Mercy, A Gargoyle Story (15 page)

I wonder if Ayla hears it in his voice, the tugging of the rug as he yanks it up, slowly, over her eyes.
 
The other girl's name being swept under the fringe, with the edge of his lip.
 
A kid named Carly...a kid that was in his apartment only an hour ago, saying his name over and over again and inviting him to smell her.
 
I hate him enough for both of them.

"There's two of them,”
 
Ayla says, noticing the statue of the dead gargoyle.

"Yeah, Dawn’s into gargoyles, I guess.”
 
He's focused more on her hair than on what she says, as he eases up behind her and snakes his hands around her waist.
 
Oh, I remember that.
 
The feeling of him crushed against my back, his warmth spread out against me.
 
He'd hold me like he didn’t want me to ever get away, and I never, ever tried.

Ayla doesn't either.
 
She turns to face him, the way I used to.
 
The way probably ever girl in the world would, because his arms feel so reliable.
 
She leans back, her pelvis locked against his, her hair dangling.

Then they kiss and my heart is just a jar of rocks.
 
I want to reach out and yank Ayla away.
 
I want to roar at the boy.
 
I want this to stop before Ayla and Carly get hurt.
 
Before either of them is wrapped in a paper robe, in a tiny sterile room, with a doctor, instead of him, between their knees.

I stand.

They don't notice me.
 
They remain locked in their kiss, his hands cupping her jaw as if her kiss is food.
 
Yes, I remember that too.

I inch forward, out from beneath the fronds of an overhanging fern.
 
I don't care if they look up, if they know I'm not a statue, if he even figures out it's me.
 
I don't care.
 
I might even want them to.
 
His hands are sliding down her forearms and a bouquet of emotions rush up inside me.
 
Hurt, anger, confusion, disappointment.
 
And then the door to the stairs bursts open and a figure emerges from the shadows that stop me dead.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Selene stands in the doorframe, her breathing so labored that her chest rises and falls like a dribbling basketball.
 
She holds onto the knob as if it is the only thing holding her up, but she shouts the word she came for, between breaths.

“Ayla!”

The Boy releases Ayla as if it was his name that was shouted.
 
Ayla’s confused gaze wanders until it finds Selene.

“Come…home.
 
Now,” her foster mother puffs.
 
Ayla screws up her face in a sour, challenging smirk.

“What are you doing here?”

“I…know.
 
I know…about him.
 
Come home.
 
Before you get...in…over your head.”

“I’m almost eighteen.
 
I think I’d know if I’m over my head.”

“He was your dead friend’s…boyfriend…wasn’t he?”
 
Selene bends over, one hand still on the door and the other on her thigh, still trying to catch her breathe.
 
“The one that was…pregnant, right?”

Ayla’s mouth drops open, but only a smothered sound makes it out.
 
The Boy looks off, over the ledge somewhere, as he jams his fists in his pockets.
 
Ayla knots her arms on her chest.

“You are so rude,” Ayla snaps at Selene.
 
“Why would you even say that?
 
We
lost Madeline.
 
WE did.
 
But it’s not his fault that she killed herself, and I can’t believe you’d come up here and say that to him, you selfish witch…”

But The Boy’s head drops on his chest and he says, “Yes it is.
 
It is my fault.”

“No it’s not!”
 
Ayla turns on him.
 
“It was a mistake!
 
Mistakes happen and it was Madeline that made the worst mistake.”

“He got her pregnant,” Selene says, her breathing finally returning to normal.
 
Ayla glares at her.

“You think Maddy didn’t have anything to do with that?”

“Of course she did.
 
But I’m not here for her.
 
I’m here for you.
 
To be sure you don’t make the same mistake.”

“Oh my God!”
 
Ayla shrieks.
 
Even in the dark, I see her skin flush a darker shade.
 
The Boy’s chin is on his chest and he rolls his tongue in his mouth, but he doesn’t say a word.
 
“You are so ridiculous!
 
Go home.
 
I’m almost an adult and I’ll be out of your hair in a few weeks anyway.
 
Besides, I’m moving in with Adam.”

The Boy lifts his head and his mouth drops.

