Glow (2 page)

4.

Lucy

Dad’s study is just as I remember it. There’s a chess board still set up, each pawn in its place, and I press my hands to my chest as memories float to the surface, threatening to escape.

I should let the memories go, just like I let the apple tree go, but it’s hard. It’s one thing to say you’re going to do something; it’s another to actually do it.

I wish it were all easier.

The growing up part.

Dad would sit here in this wooden chair, across from me, squinting as if trying to see what I saw. I would smile at him; shake my head as I made a wrong move on purpose, pretending to not know the things I knew. That is what you do when you have to hide parts of yourself in fear they will threaten someone into walking away.

In the end he still walked away.

“Lucy, can I look at these books?” Junie is across the room, her eyes bright as she looks at the rows and rows of spines.

“Of course, there are all kinds. I spent my life with my nose in them.” I walk over and pull out a dog-eared copy of Little Women. “This is my favorite. Four sisters, and their adventures. I always wanted a sister.”

“I want to hear a story, Junie. Will you read a real story to me?” Timid asks, standing next to her, never having left her side for days now.

“Of course, after we eat some food, lets lie down and I’ll read to you, sweet pea.”

“Speaking of food … what is the plan with that?”

“We have a kitchen through these doors, but there’s no food here. That’s why we left in the first place,” I explain, walking across the study. Pulling open two sliding doors, I reveal the dining room that leads to the kitchen. 

Memories rise to the surface again, of this room filled with motionless faces, frozen hearts. Visions of my compound family, dead at the table, cloud my eyes, empty teacups, drained of poison still sit on the table. I instinctively pull my hands over my eyes, remembering Mom’s screaming as she clutched Dad’s lifeless body, and then slapped his face. Being here hurts in ways I don’t want it to.

Maybe it was a mistake to return.

“Lucy, are you okay?” Lukas asks, concerned and wanting to help, but it overwhelms me right now. There are too many conflicting emotions; I wanted to retreat here to the compound because it represents simpler times. But merely returning here isn’t going to erase the problems.

I have to face them.

Pressing my hands to my ears, my green, healing hands, soften the screams echoing in my ears. The sound dissipates, and opening my eyes, I return to the room with people I hardly knew, and in Lukas’ case, someone I thought I knew.

“So about that food?” Colton asks, his mind focused, and no surprise, we’ve been riding here since before daybreak.

“I’ve got it taken care of.”

I spin, and Charlie stands behind me, two dead rabbits in his hands.

5.

Charlie

If I can’t make magic light come out of my hands, then at least I can do something besides twiddle my thumbs. Lucky for me, rabbits scurried across the field and two lucky strikes later, they were mine.

Bringing them into this strange, circular house and offering them to Lucy makes me feel a little less-lame. And at the moment that means something. Feeling inadequate is an understatement.

“Sweet!” Colton says as I present my kill. I’ve known Colton for three years, since he and Junie crawled to Headquarters, orphaned and alone, with the threat of death gripping them tight. I’d never seen people so famished. Starved. So it’s no surprise that he’s the one asking about food now. Perspective changes when you’ve gone without for so long. Your outlook changes when you’ve nearly lost everything, including your life.

The group is in the dining room. Lucy’s house is so sterile, so cold. Nothing like the farmhouse where my parents live. The table here is a hard laminate, and the chairs are made of plastic. Durable, practical, sensible.

“Thanks, Charlie, this is amazing,” Lucy says, her eyes briefly casting a glance over the rabbits before getting stuck once more on the dishes set on the table, then flicking up at Lukas. She seems to be darting from the truth.

It’s obvious that her heart’s desperate to be wild and free, you can see it in her eyes, the ones made for uninhibited living. I hear it when I hear her breathe; I felt it when she kissed my lips, abandoning everything else in that singular moment. I understand the secret words she’s scared to say out loud, that being claimed by someone, something terrifies her, because she’s never had a chance to be on her own.

I try to avoid looking at her, to give her space, and instead look to Basil.

“Want to help me with these?”

“Sure … are we thinking a fire?” She looks to Lucy, who nods her head “yes.” Lucy glances at Lukas out of the corner of her eyes, but she doesn’t ask anything of him, and he doesn’t offer. Though we all know now that he can start fires with the literal blink of his eyes.

“I can help.” Perfection surprises me by jumping into the conversation. She’s more beautiful than she was when we were kids, but not made for “roughing it.” She’d probably never stepped outside before yesterday, probably never even wanted to.

“Sure, you can help.” The younger girls, Timid and Hana, roll their eyes as Perfection beams. I’m not used to so many girls, but obviously there’s a history between them.

