“Hey, girls!” Helene says. “You’re up early!”
“Do you mind if I drop them off now?” their mother says. “I got called into the office. I’ll be back on time, I promise.”
“Go ahead,” I tell her. “I was just going to warm up. You girls wanna come?”
Tia and Pria squeal.
“Can we play with the wings?” Tia asks.
“Of course,” I say, waving Mrs. Sadler away and shooing the twins into the studio.
“We’ll talk later,” Helene says.
I nod, my mind a mosaic of mismatched thoughts: Virtue, the absent Miss Macy, Jake, Kaylee and the community center, the Sadler twins and butterfly wings in purple and green.
And Dad. There was another curse-laden message on the answering machine this morning from Dad’s second-in-command. His drinking has to be taking a toll on the business. His truck was gone when I left, so I can only hope he made it to work today.
The girls raid the dress-up clothes and I settle into first position. Helene already has music playing. It’s our warm-up CD—all classical and soft. I take to the floor and lose myself for a bit. The halo seems to agree with my need to forget and warms me through as I lift and stretch, dancing across the floor.
At one point I catch Jake’s eye across the street. He’s chatting with Bob and the guys, chewing on a doughnut. He must be on a break. I stop and wave. They all wave back.
When the rest of my class arrives, I’m ready. Focused on them. Everything else will wait. It’ll have to.
Kaylee arrives just as I’m shooing the last of my girls into the waiting area. She drops into a folding chair just outside the door looking serious, which is unlike her.
“Hey, Kay. You all right?”
“You get my text?”
“No, I’ve been doing this all morning,” I say, gesturing to a floor full of sparkly material scraps, feathers, and straight pins on little cushions.
She squints at the mess. “Reupholstering peacocks?”
“Costume adjustments for the summer dance recital.” I wad the turquoise and fuchsia scraps into a ball and drop cross-legged before her. “So what’s up?”
“Marco Mysterioso crashed on my couch last night.”
I’m suddenly awake. “Oh good. Oh yeah. We were worried. How did that . . . Did he call you or something?”
“Showed up at Jelly’s last night all hot and bothered.” I must’ve made a face, because Kaylee quickly rephrases. “All sweaty and rambling.”
“Yeah, he, um, he had a shock.”
“You wanna tell me about the bracelet?” she asks.
And like that, my leotard’s too snug and my tights are itchy. The world has become entirely too uncomfortable. “Wh-What did Marco say?”
“Nothing coherent. He was rambling. Delia took pity on him—I think she’s crushing on him, to be honest.”
“Delia?”
“Yeah, well, in a platonic, he’s-a-cute-kid kind of way. She’s always liked the tall, thin ones. Anyway, she force-fed him coffee and gyros, but he was going on and on about darkness and evil deeds, so she bundled him into her car and took him away from the customers. When I got home last night, he was curled on the corner of the couch staring at that journal he’s had surgically attached to his hand.”
“It’s Ali’s,” I say quietly.
“I figured. Look, he said something else when I got home.”
“About the . . . about my . . . bracelet?”
“He said it made him see things.”
My pulse pounds against my temples, against the skin of my throat. I feel it in my hands and feet.
“Did he say what he saw?” I ask, my voice rough and shaky.
“You. On fire.”
Kay lives with her Aunt Delia. Her parents live in town, but they’re, well, lost souls, I guess. When we were younger, elementary school age, they were in and out of jail so often Delia set up a room for Kay at her place. Eventually she just never moved out.
Her parents are around—always at birthday parties and family affairs, usually inappropriately clothed or looking for cash—but they can’t seem to get it together enough to really be there in any permanent way.
So, Kay has Delia.
Delia’s given her a home and stability.
And Kay . . . well, Kay’s given Delia someone to mother and quite a lot of messes to clean up.
