then to the finishing line again. All before Damien had gotten three quarters of the way forward.
“I think you lost,” Hakan said smugly. Damien stuck his tongue out, but he couldn’t keep the impressed grin off his face.
“How many times can you do that?” Damien asked.
Hakan started running. Running and running until Damien felt dizzy trying to keep up just looking at him.
“Okay, okay! Jeez,” Damien said. Hakan stopped. He was barely winded.
“I bet you’re not that strong, though,” Damien challenged out of pure curiosity to see what a werewolf was capable of. Of what Hakan was capable of.
“Bring it.”
They walked over to the shed where the logs were kept, a few left over from winter. Damien heaved one up, larger than the usual log. He had to use both of his arms to cradle the wood against his chest and then use his whole body to throw it on the grass. It landed a mere foot from him.
Damien turned to Hakan, raising his eyebrows. Hakan actually laughed, not mocking but loudly, obviously enjoying himself.
Hakan picked up a piece of wood easily. There was no strain on his face even as he balanced it for an over-arm throw. The piece of wood sailed through the air, landing so far that Damien barely heard the thump of its landing. He stared.
“Okay, that was…pretty impressive. And you’re not even an adult werewolf,” Damien mused. Hakan shrugged.
They played hide and seek in the forest. First, with all of Hakan’s senses. Then, with his ears filled with music. Then, with his nose plugged. Finally, just a piece of Damien’s clothing hidden in the forest, under the ground.
Hakan found him every time. His scent. His heartbeat. Hakan could follow him anywhere.
“You’re like a real-life superhero,” Damien said as they stepped out of the forest for the last time. His eyes were bright. Hakan’s lips tipped in a smile.
“That’s not what makes a superhero. I’m no more heroic than you,” Hakan said. Damien couldn’t help but snort.
“Okay,” he said, feeling comfortable enough with Hakan to let himself be sarcastic. Hakan frowned at him.
“And what’s wrong with what I just said?” Hakan asked. Damien shook his head, flapping his hands at him.
“Okay, we gotta test your echolocation next,” Damien said, changing the subject. Hakan let it drop, but it lingered in Damien’s mind. He knew why what Hakan had said was ridiculous.
How could a person be called a hero if they couldn’t even help themselves? he thought bitterly.
If Damien could choose a superpower it would be the ability to disintegrate into the air and join the earth around him.
It was the sound of his own breaths that woke him up. The sound of an animal dying in his room. He opened his eyes but only darkness met him. Mrs. McKenzie always shut the door and the blinds. He closed and opened his eyes, and closed and opened his eyes, and there wasn’t a difference. There was just black, inside and out.
Vertigo overtook him. Damien wasn’t real. He was empty like the air around him. He was a nightmare he himself was having. His breath harshened further, even when he tried to squeeze his chest closed to not make noise. He almost wished somebody would come in and tell him off, some proof that he was real, the emptiness around him so deep and heavy it seemed to have its own gravitational pull, ripping him apart.
“Dad, Dad,” he pleaded, wishing, wishing, imagining the feel of his rough uniform against his face and the smell of his cologne like a ghost from a past embrace. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been hugged or kissed on the forehead like his parents used to do. If he could have it one
more time. Just one more time.
“Please,” he whispered, pulling desperately at the binds tying him to the bed, feeling on the verge of screaming.
Yesterday had been his fourteenth birthday, and no one had noticed. Stupidly, Damien had been waiting for a surprise. For some acknowledgment. Maybe the Salgados would find out, somehow, and invite him over, or Nicola would show up, or the McKenzies would do something, take him somewhere. But nobody had said anything at school, not even the teachers. Once he got home, it was back on the chair. Back to disappearing.
Something snapped inside Damien, the ominously subtle sound of a creature’s spine breaking. He had to get out of the binds, had to, had to. He pulled at each limb—inward, out, inward, out, and then all together, but there was no budge. He tried until he was left thrashing on the bed, his heart roaring in his head. There was an obliterating wildness inside him.
