ARC: The 57 Lives of Alex Wayfare

by M. G. Buehrlen

  I grip the doorframe to keep my legs from giving out on me again. Someone broke in and deleted a bunch of files. The very files that probably held all Dr Farrow’s notes about my visions. Three guesses who that someone was. Now I know what Porter meant when he said he’d taken care of it.

  Mom turns to look at me. “You need to go lie down, Bean. You look worse than when you came in.” She shoos me out the door with a wooden spoon.

  I find my way to Gran and Pops’ bedroom and crawl back into bed beside Audrey. I fall asleep right away, but rest is futile. I can’t stop dreaming about Blue lying there left for dead, blood leaking from his chest, the light in his blue-green eyes going dark.

  JENSEN, JENSEN, JENSEN

  At dinner, I chase diced tomatoes around my taco salad with my fork. Grief coils around my ankle like a ball and chain. Mom and Dad give me space, thinking I still feel sick. Pops and Claire are oblivious. But Gran and Audrey watch me like a pair of hawks.

  After dinner, they clutch my arms, one on either side, and drag me into Gran’s bedroom. Audrey sits beside me on the bed, and Gran closes the door.

  “All right, Bean. Spill.” Gran crosses her arms over her favorite oatmeal-colored cardigan. There are fall leaves stitched on the pockets. She stares me down with the same look she uses on the neighborhood boys who steal our newspaper. “You’re not sick, are you? This is about a boy. Your mom used to sulk around the same way when she was your age.”

  “Is it Jensen?” Audrey asks in her soft, careful way.

  I toss my hands up. “It’s not Jensen. Would everyone stop talking about Jensen? I don’t like him like that anymore. And heaven forbid I have anything else to sulk about other than a boy.”

  Gran sits on the other side of me. The mattress sinks on her side, raising Audrey up six inches on the other. “You two lovebirds have a fight?” Gran says.

  I groan and fall back on the bed. Gran and Audrey lie on their sides on either side of me. I’m barricaded in by concerned faces.

  Two very cute concerned faces, at least.

  “Look,” I say. “I don’t like Jensen. He doesn’t like me. We’re not lovebirds. That’s not why I’m upset. End of story.”

  Gran shoots Audrey a look. “OK, Pea Pod, I played bad cop. Now it’s your turn.” She climbs off the end of the bed and leaves us to ourselves.

  I narrow my eyes at Audrey and clasp my hands behind my head. “OK, Pea Pod. What ya got?”

  “Come on,” she says, giving me a shove. “I’m starving for drama. You still get to go to school. I have to spend my freshman year at home with Gran and Pops, remember?”

  “Believe me, going to school is worse. I wish I could stay home with Gran and Pops.”

  “What happened with Jensen?”

  “Oh, for the love of Pete.” I sit up and look her in the eye. “I swear to you, it has nothing to do with Jensen. Now will you please stop saying his name?”

  “Is it about your appointment with the psychiatrist you saw yesterday?”

  I flop back down on my back. Grief tightens around my ankle even more, cutting off circulation. “No. I just had another bad dream, all right? A very, very bad dream.”

  “What was it about?” Her voice is pink silk, soft and warm. It usually comforts me, calms my nerves, but this time the wound is too deep to soothe.

  I chew the inside of my lip, trying not to picture Blue’s face when the taxicab pulled away, or his teasing grin right before he caught my face in his hands and kissed me. I try not to remember the look he gave me when I jumped out of the dumpster in the alley. Or the first time he called me Sousa. And I try desperately not to think about him dying, all alone, in the back of his delivery truck.

  God, he didn’t deserve that.

  I should’ve been there.

  I should’ve prevented it.

  My throat tightens and it’s hard to speak. I stare up at the lace valance across the top of Gran and Pops’ bay window. There’s a cobweb in the corner, and it could use a dusting. I think about climbing up there and taking care of that for them right now.

  “Allie?”