The two of them live in a little house off of Main on a grassy lot between the train station and the high school. Years and years ago the place was painted bright green. It’s faded now, the paint peeling away from the wood siding. But instead of the house looking run-down, it has a homey, broken-in feel. The front door is my absolute favorite. The green walls chip and peel, the weather doing its thing, and Delia hardly notices, but every single year she repaints that front door. It’s bright blue, sky blue really. Like all those pictures you see of houses in Greece. Whenever I stand on her front doorstep I feel like I’m traveling to far-off places. Exotic places. With Kaylee as my tour guide.
And then there are the wind chimes. Metal and wood, both extravagant and trite—they hang in droves from the eaves around the house. When I was little I had trouble falling asleep at Delia’s. Between the trains shaking the house and the chimes responding with their exuberant jangle, I took to sleeping with earbuds jammed in my ears.
Once, though, when Delia noticed my struggle, she plopped down on Kaylee’s bed and told us a story about pixies and their jingling songs. I didn’t struggle so much after that.
Pixies.
I like that idea.
It gives the place an almost dream-like quality. Suitable for Kaylee, who’s always dreamed of far-off places.
The disaster of her childhood brought her here. To a home far more ideal and suitable for her than the place she was born into. I ponder that now as I stand on the stoop, Jake’s hand in mine. The wind is still, the chimes silent. I tap a metal ladybug hanging by the door. Her wings bump a butterfly’s, which in turn knocks a neighboring chime full of ceramic tea cups. Soon I’m surrounded by the song of pixies.
I don’t even have to knock. Delia opens the door, her face somber. It feels like we’re visiting a funeral home, and after my night at the cemetery, it’s an image I’d rather not encourage.
“Hey, Delia,” I say, stepping inside.
“Elle, Jake-y boy.” She squeezes us both.
“Smells good in here,” Jake says.
“Moussaka. See if you can get that boy to eat some. He’s nothing but gloom and doom and gibberish to boot.”
“You leaving?” I ask.
“That nitwit I hired to run the kitchen just called in sick,” she says, throwing a bunch of stuff into her purse.
She knocks a makeup brush to the floor, and Jake stoops to pick it up. “I hate being sick when it’s so nice outside,” he says.
“He ain’t sick. I’ll be back just as soon as I drag his sunshine-loving behind into the diner.”
She squeezes me again, her ample hips forcing me back onto the stoop.
“Is Kay inside?”
“Yeah, in her room. Heard her squawking something about a nail polish emergency.”
Kaylee left me after her proclamation that I’d been swallowed in flames. She had to meet Olivia at the community center, something about donated photography supplies. On any other day I’d have followed her there to examine the bounty. Instead, I left the teeny tiny ballerinas to Helene and begged Jake’s boss to give him the afternoon off. He agreed to give him an extended dinner break, but that meant waiting until dinner. So I leaned on the counter and stared, making Jake smirk while he processed orders. It made Phil nervous, I guess, so he finally gave in and sent Jake from the building.
Delia’s climbing into her car. I wave and step back inside, closing the door behind me. The lamps are unlit, the room dark. A sliding glass door at the back of the house lets cloudy sunlight through. It settles on top of the furniture, making me squint, but stubbornly refuses to brighten the room.
Marco’s on the couch, Ali’s journal resting loosely between his fingers. He’s sitting upright, his feet on the table. His head rests on his chest and he snores. Jake takes a seat at the opposite end of the couch and turns his eyes to me.
“Should we let him sleep?” he asks.
“Maybe,” I say. “He’s pretty gone.”
He’s still wearing yesterday’s clothes, and his five o’clock shadow has darkened, but he looks mostly peaceful. I hate that we’re going to make him relive something that had him running from the room.
“I’m gonna tell Kay we’re here.”
I’m still five steps from Kaylee’s room when the smell of acetone hits me between the eyes.
“Holy cow, Kay,” I say. “What did you do?”
“Just painting my nails.”
“Oh my . . . you look part Avatar.”
Her right foot is blue and sparkly—just like her eyelashes—and she’s mopping at it with a wad of paper towels soaked in nail polish remover.
