Splinter Skill

by A C Bell

  “He... he’s been hurting Nikki. When I wouldn’t stop trying to find out what her secret was, I guess he felt he didn’t have any other choice.” I slumped my head against the pillow and stared up at the ceiling, frowning. I balled my hand into a shaking fist. “How can I expect to protect anyone when I can’t even see a monster when it’s right in front of me?”

  Mom’s warm hand covered mine. “Adeline, look at me.” Reluctantly, I lowered my gaze to her. Resolution reflected from her brown eyes. “The monsters closest to us are always the most difficult to see, but you did find him. And you protected Nikki with everything you have because that’s what you do. Just like your father…” Tears rimmed her eyes. “He would be so proud. I am so proud. I know you’ll make a fine officer.”

  Emotion tightened my chest. My nose tingled again and tears burned my eyes. She was accepting my decision. We sat in silence for a while. Mom held my hand. I just stared at the ceiling, racked with thoughts of anger and guilt.

  Eventually, I said, “Looking back, I don’t think it was about the knife.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I… I wanted him to give me a reason to defend myself. Does that make me a terrible person?”

  “No.” Mom squeezed my hand and we fell quiet.

  ✽✽✽

  The police got a full confession from Justin and the school was doing anything they could to cover their bums. Peter was furious and told the school president that campus police could have helped me if they’d listened to him. She came to my room herself and offered to cover my medical bills and even offered to reimburse me for my meal plan this semester. I let her sweat a bit before accepting. I was released the next day with instructions to follow up with my doctor. My boss gave me the next week off of work, too, while I recovered.

  11 Bargaining

  Professor McElroy was passing out instructions for the day’s lab. We would be determining how much iron was in an over-the-counter vitamin tablet.

  “Speaking of medicine, did you take yours this morning?” Nikki asked.

  “Yes, Mother, I took my pills.”

  “That’s a good girl.” She patted my head approvingly and I swatted her hand away, laughing.

  “Morning,” Raiden greeted gruffly.

  “Hi,” I said offering a smile. He dropped his book bag next to the table and stared at the information packet at his seat. He didn’t return my smile. Didn’t even look up.

  “This is a weird one,” Nikki said. She was reading the packet extensively, chewing on her thumb nail. She hated chemistry. “Why would we need to know how much iron is in a vitamin tablet?”

  “Maybe in case someone has some kind of iron-deficiency?” I suggested.

  “And who has ‘1,10-phenanthroline’ lying around to test it?” Raiden said as if I hadn’t spoken. I tried to send him an inquisitive look, but he still didn’t meet my eye.

  “So, how was your weekend, Raiden?” I asked.

  “Fine,” he muttered.

  “Did you do anything?”

  “Nope.”

  When he didn’t expand, I shifted awkwardly in my seat. I hadn’t been at classes the rest of last week so I hadn’t seen him to thank him, but I didn’t want to mention Justin with Nikki sitting next to me. Raiden remained standoffish with me through the entire period, though he seemed to have no problem talking to Nikki.

  ✽✽✽

  “Welcome back, Adeline,” Andie greeted. I set my tray on the lunch table before accepting the hug both she and Kat were waiting to give me.

  “How are you feeling?” Kat asked.

  “Fine, but my painkillers are making me a little drowsy.”

  “She even slept through her alarm. I had to wake her myself,” Nikki said, teasingly bumping my good arm. I smiled and rolled my eyes at her.

  Kat shook her head and scooped creamy mac and cheese into her mouth. I silently wished I had gotten the mac and cheese instead of salad, but the meds were also making my stomach queasy. I thought it better to play it safe.

  “After what he did, poor girl could use some sleep,” Kat said. Nikki looked down at her plate.

  “Hey.” Andie nudged Kat with her elbow. She directed Kat’s attention to Nikki and Kat grimaced at herself.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it,” she said.

  Nikki shook her head. “It’s fine.”

