The Way

by Mary E. Twomey

  “‘Very well, my love. I will leave the children in the care of Silvester’s wife, Naomi. We will come back to them with no trace of this vile sickness.’”

  “‘What good is life if I cannot see your handsome face? My eyesight is fading!’” Beth’s legs parted ominously, inviting Daniel to mount her in the presence of the entire bar. The diners were fervent with encouragement. Catcalls, whistles and whoops filled the diner.

  Blue’s mouth fell open, and she found that even though she wanted to, she could not look away. She had never seen the seat of panties that were not white. The difference was shocking.

  “‘I will make your life worth living. Our children’s laughter will fill your ears and bring you joy. I will take you broken, and bring you back whole!’” Daniel lifted Beth’s leg and looped it around his back, revealing her bright red underwear to the waitress and now several others.

  “With little medicine to help her, the illness took her eyesight only one day after they left camp.” Purple scarf finished the passage just as Baird came over to break up the two that were acting out the birds and the bees for his sister.

  Baird nodded to Lawrence, who’d been enjoying the view from his table. Since Baird was A-blood, he had to be careful around Vemreaux and not overstep his bounds. Joe put him in a precarious position when he left him with no B-blood reinforcement to help manage things. While Baird was more than capable of physically dominating the situation, he could be in real trouble if a Vemreaux pressed charges against him. Lawrence rose from his seat and accompanied Baird over to the copulating two. “Get off my table,” Baird ordered.

  Beth merely laughed at the Wayward’s gall.

  Lawrence had little patience for their disrespect of the man who controlled the Green Abby shots and helped him end the degenerates that sullied his many businesses. Lawrence grabbed Daniel by the scruff of the neck and yanked him off of Beth, who squealed with shock. “Hey!”

  “Get off my table or get out of my bar.” Baird stared her in the face, though her skirt was less than decent and served as the focal point for many.

  Beth complied, blushing with false propriety as she sank back down into her chair. Daniel was shaking his head at Lawrence in what was clearly a deferential fear. “No, sir,” he muttered. “Never again.” When the tall, bald man released Daniel, the skinnier Vemreaux lifted up his chair with hands that Blue noticed were shaking, despite his forced calm smile at his friends.

  Lawrence was intimidating, even in a suit. He glared at Daniel. “Finish the story.”

  “What?”

  “Stand up here and finish the story with some respect for your people.”

  It was clear that Daniel wanted to argue, but would not dare to further incur the wrath of this man. He snatched up the book and read so quickly, the words were barely intelligible. “Francis David Vemreaux carried Lucinda’s heated body through state lines that had yet to be drawn, down to the small fountain in Florida that blessed his body so long ago. It was his last attempt to save the life that had become more precious to him than his own.

  “Gently and tenderly he bathed her.” Daniel looked uncomfortably toward Lawrence. “Then there’s some stuff here about that…ah, here we go.” His eyes coasted over the fabricated eroticism and searched for something less racy. “Once he tipped the water down her throat, he could feel the change rolling through her. When she opened her sightless eyes, they had turned from the perfect and purest blue to a pitch black that matched her husband’s.”

  Brown Scarf chimed in as soon as Daniel flopped down in his seat. “Thus the Vemreaux race began, and here we are today.” He stood and addressed the diners. “Come see our troupe perform on the main stage at three o’clock sharp on Peace Day in Capital City!” He was gratified when his words were greeted with polite applause.

  Lawrence clapped Daniel on the shoulder, causing the actor to wince. “There. Was that so hard? As you were, people,” he announced to the restaurant.

  Baird caught his sister’s eye and motioned for her to join him in the kitchen. He tried to put on a calm expression for Grettel. “Hey, midget, could you give us a minute?”

  Grettel obliged and stepped out the back entrance into the parking lot for a much-needed break.

  As soon as the door closed, he stared his sister down. “How many shots have they had?”

  “The couple making babies on the table?” Blue inquired.

  “Real cute, Blue. How many?”

