Brighter Than the Sun

by Darynda Jones

  I grab her arm and we hurry away from the school. I can’t help but look over my shoulder.

  “That’s not all,” she says as I drag her behind me. She is out of breath, and I slow down a little.

  “What do you mean?”

  “She asked about you, too. And then the principal came in and they asked— They asked if you’re safe.”

  I stop and stare at her. “Me?”

  She nods.

  “What the fuck?”

  She lowers her head.

  “Kim. What? Did you say something?”

  “No!” She rushes to assure me, and I know better than to even ask. “I swear. They just— I think a teacher saw you last week.”

  I bite down. She missed three days of school because of last week. Earl got fired from his part-time job as a janitor at a warehouse, and he took it out on me. I waited three days before taking Kim to school. She refused to leave me, and I couldn’t risk being seen as torn up as I was. I thought I’d waited long enough. I thought the bruises had faded enough. Apparently not.

  We hurry home. We knew what was coming anyway. Earl lost his piece-of-shit job. He couldn’t pay the rent. He would either rob someone, kill someone, or we would sneak out in the middle of the night.

  Two days later, we do just that. We sneak out in the middle of the night. Sometimes it takes the landlord days to figure out we’ve gone. Vacating during the wee hours buys us time.

  Earl knocks a hole in the wall and dumps all the pictures. I can breathe again when he does. These are bad. The worst we’ve had in a while. He’s going to kill me someday. I just have to hold on long enough to get Kim to a safe place. If she’s old enough, she can file for emancipation. But she has to be at least sixteen in New Mexico.

  I don’t get to tell Amador that we’re gone, but I have his home phone number. I use a phone at the hotel we are staying at for the night and leave a message. I tell him that our science project has been moved. He knows what that means: I will get back in touch with him when I can. He knows not to ask why. He’s cool that way.

  By the time Kim is a freshman in high school, she has grown into a beautiful young woman. She loves art and French and history. Dutch is also a freshman. She loves guys with body art, French guys, and hot guys from her history books. So they have a lot in common.

  I have a job at a chop shop with Amador and take a couple of night classes on the side. But I still walk Kim to school every day. Well, most days. There are the occasional bad ones, but those are dwindling to almost nonexistent. Earl is losing his grip on me, and he knows it.

  Unfortunately, Kim has figured out she is the reason I stay. The guilt eats at her. Especially on days like today.

  I’m missing work and Kim is missing school. I tell her to go, but she refuses. She brings wet washcloths and has to help me into the bathtub. I’m embarrassed. I tell her I’m fine. It’s no worse than usual. She pretends to believe me, then tries to keep her sobs inside, but every once in a while her breath hitches and a tear slips from between her lashes. Her fingers shake as she slides the cloth over my back. I try not to wince. Wincing only makes her feel worse.

  When I’m finished, she puts salve on the rope burns. I don’t let her know that my wrist is broken. It’ll heal in a few days anyway. She puts duct tape on the worst lacerations. That seems to help the most, and my lids are suddenly filled with lead.

  I try not to slip. I try to stay there for Kim—but then I slip away anyway and seek out the light. Seek out Dutch. She’s at school and I wonder if I see her in school now because of Kim.

  Their two schools are both different and the same. The walls at Dutch’s school seem brighter. The kids dressed better. I never imagined her as rich, but she has never had to wear dirty clothes. I’m glad. I wouldn’t want that for her. I would make her rich if I could, but for some reason, I can’t control this daydream.

  I find her in the bathroom at her school. She is putting gloss on her lips, running the tube inside the puffy edges, and then smoothing it with her middle finger. She’s wearing a button-down, a short skirt, and boots. She’s sexy as fuck, and I wonder when I started thinking of her as sexy. It seems wrong somehow.

  I realize she’s seen me. She stops her ministrations and looks at me in the mirror. I am, of course, blanketed by my robes. My hood is up, so she can’t see my face, but she stares anyway.

