by Frankie Rose
A week. A week was such an overreaction. Seven whole days had passed by and both Agatha and Daniel had been cold towards me, leaving me to trudge from room to room battling with the concept of apologizing for being rude to them. I hadn’t been this rude, though. I was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to formulate the perfect apology—one that wasn’t forgiving enough to let them think they hadn’t been unfair, but sufficiently penitent—when Agatha burst into my room. She had a plate of steaming blueberry bagels and a mug of hot coffee with her, and she was smiling. Relief swelled through me like a floodgate being opened. Living in a world in which Agatha didn’t smile had felt alien and very, very wrong.
“Ugh. Bed-head is even worse than sofa-head,” she jibed, poking at my limp body beneath my duvet. I groaned and threw a pillow, missing Agatha entirely.
“Are you getting up today? I have something I want to talk to you about.”
I checked Agatha’s face to see if her expression hid bad news; there was nothing, only the smile. “I suppose so. Does this mean I’m forgiven?”
A confused look passed over Agatha’s face. “Forgiven? You’re a strange child. Come on. I’ll be waiting for you.” She marched out of the room, leaving me where I lay with the plate and mug balanced precariously on my stomach.
Ten minutes later I strode into the hangar with half a bagel clamped between my teeth, struggling to thread my arm into the sleeve of my zip-up hoodie. Agatha was nowhere to be seen, but unfortunately—or thankfully, depending on how I looked at it—Daniel was. I cursed my conflicting emotions under my breath, nearly losing the bagel.
“What’s up with you?”
Looked like he was acknowledging my presence today. He was bent over the half-assembled engine that still cluttered the entranceway, studying it intently.
“Nothing. Agatha was supposed to be here is all.”
He looked up, no more than a cursory glance, but the split second our eyes met was enough to make the blood sing in my veins. It was like fire and ice all at once. I was back in his arms. He was staring down at me…
“She had to go up to the car for something. She’ll be back in a minute.”
I cleared my throat, swallowing back the warm rush of memories that made my heart beat faster. I took a seat on the swivel chair at one of the desks and noticed there were flecks of glass like glittering diamonds scattered across its surface. “Did something break?” I swiped my hand along the desk only to suck in a sharp breath when a shard bit into my skin. “Ouch!”
“What’s wrong?” Daniel was already at my side. He grabbed hold of my hand before I could hide it from him. A pearl of blood blossomed from my palm, shining like a ruby teardrop under the glare of the strip lights. Daniel lifted my hand up to his face, poking at the cut with his index finger, while I sat still, too surprised to move.
“It’s pretty deep.” He pinched the skin and I gasped, pulling my hand back.
“I said Ouch! What the hell?”
“There might have been glass in it. I was just checking. Looks fine, though. You’ll need a Band-Aid.” He held his hand out. I couldn’t refuse to pass it back with him looking at me like that: serious, gentle, concerned.
He looked it over once more and then disappeared over to the other side of the room, producing a first aid kit from a metal cabinet by his workstation. It was a serious first aid kit filled with small glass vials of various drugs, most of which were morphine. Accompanying the drugs were dozens of syringes, scalpels, and all kinds of scary-looking shiny steel devices. It took him ages to find a simple Band-Aid in amongst all the hardcore surgical equipment. When he did, he placed it over the cut, frowning with concentration. He stepped back with a flourish, his task complete. The air rushed back into my lungs. I hadn’t even realized I was holding my breath.
“Thanks.”
“No problem. It was my fault, really.” When he registered my confused look, he waved over to the car engine. “You could help me with something in return?”
“Uh… I have zero car-related knowledge. I doubt I’d be much help.” My mom had taken care of everything with the truck. The only thing I knew how to do was check the oil, and I was pretty sure that Daniel’s half-deconstructed engine didn’t have any oil left in it. Most of it seemed to be all over the floor and his ruined clothes.
He gave me a curt smile. “You just need to pass me things. I’m sure even you can handle that.”
Ignoring his remark, I followed him over to his wrecking ground. I ended up watching him for half an hour, during which time he didn’t look at me once. Agatha was obviously caught up in something, and it was kind of cool watching Daniel work. Impressive, like watching someone complete a Rubik’s Cube in under two minutes. All the while I fought to keep the images of him out of my mind—his tattoo; his smooth, bare skin bathed in pale blue light; the fierce expression he’d worn the first time I saw him in his frock coat and top hat. It was impossible not to feel that pull, too, the desire to feel him close to me again. It was the way he moved, powerful and strong. He was nothing like the guys at St. Jude’s. They were all boys, and Daniel gave the distinct impression at times that he was something more.