  “If you’d like, I could get you a filter for that mouth of yours.” Brandon set a full tray of food next to Kat’s. She smacked his arm and he winked at her. Peter took his usual spot at the end of the table and all at once, we realized we’d unintentionally left the seat on Nikki’s other side empty; Justin’s seat. It was barely perceptible, but Nikki tensed and leaned away from it. All of us felt the weight of that seat and what it represented and why it was now empty. Peter moved to fill the seat and the weight eased. Nikki relaxed a little. Silence lingered over the table, though.

  After a few minutes of listening to each other chew, Peter said, “So, how ‘bout them Patriots? Brady could get another ring this year.”

  “Actually, I’m kinda hoping the Broncos pick back up,” Nikki said. After a pause, the group smiled.

  “Traitor,” Brandon teased. Though we lived in Vermont, the table was full of Patriot’s fans.

  “Actually, I’m with Nikki,” Andie said. “Brady’s won plenty of bowls. What’s he need another one for?”

  “To have another win,” Kat said. She and Brandon knuckle-bumped.

  “He’s got ten fingers. Plenty of room for more rings.”

  “Since when do you two agree on something?” I asked.

  “Since shut up,” Kat said. We laughed.

  Across the room, I spotted Slade strut across the orange tile to join Raiden at a table. He noticed me and waved, so I waved back with a smile. Raiden looked up to see who Slade was waving to and I moved to wave at him, too, but his gaze shot back down to his food.

  “What’s with the cold shoulder?” Nikki asked.

  “I don’t know, he was acting the same way during Chemistry.”

  Her lips quirked down a little. “Yeah, that was weird. Maybe it wasn’t intentional,” Nikki offered.

  “Maybe.” I eyed Raiden skeptically. “I’m gonna go find out.” I pushed my chair away from the table.

  “What’s going on?” Peter asked Nikki as I marched away. I heard her mutter something about “boy is in trouble”.

  Slade and Raiden looked up at my approach and Raiden’s lips pinched into a thin line. He looked away, looking irritable. Annoyance prickled my gut. Their small table was pushed against the brick wall, leaving only one empty spot on the side. I dragged the chair back, letting the metal legs scrape the floor loudly, and slumped onto the plastic seat.

  “Why hello, Adeline, how’ve you been since class this morning?” Slade asked comically before taking a large bite of a chicken burger with an “organic” label printed on the tin foil.

  “I’m fine. Hasn’t been an overall eventful day, but I did have an interesting time in Chemistry last hour.”

  “Oh?” Slade’s glance slid to Raiden, who glared back.

  “Yeah, this annoying bug kept—”

  “Slade,” Raiden interrupted. “Can I have a minute with Adeline?”

  “Uh, sure,” Slade said. He scooted out and sauntered off with his swaggering strut, attracting the attention of several girls in the area.

  “So, you remember my name,” I said once he was out of earshot. “I was under the impression you didn’t know who I was anymore.”

  Raiden shot me a scowl, his chartreuse eyes dark. “What were you thinking?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You shouldn't have gone with him.”

  “You’re mad because I left with Justin so he wouldn’t carve me out like a pumpkin?”

  “Yell, scream, draw attention. Don't allow yourself to be lead into an isolated area. There were firemen nearby. I was nearby.”

  “I panicked, okay?”

  Raid
en leaned forward over the table, meeting my eye with an intense scrutiny. “You panicked. You nearly got yourself killed and all you can say is, ‘I panicked’? One slip up, one wrong move; that's all it takes when your life is at stake.”

  “Don’t patronize me, Raiden. I know better than you think how violently one decision can backfire.”

  “Then why did you go with him?”

  “Because I was angry!” I shouted. “I am angry! He’s been one of my closest friends for three years, and now I find out what kind of monster he really is. And yet, despite everything he’s done to Nikki, part of me feels guilty. It breaks my heart that things ended this way for them. If I’d figured all of this out sooner, then maybe I could have helped. Not just her, but him, too. I feel sorry for him and I hate him for that.”

