The Hawkweed Prophecy (11 page)

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

L
eo ran back to the town center, the burn in his ribs and stitch in his side offering a welcome distraction from everything else he was feeling. He hadn't even said good-bye. She probably wouldn't want to see him again. He should have gone up to her and held her. He should have turned her around in his arms and kissed her and shown her that he wasn't freaked out or scared like she was. He had no idea what had happened, but on some level, it didn't surprise him. All that electricity just seemed to confirm the connection between them. He sensed it the same way he sensed Poppy wanted him gone, that she was struggling and couldn't ask him to go but was praying he would. So he had left but now wished he hadn't, not without reassuring her at least. Leo bent over his legs and waited until the pain eased and his breathing slowed.

Early the next morning he went to the market and gathered some flowers that had been discarded. He picked the best of them, snapping off the broken stems, and took them to Kim at the gym who let him use the shower. She looked at him like “not you again”
but then noticed the flowers and rolled her eyes before unlocking the door.

“Be quick,” she said, and took the flowers before he had a chance to give them to her.

She threw him a towel and Leo ran to the changing room. Turning up the water as hot as he could take it, he watched the glass steam up before stepping inside. He used almost half the container of soap, piling it on his head until his hair was white and slick with lather. When he finished, he saw Kim had left him a neat pile of clothes from the Lost and Found. Leo picked them up off the bench and held them out. They looked brand new. Leo marveled at how much people must own that they could leave these behind and never come to claim them. Once Kim had given him a pair of sneakers, and Leo still wondered how it was that someone could forget their shoes.

He quickly got changed and then looked at himself in the mirror. His hair was soft to touch. His skin tingled clean. The tracksuit changed his whole hunted, hungry, feral demeanor. He held himself differently in it.
Almost like an athlete
, he thought, then felt like an idiot for thinking so.

As Leo left the gym, he saw the flowers in a vase on the reception desk. Then a guy spoke to him, a gym member who was arriving as Leo was leaving.

“Didn't know they opened so early,” was all he said, but he addressed Leo like an equal, like he too had a job and could afford to join a gym. Leo found himself too stunned to answer, but he carried those words with him all day.

His new, clean image wasn't to last long, though. Behind the
bakery, one-eyed Mike tried to snatch his breakfast. Leo wouldn't let him. No way. He'd learned the hard way that if he did, they'd all be on him every time. Easy pickings. Mike was in one of his crazes, though, and kept coming for him. In the end, Leo had to fight him just to keep him off. Mike was wild, throwing punches and biting with his cracked, yellow teeth until Leo went for his blind side, bringing him down. When he had him on the floor, Leo kicked him a few sharp ones for good measure. Teach him not to come back. Leo knew he should feel sorry, but he didn't. He just wanted it finished.

The manager of the bakery pulled Leo off Mike, hurling him to the ground.

“Get lost, you scum. Beating up a cripple. That all you good for?”

Leo didn't bother trying to explain. It never got him anywhere. He was young and the young ones always got blamed. He got to his feet, picking the now-dirty bun from the gutter and stuffing it in his mouth before taking off. He wouldn't be able to go to that bakery again—that was a real loss. And his arm was stinging where Mike's teeth had broken the skin. But what hurt most was the rip in the new tracksuit and the feeling of the torn material flapping against his knee as he ran. Who am I trying to kid? he thought to himself.

Later that morning he got his friend Ben to shave his hair off. All of it. Leo sat on one of the fat, rusting pipes that ran from the factories into the murky waters of the river. The sweet-smelling locks of hair fell softly onto the slick shore. They didn't look like they ever could have belonged to him. Leo thought of that story of the man who cut his hair for a woman—Delilah,
he remembered—and how that guy lost all his power. But as he looked at his reflection in the oily water—his head shaved, his face stark and unadorned—Leo felt stronger. This way he would never have to worry about keeping his hair clean. This way he could never even try to look like the boy he used to be before the streets, before the trouble, before he had to escape.

Poppy ran her fingers over his head, feeling Leo's skull under her hands.

“I like it,” she said.

He had been waiting for her outside her school, leaning against the wall in a tracksuit and sneakers. The other kids stared at them as they passed.

Kelly Fletcher's jaw dropped when she caught sight of them together, her eyes lingering on Leo. “Weirdo,” she barbed at Poppy under her breath, and the girls who linked arms with her whispered and giggled, managing to make the sound of laughter grating and nasty.

Mark Shaw spotted Poppy and Leo out of the corner of his eye. He kept his distance but spat on the ground, then looked the other way.

“They don't like you much,” Leo said matter-of-factly.

“They think I'm weird.” Poppy shrugged, and Leo laughed, so she added, “I am weird, I guess.”

“Who isn't?” Leo retorted, and Poppy felt like hugging him but didn't.

Instead, she said, “Let's get out of here,” and they walked side by side down the road, past all the other kids, like they were a regular couple and she, Poppy Hooper, wasn't a freak but the cool girl with the handsome boyfriend.

“How did you get out of school so early?” Poppy suddenly thought to ask.

“I have my ways,” he said enigmatically and then took her hand in his so she only thought of that.

They went to the back of the churchyard, treading carefully between the graves and past the headstones, through a small door hidden in an ivy-clad wall. It opened onto a wild garden where the long grasses reached their knees and the brambles and blackthorns, hawthorns and holly bushes grew unfettered. The meadow sloped down to a stream that reflected the dappled sky. All sound of distant traffic was drowned out by the trickling of the water as it hurried on its journey. If Poppy listened hard, she could hear the birds and the squirrels in the trees, the insects in the air, the croak of a frog, and the imperceptible sound of duck legs paddling below the surface of the water. She could tell this was Leo's place, his find that no one else he knew strayed upon.