“How did you . . . never mind.” Sometimes the how just isn’t important. I grab a few paper towels and set to work alongside her.
“You here to talk to Marco?”
“Yeah. Kay, maybe you should stay in your room. I don’t want Marco freaking you out.”
“Not a chance,” she says, standing.
“I just don’t think . . .”
“Look, I’ve known something was weird about that bracelet for months now. Since the warehouse. And I’ve known my nightmares from that night were more than just post-traumatic stress. Though I’ve had a bit of that too. But as shocked as I was to hear Marco tell me you were the human torch, I’m not shocked at all to hear your self-warming arm cuff has sci-fi-channel-like powers.”
“You’re not shocked?”
“No,” she says. “I’m irritated that you didn’t tell me before. Frustrated that I’ve been hinting around about that thing for months and you just brushed me off. But no. Your bracelet’s more than bling. I’m not shocked.”
How can she accept the weird so easily? Why was it so hard for me?
“Kay, it’s not a bracelet. Not really.”
“I know,” she says, throwing her hip into the end of her bed, moving it away from the wall, covering the blue stain on the floor. “It’s a halo. Marco told me.”
Kaylee and I find Jake and Marco on the back patio sitting at a small table under a green fiberglass awning. The afternoon sun presses against the awning, making it glow, coloring everything below it a sickly shade of lime. Delia’s backyard is really just a thousand yards of dried dirt and scraggly grass. No fence, just train tracks that cut through the back of her property.
Jake’s made coffee, and while he sips from his mug, Marco stares at the steam escaping from his.
“Why are you always making me coffee?” he asks.
“I didn’t realize it had turned into a habit,” Jake says.
“Whenever you want me to tear out my soul, you serve me black coffee.”
“Would you prefer cream and sugar?”
“No.”
A train pulls through, shaking both the ground and the chimes that surround the house. I pull a crate over next to Jake and sit. Kaylee sits on the stoop, her chin on her knees. I wait until the train passes, and then I move his untouched coffee aside and take Marco’s hands.
“You’re still warm,” he says. “It’s because of that thing, isn’t it? The halo.”
I look to Jake. His hazel eyes are anxious, but we’ve talked about this. Honesty—complete honesty—is the only way to move forward now. He encourages me with a nod.
“Yes,” I say.
“Where is it?”
“In my duffel bag. In the car. I can’t tell you how sorry I am about yesterday.”
He pulls his hands from mine and off the table, pulling into himself. “I shouldn’t have run off like that, but . . .” He dissolves into silent sobs, his shoulders shaking. “I can’t watch someone else I care about die, you know? I can’t.”
“We’re here to help, Marco. We’ll do whatever we can to keep that from happening.” Jake’s voice cracks, and he takes a minute to gather himself. “Can you tell us . . . You saw Brielle dying?”
Marco avoids eye contact now, his gaze on the splintered table. “Remember that story I told you, Elle, about Olivia’s mom dying in a fire. Remember how I said we were there—Olivia and I?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
I’ve told Jake, but Kaylee’s still in the dark. She’s quiet, though, looking on, her green face and blue eyelashes turning her into an alien.
“It was a long time ago, and I’d forgotten things over the years. But when I put that thing on, it all came back to me. Intense. Detailed, you know, moments fragmented, captured in lingering snapshots.”
I picture a graphic novel. A comic book. Squares of color that, when assembled, tell a story.
“What did you remember?” Jake asks. I’m so glad he’s here. I get all captivated when Marco talks, and I forget to ask questions. Important ones. It’s like watching him perform. Even now, his tears trickle away and his inner storyteller kicks in, taking over, helping him articulate whatever the halo showed him.
“Well, it wasn’t just Olivia and me, for starters. A bunch of us guys were there. Guys from the neighborhood sitting on the benches in front of the school, hanging out, making fun of pedestrians. You know, stupid stuff boys do.”
My private school in the city had benches like that. We girls used to sit there and wait for the all-boys school to let out.
