by Brindi Quinn
“You have a meeting soon anyway, Nero,” said the demon. Slithering, he walked to the window and pulled the shades wide.
Nero shielded his darkness-adjusted eyes.
“A little light will do you good. Leave the darkness to me.” The lawyer shifted his gaze to the floor where, several feet below, Tide and Rye were already packing.
After a hasty explanation of the plated box from Rye, an intense longing to open Foster’s hidden treasure had invaded the pair, enough to make Tide write a note of deceit to her father, claiming her to be spending the night at Y’s. Really, though, she’d be spending it at . . .
Tide’s breathing ceased at the thought. Rye gave her a saving pat on the back, and the two of them set off to Rye’s apartment in search of the secret box. Rye was counting on it still being there. After all, he’d only been out for a few minutes when the box had gone missing, and even though there was the possibility that Foster had somehow come home and retrieved the box during that time, Rye didn’t think so. Had Foster come home, he’d have stayed longer than that, and what were the chances he’d been outside at the exact moment Rye’d been about to open the box? No. It was more likely that Foster had used Rye to hide it somewhere within the unit.
“Not yet,” said Rye, repeating Foster’s words – words that implied that there’d be a time for opening it. “It has to be there.” He looked at Tide. “But even if it isn’t, at least it means we get to spend more time together.” He slipped his hand around Tide’s and weaved his fingers through hers. Although the night air was hot, Tide’s skin pricked.
Rye noticed. “You’re nervous?” he said.
There was something about it. Even though they’d already kissed, there was something about the small gesture that made the princess jittery. The earlier kiss had been instinctive. Impulsive. But this was all Rye and Tide. They were both present and aware in the moment, and everything about their skin connecting was theirs and theirs alone.
Tide looked up at him. “Stupid, huh?”
But when Rye’s eyes connected with hers, his confidence began to slip just a little. His fingers were weaved between fingers that were much smaller than his. Fingers that were warm and dry and soft . . . And he suddenly remembered just how sweaty his own were.
“Eh-” He dropped her hand and wiped his palm on his jeans before taking hers up again.
Tide giggled. Rye liked it, and he couldn’t help but stare at the cute being at his side.
“L-look!” he said awkwardly. “It’s the night of the dust moon.”
“Dust moon?” Tide looked up. The foggy black sky was starless, for none of those twinkling lights were bright enough to break past the haze that surrounded the city. The moon, however, was powerful even in the midst of its waning – powerful enough to shine through the vapor – and even though it was incomplete, there was nothing empty about it; it felt as though it were meant to be that way. “Why do you call it the dust moon?” asked the princess, staring.
“The edges,” said Rye. “See how they’re kind of smudged?”
“Isn’t that just because of the fog-clouds?”
“Shhh. Nope! There’s something magical about it.”
Tide rolled her eyes. “Cheesy.”
“Well excuse me for trying to be romantic!”
“Romantic,” repeated Tide. Rye’s palm sweat worsened. If Tide noticed, she didn’t care. She was just happy to be holding him. Even so, she was about to break up the serenity of the moment. It was time to bring it up. The reason she’d asked him over. “Rye?” she said.
“Hmm?”
“Now that you’re here . . . well, not here . . . Now that you’re around, you won’t . . . like . . .” She couldn’t say it. That was fine. Rye already knew.
“Oh,” he said. He tilted his head forward so that his hair would hide the emotion behind his eyes. Conceal it from the pretty girl. “Disappear? Is that what you’re asking?”
“Y mentioned something . . . and I don’t really know . . . er . . . how it works, so . . .”
“It’s possible.”
“EH?!”
“It’s sort of like a tug of war. Well, for some people it’s like that. Some people are in competition with their Mains.”
“Competition?” Tide said.
“For existence. I can’t really speak for the Mains because I don’t know what happens to them when their Seconds are in control, but for us Seconds, the weaker our Mains are, the stronger we are. That’s why I work so hard to stay rooted.”
