Arlington, VA, January 2014
Chaz Villette shook the rain—snow—whatever the hell the concrete-colored sky was flinging down on the greater metro area—off his jacket and his climbing bag and left them to drip the rest of it on the tile floor of the condo's front entry. He could hear music from the living room, a song he didn't recognize and which didn't sound like anything Hafs would play.
She was home, though; her big sapphire-blue coat that swung like a swashbuckler's cape was on its hook. Maybe she had company. But company would have a coat, too, and would leave it here, and there was no sign of strange outerwear.
Other people just walk in their front doors,
he reflected.
Maybe even yell, "I'm home!"
Neither he nor Hafidha were other people. Nor was anyone they worked with. So he knew where his weapons were (gun in holster, mirror folded in his head) when he rounded the corner into the living room.
Hafidha sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the flat-screen TV, a gallon plastic container of homemade chocolate-cherry-granola cookies corralled by her thighs and calves. On screen, three girls in leotards and toe shoes
pliéd
and sniped at each other in...British accents?
On the surface, at least, nothing to be worried about. Chaz let his shoulders drop a little. "What happened to the guy in the moldy two-hundred-year-old overcoat?" he asked.
"I'm time-shifting
Sleepy Hollow,
" Hafidha replied around a mouthful of chewy cookie. "This is homework."
"Homework. Gamma ballerinas?" He plopped down beside her and stole a cookie.
"Not
work
homework. Not office work, I mean. This is one of Susanna Greenwood's favorite shows."
Susanna Greenwood was one of Idlewood's youngest inmates. Hafidha was mentoring her through the process of getting and using the implant. The bugzapper.
"Ah. It didn't seem like a you thing."
"I'll have you know I took ballet for seven freaking years, baby bro. I can balance on the ball of one foot with the best of 'em."
The TV showed two young guys doing a step-pivot, step-pivot, leap sequence that made his whole lower body ache in sympathy. "Is it...Australian?"
"Yep. And unlike the Disney Channel equivalent, it's full of teenagers who are butt-stupid in actual teenager ways, rather than made-up let-us-teach-you-this-lesson ways. Ooh, hang on. This is one of Kat's hip-hop routines." Hafidha waved the volume up, and they watched the dancers turn themselves into fierce, angular, graceful geometry.
"And you know the character's names," Chaz said when the dance ended.
"Teenagers think you're stupid if you don't know as much as they do."
"Uh-huh."
Hafs slugged him in the arm, then passed him the tub of cookies.
The end credits began to roll. "The way the show came up... Susanna said she had a quiet freakout when one of the characters got injured. She said it scared the crap out of her—that in a matter of seconds, someone could go from having a plan and a life and a shiny future to zip, game over, out of quarters.
"And I could see it was horror-movie stuff to her. That was when I realized the thing she was terrified of had already happened to me. Twice."
She bit into another cookie while Netflix settled on its home page for the show.
Dance Academy.
"So you told her it wasn't that bad?"
"Hell, no. I told her she was right. I told her what doesn't kill us mostly leaves us seriously fucked up, or words to that effect. When a life-wrecking event happens,
it wrecks your life
. And you have to try to get a new one, which is a lot harder than replacing a wrecked pretty much anything else."
Chaz contemplated the piles of wreckage on his own backtrail. But he'd been able to stick with his old life after all. The Relative had broken him, but he'd put himself back together and returned to his work and his friends and his future. "Boy, you sure do know how to give a pep talk."
"I do, though. It made her feel better."
"Seriously?"
Hafidha tossed her head—the braids that would have been flipped off her cheek were gone, but the gesture remained. "If I were standing at the top of a cliff with one of your pretty rectangular parachutes and said I was scared to jump, what would you tell me?"
"I'd say if you weren't you'd be an idiot. Oh."
"When you're scared, and reasonably scared, and somebody tells you, 'It's no big deal," you know they're a liar. And being lied to is never comforting." She tucked her feet under her and stood up. "Jammers do not live by cookies alone."
"Who are you, and what have you done with my Wabbit?"