  The bell rings and the other girls leave, but she stays glued to the spot. She still doesn’t know who she is. What she is. She only knows she helps the departed. She helps them with their problems. Then she helps them cross to the other side. She has no idea she’s the reaper. Destined to do her job for hundreds of years after she passes. It’s what they do. Reapers.

  I decide to enlighten her.

  I plant my feet on the ground, let my cloak settle around me, and walk toward her. She is frozen. She doesn’t know what to think of me. This girl who is afraid of nothing is scared to death of a coward hiding behind a layer of smoke.

  I lean into her. She smells like strawberries and coffee and a soft perfume that barely brushes the air. She is completely motionless. Watching. Waiting.

  My mouth grazes the tender tip of her ear, and I whisper, “You are the grim reaper. You will live forever. You will ferry souls to the other side for hundreds of years. And you are magnificent.”

  She doesn’t acknowledge anything I’ve said. She just stares.

  I realize someone else has entered the restroom. A woman. She is talking to Dutch. Snapping to get her attention. Threatening her with a pink slip, whatever the fuck that is.

  I start to draw my sword, but Dutch snaps out of it. She shakes her head. Pleads.

  “Miss Davidson,” the woman says. She gets in her face and Dutch slowly turns away from me and toward her. But her gaze is fixed on me. She is worried I’ll sever the woman’s spine. She should be. She’s a bitch.

  Fine. I resheath my sword. She’s no fun.

  “Go to the office immediately,” the woman says.

  Dutch nods and looks over her shoulder at me as the woman leads her out.

  I’m still not sure why she’s so scared of me. It’s my dream. But in it, she’s always in trouble. Like she’s made that way. If she’s not almost getting herself killed trying to help a departed, she’s almost getting herself killed by one of her classmates.

  Even though our meeting is brief, her light does its job once again. It heals me. At least I think it does. Why else would I heal so fast? Even if it doesn’t, it keeps me sane. It keeps me from ripping the world to shreds.

  14

  After I confront Dutch in the restroom, I go back to my world. The days are thick and sticky. Not with heat. It’s cold out. With tension. Something has happened. Something has set Earl on edge. He wants more from me, and if I don’t give it, Kim pays the price. No amount of pain is too much to save her. She’s going to get out of here. She’s going to be someone. Even though she’s not in school at the moment, I find textbooks and make sure she reads them and does all the exercises. She may not go to Harvard, but she is going to college if it kills me.

  Because of the renewed violent tendencies, I begin seeing Dutch more and more. As the vision in my dreams grows older, as Dutch ages, so does my interest. It ages. Becomes more visceral. More carnal. She is amazing, this creature I created. She is proud and strong and tenacious. She sticks her neck out too often, though. Sometimes she almost gets it cut. Since saving her from the perv who kidnapped her when she was four, I’ve had to come through for Dutch a few more times.

  One of her classmates tried to run her over with an SUV. That was one of my more showy displays. The massive vehicle is shooting toward her with the pedal to the metal. She turns just in time to see me step in front of it and knock it into a store window.

  The guy is arrested but not for attempted murder, because Dutch doesn’t tell anyone he was coming for her. She doesn’t understand why he did it, but she can feel his pain as much as I can. Doesn’t fucking matter, though. Attemp
ted murder is attempted murder. He should have gone down for that.

  But life goes on. Then one night Earl comes home drunk and angry. He is always drunk and angry, but this night, he can barely stand. He storms into our room and starts yelling at us to clean the apartment. We haven’t been here long. We only just left a small garage where we were staying in exchange for fixing up the house and doing some yard work. But Earl never actually did a fucking thing, and the lady kicked us out. He’s been mad ever since.

  Whatever set him off tonight, though, must have been a doozy. He is furious. He’s in a filthy beater and dirty boxers. He grabs my shirt and jerks me off the sleeping bag I’m on. Kim is already awake and huddling on the mattress in the corner. Her knees up to her chin. Her hands over her ears.

  She’s shaking her head. Praying he is just pissed and really does want the apartment cleaned instead of something else. Her prayers go unanswered.

