Creeping Beautiful

by JA Huss

  “I’ll help you. Whatever you need, Indie. I’m here. And I’ll help you.”

  She nods her head, swallowing hard. “Good.”

  She sighs that word out in a low, soft whisper. And I think to myself… she can be soft. When she’s like this, she can be fragile like a snowflake. And soft like the wings of a butterfly. And quiet like whispers in a church.

  She’s not really made of sharp corners and hard edges.

  She’s a girl. And she’s real underneath it all. She’s still in there after all the things we made her do and were done to her. She has to be in there. I have to believe that.

  “Do you know where he is? Have you talked to him recently?”

  “No. We don’t really talk anymore.” Indie looks disappointed for a moment. And I can’t stand to see her like that. “But I’m sure I can find him.”

  Adam has been my best friend for as long as I can remember. We went into this whole Indie project a team. And if we were on speaking terms, we’d still be a team. Still be on her team, at least. But she’s been missing for four years and I need to know what’s rolling around in that messed-up mind of hers before I start thinking about getting in touch with Adam again. Because it’s not Adam she should be blaming.

  “I tried calling. I must have an old number. He’s not picking up. Goes straight to voicemail. He went to Daphne, Alabama. Did you hear about that? Did he tell you about Nick Tate?”

  I shake my head, a sinking, sick feeling rolling around in my stomach. “No. He hasn’t mentioned Nick Tate to me. Not in years. I don’t think he was there meeting Nick, Indie.”

  “Well. Then he probably has a girl there. Did you know he had a girlfriend?”

  “Adam?” I say this too loud and too surprised. “No, Indie. Adam doesn’t do girlfriends.”

  I want to say more. I want to say things like… Adam does you. Adam does us. We do him. He doesn’t do girlfriends.

  Indie just huffs at my answer. “When’s the last time you talked to Donovan? Where is everyone? Why aren’t we working?”

  I run my fingers though my hair, take a deep breath. “You, Indie. You’re the reason we’re not working.”

  “You didn’t answer my question. Where’s Donovan?”

  “At home. I guess. I don’t know.”

  “He moved.” She says this like she’s tired. “He moved out. I went to Donovan’s first and some old lady answered the door. Said he didn’t live there. Said she’d never heard of him.”

  I spend two whole seconds wondering if that old lady is still alive.

  “Where the fuck did he go?”

  “You went to Donovan before you came here?”

  “Don’t get jealous on me, McKay. I can’t deal with that shit right now. Where is he?”

  “You want me to call him?”

  “Duh. Tell him to get here. I need to talk to both of you. I did everything you wanted when I was a kid and now it’s your turn to do things for me, you understand? I want Adam. He needs to pay for this. For everything. I get it.” She laughs a little. “I do. He’s always been jealous of Nathan. But he’s gone too far this time.”

  “Hold on.” I put up a hand to stop her. “How the fuck exactly did Adam get a hold of Nathan?”

  “How do you think? Why are you taking his side?”

  “Indie.” I don’t laugh. Because this truly isn’t funny. But she’s being ridiculous.

  “Don’t you dare, McKay.” She points a finger in my face. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

  I put up both hands in surrender. “I’m not. I’m not, OK? I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on, that’s all.”

  She wraps her arms around her wet t-shirt and hugs herself.

  “You need some dry clothes. And a bath. You wanna take a bubble bath?”

  She pouts when I say this and suddenly, she looks ten again. Like the girl she was the day Adam brought her home. Small and thin. Young and defiant back then. Feral. Wild. Already dangerous.

  But she wasn’t angry. She didn’t come to us angry. If I had to pick an emotion for Indie that first day I’d call her unaffected. Distant. Maybe even… cold. Not cold like snow. Cold like serial killers who have no conscious.

  But when did that ever stop me from loving her?

  We all have a little serial killer inside us, don’t we?

