Landing (14 page)

Chapter 19

The sun finally rises on a new day.
Tarren wants to continue watching the trailer, but Gabe convinces him that we
all need rest. Our motel is only two miles away from the show, and Gabe can
monitor the live feeds from the trailer in his room.

“Plus, as long as she snags her
purse, we can track her through the bug I put there,” he says.

Tarren accepts this logic, mostly,
I think, because he wants to question me about what I learned. When we get to
the motel, I drain the last two rats in the bathroom, and then we set up a
little Fox pow-wow.

Slowly, clearly, without any
dramatics to speak of, I recite my conversation with Kyle and Jane. I leave out
all of Kyle’s silly grins, his “booga, wooga, uooga”, how Jane combed her
fingers through the long grasses, and how she kissed the tip of Kyle’s nose to
placate him. I also leave out my last question to Jane and her answer.

The rest I give freely to my
brothers. I watch as Tarren’s pen paints clean block letters into his notebook.
He underlines something. Gabe hunches over his laptop, pulling up spreadsheets,
adding notes in animated bursts, and clucking his tongue.

Upon Tarren’s request, I repeat the
story again. He stops and starts me, has me rewind and jump scenes while he
fills pages in his notebook. The story feels far away, hollow, like it was
someone else going through the motions, betraying the trust of her new friends.

Tarren is interested in The
Exalted, while Gabe asks me to slow down when Kyle and Jane discuss their
strategy for ducking the angel radar. He gets a big kick out of the whole
“Vigils” thing.

“I like it,” he says. “We should
adopt it, you know, like wear big Vs on our chests so when the angels see us,
they know, that, like, their card is punched. It’s over. We need a signal too.
A big V spotlight the Commissioner can use to contact us.” His enthusiasm is a
little too forced. I can tell from his energy that he’s freaked. Part of it
might be about The Exalted, but I think it’s mostly what Kyle said about angels
needing to feed on human energy; how I’ll always be hungry without it.

I don’t try to hide this part in my
narrative, or couch it, or even offer up a peevish defense about how I’m
different. I just say it straight out, using Kyle’s exact words. Tarren’s face
does not reveal any concern, but, then again, it wouldn’t. Still, I know the
wheels are turning fast in his brain, and all those doubts he has about me are
taking even deeper root.

When both boys are satisfied with
my explanation, I excuse myself to the shower. Beneath the hiss of the scalding
water, I can hear them talking quietly, reviewing this new data, and coming to
terms with the consequences.

Gabe’s voice jumps and then quickly
hushes.

For the first time in the known
history of Maya, I don’t strain to overhear their conversation. I’m in no mood
to handle a rehash of all Tarren’s doubts about me and Gabe’s stubborn defense.
So, I sit down under the spray of burning water, pull my legs to my chest, and
clasp my hands over my ears to mute out their voices.

Protected within the veil of water,
I wait for things to settle inside my head, or for this thick binding of guilt
to ease just a little. There was something so enticing, so wonderfully simple
about the lives that Kyle and Jane had chosen. I want to hate them, I want to
despise them, I want to say yes to their offer and be part of a family who
accepts me for exactly what I am.

Instead, I stand up and turn off
the water.

***

When I exit the bathroom, my
brothers both watch me carefully. Gabe’s aura is flickering up and down,
splayed with irritated oranges from their argument. Tarren’s aura is on
lockdown, which is a sign in itself.

They’ve decided that we will all
rest for three hours and then set up a rotating watch on the trailer. Tarren
will start, and Gabe and I will relieve him.

Tension hums between us, and the
big, nasty truths of what we must eventually face about my hunger. We ignore
them. The boys both look beat to hell. Pale faces. Scruffy jaws.

Yawning, Gabe packs up his laptop
and trudges to his room.

I pretend to sleep, and Tarren sits
on his bed, looking over his notes, scribbling more. I hear his pen pause every
once in a while, and I wonder if he is glancing over at me, trying to figure out
what to do. I imagine those seeds of doubt fermenting in his mind, shooting up
into wild, abundant vines.

Beneath my pillow, I clench my
fists. Why does he even take all his notes in a fucking notebook anyway? That’s
what computers are for.

