by Dawn Metcalf
“I do,” she said. The room was still whirling. Her lips were kiss-swollen. Her hands held him tight.
“I am feeling more,” he said as a shudder passed through him, a trickle from the tips of his hair down the slide of his spine. “I feel everything more.” It was a confession teetering over an exciting precipice. “I cannot express it. I can hardly keep track of it all.” He swung her around, dimples framing his wide smile. Sparkles swam in his fathomless eyes. “It is you! All you! Everything!” He leaned his head back and laughed. She hugged him, laughing, too, unsure why, but happy all the same. Ink was happy! He was happy! Because they were together. Because of her.
“I love you,” she said with a smile.
“Yes! I feel it—” he tapped his chest hard with two fingers “—here.”
She rubbed the spot tenderly as their circling slowed. They watched her hand rest against him. Here it was: a perfect moment.
“Can you feel this? All of this?”
He inhaled sharply. “Yes.”
“What do you feel?” she asked.
He smiled at her and squeezed.
“Joy,” he said, laughing. “I feel Joy!”
TWELVE
SHE WAS SKIPPING. Joy couldn’t believe that she was actually skipping down the plaza with an armful of designer plastic and stiff paper bags. They rustled and banged as she walked with a bounce in her step. She tipped back her head and twirled around, prompting Monica to laugh.
“Come on, Twinkletoes, let’s go!” Joy said. “You said ‘shoes’ and somewhere I hear platform straps calling our names!”
“I can’t believe you bought me these.” Monica held up her Nordstrom Rack bag. “Seriously, are you high?”
Joy laughed. Stef had asked her the same thing, even though he knew better. “I said the first purchase was on me,” she said. “And so it was. Besides, consider it an investment in us having fun.” Joy glanced back at her friend, who looked unsure and tight-lipped. Joy tsked. “I know things have been not-so-fun lately and we haven’t had a lot of time to hang out. I’m worried about you.”
“You keep spending money like this and I’ll be more worried about you,” Monica said. “This isn’t more guilt checks from your mom, is it?”
“No,” Joy said. “Ever since my birthday visit, she seems to think all is forgiven.” Oddly enough, Joy thought she might even be right. Since coming home in May, Joy hadn’t brooded as much about Mom ditching the family and running off to California with Doug. Joy didn’t even think twice about calling to check in. They were growing beyond civil, sounding more and more normal and less and less afraid. Stef and Joy took turns answering the phone—Stef enjoyed making up outrageous lies about trashing the house, but Joy didn’t like telling even silly little lies anymore. It wasn’t worth it.
“I told you, it’s my new job,” Joy said, swinging her purchases. “This is a long-overdue celebration blitz.”
“Personal shopping,” Monica said. “Seems we are making our new job into a new hobby?”
Joy chose her next words carefully. “I am happy and deserve something pretty. And so do you.”
“No, I don’t.” Monica sounded uncharacteristically bitter. Joy always thought of Monica as Miss A-#1 Fun. But there was an unmistakable Gordon-sized hole in the air, and it was all the more present as they shopped around the mall. He was usually the one toting the bags.
“You sound unhappy,” Joy said.
“I am unhappy,” Monica said. “I have a right to sound unhappy! I’m breaking up with my boyfriend because he’s too nice and understanding and I have only just realized that I’m a politically incorrect hypocrite.” She swung her bag for extra emphasis, nearly knocking over a display. “You’ve been hogging the Unhappy-Pants for the past year, so now I’m pulling a Sisterhood and it’s my turn to wear the pants!”
Joy whistled. “Whoa. Did the apology not go well?”
“We’re talking. On the phone, anyway,” Monica said. “That’s better than not talking, right?”
Joy nodded. “Yes, definitely. Don’t worry. You’ll work things out,” she said, spinning in place. “You’re both still crazy about each other—the rest is just head games.” She shook her head sympathetically. “They’re not real.”
“Coming from the expert on head games,” Monica said, doing a quick double take in front of some lime-green pumps. “Speaking of, have I recently needled you about my continuing quest to meet your Someone-A-Guy, Ink?”