  I can’t tell Audrey about Blue dying, even if I tell her it was all just a dream. I’ve never been able to talk to her about death. Not when my biggest fear is coming home to Mom standing in the kitchen, eyes rimmed red, holding one of Audrey’s bandanas in her hands. If it hurts this much to lose someone from a past life, how much will it hurt to lose my sister?

  I sniff and wipe my nose with the back of my hand. I can’t let her see me fall apart. I have to be strong for her. Always strong. So I pat her hand and just say, “I’ll be OK.”

  CHAPTER 14

  NEIGHBORS

  When I wake up the following morning, it’s half past eleven. A note on my bedside table from Mom and Dad says they called in to school for me, they hope I feel better, and they love me. The smell of Gran’s homemade cinnamon rolls lingers in the air from breakfast. I make my way downstairs, hoping to find a few left.

  The house is empty. I find two cinnamon rolls on a plate under a dishtowel on the kitchen island. A note from Gran says she and Pops took Audrey to one of her appointments.

  It’s been a long time since I’ve had the house to myself. Part of me wants to stay and take advantage of the peace and quiet, maybe work on some of my projects, but I know I wouldn’t be able to concentrate. There are too many questions left unanswered.

  I power on my cell phone while I take a bite of cinnamon roll, expecting to see a dozen calls from Porter, but there isn’t even one.

  I redial his number.

  “Hello?” he says in his distinctive, gentlemanly voice.

  “Where are you? I need to talk to you. Do you live somewhere downtown?”

  “Alex?”

  I lick the glaze from my fingers and rummage in a drawer for pencil and paper. “Give me your address. I can take the bus.”

  “I didn’t think I’d hear from you so soon.”

  “Address,” I say, pencil poised.

  He’s quiet for a moment, then says, “142 Elmwood.”

  I start to write it down, then drop the pencil. “142 Elmwood is just down the street.”

  “Well, you needed protection. Someone had to keep an eye on you–”

  I hang up on him and grab the last cinnamon roll and my army-green parka on the way out the door.

  142 Elmwood is a cute two-story Victorian with yellow siding, white trim, and two bright red Japanese Maples in the front yard. Porter sits on the front porch in a rocking chair when I arrive, smoke curling from a cigar in his hand. He’s wearing jeans again and another black polo. No cap today, just very, very, short white hair.

  “This is Mrs Yoder’s place,” I say, crossing the leaf-covered yard to the porch. Sunlight warms the top of my head.

  Porter nods and rocks back and forth. “She rents the top floor to me.”

  I stand at the base of the porch steps, my hands in my coat pockets. “How long have you been here?”

  “Renting from Mrs Yoder? About three years. Before that I lived in that apartment complex on Baybury. Before that I rented a house on Maple.”

  I narrow my eyes at him. “You’ve been spying on me my whole life?” The thought gives me the creeps. What had he seen?

  He points his cigar at me. “I’ve been protecting you. There’s a difference.”

  “How do I know you’re not just a filthy old man who has a thing for nerd girls?”

  He frowns at me. “Do you think I look like a filthy old man?”

  I shrug. “How would I know? I don’t exactly keep a checklist for profiling pedophiles.”

  He makes a face, the kind I make when I try a sip of coffee. “That might be the most disrespectful thing I’ve ever heard you say. Do you speak like that to all your elders?”

  Elders. That makes me snort. “Sadly, I haven’t met too many elders worthy of respect outside my family. Adults seem pissed off because of their life choices and take it out on us kids because, unlike them, we sti
ll have time; or they’re blind and forgot what it was like to be a kid so they try to put us in a glass box; or they’re jackasses just for the fun of it; or they’re blissfully ignorant of, like, everything. Which one are you?”

  He levels his eyes at me. “I’m not a liar.” He flicks his cigar and flecks of ash sprinkle to the porch floor.

  I level my eyes back at him, my chin lifted. “All adults are liars. They lie under the guise of protection, but it’s still lying.”