She frowned down at him. "Pffft. We need a pile of grilled cheese sandwiches. And maybe some beer. After that, wanna watch the next episode with me? It's only half an hour."
Teenagers being stupid. And, based on that step-pivot-leap bit, trying to defy gravity on a daily basis.
As an athlete, he could respect that. "I'll slice the bread.”
Ashton, VA, April 30, 2014
"So here you are again," Saito says. "Danny-boy. With your trampled-on fear all muddled up. Got anything new for me?"
"Stubbed my toe this morning," Brady replies.
"And you had
sex,
" Saito complains. "Snuggly wonderful dawn-time cuddling. You had a good lunch. You're not even
hungry
. Must you antagonize me like this?"
"Unexpected consequence," Brady says. "Desensitization."
"You're not living up to the deal. Give me something."
"Doing my best."
"I hate slow periods," Saito complains. "Waiting for the other shoe to drop. For you to break up with your boyfriend or have a teammate die. That grief felt good, Dann-O. Felt like the first time. But— Not today. You're in a good mood."
"It's been good lately," Brady says. "Sorry."
"You have something in there," Saito says. "Something you're covering up in all that fluff. Nobody knows you like I do. How's your monster on work release?"
Screw you, buddy.
"She's fine."
"For now. Until she isn't fine. And it could happen in a blink."
"She's fine."
"You're boring today," Saito complains. "Can't even get you past worried about your team monster. I could do that. Be on your team. I have a knack for interviews. I can really get down deep."
"You're never getting out of this room, Jason."
"And you're not the deal I bargained for. Give me Dallas.
Chicken in the bread pan, picking out dough
... No," Saito says, and jerks backward against his chair in frustration. "Give me Hafidha Gates."
"She's fine," Brady repeats.
"Have you stayed at the office while she was in the field? Have you let her out of your sight yet?"
"She's been in the field without me there." That's a mistake. Defensive.
"Ooh. There's something," Saito says. "Give me that."
"It's nothing."
"Liar." Saito sits up, settles back. "She did something that makes your spine crawl. Give it to me. It'll do."
Leesburg, VA
Her shroud wasn't even finished yet.
Ash had started it right after seeing an episode of
Six Feet Under
with a green burial. People thought it was morbid and creepy. "Way too goth, even for you," Jessica had said, while Ash searched for undyed linen cloth and researched plant dyes for the silk floss she'd dye herself. But you understood. Death is a part of life, and abstract at nineteen.
Ash hadn't abandoned it as a teenage fancy. She cut the linen, stitched it by hand, dyed the thread with berries and leaves and bark, stitched pictures and words and signs. She took it out on each of the sabbats and on her birthday to stitch on it. If she only got a little done, she'd shrug, smile, and put it back in its box to wait for the next time. There's enough time left when you're nineteen, when you're twenty-four, when you're not even married yet, when you're only twenty-six.
But it wasn't finished. The needle had still been threaded through a line of madder-dyed silk; at the spring equinox she'd been stitching a glyph she'd designed herself that meant gentleness. You don't know how it was supposed to finish, and so you pushed the needle through in a simple running chain to write the date of her death, and to mark the approximate places where her heart, kidneys, and eyes would have been—what the transplant people took, before they disconnected her from the machines. The sun, the scales, the ram's head. This was your job: Even though you didn't believe anymore, you knew the signs and symbols, you knew her meaning.
You couldn't bear to help wash her body, or to braid her long, long hair into the crown she liked the most. Couldn't bear to look at the bruises and the fractures that would never heal, the sutures from the transplants raised and ugly on her skin. No one minded that you couldn't. And so you sat in the room outside and stitched the last clumsy marks that weren't enough. Someone always came to touch your shoulder to see how you were doing, if you needed anything. Ash's brother, Connor, came to help you pack herbs in the pockets of the shroud, and Ash's mother, Sandra—that name was awkward on your tongue, she'd always been Mrs. Campbell—walked you to your car parked under the magnolias and gave you one more hug before you went home to sleep before the ceremony.