  “Two rounds, is all. Couple blood drinks, too. No food yet. Too busy with other things, I imagine.”

  Baird held his finger up in front of Blue’s face, and she knew that all humor was to cease. “You listen to me. That girl is trashy. She’ll be pulling stuff like that for the rest of her life to get attention from Vemreaux who’re too stupid to notice she’s using them to feed her own ego.” He watched his sister nod submissively. Baird ran his hand over his face to gear up for the uncomfortable thing he needed to say. “Do you…do you have any questions about what you saw out there?”

  Blue thought that she would rather face the predator with one hand tied behind her back than discuss sex with her brother. She mashed her lips together in thought. “Just one.”

  Baird crossed his arms over his chest and set his feet shoulder-width apart, squaring off to face her dreaded question. “Alright. Out with it.”

  “How long does Elle have to wait before you throw her down on a table like that?” she teased with a grin. Before Baird could shut his mouth that had fallen open, Blue snickered. “I’m nineteen, Baird. I took sex education in The Way. I was starting to wonder if you ever took the course, though.”

  He responded by playfully lunging at her to catch her head in a lock, which she artfully ducked out of. Blue laughed, and the sound did his heart good, lifting his mood from the terrifying conversation he’d been psyching himself up for five minutes to have with her. “Is this conversation over, then?” he asked, smiling with relief.

  “Please, yes. And forever.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Stand Too Close

  Elle flitted into the kitchen wearing a secretive smile. She fixed a fresh glass to make a second blood shake for her customer. “Someone’s a popular girl today,” she commented, filling the air that Baird was determined to make tense with his honed-in hostility.

  “Oh, yeah?” Blue replied without looking up from her book. There was a lull in the hectic rush as the lunch crowd thinned and the dinner diners were just realizing their appetites. “How much did the mouth breather tip you?”

  “Not me.” Elle tapered her smile to appear as if she knew something that Blue did not. “Someone’s asked to sit in your section.”

  At this, Baird slammed his knife down on the cutting board and stomped over to the door, peering through the hole in the upper half that revealed the restaurant. “Who is it?” he demanded.

  Grettel flinched and busied herself with a boiling pot of potatoes to avoid Baird’s wrath.

  “Will you calm it down, Baird?” Elle put her hands on her hips and stared at the back of his head. He could feel her eyes on him, so he made sure not to turn around. “Man alive! It’s just Stand. You act like the predator itself’s gonna come up and order hisself a blood smoothie or something. Get a grip!”

  He did feel a little foolish, but wouldn’t admit his overreaction. Instead, he turned away from the door, still avoiding Elle, and returned to the cutting board.

  Blue jumped down from the island and skipped to the door, knowing it would agitate her brother. “Oo! My first fan!” Baird most hated it when she acted like a child, so she made sure to behave as such when he was being particularly insufferable. She contemplated whistling just to push him further, but decided against it. Grettel looked like she was about to climb into the pot of potatoes just to escape the man.

  Blue’s skipping ceased when she emerged from the kitchen. She resumed the subservient body language she was beginning to find restrictive. She had only two other tables that w
ere occupied, and they were both enjoying their meals without need for her, so she did not mind that Stand took his time ordering a haggis sandwich on pumpernickel with a side of trout slaw.

  “How has your afternoon been?” Stand asked politely as he handed her the menu.

  “I’ve been studying that Geometry book you gave me.” She spoke conspiratorially, unsure they should be talking of such things out in the open.

  His smile danced in his eyes. “That’s great! Have you gotten to any of the homework sections?” Stand straightened his tie to have something to do with his hands.

  “Yes. Though, there’s one thing that I don’t understand yet.”

  “Yet? That’s a very healthy attitude. I’m sure a smart girl like yourself can do anything you put your mind to.”

  Blue’s head shot up and she stared at him warily, her eyes holding him in a near trance. “You don’t know that I’m smart.” What she really wanted to say was, “how do you know that I’m smart?” but she knew that would be too much of a tell.