Leo got two apples from his pocket and they crunched away in silence, looking out across the water to the fields beyond. The road that circled the town was just visible in the distance. From where they sat, it looked like another stream, a concrete one reminding them they were still within the confines of society. They threw their cores into the water and watched them bob away. Then the church bell rang, its chimes reverberating across the town, reminding Poppy of the time.

“I should go,” she said apologetically, causing Leo's face to fall. “I'm sorry,” she went on. “It's just I promised I'd meet a friend.”

“It's okay,” he told her, but he looked so crestfallen that Poppy couldn't bring herself to get to her feet.

“I
want
to stay,” she murmured, and he looked up at her with eyes so urgent that they held her there, fixed in that spot.

“Don't go then,” he said gruffly.

Poppy thought of Ember waiting at the dell as they had promised and all that she must be wondering. Grimacing with guilt, she looked at her watch. She was already late. Even if she rushed, by the time she made it there, Ember would have to leave soon after anyway.

“I'll see her tomorrow. She'll understand,” Poppy resolved, and she was rewarded with the sincerest smile from Leo.

“You'll stay?”

Poppy nodded, consoling herself with the thought of how much Ember would love to hear her news and how she'd hang on every word of her description of Leo and make her tell their conversation over again.

Poppy lay back on the grassy bank and Leo did the same, their eyes looking upward to the limitless sky, and Leo talked, this time about himself. He sounded like he was joking when he confessed he didn't know where he came from. And he laughed when he told her that he didn't think much of parents, having been abandoned twice, first by his father, then by his mother. But he turned serious when he said he never missed them because he had never known them and, besides, he had had Jocelyn, and she loved him enough for both of them.

“The tarot card reader?” Poppy remembered.

“Yeah, not sure how good she was at reading them. But she was the best mother to me. You'd have liked her. She was a strange one too.”

“Oy,” objected Poppy, elbowing him in the ribs. “I thought you said everyone was weird.”

“Everyone I know. But you and her—you're in a different league.”

Glad to be paired with someone Leo loved, Poppy decided to take that as a compliment.

“We were happy when it was just me and her. But then she met Evan.” Leo gave a bitter laugh. “The joke of it is that I think she thought it'd be good for me. Having a father figure.”

“What did he do to you?” Poppy's voice dropped to almost a whisper.

“It wasn't just him. He had his boys. Two sons. The spitting image of him. Heads like potatoes, all of them. But their fists . . .”

Poppy's finger went to the scar that ran through Leo's left eyebrow, but she flinched as the sensation she got from it was fiery like a burn.

“Ashtray, that one.”

“How many are there?” Poppy asked.

Leo pointed to each of the scars they'd given him over the years, like they were props to a good story—on his forehead, his chest, his hand, his arm—his mementos of family life. Poppy hid the pity from her face, though it had caught inside of her and she couldn't dislodge it.

“There was no escaping them. Our apartment was tiny. Three
growing boys, I guess, with no room to grow. I get why they were violent, but him . . . he would goad them into it. He'd enjoy it.”

“What about Jocelyn?”

“She used to shout and pull them off me. But then she got sick. She just faded away. Every week there seemed to be just a little bit less of her. After she died, that's when I got the knife.” Leo kept his eyes gazing long into the distance, as though looking back in time before he spoke again. “She saw her death in the cards. She knew it was cancer before the doctors told her, but she thought all her herbs and crystals might buy her more time.” Leo gave a short and bitter laugh, like a fist hitting wood. “She didn't stand a chance.” He hung his head then and picked at the grass. “She kept telling me it was going to be okay. Even when she couldn't sit up anymore, she still kept saying so.” Then Leo looked at Poppy and tried to smile. “That's optimism for you.”

He gazed back out across the field and went quiet. It felt like prying to look at him, so Poppy stared ahead too, wishing she could think of something to say that didn't sound empty and trite. She sensed Leo retreating inside of himself and very gently she prompted, “What happened after? With them?”

“You don't want to know.”

His voice had changed, like he couldn't keep the lightness in it any longer and the words were too heavy to trip off the tongue. Poppy turned and looked, despite herself. His features were so very still. He sensed her looking and finally turned his head, and she caught a flash of what he'd suffered in his eyes. Then he blinked and it was gone and a stranger's eyes were looking back at her.

“Leo?” Poppy whispered.

“Forget about all that,” he said. “We're here . . . now . . . alone.” He looked at her flirtatiously, like it was all a bit of fun, but it felt like an act and Poppy didn't buy it. He reached out and touched her hair, twisting his finger around a strand that fell on her cheek. “You're gorgeous, you know that?”

He leaned forward to kiss her and Poppy put her arm out to stop him. The words—they sounded wrong. They sounded empty, like a lie, like they belonged to someone else. Poppy rapidly replayed them in her mind, but no matter which way she phrased them, they jarred. Why did he have to say gorgeous? It wasn't him. And it certainly wasn't her. Leo was looking at her warily. She pulled away, just out of his reach.

“I'm sorry,” she mumbled.

“C'mon,” he coaxed, trying to pull her back in. Poppy resisted and he said harshly, “What? You want me to tell the rest of my sob story first? Is that it?”

“First?” Poppy flashed fiercely.

Leo froze, and Poppy instantly felt ashamed.

“I'm sorry,” she said again, but Leo shook his head angrily. “What are you sorry for? Me? Them? Yourself?”

Poppy didn't answer and sat there for a moment. She knew she should try to hold him, kiss him, and make him feel better. But she just didn't know how to start. Instead, she got to her feet.