“Can you come and hold this a second?” He held up a wrench in one hand while lifting the engine block from the floor with the other, the muscles in his arm straining under the weight. I froze to the spot.
“This is heavy, y’know,” he added when I didn’t move. I shook myself out of my paralysis and took the wrench from his outstretched hand.
My head swam, filled with the smell of him as he leaned forward to heave the block around. Citrus soap and something else, something masculine and charged. Why did he have to smell so good? I couldn’t think. I held my breath, scrutinizing the fine hairs on the back of his neck as he fiddled around. When he reached back for the wrench, his hand found mine and I fumbled, struggling to hand it over. He turned to look at me, those fierce green eyes piercing me through. Then he smiled.
He might as well have slapped me straight in the face.
“Try not to drop that on me, okay?”
I sank back onto my heels. Had he just smiled at me? Really smiled, like it was the most natural thing in the world? He lowered the block, apparently pleased with whatever he had accomplished, and moved around the other side. I made to get out of his way, but he gestured for me to stay put, seating himself opposite.
“Do you know what this is?” He sat back on his heels, holding up a fist-sized piece of metal with a red plastic base. A thick black wire led from the silver cap at its top, and four identical cables emerged from its red underside. I had no idea. I shook my head, mute.
“This is a distributor. It’s part of the car’s ignition system.”
“Oh, sure,” I said lightly, as though I instantly knew exactly what it was he was holding out to me in his hand. I took it and turned it over a couple of times, impressed by its weight but still clueless as to its function. He scooted closer. I bit down on my lower lip, not willing to look up from the strange piece of machinery.
“You see this wire?” He rotated the distributor in my hands. When he brushed my hand with his fingertips, my skin burst into invisible flames. “This wire on top supplies a high voltage charge to a rotor inside here.” He gestured to the main silver body. I nodded again. He paused, searching my face, looking to see if I understood.
“Yeah. Okay. The rotor.” I had no idea what he was talking about. All I could think about was how close he was, and the amazing flecks of gold and amber in his eyes.
“Yeah. Right. This is the cap. The rotor spins inside here.” He tapped the top again. “The rotor passes four contacts inside the cap connected to these wires below, which each connect to a cylinder in the car’s engine. When the rotor passes each contact, the current arcs from the rotor and down the wire to the cylinder, firing it in turn. The car runs smoothly because the cylinders are fired individually, one at a time. You see?”
His voice was richly hypnotic, but he might
as well have been speaking Japanese. I barely heard a word as he demonstrated how to reattach the distributor to the car, holding his hand over mine as he neatly fitted it back into the engine. Skin on skin contact and not a frown or a flinch in sight. In fact, he seemed utterly immune to it until my breath caught in my throat.
I literally saw the second our close proximity hit him. He froze, and for a moment I knew he was feeling what I was feeling: the static charge crackling between our skin. He looked deeply into my face and swallowed, his expression hazy. The crimson, burning hue blossomed on my cheeks again. I knew I looked a little disorientated as I stared back up at him. He broke our strange, intimate moment and looked away, clearing his throat.
He knew.
Stellar work, Farley.
I placed the distributor back on the white sheet, tears springing to my eyes. No, no, no. Don’t cry! I begged, No one else starts crying whenever they’re embarrassed. Please do NOT do this! Seemed I was out of luck. “Thanks for the Mechanics 101. I’m probably not the best student, though.” I turned and marched off out into the corridor, suspecting I hadn’t been quick enough to hide my first tear.
The door to my room had only just slammed shut when it suddenly bounced off the frame, flying open right behind me. Daniel stood there, fuming in the doorway.
“What are you doing?” I cried.
“No, what are you doing?” he yelled back. His chest heaved as he stared at me.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You damn well do! This can’t happen.”
“Nothing’s happening!”
“Then why are you crying? Why are you upset?” He looked like he was about to snap. He stalked into the room and kicked the door closed behind him.
“I can’t help it. I’m not… not crying. It just happens when I’m… I’m…”
He set his jaw, his hands twitching at his sides. “You feel something for me,” he said, daring me to try and deny it.
