Reborn (Altered) (2 page)

“Where’s Sam?” I asked.

“In town, filling the gas cans.”

“Cas?”

She bent down to fish out the first-aid kit from beneath the sink. “He went running about a half hour ago.” She unzipped the kit on the vanity top and started tearing into gauze packs. I caught her hand mid-tear, and she glared over at me.

“Stop,” I said. “Don’t waste the supplies. A rag will do.”

She frowned, but didn’t argue, and switched to a rag she dug out of the closet. She wetted it down and came over to me, hunching so we were face-to-face.

Her blond hair was braided, and it hung over her shoulder, tied off with a black rubber band. Dark shadows painted the skin beneath her eyes. She hadn’t been sleeping well lately. Flashbacks and old demons haunted her out of bed. I could relate. None of us really slept well, except for Cas. Cas could sleep through an air raid.

Anna cleaned the blood from my face and the open wound on
the side of my eye, working with the methodic confidence of a professional, even though she wasn’t.

“Why do you keep doing this?” she mumbled.

I scowled. “Why do you keep asking?”

Another frown. It was her default expression with me.

“What’s going on, Nick? Is it more flashbacks?”

Yes.

I looked past her at the towel hanging from the towel rack. It used to be brown. Now it was a faded mud color.

I saw a flash of a girl. I kept seeing her. The same girl. And every time I did, she was shaking. No, not shaking.
Trembling
.

And there was always blood on her face, tears running through it. Blood pulsed out of a bullet wound in her chest, and she held her left side like it hurt.

I didn’t know who she was. I didn’t know how she’d been injured, or if it’d been me who did it. Sometimes I doubted the reliability of my head. Maybe she was an image left over from my life before the Branch. A girl I saw in a movie. A character I read about in a book.

If she was real, I couldn’t stand to live with the idea that I’d hurt her. The only way I’d have gone that far was if she was trying to kill me first. If the girl was connected to the Branch, then she wasn’t innocent. No one involved with them was ever innocent. Me included.

“In my files,” I started, “did it say anything about a girl from any of my missions? She might have been about our age. Or maybe a bit younger.”

Anna thought for a second. “I don’t think so, but I could check again.” She nudged my chin, forcing me to look at her, but I quickly shifted away.

Anna had always been the type of person who didn’t hesitate when it came to touching. For her, touching was caring. For me though, touching always meant pain. That’s what happens when your dad spends his free time beating the shit out of you. My life was crap even before I joined the Branch.

“Is that what all this is about?” Anna asked. “A girl?” There was a note of worry in her voice. Like she was afraid I’d fall down the rabbit hole of love and get myself shot. Fuck that.

I didn’t answer the question. Instead I did what I do best. I scowled at her. “Just look, please?”

She frowned, but nodded.

“Thanks.” I edged past her to the door to escape. This time she didn’t follow.

2

ELIZABETH

I SCANNED THE SHELVES ABOVE MY DESK and ran a finger down the row of cobalt glass bottles labeled with peeling stickers that said things like
THAT DAY THE POWER WENT OUT, SPRING
, and
CARNIVALS
.

My memories were carefully chronicled in fragrant oils, mixed in cobalt bottles, labeled and shelved.

I stopped when I found the bottle—the label—that I’d been searching for.

GABRIEL.

I dreamed of him last night.

Upon waking this morning, I was reminded immediately of just how long it’d been since he’d disappeared from my life, as quickly and suddenly as he’d arrived.

It was hard to forget someone when he’d saved your life, regardless of how much—or how little—you valued it.

Gabriel’s bottle was the oldest. The first. Tied to one defining moment in my life—the night that I was saved, the night that I escaped the people who had kidnapped my mother and me and held us captive for six long months.

I plucked the bottle from the shelf. Though the cork was still firmly lodged in the neck, I immediately recalled the way he smelled.

Musk. Pine. A drop of cinnamon. Bergamot. And finally, cedarwood.

The scar running from my left side all the way down to my hip bone flared, a phantom burning where a knife dragged across my flesh, slicing through tissue and muscle, nicking bone.

The second scar, the old bullet wound in my chest, pulsed.

I missed him. I missed him in a foreign way that I couldn’t explain. I didn’t really know him. I hadn’t even spent much time with him. But every time I thought of him, there was this crushing ache in my head, like Gabriel’s absence was a hole inside me, so deep and wide that nothing else would fill it. By saving my life, he’d taken a part of it with him.

Without opening the bottle, I put it back on the shelf and tucked it behind the one labeled
WILDFLOWERS
.

I couldn’t revisit Gabriel today. Maybe not tomorrow, either.

His bottle—its contents—was the one I loved and hated and feared and tried desperately to forget.

But it was the one I couldn’t forget even if I tried.

Pots and pans crashed together in the kitchen as I made my way downstairs. I found my foster mother, Aggie, digging in one of the bottom cupboards, her hair tied back with a bandanna. Various ingredients were spread out on the countertop.

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

Startled, she whacked her head on the edge of the cabinet door. She scooted back, rubbing the sore spot. “You scared me.”

“Sorry.” I went straight for the coffeepot. Aggie had my favorite mug waiting for me nearby, and I filled it to the top.

“I’m looking for my Bundt cake pan.”

I gestured at the cabinet on the far left. “Check that one.”

She frowned, but looked inside and pulled out the pan in question. “Well, how about that.”

Out of all the foster parents I’d had, Aggie was by far my favorite. I’d been through five homes before settling down here.

Aggie was well into her sixties when she took me in. She was a single woman who had lost her only daughter to breast cancer many years back. Aggie understood loss like none of my other foster families had.