  “Come on.” I take her hand and pull her through the shop. “And mind the floor, OK? There are all kinds of sharp metal shards lying around. If you cut your foot—”

  “I know. I won’t be able to run.”

  This fucking girl. “No. If you cut your foot, you’ll have to go get a tetanus shot, you fool. I know for sure you’re due for one.”

  “I’m not gonna step on anything. And you don’t know me that well. I could’ve gotten a booster.”

  I peek at her over my shoulder as I reach the stairs. “Did you?”

  “No. But that’s not the point. I could’ve. OK? You don’t know shit about me anymore.”

  She’s wrong. I know Indie Anna Accorsi better than anyone on this planet. I made her. I shaped her. I turned her into this… whatever she is now. I understand what’s lurking inside her mind far better than she ever did.

  But there’s no point in arguing with her when she’s like this, so I don’t say anything. Just lead her up to my second-floor apartment and hold the door open so she can go inside.

  I follow her in, shut the door, and lean against it.

  Here we go again.

  Indie wanders around my apartment picking up small things and looking at them with an innocent child-like wonder.

  A wrench from my small dinette table. And while I wouldn’t normally see anything particularly special about this wrench, today, from a distance of ten feet away, I see what she sees.

  The oil stains. The marks on the open end. Evidence that this tool has been used. The slight discoloration of the steel on the handle that earned me a ten-percent discount when I bought the set from the salesman.

  She sets it down and moves on to a pen. Just a regular, cheap ballpoint pen to anyone else. But Indie studies the chew marks on the cap end. The crack in the plastic along the barrel.

  She sets it down and looks at me. “It’s been a while.” Her tone is small and soft, all trace of the badass girl she was downstairs gone now.

  I nod. “About four years, I’d guess.”

  She hugs herself and smiles. “Did you miss me?”

  “What do you think?” I ask it to be sarcastic but also to hear what she has to say about that. Because you can’t ever really know what’s going on inside that head.

  She shrugs and turns. Picks up a candle. Smells it. Looks over her shoulder at me. “Who gave you this?”

  “Misha. A while ago.” But I feel the need to add qualifiers to that answer. “For my birthday. Thirty-fourth. You missed it.”

  She nods, puts the candle down and wanders over to the couch where she takes a seat and picks up a ring of keys.

  I study them with her, then answer her unasked questions as she holds up a fob. “New truck. Bought it last year. New, like actually new. Nice too.”

  She holds up another key. Not a fob.

  “You know that one.”

  “Motorcycle,” she affirms, dropping it to pick up the next key. “House,” she says. “Yours,” she adds. And for the last one she says, “House. Adam’s.”

  She slips Adam’s key off the ring and slides it into her pocket.

  “That all you need, then? That why you came?”

  “No.” She leans back into the cushions. “I’m cold, so…” She shrugs. “I’ll take a bath with you.”

  “Uh, no. Not with me, Indie. You know better.”

  She squints her eyes at me. “Do I know better? Who taught me better, McKay? You? Adam? Donovan?”

  “Well.” I cross my arms, still blocking the door. If she wanted to leave there’s really nothing I could do to stop her. But it doesn’t hurt to send all the right messages. “I’d go with Donovan, I gues
s. If I had to choose.”

  She holds my gaze for a moment and then agrees with a nod. Maybe a smile too. But I can’t see it. She drops her head and her long, wet hair falls forward to cover her face.

  “I’d have gotten you something better than a candle.” She lifts her head up so I can see a sliver of one stormy, blue eye peeking out from behind her hair. “For your birthday, I mean.”

  “Yeah… well. You weren’t here and Misha was.”

  “Misha’s dead now.”

  “I know.” I sigh as I rub both hands down my face. “I’m aware.”

  “She deserved to die.”

  “You want me to run you a bath, then?”

  “Everyone’s dead now, huh?”

  “Indie.” I say this sternly. “We’re not getting into this.”

  “Into what?”

  “You know what.”

  “I’m just saying. Just making an observation, that’s all. Everyone is dead now.”