“I’ll round up whatever food we have left in our packs,” Junie offers. “Lucy, can you help?” She nods and they head to the kitchen with bags slung over their shoulders.

The three of us go outside and Basil begins rounding up sticks for the fire while I pull out my knife to skin the animals. Basil moves fast, she’s been in the wild before. It’s obvious as she picks up pieces of wood piling them in her arm, and quickly tosses others unfit for her fire. This crew could be fending worse, if all the girls were like Perfection, but I’m hopeful we’ll be okay with strong people like Basil and Colton around.

Perfection walks over and winces when she realizes what I’m doing, taking the hide of the small animals. Holding her hands over her eyes, she pulls a sharp intake of breath, shivering at the sight of the blood.

When I don’t say anything, she works to compose herself before speaking to fill the silence.

“Charles, do you remember when we were kids?” Perfection asks, smoothing her hair, something clearly on her mind. “Do you remember the game you and I would play, where we would find everyone mates?”

I know what she’s talking about. There wasn’t much else to discuss when your entire world was the size of a box, when you were rarely allowed to look out beyond the marble walls. She’s talking about the game where we’d pair everyone up in the Refuge, forever obsessed with mates and Binding. It was what Vessels were preened for from infancy. Grow Up. Be Bound. Reproduce. Repeat. Even if my parents admonished these sorts of things to me privately, there weren’t many options for entertainment. I was never book smart like Lukas. I only read because my parents forced me to read their old science journals they had stowed in their luggage when they joined The Light.

We never played this game with Lukas because it didn’t apply to him in the same way it was going to for us. If I had stayed there, I would have become a Humbleman. I would be one now.

I nod, not looking up from what I’m doing, blood dripping in the tall green grass. I don’t like to reminisce about my childhood. It was a make-believe world full of demons disguised as angels. Not one I want to return to.

“If I remember correctly, we never could agree on what would happen to us,” I say, trying to dismiss her. Back then Perfection swore she didn’t want Lukas. She didn’t want to compete. After I left, that must have changed because hell, she came here as his mate.

“That’s not true. We said if we both grew up, and didn’t have mates, we would choose one another.” She crouches down, in her tattered and ripped-to-the-knees Vessel gown. I look at her, her eyes trying to meet mine. She bites her lip and places her hand on mine, stopping me from finishing preparing the meat.

She doesn’t realize my heart has already been given to someone else.

“It’s not gonna be like that, Perfection. I can’t. I chose someone else.”

She withdraws her hand, sharply.

“Who?” she asks, but it sounds like an accusation.

“Lucy.” I speak the truth because I have no use in telling lies.

“What is with you and your bother? You two used to be
my
friends
.
I thought you were gone forever, but you’re miraculously back from the dead and we have a chance to get back the lost time. But then she comes along and now … she’s
everyone’s everything
.” Perfection crumbles in the soft grass and crosses her arms in a practiced pout.

“Look, there are no miracles here. Sure, I was your friend, and still am, but the idea of us is too much for me.
You
are too much for me.” I start working again with my knife, ready to start the fire and roast lunch. “Why don’t you go somewhere else for a while? I need some space.”

“Easy for you to say, Charles,” she says, her voice thick and bitter. “I don’t have anywhere else. I don’t have anyone.” Picking herself off the ground, she stomps away.

At this moment, she could keep on walking. I can’t handle an attitude problem, not when so much is at stake for everyone.

Even if Perfection and I made promises to one another as children, things change. We grow up, we make choices. And good or bad -- we have to live with them.

6.

Lukas

I don’t know if everyone expected me to use my energy to turn this place on, I’m sure there’s a generator somewhere, but I don’t have the energy. Literally. My body is tired. I’m weak. It was only last night my life force was drawn out in a big gust. Drawn out because my body was shutting down after all of my lies. All of my half-truths, all of my deceit.

My body rejected the choices I made.

And now Lucy rejects me, too.

I used my ability to create a fire at the Refuge the night of my Binding with Perfection, the one I’ve been warned against using, and then I took light from that Humbleman at the Rehab enter. Doing those things was wrong, I know that.

But sometimes, is it okay to do the wrong thing in hopes of making something else right? Is it justifiable?

I thought so.

But it seems that I’ve been wrong about an awful lot.

“Lukas, do you want to help Colton and me get water and food for the horses?” Duke asks. He’s a gentle giant, tough, burly, like he could wrestle any of us to the ground and win, but wouldn’t. Instead he’d wrap you in a big hug and ask how he could help. He smiles warmly, and it helps me relax. I’ve been so tense ever since Charles told me he was going to fight for Lucy. It feels good to finally exhale.