Our suffering wasn’t the same, exactly, but it was suffering nonetheless. She’d been patient with me from the beginning. Kind. Soft-spoken. I wasn’t sure where I’d be without her.

After I’d been rescued, I’d felt like a buoy lost out at sea. My mother had always been my rock—she was strong and determined and smart. In some ways, living without her was worse than being held captive.

A lot of my earlier anxiety attacks could be traced back to my mom’s absence. Some tiny thing would remind me of her—a scented candle, her favorite brand of chocolate, an old sweater—and the pain would come crashing back.

I couldn’t stop seeing her face, the panic in her eyes, when my captors threatened us both to secure my full cooperation. They didn’t come right out and say it, but it was certainly implied that if I didn’t do everything they asked, they’d kill my mother without hesitation.

“Do you work today?” Aggie asked as she handed me a banana. “Eat that up while I cook you some eggs.”

Aggie was forever pushing food on me, fussing over how thin I was. Compared to her, I was small—she was a large woman, with wide shoulders and a substantial chest—but compared to Chloe, or any of the girls Chloe hung out with, I was average sized.

“I have today off,” I answered, peeling back the banana’s skin. “Are you busy? We could have a movie day.”

“I have to be at the senior citizens’ center this afternoon, otherwise
I would love to spend the day with you. You’ll be all right on your own?”

“Of course,” I lied. Honestly, I didn’t want to spend the day in the house by myself. When I was alone, I tended to disappear inside my own head, and my head was a landscape of horrors from the past.

Aggie gave me a sidelong glance before turning and busying herself at the stove. “Actually, you know what, I’m sure they can find another volunteer. I’ll give them a call and let them know I can’t make it.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Nonsense. I want to.” She waved the spatula in the air. “We were supposed to paint flowerpots today, and really, do I need more flowerpots?”

Her back deck was littered with them. Big pots on the floor, small pots lined up on the railings. More pots were placed around the house, and not all of them held plants. At least a half dozen of them held odds and ends. She was right, she didn’t need more, but that wasn’t the point. I hated asking her to change her plans for me.

But I couldn’t bring myself to object, either. The past was creeping up on me today, suffocating me like a shroud.

“If you’re sure,” I said, and she nodded. “Thanks, Aggie.”

She smiled. “Of course.”

I closed my eyes once she turned away, and pressed my fingers to the bridge of my nose, feeling a headache growing beneath my skull.
I saw my mother in the darkness, screaming my name as my captors dragged her from me.

I’d escaped from where I was being held, but my mother hadn’t been so fortunate.

If I’d fought a little harder the last time I’d seen her, I would have hugged her, hugged her tightly and told her how much I loved her.

3

NICK

I WOKE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, choking back a memory of dear old Dad that had found its way into my dreams. I lay in bed for a while, trying to force myself back to sleep. When that didn’t happen, I tossed off the sheet, threw on some clothes, and headed downstairs.

Everyone was asleep, so the house was quiet and dark. I dodged a creaky floorboard between the stairs and the living room, and made my way to the fridge. Inside were all the necessities—leftovers and beer. After dinner, Anna had sliced up what was left of the chicken into bite-sized pieces. Easy enough to eat with my fingers.

I left just enough food for it to be a tease, not enough for a meal. Cas would whine like he always did when things came down to food. I smiled to myself as I plucked a beer from the fridge.

With a quick
pop
of the front door lock, I was outside, grateful for the cool air. The moon was nearly full, so I didn’t need a flashlight to find my way to the edge of the woods, to the hollowed-out log that sat beneath a massive maple tree. I rooted around inside and pulled out the pack of cigarettes I’d hidden there along with a lighter.

Vice in hand, I went back to the porch, eased into one of the old lawn chairs, and propped my feet on the railing.

The night was noisy. Always with the goddamn crickets. Sometimes a coyote or two howled at each other.

Leaning back in the chair, the front legs rocking off the porch floor, I lit a cigarette and drew on it. Smoking was an old habit, one I’d obviously quit somewhere along the line, but I couldn’t remember if I’d quit on purpose, or if I’d just forgotten I’d smoked once my memories were wiped.

Either way, I still craved cigarettes like I craved good whiskey, and sometimes drawing on nicotine helped to break up all the shit crowding my head.

I felt better already.

I took another pull off the beer and then set it on the porch floor. I dug in my pants pocket and withdrew a flattened paper crane. Cigarette still clutched between two fingers, I brought the crane up to my line of sight and stared at its pointed head.

My mother was the one who taught me how to fold paper cranes. I was only five, maybe six. At first, my cranes came out crooked, with more fold lines in the paper than were needed. But origami was one
of the few things we did together, and I didn’t care so much about the cranes as I did the attention.

The memories of my old life were still foggy and disjointed, but more and more of it was coming back—things I didn’t want to remember, things I was angry at having forgotten. The paper cranes were one of the first things I remembered about my mom. Everything else about her came after.

My mom was a shitty parent.

When my memories started to resurface, I’d remembered my dad first, and that my mom had left us when I was young. I’d wanted to think she left for a good reason, maybe because she couldn’t stand the shit and chaos my dad put her through.

Now I knew better.

Mom left because she was a junkie, and being a junkie had always been more important to her than being a mom.

She had good days, where she was just high enough to be happy, not too blitzed to be useless. Those were the days when we folded. It was the only creative thing she knew how to do, maybe because it didn’t require a lot of clearheaded thinking once you knew the steps, and she knew them by heart.

On the rarest days, I had both parents. Dad used to take me fishing on Little Hood Creek, and Mom would curl up on the bank, a book in her hand, big, round sunglasses hiding her eyes. When she was baked from the sun, she’d toss the book, dip her feet in the water, and point out the minnows darting between her legs.