Twig

by wildbow

  This was the place he knew, and all of the work, it was done out of a desperate hope to earn a place here, to be Mrs. Earles’ assistant. She had already talked to him about it, on at least three occasions I knew of, told him he had to work, he had to find real work.

  If he were anyone but Rick, I might have felt sorry for him. If he’d given me one break, throughout the entirety of the time I’d known him, I might have gone and made it a mission to get a foot in the door for him, a bit of work as a favor.

  “Sylvester,” Mrs. Earles said. “Let Fran look after Kenneth. Get the plates out.”

  Fran can actually reach the shelf, I thought, but I didn’t argue. I moved the stool and got the plates. It let me keep my distance from Rick, separated by a table and a counter.

  When I turned around, he was watching me, staring at me. I put the plates down on the table, not breaking eye contact.

  “Bowls,” was the next order.

  So long as I was prompt, I had an excuse to turn away.

  Ashton came down the stairs with the rest of the younger group. A step younger than the rest of the Lambs in appearance, he was surrounded by a throng of the children, who were expressive, some with puffy red eyes from going to sleep crying, others energetic, eager for their breakfasts.

  Ashton seemed like the odd one out, eye-catching with his straight red hair, already combed though he’d just gotten out of bed. His expression was placid, too flat.

  Time with Helen was supposed to fix that. A slower process with him than it had been with her.

  I put the bowls on the table, reached out, and mussed up his neatly parted hair.

  The goofy smile he gave me seemed genuine, taken standalone. But the way he changed from one emotion to the other seemed odd, too abrupt, or not abrupt enough, as if he was putting on a mask. The goofiness was just slightly out of tune with the situation.

  “Sleep well?” I asked him.

  “Yes,” he said, reaching up to fix his hair. “You smell like girls.”

  “I was up early, checked up on Lillian and Mary earlier,” I said, grabbing his nose, lightly yanking his head from one side to the other. When I pulled my hand away, I gestured, careful. Words.

  He nodded. “How are they?”

  “They’re as can be expected. Mary is tough stuff.”

  “Mary really liked Gordon,” Fran said.

  “She did,” I agreed.

  Fran averted her eyes as I looked at her.

  Mary wasn’t the only one who liked Gordon. Lillian, Mary, Frances, Eliza, Susan… There isn’t a girl in this house who didn’t have at least a short phase of falling for him. But he was seen as too handsome, too nice, too unattainable.

  Or maybe Fran was looking away because I was missing an eye, and she didn’t want to ask.

  Ashton finished tidying his hair, doing a surprisingly good job of getting every last bit stuck down into place. I reached out and messed it up again, more thoroughly than before.

  Helen made her way down the stairs with Jamie as Mrs. Earles gave me more orders to keep me busy. Helen lit up as she saw me, making a beeline for me, throwing her arms around me to hug me from behind.

  She didn’t let go as I got the silverware or started carrying the first bowls of apple-cinnamon porridge to the table, which forced me to waddle a little. It might have been more bothersome if she wasn’t so very aware and careful of my sore shoulder. She’d seen it, or Jamie had mentioned it.

  I felt a bit more resistance each time I moved way from the counter, Helen getting heavier and heavier. I grabbed a slice of apple and extended it back over my head. I heard the crisp sound of her teeth slicing through it, leaving me with half of a slice.

  “Take the entire thing,” I told her. Teeth yanked the rest of the apple free. My burden lightened.

  I grabbed four bowls and four spoons, tapping a bowl against the top of Ashton’s head in passing, meeting Jamie’s eyes and glancing at the back door. Both rose from their seats.

  Without a word, we made our way into the back yard, slipping on the general purpose rain boots that sat there for anyone to use if they were going out to play.

  This wasn’t an extraordinary thing, and it passed without mention. Helen hung on me like a leech on a cow’s leg, her nose pressed up against the top of my head like a pig’s snout. Normally, when we did this, we sat on the stairs by the back door. Today, I crossed the back yard to the far corner, beneath the tree, where the branches provided some cover from the snow.

