by Dia Reeves
Jimi wished he had one of Ophelia’s fluffy blankets. He wished he had Ophelia period. She hated him but would have at least bandaged his bleeding wounds. Even Lecy was gawking. From a distance.
“What’re those?” Someone was pointing. Horrified.
Jimi said, “I can poison things with them. Like I poisoned that helibird.”
“Copycat.” Lecy smiled at him. Good ole Lecy.
“I only steal from the best.”
He retracted the stingers and especially his wings. The wind was too hard on them. The colder his wings got, the colder Jimi got. Everyone was still staring, as though his wings couldn’t be unseen.
“Two different helibirds targeted you,” Rishi mused. He was sitting in a lawn chair, while everyone else stood. When he reached out, someone quickly put a beer in his hand. “I’ve never heard of that.”
“It said it wanted to take me to winged boy land or wherever.”
“It said?”
“My mother. My other mother. She keeps sending people to fetch me.”
“Then perhaps you should go. It might be good for you to be with your own kind for once, and learn about your heritage.”
“I already have a damn heritage.”
“Yeah leave him alone, Rishi,” Carmin said. “Jimi’s already struggling with life. I don’t think he’s ready to struggle with two lives.”
“I’m being serious. You always said you loved how Dez journeyed all the way back from the grave for you. All that effort. Just for you.” Rishi didn’t add for some bizarre reason but Jimi heard it loud and clear.
“I was wrong about Dez.”
“You were wrong about a lot of things, but now someone really is making an effort just for you. To be with you. You’re someone’s Dez, Jimi. Do what she would have done, and go where you’re wanted.”
Chapter 17
The day after the water tower party, Jimi visited Alexis’s house. Only because it was her birthday. When he got there, the party was already in progress. Men and women in tailored suits and dresses, nibbling tiny things and clinking the ice in their crystal glasses. Songs like “Rose Rouge” and “Chan Chan” and “Doin’ It to Death” drifting from hidden speakers. Servers carrying trays of champagne. Jimi nabbed two glasses and sucked them down before Paul caught him.
“Leave some for the rest of us.” Paul kept tugging at himself, so awkward in his suit, the gin and tonic his only comfort.
“Where’s Mom?”
“Upstairs. She’ll make her grand entrance any second now.”
“I can’t be here all day. People keep looking at me.” Alexis’s drunk fancy friends, gawking like yokels.
“It might be less”—Paul used his drink to gesture at Jimi’s eyes—“distracting if you wore shades or something.”
“Or I could scoop them out and carry them in my pocket. Would that be less distracting?”
“No, actually.”
“Or I could leave. Should’ve done that half an hour ago.” Jimi stormed upstairs and rapped sharply on Alexis’s door.
“Who’s there?”
“Me. I’m leaving your present in the hall. Bye.”
“Are you alone?”
“Aren’t I always? Isn’t that the story of my life?”
“Come in, if you want.”
Jimi didn’t want, but he opened the door anyway. He hadn’t seen her up close since Thanksgiving. Could barely remember what she looked like.
Alexis lay back against silk pillows, like a movie star who awakens magically in full make up and perfectly coiffed. Wan though. Something in the set of her mouth, like she was trying not to throw up. But it was afternoon. Did pregnant ladies get afternoon sickness too?
“Why are you leaving so early? Are you partied out from the water tower?”
Keeping tabs on him, huh?
“No. I just don’t like old people.” Jimi stepped forward and tossed the meticulously wrapped present onto the bed. “Here.”
A vase of lavender sat on Alexis’s night table, as always. She said the smell gave her the sweetest dreams. Beneath the sweet smell that met Jimi as he moved close was a sour tang that made his nose twitch.
Alexis cradled the box but didn’t open it. “César said you have a new girlfriend. Are you leaving to go to her?”
“She’s not my girlfriend. I hate her.”
“You should bring her by; she sounds interesting.”