Tide understood . . . sort of, but she needed to elaborate. And to elaborate . . .
She bit her lip. “I want to say something, but I don’t know how without making you seem like a thing.”
“It’s okay,” said Rye. He smiled at her. “I’m feeling pretty good right now.”
“All right. Let me know if . . .”
“I will.” Rye swallowed. Her concern for his state of being was the most grounding thing he could think of.
“SO,” said Tide, taking a breath. She intended to deliver the next lines as quickly as possible so as to avoid causing Rye unnecessary pain. “If a Second is like a manifestation of a split personality disorder, what happens when the Main is cured?”
Though she said it all in one breath, Rye cringed at being compared to a disorder.
“Rye, I’m sorry!”
“No.” He shook his head. “From a scientific perspective, I guess that’s pretty accurate.” He squeezed her hand to keep from floating. “And you’ve hit the nail right on the head. If the Main is ‘cured’, it’s possible for a Second to disappear.”
It was the very thing Tide feared the most. “No.” she said, dropping his hand. She folded her arms into herself.
“Oh! Don’t worry, Tide.” He cupped her face. “I don’t think that he . . . that Foster . . . wants to be cured.”
“Hm?”
“You see, at the beginning it was like . . . I only came out once in a while. But then he just kept getting weaker and weaker and letting me out more and more, and now I’m almost always in control. I think he’s given up.”
“So . . . is it possible for . . . for him to . . .”
“Disappear?” said Rye. “I don’t know. But it’s every Second’s dream.”
But when Tide thought back to the gray boy that’d lit up at her smile . . . She thought back to the strange throbbing beneath her ribs that he’d caused. She didn’t WANT him to disappear.
“Why can’t you just coexist?” she murmured.
“Because we share a soul. That’s what it boils down to. Two beings that share one soul. I don’t think something like a soul can be split in half. It can only be shared. But to contain a soul, you need a strong enough physical vessel. That’s why there’s such a struggle – a tipping scale – between a Second and their Main.”
“Rye,” whispered Tide. “How do you know all of that?”
Rye tossed an arm over the top of his head and stared at the dusty moon. “Before the split, we worked in a lab that was researching the Second . . .” He frowned while searching for a suitable word. “The Second epidemic and the nature of the soul. I don’t remember much from that time, though.”
“You worked in a lab?” said Tide. “But weren’t you really young? How old are you, anyways?”
“I told you.” Rye pointed to his chest and pursed his lips. “I’m two.”
“Awfully tall for a kid, aren’t you? But now that I look at you, you DO have a bit of a baby face.”
Rye neared his ‘baby face’ to hers. “What are you saying?” he asked seductively.
Tide concentrated on breathing. “I’d like to see you in a lab coat.”
“Ho! Is that so?” Rye leaned away and gave her a full-toothed smile.
Tide grinned stupidly to herself as she imagined him in costume. “S-seriously,” she said, shaking the image away. “How old are you?”
“Twentyish, I think. Maybe twenty-one. When we split, Fos- . . . eh . . . I was eighteen. I�
�d graduated early and had already started an internship in that lab. I don’t know if he still works there or not.”
“Hm,” said Tide. “Interesting.”
It was. It was all very interesting. In the library across the city, Foster stared into the blank-paged book. “They’re starting to figure it out,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time now.” And he was more than sad; He was despairing.
The demon’s stomach rumbled. It was getting hungrier, but neither Nero’s daughter nor Foster’s Second heard. Rye was preoccupied by the box he had yet to find. Tide, on the other hand, was consumed with thoughts of freedom. A way for Second and Main to coexist? Was an optimistic dream like that possible? Probably not, but she wanted it to be. She wanted Rye to be his own person, whole and unchained, but she wanted Foster to be free, too.
From then on it was heavy thoughts that the princess walked alongside the boy with the shared soul.
When they finally reached Rye’s apartment, St. Laran was entirely asleep. The last of the straggling street-dwellers had turned in, leaving the streets deserted; inhabited only by the city’s hissing, winding sounds that would never stop. The St. Larans were used to them. The noise was a familiar backdrop to their nighttime rest – a soundtrack to mech city life.