“You have not been neglecting your duty,” Joy said, circling to look at a window display full of long summer dresses and tiny mirror balls. She’d told Monica his nickname as a sort of condolence prize. It was kind of nice hearing her best friend say it out loud. “He’s been out of town a lot lately—” true “—and I thought we could do a big get-together this summer, but something came up.” Joy adjusted the bags in her hand. “He might not be available.”...as opposed to visible, she mentally added. Joy still didn’t like thinking about having to cancel her order with Mr. Vinh so hadn’t gotten around to it yet. She worried that there might be consequences, like cancellation fees. She tried not to think about it. “It all depends.”
“Depends on what?” Monica said. “Does it have to be a blue moon or solar eclipse or something?”
Joy was about to return serve when something caught the edge of her Sight: the multimirror reflections turned shiny rust-red. Joy dropped her purchases and turned, hand raised.
“Move!” Joy shouted and mentally pushed! Her palm bowed inward around Inq’s glyph as a pulse of air knocked Monica sideways, out of the path of the Red Knight. There was a moment of blind fear as the twin blades came down. Her golden halo flared. A blinding clap of lightning shattered all the surrounding glass and mirrors into a fireworks display. Joy cringed, shielding her eyes, blinking back colors, but remained standing amid the wreckage, unharmed. The Red Knight had been thrown back against the anachronistic backdrop of Forever 21, regaining its balance on pointy, plated feet.
Joy hadn’t time to be shocked that no one else could see what was really happening. She fought for her scalpel, her wrist tangled in plastic handles. There was a blur of movement. The knight swung again. Joy flinched, too late...but there was no pain—nothing but gold sparks and the scraping squeal of metal on stone. Again and again the blades rained down, a hailstorm of slicing silver death that never came close. Joy’s armor sparked on impact, defiantly gold. Joy uncurled slowly, standing straight, watching the dual swords arcing toward her face, her chest, her neck, her sides, coming at her like 3-D special effects, a blur on fast-forward, and...nothing. Nothing at all. She squared her shoulders, the glyphs singing against her skin. Her fingers curled into fists, one tightened over the scalpel in her hand. She was a fiery angel in a nimbus of unseen golden light.
She was unstoppable. Unbreakable.
There was a pause as the knight withdrew a wary step, swords held parallel to his shoulders, his body loosened to spring. The helmeted face was inscrutable. Joy flashed her Olympic-class smile.
“You’ve been hired to kill me,” she said quietly. “It cannot be done.”
Joy took one step forward.
The Red Knight eased one step back.
“Go,” she said, holding the scalpel close in her right palm. A small voice in her head reminded her that security cameras, videophones and humans could still see her, but she had to make her stand. “Go.” She raised her left palm and pushed! The Red Knight staggered against the gale. One of the swords blew from his grasp.
The knight crouched with surprising agility, snatched up its weapon and ran for the thin spiral evergreens flanking the plaza. Diving forward, he was swallowed up instantly in a shudder of manicured branches. Joy watched him go, gleaming invisibly, and held her scalpel against her thigh. She scanned the area haughtily: nothing. Not a hint of him. Nothing dared appro
ach. The only red visible was the shopping logos of major department stores.
Joy grinned. It was over.
It worked! Her heart leaped inside her, buoyant and proud. She was alive! She was safe! Better than safe: she was invincible! Inq was right. The Red Knight couldn’t touch her. Nothing could touch her! No one would ever hurt her again!
Relief spread through her like cold soda, bubbly and effervescent and chilly to the bone. She hadn’t realized how scared she’d been, how stressed she’d been, how much worry she’d been carrying around with her all this time until it was magically gone. When the Red Knight hacked at her uselessly, when she stood uninjured and untouched, Joy felt taller and stronger and more confident than she ever had in her life. She felt as if her legs had been part of the floor, part of the framework, part of the building sunk deep into the earth—strong and immovable as a mountain, huge and impenetrable and defiant. She’d stood her ground and the Red Knight was powerless.
Joy lifted her arms and pumped them once, the same feeling of winning the gold hot through her veins, blooming bigger than life, larger than what her body could hold. She bounced on her feet as the glyphs darkened, quieting to normal. Only then was Joy aware that nearby shoppers were staring at her and starting to close in.