Eventually, Tarren closes his
notebook, tucks it into his duffle bag, and lies down on his bed. When his
restrained aura eases, and his breath slows and evens out, I slip from my bed
and unlatch the window. I tried this once before, and Tarren caught me. That
feels so long ago. Today, the window opens silently beneath my trained hands,
and I slide out. Tarren doesn’t stir.

I climb onto the motel roof and sit
on the ledge with my legs dangling over. The afternoon sky is crowded with
clouds that spit down a light rain. The wind turns it sideways, and it pecks at
my face and at my skin beneath the thin cotton of my t-shirt.

I don’t want to think about Kyle
and Jane—our little monster family that might have been—so instead, my mind
takes this “what might have been” theme and applies it to all the tar heavy
secrets I’ve spent so much mental energy trying to hide in creative ways.
Chains, caskets, concrete, bricked up walls, things like that.

For instance, what could have been
if Grand had never torn the secret of my existence from Tarren’s lips during
the extended torture session that left Tammy dead and my brother with a network
of scars sewn into his flesh?

What could have been if Grand
hadn’t left that baited laptop in his hotel room, tricking my brothers into
thinking he was close to finding me? If he hadn’t followed them to my college
when they tried to protect me? If my brothers hadn’t inadvertently led them to
my innocent little world, to Ryan.

It’s a secret I’ve kept from my
brothers, am still keeping all by my lonesome so they won’t have to.

Gabe and Tarren shadowed me, but
not close enough. They’d unwittingly done their part, and Grand swooped in and
snatched his prize. If Tarren hadn’t slipped a tracker in my purse, they would
have never found me in time to launch their belated rescue. A rescue that
didn’t save Ryan and, honestly, didn’t save much of me.

I look up. The door to the roof
opens. Tarren walks over, pauses as if he expects an invitation, then sits down
beside me. Out of arm’s reach, of course.

Tarren has a talent for annoying me
even when he isn’t trying. Maybe it’s because he’s staring at me with that
carefully cloaked face, and I can never tell what he’s thinking—if he despises
me, pities me, or maybe something else.

“What do you want?” I finally ask.

Tarren doesn’t answer right away.
This is another thing I can’t stand about him; how he always takes his time,
auditioning his words like he’s got to be careful around me.

“It wasn’t easy what you did
yesterday.” Tarren pauses like I’m supposed to respond.

“You did well,” he says after a
while. “I should have told you that earlier.”

“So I earned my angel-killing scout
badge?”

Tarren frowns. I know this is hard
for him, playing nice, but he’s not the only one with an excuse to be moody.

“I know that none of this has been
easy for you,” he begins softly.

“Quit it!” I snap at him. “I get
enough slack from Gabe; I don’t need it from you.” I meet Tarren’s pale blue
eyes, and I don’t back down. “I know that you don’t trust me, and maybe you
shouldn’t. I get it. I’m a liability.”

I wait for the famous Tarren scowl
and those narrowed, penetrating eyes. Instead, he leans back on his hands and
looks down at the motel entrance below us.

I follow his gaze. A woman walks
out of the lobby door rolling a big suitcase in one hand and dragging two
bulging black trash bags with the other. Her blonde hair is pulled into a
sloppy ponytail that reveals inches of dark roots, and her jacket rides up her
waist as she swings the trash bags over her shoulder.

The woman’s energy is muddy blue,
lying almost static around her body like a sodden blanket. A little boy runs
out around her. He seems to be all coat with little nub arms and legs sticking
out and a round, dark head on top.

“Dylan, no running!” the woman
yells. “Brad, you coming?”

“Uh-huh.” An older boy with glasses
and freckles follows the woman out of the motel. He drags a second suitcase on
wheels. It keeps flipping over, and I can tell from the kid’s dancing aura that
he’s getting pissed. He kicks it back over. He might be eight or nine years
old.

The mother arranges her children
and belongings. The boys go on a bench at the curb, and the luggage is lined up
next to it. The children are told to sit still until she gets back with the
car. They nod their heads vigorously, but as soon as the mother is gone, the
older one stands up as if to prove his mettle.

“Let’s wrestle,” he says to his
younger brother.

“Nah-ah, I don’t wanna.”

“Yeah you do, come on.”

A smile tugs at the corner of
Tarren’s mouth but doesn’t stay long.

“We used to gang up on Gabe when we
were kids.” His voice is soft like he’s sharing a secret. “Tammy was worse, but
I always played along.”

