Mercy, A Gargoyle Story (9 page)

“But these are Jaibu’s only options, if you surrender them.
 
He could kill Truce, and you could kill Jaibu, if a challenge arises.
 
Then, the kingdom would be completely yours."

"But I have another choice," I say.
 
"I can decline the kingdom."

"Oh no, not now.
 
You’ve been cast in a gargoyle form," Trickle says.
 
"Your only options are to either choose a suitor, and claim your kingdom, or heal your human recipient and pass on."

"I want to die,” I say quickly.
 
“But I don't have a recipient yet."

"Well then," Trickle's voice fades with the last of the raindrops, "If passing on is your choice, you best find one.
 
The murder of a gargoyle is most definitely not adviiiiiiiis…"

CHAPTER NINE

The rain goes.
 
I don't drag the pail full of water to Trickle.
 
I don't want to hear any more.

I don’t have a human recipient and I don’t know how to find one on this rooftop.
 
It must be why Moag chose to leave me here, trapping me, so it is easy for suitors to find me.
 
It’s not likely that I’ll be able to find a recipient up here and steal Moag’s chances of passing on.
 

Dead already, I don’t know why another death worries me so much, but it does.
 
A gargoyle means to kill me.
 
Marry me first, and then kill me.
 
I review the conversation with Jaibu in my head over and over again, trying to understand.
 
The only reason for marrying him would be to become the Queen and I don't want that.
 
I want to die.
 
But allowing Jaibu to kill me might be the easiest choice.
 
I’d know what to expect.
 
I wonder if dying, as a gargoyle, would be anything like my human death.
 
But, choosing my death is less comfortable now.

I wish there was some way to find my recipient.
 
I don't know how I'd even know if it was the right one.

There was only one time before that I was sure I'd made the right choice.
 
I knew The Boy was the Right One, the night I introduced him to Ayla.
 
She was the only family I had; she was the one person who cared enough about me to be skeptical that a boy would be worthy of me.
 

"If he hurts you, I'll break his legs," Ayla had said over our coffee cups.
 
Ayla.
 
She's 5'5 with zero upper body strength.

"How are you going to do that, Spaghetti Arms?”
 
I'd laughed.
 
Ayla turned her back on me and swung her solid, blue-jeaned butt back and forth on her thick legs.
 
She was a pear-shaped girl that played Queen's old song,
Fat Bottom Girls,
like an anthem, and she could still move her big butt like a ballerina.

"You said this guy's really skinny right?" she said.
 
"I'll break him with the undeniable power of the ass!"

It didn't matter that I knew Ayla would do little more than share a pint of Ben & Jerry's with me, if The Boy ever hurt my feelings.
 
What mattered was that she loved me.

When The Boy showed up at the coffee shop, we saw him before he saw us.
 
He passed by the windows, like a short strip of movie film.
 
Every glance was perfect to me.
 
He was looking at the sidewalk, Ayla followed my finger to him, and then she followed him from window to window until he reached the door.
 
I wanted her approval.

"Him?" she whispered when he walked in.

"Mmm hmm!”
 
I giggled.

He walked right up to the table and met my eyes first, and then Ayla's.
 
His eyes lit up.

"So,
you're
the firing squad?" he asked her.

"Sure am," Ayla said and added quickly, “And you are?”

"I'm Adam."

"Ayla."

"Nice to meet you."

"Yup, nice," she'd said, and then they both turned to me.
 
Her grin was tight and goofy and excited for me.
 
His was awkward.
 
He pecked my cheek.

"So how long have you two known each other?" he asked.

"Ayla's my best friend," I told him.
 
I looked across the table for her agreement.
 
Ayla nodded at him.

"Sure am," she said.
 
He put his arm around me, and she dropped her eyes into her empty cup with a tiny frown.
 
I didn't want her sad, I didn't want her jealous.
 
But I snuggled against his chest, proud he was mine.

***

The Boy’s light is on when Ayla sneaks out of the apartment house door down below.
 
It is later than both coffee shop hours and curfews.
 
I am almost grateful for the distraction, even if it makes my heart churn ashes.

Ayla is dressed like half a thief, wearing dark shorts and a dark spaghetti-strap tank, but her skin is a white flag against the night shadows.
 
She shoots across the street and dives through the front door of The Boy’s building.

I was consumed with him once.
 
My relationship to The Boy was what I dreamt of at night, what I used to make decisions about what I'd wear that day.
 
I ate my breakfast wondering if he was awake yet, checking my phone for messages he might have left while I slept.
 
The first two weeks we were together, there was always a text waiting.
 
After we did
it
, the texts dropped off to one every other morning and then the mornings without texts began to stretch out, until the texts didn't even happen anymore.
 
We were together for four months before
it
happened.
 
At the end of the sixth month, everything was over.
 
The seventh month, I was lying at the bottom of the lake.

I loved him so much, the hinges of my heart squeaked and pulled and felt like they were always being thrown open.
 
I'd sit beside him and feel the tremor he brought me, his drumbeat pounding down between my legs.
 
I would ditch Ayla just to spend time with him; I’d stay out late, skip morning classes, and have to piece together all kinds of excuses so I wouldn't be suspended.

I'd have done anything for him and I did.
 
I had so much feeling for him that I believed I could fill him with it, if he ever ran out.
 
I never believed he would.
 
During that fifth month, I went to the clinic alone, because he couldn't get off work.
 