“Of course. I’ll ask Lucy where the water is.” I head through the dining room and see Lucy whispering with Junie in the kitchen. The moment they see me they stop.

“Where could I find some water? We need to take care of the horses,” I ask them.

“The best thing would be the greenhouse. There’s a spigot there that uses water from the well,” Lucy answers.

“Can you show me?”

She nods. “Sure, it’s right through this door.” She walks behind me and opens a door I hadn’t noticed. How could I notice anything but her when I’m in her pretense? I follow her into a greenhouse that’s nothing like the vast and abundant hothouses at The Light, like the flower garden where Lucy collected herbs.

There are a few platforms of pitifully dried dirt, and a pile of rusted metal containers that perhaps at one time held the promise of produce.

“Pathetic, right? No wonder my mom loved working in the greenhouse at The Light. She said she used to have a green thumb, but that nothing was willing to grow for her here.”

“The Light has access to so much more light for their crops. It’s an unfair advantage.” I don’t want to talk about vegetables with her. I want to talk about getting back to The Light. About how we’re needed there to make it a better place.

“Yeah, I don’t want that anymore though, an
unfair advantage.”

“Like my light? Your light?” I don’t follow her train of thought.

“Well, I guess. I mean I love that my light is able to heal, and that you’re able to do incredible things with yours, but it will be used against us. And why should we have an easier time because of something we didn’t even choose or work for, when girls like Junie and Basil have had to fight for survival? Why should I have it easy?”

She’s riled up, in a good way. A passionate way. The way I saw her on the first night we met at the Refuge, at the dinner in the great room when our eyes met and our glasses shattered and our lives changed forever. But she’s wrong.

“You’re talking about wanting to live your life in denial, Lucy. The fact is you’re a girl who was born in a world of darkness. You’re a girl who brought light to the world.
You are those things
. To deny them is to deny yourself. That isn’t living. If you did that, then everyone else would have the
unfair advantage
over you. Because they would be living whole lives, while you suppressed yours.” I shake my head, frustrated.

“It’s like we’re right back where we started, Lukas. Arguing. We can’t go a minute, a moment without getting in a fight.” Tears gather in her eyes, and it’s clear she understands the magnitude of our light. She knows, she just doesn’t want to admit it.

“Lucy, we argue because we’re fighting a battle inside ourselves. If we stop that, if we give in to who we truly are, who we can be together -- like we promised on the ledge when our lips met -- then the fighting will stop.” I step closer to her, wanting to be closer still.

“Lukas, why did you do it? Why did you kiss her?” She holds my eyes steady as she asks, searching me for an answer. Searching for some truth.

“I didn’t choose it, Lucy. I couldn’t think of another way to get to you. The Council put me in a corner. I let myself be Bound to Perfection, because I was willing,
am still willing
, to do anything to be with you.”

“And the kiss?” she asks, again.

“It was nothing like this.” I pull her to me, sending the firework rainbow off once more. We enter our shielded world, where nothing else exists besides her and me. And I kiss her. I kiss her lips like I did before. I search them hungrily, because all I want is her. All I need is Lucy.

Her hands wrap around my neck, and I know she wants me too, because when we hold one another tight everything else evaporates. Her fingers grab ahold of my face, and she pulls herself up, to whisper in my ear, “I can’t do this.”

I release my arms, not understanding, and pull away. The kaleidoscope around us instantly disappears when we sever our hands from one another’s body. The kiss was a moment, a fraction of time. Stolen, and over too fast. My hands shake, though, and know the kiss was too much for my body. It’s scary to see how my body reacts when it connects with hers.

She sets her green hands on mine, even though I know she wants to pull away. She knows I’m in pain. My light wanes, and she wants to help and she does. Her touch soothes and releases me as she lets me go.

“What the hell?” A voice from inside the compound shouts out.

I look at Lucy, realizing we must have set something awry again when we let our lips touch. She folds her arms and steps father from me, increasing the divide.

“I need some space, Lukas. I can’t do this right now.” She wipes a tear from her face, and her eyebrows force themselves in a steady line, as though she is willing herself to not give in to the possibility of her and I. “Anyways, the water is right here, there are tons of buckets. I don’t know how much horses drink … maybe Charlie….”

“I can figure it out myself.” I turn from her, wanting to stomp, to slam something, to punch the wall-- but not wanting to act like a child even though the anger inside me is boiling. I can’t do anything to make the one person I care about happy.