  “Protection can be a good thing,” he says. “It can give a child freedom to grow, to live their life without shadows of despair lurking beyond every turn. It gives a child boundaries, a sanctuary within the cruel world. Protection builds walls. Keeps a child safe, just like I’ve kept you safe all this time.” He leans forward in his rocking chair. “Tell me, are you happier now that you know the truth? Or have you been wishing you’d never met me at Ristorante Cafferelli?”

  I scowl at him. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because he knows too damn much, or because he makes too much damn sense. “So what exactly have you been protecting me from?”

  He sucks on his cigar, then puffs out a cloud of smoke that veils his face for a moment. “From Durham Gesh.”

  A cold breeze rustles the leaves and bites through my parka, making me shiver in the sunlight. I pull my sleeves down over my wrists. “What does the founder of AIDA want with me?”

  Porter raises an eyebrow. “If I tell you more of the truth, the truth you say you want to hear, do you promise not to storm off again?”

  I roll my eyes and flop down on the porch steps. “Come on. I stormed off because you made me erase everything, and I was trying to wrap my head around all this time travel and reincarnation stuff, and I was frustrated, and you were super confusing and annoying.”

  I catch the smallest grin behind his cigar. “Fair enough,” he says. “Shall I try to be less confusing and annoying today?”

  I push my glasses up. “That would help. Seriously.”

  “How about you ask the questions this time?” he says. “I’ll answer as simply as I can.”

  I lean my back against one of the porch pillars, hoping Porter’s serious about keeping things simple. “OK. Start with Durham Gesh. Why do I need protection from him?”

  He breathes in another mouthful of smoke, then drops his cigar and flattens it with his heel. “Because at the end of your last life, you and Gesh had a falling out. You didn’t agree with his methods anymore, so you left AIDA. Escaped is a better word for it. He’s been looking for you ever since. It’s my job to make sure he never finds you.”

  The way Porter says that makes me feel like a rabbit out in the open with wolves on the prowl. “What happens if he finds me?”

  “He’ll force you to work for him again.”

  “And what if I refuse?”

  “You won’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  Porter glances down the street in the direction of my house. “There are exactly six reasons why you won’t, and four of them share your last name.”

  My family.

  “He’d threaten my family?”

  His rocking chair creaks. “He’d do much worse than threaten.”

  My hands are fists on my knees. My heart is in my ears. “That doesn’t make any sense. I’ve never done anything to him.”

  “Not in this life, no. But he knows you were reincarnated again. He knows I’m hiding you. For him, that’s enough.”

  I shake my head. “Then I’ll work for him. I don’t care. I worked for him before, right? If it keeps my family safe, I’ll do anything.”

  Porter stops rocking. “You can’t work for Gesh.”

  “Why not? All of this,” I say, waving my hands, “my ability, the visions, being a Descender, it’s caused enough trouble for my family already. It needs to stop. If I can stop it by working for Gesh again, then I will.”

  Porter scrubs a frustrated hand over his face. “He can’t find you, Alex. If he finds you, it’ll ruin everything.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re a Transcender.” Porter says it like I’m stupid. Like that should mean something to me. “You’re more powerful than all of us, all of the Descenders combined, which makes you dangerous. You’re the only one who can bring Gesh down, and he knows it. So he wants you contained. If he finds you, he’ll break you. Make it so you can’t fight back, can’t do anything except follow his orders. He did it to you once before. He’ll do it again. It’s his specialty.”

  A memory flashes before me. I’m that little girl with braids again, the same little girl playing Polygon, but this time I’m strapped to a chair in the middle of a sterile medical room. The lights above are harsh and bright. The boy with the wire-rimmed glasses watches me from the doorway. He looks worried for me, his dark eyes round and wide. A tall man in a white lab coat shines a blinding light in my right eye. It’s Gesh, I know it is, I remember it being him, but I can’t see his face past the light.

  “Kan du huske hvem du er?” he says. Do you remember who you are?

  I shake my head no.

  He slaps me, hard. So hard I almost pass out.

  “Husker du nu?” he says. Do you remember now?

  Tears spill down my cheeks and lips. My whole body trembles. I rub my bare forearms and wrists, my palms sliding over rashes and scars and burns and bruises.