He didn’t know how long he stayed in that state, straining and pulling like he was possessed, until the pain of his raw skin penetrated the adrenaline pumping through him. He fell still, trembling. Exhausted. He breathed into the darkness, breathed it in, breathed it out, and it sounded like sobs, and it sounded like nothing. He lay there. A body that had crawled from the rotting earth, the mineral residue on his body salty and acidic.
When Mrs. McKenzie untied him in the morning, she frowned at his wrists and ankles, telling him off for the blood stains on the sheets, but it was as if she were talking at him from the other end of a tunnel. He watched his body as if through a thick pane of soundproof glass, observing it go through his morning routine like it was someone else. He was scared, somewhere deep, but the emotion was abstract, curled somewhere unreachable.
At school, he stared straight ahead, eyes unseeing, until something leaped the distance, an insect-hive buzz in the form of one of his classmates. If asked later, Damien wouldn’t be able to recall what Calvin had said passing him in the hall, but it had been fire on dry kindling. Before Damien knew what was happening, he had jumped on Calvin, rabid. He didn’t care if Calvin hit him back. He didn’t care about what happened to him. He wished he could break every one of Calvin’s bones with a viciousness he had never felt before. Just as suddenly, however, he was ripped away from Calvin’s shouting form before any real damage could be done. Damien twisted madly in the hold. Not even seeing that it was Koko calmed him down.
“Let go!” he snarled.
“Shut up,” she replied, marching him quickly away from the scene of the crime, where only a few people had stopped to gawk. Damien had no choice but to walk through the crowd, his jaw clenched so tight he could hear his teeth grinding. She stopped where the crowds had thinned, pressing his back against the wall.
“What the hell, Damien? Since when do you let that loser get to you?” she asked and Damien almost laughed.
Calvin had always gotten to him. Everything had always gotten to him, was getting to him, one thing after another, and another, and another, and he was suffocating. Nobody could see, was even bothering to look, and the divide between what he felt and what everybody saw was killing him.
“What the fuck do you care?” Damien spat out, shoving at Koko, who stumbled more in surprise than anything else. She stared at him incredulously.
“Damien, what—”
“Fuck you!” he said, voice harsh, trembling. Koko’s expression hardened.
“Fine! Get expelled for all I care!” she growled before stalking away. Damien watched her leave, staring at the quickly emptying hallway unseeingly. He was still trembling, tense, as if the empty core that had opened during the night had been filled with an anger that couldn’t be drained away, that he couldn’t see past.
He sat in his next lesson, thankfully not one he shared with Koko. He barely listened, clawing at his arms under his long-sleeved shirt. He hadn’t been scratching his arms for months, since he had met the Salgados, but now he couldn’t seem to stop. He concentrated on the feel of his nails raking the soft underside of his arm, peeling the skin away again and again. The pain was like an anchor, but instead of helping him stay afloat it was pulling him under.
He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe.
He looked up and his reflection stared back at him, bloodless and lost. He was trying to wash away the dots of blood all over his arms, but instead stood numbly, rubbing incessantly at the lines of red. The colour looked alien within the relentless white of the school bathroom.
“Damien, I’m going to come in if you don’t come out,” a voice was saying. He turned his head. There was a kid beside him looking worried, but the voice had been a woman’s.
“What?” Damien said. The boy frowned.
“She’s waiting outside,” he replied.
“Who?”
“The school nurse? I called her, remember? You’ve hurt yourself, dude. Are you okay?” he asked, nodding at Damien’s arms. Damien stared at them.
“Yeah,” his own voice said. “I’m fine.”
He was following a woman, then. She had her hand on his shoulder and he wished she would stop. She took him to a little room attached to an office. She had an expression on her face—soft, penetrating—and Damien wanted to turn, or hide, or run away. Her gaze landed on the bandages he had put on himself that morning, from the rope burns, and he shrunk away from her, curling his arms against his chest.
“It’s okay, Damien,” she said softly. “Can I take a look at your arms?”
Damien folded in on himself a little more. “It’s nothing,” he muttered.