  He shoves me into the kitchen. The harsh yellow floods my vision and I miss the first swing. It lands on my jaw and knocks me back against the wall. He smells like a sewer, and I gag when he leans into me. Fondles my cock through the sweats I’m wearing.

  I’m not in the mood for his shit, so I elbow him. His head jerks back and I scramble away, but he grabs my hair. Pulls me to his chest. Wraps an arm around my waist.

  “It’s you or her,” he says, his breath hot and noxious.

  He lowers his hand. Slips it under my waistband. But I’m not drugged and I’m not tied up. I think about killing him. It would be so easy, but what would happen to Kim? Would they take her away from me? Of course they would. We aren’t even related. I have no claim to her.

  I decide not to kill him, but no way am I just going to lie there and think of England. I hit him. Hard. I’m pretty sure I broke his jaw, but he is too drunk to realize it. He wraps a meaty hand around my throat, knocks me against the wall, and hits me over and over, his fist like a boulder.

  My immediate concern is air for my burning lungs. I claw at the hand around my throat, but he hits me again. My head whips back and slams into the wall. I go limp, but only for a second or two. I try to block his punches, but when I open my eyes, my gaze locks on to something outside. Something just beyond our kitchen window. I focus for a split second, just long enough to see a girl standing on the sidewalk, looking in. I glare at her, suddenly furious that she is seeing this. That anyone is seeing this. Then Earl hits me again.

  We fall to the floor and I know it’s over. He’ll get his way like he always does. Like he always has.

  Through the fog, I hear the kitchen window shatter. I blink back to consciousness and look past it to the girl standing on the sidewalk outside. Half her face is covered with a scarf, and a hat hides her hair.

  She yells something about calling the police, and Earl is up in a heartbeat. I take the opportunity to run. I go toward our bedroom, but Earl is right on my heels.

  Kim screams at me. “Run! Get out!”

  So I do. Like the coward I am, I run for the door. Earl trips and is no longer breathing down my back, but I don’t slow down. I crash into the hall, past the other apartments, and out the back door, where I stumble into a chain-link fence behind the building. I use it to leverage my weight—wrapping my fingers in the links as I navigate the uneven, frozen terrain barefoot—and manage to make it to a Dumpster. Which is appropriate, given the circumstances.

  I fall onto all fours and try to calm my racing pulse. Dry heaves pump my stomach for several long moments, but nothing comes out. My breaths are ragged and wheezy, the air in my lungs struggling to get through my burning throat.

  I hear someone coming, but it’s not him. I know the sound of his footsteps. On carpet. On wood. On gravel. The footsteps I hear are lighter, and there are two sets of them. They stop near me. I can feel concern wafting off them, and it’s the last thing I need. Their compassion. Their pity.

  I look up, but they have a light focused on me and I can’t see past it. I glare at them. At her. She got his attention. Now she needs to get the fuck out of Dodge. If she thinks he won’t kill her because she’s a pretty girl, she’s sadly mistaken. I’ve seen him kill a man for a lot less than a broken window. The man wanted me. A broken boy. But not for the same reason Earl wants me. I’ve realized years later that he wanted to save me from Earl. He got too close, though. Asked too many questions. Pried a few too many times. And paid the ultimate price.

  But this girl is just standing there. As though a rock through our window and the threat of a phone call will stop him.

  I raise a hand to block the light. They think it’s to block the light they are holding, so they lower it. It’s not. It’s to block her light. I’ve never seen it with my real eyes. It’s blinding and brilliant and beautiful. I turn and spit out the blood that filled my mouth in the few seconds we’d been checking each other out, then look back at my two saviors.

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  My ears are still ringing, but there is no mistaking the soft lilt of a feminine voice. Of Dutch’s voice. It’s just like in my dream. Or what I thought were my dreams.

  I try to stand, but the earth moves under my feet. Dutch jumps forward to help me, but I back away. Livid that she is seeing me like this. At my most vulnerable. At my most whipped.

  “We have to get you to a hospital,” she says.