  Raiden grimaced. “Adeline, I’m—”

  I stood and told him exactly where he could shove his apology. As I made a beeline for the exit, I felt my friends watching me from the other side of the room. Footsteps followed and I expected it to be Nikki or Peter, but it was Raiden who reached around me to push the glass door open for me. I grumbled. Having him follow defeated the purpose of making a dramatic exit. I ignored him and marched outside, back into the wonderful smell of the rain. Clouds blanketed the sky and the concrete was still slick from the recent rainfall. I hugged my leather jacket tighter around myself, difficult to do over my sling.

  “Adeline, wait,” he said behind me. “When I found you gone, it scared me. I’m sorry.”

  I growled in my throat again and came to a begrudging stop. “So, your reaction is to get angry?” I heard his arms slap his sides as if he had lifted them in a shrug and then dropped them. My shoes faintly smacked the layer of water on the sidewalk as I turned. The apology in his eyes made my anger fizzle out. He tucked his hands, turning pink from the chill, into his pockets.

  “I’m human. That’s my only excuse.”

  I tried to cross my arms, but obviously couldn’t with the sling. Instead I crumpled my hand into the tiny ‘woman-sized’ pocket of my leather jacket. When would clothing companies start giving women real pockets?

  “Thank you for what you did. Getting me out of the fire and then carrying me to the ambulance later.”

  “You’re welcome.” He fixed me with his green eyes and I looked down, shuffling my feet. “There’s nothing you could have done, you know. Even if you’d found out sooner. He had it in him all along.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t believe that. I don’t believe anyone is born evil, destined to go rotten. He made bad choices. Fell down and couldn’t get back up. Isn’t anyone capable of that?”

  “He’s a coward.”

  My nose tingled and my throat tightened. “Yes, he is,” I agreed. I looked up at the clouds to let the glare startle the tears back. “Somewhere along the way, I’ve stopped looking for the signs.”

  “It’s happened before?”

  “Yes, but not with a boyfriend.”

  “Who, then?”

  I didn’t want to answer that. It wasn’t my story to tell.

  “My mom,” Nikki said.

  Neither Raiden or I had noticed her come out. The door was still easing shut behind her. Her face was still, calm, but I knew it was a facade borne of years of acting practice. Raiden looked between us, unsure what to say. Nikki’s hazel eyes held my blue ones.

  “The night I found out, Mrs. Ware kept saying Nikki was changing the tv channel. Called her a witch. She was terrified, livid. When she slapped Nikki, I pushed her away. She cut her hand pretty bad on a picture frame. I had no idea she had schizophrenia.”

  “Having a mental illness doesn’t make someone violent,” Nikki argued. “She did that herself because she hates me.”

  Sadness filled my chest. “No, she doesn’t.”

  Nikki looked down at her feet, crossing her arms.

  “So, you think you should have been able to recognize the signs back then?” Raiden interjected.

  “Yeah,” I said nodding. “I should have been able to do something.”

  He patted his pockets, looking for something, then reached into the inside pocket of his jacket to retrieve a pen and a card. He quickly scribbled something onto it and handed it to me. It was a business card for what looked like a law firm. Cravitz and Fitch.

  “Humor me here. Solve this.”

  I gaped. He’d scribbled a series of seemingly random numbers, letters, and lines to form a complex mathematical equation. Nikki came over and looked at it, too,

  “Um, I can’t.”

  “Why not?” He asked.

  “Because I don’t know anything about calculus,” I said. “Hey, you just assumed I wouldn’t know how to do this.” I glared at him.

  He balked. “Well, I-I assumed that since it doesn’t have anything to do with your major—”

  Nikki bumped my hip and I smirked. “She’s pulling your leg, Raiden. Peter has taught her some bad habits when it comes to lightening the mood.”

  Raiden sighed. “My point is that, as a twelve-year-old girl, you would have been no better equipped to deal with a complex situation involving Mrs. Ware’s mental health than you are to solve that equation now. You simply didn’t have the know-how.”

  “Huh,” was all I managed to say.

  Was it really that easy? I’d always thought of myself as a kid who’d had to grow up quicker than most after Dad’s death, so I’d always thought I should have been prepared to help Nikki. But with Raiden’s logic, could I really just let myself off the hook. How exactly would I have helped Nikki back then? Short of kidnapping her and refusing to return her to her parents, which would have done more harm than good, there isn’t much I would have been able to do. Maggie and Rick had been there for Nikki, so I would have only been one more person for moral support. And since I would have been unable to really understand the situation, I probably wouldn’t have been very good at it.