“Still, it’d make me feel better if I could just take a quick peak, okay?” she said. Her voice was irritating, like she was talking to a scared animal or a child.
Damien knew, however, that refusing would just make things harder. He extended his arms and she took one gently, rolling up the long sleeve of his shirt. She examined the red marks on his skin. There were a lot of them but they weren’t deep, only a few of them bleeding.
“It was a rash,” Damien blurted defensively. “It was really itchy, I didn’t mean to scratch so hard. I’m sorry.” Damien watched her turn his arm this way and that.
“On both arms?” She sounded doubtful.
“I was playing outside this morning, I think it was the plant I was carrying.”
“What’d it look like?”
“Green…the leaves had, like, spiky bits.”
“Oh! Poison ivy, probably. That would definitely make you itch.” She paused. “What about these?” She pointed at the bandages.
“I was playing with some fireworks and one exploded in my hands. I didn’t mean to,” Damien said, amazed at himself, a spectator in his own lies. The nurse was still frowning but seemed to capitulate with a sigh.
“Alright, well, let me grab your file and something for your arms,” she said, getting up and walking to the attached room.
As soon as she disappeared, Damien lunged for the small, metal cupboard that was usually locked, judging by the key hanging from the door. Damien watched his hands as they grabbed whatever pill packets he could find, stuffing them into the waistband of his trousers. A filing cabinet shut in the other room and Damien scuttled back, making sure that the cupboard door was shut and his baggy shirt hid any sign of the packets digging into his skin. His heart was racing, the only thing he could hear as the nurse disinfected and bandaged him up. For the first time since the day started, he felt oddly centred.
The nurse put gauze over the worst of his arm and Damien surprised himself by how flat and steady his voice sounded as he asked for a bottle of water.
The numbness had returned, but he’d never felt it like this. He moved across the school like a golem, the hollow inside him rattling with loose dirt, with an old and defective magic. He was only pieces put together by somebody else’s will.
His hands weren’t even trembling as he crouched in a darkened corner outside, hiding behind a covered trash can. He watched them pull the sleeves of pills out of the boxes and then pop the pills out, leaving rows of emp
ty graves in the aluminium. He broke the seal on the water bottle. It made a soft sound of protest before cracking open.
He didn’t know what the pills were, but he took them methodically. There was nothing but the shape of the pills, the way it was getting harder to swallow as his tummy filled with water, and suddenly—the bell. He jumped, upsetting the collection of pills nested on his legs, and it was as if the sound jerked him online. He stared at the remaining pills, at the packets, at the darkened bit of tarmac where some of the water had been squeezed out of the bottle when he startled.
There was a feeling creeping up on him, slow and panting, and Damien couldn’t, he couldn’t—
He picked up the remaining pills, the boxes, and stuffed them in the trash along with the water bottle, not bothering to cap it as it spilled inside the can.
He didn’t know what he’d just done, how many pills he’d taken, but he knew it’d make him disappear. His own superpower.
He went to class. There were only two more lessons before the end of the school day. He waited. He felt like there was a ticking time bomb in his stomach, but nothing happened. He expected it to be like the movies, to drop dead suddenly, seizing and frothing from the mouth, but he just sat there, unable to concentrate, trying to ignore Koko glancing at him from the other side of the room. His mind was flooded with dark, stagnant water that did nothing but weigh him down.
The nausea started in a rolling wave during last period. He didn’t know if it was the wait or the pills, but the small sound that escaped him made Koko look at him for a moment, a frown on her face. Suddenly, he remembered that he was supposed to go to Mia’s after school and a bolt of panic sliced through him. He raised a hand, trying to keep it from trembling, and asked the teacher to be excused. He must have looked pretty bad because she excused him at once, offering to send someone with him. Damien shook his head vigorously, practically running out.
The hallways were deserted. The murmur of different classes met Damien every time he passed a shut door, like the chattering of phantoms from beyond the veil. No one stopped him as he stepped outside, already half transparent, half dissolved. He started walking, uncaring that he didn’t have his backpack with him. He wasn’t going to need it.
In This Iron Ground (Natural Magic) Page 7