  “You’re going to have to let go of me,” I said.

  We sat on the fence, with Ashton sitting with his back to the tree.

  “You needed a good long hug,” Helen said.

  It was cold, but the porridge was hot enough to warm our hands, and holding it near our faces warmed skin and let steam warm ears.

  “I needed a hug? As in me, specifically?” I asked.

  “I think Sy had enough hugs last night, by the smell of him,” Ashton said.

  “Nuh-uh,” Helen said, wheeling on Ashton.

  “But the smell—”

  “Enough about the smell,” I muttered.

  “You can’t just trust your nose,” Helen said, with the firmness of a clucking mother hen to her chick. If she’d have wagged her finger, it would have been perfect. “Pay attention. Sylvester looks after the others so much, he never looks after himself.”

  “Oh,” Ashton said.

  “You have to watch out for that, and give lots of hugs,” Helen said. Ashton nodded, giving zero indication that he was taking her advice with a grain of salt.

  The weird emphasis she was putting on certain things was making me worry about Ashton’s education. Lessons from a mad, arrogant worm of a man had somehow given us a workable Helen, but I wondered if those lessons or the lessons she had explicitly learned without Ibott’s influence would skew things too much one way or the other.

  “Enough of that, please,” I said.

  “She’s right, though,” Jamie said, quiet. He blew on his porridge. “You have to look after yourself.”

  “Looking after you guys is how I look after myself,” I said. “I dunno.”

  “I get the feeling that you wanted to talk about something,” Jamie said. “Coming out here. I’m assuming Mrs. Earles told you she’s planning on putting the stone here?”

  I looked down at the shady corner, with the tree on one side and the corner of the stone wall on another two sides. Just enough out of the way that kids wouldn’t fall and crack their heads open on the thing.

  “It’s about the Baron,” I said. “I told Lillian and Emily, I thought I should fill the rest of you in…”

  I trailed off.

  There were faces in the window by the dining room table. Fran, Susan, some of the taller youngsters whose faces I couldn’t quite make out.

  I was experiencing prey instinct, in a way. Something about expressions, timing, the fact that Mrs. Earles wasn’t telling them to sit down and eat—

  “Rick,” I said.

  The back door opened.

  The conversation had died. We were silent as we watched Rick make his approach, tromping across the yard. He smiled in what he probably thought was a disarming way.

  “Alice got upset after all of you left, and Mrs. Earles had to take her upstairs. The little kids are sensitive, you know, it doesn’t take much to tip them over the edge to tears. You can’t all just up and leave like that.”

  “We had stuff to talk about,” I said. “In private.”

  “Your secret, Academy-sponsored club, huh? Do you think I’m stupid? That I can’t put the pieces together?”

  “Rick—” Jamie started.

  “I don’t think your inability to put pieces together is why you’re stupid,” I said. “I think your inability to recognize that others have put the pieces together and are not making a big deal of things is one small part of why you’re stupid.”

  “Sylvester,” Jamie said. “Enough.”

  “Jamie spends nearly a year out
of commission, being taken care of at the Academy. You go on these long trips, we’re supposed to believe it’s this special Academy sponsorship, that you’re learning things and running small errands, and maybe you’ll go to Mothmont and become proper Academy students? But you keep coming back hurt, or with new skin. Or Lillian, and Lillian is really terrible at keeping all this a secret, by the way, she looks like her dog just died. Now you come back, and Gordon’s dead—”

  “Careful,” I said, glaring.

  “I’m being careful,” Rick said. “Fuck, don’t you get it? That your lives fucking impact ours? You come back and there’s an imposed silence. The kids are shushed if they ask certain questions, and it eats Fran and Susan and Merry alive because they try to put the pieces together, and they don’t have the information, so they put it together in the worst possible light?”

  “And you,” I said. “You’re leaving you out.”

  “I don’t matter, I’m concerned about them.”