He said he didn't want to ask Backward Baseball to switch shifts again.
 
I said it was okay.

And I was the one who let a part of us be sucked out of me.

The last time we were together, it was almost closing time at the coffee shop.
 
We sat opposite, in high chairs, at a podium table.
 
He had plain coffee.
 
My cup was from the bottom of the urn I think.
 
No matter how much cream and sugar I dumped in, I just couldn't make it taste sweet.

"We need to talk," he'd said.

I smiled.
 
"Okay."

He squirmed on his seat, swung it side to side, but kept his elbows on the table.
 
"Things have been pretty crazy lately, huh?"

"I'm glad it's over," I said.
 
I thought he'd want me to say that, even if he knew better.
 
He knew I still cried about it.
 
His arms got stiff whenever he had to hug me.
 
He told me I had to let it go.
 
He wiggled on his high chair across the table from me and I thought he was finally going to tell me it was all a big mistake.
 
I felt myself swell; waiting for him to say what I figured would heal everything.

He let out a big sigh, with a smile.

"Oh, yeah.
 
Me too," he said.
 
He rolled his eyes up over the invisible hurdle we'd cleared together.
 
"But that's not what I wanted to talk about.
 
I wanted to talk about us."

He said it so sweetly, I scooted closer the edge of my seat, leaning forward to hear every word.
 
I opened my eyes wider, smiled wider, let my heart expand a little, as if I could let it flood across the table and surround him.
 
He was so nervous.
 
He stood up beside the table and slid one hand into his pocket.
 
My breath caught in my throat.
 
I knew what he was about to do.
 
The proposal would be the reward for doing what he wanted me to do.
 
To show me he loved me, despite what he asked me to do.

"I know you love me, Madeline," he said.

"I do."
 
I inhaled until I couldn't expand anymore.
 
I wanted to remember this moment forever.
 
The grin twitched off his face.
 
His knuckles bucked against the fabric of his pocket.
 
I laid my hand flat on the cold tabletop, ready.

"That's why I have to tell you, Maddy...God, this is so hard.
 
I'm just going to say it, okay?”
 
He exhaled a deep breath.
 
“I'm not in love with you."

My smile froze.
 
I couldn’t process what he was saying.
 
I tried to puzzle out why he wasn't taking my hand and slipping on a ring.
 
I wasn't embarrassed.
 
I didn't even realize I should be, until he frowned.
 
My brain clicked and his words finally gushed in.
 
They splashed inside me, against the back of my eyes.
 
I tipped my head to one side, hoping that what he said would just drain out.
 
Instead, he stood there at the edge of the table and I could feel it.
 
He was already leaving me, like a melting sand castle never meant to stay on my shore.
 
I squinted, trying to see over the tidal waves crashing inside me.

"What?"
 
I blinked.
 
He shrugged.
 
We were, finally, both embarrassed.

"I'm sorry.
 
I wanted to.
 
You're hotter than anybody I thought I could ever get, and you're a good person, but I'm just not
in love
with you.
 
I keep trying to feel it, but I don't.
 
And now that all that stuff has happened, I just can't keep leading you on, because it's never going to go anywhere.
 
It’s not fair to you."

Blank inside.
 
There was only a hole at the base of me that I drained through.
 
Just as I found the air, his words hit me.
 
He was right: it wasn't fair.
 
The only fair thing I could see at that moment would be for him to stay with me, forever.
 
I’d given up so much; he could give me a little.
 
But there wasn't enough left inside me to say it.
 
He began to talk again, each word quivering, like he was standing on the end of a diving board.

"It's my fault, okay?" he said.
 
He was desperate, maybe frustrated, or even angry, I couldn't tell.
 
Didn't care.
 
"I like you, but I don't love you, and I'm really sorry it happened like this.
 
It's all my fault."

He had an almost-grin, as if calling our relationship 'his fault' erased the last six months.
 
Like
his fault
would leave me any less ruined.
 
He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out the key to my house.
 
I'd given it to him the week before, and had gone to bed every night since, fantasizing that he'd use it, and I’d wake up with him beside me.
 
But he'd never once used my key.

Not until that moment.
 

He slid it to me, with just one finger, over the tabletop.
 
He finally used it to ruin my life.

"Okay, well, I gotta go," he said with another shrug.
 
He put both hands in his pockets and slunk out the door.

Leaning off the lip of the building now, watching his window, I squint at his apartment window.
 
The ash-rain falls on my shriveled heart.
 
Maybe I should've fought harder for him.
 
Maybe I should’ve fought harder against him.

 
Ayla's knock is at the door and he goes to it, glancing through the peephole.
 
He immediately pulls open the door and Ayla's face is stoic as she steps inside.

My heart rolls in my stomach, like an extinguished flame floating in gasoline.
 
I don't want to see her there.
 
Not being the same fool I was.
 
I spread my wings up around my head, catching their conversation in the bowl.

"Are you all unpacked?" she asks.
 
He nods.
 
They stand in his apartment as easily as if they are a roof and a basement, like two ends of bread or a thumb and baby finger.
 
I was always the glue between them, and now, they are standing uncomfortably close to one another, as if they don't even remember how to be acquaintances anymore.

Ayla rests her hand on the back of his couch.

"You want a drink?" he asks.

"Sure," she says.
 
The Boy goes and pulls a bottle from his fridge and splashes cola into red plastic cups.