  “If you don’t believe in yourself…” Stand began awkwardly, but then switched tracks halfway through. “Smart people want to learn.”

  The statement was almost a compliment, which made her feel exposed and uncomfortable. Blue did the only thing she could think of. She walked away.

  Blue slapped the order form down on the ledge for Grettel, who was nearest, but Baird swooped in and snatched it up. His temper was on a gradual decrescendo after having been put in his place by Elle. He worked on filling the order while Blue brought the professor a glass of water.

  Stand looked up, hoping to catch her eye, but Blue remained veiled behind her scrim of hair. “Are you busy right now?” he asked after thanking her for the water. She shook her head in lieu of opening her mouth. “Why don’t you bring out your textbook? I can help you with the things that don’t make sense yet.” His emphasis on the last word sounded like teasing, so Blue relaxed.

  “Really? That’d be so great. I’ll be right back.”

  She stopped on her way back to the kitchen to check on her other two tables, one of which was doing fine. The other requested an O-Positive blood shake refill with a shot of lemon flavor this time instead of chai.

  Blue mixed the shake quickly and grabbed her book off of the island where she’d left it. Baird was eyeing the text, looking like he would very much enjoy stabbing it with the knife he was holding. The sharp utensil was supposed to be used for cutting Stand’s haggis before plopping it into the pot. Baird wagered it would do just fine on the book.

  Blue dropped off the freshly made shake to her nearest table before heading to Stand. Though she’d seen Elle lean on the edge of people’s tables and occasionally sit down in a booth as she took an order, Blue felt awkward making such assumptions of other people’s spatial preferences. She stood behind the chair opposite the professor. “May I?” she requested in a small voice.

  “Please. So where are we at?”

  Blue noticed that Stand’s casual use of the word “we” was not common. None of the other patrons included her like he did. “I’m stuck at noncoplanar lines. I know I’m supposed to know what that means, but I just don’t.” She opened the book to the page that had several noncoplanar line problems on it and frowned.

  Stand mimicked her expression without meaning to. “Oh, well it’s been a while. Let me see for a minute.” As he flipped through the chapter, he shook his head. “You’ll make this a lot easier on yourself if you start at chapter one. This is chapter eight.”

  “I did start at chapter one,” Blue responded, defending herself. They’d had textbooks in The Way. She knew how to read a book properly. “That part I understood. It’s these noncoplanar lines. I don’t want to go much further until I understand them.”

  Stand looked up at her with a baffled expression. “You mean to tell me that you taught yourself eight chapters of Geometry in a day?”

  “No,” she corrected him patiently. “I can’t make it through chapter eight because of the noncoplanar lines. They came out of nowhere without an explanation. I’m sure it’s something all the Vemreaux know.”

  “Apparently not, since I can’t remember what they are and I actually completed the course. It was decades ago, but still.” Stand caught himself too late. He hadn’t meant to reveal his age to her. Though to most Vemreaux, age was not an issue once you were frozen, he had not spent much time around perpetually aging people. He wondered if the fact that he was far older than her would matter. She did not appear as though anything odd had registered to her. This relieved him, until he realized that his age didn’t matter to her because she did not consider him in the way he was hoping she might.

  He looked down at the page she’d given him and turned to the previous one. Sighing, he pointed to the binding. “Well, here’s your problem. Someone tore the page out right before it.”

  Blue gasped and placed her hand over her mouth. The idea of checking for such a heinous crime had not occurred to her. “Who would do something so awful?”

  Her innocence endeared him to her. Stand chuckled, flipping to the back of the book. “More people than you’d think. Let’s see what the glossary has to say. Hmm. Noncoplanar’s not in here,” he muttered aloud. He thumbed through the pages until he found the right one. “Now, here’s coplanar. It means ‘within the same plane’.” His blond brow furrowed. “Well, what does that mean?”

  Blue let out a light laugh and took the book back from Stand, judging correctly that he was perhaps not the best tutor for the subject. “Never mind. I get it now. I didn’t know math books had glossaries. I wouldn’t have bothered you.”