“You are?” he says, and Ayla nods once, even though her brow is still bent from battle.
 
Selene tsks through her teeth.

“It’s a mistake,” she says.

“You don’t know anything.”

“Come home with me, Ayla.”

“No.
 
I’m staying here with Adam.”

“Then I’ll send the police to come get you.
 
You’re still my responsibility, until you’re eighteen.”

“Just go home, Ayla,” The Boy says.
 
His voice is small and weak.
 
He looks away again, across the roof, anywhere but at Selene.
 
“I’ll help you move on your birthday, if you still want to.”

Ayla throws back her head like a wild mare, but she goes.
 
She tears past Selene with a violent shove of her shoulder against the doorframe, but she never touches her foster mother.
 
Selene stays put once Ayla is gone and gives The Boy another hard glance.
 
He accidentally meets her eyes.

“Don’t do to her what you’ve already done to someone else,” Selene tells him.
 
“Not to her.
 
She’s
my baby
and I won’t have it.
 
I’ve been keeping an eye out, and I’m going to keep on doing that.
 
Don’t you try anything with her, you understand me?”

The Boy just stares at her and finally Selene tips her head, jaw out to him, before turning away and puffing back down the steps and out of his building.

***

I follow The Boy, after he leaves the roof, although I scale down the side of the brick and he walks down to his apartment.
 
I am outside his window when the door opens and he flips on the light.
 
He runs his hand through his hair, dumps his apartment key on the counter, and his cell phone rings.

“Hello?”
 
I curl up my wings, hoping they don’t show through the window.

“Hey douchebag, how you been?”
 
The voice on the other end is tiny, but familiar and audible.
 
It’s Rodeo.

“Good.
 
What’s going on?”

“Well, what the fuck, E?
 
I come up to your room and Dern said you moved out.
 
I know a lot went down with you, but Jesus…you should’ve said something.
 
Was Madison really pregnant?”

The Boy sighs and the color drains from his forehead, his cheeks, his neck.
 
He turns an awful shade of gray.

“Madeline.
 
Her name was Madeline and yeah.
 
She had an abortion,” he says.

“Whoa.
 
And then she just went and offed herself?
 
That’s a lot of shit.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Well...how’s everything else going?
 
Where are you anyway?”

“Queens.
 
Moved to be near Ayla.”
 
My wing droops a little.
 
I don’t know what use it is being vain when I’m not even alive anymore, but I had hoped he would say he came because of me somehow.
 
I think of Truce and how he wanted to know what The Boy had done to me.
 
I add this small thing to my list of all the things The Boy does to me even now, every day, by not thinking of me anymore.

“Ayla?
 
That girl you used to see?
 
Rhino butt?
 
That one?”

The Boy grits his teeth.
 
He says, “Ayla’s the one I took to Dern’s party.”

“Yeah, Rhino.
 
Didn’t she dump you?
 
You stalking her now?”

“She didn’t dump me,” The Boy says, but he stops in the kitchen to bang his fist methodically against the counter.
 
“She moved and I started college.”

  
“Uh huh,” Rodeo’s doubt leaks through the phone.
 
“Well, you moved up to the grade A class when you scored with Madeline.
 
Don’t lose your footing now.
 
Even if she was all emo, that girl was still caviar.
 
I know a lot of crap happened, but don’t be going back to the Alpo, man.”

The Boy’s knuckles grow white as he grips the counter.
 
“You know what, Chip?
 
You don’t know shit.”

“What are you getting all hot about?
 
I’m just trying to tell you that it doesn’t matter what you look like after all.
 
Go a little younger, play ‘em some guitar, and you can snap up the hotties like a boss.
 
I’m just trying to keep you from dumpster diving for your chicks is all.”

“Ayla’s not dumpster diving.
 
She’s actually got a brain.
 
You can have all the Maddy’s you want and you know what,
man?
 
You deserve ‘em.”

The Boy clicks off his phone and throws it down on the counter.
 
He stomps down the hall to the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.
 
I hear him retching inside.
 
When he finally comes out, he wipes his mouth and grabs his phone again.

He paces as he dials, sighs, waits, while the phone rings on the other end.