  I spit again and start down the narrow passageway between the apartment building and the business next door. I’m shaking and she thinks it’s because I’m cold. She follows me with her sister, Gemma, who is clutching on to Dutch’s jacket sleeve as if it were a life preserver. She’s shaking, too. Partly from the cold and partly from fear. At least she has the sense God gave a gerbil.

  “Look,” Dutch says. “We saw what happened. We need to get you to a hospital. Our car isn’t far.”

  “Get out of here,” I finally say, trying to keep the crisp edge of pain out of my voice. With effort, I climb onto a crate, grab hold of a windowsill, and try to see inside. Kim is still in there. Just because he’s never hurt her before doesn’t mean he won’t start now. When he’s this mad and this drunk and this volatile, the only wrong move I can make is to underestimate him.

  “You’re going back in there?” Dutch asks, appalled. “Are you crazy?”

  “Charley,” Gemma whispers to her, “maybe we should just leave.”

  Naturally, Dutch ignores her. “That man tried to kill you.”

  I throw her my best scowl from over my shoulder before turning back to the window. “What part of ‘get out of here’ don’t you understand?”

  She waffles, unsure of what to do. She decides. It’s the wrong decision.

  “I’m calling the police.”

  I whip around. Leap from the crates. Land inches in front of her. With just enough force to let her know it’s there, I place a hand around her throat and push her back against the brick building.

  For a long time I only stare. A thousand thoughts hit me at once, the least of which is the fact that she is real. Flesh and blood. Dutch. Her light soaks into me. Begins to heal me instantly. I begin to calm. To slow my breathing. To clear my head.

  I don’t know what to think, other than the fact that she is more beautiful than I ever dreamed. She is real. And she has seen me. The real me. I have no robes to hide beneath now. No cloak. She has seen how I live.

  I don’t think she realizes it’s me. Does she know that I’m real? Maybe she thinks like I did. Maybe she thinks I’m a dream. A figment of her imagination. Something to help her cope with the reality of her existence. Or maybe she thinks I’m the boogeyman from under her bed.

  No. She is stronger than that. Stronger than me. She faces reality with both fists raised while I cower in a closet. She is so much more than I will ever be.

  I don’t want her to see me like this. Covered in blood and whimpering like a little bitch. I have to get rid of her and make sure Kim is okay. I’ll go back inside if I have to. I’ll snap his neck if I have to, and I have a feeling a par
t of him knows that. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t dare touch Kim.

  Either way, first things first: I have to get rid of the angel standing before me.

  “That would be a very bad idea,” I say at last.

  “My uncle’s a cop, and my dad’s an ex-cop. I can help you.”

  I scoff. Toss in a little sneer for added texture. Then do my best to intimidate her. To let her know how unwanted her offer is. “The minute I need the help of a sniveling brat from the Heights, I’ll let you know.”

  That throws her, but not for long. She sets her jaw. I’ve seen her do it a hundred times, and I want to groan aloud.

  “If you go back in there, I’m calling the police. I mean it.”

  I bite down, completely frustrated. “You’ll do more harm than good.”

  She shakes her head. “I doubt it.”

  “You don’t know anything about me. Or him.”

  “Is he your father?”

  This is getting us nowhere. There is one surefire way to get rid of a girl, however.

  I hate to do it, especially in light of the hell I just came from. The hell she just saved me from. But I steel my resolve and make my move. After raising a hand to her slender throat again, I lower my head and gaze at her like a panther might seconds before attacking a gazelle.

  She stiffens, and I have her in my snare, so I charge forward. Press the length of my body against hers. Lean in and whisper into her ear. “What’s your name?”

  “Charley,” she says, fear finally staking its claim.

  I pull the scarf down so I can see her better. So I can take in every inch of her face. Of her sculpted mouth.

  She tries to add “Davidson” at the end, but I’ve surprised her and it comes out as one mangled syllable. Astonishingly, it sounds like the name I gave her, and I have to wonder if that’s a coincidence.

  “Dutch?” I ask, scrunching my brows together.