Wrapped in those sounds, the Second and his princess took the lift to the eighteenth floor.
Rye’s apartment was still. Dark, too, until Rye lit a Bororore-fueled lamp that bathed the living room in a surreal orange glow.
“Now,” said Rye. “We search.”
“Right,” said Tide.
Neither of them could explain why finding the box was so important all of a sudden. They just knew that they had to open it as soon as they could. A key in Tide’s home matched a box in Rye’s. It should’ve been intriguing, but they didn’t really pay mind to the fact that two people who’d never previously met shouldn’t own matching sets of something like that. Both of them, deep down, realized that that there was something more to their relationship. Both of them knew that something was off. But thinking about those things threatened to loosen their holds on the earth, so they turned a blind eye and searched, forcing ignorance.
The night turned up no results.
Tide settled down on a bed made of cushions in the living room, while Rye, entirely aware of the pretty girl in the other room, locked himself in his quarters. He was restless. The dust moon through the window was a reminder that she was in the next room being lit by the same soft glow.
“Self control,” he told himself. Little did he know, Tide was undergoing a similar problem.
The cushions smelled like Rye. The blanket was his. The room was filled with relics of his and Foster’s life. Every time she grew drowsy, the scent of the blanket around her evoked an image of his arms around her shoulders. That wasn’t the blanket; it was his shirt. Those weren’t the cushions; they were his chest. Those thoughts made her heart race disobediently.
“Knock it off, freak!” she mouthed to herself.
In this way, the two drifted into uneasy sleep.
~
When Rye awoke, he was on the floor of the living room with a pretty girl’s head resting on his arm and no recollection of how he’d gotten there.
“Tide?” he whispered, groggy at first, but when he realized how inappropriate his presence there was –
“HOLY TOMATO-! TIDE?!” Feeling like the biggest lech, he rolled out from under her, threw a blanket over her pajama’d body, and crab crawled away.
Drowsy, Tide opened rubbed her face. “R-Rye?” she muttered.
“Gah! I’m sorry! You think I’m a creep, right?! I swear, I didn’t mean to sneak into your bed! For real, I don’t even remember doing it! It must’ve been lame-o Foster! Sounds like an excuse from a pervert, right? But I swear, Tide! You-you haven’t been violated, have you!? I’m pretty sure I didn’t do anything, but-!”
But Tide wasn’t listening. Her eyes had settled on the thing in Rye’s hand.
“You found it?” she said, still half-asleep.
Rye looked down. In his hand he held the license-plated box.
“Oh?” He said. “I guess I must’ve-”
But it was then that Tide fully woke up and realized the circumstances of her waking, and when she did –
“OMIGOD!”
– a yell escaped her. She was more than flustered: She was mortified. For at least a portion of the night, Rye’s arms had been around her snorish body in all of its night-breathed, sweat-panted, bed-headed glory. She was so not cute! She knew that, and she took her embarrassment out on Rye by throwing pile of bedding at his head and running to the safety of the bathroom.
Rye read the slammed door to mean that his houseguest was unforgivingly enraged with his perverse actions. “Gah!” He gritted his teeth and silently cursed his Main. “T-Tide?” He rapped on the bathroom door. “I’m way sorry!”
“Over-apologize much?” he heard over the sound of running water.
It was one of the most confusing things he’d ever experienced. “Humor?” he mouthed. That was a good thing, right? Or was that what girls did right before they gave a break up talk?! “Y-yeah,” he said, straining himself to sound suave. “Guess you’ve rubbed off on me.” Rubbed?! He pulled at his hair. Those were the sorts of words he had to avoid! “Idiot,” he mouthed.
“Who’s an idiot?” Tide opened the door.
Her hair was brushed. Her mouth was fresh. The old sweatpants were nowhere to be seen. Rye was taken.
“So cute!” he said without meaning to.
“Eh?!” Tide’s cheeks reacted.