  “We’re not dead. You’re not dead, I’m not dead. Adam’s not dead. Donovan’s not dead…” I stop because she’s right. Plenty of people are dead. But I don’t want her thinking too hard about that. Not when she’s in this frame of mind. “Who cares about dead people anyway? We’re still here.”

  She inhales deeply and sinks a little further back into the couch cushions. Pulls her legs up to her chest and wraps her arms around her wet jeans. Hugs herself.

  She told me once that Donovan taught her that. He told her to hug herself when she was alone and afraid because hugs cure everything.

  “We are still very much here, aren’t we?”

  “Bubbles?”

  She nods. “Sure. Why not?”

  “You gonna be here when I come back?”

  “Do you want me to be here?”

  I nod. “Please don’t go.”

  She smiles at me. And when Indie smiles… fuck. I don’t even know how to describe the feelings that run through my body when she smiles. It’s relief, and happiness, and a sense that everything is actually going to be OK. Like this shit will work itself out and we’ll all be normal again.

  But it’s a lie.

  That smile is a lie and those feelings are lies too.

  Because we were never normal.

  There is nothing normal about the feelings I have for this girl. Woman, really. She’s a woman now. But she didn’t start out that way. No one starts out that way. There has to have been a time in her past when she was just… what? Just a child? An innocent child?

  I want to believe it. I really do.

  But it’s not true.

  This girl was bred. She was made. She was a plan.

  I know there’s a contradiction in there somewhere. Maybe it’s not even that hard to find if I cared to push the curtain aside and take a good look at my life, and my actions, and myself.

  And all the ways I contributed to the plan called Indie going off the rails.

  But this isn’t the time for self-reflection.

  She’s home.

  After everything that happened that day, she came back. And she came back to me.

  Not Donovan. Not Adam. Me.

  I walk to the bathroom and flick the light on. Stand there, still and silent. Listening for the tell-tale sound of a front door closing quietly behind her as she makes her escape.

  But that sound doesn’t come. I know she could sneak out without me hearing, she’s that good at her job. But I also know that if she is leaving, she’d want me to know it so she’d make enough noise so I’d hear.

  She made some mistakes early on, but in the grand scheme of things Indie’s job performance was impeccable. She is the meaning of the word professional.

  Not professional like she says all the right things and always follows instructions. She’s almost never that kind of professional. I’m talking about that feeling you get when you know someone can take care of shit. Can get the job done.

  Relief. That’s the feeling you get when you send Indie Anna Accorsi in to do a job. Relief that she will come out the other end and you can tick this particular task off your checklist.

  But she never saw herself the way we saw her. I guess all truly talented people are guilty of that particular divergence. Geniuses are all insane, aren’t they?

  I start the water, adjust the temperature, then pick up the bottle of cheap strawberry shampoo and squirt some under the roaring faucet.

  If she leaves now, I’d never know. I could go check, but then she’d know I was checking. So instead I sit on the toilet lid, lean forward, and hold my head in my hands as I start falling into the past…

  I met Adam Boucher when I was nine years old. I don’t think Adam was a part of what his father was doing that day they showed up at my family’s compound in Alaska. I don’t think he knew the real reason Mr. Boucher bought me and took me home with them.

  I certainly didn’t.

  I still don’t know all the specifics. All I know is that one day I was living at home with my family and the next I was living in New Orleans with the Bouchers.

  The day we got home—my new home—Adam’s father took me into his office and sat me down in a chair that was monumentally too big for me and started spelling things out.

  Adam would be leaving soon.

  I would be staying behind.

  We didn’t have much time to put this whole thing together.

  Adam had a job and I had a job. This was the way of the world we lived in.

  I just kept nodding my head. Yes. Yes. Yes. Whatever you say. It’s not like I had a choice. My decision had been made. He had already explained some things to me back in Alaska. He had already spelled out my choices in no uncertain terms before we left.