“Maybe.” Jimi missed Ophelia, and it was so obnoxious how he’d gotten used to seeing her. But what good was wanting to see someone who didn’t want to see him back? Friendships couldn’t be lopsided like that.
“Sit down,” Alexis said, and gestured at the tufted chair near the lavender vase.
Jimi stayed where he was. He wasn’t at her beck and call. She couldn’t just decide to have a conversation when he was past ready to leave.
“I cleaned your room yesterday. It was difficult, with all the boxes. Why haven’t you unpacked them? It’s been months.”
“I’m used to living out of my duffle bag. It’s easier. Besides, I’m going to college pretty soon. Far away. Far, far away. With everything boxed, it’ll make it easier for you to ship it all to Goodwill or wherever. You gonna open the present or what?”
She did finally, carefully unwrapping the paper. The bracelet nestled inside the box was absinthe green like the sap it was made of, ovoid shapes strung together on a silver chain. Within the translucent sap were tiny figures that Jimi had carved and painted. Debonair César and hayseed Paul. There was Ollie May, the grandmother who’d raised Alexis looking as saintly and wise as only a grandmother can. Jimi in full on fairy mode. Because he had wings, and she needed to deal with it.
“I left a blank oval for the baby. I can add it in when it has a face or whatever. That’s real spindle sap, so it’s good for one wish.”
“Spindle tree sap.” Alexis held the bracelet up, watched the light play on it. “Must have been expensive.”
“I made it.”
“Then where’d you get the sap?”
“Somewhere. Do you like it?”
She stared at the bracelet a long time. Then gasped. And writhed. Clearly in pain.
“What’s wrong?”
She exhaled, relaxing, the pain still in her face. Had been there all along. “I lost the baby.”
Jimi had no idea what to say. Or what to do with his hands. Why were they on his hips like that? He put them in his pockets.
“When?”
“Today. Now.” She fingered the empty oval. The baby’s oval. “No need to make a face for it.”
“Does Paul know?” Jimi felt a flash of rage, thinking of his step-father downstairs drinking gin and partying.
“No one knows. Maybe in some alternate world I’m still pregnant. Maybe I have a dozen children. Somewhere.”
“I could call the doctor.”
“Why? So she can tell me what I already know? I’ve been through this.”
“But…doesn’t it hurt?”
“My heart mostly. A doctor can’t fix that.”
“Neither can I.” Why was she telling him this? He wasn’t equipped for this. This was Paul’s job. Or César’s. “Use the bracelet and wish for a new baby. Or better yet, wish for more diamonds or something that can’t drop dead.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, Jimi knew he’d said the wrong thing. He could feel the wrongness, saw it pierce Alexis like poison darts.
She leaped out of bed and the sour smell engulfed Jimi, drove him backward. She was bloody from the waist down, like a nightmare. An accident victim limping around when it should be dead. The bed was worse, swampy with gore and clumps, like something had died there.
Something had.
Ophelia had been right that day at the bridge. He really could shape the world. His fresh mouth had created this nightmare.
“Let’s forget about it,” he said, backing away, saying words. What was he saying? “You’re right. I’ll take the boxes and move them back into
my old room. It’ll be like the baby never existed. It never did really, if you think about it. You don’t need a baby, anyway. You have me.”
Alexis shoved him from her room with so much force, Jimi smacked into the hallway wall and hurt his already sore shoulder.
“I don’t want you. I don’t even know what the hell you are! All I know is that you are not my son.”
A few hours later at his dad’s house, Jimi was sitting in his room at his desk, minding his own business when César came barging in.
“What the hell’s going on?” he said, over the beeping smoke alarm. He ran to the window and threw it open. Billows of smoke wafted to freedom.
“I was supposed to be at Mom’s party,” Jimi said, dropping the photos of Alexis into the metal wastebasket where a fire blazed. “Turns out I have no mother, so I’m off the hook.”
César snatched the photo album from his hands. “You can’t burn down the house just because you had a fight with Alexis.”