  “You’re not bothering me.”

  It was at that moment that Baird decided not to wait for his sister to come back for the order, and he refused to let Elle deliver it. He stalked out of the kitchen after removing his stained apron, striding toward Stand’s table. Blue had her back to him, but she could smell her brother’s scent on the air. Abruptly she stood, but Baird’s heavy hand pushed her back down.

  “Here you are, Stand. On the house for showing my kid sister Geometry.” His facial features were carefully knit into a pleasant expression, but Blue knew better. “Can I get you a blood shake to go with your meal?”

  “No, thanks. And it was no trouble, Baird. She’s a very smart girl.”

  “Is that so?” Baird commented jovially, but Blue could hear his teeth clicking together as he spoke.

  “I’ll leave you to your meal.” Blue made to stand, but the professor held up his hand.

  “You’re going to leave me to eat this whole meal by myself? You know, some people think it’s pathetic to dine alone.”

  Baird chewed on the inside of his lower lip and excused himself.

  Blue knew he’d let loose on his feelings about her eating with the Vemreaux soon enough. For the time being, she decided to take Stand up on his offer to sit with him while he ate, hoping to avoid Baird’s inevitable confrontation.

  Blue did not know nearly half of the things Stand shared with her. She knew that Christopher Columbus discovered North America, but she did not know that he thought he was in some place that used to be called India at the time. She could list all of the presidents and their vice presidents in order before the switch was made to emperors, but she had no idea that some of them had been Vemreaux. She was surprised to find that Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy were of the superior blood type.

  “Why did they die so young, then?” Blue asked, letting her curiosity direct her tongue.

  “Just because someone’s B-blood doesn’t mean they bathed in the Fountain. Abraham Lincoln bathed in it, but Kennedy didn’t. And Kennedy was Original Vemreaux, too. There are Vemreaux today who choose not to bathe in the Fountain, for whatever reason.” He took a bite of his haggis on pumpernickel, making sure to swallow before continuing. “Tough skin and bones or not, bullets are bullets, especially ones fired to the head. Neither man would’ve survived either way.” He took a sip of his water
. “That’s one of the reasons the guns were all destroyed when we entered the Age of Peace.”

  Blue looked down for a moment before building up the gumption to ask a frank question. “Stand, can I ask you something not about Geometry?”

  “Of course. You can ask me anything,” he said kindly.

  Blue permitted a small smile at his benevolence. “Baird said that scratch backs the Vemreaux currency. But I know that it wasn’t always that way. Scratch has only been big since World War Three, after they rounded us up by blood type.” She watched Stand squirm in his seat slightly. “What backed the currency before that?”

  Stand exhaled pointedly that this simple query was the one she wanted to address. “Well, before the world unified under King Sinclair, there were many countries, far more than three. The most popular backing used to be gold. Then when countries borrowed more from each other or their own banks than they could possibly pay back, they began to back their currency with debt.”

  “I’m sorry? Did you say debt?” she asked, leaning in curiously.

  “Yes. The more they borrowed, the more money was printed. It was basically a house of cards that was built up so high, into the trillions, in fact. All it took was for one large country with a solid military force to call in what was owed to them for it all to collapse. When the other countries couldn’t pay what they owed, they went to war, which eventually became World War Three.”

  “In The Way, they told us that World War Three happened because of the violent nature of us lesser blood types.”

  Stand thought over his response. “Well, violence certainly played a part in that, B-blood or not. But that wasn’t the start of it. Now we have one world currency that’s backed by a renewable and regulated resource. Waywards have an important job, tending to the cows and making S-bricks. S-bricks took the place of gold bricks. How would we fuel our houses without the methane gas put out by your facilities?” He took a bite of his meal and chewed thoughtfully. “Before World War Three, they mostly used finite resources. Oil, coal, what have you. Wars were fought over the resources over and over again. Now King Sinclair regulates everything, so all three countries are treated the same. This way, there’s no cause for war.”