*
They arrange to fetch you in the car hired for the family. No one wears black. Ash would have hated it. Most wear green, her favorite colour—you're wearing a deep loden green shawl around your shoulders, fastened with her favorite shawl pin—a copper lance and a knotwork ring. Connor takes your hand to help you out of the car and holds it as you walk. You squeeze it because that's what you're supposed to do. Because it's supposed to feel comforting.
You leave your shoes outside the place marked as the entrance to the circle, and walk the spiral, turning inward. Ashley's mother respected her religion the way your parents wouldn't have, back when you believed it, too. She had talked to the people in Ashley's circle, and let them do everything the way they thought Ash would want it. Your bare feet grow cold as you turn widdershins through the spiral and find your place in the inner ring of mourners. Her family. Her circle. And you.
You're cold. Everything sounds far away, unimportant. The shroud isn't finished, but it's wrapped around her body, small and motley with the embroideries of wheels and constellations, a map of Ash's own meaning and what she wanted to set down to mark her life.
There should be more. There shouldn't be an inch of beige left unmarked, and the
wrongness
of that latches hold surely as Connor's hand and scrapes at the edges of emptiness, the unreality.
This shouldn't be happening.
Then there's a soft press just over your left shoulder, a wisp of honey and sandalwood teasing through the air, and the batting over your senses peels away—the moisture in the air, the cool bluegrass under your bare feet, Connor's hand holding yours tight and the brilliant blue sky and oh, deep in the center of your chest, it
hurts
and claws up your throat in a horrible jagged sob, the first you've cried since that first denying scream over the telephone
a car crash
the other driver killed immediately, Ash airlifted out with a massive head injury, unable to breathe unassisted
She had been coming to your house.
Work had been the absolute shits. Even knowing that you were walking straight into a universal PMS zone didn't make it any easier to handle. When Sam and Tyrone had laughed just as you'd gone around the corner—it probably hadn't been about you but fuck it made you want to turn around and demand to know
what
was so fucking funny and even a run through the trail and splitting wood to refill the wall of split logs didn't take the tension out of your shoulders, didn't dull the need to start a fight.
You had complained to Ash as much as your nondisclosure agreement would allow, and your best friend, your heart-sister, said, "Take a shower, use the salt scrub, we're going to unblock your cramped-up energy and then we can watch any Jane Austen movie you want."
"I love you," you'd said, not knowing it was the last time. "And your crystal-hugging bodywork."
When she wasn't there a half hour later, you assumed she'd decided to pick up something to eat.
After an hour, you sent her a text.
The phone rang ten minutes later.
*
You can't stop crying now. Connor and Sandra have their arms around you, and you can't stop, she's gone, because she was coming to your house because you couldn't even stop sulking long enough to make the drive from Purcellville to Leesburg to make good on your weekend plans, she's dead
because of
you
They get you back to the car somehow, and you try to take slow breaths that don't hitch, and when your sinuses clear, you smell honey and sandalwood again, and wonder if you're going crazy.
Sandra takes you home to the big house surrounded by deep Virginia woods. She tucks you into bed as if you were sick and reads
Sense and Sensibility
to you until the pills take hold and you fall asleep.
You dream of Ash teaching you to dance the strathspey in this house. You dream of the first day you met at your new school. You are both fourteen, and you never want to wake up.
But you do.
Ashton, VA
Hell is beautiful in the spring.
Dice bumps the driver's-side door closed with his hip and balances a grocery sack and a cardboard box on one hand and double-checks the lock. Actually two boxes: one destined to stay at the door for Leon and his partner after the mandatory search is done, the other to go upstairs, not down, up to the activity room, where Eddie and a guard will wait.
They might play chess, with Eddie able to move his pieces himself. Dyson's read up on sports scores, but Eddie may have already seen them himself on the television, and he'll listen.
Leon takes the boxes of kolache with
thanks, you shouldn't have, I could never eat two boxes by myself
and a big laugh before they go do the usual search. Leon doesn't ask the question again, and then Dyson Cieslewicz heads in a new direction from his usual route to the high security area and the support group meeting in the vast and empty cafeteria—to a smaller wing, with only a handful of residents.
Two of them are standing out by the nurse's station, accompanied by the usual complement of quiet, watchful staff. Dice smiles at the first, a slender young woman.