There was no point trying to hide it now. I looked away, numb.
“You can’t feel that way about me.” He lowered his voice. “It’ll only get you hurt.”
“Oh, come on! That’s so cliché! What’s that even supposed to mean?”
“It means my life is one that prevents me from the luxury of silly romantic notions. I can’t have you look at me the way you just did. I don’t care what Agatha’s told you, or what she thinks she knows. This isn’t going to happen, okay?”
Silly romantic notions? My embarrassment quickly moved aside to make room for anger. “Agatha hasn’t told me anything. None of you ever do. You’re right, I do feel something for you, but don’t worry. From your reaction, it’s pretty clear that the feeling’s not mutual. I’m not some crazy stalker. I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t flatter yourself into thinking that I’m completely head over heels in love with you. So just go!” I screamed. His words had destroyed me, rejection a bitter poison on my tongue.
“You don’t understand.”
“I think I do.”
“No! You don’t!” The hard look in his eyes morphed into something more pained and desperate. He stepped forward and grabbed me roughly by the arms, the same way he’d done in the silo. “I sat there and watched you for months. Months! I watched you everywhere you went. I watched you when you didn’t go anywhere at all! When you were so low you couldn’t even leave the house. I watched the most beautiful person I’d ever seen get screwed over by the cops and have her life threatened on a daily basis without her even knowing it.”
I stared up at him, frozen and unblinking, his words barraging me.
“How do you think I felt when I found you bleeding and broken on the floor of Aldan’s room? I thought you were dead!” He stood, his eyes on fire, with something terrible strewn across his face. His voice dropped to barely more than a whisper. “We’ve got a war about to be unleashed here. One I’m going to die for. One where you and I are an impossibility. So I don’t get to tell you that I love you. And you don’t get to look at me like that.”
He charged out of the room and slammed the door so hard that the stack of CDs on the shelf toppled over and crashed loudly to the floor. I placed my palm on my solar plexus, half expecting to find a hole there, one that had just been savagely kicked straight through my chest. Had…had he just told me in a roundabout way that he was in love with me?
My body shook with the power of my wracking sobs. They almost drowned out the timid knock at the door. I caught the next cry in my throat, miserably hoping that Agatha—it could only have been her—would go away. I should have known better. I hid in my knees, not wanting her to see my blotchy, makeup-stained face.
Agatha crept into the room and slipped herself down beside me, rubbing a hand up and down my back. “I’m sorry. I should have seen that coming. Are you okay?”
“No.” I sounded like a little kid, small and hurt.
“In his head, he’s doing the right thing, Farley. He thinks he’s saving you a lot of pain and heartache in the long run.”
“Oh, and this…this is a walk in the park, right?”
“No, of course not. I’m not saying I agree with him. He cares about you more than you can know. He’s just never felt this way about anybody before. He doesn’t know how to deal with it. He feels vulnerable and that terrifies him. He’s spent the last hundred and fifty years closing himself off from the world so he can be strong enough when the time comes. Now that time is here and he’s the weakest he’s ever been.”
I blinked back my tears and looked at the tiny woman. “So that means he has to punish me for it by treating me like he hates me? I don’t see why he thinks he’s going to die, anyway. Surely there’s a better way to deal with this problem than to pointlessly throw three or four lives away? Their plan won’t work!”
Agatha looked sad. “Daniel’s doing the only thing he can think of to save you. There are things you don’t understand. Things that would hurt you if you knew them. We both just have to have faith that he’s doing the right thing.”
She sounded like Aldan—hope and faith. It just didn’t seem possible. Especially now I knew the guy I was falling in love with felt the same way about me, and he was probably going to die on a seventy-thirty split.
Agatha grimaced and squeezed my hand. “I know this is the worst timing, kiddo, but I really do need to talk to you about something.”
“You have got to be kidding.” That look in my bedroom earlier had been a well-constructed mask, and I could now see the concern etched into the lines of Agatha’s face. Of course, things couldn’t just get better for once.
“Yeah. It’s kind of important.”
The weight of Agatha’s words filled me with a whole new sense of dread. “How bad are we talking?”
“It’s just a complication that could cause problems. Aldan thinks we should act now before the situation could have any effect on our plans, though. Come on, we’ll get you fixed up and I’ll explain.”