  “Bull, feck, and shit,” I said. “Do you want to know why you can’t get a job, Rick? Because when someone looks into another person’s eyes, what they expect to see is themselves, reflected back at them. Hell, I look in Helen’s eyes and I see it, and Helen’s odd. I look into Ashton’s eyes and I see him studying me, paying attention to me. But when we all look into your eyes, there’s either nothing there, or there’s just more you.”

  Jamie put a hand out, touching my arm.

  “I don’t think you’re making any sense,” Rick said.

  “Whatever happened to you before Lambsbridge happened. Fine. You had to survive, put yourself first, put yourself last. I know tons who are like that. But where it rankles and puts people off, Rick, is that you keep trying to act this role badly, pretending that you’re this really nice guy who plays with the kids and cares about others’ welfare. Some people see it for what it is, when you’re too intense, when you’re smiling without it reaching your eyes. Some people don’t, but they sense the wrong. If you’d just be up front about being a callous, self-absorbed asshole, people would at least be able to figure you out.”

  I could see the change in his eyes. Anger, indignation. Better than nothing.

  “If I’m concerned with what I’m doing or feeling right now, if anything at all,” Rick said. “It’s because Gordon was a friend. Did you ever damn well think that in our age group, besides Eliza, Fran, and Susan, there’s only you guys? Of you guys, Gordon was the only one who gave me the time of day.”

  “Gordon knew full well who and what you were,” I said. “He gave you the straight talk when you needed it. I remember one incident, not long after Jamie here went to the hospital, that Gordon gave you a pounding. Now he’s gone, that one thing that was keeping you from pressing too hard is out of the way, Mrs. Earles steps upstairs, and you waste no time in challenging us. Don’t try and revise history and act like Gordon was anyone but who he was. Not today, least of all.”

  Rick looked at the others. “Is anyone else going to chime in on this? Because I’m really concerned that Sylvester is demented.”

  “I would, if Sy let me get two words in edgewise,” Jamie said. “And if I had any clear idea of what to say. I think the best thing to do would be to go inside. We should all give each other a bit of space while we process things.”

  “I’m not going to do that,” Rick said.

  “You never do,” I said, under my breath. “Never back down, never stop until you’ve pushed boundaries or breached a line.”

  “Because I’ve spent my entire stay at Lambsbridge doing that!” Rick said, raising his voice. “Just tell me straight, say what really happened to Gordon.”

  “We said,” Helen said, her voice quiet.

  She was putting on an act, looking upset at the topic and at the commotion. Most others would have looked at her and held back. But Rick was pretending just as much as she was. The empathy was absent.

  “Just tell me,” he said. “And I’ll go, and I won’t bother you again.”

  Jamie spoke, “We were visiting contacts for Lillian’s—”

  “No,” Rick interrupted.

  He fixed his gaze on me. His eyes met my eye.

  He wasn’t going to let up, and he wasn’t going to leave us alone.

  “Admit you don’t give a damn about those kids in there, about Fran’s feelings, or Alice crying, or Gordon dying,” I said. “Say it, and I’ll tell you, straight-up.”

  “You want me to lie?” he asked. “Shit on a candlestick, Sy—”

  “Don’t call me Sy. We’re not friends.”

  He clenched his fists. “I have never known anyone to hate me so damn much, when I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong, beyond maybe a few social slip-ups and wanting to know what the hell is going on around me?”

  “I made my offer. I’m not haggling, I’m not going to suddenly buy the act. Accept the offer or go back inside.”

  “Okay,” he said. He smiled like this was a game. “I’ll lie. I’ll pretend I’m some hollow, messed up person.”

  The light in his eyes was gone, now. The expression he wore was the same one he might’ve worn as he stuck a knife into my belly.

  “I don’t care about Fran, or Susan, or Gordon,” he said, his voice cold. “I don’t care about you, or the family, or the kids. I play with them and I could just as easily slap them across the face as sing with them. I’m asking because I want to know for me. Because I’m sick of looking for jobs, and the rest of the fucking world seems to bend to accommodate you, and I could really do with some of that.”