This is the very first time I’ve
ever heard Tarren say his twin sister’s name, and it causes his whole aura to
recoil, like water thrown on a fire. A yellow-ginger hue pulses up from the
center met by a pale, throbbing red. I know what red indicates — pain,
suffering — but I still haven’t figured out what that apricot shade means.

“Gabe was so easy to rile up,”
Tarren continues. “He’d always follow us around, want to play with us. Mom
would go out on her “trips”, and she’d expect us take care of him. So, we’d
invent games and then change the rules so that Gabe always lost and had to
endure whatever random punishment Tammy or I made up.” Tarren pauses, and that
sad smile makes another short appearance. “We’d make him stand outside in the
snow or hold his breath until he passed out or wear one of Tammy’s dresses.
He’d scream and cry, and we would just laugh at him, because we always knew
he’d come back wanting to play again in another hour.”

Below, Dylan, the younger kid,
scrambles up on the bench. “I’m Cena, and I’m gonna break your bones,” he calls
out in his high little voice. “Yay!” he jumps and kicks in the air. He doesn’t
land anywhere close to his brother.

“That’s gay,” Brad says. “You gotta
flip when you jump and try to land on top of me.” He takes off his big jacket.
“Okay, okay, my turn now. You gotta stand there while I clothesline you.”

“Tammy and I got fed up with always
having to watch Gabe,” Tarren continues. “So, one day we invented this secret
club in the basement, ‘The Truly Terrifying and Totally Terrific Ts’, and we
didn’t let Gabe join. We locked the door and watched TV while he banged on it
and screamed.”

Tarren’s eyes are far away, so
pale, they almost look colorless. The pain hasn’t left his aura, though it’s
mellowed into more amber than red. “He got in though,” Tarren says. “Used a
screwdriver to unscrew the doorknob.” Tarren pauses. “Gabe is really smart,” he
tells me. “He doesn’t think so, but he is.”

“I know,” I say.

The little kid starts screaming,
“Get off me! Get off me!”

His brother is on top of him,
pulling his arm back. Dylan’s energy is growing bright and streaking red.

“You gotta tap out,” Brad tells
him. Dylan just howls.

An old station wagon pulls up to
the curb. Their mother rolls down the window. “Brad, get off your brother!” she
screams. She gets out of the car, and as soon as the door slams, Brad releases
his grip, grabs his coat, and scrambles onto the bench.

“What the hell do you think you
were doing?” The woman keeps plodding toward him. Dylan lies in the grass
holding his arm and wailing his lungs out. The red dissipates from his aura.
The kid’s not really hurt, crafty little bastard, but his mother doesn’t know
this. She scoops up her young son and bounces him on her hip.

“He kicked me,” Brad pouts. “Here.”
He rolls up his pant leg.

“Get in the car,” the mother tells
Brad with all sorts of menace in her voice. “Now!”

“Keep going,” I tell Tarren. “So
Gabe crashed your secret club.”

Tarren brushes the rain off his
forehead. “He was so proud of himself for getting into the basement, but we
were not amused. We chased him all over the house, and Tammy tackled him and
slammed him against the wall. We dragged him outside and tied him to that big
tree out front with a couple of jump ropes. It was the same tree where you hid
his hat.”

Tarren’s voice drops lower. “Tammy
decreed that the penalty for sneaking into our club was banishment for the
entire night, so we left him out there tied to that tree.”

Brad crawls into the back of the
station wagon, pushing the trash bag off his seat with some gusto. The woman
straps Dylan into the front passenger seat, which I think is illegal for a kid
his age. He reaches out for her.

“Mom, Mom, momomomomom —” The woman
closes the door. For a moment she stares into the distance. I can’t even guess
at what dread is clawing through her mind, but I can see it in the dark swirls
of her aura. I feel bad for her. Seems like we’ve all got the whole world on
our shoulders one way or another.

With a couple coughs, the station
wagon rumbles to life. Tarren and I watch it head out of the parking lot.

“I could hear Gabe from my bedroom
window,” Tarren says, “sobbing all night long, twisting against the ropes. I
wanted to let him in, but Tammy and I shared a room back then. She had meted
out her punishment, and I wasn’t willing to undermine her. Not even for Gabe.” Tarren
won’t look at me. The rain has turned his hair black. He hasn’t changed out of
his cloths from the mission, and he smells of the forest and of dried sweat.