Joy’s smile faded with her unearthly light and she fumbled for her bags.
“Time to go,” she muttered and waved her friend over. “Monica?”
Talk bubbled in at the edges of the crowd. Some male voices called to one another. An old lady cried out. The sound zinged up Joy’s spine, alarming her. She slipped.
Joy looked down. Red smeared her shoe.
“Monica?”
That’s when she saw her best friend. And that’s when she screamed.
* * *
It was the smell that made Joy want to get up and leave. She didn’t, of course, because you can’t leave when you’re in the waiting room of a hospital expecting news. You have an obligation. You have responsibilities. You have to stay in the stink of chemical cleansers and body odor and powdery latex and that curious, sterile smell of something that can’t exist outside in nature because it’s about as natural as toxic waste. Joy crossed her feet beneath the hard plastic seat, wondering who’d design a place to be the least comfortable environment possible for the people who needed to be comforted most. Why were funeral parlors so much cozier, when the person everyone had come to see was already dead, and yet when the same person could still be alive, they stick you in a cold, unwelcoming, vomit-colored room filled with clear plastic tubing and bad filtered light?
She hated hospitals.
Even though she sat with Gordon on the orange-colored bench, she felt alone, numb behind a thick layer of glass. Maybe that was the armor? Maybe it protected her from feeling anything that could harm her? Somehow she doubted it. She remembered Ilhami’s recklessness in New York, his daring escape, the drug money and the raining bullets, running safe and secure behind a single glyph. Joy wore a couple hundred of them now. Monica hadn’t had even one.
Joy was so stupid.
There was a hollow echo replaying in her head, the words she’d kept repeating to the paramedics and the police and then to the Reids and the doctors and Gordon and the receptionist behind the counter when she’d first gotten to the hospital and they’d said she couldn’t go in because she wasn’t family and she would have to wait. Joy kept talking as if the words were a passport, a tithe, a secret code that would allow her to explain what had happened without saying in any way what had really happened because, of course, she couldn’t say that. It even tickled on her tongue when she sat in the pool of blood, carefully not moving Monica’s head because the long gash across her forehead had cut through her nose and Joy wasn’t sure if she would drown in her own blood and stop breathing. She’d watched air bubble through the fissure of blood and bone thinking if she kept her eyes on it, she was certain Monica would keep breathing. She couldn’t die from that, could she? A severed nose? A long gash? It didn’t seem possible. But none of this was possible, which was why Joy had invented the story of some psycho with a knife that rushed past them, slashing as he ran.
After she told that story, she’d thrown up in the toilet.
Joy squeezed the warm gel pack nervously in her hands. Lies were stupid. No camera would show any attacker in the mall. Joy knew that she had a scalpel in her purse. She didn’t know what might happen, but the childhood fear of being locked away in a psychiatric ward loomed somewhere, screaming in the back of her mind behind a black curtain of guilt. If she listened, she could imagine the faint sounds of Great-Grandmother Caroline beating blindly at the bars on her door.
“Joy?”
Joy glanced up and stood, feeling Gordon do the same. Mrs. and Mr. Reid were standing in the double doorway, faces the color of deadwood, bleached with fear and hospital lights. Their eyes were twin cameras set on “record” as if they were filming the moment from a long way away, storing it for later viewing because this couldn’t possibly be happening now. Joy knew she should say something, but their faces stole her voice.
Gordon stepped up to Mrs. Reid, and Joy watched her puffy eyes spill over. Gordon’s wide rugby arms came around her, hugging her shoulders, and Mrs. Reid hugged him back, sobbing unreservedly into his shirt. Gordon’s face was hard and soft at the same time, jaw clenched but eyes peacefully closed as if in prayer. Joy watched the two of them like a nature show. Mr. Reid rubbed his wife’s back. Joy’s stomach tightened. Mr. Reid noticed her through his rimless glasses.
“She’s all right,” he said. Joy wanted to be sure which “she” he meant. Joy wanted to hear him say her name. She needed to hear it said. She needed it to be real in the way only a dad could speak things into being. Mr. Reid nodded as if he understood. “Monica will be fine.”