“No!” said Rye, shaking his head with determination. “Not cute!”
“Huh?” Tide took offense.
“I mean-!” Rye sighed and dropped his head. He was exhausted. “I don’t know what I mean. You always look cute. Especially in the morning.”
“No way!” said Tide. “How embarrassing! I’d hoped to sneak into the bathroom before you got up, but I let you see me like that!”
“Wait.” Rye wrinkled his forehead. “You aren’t mad?”
“At what?”
“That I . . .”
“You said that wasn’t you, though, right?” said Tide. “It was Fost . . . HIM. I know how it works by now.” Her mouth turned sly. “A little convenient, if you ask me, but . . .”
Rye let out a sick-sounding exhale and slumped to the floor. She wasn’t mad. That was all that mattered. “Breakfast?” he said feebly.
“Sure! And then-” Tide held out her palm where the odd key had taken up residence.
Rye nodded. He went to fix a fancy breakfast of cereal and tea while Tide waited, running her finger along the mysterious box that matched the key.
Miles away, Foster stared at the blank page and braced himself. He didn’t know what would happen once they opened the box, but he was sure of one thing: The contents therein were sure to set at least a few things in motion.
A hasty breakfast later, Tide and Rye settled onto the floor.
“Phew,” said Rye. “Last time I tried to open this, I lost it.”
“It’ll be okay.” Tide handed him the key. Now that the two pieces were near each other, there was no mistaking it: They were a pair.
“M-maybe I got it at the Gustway?” said Tide, searching for an excuse. “Yeah, that must be it! And you said that he had been there before, right? Before the split, I mean. So that’s it, right? He dropped it and I found it somehow? . . . Or something.”
The words were hollow.
“Er- yeah. I think it’s a possibility,” lied Rye. “Or something.”
“Hm. Anyway, go ahead,” said Tide. Rye slowly put the key into the lock.
Pop!
A tiny popping noise alerted the curious duo that the key had indeed worked. Why it should work, was beyond them, but they couldn’t think about it too much. If they did, they’d drift.
Rye took a breath and lifted the box’s top.
. . .
It was e
mpty.
. . .
That’s what Rye thought at first, anyway. But when he turned over the lid he realized that there was a slip of paper taped to the inside. Careful to be gentle, Rye removed the paper and turned it over.
It wasn’t just a piece of paper. It was a photograph. An old, discolored photograph of Foster. But it wasn’t JUST of Foster.
“Rye,” said Tide when her eyes found the second person. “That’s . . . you?”
It was Rye. And he was solid. And so was Foster. And they looked . . . happy? More than happy. They looked to be having the best day of their lives. There was a moment of surprised and analytical silence, and then –
“You both existed at once?!” said Tide, thoughts racing.
“I . . . guess so?” said Rye.
“How?!”
“Couldn’t tell you.” He paused to swallow. “And there’s something else.” Rye tapped his finger on the part of the photo where his hand was entwined in the hand of a third and final photographed person. It was a person with long, dusty hair and a corrupt sort of smile. “I think Jobe and I were . . .”
But it was too much for the Second to handle. He couldn’t take it, so he collapsed into vacancy.
“Rye!” It was the very first time Tide watched him go. It was instant, like a switch. One minute he was Rye; the next, he was a soulless shell. A true Second. Tide’s hand wandered to the scarf around his neck. “No,” she told herself.
She looked to the photograph for distraction. Shown via sepia tones, Rye’s fingers were woven through Jobe’s in the same way he’d held her hand the night before. If it proved anything, it proved that Jobe’s previous crabbiness really had been attributed to jealousy. But it wasn’t because he’d been jealous of Rye. It was because he was jealous of her.
But still, nothing else made sense. Tide stared at the photo and tried to make clarity of something, anything, but a darkness at the back of her mind kept her from connecting the dots that should’ve been easy. The conclusion she should have drawn continued to evade her. It wasn’t her fault, though. Her mind had been tampered with. Her memory was flawed.