  “Just think about it,” Raiden said. He looked to Nikki. “And I’m sorry. Both for how I’ve meddled and for what you’ve been through.”

  She shifted uncomfortably and nodded. He turned to go and we let him. Nikki bumped my arm with her elbow and drew me into a hug.

  ✽✽✽

  The parking lot was barren, even for a Friday afternoon. Slanted sunlight set the lot aglow in pink and orange hues. The flapping of paper caught my attention as I strolled up the walk to the dorm building. A piece of paper had been nailed to the street sign on the corner, the corners flapping in the chill wind. A yellow lab with a droopy face named Alfie had gone missing. I pulled out my phone and took a picture just in case I saw the dog and then called Peter. He answered quickly.

  “Hey, do you want to walk over to Aram with me? I’m starved.”

  Peter chuckled. “Of course, you are.” Someone shut their car door across the lot and the sound echoed through the phone. I spun and spotted Peter strolling away from his car at the back end of the lot. I waved, but he didn’t see me so I tried hopping a little at the same time. Still nothing. Since I couldn’t wave and hold the phone to my ear with one hand, I pressed it to my ear again.

  He was in mid-sentence. “—ut I actually just got to work. I’ll be here pretty late.”

  I pulled the phone away from my ear to stare at it, as if it had twisted Peter’s words to form the lie itself.

  “Are you okay?” Peter asked.

  “What? Oh, yeah. I’ll let you go, then.”

  “Okay. Go eat your weight in pasta.”

  I laughed. “Alright. Bye.” I stuffed my phone in my pocket and watched as Peter crossed the lot to the sidewalk. If he wasn’t going to work, then where was he going? And why wasn’t he driving? As was apparently becoming custom, I decided to find my own answers and followed him.

  ✽✽✽

  Kettering Park was an open field with a tall chain link fence in one corner for baseball. Since it was only a few blocks from the school, it was often occupied by college kids. With both nightfall and the threat of a s
torm on the way, however, it was empty except for the black Audi parked by the sidewalk. Raiden spotted Peter and slid off the trunk.

  “Hey,” he said with a friendly grin.

  “Hey. Is Dad here yet?”

  “Yeah. He already went in, so I sent Slade to watch his back.”

  “Cool, thanks.”

  Raiden popped the trunk and tossed a walkie-talkie to Peter and then pulled out his rifle. He clicked the magazine in and slung the strap around his shoulder, pocketing an extra magazine for good measure.

  “Want one?”

  Peter waved his hands. “Nooo. I don’t like guns.”

  “I don’t want you unarmed.”

  Peter lifted his shirt to show Raiden the Kevlar vest. His jacket disguised the bulkiness. “I’m not unarmed, either, now that I know chasing won’t be my main focus. Ready Rambo?”

  Raiden eyed him for a minute, uncertain. Then he shut the trunk. “Yep.”

  They marched toward the tree line. When Peter had seen the poster for the missing dog, he was almost certain the cynephi was somewhere in the two-mile expanse of woods beside the park. Legally, they could perform a citizen’s arrest if they found probable cause, meaning the SAU didn’t need to lift a finger since they were clearly too busy sitting with their thumbs up their bums to do so.

  ✽✽✽

  When they were sure to be at least twenty paces in, I trailed after them. What could they possibly be doing and why did Raiden have a rifle? The chilly breeze continued to nip my face, but not as harshly with the trees providing a windshield.

  At first, I thought they'd gotten out of sight, but I caught a glimpse of Peter’s figure off in the distance. I followed quietly. He bent to the ground to look at something while Raiden stood idly by. After a minute, Pete shook his head and rose, continuing his march. After about thirty yards, he bent again, repeating the action. This time he changed course slightly. He seemed to be following a trail of some sort. Tracking an animal? With the gun, it seemed like they were here to kill something, but that couldn’t be right. Peter was avidly against hunting.