"Hey, Susanna."
She smiles back, after a delay and a half-halted wave, then she slips into a room and shuts the door quietly, avoiding any further contact, but the other woman turns around and smiles widely.
"Dice," Natalie Summers says.
"Natalie," Dice answers, and up his arms come, a mirror of hers as they step closer together and hug. it's a close squeeze, though Dice is one-armed because of the second box of kolache and the grocery sack, but when they step apart Natalie's got a light in her eyes. Her red hair is natural, from the soft fuzz on her head, but not as vivid as he was used to seeing it, and she reminds him of a young Sinead O'Connor, with huge eyes and the hollows of her cheeks filling in a little.
"It's so nice to see you," she says. "I've met your brother." She acts like the guard standing just out of reach and to her right is personal security. She's probably used to having personal security.
"And now you know everything." Dice laughs.
Natalie lays a tan-gloved hand on his arm as she laughs along.
"Hardly. Kylie was just here," Natalie says. "Last Sunday."
"Oh, good! Good," Dice says, and sets the box down at the nurses' station occupied by Sam, who isn't a nurse but was studying to be one, and rocks back on his heels. "I'm glad."
"Me, too. She never stopped being my friend, Dice."
Dyson already knows. Kylie wrote him a message on Sunday. "That's good."
"Is your brother okay?" Natalie asks, and Dyson can't hide the expression that goes with his stomach dropping to the floor. "It's probably nothing," she says quickly. "He's not in observation, but he's been keeping to himself today and yesterday, and you can't usually get him away from the windows in the recreation room. He sits in the sunlight," Natalie says.
"Should I tell him that you were wondering if he was all right?" Dyson asks, and she shakes her head—and then changes her mind and nods.
"It's good to know that somebody's thinking about you," she says. "Susanna was, too."
"I'll tell him," Dyson promises.
Natalie goes off to the TV room. Eddie comes out not long after, smirking at Dice.
"The rich girl talks about you, brother."
"She asked if you were doing all right. She says Susanna was worried about you, too."
"The kid? No fooling. Wasn't feeling social. Let's play some chess."
Dice plays because Eddie likes to. They start a Catalan opening by silent agreement, and leave the clock off. Eddie doesn't rest his left arm on the table, doesn't talk much, glancing at the other end of the room where Natalie sits and watches a show with vampires of some kind.
"You sure there's nothing going on there?" Eddie asks, and Dice nods.
"I'm sure."
"Not like you could go on dates with her anyway. She's got the treatment already."
"Ah."
"She's already going for walks," Eddie goes on. "I'm not even at walks yet."
"When you get there, do you want to take a spin around the gardens?"
"You should go on a spin with her."
"Eddie."
"Okay, okay. But she likes you, man."
"I know she likes me, but it's not like that."
"Like you and that tattoo babe you date."
"We go to the movies together sometimes."
"But it's not like that," Eddie grumbles, and his left shoulder rises until he notices it and shoves it back down. "Can't you just get laid?"
"Eddie."
"Okay, okay. You're seriously into this sensitivity cra— stuff. Why not get your leg over?"
"How would Natalie feel if I used her like that?"
"Fucksake, Dice. You never fucking quit. It pisses me off."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Yes, you do," Eddie says. "Never mind. Let's do some chess."
Dice reaches for his knight, and squeezes the horse head, resisting the urge to take his hand away. "J'adoube."
"No kidding j'adoube. I wouldn't have let you make that move when I was twelve." But Eddie doesn't give a suggestion or hint, letting Dice figure out an alternative.
Eddie wins eight moves later, shakes his head at the hint of another game. "Eat one, or you won't get one."
He means the poppyseed, their favorite. They eat in silence, watching the last minutes of the visit tick by, and Dice knows that he can't tell Eddie. Not yet.
"Well, I better get going," Dice says, and Eddie dusts crumbs off his hand.
"Yeah, you wanna get home soon. You doing that—that polo thing, with your bicycle?"
"Yeah." Eddie approves of bike polo. It's daring. He's proud of every scrape and bruise Dice gets, because a funny story about pain is one of the ways he takes the measure of a man.