  So there was nothing else to be said on my part. Just… yes, yes, yes.

  But Adam didn’t go away. Something happened. His father changed his mind? He got kicked out of the program? I’m not sure.

  All I know is that Mr. Boucher’s grand plan for Adam and I was upended. Never happened.

  And everything was pretty normal after that—if you don’t count the martial arts training, the trips to the private shooting range, and the way Mr. Boucher, and about two hundred other Company higher-ups, died that night in Santa Barbara all those years ago.

  Everything was pretty damn normal until Adam went down to that island in the Caribbean and came home with Indie Anna Accorsi.

  I wondered about that a little bit back when it happened.

  But I never quite wondered enough.

  “Knock, knock.”

  I glance up and find Indie leaning against the doorway peeling her wet jeans down her legs. She kicks them aside and then sighs. “So, really. How have you been, McKay?”

  “I’m OK. I can’t complain.”

  “Still building things with your hands?”

  “I do a job here and there.”

  She lifts her t-shirt up over her head and lets it fall to the floor. I know I shouldn’t look but I look anyway. Her bra isn’t sexy. There’s no lace. No flower pattern. It’s just black cotton. Same as her underwear. More practical than anything else.

  I distract myself with thoughts about her gun. Where did she put it? It doesn’t really matter. The only thing that matters is that it’s not still tucked away in her jeans. And that means she’s not here to kill me.

  I stand up and push past her. Go out into the hallway and walk into the kitchen to try to collect myself.

  “I had a job too,” she calls from the bathroom. She shuts off the water in the tub and gets in, hissing at the heat.

  “What kind of job?” My heart is pounding. I place my hand over it as I wait for her answer.

  “I was a dog walker.”

  I smile, then huff out a small laugh. “When was this?”

  “Oh…” She hisses again. Then I think she goes under. But a few seconds later there’s that sound people make when they resurface and then some sputtering. “Like… last year, I think.”

  “Last year? What have you been
doing since then?”

  She sighs in the other room. Says nothing. So I go back down the hallway and now it’s my turn to lean against the doorjamb. I fold my arms and wait her out.

  She’s sitting in the tub the same way she was sitting on the couch. Knees pulled up. Hugging herself. Bubbles up to her shoulders. Staring straight ahead at the subway tiles on the wall. Her hair is wet and slicked back over her head and her teeth are chattering a little.

  “I’m not really sure, McKay.” She wipes her hand over her eyes to get the water out and then looks at me.

  “That’s OK.” I say it softly to soothe her. “It’s fine. You don’t need to remember. You’re here and so… so you’re here and it’s fine.” I’m talking in circles because that’s what this feels like. One. Endless. Circle.

  She frowns and nods. “That is why I’m here. I need you to help me. Adam, you know. He took him and…”

  “I’ll handle it,” I interrupt her. Because whatever is going through her head about Nathan St. James right now, it’s got nothing to do with Adam.

  Or reality, for that matter.

  She nods again, still frowning. “Will you wash my hair for me?”

  This is something she talked me into doing a lot when she was small. Until Donovan told me to stop. I liked it though. I like taking care of her. I don’t know if it helps her, but it helps me. And I like it. So I did it back then and I’m gonna do it now too.

  “Sure.” I walk into the bathroom and sit down on the toilet lid. I swing my legs to the side, just like I used to, and squirt some of the cheap strawberry shampoo onto the top of her head.

  She sucks in a deep breath and lets it out. Then glances up at me with a smile.

  I smile back and start working the shampoo into her hair, my fingers gently massaging her scalp just the way she likes it.

  She slides her body sideways so she’s leaning against the side of the tub, making it easier for me to reach her. And she’s still so fucking small she can do this without effort. Just tuck her legs up to her chest and fold herself into a little bundle of girl.

  But she relaxes. I can see it in the way her shoulders drop. The way her head drops too. She rests her chin on her knees and even though I can’t see her face, I know her eyes are closed.