“Olivia was there that night, at the benches, talking to us. Her mom was inside meeting with a teacher.”
“At night? Don’t most parent/teacher conferences happen during the day? That’s when they did ours,” Kaylee asks.
“Yeah,” Marco says. “Probably. I don’t know. That’s just, that’s how I remember it.”
“It’s okay, Marco, go ahead. There was a fire?”
“Yeah, it started in the back of the school somewhere. It could have been burning for a while before we caught on. And then there was smoke. Thick, moving over the school like rain clouds.” He pinches his eyes shut, remembering. “We all started yelling, pointing. I remember . . . remember the principal and, and . . . his secretary maybe. They came running out the front door. Cars stopped to watch. And the guys, we all scattered. Some of us ran toward the fire. The others ran away.”
“What did you do?” Jake asks.
Marco’s eyes open now. Crisp. Clear. “I ran toward the fire, around the school, to the back where the smoke was coming from. The guys with bikes had gotten there just before I did. Olivia had a bike.”
Marco turns his face toward the empty train tracks and the horizon beyond. His tears are gone, his voice steady, but he’s not here. Not with us. He’s there. At that school. Watching it burn.
“I think Olivia went in after her mom.”
“What makes you think that?”
“The burns. Her legs were burned. Bad. The backs of her calves, her feet. It’s something I’d forgotten about. But they took her away in an ambulance. I remember that. I remember the ambulance.”
I think back to the Fourth of July, to the barbecue. She was wearing shorts that day and I didn’t see any scars on her legs, but I won’t ask Marco about that now.
“You said you saw Brielle die,” Jake says.
“The fire trucks arrived and were dousing the place in water. They’d removed the body—Olivia’s mom—and another ambulance took it away. Most of the drama had died down.”
“When . . .”
“I saw a face. In a corner room, through the window. I don’t know if I really saw it that day. I don’t think I did. If I had, it would have haunted me my whole life, I think. I would have remembered that. But yesterday, with the . . . halo . . . on, I saw her.” His eyes find mine. “I saw you.”
I lick my lips, not wanting to belittle his experience, not wanting to hurt him further, but knowing the impossibility of it. “I w
ould have been—what?—three years old, Marco. It couldn’t have been me.”
“But it was. I ran toward the window, but before I could get there, the window shattered. Glass flew everywhere, stopping me. Keeping me from reaching you. But you were there. Staring back at me, your . . .” His face contorts and he buries it in his hands, his words spooked and muffled. “Your blond hair was on fire, and your white dress. Your eyes were so blue, and they looked right through me. And then . . .”
“And then what?” Kaylee asks, climbing onto the bench next to him.
He drops his hands, his green face tortured, like some sort of tragic swamp thing.
“You disappeared.”
26
Brielle
Saluting Teddy the Elk, I push my way out of the community center. The sun’s no longer in sight, hiding somewhere below the low-sitting buildings of downtown Stratus. The sky’s still streaked with light, the windows fronting the community center reflecting a blue expanse dewy with the promise of a summer rain.
I cut behind the community center and through the alley connecting it to Main Street. It’s darker here—secluded—and worry flutters through me once again. Before it can settle in my gut, a prayer whispers across my lips.
I pray all the time now. When I’m walking. When I’m sitting. When I’m eating.
I wake up praying.
All this unease has driven me to seek answers—real answers—and as infuriating as these dreams are, the only place that’s ever provided me completely satisfying answers has been the Throne Room.
So I pray.
My prayers aren’t particularly eloquent. They’re more of the desperate variety, and I don’t always feel heard. But saying the words, asking my Creator for answers, for direction, is right.
I know it is.
Even if I don’t feel it.
Feelings can’t be trusted. That’s something else I’m learning.
I round the corner, stepping onto Main. The Donut Factory is down the street from here, but its sugary smell dances down the street, smelling an awful lot like Jake. It reminds me of an encounter we had there, in front of the theatre, the very first time I saw Damien.
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