  He couldn’t even pretend at pretending. The mask barely fit as it was.

  “You want some of this?” I asked. I clenched my fist, because my hand was trembling, and I couldn’t bear the idea of showing weakness in front of Rick right now. “You want this life? You want Gordon’s life?”

  His arms were folded, his eyes cold. “I could do with your life. Sneaking out at night to meet girls, whispered conversations with the adults in the know, every damn fucking person catering to you, from that professor in the academy all the way down to the little kids at the Academy who get told to stay quiet and not to ask certain questions.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but in that same moment, Jamie’s grip on my arm tightened. I looked at him.

  “I know what Sy’s going to say,” Jamie said. “I have a different idea.”

  “I’m owed an answer,” Rick said.

  “How about Sylvester takes a break?” Jamie said. “He can go inside and shower, or go for a walk and come back? I’ll give you your explanation. Straight out, details, everything else.”

  “And?” Rick asked.

  “And, because you asked, because things got even this far,” Jamie said. “You’re going to get moved. You can’t stay at Lambsbridge. You’ll go to another city and maybe you’ll even get a job. You’ll get the answers and you’ll be sent far enough away you won’t be able to do a damn thing with them.”

  “We’ll see,” Rick said.

  Jamie looked at me. I heaved out a sigh.

  “Okay,” I said. “I was going to go down to the Shims. I guess I can do that now.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Jamie said.

  “We’ll come!” Helen said, perking up. “Ashton and me.”

  I nodded, ignoring Rick’s ‘told you’ smile.

  “Picnic at lunch today,” I told Jamie. “We’ll be back before then. Mary and maybe Lillian will be showing up.”

  “I’ll keep an eye out,” Jamie promised.

  I nodded. I hopped down off the wall, grabbed my cold bowl of porridge, and made my way back to the house, Helen and Ashton following behind.

  Jamie had known my answer before I did. I had to think about it to piece together the words that had been on my lips.

  You want my life? You can have it.

  No, not quite, because fuck Rick.

  Because I liked being alive, I just… didn’t want this life.

  I was done. I’d told myself I couldn’t s
ee another Lamb die. Mauer had talked about me needing just one more push. Now I was on the ledge, there was no stepping back. I just had to figure out how to move forward.

  Or if the other Lambs would even come with me.

  Previous Next

  In Sheep’s Clothing—10.2

  “She got frustrated, I think,” Helen confided. “Duncan got the worst of it.”

  “Frustrated how?” I asked.

  “She decided she was leader, which makes sense, right?”

  “Right,” I said. I thought about it for a second.

  “She—” Helen said, in the same moment I said, “Oh.”

  She smiled wide. “Yeah.”

  “She led you like you were Bad Seeds?” I asked.

  “She tried. She got frustrated, like I said. So she paired me with Ashton and she tormented poor Duncan, demanding he keep up.”

  “Poor Duncan?” I asked.

  “Poor Duncan,” Ashton echoed me.

  Helen’s cheeks were rosy from the colder weather, and seemed rosier still with her apparent merry mood. Her scarf, not one of the nicer ones, but a ratty one covered in balls of lint, was wound around her neck, trapping golden curls beneath it. Her jacket was a boy’s jacket that had been blue once, but a bad wash had bled some of the color out in such a way that it transitioned from pale green to dark blue, with the more worn patches appearing all the more visible where the color had faded.

  Helen had reached the point where I doubted it was possible to make her look bad, whatever clothes were draped on her.

  Ashton, too, seemed to be getting more of an eye for it. I’d had to dig up a more convincing shirt for him, but his jacket and pants were spot on. Quiet as he was, often so still I had to check he was still breathing, his eyes remained alert, taking everything in. His hair needed work, though. Too tidy.

  I didn’t correct it. I wanted to see how Ashton operated without prompts and prodding.