Backward Baseball Cap answers on the second ring, “Hey buddy, how’s it going?”

“Just talked to Chip.”

“Oh yeah?
 
What’d that butthead have to say?”

The Boy sucks in a breath and exhales like he’s giving up.
 
“Nothing.
 
The usual.”

“He wanted to know about Madeline?”

“Yup.”

“Nosey bastard.”

“He was trashing on Ayla too.”

“Lemme guess.
 
Because she’s not as hot as Madeline?”
 
Backward Baseball laughs a laugh that isn’t one.
 
The Boy groans.

“That’s all he thinks there is to anything.”

“To be fair, wasn’t that exactly what you were thinking when you were with Mad?”

The Boy leans his head back, inhales.

“Yeah,” he says, defeated.
 
“But I
tried
to feel more.
 
At least I tried, when I found out she was…you know…knocked up.”

“That was a tough break,” Backward Baseball sympathizes on the other end.

“That’s why I told her to have the abortion,” The Boy pinch-rubs his eyes, crushing them beneath his fingers.
 
“God, I never thought she’d go and kill herself.
 
I figured she’d hate my guts and just walk away and be happy that we didn’t have the kid together.”

The Boy covers his face.
 
He shudders, and makes a funny noise between a grunt and a sniffle that Backward Baseball must hear on the other end, because he says, “Damn, man, I feel for you.
 
It should’ve gone the right way.
 
There was no way of knowing she was going to be such a clinger.
 
Or that she’d end up doing what she did.”

“No,” The Boy says.
 
A tear slips out from under his crushed eyelids, but he levels his tone, so Backward Baseball won’t know he’s crying.
 
“Never expected that.
 
She kept wanting me to explain why I wasn’t into her, you know?
 
And what was I supposed to tell her?
 
It was just her body, all along?
 
I thought
that
would send her over the edge.
 
I tried to make it work, but I just don’t get how it works, dude.
 
I mean, she was so into me, she was totally hot, and I just couldn’t make myself feel a damn thing for her.”

Backward Baseball lowers his voice, like he’s standing over my grave.
 
“You’d do it all different now if you could.”

“Hope so,” The Boy says, wiping his cheek with the heel of his hand.
 
“If I could do it all over, I would’ve never even talked to her that first time at the coffee shop.
 
I’d just erase the whole damn thing.”

***

I am back on my own rooftop, sunken down in a corner, struggling under the weight of it all.

What a stupid thing to ever want.
 
A boy that is alive, a boy that still doesn’t, and never did, love me.
 
Deep inside, I’ve always known he was just an exciting static at the end of my fingertips, just a little too far beyond my best stretch.
 
But even with these arms I have now, easily twice the length they once were, I see he is even more unreachable than ever.

He’s never.

When I look at him now, I see him so differently.
 
Sickeningly thin, with pothole cheeks and hair that hangs like thread.
 
He’s just a boy with lumpy, kabob knuckles and a voice so low that it rumbles in my stomach and makes me ache like I am starving.
 
It’s only worse because nothing has changed, although everything has.

I peek over the edge of the roof and see that The Boy has left his phone on the counter.
 
He’s sitting on his couch, his gaze tractor-beamed by the light of his TV.

He was never handsome.
 
I knew that.
 
It’s even more obvious now.

And it can’t matter anymore that I had found other things in him that I believed were more important than his looks.
 
He never found any of those things in me.
 
Everything that has led me to this corner of the rooftop has something to do with believing that The Boy loved me, while also ignoring every sign that he didn’t.

The itch of wanting fades slowly inside me, scabbing over into a memory I don’t want to scratch open again.
 
But I feel hollow without wanting him.

I think of climbing down to Ayla’s window and looking in, just to remember the comfort she used to bring me.
 
On days when I would complain about my hair or my boobs or The Boy, she would tell me, "You're beautiful, Madeline.
 
And smart.
 
You can have anyone.
 
Hear me?
 
Anyone."
 
She'd lower her lashes and give me her sly, teasing smile.
 
"Or everyone, if you play your cards right.
 
Look around the coffee shop and tell me.
 
Which one do you want?"