Joy’s breath came out in a cough with a sob hooked at the end like a worm. Her inhale was too loud and her exhale brought tears. She ran to Mr. Reid and hugged him hard, wiping her face across his power tie. He patted her back and kissed the top of her head.
“It’s a miracle,” he said. “They said it was a glancing blow. It missed the eye and only scratched the bone of the orbital ridge. Whatever it was...” He squeezed Joy as if to smother the thought. “Well, it could have been a lot worse. A lot worse. But it wasn’t.” He patted Joy’s shoulders and she let go, rubbing her face with her hands and reaching for one of the ever-present boxes of flimsy tissues. “We have a lot to be thankful for.”
“There was so much blood,” Joy said, as if that meant anything.
“Head wounds bleed a lot,” he said calmly and tapped a spot on the side of his head, permanently dented from some brick Monica had told her had been thrown from a truck while he’d been walking home from church. No matter how many times she’d heard the story, Joy had never once thought about the blood. “Ask the vascular surgeon. Trust me—these things usually look worse than they are.”
“Can we see her?” Gordon asked, still holding Mrs. Reid. She must have cried herself out and was now transferring self-consciously to her husband’s arms.
Mr. Reid hesitated for the barest instant. He exchanged a glance with the police officer who stood waiting against the wall.
“Soon,” he said. “She’s sleeping right now. And I don’t want you—” he looked at Joy and Gordon “—either of you, to see her like that. I won’t want to lie to you—seeing Monica will be a shock.” Mrs. Reid started crying again, quieter than before. Mr. Reid hugged his wife, his own eyes growing shiny. “Most of the damage was a single laceration, a clean cut, but she’ll need corrective surgery. They’ve already called in a neurosurgeon, a plastics physician and a facial specialist who’s repaired her septum, the bridge of her nose that was severed, and we’ve approved the use of a new laser technique that should minimize her scarring and the hospital stay, but...” His voice faltered. He rubbed his cheek again
st his wife’s hair. “She won’t look the same. They wanted to prepare us. She’ll be scarred for life.”
“I don’t care,” Gordon said. “I don’t care what she looks like. I...” He raked his wide hands through his stubbly blond hair, calming himself with effort. It was as if his wide arms didn’t know quite what to do. “Mr. Reid, sir, please, can I see her?”
Mrs. Reid placed one of her delicate hands on his shoulder. She was a piano teacher and her every move was musical. “We know that she’s special to you,” she said. “And that you’re very special to her, too. But let’s try to think about Monica right now. She hasn’t had a chance to see herself yet. She doesn’t know what’s happened. I don’t want her thinking we let you in to see her when she didn’t feel ready to be seen.” She patted her husband’s chest. “Some ladies don’t like their men to see them at less than their best, even after twenty-two years.” She unwound herself from Mr. Reid and rubbed her hands together. She smiled at Gordon. “Would you be so kind as to escort me to the cafeteria? I think I’d like a cup of coffee. Would you like one?”
“Of course,” Gordon said automatically. His manners were impeccable, boarding school bred. “Right this way, Mrs. Reid.”
Joy watched them head for the elevators while she stood alone with Mr. Reid, the policeman’s eyes boring an itch into her back.
“She’s still got it,” Mr. Reid said, looking after his wife. “Miss Southern Belle. Only girl to win two years running and Homecoming Queen, besides. Always a lady, even in the most difficult times.” He shook his head and didn’t bother to wipe his eyes. Joy wondered how men kept all the tears in. He sighed. “You know what I’m going to ask you, don’t you, Joy?”
“I wish I had seen him,” Joy said, totally unsuccessful at keeping any of it in. The tears bubbled over; the lies stung worse. If she thought about wanting to know the identity of the Red Knight, it hurt less. “I really wish I did, but it happened so fast.” She wiped her face with the thin-as-lint tissue and grabbed another, balling the first in her fist. “We were shopping and we stopped to look at the window display and I saw something in the mirror balls and he was there and gone.” All true, but too much else ran through her mind—all of what happened after. Joy was aware the silence had gone on too long. Mr. Reid stared at her. Confession wet her lips.