“It wasn’t a fight. We’re having a fight. She disowned me!”
While César doused the flames with what was left of Jimi’s orange Country Club soda, Jimi told him everything, especially about the miscarriage.
“And then she said I wasn’t her son. That’s fine, if that’s what she wants. I can make it real for her with the force of my will. So here it is, universe: Alexis Labonne is not my mother.”
César gave Jimi a troubled look. “Wishes come true in this town. Don’t say things you don’t mean.”
“I do mean it. Maybe.” Jimi slumped in his chair. “Maybe I should slide backwards through time and die with Dez in that car crash. Die instead of her. Then Ma would never know I was really a freak. No one would know. Then she wouldn’t care so much about needing a new baby to override my existence.”
César kicked the flooded wastebasket across the room, startling Jimi. “Part of Alexis died every time one of our kids did. She’s been altered by that, diminished in some ways. But you don’t have to whittle her down further by thinking the worst of her. Or yourself. If you have to be a freak, Jimi, be the best one you can.
“Instead of being an asshole.”
✽ ✽ ✽
The next day, Jimi’s mope fest was interrupted by a knock at the door.
“Well, look who decides to show up on my doorstep? Two weeks later.”
“It hasn’t been that long, and so what if it has?”
Ophelia stepped inside like she was sure of her welcome, like he wouldn’t throw her out just for kicks.
“You didn’t say whether to come to your mom’s or your dad’s, so I had to guess. Should I say hello or something?”
“We’re alone.”
“Good. I hate chit chat. Where’s your room?”
Jimi led her to the back of the apartment, and it was a constant shock to see her behind him after half convincing himself he’d blown it.
In her white coat, she blended into the snow-blind décor of his room. “Why’s it smell all burnt in here?’
“My life went up in flames; this is what it smells like.”
It didn’t smell burnt at all; it smelled like her, that same too sweet to be anything but poison scent.
“Why’s your life in flames?”
“My mom disowned me.”
“Which one?”
“The human one.”
He told Ophelia about the birthday party and the bloody turn it had taken.
“Dad says I was an asshole, and I guess he’s right. That’s the thing though. I’m a horrible son. The worst one that’s ever walked the earth. And Alexis sucks as a mother. If you think about it a certain way, her disowning me works out for both of us. Now we don’t have to have relationships that we suck at.”
Jimi wiped his eyes, stared at his hands and despaired. “I keep expecting my tears to be black. They really should be. To underscore the futility of my existence.”
“You’re an idiot.” Ophelia handed him a tissue.
Jimi blew his nose. “That’s the consensus.”
“She’d forgive you if you apologized. Wouldn’t you forgive her?”
But Jimi didn’t want to talk about Alexis anymore.
“It’s not cold in here.”
“It is so. The window’s wide open.”
“So close it. And take your coat off.”
Ophelia gave him a look, but did what she was told. Sort of. She closed the window, but only unbuttoned her coat. Wandered around the room looking at stuff, even though he didn’t have anything near as interesting as a phone to call dead people. Rummaged through his books, peeked into the closet, opened the file boxes on his desk. Found the printed photographs he’d taken of her. All the drawings based on the photos.
He pulled out his phone and when she turned to him, he snapped a picture and said, “You’d look weird with bigger tits.”
“Oh?” She looked down at her figure, hopeful.
“If you took that coat off, I could tell for sure.”
Ophelia buttoned the coat to her chin. Grabbed a framed photo of Dez off a shelf, triumphant. “This is her, isn’t it?”
“The only one I have, since I pointlessly trashed the rest. Had to get it from the yearbook and blow it up.”
After a lengthy perusal, Ophelia said, “She’s pretty. And earless. Where’s her ear?”
“Got chewed off by a cackler,” he said, flipping through the images he’d just captured. “I yanked it off her before it ate her entire face. I would have stomped its head in, the way you’re supposed to, but she wouldn’t let me. She made me let it go. It went running off into the trees, probably killed a dozen people since then, but Dez couldn’t bear to hurt anything.”