  I cower as he raises his hand to strike me again.

  That’s all I can remember. The memory is gone. Out of reach. But I can still feel the sting of his hand on my cheek. I can still feel the painful scars on my wrists.

  I let go of my sleeves, which I’d been gripping this whole time. I push them up to expose the bare skin underneath. I run my fingers over my wrists. They’re pink and perfect. No scars. But I remember them now. Burning cigarettes pressed into my flesh. Ropes tied tight, rubbing my skin raw. Serrated knives slicing patterns in blood.

  My nails bite into the palms of my fists. I squeeze my eyes shut. That memory of Gesh awakens a mixture of fear and hatred I hadn’t known was inside me. I don’t remember anything else about him, or my last life, but I have a feeling Porter was right to keep me hidden.

  My teeth chatter, and I start to shiver, suddenly feeling cold and bitter. Porter notices my discomfort and motions for me to follow him inside. We climb painted stairs to the top floor. Porter’s apartment is sparse, to say the least. A tiny kitchenette in the corner looks out over the street, and a futon and over-stuffed armchair take up all the space in the living room. It smells like burnt toast, coffee, and cigar smoke. It’s hard to believe Porter has lived like this, without anything to his name, for so many years.

  All because of me.

  Porter fills an electric teapot with water from the tap. I fall onto the cushions of the armchair, feeling bad for treating him the way I have. He’d only been doing what was best for me. This whole time. “I remember him,” I say. “I remember Gesh.”

  Porter turns off the tap and looks at me.

  I rub a hand over one of my forearms. “He tortured me, didn’t he?”

  Porter’s eyes close for a moment, like my words pain him. Then he plugs the teapot in and flips the switch. “Gesh is a very troubled man.”

  “That’s why I didn’t agree with his methods at AIDA.” I swallow a knot in my throat and hug my arms across my chest. “He hurt me. Hurt others too, I guess.”

  Porter gives me this grave, solemn look. “I won’t let him hurt you ever again. Or your family. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe.”

  Somehow I know he’s telling the truth. “Is that why you hacked in and deleted Dr Farrow’s files? So there’d be no trace of my abilities?”

  Porter pulls two mugs out of a cabinet and sets them on the counter. “I have to erase any trail that might lead Gesh to you. He has spies everywhere, especially at AIDA. Imagine one of them stumbling across Dr Farrow’s files – all her notes about a seventeen year-old girl plagued with realistic visions of the past. That would’v
e led him straight to your doorstep.”

  I bury my face in the crook of my arm, feeling like such an idiot. If Porter hadn’t been there to cover my tracks...

  “Incidentally,” he says, “I heard Dr Farrow accepted a very lucrative job offer in San Diego. She boarded a plane this morning. We won’t be seeing her again anytime soon.”

  I peek up at Porter from behind my arm. “You made that happen?”

  He drops a teabag into each mug. “Couldn’t risk her being interrogated too heavily about the security breach.”

  I watch him pour hot water over the teabags, the steam curling past his face and up to the ceiling. “You must be a pretty good hacker to break into AIDA’s database.”

  “I should be.” He hands me a mug and sits down on the futon with his own. “I designed the system.”

  ANSWERS. FOR REAL THIS TIME.

  I sip my tea slowly, so it doesn’t burn my tongue, and Porter tells me all about Gesh.

  “In the beginning, Gesh and Flemming lived by a strict code of ethics. Descending would be used for the good of humanity, nothing more. But Gesh lost sight of the code somewhere along the way. Once AIDA became large enough, and Gesh had trained enough recruits to do his cancer research for him, he took a step back to explore his own passions and greed. Descending was no longer a means to saving the world. It became a vehicle for conquering the world.” Porter leans against the back of the futon and props an ankle on his knee. “Imagine if I wasn’t there to chaperone your descent to Chicago. Imagine if you could get away with anything. What would you have done?”

  I know exactly what I would’ve done. It involves Blue’s bedroom, his biceps, and a lot more kissing. But I don’t dare say that to Porter.