“How sweet.”
“Very sweet. Why’d you take so long to come to me?”
“You always get your way. It’s not good for you.”
“But you’re here.”
“I’m not good for you. So I decided it was a nice balance.”
Ophelia put the photo back where she’d found it. “You wanna come with me and watch a guy hang himself?”
Jimi considered his options. “Obviously.”
Chapter 18
Inside Ophelia’s car again, fluffy as before, antiseptically white, but Jimi was reminded of his sojourn inside the Sack Man. That same feeling of having been swallowed, minus the terror. He relaxed into it, felt the car sliding along rather than rolling.
This was the peculiar feeling he’d had in his gut the first time he’d ridden in her car. A different sensation now that he was relaxed. Like his abdomen was being massaged. No wonder nothing got to Ophelia. He’d be calm too if he got belly rubs every day.
She didn’t seem calm though. Rigid and flush with the door so that he couldn’t touch her. Not even accidentally. But then she said:
“You haven’t given me a present in a long time.”
Rubbed his face right into it.
“Those weren’t presents.”
“Offerings?”
“No.”
“Because you worship me.”
“Those were incentives. That clearly didn’t incite you to do crap except annoy me.” He had to take a photo of her. Church girl prim, her scarlet lipstick an unholy shout. Even at her most obnoxious, she was photogenic as hell.
“You should give me something.”
“I don’t have anything.”
“You have secrets. Everybody has secrets.”
“I killed Dez.”
That took the starch out of her, but not in a bad way. She lost that rigidity, relaxed into the seat, mirroring Jimi’s pose. Expectant, like a kid waiting for a bedtime story.
“Big Mike, this guy I know from school, likes to throw parties, and for his birthday a couple of years ago he decided to throw himself a coming out party. He said we all had to come as fairies so he wouldn’t be the only one. Me and Dez got there, and then I realized I’d left Big Mike’s present at mom’s house all the way upsquare. So I gave Dez the keys to my car and told h
er to go get it.”
“Bossy McBosspants.”
“Dez didn’t mind. Not like you. On the way back to the party, she lost control of the car and crashed. She died because I’m bossy.”
“She died because she was a bad driver.”
“She died because of me!”
Hard to feel intense about it, sliding along in her car, heads lolling together on the backseat. Close enough to smell her cherry-scented lipstick.
The door locks popped up, startling him. “We’re here.” Ophelia was already half out of the car.
Parking was at a premium in the square, so they’d parked at a lot and were now walking down a street full of tall, skinny houses in a tidy row. Sunny, cold, not too windy. Perfectly normal. Except for the skateboard rolling along the sidewalk, while its owner hovered at least two feet behind, completely out of sync.
“Why did you drag us outside of time? It’s not raining.”
“It has nothing to do with weather. I like to be where people aren’t. When people are around, they interrupt you.” She stared at Jimi, pointedly. “With questions.”
“Are you immortal? How’s that for a question?”
“I might live another hundred years. Or a thousand, but anyone could. The trick is, you have to not die.”
“That’s a hell of a trick, Ophelia.”
“I suppose it would be easier for me to live a thousand years than it would be for you.”
Jimi stepped aside to allow the skateboard and its out-of-step owner to roll past. “How can you tell how far outside of time you are?”
“Not too far if at least the concept of time remains. A clock that tells time, but horribly. A sun that rises, but maybe not in the east. The further out you go, the weaker time gets, even the idea of time. If you go out far enough, time stops altogether. That’s eternity.”
“What’s it like in eternity?”
“I have words, but they would be meaningless to you. If I see twenty-seven colors in the rainbow and you only see seven, how do I describe the colors you can’t see? Colors you aren’t meant to see. If I took you to eternity—”
This again.
“You don’t have to take me anywhere. Other than wherever the hell we’re going.”
